Budget Public Hearing #2 5:01pm - Sep 16, 2025

I know. If everybody could have a seat, we can get started. Ooh, we got an echo. Ooh, we got an echo. Echo, echo, echo. Why is that? Oh, it's over. Fixed already. Good job. Hello, Nan. Okay, great. Thank you. Oh, I forgot about that. Very good. If we cut the budget, we can't get it. Okay, if everybody would have a seat, we can get started. It is past 5.01. Thank you. That's good. Great. Okay. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Beam Fur, Mayor of Broward County. Tonight, the Broward County Board of County Commissioners will conduct public hearings on the final millage rates and final budgets that will support county services during fiscal year 2026. This is the last of two public hearings as required by law. The purpose of the hearing is to receive comments from the public and provide information on the county's proposed budget and tax levies. The public hearing will be conducted in three sections. The first section includes public hearings on countywide and Broward municipal services, district millage rates and budgets, as well as fire rescue and street lighting sub-district millage rates and budgets. The second section includes public hearings on the millage rates and budgets for the county's dependent water control districts. And the third section includes adoption of the county's five-year capital improvement program. An agenda listing all the items to be discussed and the order of the items is available near the entrance if anybody needs it. If you are interested in addressing the board of county commissioners about an item on the agenda, please register with the county staff member near the entrance of the commission chambers if you have not registered already. County staff is also available near the entrance to answer questions about the county's budget and taxes. If anyone has questions about property value assessment or exemptions, the property appraiser's office staff is available near the entrance and can also be reached at 954-357-6830 or martykeer at bcpa.net or in room 111 on the first floor of this building from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The last day to file an appeal with the Value Adjustment Board to challenge your assessment is September 17th. If anyone has questions about the VAB process, staff is available near the entrance to discuss. With that introduction, let's begin. For fiscal year 2026, there is a proposed 7.28 percent aggregate increase in property taxes when compared with the taxes generated from the aggregate rollback rate. The rollback rate generates approximately the same amount of taxes as the prior year plus taxes generated from new buildings added to the tax roll. The aggregate millage rate of 5.7024 as compared to an aggregate rollback rate of 5.3156 includes all ad valorem taxes levied by the county and its dependent districts. This aggregate millage rate is the basis for the state required advertisements concerning the budget and taxes. The rollback millage rates and the percent change in property taxes are based on the assessment rolls certified by the property appraiser. The public hearing is open on the general county millage rate and budget. The final millage rate proposed for general county purposes is 5.6690, which represents a 7.30 percent increase in property taxes as compared with the rollback rate of 5.2832. I would like to introduce Monica Saperro, county administrator, to provide a brief overview of the county budget and millage rate. Monica? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commissioners again. As you are aware, this budget has been developed while several uncertain fiscal trends have been in the background for the county, with the most significant financial impact to the county's fiscal year 26 budget being due to the transition of the county-wide tax collector. In fiscal year 26 budget process, sorry, the fiscal year budget, 26 budget process has been challenging, but our very dedicated and great staff have risen to the task yet again. Today we are presenting a budget for fiscal year 26 totaling $8.756 billion, which is $930.8 million more than fiscal year 25. The operating budgets reflect an increase in the amount of $428.2 million, largely due to increases in the BSO, law enforcement, and fire rescue contracts, the local provider participation fund paid fully by private hospitals, the constitutional officers' general fund budgets, and included for the first time to coincide with the opening of the new convention center headquarter hotel, is the Hotel Enterprise Operating Fund, which is also fully supported by hotel revenues. It also reflects an increase in the capital budget of $568.4 million, largely due to the budgeting of the following major projects in fiscal year 26. A new Terminal 5 at the airport, the county's Emergency Operations and Communications Center, and other significant transportation capital projects. Finally, there's a decrease in the debt service budget of $65.8 million. I am pleased to report that the county has paid off all general obligation, or GEO, debt, and the amount of GEO debt per capita is zero. The general fund budget proposed for fiscal year 26 totals $2.036 billion, which is an increase of $110.9 million. The general fund regional Broward Sheriff's Office recommended budget increased by $22.8 million, which includes funding for the second year of the salary adjustments for detention deputies and funds for an additional sergeant in the central Broward district. Additionally, the general fund transfer to the dispatch contract fund for 9-1-1 services increased by $1.4 million. Those two items combined increases the fiscal year 26 BSO budget by $24.2 million, which is an increase of 3%. In addition, for the other constitutional officers, the property appraiser's office recommended budget increases by $1.3 million. The supervisor of elections budget decreases by $3.8 million, primarily due to the different elections planned in fiscal year 26 compared to fiscal year 25. The clerk of courts budget increases by $0.15 million, and the fiscal year 26 budget for the tax collector increases by $65 million, which is driven by the 2% commission levied on the county, which includes the county paying the school board's share per state law, that will be withheld by the tax collector in the distribution of property tax revenue to the county beginning in fiscal year 26. The budget proposes a series of actions to restrain the county budget, given the available resources, while balancing providing services to our community. There is a reduction in the county's overall number of positions by 159, and the general fund agency's budget reduction exercise resulted in reductions and recurring core operating expenses of $20 million annually. Other recommended changes are to reserves to overall guard against future uncertainties. An increase in reserves by $6 million for emergency preparedness and shelters, a decrease in reserves by $10 million for government services used to offset a portion of the tax collector transition, and an increase in reserves by $40 million for emergencies and cash flow. To support the general fund, the certified property tax roll increases 7.52% when compared to the tax roll used for the adopted fiscal year 25 budget. But we do not anticipate this level of growth to continue. The fiscal year 26 total millage rate remains the same as fiscal year 25, with a decline in debt service millage and a corresponding increase dedicated to the second year of BSO detention deputy salary adjustments and to the general fund reserves. Part of the shifting within the same total rate will help the county build our reserves for emergencies, whether they are financial or weather related. It should be noted that county taxes make up approximately one quarter of the overall property tax bill. The increase in assessed value for homestead property owners is capped at 2.9% for fiscal year 26, and generally, homesteaded taxpayers will increase a slight, will experience a slight increase in county taxes. For other properties, the change in the assessed value of each property will determine how much the property taxes will change. The final public hearing to adopt the county budget and tax rates is scheduled for September 16th today. Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commissioners. Question? Yes. Very brief for the county administrator. County administrator, you indicated that the, a part of the $80 million shortfall is that not only are we, with the new tax collector, is not only paying our share that we're also paying the school board. Are we also paying the cities as well? My understanding is the cities are not paying. No, they do not pay. We do not pay. Who does pay? Well, we pay for the counties collected, the 2% on the counties collected revenues, as well as the majority of the school boards collected. But there's no assessment on the city's collected portion. Okay. Okay. With that, we will, we'll see if there's anyone from the public to speak. Do I have any other, any other forms here? Are these all? Okay. We have six. Okay. Our first speaker is Chris Nelson. Our next speaker, our next speaker will be chief judge, Carol Lisa Phillips, six, six. Commissioner Michael Udine for pushing for this, this millage rate decrease, and also to Mayor Furr and Commissioner Fisher, Commissioner McKinsey, who all bravely and sensibly voted to lower the millage rate. This is what we need to do tonight, guys. This is the time to bring it home. Oh, oh, wait, he didn't? No, I didn't. Well, guess what? You have tonight to rectify that error. So let's go. Don't count on it. Don't count on it. All right. So since I only have two minutes, let's just say, according to your numbers, Mayor Furr, the county's total budget since 2019 through today increased by 61.8%. You say, how does that happen? The millage rate has stayed the same. Well, property values have gone through the roof, according to the property appraiser. I don't really know about his numbers, though, but that's how it works. They say your property's worth all this money now, but we're going to keep the millage rate the same. But that's a property tax increase. And this has created a windfall to you guys, to the school board and the sheriff's office. I won't put it all on you. There are other people involved in this. I get it. But this is with only a 5.78% increase in population from 2019 through today. So where is this money going? You got a 61.8% increase in the budget and a 5.78% increase in population. There are places where you can cut. We talked about this earlier today. There was $200,000 that went out the door to donations and things like that. That could have been cut. It's do you want to? Do you have the willpower? Now, you've seen our new CFO, God bless him, blazing goalie. I was in Orlando reading him the riot act yesterday. You know what? I would rather him not be coming down there and doing that here. I would rather hear that Broward County did what was right for the taxpayers, the people that pay you guys' salary, that pay Monica's salary, and do the right thing, because this is our money. And it's really too bad we have to stand here and ask you to keep some of our own money. Property taxes need to go away, as a matter of fact. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. Do the right thing tonight, okay? Next, we have Chief Judge Carol Lisa Phillips, followed by Judge Lauren Alperstein. The Honorable Chief Judge. Let's make sure we got those titles right. The Honorable Mr. Mayor and the Honorable Commissioners. Good evening. And we're not here. We're trying to be efficient, not to waste your time. We were here back in May. We just wanted to thank you all for your support, and you're continuing to budget our court-related functions that are necessary, the technology and so forth. We also wanted to bring up, we do have some disappointment with regards to the family division issues that we had brought up back in May. And just to give you a little bit of quick overview and provide some context, that was staffing to allow the court to offer a variety of in-house services to provide education, therapeutic intervention, and other intervention services to assist families during disillusion and other domestic relations court proceedings, and to allow referral of appropriate cases and monitoring of referrals to outside service providers. You know how important this is to the residents of Broward County, to the children of Broward County. We are trying to be more efficient. We're trying to get them to the services and follow up and make sure that they do the services, and if they do not comply with the orders, that we rectify that situation and put in the appropriate sanctions. Let's let all three of them speak first. Two, okay. He's here for moral support. Okay, okay. So good evening. It's nice to see everybody again, and we do. We want to thank you for all of your support of the judiciary, but we are a bit disappointed about that our request for family court services has not been included in the budget. In accordance with some of the commissioner's requests, we even went back and scaled back our requests. We've been having countless meetings with Senator Rich in trying to figure out ways that we can come to a meeting of the minds by using partners that are in the community, but there is still a huge need and a huge gap that is missing, and those are for those court navigators. I have the privilege of being the chair of the family division for the 17th Judicial Circuit, where I oversee the seven other judges who serve in that capacity and four general magistrates. Our cases are rising. The needs of our community are rising, and we are simply triaging, again, as I said back in May, all the families that come before us, and we don't have the resources to help these families, to provide the therapy for the families that they need, and to be able to get them on the right path and reduce the trauma in their lives. And so we are really, once again, asking for, please, your support, and to reconsider our request so that we can do what we're supposed to do, as mandated by the Florida Supreme Court, and effectively help these families in a therapeutic setting. Can you remind me what that gap was, how much money that was? So our initial request was for a little over a million dollars. I think per, we did pare it down. For the fiscal year of 26, we asked for $760,322 for phase one. For phase one? For phase one. Okay. Thank you. Okay, I think Vice Mayor Bogan would like to, has a question? Judge Albertstein, first, I want to apologize. I think the last time we had a meeting, I came across the wrong way, and I apologize for that. No, I'm very... Not you. No, I apologize. I want you to know, I feel very strongly from past history, being a lawyer 42 years or other personal stuff, how important your division is. Thank you. And I really mean that. And if I could, you know, you deal with families. And, I mean, she deals with families, and families that are breaking up, divorce, really important things that can help families. And I'm going to try to see, even if I, whether I, you know, buy in today. But, you know, if something would help, help what you're saying, help these families and help stuff, you know, I'm going to, you know, see what we can do. Because, to me, you're talking about our community, you're talking about people's time, where it's most vulnerable. And they're just, I just want you to know, I totally support, you know, what you're doing. And I'm going to ask our council where in the budget I can make some type of motion to see if we can help support this. Commissioner McDaniel. No, I'm looking right behind you. He's, like, right there. Thank you. I just want to ask the chief judge a question. Maybe she can be answered. Thank you for all you guys. I know this program is very important. We have on our budget, on page 3-10 for judiciary, we have $8.2 million to stand up some IT work through the court, through the general fund. What if we reduce that to 7.5 and move $750,000 into this program so we could fund both? We, I think we can't do that because you all, in the north wing, in the criminal side with the older courtrooms, we have budgeted for the work to be rewired. What's happening is transcripts aren't being done appropriately. We are trying to move over and make it more efficient and less money through Blue Man. We are unable to do that. What's happening is the microphones, everything's been pulled out. I mean, it's a 1990 courthouse over there. Right. So they're redoing all the wiring. We did find a lesser amount, better way to do the work, but we cut that back and we talked about that back in May to reduce the amount that we requested. Okay. We also put in $1.4 million to paint and seal some of the buildings. Could we defer that for a year and cut that in half? Cut it in half. Cut it in half, put half in. So I'm just trying to figure out a way to do it because I'm not looking to add more dollars on this. This is a way that I think we can come up with something that everybody thinks is super important. So let's paint it half of it this year and half next year and take the $750 and put it into this program. All right. So I don't know what's going to be cut and pasted. I know that I was out at the North Satellite a month ago and the smell was so bad that when I got home, my nose was still burning and I'm one of those people who doesn't care about that kind of stuff. They have scrubbers going 24 hours a day in the courtroom and in the chambers. You've got lots of staff, county commission, commission people working there from Broward County and everything. So I don't know if the money is going to be at that part. There's windows leaking out at the West Satellite. You know, I just can't come here and commit. I'm just taking the paint and seal. I mean, I'm just trying to go through something. I mean, I'll go paint and seal it. Right. That's what I'm saying. If that's all it is, I'll go do it. I get it. My dad plastered this ceiling in here many, many years ago. Wait a second. Monica, excuse me. Monica, if the building is defective, why would it come out of the paint and seal budget? It's our building. Like the courthouse in Fort Lauderdale that we got rid of. The North Satellite's our building. Why aren't we responsible for that versus this coming out of a paint? What she sounds like is there's mold or something. Because scrubbers are for mold. If she's saying there's scrubbers, that means there's mold. If windows are leaking, that's the building maintenance. It shouldn't be coming out of this line item. So the line items that Commissioner Udine, right, the Commissioner Udine is, are you referring, are you in the operating or capital budget? First, I was in the operating when I said to do it from IT, because I know they're probably not going to do all this in one year anyway. Even though they say they will, I get it. If this is the most important thing, which I think it's pretty important, it's families here, can we make that motion as this board here and just say that that's what we're going to do? You can, but let me explain, let me answer what Commissioner Vice Mayor Bogan was referring to. We are responsible for the facilities, and that is part of the budgeting. So if you look through the budget book, like what that Commissioner Udine is doing right now, all of these things are appropriations that we are giving to, for those facilities at the courts. But the money that we're talking about, it's a line item for painting. Painting is not scrubbers. I'm very familiar with scrubbers. Maybe that's somewhere else. I don't know. No, no, no, no. It's okay. But let it be somewhere else. I'm happy if it's somewhere else. Because then we could do what we're talking about. If we're responsible for fixing these buildings and leaks and mold, that shouldn't be in a painting line item. Absolutely not. And we have facilities dollars throughout our entire budget. So Chief Judge, sorry guys. So Chief Judge, I don't think you have to worry about this one point whatever interfering with scrubbers. Scrubbers are not painting. If you have mold, I don't care what's in your budget, we are responsible for giving you a safe and healthy place to live, to work. Okay? That's what, that's what this is. But this, but this line item, I don't think it's talking about scrubbers or mold or leaks at windows. I, I, I, wait, wait. Now that, now that I have, I have clarification. I know what line you're looking at. Okay. So we have in our judicial facilities maintenance and improvement programs in general. These are dollars that we have every year for recurring type of things that we need to, to, you know, cause all the buildings aren't brand new and you have to have maintenance on buildings. So those are dollars that we have that we program every year so that we can keep up with any kind of things that might happen during the year. So that's different. That's an annual appropriation that we just have and different budgets all over. He's saying, he's saying instead of putting 1.4 million painting this year, let's put 700,000 or whatever she can to use and the other 700 for painting so she could have her program and we just won't do all that painting this year. Does that make sense? But you're deferring maintenance. Oh, we're deferring painting. Which is, I know, you're deferring maintenance, but that's, that costs more in the long run. Well, the other, the other issue, and I just want to, just to make sure we're talking about apples and oranges, I mean apples and apples, not apples and oranges, is that the programs that we're talking about would be not just one year. These are recurring, this is a recurring establishment of a program. So if you want to do that, you certainly can, can do that. But I just want to make sure everyone understands it's not a one year switch. It would be a recurring commitment. Can I ask a quick question that is, Mr. Eugene, then I just had a question. I didn't have a chance to meet with them before this, so I don't mean to be ambushing you on any of this stuff. I'm just looking at the budget when you brought this up. I just flipped to the judiciary page. So in my opinion, this doesn't mean we have to fund it forever. You're asking us for a specific amount. Maybe it's going to work. Maybe it's not going to work. Maybe the judiciary is going to say it's not a program they want to do. Maybe it's not going to be cost effective. All I'm saying is, I'd like to do this, but I'm not taking money out of reserves, and I still want to try and provide a millage rate cut. And I think I proved that we can do it by moving some of these things around. But that's just me. I'm happy to. Senator Rich. Okay. So I have a couple of comments and questions, but I would like you to share, Lauren, some of the things that we discussed at our meeting with Joe about the numbers, the numbers of cases that each judge has, and the kinds of scores that children are coming out with on tests now that are increasing the need for this kind of a program. Okay. So as I said, the cases and disillusion of marriage cases across the state are on the rise, both for disillusion of marriage cases and domestic violence. And so I sit in the capacity of Unified Family Court, where we do disillusion of marriage cases, paternity, child support, child custody, time sharing, along with the corresponding domestic violence case if there's a pending family case. Right now, any given judge in Broward County, not including the magistrates, has between 900 to over 1,500 cases. And those are pre-judgment cases, which means those are initial filing cases. Those do not the cases that Vice Mayor Bogan mentioned back in May. It's the cases that keep coming back, which means they're already divorced. They already have a paternity agreement. But for whatever reason, the parties and the families are in continued conflict. So our numbers don't capture really the true number of cases that we have. There's also a study called ACEs, which Judge Bristol spoke about back in May. It's called Adverse Childhood Experience Study, which talks about basically the more events that a child incurs or experiences during their lifetime, the more trauma they have. There's physical effects, both emotionally to their health, to their academics, that that has. And so our goal with this program is to reduce that ACEs score of the child, to reduce the trauma the child incurs. That way the child is not in the streets, is going to school, is being able to be a functioning member in the classroom, like Mayor Furr mentioned. And that way they're actually able to be educated by having the services in place, by having the therapy they need to deal with the conflict that they're ensuing. But the problem that we're having is that with our increased case numbers, we're triaging these families. And we are not doing what we need to be doing as judges and mandated by the Supreme Court to provide therapeutic services and use all the community resources that we have available to help these families. And the big issue is that the navigators that we mentioned back in May, we're not allowed by the canons to select providers for the families. And frankly, I don't have a therapeutic background. I have a law degree. I am not in the position to decide which mental health professional is suited for this family. That's why we need people with that background in the courthouse who are able to find the providers, either free of cost, low cost, to be able to work with the family's insurance, to be able to find the providers that we need, and then monitor the cases. Remember, the judiciary is independent. We're not supposed to be personally following up with these cases, calling the parents saying, did you go to your therapy session? You know, is your child going to school? We're not allowed to do that. But that's where these navigators in the courthouse are able to help us and report back to the judges so we know if the families are really getting the help that they need, following the orders that we have in place, and then we can monitor them. So that's part of our request. I hope that answers your question, Senator. Yes, it does. And I just want to say that we have been meeting with a number of the providers in the community. We have an incredible network of providers in this community who are available to provide services, but we don't have the navigators. And the last time we talked, we talked about maybe, you know, starting with a pilot of four navigators to, you know, to deal with, you know, whatever number of cases each one of them can do. And I don't think it was $750. I think it was less than that to do that. Do you recall what? I think it was the navigators and then Joe. For the four judicial navigators, it was $309,304.76. The $760,000 comprised of a family court service manager, the two judicial support investigators who would help do custody investigations, so social investigations that are required by statute in high conflict cases, the four judicial navigators, and then the three administrative assistants to manage monitoring the cases and helping the navigators. And that's phase one? That was phase one. Phase two are for services that we want to be able to provide in the courthouse and the satellite courthouses. Okay. Can I say something? Yes, please. And then I want to. Since I didn't want to. Go ahead. Judge Alperstein has taken over the family division. She's made it more efficient. She has made it run more, operate much better. And what you don't understand is I do county criminal. So when they have a problem with the thousands of cases that they have in family law, slowing it up, which the cases are old, I end up with the criminal matters because people start when they're unhappy and they're going through a divorce, somebody gets charged with something like, and then a violation of the injunction order ends up in front of us. So it's costing the county a lot of money to have it inefficient, which she's trying to fix. And as you all know, we never come here asking for anything. And so this is the first time and other counties are doing it. And I don't understand the paint numbers, so I'm glad you brought it up. But these are numbers I think the county comes up with because you're the ones who maintain our courthouses. So I don't know if it's going to hurt or not. I would assume your county administration is using that money, asking for the lowest number that they could ask for. So if you take some away from that to give it to some other area, it's going to hurt you in the long run. But I don't know the answer to that question myself. All I know is she's doing a fantastic job. And the better she does, the less cases I get and the less domestic violence cases we have. And so that is good for your constituents in a way you cannot imagine. And I recognize that Judge Alperstein is doing an amazing job. And I think Monica has... We have a solution. Yeah. I think Monica has something. So I was brainstorming with my team here. And while there's not recurring dollars, there is a line item in the operating budget for judicial that is a budgetary reserve for strictly for court administration local programs. It's about $660,000. And if you wanted to do the $309,000 for Navigator, I believe it was, as a pilot project, maybe for a one-year, then we could make that amendment and not impact any of the other judicial appropriations. And it wouldn't come from any other area of the budget. It would come straight from a judicial reserve that is meant for court administration type of local programs. Again, it's not recurring, but it could be done on a one-year pilot. And then you guys can evaluate it again in the coming year. I just wanted to offer that as a potential option. Let me ask you. So Judge Albertstein mentioned the other support positions. So you're only talking about the four navigators. So is there other available money could be used also to do this pilot in the proper way with the support services that they need? Up to that $600? Up to $600, yeah. Roughly. I would be hesitant to say comfortably that you could use, exhausted the whole $660,000 and then just not have anything available. Is there anything needed in that area? And another way, if you are, another angle on this is if you decide as a body to do this without having to impact the budgetary amendments this evening, we could bring an item on October 7th and move those dollars from the reserves and assign it to that program so you don't have to amend the budget structure tonight. Might be more comfortable. Thank you. I would certainly be happy to do that because I believe even though it's a start, it's a pilot. I mean, hopefully it will be so successful and we will be excited to find the money next time to do it again. But I think we just need to get a start to help them through this crisis. And I think Judge Gottlieb said it. I mean, a lot of these children, first of all, I mean, these test scores that we were talking about, the kids have so many more social problems and behavioral problems. And many of them either are, they're also having an increased rate of suicide and also criminal activity. So I just think that this is, you know, behooves us to do it this pilot. Senator Geller. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Three quick items. First, I was originally concerned with Commissioner Udian's ideas simply because, for all we know, there may have been a contract out for painting or there might have been a contract out for computers that you can't just say, well, we'll cut that in half if there's, particularly if there's already a signed contract. So I wasn't thrilled with that. Secondly, I would say that, and with the greatest respect, and Judge Phillips, I appear in front of you. I think you're wonderful. Representative Gottlieb, Judge Gottlieb, took over my seat in the House. I've known him for decades. Judge Alperstein, haven't known you as well. But this sounds like absolutely a wonderful program. I can tell you that one of the reasons I oppose reducing the millage is there's 50 groups that could come and tell us how desperately they need the money. We're aware of that. We never have enough. Even if we increased our money by, our taxes by 10%, we're not. But even if we did, we would never have, our resources will never equal our needs. So I understand that. That's why I'm a little concerned and why I've opposed cutting the budget. But finally, what I would, what I hope we can do, I think there is a consensus that we will do something from the reserves. I would hesitate to do this today if the county administrator has indicated that she will find a way in consultation with the chief judge that the two of them will meet at our October 7th meeting. They will come back to us with an exact number that the chief judge and Judge Alperstein can live with. I think that would be better than just doing it today. So I'm hoping that what we will do, county administrator, is it your intention that you can meet with the chief judge and decide over the next couple of days on what the appropriate number is and have that in front of us on October 7th? Yes, I will make myself available and as will my team with Joe D'Amico, corner administrator and whoever else. As long as we can get to a number that is under that reserve number. And it sounds like given the navigators and maybe a couple of support, we could get under the 600,000 and we could probably make something work to bring to the October 7th. So, Mr. Mayor, that would be, I don't know if you need a motion on that. Not right now. Okay. It would be my hope that we do not take action today based upon the representation that this will be in front of us in a thought out, thoughtful method on October 7th. Okay. Commissioner Fisher. Thank you, Mayor. First of all, I remember the workshop that we talked about this and the necessity for the additional dollars to be able to help our family court. At that time, Senator Rich became our point contact where she diligently worked with you and all the other agencies to try to come up with the money. So, I want to commend her for all the efforts that she put forth and I would highly support her actions where she's talking about maybe the four navigators, et cetera. So, I just, I think it's a good compromise, but ultimately, you know, Senator Rich, you obviously you'll get with the agencies too, to, to collaborate together, but look forward to the October 7th because I do want to support at least the pilot and maybe a little bit more of what you can, Ms. Shapiro. So, thank you, Senator. Vice Mayor Bogan. I'm glad I called you back up. I wanted to say, I'd like to make a motion. I'd like to make a motion. We're not doing, we're not doing a motion now. We're on the middle of the train. How can, so let me tell you what I want to do. Okay. Just, I want to, I want to amend our budget in some way would give Monica Shapiro authority to allocate money from this specific line item, which is the judiciary for programs. It's, it was, it's a, it's a fund for programs, give her the authority to execute and do that. I don't know if you already have that authority, but I'd like to give her authority today and see how council could say how we can do that and get this done so they know that they can move forward. Commissioner. So we don't have to, so we don't have to bring it back and forth. Yes. Vice Mayor, just because we're doing the millage right now, so that would be an appropriate motion on the budget if you wanted to do that, or as Monica suggested, we could bring it back on. I'll do that later in the budget. Thank you. Yes. Commissioner Rogers. It's fine. Thank you. Okay. I'm always leaving my mic off. Well, it was good to see you again. Your advocacy seemed to be working, but I just have one question for you. Are, how is, what is your relationship with the school board? I know this is family and children. All I keep hearing was all the things that are happening to our children. Do you have a relationship with the Broward County School Board? Are they providing any relief? Have you advocated in front of the school board? The school board does not provide any relief to the judiciary. That's the question. Obviously, we work along with the school board working, but we don't collaborate together with the school board. They have their own resources, and again, we are the judiciary. We really aren't supposed to be doing social work. We don't know where to send people, and that's why we're asking to become more efficient and help the citizens of Broward County and the residents of Broward County, you know, to help navigate them and get them to the right places and get them the help that they need. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Oh, go ahead. Okay. Thank you for that response, but I was not there. I know that you're not supposed to be doing a lot of the things that you're currently doing, and you're advocating in front of the county commissioners, and we know we're responsible for the building and making sure so when that came up, I was 100% supportive of the county taking care of their responsibilities, all right, as it relates to the structure, as it relates to the work you're doing, the social service work you're doing. And I know Nan, our Senator Rich, went out and she talked to you, and she probably checked in with all of the resources that we do provide to see whether or not there was anything that we could take off your hands. I am saying, will you speak about your navigators or, yes. With technology, I don't know if you can work off-site, if some of the job can be done off-site. The technology and the budgetary amounts for the technology are for the north wing of the courthouse, which is the circuit criminal side of the courthouse that was built back in the early 1990s. And that is a huge requirement under the criminal, especially circuit criminal. I mean, we do try death penalty cases over there, and if we do not have an appropriate record, that case comes back down to us if an appropriate record is not given and the people are not given due process. We're also trying to implement what is called Blue Man or electronic recording to save money and to be more efficient. But it's requiring new wiring. All the wiring over the years has been pulled out. Microphones are books. They're putting, you know, certain councils aren't purposefully, but they put a microphone on top of, they put a book on top of their microphone or a file on top of the microphone, and it's not being picked up. Therefore, it's not being transcribed. And so you have residents who are given, should be given their due process and be given their day in court, and they're not being given that because there's no record. There's no record being given. So we need the technology. Okay, I'm glad we're in agreement that technology might reduce, create efficiency, more efficiency. Yes, Commissioner. I see that my colleagues are leaning towards maybe a pallet, and I think a pallet is just for a period of time, so that gives us more time to see if we can find additional partners for you. And maybe that meeting I'm always talking about with the school board, we might achieve that. Because I believe the school board should be part of understanding, knowing what is happening to our children, whether or not they're in school. This is their responsibility. They are a taxing district. They can do the same things that we are doing. So I challenge us to work with the school board to help to identify some additional resources as we move forward. County Administrator? So I just want a point of clarification. So the Judicial Tech Fund that was initially raised, I just got confirmation that is a restricted account and can only be used for certain things. So I think the solution might be something that could, yeah. I'm talking about the Reserve one. So just because everything gets mixed up when everyone starts talking, there's $4.15 million budgeted for technology people, not hardware, not software, not the North Court wing. I'm reading the budget. It says $4.153 million for 20 information technology personnel. I don't know whether that's the right number or not. You guys know what that is. All I'm saying is every department, every agency, every group, we fund a lot of the courthouse. We are one of their funders. They don't come asking us for us every year because we fund them to a huge amount. We pay for all their facilities. We pay for everything. Yeah, I know we have to, but the state's supposed to pay us back for certain things, which they never pay us back for, and we always end up eating it. That's fine. We'll be happy to go up to Tallahassee with you. I'm with you. We can advocate for that. I believe that this program is important. I don't know if 20 information technology personnel is as important as this. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. But Monica can work with me. Well, it's really, really, really important. Without them, we cannot run the courthouse. Every day, they'll bring over their step counters. Right. I mean, literally, they run miles a day. I'm sure they are. We don't have 20 information technology specialists in this, you know, with the kind of stuff. You have 100 and some. I agree. You need it. I agree it's important. But the Monica should look through the judiciary budget. And like every other department, let's see if there's dollars there that we can spend on this. I don't think it should come out of general reserves. I think it should come out of judiciary reserves or judiciary personnel. I know we'll be back. We never use the money that we have every year in there. There's always different excesses that come. We can find money in this judiciary budget to satisfy this program. It's important. I want to thank you all for coming today. Last time when you came, you kind of had a tough audience. Today, I'm seeing a different consensus. But I do, I'm going to disagree with you on this, Commissioner Rogers. I think this is our responsibility. I absolutely think it's our responsibility. These are the most vulnerable kids in our county by far. And if you don't deal with them on the front end, you are certainly going to be dealing with it on the back end. And that would be with Judge Gottlieb's end. And worse. The money that we put forth on this, it is returned. And the statistics show it between 8 to 11 to 1 return on the dollar. You don't get a chance to leverage money that well. So any money we're putting in, we're getting a return on investment by not having to deal with it on the other end. However, we need to find a way to do this. I think there's a consensus to do that. We're just doing the millage rate right now. But you guys, thank you for being here. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. Thank you for always being wonderful. I just want to say one thing. I want to recognize Joe Domenico, who's your executive assistant. He just does such an amazing job. And he's helped us coordinate all of this with the Children's Services Council and the Broward Behavioral Health Council to try and pull everybody together to see what we can do. And he serves on the Coordinating Council of Broward, representing the courts. So it's really wonderful to have him there representing the court perspective all the time. Thank you. Yeah, I don't know if there's a way to match dollars with the Children's Services Council. I know you're in the middle of this, and that's where you are at. So I'm glad you're there for that. Commissioner Rogers. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. I'm just going to have you close by saying you're in disagreement with me because I'm hoping, just like we can go to the Children's Services Council and advocate for some dollars, I believe strongly we can do the same thing with the Broad County School Board. There are children. They're vulnerable. I understand it. I know the population. I can dig deep and speak to why I love the program. But I can also say we can look to other resources and foundations that help us to do it. It should not all be on the backs of our taxpayers. Okay. I thank you. Okay. Thank you all very much for being here today. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. All right. Your honors. Our next speaker is Robert Kirchgraber. Help me out on this. Robert. My name is Robert Kirchgraber, and I do live in Broward County, down in Damien Beach, great area. A couple of questions here for the council. I see my time is limited, not in the judiciary, so I guess I'm only limited to two minutes. First question is, I don't understand why we did not say the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of the meeting. We spoke about this. We did this morning, and I talked to you about this last time. We never adjourned. This is a separate? Not a separate meeting. We never adjourned. Separate agenda. We never adjourned. Never adjourned. We never adjourned. Well, we have a different audience. Okay. It only takes a minute. I see the budget. The tax collector has increased the property values, which is great, but yet the tax collector won't write me a check for my house. So as a result, you guys get a windfall. You always get money. The residents are not an ATM. You're all here, and it must be a great opportunity, and I'm sure it's at times quite rewarding, but now we're asking you to do the hard line. We need a rollback. We have seen increases year after year. We've seen increases in contracts, future obligations, contractual obligations with employees and unions and things like that, and it's hurting us. It's hurting us today, and it's going to hurt us down the road. I don't see where Broward County has to constantly lean on the taxpayers. I think there's areas that definitely can be addressed that can be run more efficiently. I have a question. I don't understand why when Doge was here that the BSO was totally excluded from that audit. Neither do we. Okay. Kind of crazy, isn't it? Yes. Kind of crazy, considering it's what, almost 55% of our budget? Correct. That's a lot of money. Thank you for making that point. Appreciate that. Okay. So I'm new to all this, okay, but I'm easing into it. And it's time that we start asking questions. The other thing that I would like to bring up again is that Dania Beach has their meeting at 7 o'clock. That gives the residents of Dania Beach an opportunity to come, drop their kids off at home, do whatever, and then all of a sudden they can make it to the meeting. Having it at 5-0, after 5-0-1, which I understand by statute, we talked about this, it has to be after 5-0-1. It can be 6-0-1, 7-0-1, okay, and I understand you put on a long day, but please allow the constituents of Broward County to at least be able to make it to the meeting, okay, because the traffic coming down Broward and Andrews is crazy, okay, just crazy. Thank you, Mr. Petra. With that, I thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Next is Anna Henry. Anna, and followed by that is Erin Gonzalez. Good evening, everyone. So today I brought to you all in regards to a conversation that's being held in Broward County, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, clean across the state of Florida. So my concern is that there's an issue within the mental health realm, and similar to the actual attendees who were here before me, I am a community health worker in Broward County, and I advocate from Broward to Miami to Palm Beach. So I work two jobs. I work south of here, and then I work north of here, and within that, I work with, in the north of here, I work at a residential, where I, too, am familiar with the background and the traumatic events that goes on with our youth and different things within our state. So before you, I bring the state of mind versus the state of Florida, because we're not just Broward County, we're not just Miami, we're not just Palm Beach, we're Monroe, we're Jacksonville, we're Gainesville, Orlando, you name it. We're all the decision makers according to what is going on and what needs to be done in our state. And so with that, I'm a parent as well. I advocate deeply within the heart of Broward County, within the Sixth Drunk Corridor, specifically, where I've reached out to different families about different things that's going on with our juveniles in our community. In 2016, it was such a bad condition where our youth were dying at a rapid rate. In 2020, 2021, we lost numerous amounts of youth. And so now what the discussion is is about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And so when the judge and the members of her board came before you with the conversation about what's going on in these programs, I am a parent as well of four, where two of my children struggle with mental health, where I've spoke to a previous one of our leaders in Broward County in regards to the juvenile justice system. So the juvenile justice system leans on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which makes me think that it's kind of predatory when it comes to our youth. And I know my time is up, but this conversation has to be had because it's being had in different organizations like CSC. I done did a million and one trainings with CSC, just came from a training. And so we're all talking about the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but we're not utilizing it professionally or community wise when it comes down to the needs that needs to be met. So like I said, the juvenile justice system has this system set up in their system to be able to kind of like criminalize our communities every day. So when we think about the decisions about the budget and everything that we're getting ready to make a decision on, we need to think about this first. Can you, I would suggest, can you email that to all of us? I surely can. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. So how would I get your emails? If you go to Broward.org. Okay. And you'll see, there'll be a list. Yeah, a list of the commissioners right there with their emails. Got it. Got it. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Aaron Gonzalez. Good evening. Your wife is a teacher, right? That's correct. That's right. Okay. So my name is Aaron Gonzalez. I live here in Broward County. I brought my wife and my infant baby tonight. I spoke at the last hearing. I listened very carefully to those who spoke, and I also listened very carefully to the commissioner's responses. Commissioner Geller, you argued that we must keep property taxes high as a hedge against possible future cuts from Tallahassee and Doge. With respect, that means asking families to overpay now for cuts that might never come. People cannot pre-fund hypotheticals while falling behind on mortgages, groceries, and insurance. The truth is, this fiscal year, 2026, budget grows reserves by more than $46 million, bringing them to $266 million total, far above the minimum needed to protect the AAA bond rating. These contributions are discretionary. If we can redirect $10 million to fund a tax collector transition, we can certainly slow contributions to give taxpayers relief. Several commissioners invoked affordable housing to justify holding the tax rate, yet nearly 62% of the renters already spend more than 30% of their income on housing. We lose over $25,000 affordable houses or units each year, and investors keep buying and continues to squeeze their supply. If you truly care about affordability, then the most direct and immediate step is to adopt rollback and provide property tax relief in fiscal year 2026. Talking about affordability while raising taxes is a contradiction. We heard residents last time, a first-time homebuyer, shocked by a $6,000 increase in taxes, another paying $8,400 for a 600-square-foot home. These are not statistics. These are lives being destabilized. Thank you, Mr. Gonzalez. With that, is there anyone else from the public that wishes to speak? No, Mayor. Okay. Now the public comment period is completed. I will take comments from the county commission. Senator Geller. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Great, you're still there, I see. You were quoting RCFO, Blaise N'Golia. You quoted some of what he said. I believe that what Mr. N'Golia said is that he thought that spending should go up no more than population plus inflation. You mentioned the, if you'll check, I can find you that quote. I'm sorry? Oh, okay. Because you made a reference to him, but no, we can't do the back and forth. But I know that CFO N'Golia had said that spending should be no more than the combination of inflation, population growth. But I do want to remind the commissioners and the people in the audience that that's what we've done in Broward. Our population growth, CPI and population growth together, have grown over the past five years by 32.9%. Most spending has grown by 33.9%, roughly the same number. But when you add in our increases in reserves and BSO, that would account for all of the tiny difference, 32.9% versus 33.9%. So I think that it's important that people know that. And what I had actually said at the prior meeting, and I continue to believe this, the problem is it is appropriate, in my opinion, that we all know that we will have good times and that we will have bad times. It has been my opinion, and I have said this repeatedly, I argued with Governor Bush over this when he was governor and I was in the Senate, that if you reduce your taxes during the good times and you're not willing to increase them, if you cut them during the good times and you're not willing to increase them in the bad times, and the bad times everybody will say, of course you can't increase taxes during the bad times, then you are guaranteeing systematically that you don't have enough money to run government. If you cut taxes that you have just enough to get by during the good times, when it goes, reverts to the mean, by definition, you don't have enough money during the bad times. We have all sapped through budget hearings. We've all had people come to us and say, we need more money for mental health. We need more money for housing. We need more money for homelessness. We need more money for seniors. We need more money for the judiciary. We will never have enough to meet our needs because the needs will always exceed our means, but that doesn't mean that we should reduce our means. I did state that I do believe that there will be a substantial mandated reduction in millage that will probably pass next year. I don't think anybody is seriously talking other than the governor. I don't think the legislature is seriously talking about eliminating property taxes. But I think if there will be some substantial reductions in our property taxes, which are candidly going to cause very real and very significant pain here in Broward County and throughout the state. I think the having said that I have said all along that during good times, I think what we what the fiscally prudent thing to do is during good times, not to go out and give massive salary increases, not to go out and hire a lot of new employees. Because if we do that, when we revert to the mean, we won't have enough money, there are other counties that have done that Broward has not. We have not given that given massive salary increases, except to law enforcement. We have not given, hired a bunch of new employees. Other counties have. We haven't. But we should also not be reducing the millage because it is my belief during good times, you build the reserves and you do the one time capital expenditures that you cannot afford to do during the bad times. That would, in my opinion, be the fiscal, fiscally responsive thing. And I kind of think that that's proven out. We are one of roughly one and a half counties in the entire nation with a triple A bond reserve. And I've heard Doge mentioned. I don't think they'll find very much. There's a lot of counties that people say, oh, if you look at that county, what you'll find is they've given these bloated contracts to their friends. I want to remind everybody, Broward County is one of a very few number of counties in the country where there's not a single county commissioner on any of our selection committees. All of our contracts are done by professional staff. The commission votes on them. They're normally approved, rubber stamped, if we don't find any problem. If we find a problem, we don't discuss it in the back rooms. It's discussed here at a public meeting. So I don't think they're going to find that. I also am. There was discussion about the sheriff. You know, I will discuss this at greater length when I write something in my newsletter, and I hope that we do more. We in government, whether it's the city or the county, have done bad jobs of explaining where the taxes come from and where they go. And I hope to remedy that. But it's important to understand, first of all, that when you look at the amount of taxes you're paying, the county gets roughly 25 percent of that. We get less than the cities. We get less than the school board, number one. Number two, people that own their home, they're capped at, you know, the state 3 percent max, and during periods of low inflation, it's lower. And what happens when we do hit recessions and property values fall? If you have a home that's assessed at 500,000, and then there's a recession and it goes down to three, and then a year or two later, it's back at five, your property value reset at 300,000, and that's the number now that the 3 percent applies to. So it'll take 10, 15 years, 20 years, I don't know, haven't done the math, before you're back to the number you were at before that recession. I want to remind people that although there's discussion about an $8 billion budget, $9 billion, that's fictitious because that includes our enterprise funds, which are almost $3 billion of that. That's money that doesn't come a penny from property taxes. That's airport seaport water, and that money can only go to airport seaport water. When you include that, the reserve funds, excuse me, the restricted funds, which are state federal grants that can only go towards certain areas, or our transportation surtax. When you eliminate our debt service for things like the hotel and other things, when you go through all of these numbers, you show a budget of about $2 billion. But that number is misleading also, because that $2 billion number includes reserves, which we don't spend. Those reserves are, you know, one year, I think last year we had $240 this year. We've added to that, we have $260,000, if you take out the reserves and the non-departmental transfers, which are basically money that comes in and goes out and isn't real spending, our budget that if we wanted to, the items we have discretion over is $1,642,000,000, of that BSO gets $834,000,000. And if you look at the tax collector, the property appraiser, supervisor of elections, and all of those others, county constitutional officers, we're left with $663,000,000. If you want to look at the top ways we spend that money, and I'm only going to include items that are over $10,000,000, because I don't want to go on too long. We spend $90,000,000 on libraries. That's our number one spending. Congratulations, Mr. Mayor. Two is our buildings, and you just heard about we have to spend, preserve our buildings, $73,000,000. Parks is number three at $59,000,000. Children and health care at $42,000,000. Technology, and if we don't spend, I keep advocating actually spending more on tech, because what keeps me awake at night is being hacked. That's, we're spending $38,000,000. Homelessness, $30,000,000. County attorney, $20,000,000. Finance, to make sure we're spending our money accurately. $17,000,000. Enhanced 911 tech. $16,000,000. Addiction recovery, $16,000,000. Animal care, $12,000,000, and $11,000,000 to the medical examiner. That's where our money goes. We're not, you know, spending recklessly. So, based on all of this, I think that we should keep our millage the way it is. We still are not going to properly fund. We're going to hear every year, oh, we need more money for this. We need more money for that. We don't have it. I think what we are doing is a fiscally prudent item, and I thank you for your time. Thank you, Senator Gellar. Anyone over here? You're going to what? I think we need to recess. Okay. Well, yeah. I'm not going to repeat everything that the good gentleman, my friend over there, just said in summarizing our process. I'll just be brief. I just think it's time for relief. Okay. Anyone else? Commissioner Eugene? So, this is our budget. It's got everything in there that we spend on, and we have two meetings a year to kind of approve the millage and the budget, statutory meetings. Everybody knows this. At the last meeting, we unanimously voted in favor of this budget. Everyone voted for the budget because the budget is well done, and they did a good job. I asked for a modest tax decrease, modest millage rate decrease, and the question was presented to our county administrator, well, what will we have to cut out of this budget if we do a modest millage decrease? And the answer was nothing. We wouldn't have to cut anything out of this budget. No program would be getting cut if we approve this with a modest millage rate reduction. What else does this budget have in here? It has the highest dollar amount that our taxpayers have ever paid for public safety in Broward County's history. Never paid more. They're doing it in this budget. It also has the highest amount of ad valorem dollars that our county has ever paid for affordable housing. We've never paid more ad valorem dollars for affordable housing. Broward County pays more ad valorem dollars than any other county in the state of Florida. Any other county. And we're right to do that. We're trying to help. But there is room for a modest millage rate reduction. Senator Geller makes a good point. I actually agree with his point that really you would want to put more money in reserves, and we've done that. And Senator Geller continues to say that the reason he doesn't want to do this, because he's done this a long time, so has many of us, is because nobody ever wants to raise it in the future, the millage rate, because they'll never come back. Here's my commitment to you. If we need to raise it in the future, I'm going to vote to raise it in the future. But we don't need to raise it now. So I would be there with you in the future if we need to raise it. It's appropriate at this time. And when the time comes, I'm going to make a modest millage rate reduction, because it sends the message when we can send money out the door at the end of the year to different nonprofits. And those are not needs. Those are wants that this commission, we want to do certain things, and we must do certain things. If we can't lower by a modest amount, and if we can't get six votes to lower by a modest amount, we're not doing something right here. There's billions of dollars in this budget. We were able to reduce 159 unfilled positions. So that means what happened in the last few years is those dollars were budgeted, no one filled those positions, so the money was swept into reserves, which is what you're supposed to do. And that's what we used along the way when we needed to fund certain things along the way, so we came up with those dollars. Our taxpayers came up with those dollars for us. It's time for relief. It's not even a lot. By the way, if we voted for what I proposed last time, we're still going to get blasted in the Sun-Sentinel when they're going to say, they only gave you a modest tax, you know, enough for a cup of coffee. But that's not the point. The point is, and we should have done this a couple years ago, start bending the curve downward to give relief to residents. So when the time comes, I'm going to be making another substitute motion. I know we have a little more money than when I made it last time, so I'm going to probably increase it dollar-wise a little more. I got four votes last time, or three votes, and Commissioner Bogan mentioned at the workshop that he was supportive of it. So I'm counting him as someone who I'm going to have his vote. I need to get to six, but you guys need to get to six also. And if you don't get to six, every program that the county attorney will tell you, if you don't get six votes to approve a millage rate, it goes to the rollback rate, which means affordable housing, gone. Library improvements, big hit. We'll have to go back. And I think that would be, you know, something that would be very, very difficult to achieve. So I'm going to ask everybody when the time comes, the four that were with me last time, stay with me again this time. It's time. Let's do it. We can do it. Thank you. Senator Rich, and then Fisher, and then Vice Mayor Brogan. Well, I think it's no surprise I am not in favor of a rollback. We have incredible needs in this community. And the amount of money that we're talking about a rollback is not going, when you talk about $500,000 of a rollback. Well, I'm going to be moving for more than that. Okay. I'm going to use that figure right now. Okay. Excuse me. $500,000. You know what that is for each homeowner's property? The average is 43 cents. And I want to tell you, when you look at the aggregate, no matter what number you come up with that you want to roll back, when you look at the aggregate of what it can do to help people in Broward County, in a county that has an affordability crisis, an increase in homelessness, an increase of mental health issues, it goes on and on. And to me, and I look at the Children's Services Council on which I sit now, and the vote there was because it was such a small amount of return to an individual that the aggregate meant so much in millions of dollars to Children's Services. And I feel the same way here. We had just a long discussion right now about, you know, just one program, you know, with the court. And to me, that small number of amount of money that we would get in return, we could fund any one of a dozen programs that we all think are necessary in this community. I want to say we have done an amazing job with affordable housing, and we would not be able to have done it unless we maintained, you know, our tax base. We are actually, right now, we are considered the best practice in the state for affordable housing. Everybody envies what is going on in Broward County. We leverage funds, and we really make a difference in affordability of housing here. We have actually made a difference in the lives of thousands and thousands of residents. And I can go over some of the statistics to, pardon me, someone say please don't? Is that what, oh, excuse me. Well, it's important to know that the money that we have leveraged here and the money that we use for gap financing has provided, since we started doing this, has provided us the ability to build over 4,000 units. And we have 1,000 or more under construction now, or about to be under construction. We have created construction jobs. We have made a tremendous amount of impact on construction. These are ongoing jobs, many of them. We have served over 9,000 residents. And to me, to not be able to continue doing that, when we understand that affordable housing, over 60% of people in Broward County are affected in one way or another by the affordability crisis. And we have made, we've made a dent. We've made more than anybody else in the state of Florida right now, any other county. And I am hoping that we are going to be able to continue this. I also feel that we are a fiscally responsible county. And I look at our budget, and I look at the things that our staff did when the DOGE team was in here. And I'll tell you, I see that Mr. Nelson isn't here anymore. I was going to show him that what we really ought to be looking at at DOGE is how they spent $200-plus million dollars on Alligator Alcatraz, on contracts that were not properly put out there, that were done and given to favored people without any scrutiny, all the kinds of things that were done. We don't do that in Broward County. We are very careful with our money. And I think that each one of us has a favorite, something that's so important to us. I look at, sorry, I had a piece here that I wanted to mention. You mentioned today about, sorry, I can't find it right now. You mentioned today, Commissioner Rogers, about home ownership. And I had some recent figures from Ralph Stone about it. And we are at a point now where we have a lot of people looking at doing home ownership. This year we get, we have, our sources are from CDBG, Home, Ship. We have our own gap financing here from us. Right now I'm looking at total home ownership purchase assistance in this one year was over $3 million. Parkview at Miramar had 62 units. That was $2 million. Sunset Strip Square had 29 units, $1 million. Habitat had 26 units. We had altogether 117 units, over $4 million was spent on home ownership. That is important. And we even have now people like Urban League that is building a huge development. And 114 of the units are home ownership. So we're trying to recognize that there are people that want to invest and create wealth and have home ownership. But we also know that we have an overwhelming number of people in Broward County that still are having, are still involved in this affordability crisis. And for me, the small amount of money that would be in return and the damage it could do to programs that we desperately need in this, in this county is the reason that I, I cannot support that. Commissioner Fisher. Thank you, Mayor. And I was actually one of the ones that voted for the millage reduction that Commissioner Diener brought forth. And I was hoping he would stay the same and not increase that number. But that's his prerogative. But I just want to bring up a couple more items. And I think we've all been kind of repetitive to some extent. But, again, we talk about the budget that we approved that Ms. Shapiro's team put together. You know, again, had to expend $80 million more than we had to last year with the tax collector. And then, of course, she was able to, you know, take $20 million of recurring monies and eliminate that. So that's $100 million that came out of our budget that we could have continued to do other programs and so forth. But what I don't want to do is I don't want to pit ourselves against each other and say, well, you know, you've got to get to six and this side and this side. But I think it's necessary to understand. I think it shows a good message of good faith, right, is if we can, no matter how minuscule it might be, at least it shows good faith that we're reducing our millage rate and to provide to the most vulnerable out there. You hear about those folks that are suffering. And so I think it's a good idea. From what I'm hearing, no programs would be ever all preserved. So there will be no cut in any programs. This would come from our reserves. And I think it's the right thing to do. I think, again, it shows to the Broad County residents that we're doing what we can to help the most vulnerable and everybody that we serve here in Broward County. So, again, it's not affecting any programs. Despite of what we've had to cut out and what Ms. Superior has done, it's still an opportunity for us to show, you know, that we can do something for those who are in need. Whether minuscule it is, it just shows good faith at the end of the day for others. Thank you. Vice Mayor Bogan. Two points. First of all, I want to make sure everybody understands, you've got a $5,000 tax bill at home. You've got a $5,000 tax bill at home. How much of that comes here? $600. Let's make sure you understand. You've got a $5,000 tax bill, property tax bill. We're talking about allocating. After the constitutional officers and everything, we only are allocating $600. So if you have a $10,000 tax bill, it's $1,200. Just so everybody understands, we're not allocating $5,000 of your tax bill. Okay? We're actually only get from that. We get a piece of it. It goes to municipalities. It goes to other places. We allocate. So for everybody in the county, if you're just think of it simply, if you get a $5,000 tax bill, we're here only allocating $600 of that. That's it. Happy to explain it to somebody if they ever want to know about it. I think we need to show times change. Things are fluid. Times change. Sometimes it's great when the gravy's going good, and sometimes it's times to suck it in a little. And I think you need to also who we are elected by, and the people want to stop hurting. And I think it's all about helping the public with the least amount of pain. And so we need to show the public, one, that we want to care about their tax bill. And on the other hand, we need to show the public that we care about providing services. And I think, you know, that has to go dual hand in hand. And we can't just, every year, I was supporting keeping the millage rate the same. In 10 years I've been here, by the way, we've only reduced the millage rate once. We've never raised it. When Chip Lamarco was here, we did reduce it a little. And then everybody was saying, oh, my God, we won't have money the next year. We won't have money. We had money. Kept coming. Everything's good. And so we've never raised the millage since I've been elected in the past 11 years, 10, 11 years. But times are changing. And I think we need to show to the voters that we care about what they're saying. And after, you know, so after Commissioner Udine makes his amendment, I may make a, try to make an amendment to his amendment. But I think it's about time that we are cognizant that the voters want a downward trend. And if you could get a downward trend that's not going to affect your projects, it's a win-win. It's showing the voters something. And, hey, we're not just going to keep, we're sensitive to it. And so I'm going to support, as I sit here right now, Commissioner Udine, his proposal. And I think if you could sit here and say it's not going to affect your programs and services of helping the homeless, the food insecurity, it's not going to affect housing, it's not going to affect our programs, I think it's needed. So, anyway, you know where I stand, and I'm done. Thank you. Anyone else? Mr. Davis. Thank you. I had mentioned at the last meeting about the municipalities, and when I looked at their numbers, the average millage for the other cities is 6.71. So we are way below that. And we don't know what many of them, many of them are going to hold the line. Some may even increase. I don't foresee anybody decreasing. That has not been the trend. And if they decrease, they're decreasing from a number like 8 point something, which then they should decrease. But my issue here is that the amount is so minuscule. And that, to me, as a taxpayer myself, is like just doing lip service. You're just saying, well, be quiet because I gave you a millage decrease. But it really hasn't helped me. It can't even buy a gallon of milk. So I think that money will be better served in the services that we provide or maybe can provide more. For example, how about helping people to stay in their homes, those that need it, that are coming upon foreclosure? That millage decrease is not going to help that person. It's just not enough. But if you put it in programs where folks can apply and get the help they need, substantial help, it will go a longer way at helping people stay in their homes. Also, monies for renters. Not everybody is going to buy a home. Some people don't want to purchase a home. They don't want the additional headache. But these folks are working individuals that can't even qualify for a one-bedroom. They're making $70,000 a year and can't afford to live in a one-bedroom. And so helping those, which a couple of cents on the dollar is not going to do it. And so we have to look at programs that can really make a dent in people's lives. And not just almost giving lip service and say, here's a couple dollars. I helped you this year. Next year I may have to raise it and triple. And so I think we really have to be mindful when you're lowering the rate, what can that amount really do? So it's not just to pat yourself on the back and say, we lowered the rate this year, give us a clap, because nobody's going to clap for a couple cents on the dollar. And to me, unless you can go to the rollback rate, you're really not helping our residents. You're really not. Anyone else? I'll weigh in then. I actually think this year has been an interesting year for citizens in general, of learning about the budget. We've had a chance on the federal level, you started to hear where lots of money was going, various things, and yeah, through Doge and all that stuff. And I think a lot of people got educated as to where some of our money goes. And, you know, I think it was a good process. Here, I think the same thing is happening. We've gone through the Doge process. People had a chance to hear lots about just like what you all just mentioned, what Senator Geller mentioned, about how we've done well on this. We've actually stayed with inflation with, you know, with regard to population and inflation. We've done well with our reserves. We have no debt, which is very rare. And the fact that this county, out of 3,144 counties in the United States, only 47 of them have a triple bond rating. We are one of those. So that tells you this county is doing very well. I appreciate the tension here is a good tension. And I appreciate you kind of keeping us the guardrails a little bit here. I don't agree with you on this. But, like, for instance, you say nothing cut, nothing is going to get cut that is being proposed. But the realization is we didn't propose anything this year because we knew we didn't have anything. We all said we're not going to propose anything. So there is nothing to get cut on that. However, when I, before, when we first started our process, we had talked about a couple of things. One of them was, had to do with the resiliency plan. The resiliency plan is looking forward in the future toward 2050 and what we are going to need to do in this community to make sure we're not underwater, literally. And it talks about these things, it recommends these things to be built over the next 25 years. 190 miles of enhanced seawalls, 159 control structures, 33 new pump stations, 41 upgraded crossings, 1,247 acres, feet of storage. Now, we can wait to the last minute. You can wait till 2050 and start that and everybody's going to be, it's not going to work. It took us 30 years to do the sand bypass. And this is 25 years away. That needs to be done by 2050 based on the scientific calculations right now by those scientists that are part of the climate change task force. We have decided at the beginning of this year, budget year, we had talked about spending $100 million on working on, on this kind of drainage stuff on, on not anything other than pipes, coverts, drainage, to make sure that we began that process. Because of what we knew, because of the budget we knew was coming in, we dropped that $100 million to a million and a half. I don't know what percentage drop that is, but it's a lot. So that's just on that, on that front. When you think about libraries, the Broward, the Broward County School Board has a hundred schools that don't have a librarian. That's not good. And so what's, what has had to happen is they have had to use our libraries, you know, all throughout this county. The, our, our libraries have become the de facto libraries for the school board, for many of them, because there is no librarian there. And our librarians are now the, somewhat, are doing double time as school librarians. And we are, and we are having to cut some programs in libraries, interlibrary loan, capital projects, collection management. Those are being cut. When you look at our parks, we, we put forth and, and did an entire long process of, of a master plan for our parks. Think about how well our, how much our parks are used. The people in this county use our parks all the time. You know what, I mean, partly, a lot of people don't have money to do other stuff than go to our parks. That's a fact. That is a fact. And our parks are, in many ways, the, the one respite for so many people in this county. And the one thing we should be doing is making sure that they are as nice as they can be. And that they're, that those facilities are up to date. And that, and, and Dan West and his whole crew has done a fantastic job. But they're doing a lot with very little. That plan is sitting on a shelf, waiting to be put into action. It is an unmet need. Commissioner McKenzie, today you talked about all the homeless that are all, that we're seeing all across our county. I see them in Hollywood. I see them, I drive from Hollywood. I see them all the way up US-1, Hollywood, Dania, Fort Lauderdale. And if I kept going to Pompano, I'd see them in Pompano. Yep. And we know what, what is, what it takes to, one, shelter them. We know what it takes to do the wraparound services, to try to get them off the streets, to try to get them in shelter, to try to get them served, and try to get them back on their feet. And it's not cheap. And if you think that by cutting money we can do it better, I don't think so. I don't think that works. And I don't want to just be throwing money to get it done. That's not, I'm not, I don't, I want it to be going to a place where it works. I think all of us do. I think this whole board is very responsible in doing that. So, with all of the unmet needs that are in this county, the idea that we would cut, and I do appreciate, I would love to be able to say, well, I cut your millage rate. I'd like to be able to do that. But I don't think it's, I, for me, I, you know, I don't think it is a responsible thing to do, knowing what is coming up in 20, by 2050. Those kind of responsibilities are on our shoulders. And, because the citizens don't have this in their hands, they don't know all the information, you know, and we try to get it out. We've got websites and dashboards and all kinds of stuff. It's not that it's not out there. But we're the ones that are given the responsibility, the stewardship, to be looking toward the future, to try to make sure that we're taking care of those things. And I don't want us to be the ones who said, well, we knew about it, but, you know, we just did, we decided not to act yet. I don't want to kick that can down the road. So I'm going to be voting to keep, at the minimum, this millage rate where it is. You know, it's, you know, I know it is, it's hard on all of us. But the one thing that for us all to think of, it is a shared responsibility. It is a social contract that we are all in. And that social contract, it means we're all, there's a little bit of sacrifice across the board. And if we do it together, then we can meet these needs. We can't do it on our own. And that's what paying taxes is about. It is a shared responsibility that makes sure that we look after each other. That's really what it comes down to. So, with that, any other comments? Okay. Yes. Commissioner Rogers. But as we continue the discussion, you see other things. And I see and I heard and I'm still going to be focused on where we are because there are needs out there in our communities, as we say. You might see development with 100 units and 25 is affordable and you think that is more important than a senior who is living in a condo that needs help to be able to stay in that condo because we have, I'm looking at the loan funding. I was on a call with Ralph and there are some funding where the association themselves can go and borrow money. But I heard my colleagues tell me they're unaffordable. They're not, they're at a fixed income level right now. There are seniors when they bought into those homes 25, 30, 45 years ago. Yes, so they didn't do everything they should. So, are we going to sit back and not do anything? I see the reserves. I see the funds that we might have to reach out and touch when we have a surf side in central Broward and we can't blame it on the ocean. Okay. We can't blame it on all those things that impacts our building. But we have some dollars that we can allocate towards helping with the housing challenges in Broward County. It's not just all new buildings that needs help. The condos need our help and we are not doing anything to help those condos, to guide them, to help them at all. So, if you're doing something, I would like to hear about it because I've been sitting here advocating for us to put some money out there as Broward County to help the condo association, not the condo unit. They, too, are taxpayers and they, too, are struggling. But creative minds aren't there yet. All right. So, we'll get there 10 years down the road if it be too late. There is our veterans that we acclaim to love. I'm listing all the things that we are going to be doing and supporting with the budget that we have. Do you want, we are going to have another chance to speak on the budget. This is just military right now. Okay. The budget. Okay. Because I am speaking about things in the budget and things that we could have added to the budget. But we are being conservative and we are making sure that we only do the important things. And we have agreed that sometimes we might not agree on what is important, but I will always advocate for what I think is important. Right. So, I still believe that we can take some funding, $5 million, and put it into home ownership. Give those young people that we want to move back to Broward County an opportunity to purchase a home, not to rent a home, but to purchase. Be it small, it has to be small to be affordable. And we need to look into that. In good times, we save. In tough times, we have to do what we must. And we do it in our homes. So, we have to do it here on the commission. But we have so much that we are not taken care of. The courts did not have to come into this meeting to tell us the windows are leaking, the roof is leaking, and all that. For me, that's a surprise and should be a no-no and should be, I don't know what else we could say. I don't believe the courts needed to come here and tell us how badly it is. But I also believe the courts, to take care of my children, they should be going everywhere, not just everyone counts on Broward County alone because we have the deep pockets. I'm glad we continue to share that we only get 25% of the Avalor to do all the things that everyone is asking us to do. And I still have a list that I will share with you if you need to see it yourselves that I get asking for cultural dollars. So, I'm hoping, I talk to our director, hoping we'll find some dollars so we can help those, provide those services that are needed. Not because it's cultural, it is not needed. Sports and cultural tourism generates dollars here in our county. And we are, they're just asking back for some, and not everyone will get directly from the county. So, when we allocate certain funding from our expense account or office account towards those programs, we are helping some of those people that need it the most. So, I'll stop there and I'll go back to the same conversation as we move forward, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Vice Mayor Broward. There's one thing nobody's talked about, and I just want to make sure we're all on the same page. The number 98. The number 98. We've cut $98 million from our budget this year. Now, one person has brought it up. Let me say that again. We've cut $98 million out of our budget this year. Where's that coming from? $80 million from the tax collector. $12 million from cutting positions, 159 positions. So, adopting Commissioner Udine's cut may be, as Senator Ridge or Commissioner Davis said, is very inconsequential. That, together with what we've done internally, and I think people need to understand, it's not cutting a million dollars or whatever it is, half a million. We have cut, with his, $99 million out of this year's budget. When you talk about property tax collector, when you talk about the 159 positions, and then starting the downward trend, it's $99 million. Not $500,000. Not a million. Let's keep the numbers right. Pardon me? It's actually $100 million. Thank you. $100 million. So, let's not talk, he's only cutting it a half a million, he's only cutting a million. Maybe with that, with that tool, he's only, but we have internally also cut $99 million, with his would be $100 million from the budget. Nobody knows this. Everyone thinks we're keeping it the same. We've cut $100 million, and I think that's a message. So, I want to just make sure that's said loud and clear. Thank you. Okay. Last chance. Anybody else? I just want to, we all have great points, and I think we're in this predicament because of the assessments. The assessments is what's hurting the constituents, and I've been told by my colleagues, you know, that it's the state, but no one's talking about the, you know, the 800-pound thing in the room, which is these assessments on our properties. I think we need to, you know, wherever we need to go to lobby or to address how we're assessing. Because every one of those persons that you all spoke about earlier that came here, the guy with the 600 square feet, Mr. Gonzalez, that you spoke about in your presentation, you talked about the assessments on your homes. And then we talked about this 43-cent savings, but with all that we're doing collectively, 43 cents is where we're starting somewhere. It's a step in the right direction. And if we would challenge, and this is my point, if we would challenge the other cities, the other 31 municipalities, they all gave 43 cents. It might be something that, you know, can be felt, but we do have to do something, Mayor. And I would never stop fighting for the homeless, even if we didn't have the money. But it's clearly in our budget that we have money for the homeless. Sometimes we may have to go back and reshuffle the deck. Maybe we're not doing the right things with those dollars. Sometimes maybe affordable housing, how we look at it and how we get ranked in the state to say that we're doing such a great job, is not impacting some of those folks that are on the street or those people who are losing their homes. So, yeah, we're doing it, but maybe we need to reshuffle the deck in the next budget cycle on who needs what. And I do not like how the court system came here today, because we had a long discussion, workshop, about how we would deal with that. And then for some reason it felt unnecessary to come here today, revisit it, and we've had an administrator working on this budget, and we've all beat her up about, you know, cut here, cut there. And today we had to go back and make her reshuffle the deck to find this money. Yes, it's very important what they're talking about, but maybe we need another year to reconsider. You know, is something going to happen tomorrow with that court system if we don't give them that money? But we found $600,000 today for the court system. We found that when we were saying we don't want to deal with reducing the millage rate of $500,000. But we found $600,000. I think it should be more than $500,000 or whatever the number is. That's what Commissioner Udine is proposing. But I would propose a different number, but I've got to start somewhere. And tonight I'm starting with, A, being brief. And I think our constituents need relief today, tonight. And on the millage rate, I will be supporting you in those efforts. And on the budget, I know it's important that we get Monica the tools that she needs to run this county. And it would be a different perspective on that. But next year, I'm going to argue a little differently about some of the things that we do support in our budget. And maybe we start a different trend in a different way. Because we all know that philosophically, someone sat here and kind of steered that money to where they wanted it to go and got a consensus. And we got there. And libraries are important, too. I mean, everything we talk about is important. I tease you. But in your absence, Hollywood Library will be rebuilt. Glad to hear that. Mayor, just quickly, just really quickly, and I don't want to beat it to death, but you talk about the homeless issues. And we do have programs now. We are funding those programs. Nothing is being affected by that. Oh, great. And if you look at the big picture, if you take how much money we have in reserves now? $266 million. If you took the $266 million and spent all that, you still wouldn't cover all the programs that we're talking about tonight. You still wouldn't do that. So everything is relative, right? So you can't buy every senior, you know, fix their condominium up for that kind of money. At the same time, do this over here and this over here that everybody has their pet projects for. So if it comes to a point where you've got to say, yes, we need these reserves desperately for what they're used for, but everything's relative. You talk about when you need this program, you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars and still not touch it, what everybody needs in this county. You just can't do it. So I just want to say that point. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Udine. I mean, I'll just briefly close because I know there'll be a motion for the millage and see if you get six votes to pass the millage rate, but and then I'll make a substitute motion. But everything that the county does, I think the county does properly. I think their employees are good. I think the department heads are good. I think we spend our money properly. There are going to be needs, as Commissioner Fisher said, no matter what. We can't solve all the needs. I think that the argument that we're just going to do something and it's not enough to do it or we're only lowering it a small amount, I just, that, that, it's just not logical to have that kind of thought pattern or you could never get to this. We should lower the millage rate. We can lower the millage rate. No project's going to get hurt. We do a great job with affordable housing where the number, we spend the most money on it. We would still have those 9,000 jobs, construction jobs, whether we did this or not. People would still be building in Broward County. They would still be doing what they need to do. We have spent those dollars to turn it a certain kind of product that we want. But the affordable housing issue is a supply and demand issue. But as far as jobs for the actual people building what's being built, trust me, people would build and people would do things in this county otherwise. I think that we're doing a good job with affordable housing. I think we're providing the dollars. These dollars are in here and we all voted for it and nothing's going to get cut from that. When the time comes, I'm going to make the motion, and I hope I can get to six, but we'll go from there. Okay, anyone else? Why do you keep saying you hope you can get to six? Is there something under you? So someone's going to make a motion for our millage rate, and if it doesn't get six votes, it can't pass because it's not the full rollback rate. So the majority, I'm going to call, of what they said. I know what I'm asking, and I want him to say this because no one's saying it. So what I'm saying is, let the majority put their millage vote up and see if they get six votes. Okay. Okay. Anyone else? Thank you, sir. Then we can short-circuit. Okay. Okay. Here we go. Now that Commissioner comments are complete, the board will vote to adopt the final millage rate and budget. It is imperative that everyone votes audibly on each item. Moreover, to ensure the record is clear, please wait until I complete reading the subject of each resolution and motion before making a motion and a second. Do any commissioners have any proposed amendments to the proposed final county millage rate and budget? Well, it's asking me to do it this way. I think I have to do it this way. Commissioner, Mayor, you can move on to the next line. What's that? You can move on to the next line to just take the first motion. If, yes, and there is a motion, and a second, please refer to the lowering millage rate script. Just, just. Is there a motion on resolution? Okay. Thank you. Is there a motion on resolution number 2025-582, establishing the final millage rate for general county purposes of 5.6690? Second. We have a motion and a second. Second. We have, okay, we have a, it was a motion by Senator Geller and seconded by Senator Rich. Seconded by, okay, is there a substitute motion? No, let's take a vote on this one. I'd ask for, I'd ask for a roll call vote on this, and then we'll see if it gets six votes. Okay. Okay. No second. Okay. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Let me see, let's raise hands so we can see. Okay, one, two, three, four, five. All opposed, say no. Okay. Let the record show that the motion, because it's six, it says motion passes, fails. It fails because it is required six. Yes, sir. Okay. So let the record show the motion fails. And it says, please identify anybody who voted against. Commissioner Udine, Vice Mayor Bogan, Commissioner McKenzie, Commissioner Fisher. Okay. Is there a motion? Oh, now we need, now we need to go to a substitute, a second motion. Okay. Second motion. Commissioner Udine. I'd like to make a motion on behalf of Commissioner Fisher, Commissioner McKenzie, Vice Mayor Bogan, and myself that we adopt the millage rate of 5.6658, which is a reduction of $1,019,864. That's a little bit more than what my motion was last time, but I figure I want to go there because there was some extra money that was found that we saw today in our 10 o'clock meeting. So I think that's something that we can do. And again, I'd ask our county administrator, is there any programs that need to be cut from this budget that the five just voted for? Why don't you get a second? Yeah, let me see if there's a second first. And rather than saying it's on behalf of all four, I'm going to say it's- Okay, it's my motion. It's Commissioner Udine's motion. Do we have a second? We have a second by Commissioner McKenzie. Okay. Mr. Mayor, I'd have a substitute motion. Okay. I told him I was waiting. Yeah, he had asked first. So let me go. I asked first for a substitute motion. Mr. Mayor, I will be happy to withdraw my motion. He did ask me first. In favor of Commissioner Bogan. Before I make a substitute motion, I heard what Senator Rich said and Commissioner Davis said about this is such a little amount. So why don't we look to- and I'm going to ask Monica before I do this. I'm looking to reduce this. Let's talk about an additional 50 million. Now, we've already reduced it 99 million. Ready? So if we did an additional 50 million, Monica, I guess my question is before I do a substitute motion, would this hurt the voters of Broward County or the residents of Broward County, not the voters, the residents of Broward County? And if so, how- and what- in what way? So this will impact programs, the additional, you know, proposal of $50 million that you're just speaking. Such as? So there are things such as, you know, seniors and veterans programs that we have. We're looking at close to $8 million there. Homeless services, if you wiped it all out, that'd be $30 million in general fund dollars. E-9-1-1 regional communications. You've got things like emergency management. Those would be programs that would- if you're not going to touch reserves. I mean, you could- if you wanted to look at a programmatic approach, those would be things, you know, crisis intervention and sexual assault treatment, addiction recovery services. Those are real programs that are funded with general fund dollars. There are reserves, but then again, you know, that would not be something that I would recommend because prudently, you know, we're in an uncertain time of emergency assistance that might- we might need. And that is why we have prudently increased our reserves for hurricanes or other emergencies. And so, you know, if you're going to look at a reduction such as that, there would be some significant impacts. And you would also have impacts to libraries and parks and economic and small business things for small businesses that you all do. So, so there would be a significant impact. So, on one hand, I want to help people who live in Broward by- as people got in front of us saying, we need help lowering taxes. But then you're saying by doing this, which I think equates to about half the rollback rate, what I'm talking about, how many people would be impacted? Seniors, veterans, all the different programs. So, it's kind of a catch-22. Do you want to help people more? We've already reduced it $99 million or $100 million. And I think it's important that we send- the voters know that this is a priority for us. How about Commissioner Udeans? He keeps saying it, but I need to hear from you. If we adopted his reduction, would that have any impact on the residents of Broward County? So- Yes or not? Well, it depends on where you'd like me to take the money. So, the $500,000 that he had proposed at the last meeting, that was something that was accounted for previously during the budget workshops. So, that was in reserves. The answer, quite frankly, would be no, because it wouldn't be taken from programs. It would be taken from the reserves. So, there wouldn't be an impact of the $500,000 if you wanted to go to the million that he's proposing now. That could be taken from the reserves. Emergency reserves for ad valorem or for cash flow emergency reserves. Okay. I'm not- based on what you're saying, based on- so, you're saying my substitute motion would be impacting a variety- That's correct. Of many people in our county and hurting them in programs. I'm going to back off. I'm still supporting a reduction in millage, whatever- wherever we can get there, but I'm not going to make a substitute motion. At that point in time, Mr. Mayor, I'm back to my substitute motion. Senator Gillar. Thank you. I think I made my views clear earlier. I also know how to count. I don't see that we have six votes for either a large reduction or no reduction. Commissioner Yudian, at your last- by the way, when you said that, if necessary, you would be willing to raise tax in the future, that's something that persuades me. I would offer- what I heard Commissioner Fisher say is you felt it wasn't necessarily the amount, it was the principle that we needed to show a reduction. Commissioner Yudian, when you were asking for half a million, you asked, is there anybody that's willing to compromise at that time? There wasn't. Well, now there is. Of course, I know how to count. So, I would like to offer a substitute motion, move to amend the final millage for countywide purposes to 5.6687. This reduces property taxes by about $100,000. Whether it's $100,000 or a million, it's not necessarily going to have any substantial impact. I think Senator Rich said it was $0.42, $0.43 a homeowner. I don't think it particularly matters, but I'd like to keep it as low as possible while still showing that, yes, we are prepared to do- to send a message because we need six votes. So, in the spirit of compromise and needing six votes, I would offer this, which, again, the millage of 5.6687 would reduce by approximately $100,000. And, by the way, Commissioner, we didn't find extra money earlier today. Some of the commissioners from their accounts chose to make contributions to private entities, to non-for-profits. That doesn't mean the county found extra money, which is, I think, what you're referring to when you said, well, we have more money now than we did earlier. Do you want to call for a second? We really don't. Mr. Mayor. Okay. We have a- hold on. We have a motion on the floor. Do we have a second to that? Can we have discussion? We need a second for a discussion. I'll say- okay. Commissioner Rogers is- For discussion. For discussion only. We have a motion and a second on the floor. Commissioner Davis. Thank you. I noticed that when the $1 million figure was raised, that, Monica, you mentioned, that wouldn't be a problem. Could take it from reserves. I want to know how much you're able to get from reserves. Because if we can take $1 million, then maybe we can take more. What is the maximum you can take from reserves? 200. Comfortably. So, that's a trick question, because I don't know if we're going to have a hurricane that we would need our reserve funding for. You know, comfortably, you know, I think the $1 million is something that would not cause me any concern. How much more could you take from the reserves, and how much would that save the taxpayer? Because, you know, $100,000 is not going to do anything for anybody. $1 million, I haven't heard the cents, the dollars and cents. But you're okay with $1 million. So, are you okay with $2 million? Are you okay with $3 million? What are the dollar signs? And you've already put how much in this year into the reserves? So, if we are able to take $1 million out, maybe you can take $2 million out. County Ministry, there's an advised amount of reserve that on general practice in the United States, it's 17%. I don't know what percentage we're at. If you give me one minute to do my quick calculation, I'll get that right back to you. In addition to that, I'm not willing to cut any programs, anything like that. But I may be willing, since you're saying the $1 million will come from reserves, maybe there's more that can come from reserves. I like it. Bob, am I right on that number? Do you know? The standard, the advised rate? I think I'm pretty right on that. Yes, 17%. And that's the amount that throughout all organizations, they say, try to have at least 17% for disasters. That's why I think that's when you start thinking about reserves, that's the number that's prescribed. That's good if you did it that fast. Vice Mayor Rogue. I think Commissioner Davis is right on. You know, you can't have it on both sides. You know, it's only $0.43, so it's ridiculous. Oh, $0.50 million is too much. I mean, what is it? What's the right? Then if you don't want, if it's too little, then let's put more in. I think Commissioner Davis is right on. I think we should say, you know, can we take $5 million out of reserves? Can we take, you know, whatever millions we could take, $3 million, $5 million out of reserves, and make it something substantial, at least to start. It's a great step in the right direction. So I'm all for it. And Commissioner Davis, great suggestion. You're for it, too? Great suggestion. If we could get to $2 million, if we could get to $2 million from reserves? If we could get to $3, $4, $5 million, we could get to $5 million. I move that we eliminate our budget and just, you know. $200 million. Yeah. No, cut $2 billion. Let's go to $0 million. We've got County Administrator. Hey, let's get back to this. County Administrator. So I just want to, okay, so the question was, we had a couple of questions. Let me answer them in the order that I believe that they were asked. So you first asked about the 17% and what the responsible reserve amount for general fund agencies are. And that, based on our general fund minus the reserve amount, based on the actual transfers and the dollars out for programs and whatnot, we're looking at $300.7 million that we should have in reserves, okay? Based on what we should have. If we, no one's really funded at the 17 ideal percent. So we're not even there yet. But that's what we attempted to do in this budget, is to try to increase those reserves to get closer to that amount. We've, this is the closest we've, you know, we keep inching up. So when we're looking at $500,000 or $1 million, Commissioner Davis, you know, I don't think that, you know, we increased reserves this year in the recommended budget. We did it by about $6 million when, in the recommended budget. What does that, what does that bring it up to? That was the $266. Okay. So we should be at $300 and. Right. And this year in the budget, we did increase reserves and we got closer to the $300 million. But we're almost, it sounds like we're almost $40 to $50 million short. No, but we've always been short. Well, I know, but that's a prescribed rate. We've always been short. And there's two types of reserve. There's what you must have and, you know, the other reserves from what I'm told. I don't think any municipality is at 17%. Correct. No, you're absolutely right. That's a pipe dream. I want reality at this point. Please. That is the prescribed rate. But that's not the reality in everywhere else. And I've been in the count, the cities for many years. We've never funded at 17. What is the, what is the general amount that is in the reserve? Percentage rise. We're close to, we're close to, I believe it's 14%. I'll get, it's between 14 and 15% is what we have. And generally speaking, that is not the amount that is required. Well, it's not, it's not a requirement. It's an aspirational. It's an aspiration. There is a requirement. There's one that is required, right? A amount of reserve that is required to have. And maybe somebody else can explain it. Because from, in all my years, there's a required reserve. And there's what you would like to have. The required is not 17. So there's no statutory requirement for reserves. It's only for debt service that you have to have. And what is that? Zero. We don't have any. For debt service. No debt. We have no debt. We have zero obligation. So therefore we should be providing relief. I believe we can provide tax relief from the reserves. Mayor, since he made. Excuse me. Wait a minute. Sorry. Sorry, I was getting clarification. They wanted to make sure I said general obligation debt. And I did say that. We have zero general obligation debt. We have debt in the enterprise funds. But that's not. That's a separate issue. Mayor. Okay. Hold on. Commissioner McKenzie. Who are you asking? I was going to make them. Well, right now we have a motion on the floor. Okay. And a second. But I'm going to make a substitute. Okay, hold on. Make a substitute for the substitute. Yours is at 5.6687, correct? Senator Geller? Yes, sir. I think Commissioner Udine has an amendment to that. Yeah, hold on. Okay. Excuse me. Okay. Go ahead. I want to do a substitute motion. And it's not going to be a, it's going to be a reduction on the millage that would equate to $5 million out of our reserves. It would be a $5 million reserve, a $5 million reduction, whatever the number that would equate to a reduction of the millage and come right out of our reserve, meaning we're still putting a million dollars away this year reserve, and it's not touching any programs, and I hope you ask for a second on that. I second the motion. I was going to do $6 million had you taken me first. So just as a point of information also, if I could bring up, where the genesis of me bringing this up over the last couple of years happened to have been because we had voted debt millage that was paid off every year, and I said we shouldn't sweep that into the general fund. As we paid that off, we should give that back to taxpayers. And that's basically around what this number is that we would be doing at the number Commissioner Davis brings up. So we should support a millage reduction. But now this is, this starts reducing reserves by this, by this motion. But I got a motion and a second. Okay. So you have a motion and a second as a substitute. So how do we vote? Our reserves, our reserves in the 2026 budget would be higher than what they are currently. Even with this, it would be $1 million. We would still be adding to reserves. Okay. It's just from a parliamentary procedure standpoint, the second substitute, which is the last substitute that you can have goes first. If that fails and it goes to the first substitute, if that fails, it goes to the... Okay. So we have a motion and a second. What was it? What was the number that you had? The motion would be to reduce the millage rate to a number that would equate to $5 million reduction. So I need to know what that number is. It's 5.6533. Exactly. That's what I said. Say it again. 5.6? 5.6533 would be the new millage rate. Okay. For that proposal. All right. Does everybody understand the motion? Yes. Yes. Does everybody understand? The mayor is a piece of information, so even if this were to achieve the six votes, you would still need a subsequent vote to formalize it. Okay. Any discussion on this? Senator Geller? No. Oh. Well, I'm just very surprised that at the prior meeting, five of us voted that the $500,000 was too much. And now we're... At the prior meeting, there were five votes against reducing the millage by an amount that Mr. Yudin at the time was asking for $500,000. And now we seem to be in a rush to cut $5 million instead. I think that this is very problematic only because I've been preaching that we need to build our reserves because we know that bad times are coming, number one. Number two, we know that we don't know when we're going to be hit by a hurricane. I hope it's never, but we're going to be hit by a hurricane and we're going to need those reserves and spending reserves. Again, prudently, we should be building our reserves each year. If the, Commissioner Yudin, I'm reluctant, but if this is defeated, I'll reluctantly go back and support your original motion. Oh, you guys make me mad. Yeah. Now I like it. I'm not voting for a $5 million reduction. But again, let's see if there's four. But again, I would be prepared to vote for the $500,000. Of course, I want to reach a compromise. Did you want to say something? Yeah. So, okay, I'm sorry. Senator Richards first, then you're next. Go ahead. I've been sitting here waiting for quite some time. So I just can't even believe where we are right now that we're talking about $5 million reduction in our reserves. Let me tell you, we're talking about, we don't know what kind of hurricane or other kind of flood, something, anything could happen. And we don't, we have to have reserves. The other thing is that we all know there is a distinct possibility that ad valorem taxes will be reduced by the legislature. And we will have to then deal with that. And that will kill us here. That will give us a huge drop in the amount of money that we have. And we need to maintain our reserves. I'm proud of the fact that we don't have a general obligation debt, that we have decent good reserves here. So that we, this, this is what people that are fiscally responsible should be doing. And I, I'm just never going to support anything like this. Mr. Dean. I just want to ask Norm and Monica one question. So in the, in the, this current year that we're in now, this is the 25, 26 year that we're sitting in today, we're, we're, we're 24, 25 in this 24, 25 year, what are our total reserves? 266 million. I thought you said there were 260. Yeah. You said we are 260. So you said the current one we're sitting in today, the one we're sitting in right now, 230. We have 230 in our budget year, this year that we're in, what do we have in this budget year? 266. So we're going from 230 to 261. So we've built up our reserves by 31 million. It's actually 266. The 6 million that I was talking about the 5 million. Sorry. Yes. Okay. So we're going from the 24, 25 year, our reserves are 230 million to 261 to 261. So we are increasing our reserves by 21 million. So I think we, I'm ready to vote. I just wanted that point of information. 21 million. The 31, 30, over $30 million. Yeah. The reason I knew that 17% is because the city of Hollywood had to go into financial urgency back in 2011. The city of Hollywood right now has 17% because they know what happens if you don't. And what had to happen is there were lots of people cut, salaries cut, the entire capital budgets cut, all those things. That's how I know that number. Because I went through that and that was painful. It was like nothing I've ever had to go through in government. And having to face every, all the staff, having to face citizens, not being able to pave a single road in the city. We had $1,700 left for capital improvements. So, so when I say that, there's a reason why, there's a reason why that, that it's, it's aspirational. And try, and we are actually on the road to getting to there. We're on, we're actually doing good work. Everything we've been doing has been going to, in the right direction. We're still going in the right direction. But I, I, we're still going in the right direction. But given what's probably going to happen next year, I have a feeling we're going to be retreating, seriously. I'm not going to, I'm not going to support this. You know, I mean, I, I might be able to go with the next one because this is, this is the second, second, but, but that one is going in the wrong direction given what we're going to, there's a good chance we're going to be facing, not only with property tax, we're seeing what's happening with, with, they're looking for some way to cut taxes. And some way to decrease the amount of money we're going to be working with over next year. That, you know, I don't know, I can't imagine that not happening. So let's take a vote. The, this was 5.6533, which would be tantamount to a $5 million reduction. Okay. All those in favor. Aye. That fails. All those opposed again. Okay. That fails. I'll go to the next. But I, okay. Because I like to make a substitute motion to go to Commissioner Dean's first of million dollars for the 5.6658. Five point. I thought that was reasonable enough. 5.6658. 5.6658 for the million dollars is what I would make that substitute motion for. Was that the one you had earlier? Yeah. 5.6658, which is $1,019,864. How much? $1,019,894. Which then increases our reserves this year. So not only are we funding everything that we have in this budget, we're increasing our reserves by over 30-some-odd million dollars. Very few people are at 17%. This gives us a full... Maybe at 15%. This is such good fiscal stewardship. We have done for year after year, we put money in. We'll be here three times during this year where we'll have more money flowing into reserves because we do it every year. Three times a year, we have money that flows back into reserves. So I urge everybody to support my motion for that. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to second Commissioner Fisher's motion. We'll get there somehow. I just brought back what Commissioner Dean, if he wants to redo the motion, I was doing the motion and he can second or vice versa. It doesn't matter to me, but I'm bringing it back to the one that he originally did tonight, the 5.6658 for the million, $1,019,800, whatever it is. Second. Okay. Okay. We have a motion on the floor from Commissioner Fisher. A second by Commissioner Dean. Debate. Debate. Senator Geller. Well, folks, you have to listen to the other commissioners here. Did I support this initially? No. Did I support the 5 million? No. I would have preferred to keep it where we were, but I can read the room. So based on that, I think this is a reasonable compromise. And unless I'm wrong, I can count to six on this one. Okay. Anybody else? Nope. Let's vote. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. One, two, three, four. Aye. Five, six, seven. Yeah. All those opposed? Okay. You and I. Okay. That's all right. Seven to two. We have a military. What did Geller do? Now we got it. Oh, I'm sorry. Tell it. Hold on. I got to go back on this. Hold on. Yay. Can we identify the no votes on the. Senator Richard and the mayor for. Right. Yes. Correct. Okay. Good debate, everybody. Good debate. Thank you. Okay. Now I'm going to the budget part. No, I'm not. What am I going to? No. So on the script, you're going to ask County Administrator and OMB to provide the amendments that we need to the two resolutions in order to adopt a millage that conforms with the vote that you just took. Say that one more time. Monica's getting your part. Okay. Go ahead. We're passing something out. I just wanted her to officially ask, and we've got it prepared, and we'll get it around right now. Okay. All right. Just give us a second. All right. That was interesting. I know. I know. Can we please share the screen? Yeah. Mr. Mayor, we're also putting it up on the screen. So we're passing this out, but this is also put on the screen so the members of the audience and the public can see it. Instead of Udine. We're fast, but not that fast. I know. Seconded by Commissioner Udine. Okay. So I should read this now? That's how I do this? We're going to pick up at the county administrator's portion where she's explaining the changes that we need to the resolution. That was quick. That was fast. Good work. That is the fastest time I've ever seen in my life. I'm ready to read it if you'd like. Yes. Go ahead. Okay. Amendments to Resolution 2025-582 for general county purposes are as follows. Line 15 is amended to set the millage rate at 5.6658. And line 17 is amended to reflect a 7.24% increase over the rollback rate of 5.2832. In resolution number 2025-583, Schedule B, amendments to the general fund include a reduction of $1,019,890 in ad valorem taxes and an adjustment of $50,990 in the less 5% line. For a net decrease of $968,900 in general fund revenues. On the expenditure side of the general fund, the reserve for ad valorem is reduced by $968,900. In Schedule A, the general fund is amended to $2,034,725,420. And the total all funds amount is amended to $8,754,000, sorry, $1,814,450. Copies of both resolutions as amended have been distributed to each commissioner and are available at the front and are being presented above. Broward County's proposed final amended millage rate for general county purposes is 5.6658, which represents a 7.24% increase in property taxes as compared with a rolled back rate of 5.2832. Okay. Now, do I, just so I know, now we're going through, now that all the amendments have gone, should I go commissioner? So, Mayor, you'll just take a motion now on the resolution. Okay, I'll take a motion for that resolution. Yes, Commissioner. I'll move it. Okay. Commissioner Udine moves the resolution 2025-582 as amended and seconded by Commissioner Fisher adopting the final millage rate for general county purposes. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All those opposed, say no. Let the record show that it's unanimous. Commissioner, what's the second resolution for? It's the budget. Oh, okay. This is for the budget. Commissioner, who would like to move this? Commissioner Fisher and seconded by Commissioner Rich. Senator Rich moves resolution number 20. I'm sorry. Let me go backwards. Commissioner Fisher moves resolution number 2025-583 as amended, seconded by Senator Rich adopting the final budget for general county purposes. All in favor, say aye. All opposed, say no. Let the record show the county commission has voted unanimously. Okay. That was fun. Yeah. That was fun. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Okay. So then, Mayor, we can go back to the regular script. I'm looking. I got it. I got it. So, no. So now I'm going to the public hearing on item A, the general county-wide millage rate and budget is now closed. Good job, everybody. Good job. Good job, everybody. Okay. We're going to the Broward Municipal Services District, millage, and budget. The public hearing is open on the final millage rate and final budget for the Broward Municipal Services District to provide funds for municipal-level services in the unincorporated areas. The final millage rate for this purpose is 2.3353, which represents an 8.91 percent increase in property taxes in property taxes as compared with a rollback rate of 2.1442. The county administrator will give an overview of the millage and budget for the Broward Municipal Services District. The Broward Municipal Service District millage rate remains the same for fiscal year 26. The county continues its investment in the Broward Municipal Service District, which is reflected in a 7.8 percent growth in the property tax roll. The average homestead property owner will pay approximately $10 more than the prior year based on the increase in property values capped by Save Our Homes. Okay, is there anyone from the public that wishes to speak on this? No, Mayor. I'm saying none. Is there a motion on Resolution No. 2025-584, establishing the final millage rate for the Broward Municipal Services District? Moved by Senator Geller, seconded by Commissioner McKenzie. All in favor, say aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Okay, is there a motion on Resolution No. 2025-585, adopting the final budget? For the Broward Municipal Service District. Moved by Senator Geller, seconded by Senator Rich. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Can we remind everyone to speak your motions and seconds audibly? All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. Let the record show that it passes unanimously. Okay, the public hearing on Item B, the Broward Municipal Service District millage rate and budget is now closed. Public hearing is open on the final millage rate and final budget for the Fire Rescue Municipal Services District to provide funds for fire rescue services in the unincorporated areas. The final millage rate for this purpose is 2.6191, which represents an 8.91% increase in property taxes as compared with a rollback rate of 2.4048. The County Administrator will give an overview of the Fire Rescue Municipal Services District tax rate. The Fire Rescue Municipal Service District millage rate remains the same for fiscal year 26. The average homestead property owner will pay approximately $11 more than the prior year based on the increase in property values capped by Save Our Homes. Okay, is there anyone from the public that wishes to speak to this? No, Mayor. Seeing none, is there a motion on Resolution No. 2025-5.86, establishing the final millage rate for the Fire Rescue Municipal Services District? Moved by Senator Geller. Seconded by Commissioner Davis. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. Let the record show that that passes unanimously. Is there a motion on Resolution No. 2025-587, adopting the final budget for the Fire Rescue Municipal Services District budget? Moved by Senator Rich. Seconded by Senator Geller. Wow, you guys are like pulling teeth. All in favor, say aye. Louder, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. There we go. All opposed, say no. Let the record show that passes unanimously. Public hearing on Item C, the Fire Rescue Municipal Service District millage rate and budget is now closed. Moving on, the public hearing is open on the final millage rate and final budget for the street lighting sub-district to provide funds for street lights and portions of the unincorporated area. The final millage rate for this purpose is 0.3743, which represents a 10.81 percent increase in property taxes as compared with the rollback rate of 0.3378. The county administrator will give an overview of the street lighting sub-district tax rate. The street lighting sub-district tax rate remains the same for fiscal year 26. The average homestead property owner will pay approximately $1 more than the prior year based on the increase in property values capped by Save Our Homes. Thank you for that overview. Is there a motion on resolution number 2025-588, establishing the final millage rate for the street lighting sub-district? Moved by Senator Geller. Seconded by Senator Rich. All in favor, say aye. Very good. You guys are getting good. All opposed, say no. Mr. Mayor, I wanted to note, you did not ask if there was anyone from the public that wished to speak, and I wanted to make sure. I thought you did. That. Okay. I don't believe there is, but I think part of the. Oh, you're right. Okay. Is there anyone. I thought you said this. There are no speakers. Okay. Is there anyone wishing to speak to this? Now that I am totally lost. Okay. I think we are at. All in favor on the millage rate, say aye. All opposed, say no. Let the record show that that passes unanimously. Is there a motion on resolution number 2025-589, adopting the final budget for the street lighting sub-district budget? Moved by. Bogan. Vice Mayor Bogan. Seconded by Commissioner McKenzie. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. Let the record show that passes unanimously. Public hearing on item D, the street lighting sub-district millage rate and budget is now closed. Public hearing is open on the final millage rate and final budget for water control district number two. For fiscal year 26, the millage rate remains the same compared to the prior fiscal year. The final millage rate for this purpose is 0.1223, which represents a 7.75 percent increase in property taxes as compared with a rollback rate of 0.1135. Is there anyone from the public that wishes to speak? There are no speakers, Mayor. Thank you very much. With that, I will take a motion on resolution number 2025-590, establishing the final millage rate for water control district number two. Moved by Senator Geller. Seconded by Vice Mayor Bogan. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. The public hearing on item E, the water control district number two, millage rate and budget is now closed. The public hearing is open on the final millage rate and final budget for water control district number three. For fiscal year 26, the millage rate remains the same compared to the prior fiscal year. The final millage rate for this purpose is 0.1325, which represents a 9.05 percent increase in property taxes as compared with a rollback rate of 0.1215. Is there anyone from the public who wishes to speak? No, Mayor. Seeing none, is there a motion on resolution number 20-2025-592, establishing the final millage rate for water control district number three. Moved by Senator Geller. Seconded by Commissioner Rogers. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. Let the record show that that motion passes unanimously. Is there a motion on resolution number 20-25-593, adopting the final budget for the water control district number three? Moved by Commissioner Fisher. Seconded by Senator Geller. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. Let the record show the motion passes unanimously. Public hearing on item F, the water control district number three, millage rate and budget is now closed. The public hearing is open on the final millage rate and final budget for the water control district number four and its sub-districts. For fiscal year 26, the millage rates remain the same compared to the prior fiscal year. The final millage rate for sub-district 4A is 0.0121, which represents a 12.04 percent increase in property taxes as compared with a rollback rate of 0.0108. The final millage rate for sub-district 4B is 0.0318, which represents a 6 percent increase in property taxes as compared with a rollback rate of 0.0300. The final millage rate for sub-district 4C is 0.1276, which represents a 6.24 percent increase in property taxes as compared with a rollback rate of 0.1201. Is there anyone from the public wishing to speak? No speakers, Mayor. Thank you. Seeing none, is there a motion on resolution number 2025-594 establishing the final millage rates for water control district number four and its sub-districts? Moved by Commissioner McKenzie. Seconded by Senator Rich. All in favor, say aye. All opposed, say no. Let the record show that that passes unanimously. Is there a motion on resolution number 2025-595 adopting the final budget for the water control district number four and its sub-districts? Moved by Senator Geller. Seconded by Commissioner Udine. All in favor, say aye. All opposed, say no. Let the record show that passes unanimously. Public hearing on item G, water control district number four, millage rates and budgets, is now closed. Public hearing is open on the final millage rate and final budget for unit area number one for the Kokomar Water Control District. I don't know why we like this one so much. For fiscal year 26, I know, the millage rate remains the same compared to the prior fiscal year. The final millage rate for this purpose is 0.1363, which represents a 6.48% increase in property taxes as compared with a rollback rate of 0.1280. Is there anyone from the public like to speak? No, Mayor. Thanks. Seeing none, we will go to, is there a motion on resolution number 2025-596 establishing the final millage rate for unit area number one of Kokomar Water Control District? Moved by Senator Geller. Seconded by Commissioner Udine. All in favor, say aye. All opposed, say no. Let the record show that motion passes unanimously. Is there a motion on resolution number 2025-597, adopting the final budget for unit area number one of Kokomar Water Control District? Moved by Senator Rich. Seconded by Senator Geller. All in favor, say aye. All opposed, say no. Let the record show that passes unanimously. Public hearing on item H, unit area number one of Kokomar Water Control District millage rate and budget is now closed. The Board of County Commissioners adopts a five-year capital program annually in accordance with Chapter 20 of the Broward County Administrative Code. The five-year capital program includes all capital projects and the revenues required to support the projects proposed for fiscal years 2026 through 2030. Is there anyone from the public that wishes to speak? There are no speakers, Mayor. Seeing none, is there a motion on resolution number 2025-598, as amended by the revised capital program summary, attached as Exhibit A to the resolution adopting the five-year capital program, including fiscal year 2026 through fiscal year 2030, moved by Vice Mayor Bogans, seconded by Commissioner McKenzie. All in favor, say aye. All opposed, say no. Let the record show that the motion passes unanimously. The public hearing on item I, fiscal year 2026 to 2030 capital program adoption is now closed. This concludes the Broward County public hearing to adopt the final millage rates and final budgets that will support county services during fiscal year 2026. Thank you for attending, and thank you to the entire budget staff for all the work that you've done. Norm, thank you one last time for bringing a budget home to us and all your work and best wishes on your retirement. Thank you. I know, I know. That he'll be talking about for years. Yeah, exactly. County Administrator, any last words? I just thank you for recognizing Norman and the budget team. I do want to, yes, and Jennifer, you know, right in the next role here. But I do want to thank Norman for as many years of distinguished service and public service and your very amazing career. And so I just want to thank you publicly and wish you all the best in retirement. It's nice to end with a discussion on fund balance policy. Always, always useful. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Norman. Thank you. Thank you, Norman. With that, we are adjourned. And thank you, Commission.