Good afternoon and welcome to a workshop meeting the Book of Ritone City Council does Monday, April 21st, 2025 the time is 215. We have no proclamations or presentations today. We have no board interviews so we'll open the floor to public request. I do have two cards first from Judy Moro and then Dil Tranca and then anyone else wishes to speak on any city matters. Please come forward, give your name and address and you'll put three minutes. Ms. Morrell. Hello everybody. And my name is Judy Morrell, 1305 Northeast Fifth Avenue. And my priority is always to stand up for Boca Raton Tennis Center and thank you for saying that good news is gonna come. Can't wait to hear it. But in the meantime I remember Scott Singer said instead of when you look it up it says the city of Boca has 99,000 people. And Scott Singer said we have 103,000 residents. So we have more people we're growing. So we need more tennis because Florida is considered by most people to be the tennis capital of the world. So, Boca Raton, instead of, I mean, we need housing, don't get me wrong. But we need to be known for other things, such as we have beautiful parks, we have 49 or however many you all say. But we need to be known as like Boca Raton, Tennessee, and are received in an award in 1992 for being an outstanding tennis court. And I would hope that this year or next year, whenever you build more tennis courts, clay tennis courts, new ones on the 30 acres, that we receive that kind of award again. Because the financial department, they have a very good record as being very transparent the city of Boca. So we don't want to just be known maybe for having a lot of parks. We want to be known for having the best recreational services, programs, clinics, children's programs, things for all income people. And it would be very nice. So thank you and we're waiting for the good news. Mr. Trinca. Good afternoon, Bill Trinca, 4097 Northwest Fifth Avenue. I'm talking about the 28th Street closing. I have been asking for months for some documentation of where that requirement that one be closed or three be closed and was negotiated down. I filed a FOIA request in January and after months the only thing I got back from them was that the city would be filing an application with Florida Department of Transportation. I went to Florida Department of Transportation, found one sheet, 1457.012, that lists closing to open one as a consideration, not a requirement. It was two and a half months later when I finally got a response from the city manager. He sent me the same thing that I had sent him, showing that it was a consideration. No requirement anywhere. I fired a second FOIA request at the end of March. After a couple of weeks, I get an invoice for $425.94 for them to provide me with that documentation. I still have nothing. I'm out 425, but then I look at the agenda and I see there's a proclamation coming up tomorrow that's going to set this whole thing into motion. So I'm requesting that you table that motion for tomorrow. Don't vote on it. Let it sit back until the information comes to me that I bought and paid for, and I will gladly share it with all you either way it goes. If it shows that it's documented and it has to be closed, I'll go away happy. Well, I'll go away unhappy, but I'll go away satisfied that at least somebody listened to me and heard heard, where is this coming from? It's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous that we're going to give that up right downtown where everything is happening for something of questionable use at the north end. You're stealing access from me, you're stealing sight views from me, I'm going to take a significant financial negative impact because of this. That's a fact. Enough on that. I hope you to table that thing tomorrow and give me some time to put something together on this and show me the documentation. Second thing, all these flags are hideous. Keep that one right there. Miss Collas? Ms. Collis. Hello, my name is Anastasia Collis. I live at 199 Mansfield, E. Book of Rotone, Florida, 33434. I'm coming to speak about a topic that I've probably talked about since May 2024, which is the formation of a group that would actually handle cybercrime and then not just cybercrime, but maybe any other issue in the book of a tone area. Now I believe I've spoken, I've given the best paperwork to Mr. Lucasick. Some of you might not have seen all of the great stuff, but I'm going to just try to summarize what I have. I have over 75 signatures of people confirming the statements that I have brought up to you, which include signatures from people at FAU, FIU, and esteemed professionals as well. I have three resumes with me. These are resumes for qualified professionals that work in IT development with over 30 years of experience. And in addition to this, I've also received, I can't believe this, but an actual, how do I state this? A good comment from one of the most qualified cybersecurity professionals in all of Palm Beach County. If you guys are familiar with cybersecurity, there's a big name called Richard Mendel. He trains the military and the FBI. And I spoke with him, and he thinks that this is actually a really great idea. In fact, he said, I might be big in cybersecurity for this. Because most people aren't aware, but there's a huge gap between the FBI and the police that cyber criminals are targeting. And this goes along with the items that I've mentioned to you already. Now, one of the comments that I believe I've received from the mayor as well was that maybe you don't oversee policing. That's totally fine. I've actually set a paperwork where this would actually just be a simple group of very intelligent. And when I mean intelligent, I mean these are people that are able to not just battle cyber criminals but solve every issue in the Boka Raton area. And in addition to this, I have also brought a recording with me so I could show you how a cyber crime was conducted, reported to the police, and nothing was done, and it wasn't even reported. There needs to be an understanding that cybercrime is not properly handled in Boca or in most places. There are issues at every level where criminals are able to get through if they do this stuff online. And I'm willing to volunteer, work for free, as a volunteer. I'm bringing in qualified professionals. I've received an actual comment that I might be big in cybersecurity from one of the most qualified cybersecurity professionals in all of Palm Beach County that works for the county, or has trained FBI agents, the military, and so on. And in addition to this, I've also brought a letter to showcase more of this. And in addition, if working with the police is somewhat of a problem, this would be a group that would volunteer and I've also set up paperwork where they would just be at the library and actually respond to cybercrime because right now if you call 911 and I have a recording there, you won't get any help. Thank you. Anyone else making public requests? All right, last call for public requests. All right, we'll close the time for public requests. We'll turn to review, actually Mr. Brown, is there anything we want to respond to on Mr. Trinkle left? So I guess you can follow up directly with him. Yeah, very well. Thank you. We'll turn to review of regular agenda items. Does any council member wish to raise any questions concerning tomorrow night's agenda? I will just share with you all. I was going to ask Mr. LeCastick some questions to follow up on similar information I got about the economic development agreement. He is not here, so I might bring those up tomorrow night. I had some concerns which I thought he might be able to address. Then we'll now turn to future agenda matters and items of public concern. We have our government campus partnership opportunity Mr. Brown. Very briefly, Council members, just to follow up where we are, what we've been working on, Terran Frisbee and staff are meeting weekly. Staff and CBRE are meeting weekly, and we're having additional issue specific meetings when necessary and when appropriate. It's important to point out to the public in general that we're finding finalizing plans for next week's public charrette, which will on the campus master plan. It will be Monday, April 28th at the Meister-Paul Cultural Arts Center from 6 p.m. to about 8 p.m. The government campus update page on the city website will, which is mybokerus.us, will have detailed information on the charret and a link to sign up to attend. You need to register in order to be able to sit at one of the 10 tables of 10. And I also wanted to point out that staff review team in term Frisbee will be meeting shortly thereafter to continue work on the plan. That's all I have for today. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Councilman. Any questions? Mr. Wigter. Yes, briefly. Mr. Brown, pursuant to our discussion, can you just give us a quick update as to where I guess it's staff and or the developer is with due diligence on the land and I know there's some inspections and things going on right now. Due diligence has commenced. They've been doing core borings on the property as well as utility locates, et cetera. And I know that they've engaged their civil engineers to begin the work that's necessary to figure out all of the things that need to be known in order to do a do diligence report. Thank you. Mr. Rantai, one, and maybe it's just a clarification for all of us. I was talking earlier today with our strategic planning consultants. And they had suggested that one open issue was whether or not staff needed direction from council on our feelings on work from home and whether city employees could be working from home. And my initial reaction is we already have a work from home policy and that I imagine that wouldn't change necessarily because of new building, the new building. So therefore, whatever we kind of assumptions we have now would be baked in. She had suggested there might not be that we might, there might be a difference view, a difference of view there. So I wanted to make sure there wasn't and if there was, how the council be able to discuss it now. I don't think there is. I don't think there is. I'm an aware that there's any concern about that. If anything, I think our work from home policies might be expanded slightly in the future. All right. Is that everyone's kind of, did anyone have any different views? If not, then I think staff's on its way on that part. Okay. Hearing none, then we'll open up the before for public comment on our government campus opportunity. Anyone wishing to speak on that? Last call. All right we'll close that and now we'll turn to our recreation master plan update. Mr. Brown. Thanks. Mayor Singer, Greg Stevens, our recreation services director and Brandon Harms, executive director of the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District. We will jointly make the presentation on our recreation master planning. We are happy to be working with the Vichon Park District as the number one partner for recreation and parks in the city. Welcome. Brown, Mr. Kohler, City staff. I'm Greg Stevens, Recreation Services Director, and I'm here with. I am Brienne Harms. I'm the Executive Director of the Greater Bokehon Beach and Park District. Thank you for having us here. Yes. So this afternoon we're here for a brief update on our Recreation Services Master Plan. This is a follow-up from our meeting back in July of last year. Just quickly to differentiate, we're talking a little bit today, we're talking about conceptual planning. So conceptual planning, we already have a couple of different elements that we've been looking at. conceptual plans will give us multiple options to look at, which once we decide which options we want to go with, those elements would then be used to form the master plan later. So sometimes you hear master plan, sometimes you're hearing conceptual plan, I just want to make sure we are clear on that. So today we're going to be presenting just quickly briefing, talking about the completed ongoing joint projects, conceptual recreation plan overview, conceptual recreation plan project details of timeline, amenities and locations, and some initial recommendations we have on starting the process. So we'll start by talking about some of the city and district partnership projects. Obviously, the projects go back years, decades, 50 years with the district here in the city. But just recently we've we've undertaken the Sugar Sand Park Mosaic Art installation, the Jacobs Tower at Gumball Limbo, which is another project that we're super proud of, and then of course the city collaborated with us on our 50th anniversary celebration last year. Some partnerships that we're working on right now. We have new softball fields and interlocal agreement we're working through that's in progress right now. At North Park we're working on the traffic garden. I'm happy to say they're going to start the paving tomorrow. So we'll get we'll see that in the near future. At Red Reef Park we're working on enhancements to the Gumball Limbo Nature Center and we always are working to improve that center. It's an iconic location in Boquerotown. We have this conceptual recreation plan that we're going to go for today and then of course the city of Bogarton Centennial we partnered with the city to put forth the park passport program this year. It's just an overview basically of the conceptual process. Keith and Associates was selected to develop the conceptual recreation plan. The contract was initiated March 13th of this year. The overall timeline for the entire plan is 98 days, and the scope is basically five tasks, but basically it's four due diligence, staff sessions, conceptual design plans, public presentation, and as needed support, which basically the fifth task would be if we have changes through the first four phases or anything that we want to add or change in the conceptual process. Scrolling down a little bit into a little more detail on the conceptual plans themselves, task one is due diligence, time frame 14 days, which we're already beyond that. So we've received the draft report, it covers land use zoning, adjacent property, basically going back into our homework to make sure what we look at and what we propose will work at the sites that we're looking at. So again 14 days on that and we've already received the draft report. We're going through and making any updates or corrections to that. Task two, our staff input meetings. Basically, it's going to be planning and design sessions, city and BPD staff. Through these meetings, we'll form the initial conceptual designs for each site based upon our planning and design sessions. And again, the timeframe here is 35 days and we're just kicking that off now. Task three are final conceptual plans and next steps. Time frame for that is 49 days based upon the previous work and task one and two. It will come up with three up to three conceptual plans for each site. Kilmonary budget estimates, preliminary parking and traffic analysis and then recommendation and next steps. Task four of the public presentations will have something to prepare to be read to both city council to the beach and park district board of commissioners and the parks and recreation advisory board sometime mid to late July that we prepared and be prepared to bring that before you all soon after. And again, test five is just if we look through any of our conceptual plans that we had and you have three options if we wanna make changes or if somebody said, hey, did you not think about this? Maybe you should look at that. We have the opportunity to go back and get that tweaked. Hopefully not. Amenities being addressed in this process are obviously the relocation of the downtown areas, the skate park, the softball fields, and of course tennis at at the Boca-Ton tennis center Some additional recreational needs that we've identified which is additional rectangular fields multi-purpose field soccer fields Lighted sand volleyball courts Expanded pool. We don't have a competition sized pool in the city and then of course another field house or gymnasium The parks that we are evaluating the land sites evaluated for these needs are Meadows Park, University Woodlands Park, Dahornley Park. There's a phase two to that park that still needs to be underway. Of course Sugar Sand Park for the softball fields and then North Park is the property in East Boga. So just going through a couple of slides, these are just aerial shots basically of the sites that we're looking at. This is Meadows Park, obviously over in the left and the center is Booker Tone Community Middle School and the park itself over on the left. We've got our sawpile fields, the pool, the community garden, tennis courts, again, looking at those elements, what may remain, and what may move. This is Sugar Sand Park. This is the Northern section of Sugar Sand Park. Basically you'll see that military trail is to the left. Palmoa Park Road is just to the top of the slide, just off the page. But this is the area of Sugar Sand Park that we're looking at relocating the softball fields here from the City Hall campus. And also from Meadows Park, we're looking at three to four fields being located to this site in order to free up the space for other uses at the other parks. Recreation, this is the Woodlands Park Shot. So again, Woodlands Park is off St. Andrews. It's just north of Gleads Road. And what we're looking at here, we have this park is long into tooth. This is one of our oldest most original parks, the softball field back in the corner. There's a lot of renovations needed here. But again, what we'd like to look at here is, taking out the sidewalk down the middle of the field, we would move the lighting to the outside of the field, take that rectangle on the far left or to the west side there, and look at regrading that so it drains an earth and south, possibly looking at artificial turf, but then making that entire field multi-purpose available year round and able to use a lot more sustained play than we're looking at now. A couple of the other things here is you know where we have the, is it possible to move the tennis courts a little bit further over? Do we need three basketball courts, but how do we create some more parking in some other amenities here? So, Counter-Story-Honey Park, as Ms. Arms mentioned, we we would be looking at Phase 2 of the park. Phase 1, basically to the right side of the slide, you can see that one of the turf rectangles that we have there now, the fire support is in the bottom left. Upper left hand corner is the dog park. So you're looking at generally the open space here directly right in the center. And here we're looking you know What other possible amenities can go in here anything from you know additional turf rectangles as we call them They can be used for soccer football rugby all those different types of amenities and see what else we can fit here as well And then North Park and as you're aware the east side of North Park the district already has master planned and they've got that kind of laid out for what's there the west side the district had originally master plan We're still looking at the site itself though primarily this site. We're looking at right now at least would be the location of the pool from Edo's Park pool and also a potential for an eventual field house And then looking at the overall property here to see you know, what what to be moved to where? So some recommendations that we've come up with internally amongst staff between the district and the city, we've identified there's 11 acres on track A at Sugar Sand Park, track days that the track that can be developed, the rest of it is conservation area at Sugar Sand. So we've identified a space there that would hold the softball fields, we've identified a space at North Park for the skate park. Tennis center is a TBD. We're looking at some costs to convert the courts at Patrieve as an option sort of to in between phasing out the tennis, or not phasing out, sorry, phasing in another tennis center. Lighted sand volleyball, we're looking at Meadows Park or North Park. And then the pool and field house space wise, we feel like North Park is a good spot for that. So that's our recommendations and those are being evaluated by Keith as part of this conceptual plan. So it's the end of our presentation, but I'd be happy to open up for any questions. Thank you both. Council members, any questions? Mr. Trucker. Thank you for the presentation. Just have a quick question. Regarding metals park with the pool, is there a goal to close that pool or to redo that pool and then open a more competitive pool in north park? So the pool itself can be one of two things. As we look back going through our needs assessment, if you really assessed the demand from the public for pool space it would be both it what's called a full-size or Olympic-sized pool which is twice the size of what we have there's also Some looking at what's a therapy pool which is basically what we have now So it can be a combination of one or both if we keep the current pool the current pool we have needs extensive extensive upgrading and work. Unfortunately we can't make it bigger and we can't make it deeper. So it has its limitations to what's there. And so it's really kind of looking at what do we do with there or would it be better off moving the pool to the other location to be able to open up space and that is park to eventually put something else there. Okay, sorry For still your side didn your slide. Demi. No, it's okay. Just I was just curious because I know that polls utilize by a lot of the students in that area and for facilities. So again, I'm sure we're already looking at that with Keith and the consultants and the conceptual recreation plan. But really important for us to educate the public when we're starting to talk about things being different, you know, shutting down, refaising elsewhere because we would have obviously the Tantus Center is one of the examples. So the more we educate us to what we're doing and putting on the website and just education, education, education, education. That's because that will be a question that will come up. So, all right, perfect, thanks. That was my question. Exactly. Thank you. Along the lines of communication and education, I'm just wondering why, and I'm sure you have a perfectly good reason, the Parks and Rec Advisory Board is not part of this process until you're into it for 89 days, into it, why they're not being, we have some discussion about advisory boards. I'm just wondering why they're not being a part of this process going forward. Because as we know, some people aren't comfortable coming here to speak, but they may be more comfortable going to one of the advisory board meetings or to beach and parks, but they're not always comfortable coming here to city council. So I think if we you know I know that they are they want to be involved earlier so I'm just wondering why they're not they're not part of it until test number four which is 80 90s in. In city 90s in but basically what we're looking at is the conceptual plans that staff are putting forward will be coming out with multiple options to be looked at of which the parks report would then be able to weigh in as well as the public on those thoughts. And if there's something that they look as to look at separately or differently after they see what's been laid out then there's the opportunity for us to change it. So the process can be sound like it's 89 days in but it's still at its infancy and they'll definitely be brought in at what we feel is the appropriate time. Okay, I just see it as your three months in, better to have the input or... and they'll definitely be brought in at what we feel is the appropriate time. Okay, I just see it as your three months in, better to have the input early than to try to go back and change something, but. I think we were just trying to work this through staff level first to get some of the initial things iron out and then have something to present to them to get their input on. Okay. All right, and the last thing was the skate park, You're also looking at a pump track. Yes, I'm sorry. Skatepark and pump track. We've identified a location in North Park. I'm actually going to share the... the other one. The other one is the other one. The other one is the other one. The other one is the other one. The other one is the other one. The other one is the other one. The other one is the other one. The other one is the other one. The other one is the other one. The other one is the other one. The other one is the other one. The other one is the other one. Yes? Mr. Wigter. Thank you. There's been talk in the past about trying to avoid a duplication of efforts in the Parks Department and the Beach and Parks District as a person who was from the North. I mean I'm here 20 years now but you know people don't understand that there's a separate taxing district sometimes and that there's still a parks department. So there's two organizations let's say that are working together here and so the fact that we're doing a joint collaboration to work together is one of the ways that we're trying to avoid duplication and really trying to work with each other. Is this, are we looking, I guess Mr. Stevens or Bram, are we looking literally at all of the Beechin Park's district and or the city's parks locations for all of this? Is this a global thing that we're looking at? Are we looking just at Beechin Park's opportunities for some of these relocation? Thanks. So it's just the parks that we for this particular plan, it's just the parks that we identified here, they're a mix of district and city parks. Some of our parks have been built out and developed so there's not really a lot of space for new amenities, but these are the parks that we have identified as places to fit the immediate needs of the relocation of the downtown facilities and then the immediate needs for new fields, the San volleyball, the field house and the pool. So it's not a global look at everything but it's a comprehensive look at where things could go. Right, but does that mean that it's still open for discussion that perhaps Lake Wyman Park can maybe have some more tennis courts or because there's that whole land south of Rutherford Park. I think right now there's one or two courts there or three. I don't recall, but there are some very long-in-the-tooth fields over there that are nondescript, you know, so I guess the question, oh, me, so I guess the question is, time your time's up. So I guess the question is, you know, are we still looking at other opportunities like Lake Wamen Park? Another thing I know it's something I harp on, which is, right now we call our golf club, the Boehk-R Raton Golf and Racket Club, when the rackets been grasped over. So is that something that we're considering reinstating or redoing as part of that facilities renovation and perhaps including it as part of this? So again, I'm just a little, I'm not quite there yet on the scope of what, are we looking at the possible world of where things can go? Here it looks a little bit more limited. Yeah, so I think there's always room to add more to this. If we get through these parks and we say there's nowhere for tennis, there's nowhere that this is gonna work for the skate park, or there's always room to add more, But these specific parks have been identified as the right places right now to look at. So I think the country club, and O'Lake Wyman has a lot of water issues, so I don't think that that was a park that we thought about for anything right now. But certainly something that if nothing here is going to accommodate the needs, obviously we expand. There's no doors closed on any other parks. Yes. And just one pet peeve, part of the pun, which is the dog park, which my pups go too often. You talked about it in that slide of de Horneley, but anyone who goes there will appreciate that you cannot go to DuHonley Park from the pet park. You have to drive all the way around. And if you actually walk through there, you could see both parks from each other. I think it's perhaps less than 100 yards to go there. I'm hopeful that there's some way we can connect the two, especially since we are now permitting dogs to be walked in the Hormley Park, that there's a way to connect those two things. Is that something that's on the agenda or that I might not know about that's already happened? Phase two had connectivity considered for the dog park. And just so you know, we're gonna have another dog park at North Park and it's going to connect to the entire park there too so you'll have two parks to take your dogos to. Thank you very much. And I'm sorry there's dad you know again everything is being looked at globally. Right now we're focusing on the most desirable lands or also parks that are long in the tooth that have amenities that need to be rebuilt or replaced now. Other parks that have amenities that are newer or what not are physically probably not areas that we're going to go in and rip out newer modernized facilities to try to switch things around. But again, we'll be looking at all of the park properties. Right now we're just focusing on these specific areas that are the most desirable locations to develop. Yeah, and you'll notice we had this discussion, I think several of the my colleagues and I, we were at a like a little bit of TPA discussion for like 2045 or something and there was giant maps all over the place. And you know, they were putting the red dots and where things should go. But one of those was if we could connect whether it's a shared-use trail or even just a very large sidewalk from the Hornley Park to the dog park behind, I guess whatever that's called Banyan behind to military that without With not a lot of work we could connect to Hornley Park to Sugar Sand Park Meaning have a more safe bicycle route there and this looks like an opportunity without a lot of work that and I say that I, I know it's a significant, but I'm saying it is not so great a distance. So large amount of next could be crossed that we could connect the two parks and it would be a huge victory for our people. So I hope you can look into that. And lastly, just, you know, it's like a big jigsaw puzzle. So obviously we're looking at these multiple pieces that where do they fit where they don't they fit. You were also already starting here, what they call it, NIMBY, not my backyard, you know, types of things where, you know, some people don't want certain elements in their other house. But we also, you know, I'll really have to look at, you know, what elements fit where. and sometimes tough decisions are going to have to be made. You know, you may have to look at the fact of, you know, okay, if you take the skate park and you put it in park X, it can fit park X, but if you do, you're taking out a turf rectangle that can't rebuild somewhere else. So we have to look at what fits where it makes the most sense to serve the largest number of people. But we're looking at all the elements. You take like Wyman, as Ms. Arms said, we have considerable king tide flooding issues. We've looked at the property there over the years. I believe there was an agreement when the park was built not to have lighted amenities on site. That also is being taken into consideration. But the correcting of the flooding there would cost us just an extraordinary amount of money. There's not a lot of parking redesign in that park would be extremely expensive. And even when you're looking at elements like at the golf course or the club, could you put tennis back you could but it's out in the county and if it were to be you know a replacement for the Boberton-Tennis Center, it's a long way, north and a long way from what we're looking and trying to keep somewhere near the downtown. So again, all those things are all being looked at. Appreciate it. Thank you. Mr. Johnson. you Mayor I have a couple of comments and compliment. The first one has to do with you mentioned the pool, potentially at North Park. I think that may, we may be able to solve that problem potentially through a potential, but promising public-private partnership. Say that three times fast. So let's just keep our eyes open for potential there. The second is the field house. I view that as the greatest, one of the greatest recreational needs. We have a need for indoor court space. In the city that too could be solved through a public private, potential promising public private partnership. Yes, P5 as it turns out. And that's my second comment. In my third is a compliment. Do I still have time left before my timer runs out? We'll pause. In the back, yeah. OK. So the compliment I wanted to pay to Ms. Harms, Mr. Stevens, and staff generally, we just had a joint presentation from the city and the Beech and Park district, which I can say is a far cry from what it was years ago. We had the two of them presenting together, finishing each other sentences at times, cracking jokes quietly, but I heard it. And so I wanted to really come. We had the two of them presenting together, finishing each other sentences at times, cracking jokes quietly, but I heard it. And so I wanted to really complement the two of you for the work that you're doing on this, because recreation is one of the things that sets our city apart in a lot of ways. And the fact that we're able to work together so well, and the two of you have been able to work through these issues so well as I think a testament It's a strong partnership and I really like seeing it. So thank you. Thank you. Like the water bottle says, better together, Mr. Brown. Yeah, just briefly. I want to emphasize that the work that Brianna and Greg did here is on things that we know we need to address now and in the near future. In the future, there will come things that we haven't thought of now that we probably need to address. Okay, do we have enough? If we were having this conversation 45-50 years ago, we'd be talking about do we have enough shuffleboard courts? We don't need shuffleboard courts anymore. That's not something that people do anymore that we haven't had that need. So I think down the road we will have those kind of of conversations. We may be over saturated with a particular type of sport, and we may need to think about how we repurpose what we have. But I think right now I'm very pleased with the work that staff put together, and I think we have a good consultant on board to continue along really addressing the needs that we have. And as I think we all feel working with the district and the city together actually sitting down working together figuring out solutions to the future, we're going to have greater progress than we had in the past. And just to echo that, this is beyond this. We work together on all the stuff, like even with North Park, we've consulted with the city on the things as we go through it and got their input. So it's not just this that we're working together on, we're actually very cohesive beyond this conceptual plan as well. We're gonna have a few questions to. First, let me start over the compliment. We appreciate the work together. And I also appreciate the Beach and Park districts, willingness to work quickly and creatively to try to find some solutions particularly on softball sugar sand as we work through other needs that are becoming more to the floor of the downtown campus. So thank you. Several years ago the district and the city combined on a joint study of recreational needs. How are we able to leverage that study and what updating do we need to determine to dovetail with what Mr. Brown said? Predicting where the needs are not based on the current usage or like the current amenities of that air but really the usage and planned usage So the the needs assessment irreferencing was 2019 that was obviously pre-pandemic a lot has changed since then We also didn't know about the downtown relocation of those amenities So there's a lot of of new needs that have come up, more pressing needs. As far as the needs assessment, one of the number one things that was desired in that was trails. We're building six miles of trails at North Park. So a lot of things are getting addressed in that needs assessment, but we're also taking some of the newer needs. We know that we rent fields from FAU and that's part of our inventory. We may not always have access to those fields. So getting like phase two, those are also priorities that we want to focus on in the next five years. And those aren't things that were considered in those needs assessments because the need was being met. But we know in the future that need won't be met. So we're taking that information. We've been addressing it as we built out North Park as we've looked at other parks, but we're also taking an account, some of the new things that have come up since then. Very good. Second question. Talking about P3s again it's been a while since anyone who's in the P3 on the private side has come to me they had been coming years ago when in fact I think it was about three years ago there were more talks by the district on P3s on the Northwest quadrant and the Southwest quadrant of North Park. How those conversations conversations gone lately and what are you on in the potential near future? So for the west side of the property we haven't entertained any P3s over there. You all know we got an unsolicited proposal to build out the entire park. We didn't consider that beyond the solicitation. But the west side because the bond is set the way it is that we can't do P3s because it jeopardizes the terms of the bond. So we waited for that to get paid off before we could look at that. Obviously, we engaged in a P3 on the East Side for the Boca Patel facility. I think the district is open to other P3s to help build these amenities. We see the value in that. We wouldn't have an indoor pickle facility if we weren't engaging in a P3. So I think that there's value in them. I think we would look at that certainly if there's an opportunity for a pool and field house, those are things that we would be open to. By the way, just going back, have any of the P3 providers and this is probably some time ago. So are there any proposals on the table where they're helping accelerate the bond payments to take that issue off the table? We don't have anything like that right now that's been presented to us. All right, thank you. Open to it if anybody wants to pay that off. Thank you. You furthered her first folks, please. Any further questions? All right, well thank you both for the- Oh please Ms. necklace. I just wanted thank you. I just wanted Mr. Brown. If you can, can you just comment on the jeffery tunnel? the Jeffrey Street tunnel and is this the city? Oh, the plan for the tunnel underneath the newly to be created Jeffrey Street tunnel and is this the city? The plan for the tunnel underneath the newly to be created Jeffrey Street connection to across the railroad is the city will undertake the work as part of the Jeffrey Street improvements and the district will refund us some portion of the cost for those improvements for the North Park connection. So it's going to happen with Jeffery Street. For the questions. All right, well, thank you both for the presentation. Thank you. We will now turn to our next presentation and it is our annual financial report. And then we'll also have our compliance report and our long fringe financial plan. So I'll turn it over to Mr. Brown for all three. Thank you, Mayor, Mr. Servus. And the financial team will be coming forward to go through the ACFR, instead of the CAFR for the city. For 2024, Ms. Jenkins. And then we'll have Ms. McGuire and her team come up for the long-range financial plan. Welcome, Mayor. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and members of the City Council. I'm going to be walking through the annual comprehensive financial report with your body today. With me today is Deputy City Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Carly Scha Jenkins. As a part of this presentation, we'll have your independent auditor come up and present to you with respect to the auditor opinion when at that time. So I'm going to go ahead and get started this document, as well as the long range financial plan, which will be receiving shortly. Both went to the financial advisory board last week, so they have reviewed these documents as well, prior to them coming to your body and didn't have any changes or comments to provide. So the annual comprehensive financial report really performs a couple different functions. So this is a large document. It includes financial information. It includes some operational information. It includes compliance information. So we're going to talk about some different elements of this report in all of those regards. So we'll talk about how we assess the financial condition of the city and performance over the past 12 months. We will look at some compliance issues as respect to the city's compliance compliance with Authority to spend money for example that's been granted by the city council another legal compliance and Hermes from the audit firm will will speak to that as well So the the cover here of this year's Act for as we refer to, is a testament to our commitment to community sustainability and environmental stewardship. So we highlighted the James A. Rutherford Park Restoration that completed in April of 2024. So this document's always backwards looking. So we like to use pictures looking back at some of our accomplishments that took place during this fiscal year or close to it. And so that's why this particular picture was taken or this park was highlighted. It's a 45-acre waterfront park that features now features ADA compliant walking pass, kayak launch, and other elements. So it's a very nice asset for the city to have. The document itself is the aquifer is compiled according to generally accepted accounting standards. And so we will speak to that in just a moment. This first page, this is the award of achievement for excellence in financial reporting issued by the government finance officers association of the US and Canada. This was separately presented to your body when we received it. So I think you're aware of it. I will highlight that this includes an evaluation of over 700 different checkpoints that they look for. And we received comments back every year as they analyze this document in detail about little things we may want to consider doing differently. Nothing major and we received the award for the 40th, 43rd consecutive year. So that's highlight that for you. And we fully expect that this document meets all of the criteria to receive that award again. In fact, it's already been submitted for review. So the aquifer is broken up. It's over 200 pages is broken up into three main sections, an introductory section, a financial section, and a statistical section. I'm going to walk through different elements of all of those for you. In the introductory section, we have a letter of transmittal. It's simply a transmittal of the document to your body. And then an organizational chart just speaks to the organization in general. So I'm not gonna spend time on that, but that's included in the tab for introductory section. The financial section is really where the bulk of the report falls. This starts off with the auditor's opinion, and the auditor will speak to that once I conclude my comments. And then we get into the management discussion and analysis section. I am going to spend some time walking through some of the highlights from that section. And then we're going to walk through the basic financial statements and some of the, I'll just point out some of the more significant required supplementary information contained in the report. And then I won't spend too much time in the statistical section. But if you have any questions as I'm moving through the presentation, feel free to stop and ask. So as mentioned, our auditors report, so this is actually page one of the documents. So if you have a tab to book, it would be under the finance section. It is the first page, it's page one. I'm not going to speak to the audit opinion itself. I'm going to leave Hermes Garzon, the senior audit manager, on the engagement to to do that as it's their professional opinion, but it does start on page one of the document. Starting on, after the auditor's opinion, we get into the management discussion and analysis section. So this section of the report includes components of the audited financial statements and several of them are comparative. So we're able to look at last year and this year and it's really management's analysis on what's changed and why it's changed. Is there anything significant that's going on that we want to highlight? We want to point out that it's driving the change. This is really the section that speaks to that. So if you are on page 8 of your financial statements, this is a few of the different highlights from that section and you will see that the city's net position shows that we ended the fiscal year with just over $1.5 billion in total assets of which 70709 million were capital assets. So, and we'll look at this statement in particular, but this is a balance sheet effectively for the government organization as a whole, including all component units and all of our different funds and operations. We ended the year with about $469 million in liabilities and you can see how the stacked bars compare from 23 to 24. That $469 million in liabilities includes approximately 60 millions in bonds payable. The city's overall net position increased from a year ago by $14.4 million. Again, this is produced on a full accrual basis of accounting, so it includes all long-term assets, infrastructure assets are included in here, as well as long-term liabilities. On page 9, this is a summary table of some of the elements included on page 9 of the MDNA section. And this summarizes the change in net position. So this is effectively highlights from an income statement in thousands for the organization in total. So all of our different elements. and sewer, general fund, everything. And you can see our revenues totaled $469 million. Expenses of $432 million with a total increase in that position of about $24.5 million. And if you look in the MDNA section in particular, you'll be able to see comparative financial statements. This particular table breaks up our governmental activities, which is the general fund and other government functions that we perform from our business type activities. And business type activities include enterprise funds, such as water and sewer funds, so things that operate more like a private business to deliver a specific service for fee, as well as internal service funds which provide similar types of services internally within the organization, such as fleet or information technology. These are consolidated columns for all of those types of functions. The business type activity is increased by $20.39 million. That's about $15.21 million higher than in 2023. And that's primarily due to higher investment earnings and charges for service. On the governmental activity side, there was an increase of about $4 million. That's $.27 million dollars lower than last year. Primarily due to increased operating costs including pension costs and that were higher than our increases in revenue growth for the year. And we'll look at those individual statements here shortly. On page 10 of the Act for the year. And we'll look, look at those individual statements here shortly. On page 10 of the Act for the MDNA section continues and it shows a chart of our governmental activities by revenue source. So it just highlights the main revenue sources that go into our governmental revenues. So you can see property taxes is our largest source of revenue with $122.7 million, and then approximately $86 million in other taxes. The property taxes was up about 11.8% from the prior year and 18.7% increase in other tax revenues from the prior year. On page 10 of the MDNA section, we're summarizing this is again the governmental activities, but this is expenditures by type. So we categorize expenditures by their category, general government, law enforcement, fire rescue, you can see those different categories, and we're simply showing those differences between 2023 and 2024 costs. The increases that you see in fire rescue and law enforcement primarily are increases in pension costs, then increases in salaries and benefits for those two groups. I'm going to highlight a few of our business type activities here. So when we look at our business type activities, we have one major fund, and that is the Water and Sour fund. Everything else is considered minor, because you can see it's such a small portion compared to relative to the Water and Sour fund. There are some formulas that actually determine whether something's a major fund or a minor fund. The only one we have that's major is water and sewer. So you can see our comparison in this chart. I then have a couple charts that just show the operations of each of those funds. So on the left of this chart is the revenue comparison from 23 to 24 in the middle is expenses and then the right is unrestricted net position. So we had about a 15% increase in revenues to a total of about $84.2 million in water and sewer. Expenses were actually down about 3% for an ending unrestricted net position balance of $122 million, slightly up from the prior year. Sanitation, a very similar story, about a 7.36% increase in revenues. Expenditures were essentially flat, so we had about a $16.8 million increase in unrestricted net position. Stormwater, very similar, 12.37% increase in revenues, expenses essentially flat for a increase of $9.5 million in unrestricted net position. Cemetery mausoleum, so this is the operational components of the cemetery mausoleum. Again, these are small numbers, but you can see that expenses in this fund do outpace revenues. So we had about a 35% increase in revenues, but it's about $436,000 in total, and expenses are about a million dollars, and that was up 7%. So although we saw an increase in revenues, the expenses continued outpace revenues. And so we are looking at different alternatives on how to recommend how we handle this going forward in the future. This year unrestricted net position did go into a negative of $183,000. Total net position is still positive, but that includes the capital assets for the fund. So when you remove those and you just look at liquid assets, it isn't a negative position and again we're evaluating different options to bring forth through your body to consider. Overall still a very small number relative to the financial position of the city. In the basic financial statements, so that concludes the MDNA section. The basic financial statements. Again, this is a significant portion of the report. It starts on page 19 and goes through, actually, past 35. It is, includes the government wide statements, the governmental statements, proprietary statements, and then concludes with notes to the financial statements. I'm going to take a minute to walk through those. I don't have slides on this, so I'm going to reference the pages in the financial statement as we walk through. And I'm not going to highlight every number because there are a lot of numbers in here, but I'll try to just highlight some of the main statements themselves so that you understand, and the public understands we're looking at here. So on page 19, page 19 and 20, this is the statement of net position. These are the government-wide financial statements. And government-wide financial statements are done on full accrual accounting, just like a private business. So this includes long-term assets and long-term debt in the statements themselves. And so from an asset standpoint, if you look on page 19, we total about $1.5 billion. That was the number referenced earlier in the MDNA section. Deferred outflows of resources $175 million, total liabilities, $469 million and an ending net position of just over almost $1.1 billion. If you look at page 21, this is effectively a consolidated income statement for the entire operation. And if you flip at landscape, how it's intended to read It's it it a walk you through how it flows. It's it is includes all of the city operations Going from left to right you'll see we start with expenses So how much did it cost to operate each one of these functions? And you can see they're stacked so at the top of the chart, we have the governmental activities followed by the business type activities. And so we start with expenses. We then deduct program revenue. So revenues are derived from providing those services. And then on the right hand side, you see the net income or loss from the operations themselves. That carries down to the section that says General Revenues. And this shows the tax revenues that are there to support the primarily the governmental operations of the business. So that's in the governmental side, net program expenses minus program revenues is a loss of $240 million. We have about $244 million of those other revenues in order to pay for those service deliveries for a change in net position of a positive $4 million. On business type activities, they add from service delivery a positive $5.2 million in revenues and excess of expenses. And when you add in the investment earnings of about $15.2 million, that's a change in net position of a positive $20.39 million. Resulting in that ending fund position of $1 billion. So this is the highest level financial report you'll see in the aquifer, the balance sheet and this statement of change in that position. Following that statement, if you flipped to page 22 and 23, these are now governmental funds. This is our governmental statements. So these are a modified accrual basis of accounting, meaning that they do not include long-term assets or long-term liabilities. We're looking at a more current version of resources. So what's actually available for use within the city? I'm not going to go through every column, but the far left-hand column is the general fund. And this balance sheet shows general fund with a balance of 110.45 million dollars and a fund balance total fund balance of 95.96 million dollars and I will take a few minutes later on in the presentation to actually take a little deeper look at the general fund itself and the fund balance balances. Every other column represents a different fund and on the far right you see a non-major governmental fund column that's a combination, a consolidation of several smaller funds. Those consolidating statements are in the back of this report as well. Page 24 actually reconciles the government-wide statements to the governmental statements. So if you're wondering how do we get from our balance sheet to the statement of net position, which is that government-wide statement, this shows a list of those adjustments that are made in order to convert the two accounting conversions. And then on page 25 and 26, you'll see the statement of revenues, expenditures, and changes and fund balance. This is effectively our income statement on a governmental fund for the governmental funds on a governmental standard, so modify the cruel basis of accounting. again showing general fund revenues of $228 million, total expenditures of $217 million. We have a few transfers for out for $3.27 million. But at the end of the day, the general fund had a surplus of $7.7 million for this 12-month period, ending September 30th, 24. And again, we'll take a little deeper look at that with a slide here in a moment. All the governmental funds are next up next in that report. And if you look at page 28, we now change to the business type funds. So we start with water and sewer and then our non-major enterprise funds. This is also full of coral accounting. So these numbers tie out to that first statement we looked at. They're on the same full of coral basis of accounting. You just get to see the individual funds as they're listed. Starting with water and sewer and then non-major. And if you flip to page 30, it shows the statement of revenues, expenses, and changes in net position, which is effectively the income statement for those business type funds. This is the only, these are the only statements that show a statement of cash flows. So because they are operated like private businesses, we do a statement of cash flows. Page 31 is that statement of cash flows. And that gets us to the final set of the basic financial statements or the basic statements themselves. And that is the pension trust funds. So these are our trust fund statements. These are assets that are held in trust for the pension plans so they don't roll up into our city's financial statements but they're presented discreetly. Behind those statements, I know that's a lot I just referenced and but I do want to highlight a couple more things. So starting on page 36, we get to the notes of the financial statements. So the notes go into a little more detail about how we account for things and what some of the nuances are in behind the numbers. So a few notes that I do want to highlight if you flip the page 51. Page 51 shows a schedule of our investments. So if you're wondering how the city's investments are where the city's investments are held, these are all done in accordance with your investment policy, but there is a listing of all those different investment types by category along with the maturity timeline. On page 74, page 74 discusses leases. So this came up in the CRA meeting a few minutes ago. This is where we discuss the lease receivables of the city. Remember the redevelopment agency is a component unit of the city. So these statements include the redevelopment agency. It's a separate fund, but they're included as they roll up into this entity. And so this does reference at the bottom of page 74, the 99 year lease that was brought up with Myzner Park. That's a 99 year lease exercised in 1980. So to council member Wigdars earlier question, that's 2088 is the expiration of those leases. And on page 75 you can see a schedule out for not just those leases that the city has as well. And then on page 76 there's a section for long term debt. So if the city had issued any new long term debt it would would be discussed here. There's reporting on all our existing long term debt. We had no debt activity this year, so there's nothing new reported in that section, but that's where you would find it. And then finally on page 81 of the notes, there is a summary of pensions. So I do wanna highlight this, page 81. There is a some statistics on how many people are in the pension plan for the three different pension plans, the city administers, and then a table that shows our net pension liabilities and deferred outflows and inflows. So that's a high level summary. This is really the only place you find that summary of the pension plan liabilities There is a measurement date difference here So you'll see at that table on the left it says measurement date of 930 23 So that's just Timing-wise that's how the accounting works for pension plans rolling up into a city's financial statement We have separate standalone statements for the pension plans that are dated 93024, but they don't roll up into this statement. So I say that only because this last year was an outlier with our pension plans making in excess of 20% return on those investments, which brought down this net pension liability pretty significantly. So I'm happy to speak with you offline about that, but we just recognize that the numbers have actually come down between that last year and this year because of that timing difference. Let's see, proprietary statements required supplementary information. Oh lastly let, let me, I shouldn't say lastly, page 109 of note, I do want to touch on this. So page 109 discusses the city's OPEB plan. And OPEB stands for other post-employment benefits. Effectively, the city, our OPEB plan, what we're really talking about here is retirees of the city that are able to stay on our healthcare plan at their own cost. That is at their cost, but they're able to participate in our plan. There's an inherent subsidy when someone stays on a group plan as an individual when they're retired because their rate is blended with all our young healthy workers. So that's that there is a liability associated with that. Our OPEB plan, although it's been consistently documented in the financial statements and the OPEB valuations, doesn't have a formal plan description anywhere written up. That was something that came up in our audit this year and we are working on documenting that and we'll have something brought back to your board to make that very clear on what that benefit entails. But that's really what we're talking about and that's where you can find it under note 11 in the financial statements. Required supplementary information, there's a town that starts that section on page 117. And I want to point out page 117 and 118. If you get into this section, you'll get to see 10 years of pension plan history. So if you're ever wanting to see how our pension plan returned on investments and what our net pension liability has looked like over the last 10 years, it's included in the section that starts on page 117 and there's a different presentation for each of the three pension plans. There's similar statistics for the other post-implement benefits, but we've already touched on that. So what I'd like to go to is page 132 and page 133. And I'm going to spend a moment to walk through this because this section is a comparison between the city's budget and actuals for the general fund. So when we talk about compliance, you know, this is where we would see how did we do compared to our plan? How did we do compared to our budget? Did the city spend within its legal spending authority, right? The city has to spend only up to the level that's been granted authority by the city council. So this section speaks to all of those performance and compliance aspects. I've summarized it on this table on the sheet. You can see a more detailed version actually in the financial statements, but you can see the final budget and then the actual and the variance column. So for example, our property taxes, we had budgeted 110 million, we received 111 million, a variance of about 1.6 million favorable variance. We had a couple positive variance, that's one of them investment earnings. Investment earnings on the revenue side was also favorable by about two million dollars which is good. Lices in permits, we had over-budgeted some of our building permit estimates simply in a software conversion, we had over-estimated that. That doesn't mean we did worse in reality. It was really just a budgeting issue. At the end of the day, our total revenues came in at 228.32 million versus the 225.92 for a positive variance of $2.4 million. So we had a positive variance on the revenue side on expenditures. And again, there's more detail included on page 133 of your financial report. All of our spending categories were under budget. So you can see the different categories here in total. We're about $15.5 million under budget in expenditures. That comes from a couple different areas. One, if we have capital projects that don't get completed, right, that doesn't get spent that's shown here. But also if we have, when we have turnover, if we have vacancies, any kind, you know, vacancies will create a positive budget variance or just money that's left in the budget. And I credit the departments for not running out and trying to spend everything that's in their budget in order to get it re-budgeted next year so that that's where the savings occurs. So in total are change in fund balance. You may recall, and if you look at page 133 and the the 134 in the financial statements. We actually had a budgeted change in fund balance of a positive $132,000. The reason that this says it's a negative $10 million is because at the end of the prior year, we had a whole bunch of capital projects and open POs that rolled over. So it's not that we were projecting, we were budgeting to spend a big $10 million deficit. It's that we had a balanced budget and we had a balanced budget the year before, but the year before we had a positive variance like this, but we had a bunch of projects roll over into the current budget. So when you add those in, it shows a negative budget, including those carry forward items of $10 million. Now the reality is, as I mentioned earlier, we had a general fund surplus of $7.7 million. And that's what you see in this table as well. So for a budget variance, pods is a variance of $17.9 million. And then an ending fund balance, you can see we had budgeted $78 million and we're at $95.97 million. When you look at our, I did, this isn't straight out of the table. I added this because I thought it was important. This is just a comparison of 23 to 24. So an annual comparison of that fund balance in the general fund. So what does it look like? How has it changed? We have increased our emergency committed fund balance, so the commitment that we have for disasters, disasters. We've increased that because it's based on a percentage of our operating budget, and our operating budget is so we've grown this reserve We've assigned 4.14 million dollars to next year's budget to do more capital projects the things that are in your improved budget And then our unassigned budget is at a 56.97 compared to 67.54 from the previous year So the unassigned as a percentage of next year's budget, we have a policy of 10%. Keep in mind, we also have 10% in the emergency fund. So we effectively, it would have 20% there, but we're at about 23%. So if you add the 10% for emergencies, you're at about 33, 34% in fund balance. It's really available in case the city needed it. So, any questions? Okay. We're almost done. Combining an individual fund statements after that. There are several tabs here that talk about, this is the roll-ups. So I said there's non-major funds. There's all the detail for those non-major funds and how they roll up are included in the next few tabs. And I'm happy to, if you ever have questions about that, I'm happy to answer questions about that. Also, detailed financial statements for all our internal service funds and the pension trust funds are included here as well. That takes us through page 174. Starting on page 177 is the statistical section. So I think the statistical section's pretty interesting because you see included in here are 10 year summaries. So although this section's unaudited, the numbers included in this section come from audited financial statements. So the auditor is going to say, well, they're unaudited and they say unaudited and on, but they're effectively the same numbers. They just didn't auto them this year. So and it has got some operational and revenue capacity analysis in there as well. So how many fire stations did we have eight years ago versus today? It would show those numbers. Employee counts over the last 10 years are included in this section. Debt capacity, revenue capacity, some different calculations over time. What I like about this section is it gives you a 10 year window and you can start to see some trends in how the city's operating. Nothing concerning to note just wanted to point out that that's included. And finally I do want to say thank you. This document takes a lot to produce and takes a lot of people to produce it. So some of those names are listed on your sheet right now. Most of these folks reside in our finance department but the input that goes into this document really comes from throughout the city. So you know thank you to everyone that's involved it is a big effort and a lot of work and we have a very short timeline to produce this in order to get it submitted to the state in a timely fashion and the GFOA in a timely fashion. So we did meet all of those timelines this year, but recognize in order to do that, we have three pension plan audits that have to be done. They have to go to their respective boards to be reviewed and accepted, and they have to roll in. The CRA has to be done. There's several different components that ultimately result in this document. So thank you to all of them. And I will be happy to answer any questions. And if there are not any, I'm going to hand it over to Hermes Garzan from C-Biz, our internal audit firm to speak to the actual audit engagement. I will, we have a separation of duties here. The financial statements are owned by the city. We produce them, we create them, and really Hermes' role in his firm is to audit them and make sure that they're accurate and that they're complete. And so I'm going to turn it over to him. First are there any questions? Mr. Wigter. Thank you very much Mr. Zervis and thank you for meeting with me separately and allowing me to attend the advisory board meetings that public obviously but I was able to really as you said go into a little bit deeper depth into them which is appreciated. Can you talk just a little bit about the growth and assessed valuation of the city over the last 10 years or so and I think at the advisory board meeting you talked a little bit about the homestead properties, about what that means in terms of taxable value and things like that. Sure, I'm happy to speak to that. That issue will come up also when we talk about the long range financial plan, which is the next item on your agenda. So if you'd like me to speak to that now, we can, or we can, I can, Sure, so go right ahead. So, you know, we've seen pretty consistent in strong growth in the assess valuation. 8, 9, 10, 12%. Because of the homestead exemption in Florida, that four homesteaded properties that growth in taxable assess valuation is capped at 3% per year. Assuming your project, your house doesn't change hands or you don't pull a building permit and add value to your property. So there's this 3% cap. For non-home-setting properties there's a 10% cap. And so when we look at our property values here for the city, that what happens is in times of strong growth in the market values for properties. you know, when you're hitting 10, 12% increase in market values in a year, our tax increase is significantly lower because we're capped by the homestead exemption and the 10% for non-homeset exemptions, just not as extreme. So it creates a gap of untaxed value. And it's a timing issue. So over time, you know, as the increase in assessed valuation slows down and falls, you know, falls into a more normal range, I'll say, that properties that don't get improved can increase up to 3%. So effectively, if you had zero growth or if you had negative growth in your real estate values, those homesteaded properties that had that gap, that value gap, could increase up to 3% per year, even in a year where the market value of that same property is decreased. So there's this gap of assessed valuation. For us it's pretty significant and it's primarily single-family residential that this is affecting because those are the most homesteaded properties are those single-family residential properties. We have about, you know, I left my sheet at my desk back there but it's about $ $14 billion in untaxed assessed valuation. That at our current milligrates could generate about $53 million in annual property tax. So what we're saying is if there was zero growth in our property tax, which is not going to happen, there will be, because there will be new construction. There's always some level of new construction. You'd stills could see a growth over time of about $53 million a year in reoccurring property tax revenues. So that's, there is, we have a fairly significant gap there. It's not uncommon in Palm Beach County, particularly along the coast where we've seen significant increases in valuations that have outpaced that 3% cap to have that timing issue. That in, you know, just for comparison purposes. So you saw we had about $110 million in the general fund property tax buckets. We put about 8% into our CIP project program. But that $53 million is about a 43% increase in property tax revenue. So that's a big deferral there that's going to continue to increase property tax values here for, I don't know, the next three to five years. Well, depending on what the market does, Did I answer your question? Thank you. No, that's good. Separate topic, maybe for the public and also for me, can you explain the difference again between in many pages there, you're talking about restricted funds versus unrestricted funds and obviously, you know, with certain buckets and things like that but really kind of you know what does that mean in terms of restricted versus unrestricted? Sure there are So if we look in, for example, page 22 of the financial statements is the balance sheet for the governmental funds. And you have a few different categories of fund balance. And there's accounting pronouncements that guide what these things mean. But you have this one category fund balance. And when we say fund balance, we're effectively talking about equity, right? If it was a private business, this would be shareholder equity. That is, this is, you know, taxpayer equity, our fund balance. There is that the highest level, there's non-spendable, meaning something that actually couldn't can't be spent. So in this, in our case, we have some inventory. So, and this is parts, this is, you know, it's not a lot, but if we have some things that literally can't be spent. But it's an asset and it's part of our equity. So it's non-spendable. After you have non-spendable, we look at restricted. And for a fun balance to be restricted, there has to be an external legal restriction. So it could be a statute, it could be, hey, you're gonna get this tax revenue, but it's only to be used for this specific purpose. Good example is you're gonna get surtax money and it can only be used for streets and roads. That's restricted, we have, it's, there's by-law, it's restricted. So it could be, you could be contractual restriction. Maybe you get money from a donor or a private party to do something specifically. There's a legal restriction on that. It's not something your body can change. That's restricted. And then we get to committed. And so committed takes an action of your governing body. So if you're committing something for a specific purpose, management can't un-commit that. That is a policy level decision by the elected city council members that have committed something and it's in writing. So we have a fund balance policy that talks about for a Cain disaster commitment, committed fund balance portions and it's 10% and we that's in writing it's a policy decision by your board. So that's committed and then you get down to assigned and assigned you know if through the budget process for example example here of assigned is subsequent years budget so we've assigned a portion of fund balance to cover next year's operating expenditures that we've already committed, we're already planning to spend. Assignment can be delegated down to the staff level. So it's really, unless there's some policy by the city council to say they don't wanna do that, assignments are step lower if that makes sense. So there's this hierarchy of fund-balanced categories. And at the end of the day, we have unassigned. So unassigned is simply that. It's everything that's left over that hasn't been, you know, it's not non-spendable, it's not committed, it's not assigned. Your body, if you want to know, hey, what do we really have control over? Everything up to restricted. So you have control over unassigned, assigned, and committed. Meaning if everything, something disastrous happens and we need to get as much money together as we can, you have access to everything that's not legally restricted or non-spendable. Thank you. One last question regarding the pension liability. You talked at the advisory board meeting about the growth in the number of employees, naturally of course, occurring the growth of the population of the city over the last X number of years, et cetera, et cetera. In terms of your perception and your experience in other places where you work, how do you feel in terms of the stability of our city's financial position and the position of its pension? So, so let's I'm gonna refer to some numbers here. So if we go to page 117 in the financial report, I want to point out a couple things. So I think this is, there's two percentage numbers. So this is a 10 year summary and page 117 is for the general employees plan. We have three plans. General employees, police and fire and executives. In the general employees plan, the two percentages I want to point out here, one is the very bottom one. And that is the net pension liability as a percentage of coverage payroll. And I'm just pointing that out because it's makes the net pension liability as a percentage of coverage payroll. And I'm just pointing that out because it makes the net pension liability valued relative to the size of the employees, right? So if your employees are increasing, it's going to keep that relative if the numbers are increasing. So you can see that trend over time. But two numbers above that is the net pension, if I do sure he plans net pension as a percentage of total pension liability. So when we're talking about how well a plan is funded, you can see that number. In 2021, this plan was overfunded. It was funded at 105 percent which is a good place to be. I would say part of the challenge is a pension is a trust and if you're overfunded that money can get stranded in the trust and you can't get it out so you know my personal preference is the be in the 95% funded level. And the city does maintain a retirement sustainability fund in the general for outside of this. And we have about $50 million in that retirement sustainability fund. That's money that's assigned, it's set aside for retirement to help with the increased spikes or really increases in pension costs. But you can see we're sitting about 81.76% here in 23. I don't have the 24 statement in front of me, but we're in the 90s because that 20% increases like 92%. So that's the general employee plan. I feel very good about where the general employee plan is funded at. If you flipped a page 120, you'll see the same schedule for police and fire. All our plans took losses in 22. So we were all funded pretty well in 21 and then in 22 there was a there were pension losses just because the markets from from covid and the interest rate changes that followed and so you can see this has us about you know 60 67 percent again we had 20 percent gains here I don't have that number in front of me, but we're, you know, we're into the 70% funded, you know, area. Nothing to panic about. I don't think it's not underfunded. There's certainly worse funded pension plans out there. I would like to see that continue to increase. Again, my target would be around that 95% level. The police and fire one is just carries a higher liability because the benefit is richer, right? You can retire at a younger age with a higher multiplier. And that produces a bigger liability. So we continue to monitor it. We have a good police and fire pension board that's actively managing those investments and they're focused on these things regularly. And then you can see the same if you flip two pages over page 123, you'll see the same table for the executive employee plan. Thank you. Again, same comments, they had about a 21% return, I think last year as well. So, you know, they're in the 80s, which is pretty. So overall, I think we've got room to improve there. We're continuing to put money in our retirement sustainability fund outside of the pension plans themselves. And we're focused in working with those pension boards to try to bring down these liabilities and make sure that these plans are efficiently run. I do attend those pension board meetings regularly, not all of them, but as my schedule allows, I do just to help kind of be there to represent the city and to work with them and provide any guidance that I can help with. This is service, thank you. Thank you very much. For the questions of Mr. Service. Mr. Goswani, you've been very patient to stand there. You could have taken a seat, but welcome. No worries. So I'll go ahead and very similar to the CRA presentation. Go ahead and present the auditors report in our compliance reports. And I'll also highlight some of the compliance reports that are unique to the city. Excuse me, meaning that they were not reflected at the CRA level and I'll explain why. But if you follow along with me to printed page one, this is our independent auditors report for the city. Again, same format. The most important paragraphs are the first two paragraphs under the opinion sub-patter. The first paragraph states what we're auditing, which is we're auditing the financial statements of the governmental activities, business type activities, each major fund, and the aggregate remaining fund information, which that's the non-major funds that Jim was alluding mentioning in his presentation. And then the second paragraph is our actual opinion paragraph, which we had a clean opinion on modified opinion as well. Again for the city as a fiscal year 30 September 30 of 2024. The again the the I won't go into every section of the auditor's report but essentially as you continue on and page one it just essentially says what what auditing standards we follow as your auditors and also the responsibilities of management when it comes to the financial statements and our responsibilities as your auditor as well and then also what procedures we perform over their required supplemental information and supplement to information and other information. Okay. And also if you um, the compliance report is separate and apart from the ACFR so the independent orders report I just mentioned is actually embedded in the ACFR. So if you would like to follow along, I'll be touching based on the compliance report which is a separate document apart from the ACFR. It's about 30 pages but I'll start on printed page number three. Again this is an independent orders report on the the compliance. Sorry, I apologize. Prior to page one, this is the independent auditors report on the internal controls over financial reporting and compliance and other matters. So this is essentially the report which you would find any significant deficiencies in internal controls or material weaknesses, is more elevated in internal controls mentioned Happily we were we were happy to report that there were none at the city level and then on the next page If there were any non-compliance matters that we've identified in our review of any city provisions ordinance regulations grant agreements, grant agreements, noncompliant contracts, things of that nature. There will be reported here as well. Fortunately enough, we have no issues to report there. And if you follow along with me to printed page 3, this is unique to the city. Essentially you would not find this report at the CRA level. And essentially the reason for that is that the city met the thresholds for federal us single audit as well as state single audit. So essentially if the city expands more than $750,000 in federal awards and state financial assistance for both, it triggers what we call a single audit and essentially a single audit is a compliance audit. We take a look at your schedule of expenditures, your schedule of expenditures of federal awards and state assistance, which are on printed page six and seven, you had about $1.6 million of expenditures on the federal federal awards, meaning you utilized that amount of money for these listed programs for the purposes they were intended for. And then on the state side, the city expanded about 1.2 million. So a total of 2.8 amongst both of them. So obviously you met the threshold. So we were required to essentially review this listing, make it based on a determination worksheet, select programs to test, essentially get their grant agreements, review their compliance requirements, and ensure that there was no noncompliance issues. Did you use the money for purposes that was allowed for? If you had certain capital expenditures. So you were purchasing equipment or real property. Did you track that properly through your accounting softwares and also inventory them? So there's a lot of things of that nature. So we did select two programs. One on the federal side, which was the highway planning and construction, a federal aid highway program. And on the state side which was the highway planning and construction federal aid highway program and on the state side we selected the statewide water quality restoration project so at the conclusion of the single audit we did not note any any noncompliance issues or anything that would warrant bringing anything to the attention of the city council. If you follow along with me to printed page 11, this is the management letter in accordance with the rules of the auditor general in the state of Florida. This letter essentially highlights a couple components, but I would say the major two important components is, it essentially forces the auditor to look back at the prior year and see if there were any audit findings. And if there were audit findings to ensure that were they either rectified or they weren't reporting again. So that's what you see in the first page on page 11 under your prior auditor findings. There were none in the report, so obviously that's none applicable. And then also on printed page 12, there's a financial condition and management section of this letter. So us as your auditors were required to also do what's called a financial condition assessment. So there's about 29, this is actually downloaded from it's spreadsheet that's downloaded from the auditor general. It has about 29 financial indicators. So it tests liquidity, you know, debt coverages, things of that nature. And we populate obviously the numbers that we've audited from the ACFR, and they also have another spreadsheet that has benchmarks. So how are you doing in comparison to your peers as well? And if we see anything that's alarming, anything that will indicate some financial conditions deterioration, we are required to also in writing communicate that to you. Obviously there were no issues there. And on printed page 14, which is our independent accountants report on compliance pursuant section 218, We essentially state if there was any noncompliance with your investment policies. I believe a year ago, two years ago, there was a Florida statute that came out of House Bill three that required certain changes to your investment policies. So, you know, the things of that nature, are you, if you have target allocations, are you exceeding those target allocations, are you within those target allocations, things of that nature, if we noted any of that would be reported here, which we have not. And lastly, at the conclusion of our financial statement audit, we're required to provide to the City Council Communications letters with those charged regovernance. That's also separate in a part from the compliance report It's about four pages and that letter essentially states any significant audit findings that we've had Along with any disagreements with management any delays delays we've encountered, and then but it also, which is also very helpful, has recommendations. And I believe Jim already alluded to this in his presentation that we made a general recommendation. This is not an audit finding, just a recommendation, regarding having a written policy in place for the OPEB for your OPEB plan. I know some of those provisions are mentioned at the actual evaluation level that the the actual area does to calculate the OPEB liability, but we just recommended to have some type of standalone document for that. And that concludes my a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind I said, no, nothing on mine, thank you. Council members, any questions? I'll just add a note of thanks because it's appropriate. Now, Mr. Zervis last week was helping us add some increase for years. We've been saying we have the lowest, we have one of the lowest milligrates of any full service city in Florida. What's south Florida? We've varied it. So, Mr. Zervis helped us identify the milligrates all the other cities and thanks to Ms. Herman and the team of interns, I feel comfortable now saying we are the lowest rate of any full service city in Florida So it's something that we should be getting out there on a communications point Someone would have to go another city would have to go Well below to catch up to us. So we might as well look at for what it's worth especiallyallahassee. So thank you, Mr. Servus, and thank you council members and city staff. That concludes that report. Pardon me? We have a lot of questions. Well, the answer. No, I think Mr. Servus covered it. That's what I just asked. I think you said you're covered. I'm sorry, I misunderstood the question. So we have another report. That's what I thought, but you said you covered it. We've concluded the audit. We have a long range financial plan that Miss McGuire is coming up. Okay, good. the question so we have another report. That's what I thought but you said you covered it okay. We've concluded the audit we have a long range financial plan that Miss McGuire is coming up. Okay good because I had said that and you I thought you were my mistake. Demuring all right anyway good because we have that whole presentation too. Miss McGuire welcome. Good afternoon, Mayor Council. I'm going to share my Guired Budget Director. I'm going to review the 2025 Long Range Financial Plan. This is the 28th update to the Long Range Plan and the Plan predicts services through 2030. The Long Range Financial Plan provides an opportunity to evaluate current policies and practices in order to implement proactive strategies and make fiscally sensitive decisions with longer-term implications in mind. The forecast is an integral part of the annual budget process. The forecast allows for improved decision making and maintaining fiscal discipline and delivering essential community services. The plan primarily focuses on the general fund. The plan also includes the transportation Fund, Water Sewer Fund, Santation Fund, and Stormwater Utility. Just going to go over the general fund briefly. But in preparing the Long Range Financial Plan, we create a baseline forecast starting with the review of historical data for revenues and expenditures. So this chart shows the historical tax revenue from 2020 through 2024. And as we always show, the other utility taxes for Antis tax and other taxes are basically flat with a slight increase. And then the top line shows the property tax, which again is basically because of assessed values going up. We haven't changed the milled rate that much so that increase is based on assessed values in new construction. This is another chart that shows the historical assessed value, which goes right along with the last chart of the property tax revenue, increasing throughout the years. The new construction is the small orange part on the top of those. And the distribution of the property tax revenue, we allocate to the general fund. We allocate a percentage to the capital improvement fund. There's a small amount that is paying from the debt service. And we allocate a million dollars every year to economic development. And that chart shows the distributions. And this chart shows the general fund expenditure history by department. And the top two lines are public safety, fire and law enforcement. So those are the ones that are mostly increasing and are a larger part of the expenditure budget. For the plan, we use some assumptions. One thing is we're not assuming any changes in services, so nothing to do with anything new. We're just, this is to maintain the current services that we have. For property taxes, we're using at five year average of 5.2% utility taxes, 4%, as well as franchise fees, 4% licenses and permits, 1% intergovernmental, 2% charges for services, 4% fines, 2% not the revenue side and for expenditures for personal services. We break it into general and public safety general. We're using a 3% average and for public safety a 4.9% average. Operating expenditures 3% and supplies to 0.3% capital outlay 1.6%. This is the financial forecast. And we start with the 2024 actual numbers. And then we use the current year budget. and then we project out one of the things. We know we usually spend less than we budget and we budget conservatively for revenues. So we also have, we expect to collect more revenues than we budget. So we use a resources forward and we're using about 3%, 3.5% on both sides, assuming that we'll get about 3.5% more revenues and spend about 3.5% less. So that's the resources forward line. I know the, we're also allocating for the fund balance. We allocate 10% for the fund balance policy and 10% for disaster. And that leaves basically the unassigned. So this chart shows the financial forecast. So you tap two lines. There are the revenues and expenditures, which are growing, but pretty close to each other. The expenditures are slightly outpacing revenues, and we are spending down the unassigned. So the bottom shows that. We always review with some recommendations to explore other fees for services, to find effective cost containment measures, invest in economic development efforts, maintain recommended fund balances, be selective about service additions, emphasize efficient use of existing resources, evaluate long-term effects of decisions, and evaluate comprehensive cost recovery objectives. We just have a couple of slides that show some history on these are the pension contributions. As we've talked about, these are a consideration and a big part of the general fund. I used to see the three years of general executive, police and fire. The 24, these are all actual numbers. Even the 2026 forecast is from that. We have the actual report. So we know that that's what the contributions will be for 2026. And we always like to show the tax bill. And we are only one of many taxing agencies on the bill. And the city receives about 21, 22, a little less0.22 on every dollar that taxpayer in the city pays. So, you know, the big percentage goes to the schools and county. And I suppose we could put the whole state on here. But we just compared to some, the few, a few local cities that are full service cities to show that our tax rate is much lower, considerably lower than these and which were at 3.67 and, you know, West Palms all the way up to 8.19. So for the same services, you know, better services, of course. But you pay a lot more for those services in other cities surrounding us. We've had that fire assessment fee. And this just shows another place where we have our rate is much lower than many. West Palm has a relatively new fire assessment so their rate has is at $100 dollars where ours is at $155. Point and Beach's assessment is a kind of a different. They had some specific things that they were assessing for so not their entire fire services that could always change. So ours is 155 and then up to Hollywood where it's $350 a year. And I'll be happy to answer any questions. Council members, any questions? Mr. Winger. Thank you. Can you go back to the beginning? I forget what's slided is where you talk about the percentage of... You talked about the valuation of the tax bills and a certain percentage is related to new construction versus existing construction there. I think that's it. As a percentage of total assessed value, what percent is new construction? We have not had a large percentage of new construction. It's more about 2%. We have a pretty big tax base. So even to move that from 2% to 3%, it's some substantial amount of dollars. But we haven't had lots of new construction come on. We have usually a few areas. So a couple of, you know, what's the newest? There's been some downtown mostly. So. So the city, as you probably are where Councilman worked through the... Is that back on? It is, sorry. The city of Boca Raton, we have the largest assessed valuation of any municipality in the county. So 60 billion, 50, 560 billion. 30 30 ish. So high 30s I thought, but anyway, sorry. I mean, we're talking apples and oranges. Yeah, yeah. Is it 30 of my off? Yeah, high 30s. Yeah. 2024. It's 34 billion. Good point. Thank you. OK, 34. Take that back. Still, the highest in the county, thank you for the correction. And so my only point in bringing that up is it takes a lot to move that number. So you see some, we look at these numbers each year. And so the increase of new construction at 2%, it takes a lot to get to three to Miss McWire's point when you have a large base. Okay, and then on slide nine. I'm sorry, I didn't camp those lights. Are we getting close? One more thing. Yeah. Just so I could understand it, if the, you were talking here that in your long range forecasts that the revenue and the expenditures, I guess we try to line them up, right? That they're, you just lost me. Oh, these are the numbers, so I didn't know if it may more so to look at the numbers for this or if you like the point is if the revenue and the expenditures are supposed to line up every year and that's what we're forecasting, why is the unassigned, can you explain why the unassigned is decreasing or at least forecasted to decrease if you go back to slide 9? the unassigned is decreasing, or at least forecasted to decrease, if you go back to slide nine, why is the unassigned, slated to decrease, I know there's, I guess, there's this one negative 14 million in 2025, but why is that slated to decrease every year? So they're not necessarily supposed to line up. So we take our actuals and we try to adjust for things we know. And then we use those assumptions that Ms. Require pointed out as far as assume growth in revenues and expenditures. And then we look at the output of that model. They hopefully align up or this shows a pretty balanced approach. It is showing a deficit. I will point out that the negative 14.3 million and 25 budget is really a timing issue. The same way that our $10 million negative budget this year turned into a $7.7 million surplus in actual. This is the same timing issue if you look up, go up a slide or back a slide, no back to the other direction. So that 14.3 million is really offset by the $15.7 million resources forward calculation, meaning for 2025 we expect to underspend that budget and bring in more revenue than what was budgeted by that 15.7 million so there's a little bit of a mismatch on the timing aspect So it shows actually a small surplus for that operating year But because we're moving from a budget to a forecast we have this little timing issue But to your point there is it does show a negative spending down a fun balance by go to advanced one site by you know 2.8 million and 2.5 million eventually down to 1.8 million. It's it's effectively pretty balanced but it's it is a slight you know spending down of available resources through that period of time. So something that perhaps we keep around every year, as we did this year, and we turned out to have positive that we... It's exactly right. And we're trying not to back into the numbers to make them balance. We're running the model and seeing where we're at, and then we advise the council on how we move forward, and that's why we have those recommendations on how we can help close that gap going forward. Also, the expenditures are growing even if the revenues are also kind of close. So we will up our fund balance and are committed in our disaster emergencies. So those reserves are also getting bigger, so which leaves less of unassigned. So that's a good point. If you look at the committed, which is 10% of expenditures and the 10% fund balance policies back in 24, it's 20 million and 22 million by 30, we're at 30 million and 30 million. So we still have that money. It's just been moved to a restricted to, because the whole budget has continued to grow. Those reserves have to continue to grow as well. Right, and one last question. So my recollection from the other meeting is that any possible impact to long-range financial planning long-range financial planning with respect to the government campus master plan we haven't yet gotten into that, is that correct? That's not included in this forecast. So we are evaluating the ongoing service costs related to the redevelopment of the downtown campus and we will be packaging that together with kind of one-time capital improvements that are needed for that project as well as the ongoing lease revenue and property tax revenue and evaluating all of that as a package together but it's not included in this model. Thank you. Thanks very much. Further questions? All right. That concludes the presentation. Thank you all. All right, and I believe that concludes all the presentations today. We'll turn to City Manager of Horts, Mr. Brown. Thank you very very briefly. Tomorrow night we're going to propose to amend the agenda to pull item 9 F from the consent agenda and put it under regular public hearings to comply with the statutory requirement that it not be on the consent agenda. That's the speed zone camera. Thank you item. Right, very bold. Thank you. Any further report? That's it for this afternoon. Thank you, City Attorney Reports. The report, Mayor. Thank you. kick it off because it's on the agenda as Boca Raton flag discussion. First, I want to thank I see a number of city employees and long-time residents who are here and it's very clear without you're saying a word that you support the current flag. Pictures worth a thousand words and I'm actually very pleased in several regards to see another flag in private hands as a rare. I was counting and I, my estimate, is just probably 20 of the current flags in existence. And part of this whole exercise of inquiry, which I'm glad we kicked off, was to get citizen engagement to see if we could instill community pride. And if it's there for the current flag, all the better. Then maybe perhaps.... Please start with the new technology. Thank you. Ms. John, I think you know well. We don't do it this way after all years of service. And I know that flags are available from Flagcraft. Don't steal my funder. Anyway, the whole point of this is many other cities. As I said at the outset, months ago was to engage the citizens Re and try to inspire more civic pride and some of the byproduct of that is more Swag some cities sell a lot of swag based on the redesign flags if we end up keeping a flag As I know you're five advocates would like perhaps then you'll want to buy more flags as Ms. John was pointing out They're available from a local retailer for like craft and we could also make them available in shirts and like. But let's not jump ahead because we've gotten some feedback from the public. Some of there are city websites, some of the social media. I'd say this tends to be the comments through our city website are a little more productive than those on social media, particularly timing of the social media comments may have inspired some other ones. But what you're seeing is a few more flags. These were put out on the website since we first brought this up before council. We had our outside vendors, I mentioned, Merritt Mile who was working on the Centennial come up with a couple of other designs. There was one more that was added and shared with Nava based on our residence design. Nava again is the nonprofit North American Vexilological Association who for no cost offered to design some flags because they conducted this project in hundreds of cities and with several states who all have changed their flags. The feedback for pink is I think some of us all was not as positive as I would have imagined, especially in a city that were our tallest building for the last 55 years has been a very large, pink tower. I thought pink might be an advantage because it would distinguish our flags because, and I don't have to go through this tie deck, but I can assure you that there are many flags that have blue and green and even once with city seals. And if you took off the seals, it'd be hard to recognize. In fact, the flag that we even had is not recognizable from what our code says it should be an issue we can take up afterwards. But without going through a slide deck unless anyone wants to, we've seen some feedback. We have a few more designs there. I can go through them again. I'll just add one in recognition because we have multiple flags of what was designed one and that's the one's closest to us on the left and right where you've got the arching one that some council members also seem to like which got the arching tiles that are reminiscent of that as in myser time. one and that's the one's closest to us on the left and right where you've got the arching one that some council members Also seem to like which got the arching tiles that are reminiscent of that is in myzer tile line I Just fold it up one and so you can see it blue light and green it would be distinctive compared to what we have still harness the traditional colors But avoid the pink good council members what's your thoughts? That's Mr. Thompson. So I've given this some thought over the last couple of days and I think I'd start by saying a periodic review of how we do things, like an reassessment of how we do things is healthy. I'm not sure maybe every hundred years is the kind of periodic review that that would necessarily comply with maybe a little too, maybe a little more periodic would be a good thing. And I'd also say that simply continuing to do things because this is how we've always do them isn't necessarily a compelling reason to continue to do stuff. But that said, we have to be mindful, I think we all are of the fact that history matters, our history matters. And we need to remember where it was that we came from. Because if it weren't for such a rich history that we have, you know, there's no way that we would ever be so prominently and positively portrayed on things like Seinfeld or the Nanny. So all that's to say is that. That's a fictional one Seinfeld. Well, what in the nanny, as you know, revolved around the mom of the nanny character, buying a condo and bokeh retone, and she could not wait to move down, and she finally moved down, and as she found out that the condo was not, in fact, a condo was swampland. So all that's to say that are being mindful of our history is a good thing. So with those kind of competing interests in mind, here's kind of where I come out on this. When you, I think when this idea first came up, I had voice that I wasn't head over heels and love with the options that were presented at that time. And I had one, I had suggested that if we were going, if the city were going to undertake to have a reassessment like this that we do so potentially with the help of the consultant that we had brought on to help with the centennial stuff Merit Mile. In that in fact it happened now and we paused there to say that I must, and I can explain this to the city manager that I do have a concern about how those options were chosen and how they were made public, no problem with the public input. That's good. But I hadn't seen them before they got released. So I have something of a concern there, both as to the content and as to the timing. Because I'm not sure we even knew that it was going to be released to the public. All of that happened and we were inundated with some feedback. Now, the options that we see here are fine, I guess, as far as that goes, but I don't think that, in my opinion, any way that they are so overwhelmingly better than the existing flag so as to justify a change. And I guess at the moment moment anyway, I'm not moved that a change is necessary at the moment. Now, I had heard anecdotally about what the feedback was that the public gave us as it relates to the flag. And I heard that it was unenthusiastic. But I want, I stress also that I didn't see the results of that until this morning, when that feedback got circulated. I didn't go separately online to see what every comment was. So to the extent we are going to contemplate a change, I would personally need more time to review and synthesize the public feedback that has been provided on this. So I see from my perspective, the options,'s one of two options that I would take. One is I would table this for some time to be able to review and synthesize the public input that was circulated to us this morning. But to the extent an answer is necessary today, and by the way, I don't really see a fire on this, such that it requires an immediate answer. It would be my suggestion that we, of the options available to us that we keep the current flag. That's kind of where I come out on it. But I'm happy to table it to give some time to think about it more thoroughly and to have the public input be synthesized in a way that I could, you know, finally and fully apply to come to an assessment on that. That's where I come down. Very good. by the way, before anyone else speaks, I forgot to share something. So I want to thank Diane King, who we know sort of the city for more than 45 years, but during the tenure, she actually helped identify the origin of the prior flag. And let me just, I'm going to share an excerpt from the Book Raton News from 1976. There's still some murky history about the flag, what the one we currently have, if you'll pass those down, George. It was adopted apparently in 1964 in response to a chamber, or actually a predecessor flag, I should say, was adopted in response to a 1964 chamber of commerce competition. That article details the gentleman who designed it, George Ryan, who did it hastily within a few hours because he was leaving town the next day and he entered in the contest to win a free trip to Bermuda He presented the then version of the flag to the mayor of city to the city mayor it by nineteen that was in 1964 By 1976 there was a flag sitting in city hall, but not waving on any flag posts. In 1980, the city, after having adopted the current seal we see now, adopted an official flag in 1980, but it didn't adopt the one we have now with the city seal. In fact, it adopted the one that's in this photo here by Mr. Ryan of a predecessor design of a city seal that was kind of reminiscent of the one that Chie using, which is now ours, but it actually had the colors from top to bottom green, green, white and blue, green for the lush landscape blue for the sky, yet blue for the sky was on the bottom. At some point in the 90s or between 1980 and 1993 we did two things. We adopted the put the current city seal there, despite what was in our resolution. And at some point after, we don't know when, between 1980 and 1993, the colors flipped to the version that we see on our city flags, the one over my left shoulder, and the one in front of the residents in the audience. So just a little more fun history that we've unraveled. We don't know when it seems to know why it flipped. If we do go forward with the current flag, we should probably update the resolution to reflect what's flying. But just what points that in terms of your comments, of Mr. Thompson's comments about revisiting the history, it was good to know that what we've been using for the better part of 60 years was done by one guy in response to a contest in a few hours. So if you know we haven't had much discussion we probably have as much discussion on the last couple of weeks as we had in the last 60 years for something that we've been using all this time. So with that Mr. Thompson's applied anyone else have thoughts? As he said there is no urgency here. We can go different ways we can table the matter entirely we can decide to keep the flag now we We can go back out to the public and we can go to Ms. Drucker who raised her hand. Thank you Mayor Singer. So my opinion is that we have so many other things that are, that I really want the input from the community. And at this point right now, the flag is really not a priority item, at least for me. I read Mr. Thompson a lot of the things that you said in terms of coming back on the communication. Truthfully was poor. It was released on April fools. People thought it was a joke. You found out about it by the text. Very important to communicate at the council and I gave this feedback to Mr. Brown. These are the ones out in the community that's going to get this information. Just the timing was very interesting. I've heard from actually some law enforcement, people that have come up to me, and like we're not going to wear, you know, the flag because of X, Y, and Z, and I encourage people to provide input and comment. And our goal was to possibly redo the flag so that it would be a positive community engagement. And I think what we're getting now is not a positive community engagement And I really do feel as a distraction to everything that we have going on That is important that the community be interactive with which is our government redesign the Palmetto Park Road input There's so many other projects that are so much more, in my opinion, important, at least to me that I've received that community input, that it would be my choice to table this for later. I think what we wanted to accomplish, and I think we discussed this in December, is that I didn't find anything wrong with our current flag, but I didn't really, but I knew we were trying to accomplish with certain cities, and I'm very familiar with the background. I just didn't think it was gonna create this amount of pretty much, not very positive output. And I think that, I think the comments, and I scanned through them as well this morning, we had like about 883 comments, and it this tab and that's tab and et cetera tab and you know, why are we doing this? So if you kind of dig into that, the comments were not all positive. You were all ones like people were just like, let's vote for this one, let's vote for that one. So I think more time to review, more time to really think, do we really wanna proceed with this? And I think right now we should just keep it as it is until we can further ponder. Any other thoughts? Is that close? Thank you. So I think that one of the things that did happen out of all of this is something that's positive. I think it did instill some more civic pride in the flag that we have. So that's a positive that came out of it and people who may not have paid attention to our flag before are now paying a lot of attention to it. I did read in real time the comments that came out, it was actually the day before April Fools and then people were commenting after. And I totally understand that this is our centennial year and we want to do things that are memorable for our centennial. Looking at our flag and the recommendations that we're done free of charge to our city, we're just something to think about. We have eight nine examples or eight examples in here right now. and I'm sure there's many more out there that the public would like to submit. I don't think we need to rush into it also. So you know there are some examples that I like. I mean I'm looking at the one in the corner over there right now but it's very similar to. It's that we have currently. I just don't think we need to do it right now. And hopefully this civic pride continues. Maybe flag craft sells some more flags, and we see them waving proudly all over Boca Raton. But I think we can, we can it for right now. Mr. Rader, any thoughts? I like the way Miss Knackle said that the installation of civic pride of the current flag is what this exercise has created. And I agree with that. It's funny because in the article that you just handed us, despite the haste with which the flag was created, a Spanish galleon, a reminder of Boko's past, lies on the left side, and circled by the words city of Boko Ritone, and a row of stylized rocks, the harbor. I mean, so the seal has a very, very descriptive thing that shows our city's history already there. And of course the colors that they talk about here too. So, you know, sometimes, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. it, you know. And I'm kind of in that camp right now. If we wanted to do another contest thing or something like that and open it up, I had a couple minutes and I was just trying to, just vision what would I do, what would I change? And the only thing I could possibly think of was some sort of silhouette of the whole town hall or something like that, which is similar to the Spanish Galean, but I didn't even think that I wanted to share it because again, I think that the current flag right now is pretty good. And as Mr. Ecker said, it's not a priority. We have a lot of stuff going on. And as we said before, we need to be hyper focused with what we've got going on right now. So I think I would table this for the time being. All right, well, we can consider a table. If someone wants to bring it back up, we can. Again, I consider this a success in that some people were alarmed, but I think a lot more were engaged. And the whole point, as I said, this is about resident engagement. And if we instill more civic pride in our current flag, and if there is more than, I know of now two flags. That's the second flag I know in private hands. One is the Cultural Arts Center, or now the Studio I don't know if anyone else had one, but I would love to see that flag flying around. Maybe that's a goal that people can spread with... one is the Cultural Arts Center, now the studio, my is a park, ball one years ago. I don't know if anyone else had one, but I would love to see that flag flying around. Maybe that's a goal that people can spread with your friends and go buy a flag between now and flag day, or we've got plenty of time for this in tenials. In tenials of coming to, so we'd love to see those flown with pride. And in the future, if we want to revisit this issue, there's lots of ways to do it. Meanwhile, I've got some colorful designs that I can take home, if anyone wants. I bought them. So, that's lots of ways to do it. Meanwhile, I've got some colorful designs that I can take home, if anyone wants. I bought them, so that's why I said zero money expended. That was my purchases, but I'm grateful to Navi, grateful to the people who waited. And that is that. That's all I have for my report. So I'll turn to Councilman Reports starting my left, Mr. Thompson. No report, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Aclus. No report, thank you. Ms. Rucker. No report. And Mr. Wigter. I have a report. Oh. from a report starting my left, Mr. Thompson. No report, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Aclus. No report, thank you. Ms. Rucker. No report. And Mr. Rector. I have a report. I'd like to talk about how we have assistance and the city council and what's been going on here. And as what Mr. Thompson just said, sometimes things need to be looked at. I had a meeting with the city attorney and I don't think we need a charter revision to have city council staff be managed by the City Council. I think that has not worked out well. I think the recent events have shown that it has not worked out well. So I've asked the City Attorney to look into this is that, you know, how could such a city council staff be just under the city council's direction? Just as we don't have the city manager's office, directing police officers. Because what I've seen happen in this last couple years, where we've tried to institute this very important, assistant aid, people just trying to help us do our jobs effectively and efficiently is a problem that hasn't worked out well. There's been a conflict. And the most recent resignations have really brought that to light. And I think it needs to be fixed. And I think it needs to be fixed whether it's by ordinance or otherwise that they should be under the purview of the city council. And it should be something that's looked at. And likewise, you know, I was disappointed and frustrated that I felt like I didn't know what to do. I felt like I had no ability to even discuss the situation. Again, I couldn't discuss it with you all until right now. So I feel imperiled to bring it up. If people in our city, whether they're working here, whether they're living here, if they're not happy, they should be some sort of ombudsman or some sort of way for them to express those concerns without fear of, even if it's a malperceived fear, but without a fear of resribution or something like that, even if it's just a fear and it's not reality. But sometimes people feel that way. Many businesses have an ambitment or organizations have like have that to you. Could be for city workers. It could be for police officers. It could be for anybody who's concerned, but they don't know who to report to. And they can't just talk to me or talk to the council members or something like that because they're concerned. There should be an impartial some way. Again, if that goes through the HR department, where there's the procedures that we need to look at, as Mr. Thompson said, well, then I'm in favor of us looking at them because I think it's important. Likewise, when people are just doing work, you know, construction or development services or permits and things like that, and they have concerns about the way things are going, and sometimes they all can't be perfect, I appreciate that. You know, sometimes when you're doing these customer service things or when you buy something, you know, there's a little tab at the end of your experience. How did we do? How did we do? I think we need that. I think we need more of that. How did we do? Hey, I just installed a new air conditioner. It took us this long to get a permit. How did we do? Great. I want to see those statistics. I want to see him from our employees. I want to see him from our people who live here, who are working with the city. I want to see them from our business owners. And I think it's important. And I think it started by the fact that our own assistants did not feel like they could talk to us or have a resolution that was adequate, whether it's rightly or wrongly perceived without them resigning, and that's why I'm bringing it up, Mayor. Mr. Riker. Mr. Riker. Mr. Riker, I was gonna wait, because I was gonna wait, because I've just come back. And the day I left that I have the day was leaving, I got the call that the person that I worked with closely on the council was tending the resignation. And again, the process of why did we have to release that person on the spot was inexplained to me. And I'm here venturing out where things that this person controlled for me and organized for me, now I'm on my own. Like, okay, now I gotta go and figure out if the credit card is canceled, if I have to figure this part out, there was just mass confusion on terms of the process and then today, another one, another person resigned. And I wanted us to sit on it because I agree with you, it's a city council assistant. So people here that they're resigning, they're thinking we are the ones that are dealing with this day-to-day activity of who the report to. They don't report to us. I've also had an issue that we, this council, some of us here, some of us not here, gave a guidance that we were gonna hire a chief of staff for the mayor and two city council assistants to assign to two of us because that amount of work for one person is very hard. I've also mentioned on this council some of the things that happened to me personally for example my extending expense reports that I've had now since last November and we're coming up on May. So I've had a trepidation of like whoever these two individuals are and by the way we shouldn't be hiring one city council assistant. It should be two because we agreed that it was two for the city council and we have not made that change. This body has not given that directive. Why I never pushed back on that was because the people that were in the places were working, the things were getting done. I understand the chief of staff takes on a lot of things as well that were working well together. But I agree, either there has to be a better way of hiring these people. And just speaking to a deputy city manager, telling them what we want is not what that person necessarily is going to end up doing because everything we pretty much give back to them, we don't get the person. And even since we give feedback on the person, we still don't have them reporting to us. So we don't know when they're in or they're out. If they're remote, if one day they're sick, like we find out later and there are things that the reason they were hired was for them to assist us in this alleged supposedly part time job. That's why we had them. So I think as we move forward, A, I want the two city council that we approved in our budget last year or the year before, that is the first thing and how they're going to assign that two to one or one to two, that's up to staff or if they start reporting to the council. But there was definitely opportunities that we could have handled better where we had people in place that were doing a really good job at their job and they're not here any longer. And that creates certain uncertainty. And I'm a human resource professional. I did that for 13 and a half years. That was my job before I was on council. So I'm not sure if we're not telling these folks what the job is in advance. Are we not paying these folks correctly? Are we not assigning them correctly? There's so many things that are going through my mind. So that's a first thing. We need to look at the position. And I know I went through some human resource evaluation, but clearly, there are two people who have argon in within a week. There's clearly some opportunity there for us to improve that. So I want to turn to the city manager and ask why is that position not being the position was an executive assistant and a city council. It should be two city council so we approved in the budget and then the chief of staff which we have. We had two positions. One was titled city council assistant. I don't recall the exact other title, but it was titled City Council Assistant. One was, I don't recall the exact other title, but it wasn't City Council Assistant. They were providing the services. We believe because it's staff who organizes and provides the operations of the city that we were to sign those two positions as we had assigned them. as far as the people, I can say from my perspective, that one of the employees generally did a good job, but there were certain areas in which she did not do a good job, and that is one of the reasons why things have been delayed, so significantly over time. That being said, we intend to look at both positions, clarify with you all what it is you need by discussing that with you clearly so that we know what the expectations are from the council members so that we can convey those expectations to the employees that we hire. We'll also make sure that those expectations are conveyed and that they understand from the beginning what their obligations are and what the reporting structure is. I was not aware that you were not being given information as to when people were not available when they took days off. If that's the case, we'll make sure that that does not occur in the future. And we will look into everything that's involved here in order to get the staff back. Meanwhile we have staff who is capable of providing the service that you need. And we'll make sure that you get that. Mayor Singer can I do a follow up? But Mr. Brown, does that answer my question? The question is, will the positions be advertised as two city council, not two city council assistance to the council? That's the way that we this body wanted a year ago on the budget. And I think that that would help tremendously because four people to one person that we don't have any control over is a very hard thing when you have four people with different calendars and different needs and different options that we deal with the city. So that is a question and you don't have to answer today but I would like to follow up. I would definitely review that and discuss that with you. I wasn't aware we were going to be discussing this this afternoon. Neither was I but now that we had the opportunity obviously we We can't talk about it as a body, but I know what this body decided on was two city council assistants at a chief of staff and part of that conversation was very clear we had robust this council about they would help with research, it would help with some of the bill updates, they would help with some of the things that we would need and And all of that has not been done because, again, I think that when you don't have the adequate staffing, then some of those extra things that we were going to give to these individuals, we were never able to do and therefore we kept them and we continued to do that research. And the reason we brought them on was for them or we decided as a body to add them to the budget and to was in order for them to provide that relief in a way and to work with the City Council and that that clearly hasn't been happening and it's been over a year and a half now. I'll just make some brief comments. I also was surprised on Friday. Surprised, but not as surprised today as I was on Friday about what happened. But I think moving forward, we really need to clarify what the obligations of City Council assistance will be and make that very clear with us, with staff. Mr. LeCasek, he's not here today, but he asked me several months ago what do you think the obligations were? I thought those were clear. And clearly there was still a separation of what the understanding was. So I just think moving forward that it needs to be crystal clear. And we know they know everybody's on the same page, which is where I think the disconnect was this time. We weren't all on the same page. We thought we were, but again, I don't think we're somehow that just wasn't getting through. So just moving forward, I think we need to clarify those obligations to what we need. Mr. Thompson. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate everybody's comments on this. This is a difficult subject to bring up. I think we recognize that. And I think everybody's spoken really well about these issues, which can't be difficult to address. HR issues in particular are difficult to address in a public setting. So I'm going to make sure that my comments are limited. But I think I approached it this way. I was I think Mr. Drucker you mentioned I was not on the council when the decision was made to hire staff in this way. Prior to that, seemingly all of the needs of the city council in the ways we're describing were handled very well. In fact, dare I say expertly by three members at three folks who sat in the city manager's office and they didn't work directly for the council. They worked for the city manager, including one of the folks who it's in the audience now. We mentioned, I forget who it was, maybe as Mr. Wigley mentioned earlier, that sometimes if it ain't broke until fix it, I guess from my perspective, maybe as Mr. Wigley mentioned earlier, that sometimes if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I guess from my perspective, and I wasn't there at the time, it didn't strike me necessarily that anything was broken by the way that it was done back then. So I would say, I think I approach it respectfully from a somewhat different point of view, which was, I was happy, perfectly happy with the way it was handled before. And if the situation now is at a place where people are unsatisfied with it, it sounds like that's the case. Then I just want to raise the possibility that there's nothing wrong with going back to how it was done before. Which was we had three folks who took care of the management staff and the city council members and at least from my perspective, it was handled as fine. I think that was a good system that was in place for a while and in that way history and tradition served as well, I thought, but I recognized that since then, you all have made a decision, you wanted to do a different way to get that. But I wanted to throw out that possibility because if now we've deemed that the situation is broken and I can remember not so distant past where it wasn't, at least from my perspective, that may be something it's worth considering doing it like we did back then. And I say that simply because I too, when I got here, back in April of last year, April, yeah, it was different. It was handled very differently. And I didn't really know what to make of it because it was so different how that role, what it was, and what it wasn't. And part of me yearned for how it was done in the past because it was handled so well. So I would throw that out is that that was a good system that served us well for a long time. Maybe it's worth reconsidering it doing it that way. I'll weigh in because I've seen it both ways and unlike all of you who had a share one assistant where we did budget for two and I believe that was the plan and if I been a council member I probably would have been more insistent on the use of that person and would want to. I've had the benefit of working with someone who filled in gaps that weren't there. I don't I never like the analogy of it ain't broke don't fix it because I think if we're reviewing an issue out of review it And I think we ought to continue to strive for excellence That is what said woke up hard for all these years. We are not in any other city. We strive for more and I why I brought this up originally in 2022 and then again in 2023 is because I after having talked to Other mayors and there's more demands on a mayor's time I think than a council person's time, but on my many years on council, I was routinely in the process of responding at some times to hundreds of emails in a week in my off hours for the Quote Part time job. Seeing that, knowing you would all have that need, I thought that we needed more assistance. And it has been invaluable on policy research, on communications, on tracking things. It's not a matter that what we had wasn't done well. It just there was more that we're able to do and the expectations are greater. That's why I thought the position should be in the budget. That's why I'm glad they were there and I think that they should be filled. And as I said last year, if we start with two and find out that council members need more staff than I would be amenable to one per each council member is a minimum in many other places, even smaller ones. So I think it will have to be seen. How cool. to one per each council member as is a minimum in many other places, even smaller ones. So I think it will have to be seen how quickly we can get the staff up to speed and determine the next step, but I do agree that I think for you all that you would all benefit from that, and the residents more importantly would benefit by being able to have faster and greater responses, tracking of legislation, which is ongoing in Tellohassassee, as one example just mentioned, I was looking at that relates to us and the other merit issues, we deal with on an ongoing basis. So, Ms. Drucker? Yeah, and the only thing I wanted to also add to that is the staff has grown. The executive staff has grown, Mr. Thompson, from when you were here. We have two or three now assistant deputy city managers that also there's four in total. There's also the CRA manager that started all these individuals. The city has grown, the staff has grown and three executive assistants to four, five council members at that time. Plus five new city manager type executive positions no three people would be able to handle that volume. And when you're getting people the rapid response of these emails, you know, they would look through my emails. And if there was a permitting issue that I can't really help with, that person is dispatching it to somewhere. If there is a phone call that's simple, a water issue, that person is responding to. It's efficiencies for the community. It's not so much because they're doing, they're not doing anything personal for us. They're doing business for the city that we might not. We've been in here since one. If anything is coming to our emails, it's almost five o'clock. If there's something minor, that person is back in the office reviewing and dispatching and getting things done while we're in here because by the time we leave here the office will be closed. So I do feel that IA, we budgeted it for two city council assistance, I would like to see that. I would like to see two dedicated Justice City Council and if it's a conversation that you need more administrative operational individuals, Mr. Brown, then we can revisit that as we enter our strategic planning and our budget season. And when it all is set and done, I also want to understand what are those folks doing? Because I never kind of understood like what exactly are they doing? I know what they're doing for me, but when they're not doing something for me, when I would hear over doing something for the city manager's office, well, you're supposed to be city council. So what does that mean? So I think clear definitions will be really, really important moving forward. For the comments or thoughts? All right, thank you. It's still your own program, Mr. Wigter. Yeah, I mean, that was slightly helpful. I think there's still some outstanding issues and the ombudsman issue and where employees are supposed to turn, I think over the course of the next coming meetings and weeks and strategic planning. I'd like to hear more about that and make sure employee surveys that we've had and we've heard the results of police department surveys that we've results of, I'd like to hear more about the summary of those issues to know how we're doing, not just procedurally who's supposed to be reporting to what and how things used to be and what not. And like Mr. Tucker said, we're a budget now, the budget's 50% bigger than the last time. So it you know a lot of things have changed but but self-reflection and reflection of looking how we're doing things looking at those policies, procedures. I think it's I think it's important and we'll be bringing it up more more often. Thank you. All right. Thank you for the comments. But if not, we will adjourn this workshop meeting at 450 C. tomorrow night for a regular council meeting. Good afternoon.