So number one, which is the fiscal year 25 adoption of the tonnative millage rate and operating budget, Mr. Reiber. Thank you, Mayor. In July, as is my responsibility as city manager, Andrew Thompson, on behalf of your team, presented our recommended budget and that budget had resulted in the trim notice mailing, which occurred this past month. This evening is the first opportunity for us to consider the setting of the rates and the budget approval process begins formally and I will turn to our chief financial officer, Andrew Thompson, to walk us through this item. Andrew. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, commissioners. As said, this is the fiscal year 2025 recommended budget. Part of the adoption process tonight is three different commission actions. The first, which is item number one, this item, is two separate public hearings. The first public hearing is on the fiscal year 2025 millage rates, which will conduct the public hearing and then the commission will thereafter adopt the tentative operating millage rate and debt service millage rates. After that first hearing, there will be the adoption of the fiscal year 2025 tentative budget, again a public hearing and then adoption of the budget itself. These two items will then be advertised on the website and the Sun Sentinel and also make notice of our final budget hearing, which is scheduled for September 18th. Also on tonight's agenda is part of the CRA's agenda is the adoption of the tentative CRA budget. So let's just go through some of the essentials of the budget, which is the city's plan of action beginning October 1st, 2024 and ending September 30th, 2025. And here are some of the essentials of that plan. The tentative budget contemplates decreasing or operating mileage rate to 5.7243 mills. This is our 10th reduction over an 11 year period. It would be the lowest rate in 15 years. And since fiscal year 14, that is a reduction of about 10 and a half percent. And so that's almost 0.7 mills reduction just on that operating mileage. And those reductions over that period of time have saved taxpayers more than $17 million. We have two other milled rates, both support the debt service, the principal and insurance payments on the voter approved general obligation bonds. Those bonds were sold back in 2020 and 2022. So we have two separate milled rates for, that will be adopting for that debt service. But together we're recommending that they in anger be decreased to 0.5534 mills, a decrease of about 10%. One of the other major elements of the budget itself are the city's three non-added ballroom special assessments and these assessments have their own separate hearing next Thursday at 6 p.m. So they are not part of tonight's deliberations only the millage rate and the budget as a whole. So our fire assessment program, we're recommending an increase from 276 per residential unit to 382 per residential unit. And this is based on the growth of fire suppression costs as was outlined in the May presentation on the fire assessment study report. And that's a report that's done every four to five years and reviews the costs of fire suppression and the demand for calls among different property classes and apportions those costs out. We had made the presentation recommended a rate of 402 with some of the other elements we learned since then we were able to recommend that lower level of increase and compared to our pure cities of a similar size, that proposed rate remains willable the average of 430 for similar size cities. We do have a stormwater assessment rate. We're recommending that being increased by $11. This is in accordance with the stormwater master plan that was developed and adopted by the city And you can see later in this presentation just how much that 11 dollars is Bringing into the stormwater fund itself for all those major drainage projects that fund more than doubling its size and increasing It's capital infrastructure investment from about $730,000 to well over 7 million billion. And then finally, we have a residential solid waste assessment rate. And it's an all properties and pays for the two trash pickups each week and the recycling pickup. This is a fee that we've seen the costs escalating that underlie the solid waste fund over the past few years. So we're recommending an increase of 310 or 310 to 340. And that's primarily in response to the tipping free increases that went into effect with our contractors last December. That still remains below that countywide average of $400 and is only $40 higher than what the the rate was in 2012 for the city which was $300. Another element of the budget which has to be balanced between revenues expenditures is maintaining sufficient reserves. So for the general fund we require 20 to 25% be kept in reserves of general fund expenditures. This budget does accomplish that keeping reserves of 22%. And then it also continues to fund highly ambitious capital improvement program of $38.4 million. We talked in July about some of the challenges that came up during budget development. So let's just go briefly through those. We do have increased pension costs again Similar chance we experience the fiscal year 24 We're just the legacy fire pension class last year went up about a million dollars again increasing 900,000 This year of citywide those pension costs which are largely set by the state and act early actual reports They're increasing by 1.3 million total just for the general fund, about 18%. We also have a growing public safety costs, about 1.4 million for BSO's contract, an increase of 7%. We have increased maintenance needs. As we prepare for the move to new facilities, we are still maintaining our old ones, many of which are from the Johnson administration and the Reagan administration. These are buildings that do continue to require maintenance to continue to be operational for our city staff during this transition period. The solid waste tipping fees, those increased by 38% last December, bulk trash by by 31%. And that's following, Fiscal Year 23 is recycling and increase of almost 50%. So we have seen substantial increases in the cost to operate our solid waste division. We continue to experience apply change challenges, particularly for specialty equipment, vehicles and machinery. Inflation has begun to moderate, but it does still mean that there's not been any deflation. So the prices still are higher than what they ever were before for labor and other items. The facility monconstruction costs, construction costs have been much higher than anticipated when it the outset. And we've been very successful and trying to find creative solutions including grant funding to help stretch those dollars. And then there's the reality of building these new facilities means moving into these new facilities. Over the next 12 months, nine out of ten city employees, about 329 employees, will be moving where they work from. And so everything is going to be changing. Where people are reporting, where people are sending in mail, the operations, the challenge there is not just logistical, it's maintaining the quality of service delivering to our community. Interest rates remain elevated. We're anticipating that there'll be some cuts later this month, but they are at historic highs making it difficult to issue new debt without having higher than anticipated or desired interest rates. We also have various rail crossings in the city. The city is party to agreements to maintain these. The CSX and FEC line both lines have maintenance planned for 38th Street together that city bill is about a million dollars. They give us about a year's notice that that work is coming and that is something they've provided. The fiscal year 25 budget is a plan and new information appears throughout the year and also during the budget adoption cycle. We'll note one of the new challenges that has appeared has been an increase in our property insurance or liability insurance. And that's noted in the agenda item in that cost increases about $250,000. And that's one of those items that we'll be addressing later year after the adoption of the budget in November when we do one of our regularly scheduled budget amendments. But again, it is a plan. A new challenge will develop over the course of fiscal year 25. There are a lot of positive things that came into the fiscal year 25 budget. Our property tax base expanded for the 12th consecutive year and almost 15% increase. The second highest increase in the county, and much higher than the county increase of 90.5%. We have seen significant private developments throughout the city. Just this one year alone, added $260 million in new construction to the tax rolls. And since fiscal year 22, it's been $400 million. So our total tax base is now about $5.8 billion. As you can see there on that chart to the right. The Minionies and Projects have really changed the dynamics of the city and are working to attract further investment in the city. And that includes Oakland, they are on federal highway, oak tree by Poulte off Northwest 21st and prospect. And then Bliss, the future there with the Middle River walk, a public amenity. We've also been able to secure low interest rates before rates start to rise with competitive bonds that were double-a rated and also very low interest rates for a public works facility and other critical projects. We also continue to explore options to fund our ambitious storm ladder program recently the Commission approved our application to the state revolving loan fund. That's a state program that provides below, typically sub 1% interest rate loans, two jurisdictions for appropriate projects to improve drainage. We've also continued to have great success in obtaining grant funding for capital projects. Just since 2015, the city's been awarded over $65 million in grants. And then we also do have our major new city facility scheduled to open and that'll open up city properties for redevelopment and also the construction of new amenities. And so this is a major part of reaching our Centennial the city manager mentions is our building our second century campaign. So that includes fire station nine, which have its ribbon cutting and just a few weeks it's a phenomenal building. I just had my walk through last month and was so impressed. The public works facility moving all of our public works operations from city park to the northeast of the city in a warehouse area freeing up that space for new parks and amenities. And then of course across the street we have the sky building being constructed on two lots previously owned by the city that remained dormant and were used for parking for many many years. So this is a very exciting time for redevelopment in the city. The total citywide budget for next fiscal year, that's recommended, is $166.2 billion. The city budget is divided into various different funds and two broad categories are governmental funds and then enterprise funds. Your enterprise funds are about 30% of the budget and those are your utilities, your business like funds. They pay for themselves, they set their own rates, they issue their own debt, they do their own capital infrastructure. Everything else you see on that pie chart is the governmental fund. Meaning it does the traditional business of government. The largest fund is your general fund, 80.5 million, about half your total city budget. And it supports a variety of different funds, including transfers out to the debt service fund, that pays all the governmental debt. Our special revenue funds, which includes our CRA, and then our governmental funds, CIP, which is all of the capital projects, excluding those in the enterprise funds. This is our largest adopted budget that's being considered and it also represents a significant increase in just a few years. So back in fiscal year 2020 the total citywide budget that was adopted was $92.6 million. It's increased almost 80% over these past few years to that 166.2. One of the things I do wanna note about the budget is that one of the largest components, particularly in general fund is people. Personnel costs are about 60% of the general fund budget. So it is a core element of the budget when we do these deliberations is understanding that a lot of the cost of the people many who received accolades tonight. So the general fund revenues, they have to balance with the expenditures just like every fund and the city budget as a whole. So they're $80.5 million in general fund revenues. And as part of the budget process, the ad valorum or property tax and fire assessment revenues are set by commission based on the rate structure they adopt. The remaining revenues are largely just a product of economic activity. These revenues are not all made equally. There are two different types of revenues. There are general revenues like the property tax that can be spent on any governmental purpose and then there are restricted revenues that are legally limited to what they can be spent on. So it's not a matter of just balancing $80 million in revenues to $80 million in expenditures. That fire assessment of $10.7 million can only be spent on fire suppression costs. The permit fees that are collected by the city, those don't go to subsidize the water and sewer fund or pay for the library. All of those are required on an estate lot to be used to spend on enforcing the floor to building code. You also have smaller revenue streams such as the gas tax, which are used to fund our repaving projects in the city. So it is more than a simple balancing act. We have to look at each revenue stream and see what can we legally spend on this. And the result is a general fund expenditure of $80.5 million. The largest share of expenditures in the general fund are for public safety, about 47% total. and that includes your BSO or your police services for $20.8 million, a little bit over a quarter of the budget. And then fire rescue at almost $17 million, about a fifth of the budget. The rest of the general fund comprises of parks, library, engineering, community development, building, the non-interprise fund components of public works, and then also the largest area you see there outside of public safety is general government. That includes city clerk, finance, administration, IT, human resources, but also includes things we'd always think about like those risk management costs that higher insurance rate that I just mentioned, also the transfers used to support other funds including our capital programming. We'll just shift very briefly into talking about the enterprise funds and again these are business-like funds. They set their own fees, they're not subsidized by tax dollars, neither do they subsidize the general fund. They issue their own debt and they must maintain their own reserves. The largest is our water and sewer fund. We purchase our water from the city of Fort Lauderdale and our sewer is our waste water's process by Fort Lauderdale and by Broward County. After that our second largest enterprise fund is the storm water fund at $12.3 million about a quarter of the enterprise funds. And again, this has increased substantially over last year. And then we have our solid waste fund at about $10 million. As stated, the solid waste fund has had seen increased personnel, recycling repair maintenance and tipping cost fees. And these fees have increased at a much greater rate than when we did a recent studies with Custler Consulting. And personnel is a matter of high competition for CDLs and qualified drivers. The recycling and tipping fee rates have grown much more quickly than anticipated. And that's a universal problem in Broward County. And one of the elements when looking at the rate structures, we did not set the rates to fully balance the fund. There are hopes that we can use some reserves this year to make sure we pay all the costs, but Broward County has been working on establishing in Broward County solid waste authority with the intention of helping ameliorate these problems and mitigate these high cost by coming to symptom collective solutions on tipping and disposal. So that said the rate increase of $30 as attempted to help stabilize the fund, but we do continue to have concerns about the long-term trajectory of that. A commercial rates or the other element, last commission meeting or an ordinance was approved that changed how these rates were adopted. In prior years it was by ordinance. Now to be set by resolution as part of the final budget hearing, the proposed increase there is a little bit under 10%, matching proportionally the increase in the residential rate of $30. The Water and Sewer Fund last year, we began work on a water and sewer master plan and then a company rate study. Those are nearing the finish line and we intend to have those presented next fiscal year. While we wait for those results in that presentation, the city's code does have an automatic rate adjustment that occurs annually on October 1st. And that rate adjustment is based solely on the provider charges of Fort Lauderdale and Broward County. In July, we did not have those numbers. Those are determined as part of those jurisdictions budget processes, but we have received them. And if what they propose is adopted and implemented, we'd be looking at a 5% increase in water and a 2% increase on sewer charges. And to put that in perspective, when the city does this adjustment, it also takes into count the savings that the city has through operational efficiencies such as our Smart meters program. So the 5% increase in water, the actual cost for waterdale is charging for us water, is increasing 8.5%. So efforts are made to shield those costs. It is not directly transferred on to consumers. Every effort is made to find new efficiencies. And if you've not signed up for the Smarteters program, I highly recommend it. It provides incredible amount of information and can help you detect leaks and identify problems in your own system and give you hourly records and further details. Much helps prevent a lot of surprises when you get your monthly bill. The Stormwater Fund, we talked about it, had its master plan and we are full steam ahead. We're taught not just building new structures for our centennial we're also working on a 15 year plan to help address drainage issues in the city. So we do have that revolving loan fund application submitted for next fiscal year that will be funding some projects but the fund has more than doubled in size increasing by 7 million and its capital program has gone from $730,000 to over $7 million substantial return just for that $11 increase. The budget is an operations plan but there is also a need to have it correspond and further the city's strategic plan. As part of that, the city departments work to develop business plan initiatives that further the objectives of the strategic plan. And so we have a variety of different strategic plan performance areas, and you can see those listed on the chart. And are initiatives that correspond to each. These initiatives are over 190 different ones and altogether they're valued at $8.5 million and they are all outlined individually as part of the budget book but some of the highlights include maintaining our roster of city, including Good Neighbor Day, expanding our business incentive programs from beyond just the CRA to also along a local part Boulevard west of I-95 in the qualified census tract area and along Andrews Avenue, continuing our food distribution programs with our non-profit partners and providing hurricane kits to our neighbors at risk. It also contemplates four new positions being added to the city, taking us to a total staffing of 329. And those are a volunteer services manager in the parks department, two new GIS positions for the ITS division, and an additional administrative assistant in the permitting division. It also contemplates a major investment in the replacement of vehicles 29 at the cost of 3.3 million. The average service life of these vehicles being replaced is 15 years. Over a quarter million and new incentive, our new new capital equipment for fire rescue, continued investments in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and it's also our first full year of KEPOQ and Park Beautiful, that program. And I will also note that it is also the first full year of IVR, interactive voice recognition phone payments for our utility billing system. So, you don't even need to go through the hassle of opening up an account. If you just want to make a credit card payment, you just call the number and have your account information. We have a very impressive capital improvement program. The highlights of the program were provided back in June by the engineering department. We're looking at a CIP of $38.4 million about a quarter of the work is related to our utilities water and sewer and stormwater. The remainder are all above ground projects facilities streetscapes neighborhood improvements and parks. The CIP is grown tremendously. We keep looking at 2020 as a base year, and you can see one of the things that has driven out the entire citywide budget is Fiskir 2020, that CIP was $3.8 million. Next year, it's over $38 million. That's an increase of 907% in just a few years. That's a tremendous amount of work being done and Contemplated for the future Just quickly going through this CIP we have the renovation grant funded of the Collins building at City Park We have city park phase two itself again. This is a serious amount of ground funding. Then out west we have the Royal Palm Park trail improvements. And then we also have the Florida Sidewalk Network funded through the complete streets and local initiatives program. And then some of those stormwater projects include the design for the Emerald Lakes Basin drainage area. That chain of lakes can see out west connecting Bluehaire and Lake Emerald, Montage and other communities out west. And then we also have a grant funded northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern Northeastern that we can say about next year's CIP is that it's not being funded by residents primarily over its... in eastern Oakland Park. One of the great things that we can say about next to CIP is that it's not being funded by residents primarily. Over 25.4 million of the funding is coming from external sources from grants. That's 66% of your entire CIP. So just to recap the budget, we're recommending a decrease in the operating mileage of 5 to 5.72543. We're reducing the debt service mileage to 0.5534 mills. There is an increase to the fire assessment rate being recommended to 382 per residential unit. And just to focus on those two, those are the only general fund revenues being set tonight and next week. And when we compare those rates to what our pure cities adopted as their preliminary rates in July, you can see that we compare very favorably of these eight cities with populations between 40 to 80,000. We have the second lowest milled rate. And you'll note that not every city here has issued debt service. Most of them haven't. So we're the second lowest combined milled rate. And that's not even considering the fact that most of the others don't have any debt. These other cities with debt service milled rates you can see are the top three in milled for our peer cities and we are the second lowest. And for the fire assessment you can see as well that our 382 recommendation remains well below $48 below that average of $430. So we do understand and acknowledge the fire assessment increase is not always the best news. But it is by comparison something that we're still working very hard to keep competitive compared to similar cities. And it's also the city's intent to keep that 382 rate constant for at least a two-year period. The stormwater assessment rate increasing by $11.00. Residential solid waste by $30.00 still well below the county average of 400. Slightly above the rate of $300.00 back in fiscal year 12 for Oakland Park. About a 10% increase for our commercial rates of solid waste, maintaining our fund balance within our policy limits, adding four additional positions to city staff, bringing us to a total of 329 positions, and that does exclude the 99 contract positions, part of our police services agreement with the Broward Sheriff's Office. It is the city's largest adopted budget in its history. And what does this mean to our residents and to our property owners? In August, every property owner received their trim notice. That trim notice provided what their taxable value was last year, what it's going to be for the upcoming tax year, what the rates they paid last year were, and what if adopted the preliminary rates, how it'll affect their property. So we looked at the median single family home from last year, and we applied the maximum growth that could have, which was 3% in the state of Florida, the growth and the assessed value for homestead property is CPI or 3 percent, whichever is the lower of the two. Last year the CPI was applicable with 3.4 percent according to the state, so that cap took effect. You can see that the effect that has in the property tax with or proposed rate reductions is a net increase of $8.72 about a 1% less than 1% increase. Then when we look at the special assessment, what's are not based on the value, the taxable value of a property but are based on the cost of service being provided. You can see the $11 increase for stormwater, the 30 for solid waste, the 106 for the fire assessment, and you can see the total increase of 147 for the assessments. All told that tax bill is increasing by 8.45% about $156. And one thing I do want to note is that although both the operating and debt service melodies are decreasing, under state law, we're required to advertise an increase in our property tax. And that's because the state of Florida has something called the rolled back rate, which has to be calculated. And that's the rate that wouldn't be set to generate just the same amount of taxes as the immediately proceeding fiscal year. So the proposed operating mileage rate is 7.42 percent above the rollback rate of 5.3289. O'Connor Park is not the only entity on the tax bills. If you look at your trim notice you'll see a bevy of different special taxing districts and then also the Broward School Board and the Broward County Board of County commissioners. Oakland Park is less than a third of the property tax bill. And one thing just to take note of is that there are significant benefits and exemptions available to to our homesteaded properties. That save our homesteaded law creates that 3% cap. So it can never exceed 3% even when CPI exceeds it as it did in the past couple of years. And then the homestead exemption also applies, which is $50,000 for cities. It's only 25,000 for the taxes set by the school board. And so over 60% of residential properties in Oakland Park are homesteaded. So the majority are receiving those benefits. For the non-home-steaded properties, be they residential or commercial or industrial, that cap is 10%. So those properties in prior years that had higher CPIs, they did grow at a higher rate. And so that tax savings from the homestead and the other exemptions you see on the right, that does transfer to some extent the burden onto others. And just to illustrate that, when we look at the growth and the taxable value versus the market value from a single average family home back in 2020, you can see the market value was about 270,000 or so and the taxable value was 130. Over the course of those years, the market value increased by 73% reaching over $450,000, or as a taxable value increased by only 18% taking to $154,000. So just to show what that difference is, that property under saver homes is paying $882. If that did not apply or that period of time, that home would be paying almost $3,000 in property taxes. So there are some significant advantages built into Florida's tax law regarding properties. So just a recap of what we're asking for tonight is a public hearing to set the milled rate. again operating milled rate of 5.7243 mills and then two debt service milled rates, one for the 2020 debt service series of 0.3589 mills from the series 2022 of 0.1945 mills. Afterwards, we're requesting that a public hearing be held on the budget itself, which is included as exhibit A and the value of that budget is 166.2 million. And again, after the adoption of these tentative rates and the tentative budget, those will be advertised along with the next hearing date. Later this month, we do have additional public hearings on the budget. Next week, next Thursday at 6 p.m. September 12, we have three public hearings for the non-Avular and Special Assessments. So that will be the fire, stormwater, and residential sawd waste assessments. If you're wondering why it's Thursday at 6 p.m., it is a product of state law and noticing requirements. Then we have our final budget hearing on Wednesday, September 18th. And that hearing also will include not just the final millage rate and final budget. It also includes the CIP, the city's compensation plan, fee booklet, and fiscal policies. It also will have the final budget. It also includes the CIP, the city's compensation plan, fee booklet and fiscal policies. It also will have the final adoption of the CRA budget. And with that, thank you very much.