good afternoon everyone welcome to the regular commission meeting this september the 15th 2025 if the clerk would kindly call the roll commissioner marker here vice mayor long here commissioner cassell here deputy vice mayor burns here mayor carney here we have a quorum thank you so much if you could all please rise for the pledge of allegiance agenda approval are there any additions deletions or subtract our substitutions for the agenda as as are you okay down there oh no i just i thought you were commenting on the agenda um are there any comments at all on the agenda any any mayor any pullings any anything so 8a has to be heard after b c and d i'm sorry what 8a which is the ordinance for the comprehensive plan amendment that would include the cip that has to be heard after all the resolutions so if we can just renumber b is a yeah c is b so 8a will become the new 8c is that right so yes so 8a is going to be resolution 197 25 8b will be resolution 203-25 8c will be resolution 198 25 and 8d will be ordinance number 1925 got you so that becomes 80 all right thank you perfect you'll remind me in case i forget yes sir thank you i need a motion to approve the agenda second all in favor aye any opposed perfect okay presentation regarding um and for a the i'm going to turn this over to mr moore this is the trajectory concerning finalization of the climate action plan yes sir mr mayor so i simply asked interim sustainability and resiliency officer chris chettister to be here to offer a few minute updates for the city commission relative to the progress regarding this matter earlier this year of course you all had an opportunity to receive an update in terms of the process of getting a climate action plan adopted given the current process i thought it would be productive for you all to have a brief update regarding where we are in this regard and why so mr chettister if you would please proceed as about a five minute or so presentation sir please speak into the microphone mr chettister make sure it's on make sure a little red light's on there there you go how about now perfect for the opportunity when i assumed the interim sustainability officer role the city had a draft foundation in place that draft prepared by my predecessor outlined key definitions and a range of initial climate action concepts it provided a valuable starting point but was not yet an actionable plan nor one that had been vetted or endorsed by our department directors since that time the work has focused on moving from a list of ideas towards a collaborative implementable roadmap a climate action plan can only succeed if there is broad participation and ownership across the organization so much of the effort has been dedicated to building on that collaboration and buy-in one of the first steps was to review the always delray comprehensive plan to determine how potential climate strategies align with the city's long-term vision that review revealed a significant number of alignments across sections goals objectives and policies specifically 584 individual policy level points of alignment were identified to capture this and illustrate this a companion document has been completed that crosswalks each climate strategy with the comprehensive plan this demonstrates that the climate action is not a standalone initiative but one that is directly tied to the policies and goals that already guide the city to ensure plan alignment translates into action thus far we've had nine three 90-minute workshops facilitated with directors staff across departments including public works development services parks and recreation utilities and neighborhood and community services these sessions provided an opportunity to discuss the draft strategies identify potential challenges and begin building a foundation of consensus the diversity of perspectives is essential and the result thus far has been early signs of collaboration and engagement across departments we look forward to additional sessions as the climate plan continues to develop supporting this collaborative process a dedicated climate action plan sharepoint site was created this serves as the central resource where all internal stakeholders have access to draft materials notes references tools and updates all in real time this platform helps ensure transparency accountability continued input and keeps the process open and inclusive as it develops looking ahead the crosswalk document between the climate action plan draft and the always delray comprehensive plan has been completed demonstrating how strongly the climate strategies support the city's vision this document is posted on the sharepoint site and is available for departmental review so any points of concern or suggestions for additional alignment can be easily flagged for all to discuss the strategies from the original draft will be reorganized into the same format that used by the climate the comprehensive plan so sections schools objectives policies this will establish a clear and consistent baseline of climate action items already adopted in the city not all of the existing policies in the comprehensive plan have active initiatives attached to them today but by linking the climate action plan to these policies the city creates a pathway to launch new projects more efficiently and ensure that initiatives are grounded in policies already adopted an additional upcoming step is to map the climate action plan strategies to the city adaptation plan public works has already done extensive work in developing and implementing that plan which provides a strong foundation for addressing sea level rise flooding and other climate local other local climate related impacts by aligning the climate action plan with the adaptation plan the city will bring together resilience and mitigation strategies into a single framework ensuring delray beach is both reducing emissions and preparing for the challenges already at our doorstep in closing delray beach is making steady progress in transforming that climate action plan from a draft into a unifying framework for citywide action with alignment now established to the comprehensive plan and soon the adaptation plan the city is well positioned to address climate mitigation and resilience together we appreciate your support and guidance as this process moves forward thank you thank you very much are there any questions thank you very much i look forward to receiving the whole thing when complete very welcome thanks chris thank you very much all right we now have comments and inquiries on agenda and non-agenda items from the public first will be the city manager's response to inquiries and highlights i yelled at this time thank you okay this is a portion of our meeting which is available for public comment so we are now having public comment anybody which from the public who wishes to address any agenda item uh that is not going to be part of the uh public hearing later on in the meeting please get up give your name and address for the record you'll each have three minutes could i ask a question before we start sir sorry um i i received an email this week and i think we may have all received an email from someone who raised what i thought was a very good question um when we asked you to get up here and give you your name and your address say again billy sent that the gentleman who comes to us and he wanted to know yeah is there a way we were i was going to discuss this with you we cannot have uh we'll give their address maybe they can write it down and pass it to her as he's concerned about safety physical safety it resonated with me i mean because i think there's a problem with that i think we've got people here we've also got people on the internet the city i'd have to research it but i feel that when we initially drafted our our local rules there was a reason behind it i know for quasi-judicial proceedings you have to because that can always would accord and be appealed that's for public hearing it's currently in the rules i'm happy to research it and um provide you with i didn't know what the what the options were i didn't talk to chief hunter about it yet and it just it resonated with me that it's something we ought to we ought to look at in other cities they have cards that you have to fill out with your name and address that's what you know that's the county does that we have to actually submit a card and they get called against the card which is probably not a bad idea because but it's still a public record if you have your name and address and you don't like what the person is saying yeah then all of a sudden you've got their name it is i think it's a fair it was a fair the school district doesn't have that rule they don't have to say their address so i don't think it's like a thing that we necessarily would have to do the only thing i would like is some kind of a contact point for the people to speak if anybody you know the city needs to write back to them because they raise an issue so maybe just the email address or something some way by way by which we can contact them and i apologize for interrupting you i came across as a public safety item that sort of stuck in my brain i just wanted to put it up here so that we we could we could look at it and see what we can do we certainly don't want to put our residents in harm i was going to raise that in comments apologies no it's a good point i know it's a good just a good time no so mr blum not that i know your name and address for the record what do you want me to give a secret id number i got that already we already we already posted your social security number you've been in my house okay i am number one just three items it's very we still need now we're still doing it what we're doing it because that's what our local rules steve blum yes sir 115 venetian drive delray beach florida 33483 yes thank you mr all right i am pleased i was reading over the rules for public participation 27 years ago the rules as far as i was concerned had to be changed everybody referred to this as a podium and it was always the podium the podium the podium it's not a podium it's a lectern what did i say and finally finally i kept on as we say fetching fetching fetching fetching until they changed it to the lectern which i'm very pleased to see i'm happy to yes yes but that's that's been going on so i have one thing to contribute to this city in my entire life it's the fact that i got it to a lectern number two is about three weeks ago i was having coffee with some friends and i made the point and i'm very sad about this and maybe you all can go back and see what you can do to change things i said you know pretty soon our flag is going to be at half mast permanently every single day and it's that way and it's a sad sad commentary on our lives today when our flag is at half mast every single week third thing is the worst word you can use in florida is secrets or secretive and i'm getting the feeling from more than one person that there's a lot of secrets going on between the city commission mayor staff and the dda and i don't think that's right at all you fund the dda completely they have to come to you for money okay you should know what's going on with the dda and you should have control over the dda that's it correction they they're under contract with us to i don't normally but i'm just for the record they're under contract with us to manage the old school square site with the exception of the crest building and otherwise they're an independent taxing authority so they are they are a while the dependent agency of of of the city they have their own bylaws and they're they're they were created legislatively huh yeah we're i was just saying we we they're under contract for us funding their portion of the activities at old school square but otherwise they're an independent taxing agency okay thank you no problem clarification just wanted to clarify see you at public's where shopping is a pleasure hi everyone um stephanie emelman i think we should get a plug for that the city ought to get free food or something for the next i'm sorry um stephanie emelman uh dary beach chamber of commerce so october is do good del rey month and it's a chamber program that pairs the for-profit businesses with a non-profit partner and together they create events that raise awareness and funds for our local non-profits so this is our fifth year of do good del rey and the past four years we've raised over 275 000 for our local non-profit community and we do this because we feel that if we support our local non-profits it uplifts the entire community so i've brought the calendars here for you which i'll give to the clerk i'd love you to take a look at the calendar and pick one event to go to and one uh non-profit to support during the month of october and i would encourage everyone here and watching to do the same thing so if you'd like a list of the events go to our website it's delraybeach.com backslash events go to october tab and you can find all the do good del rey events that are taking place in october so i hope to see you out thank you thank you very much uh good evening um commissioners um i'm john peters i live at dover road in delray beach um i am here representing the delray beach chamber education fund on behalf of alison turner our chair who is currently traveling and unable to be present today the dcf is the non-profit arm of the greater delray beach chamber of commerce on august of 28th we hosted our annual education breakfast where we funded just over forty four thousand three hundred dollars in school grants for our eight delray beach public schools this year we updated our grant process so that teachers school staff and counselors were able to apply for a grant of between five hundred and two thousand dollars to enable them to fund a specific educational initiative in their school we received 44 grant requests and funded 25 of them these grants will enable our local schools to support projects that span such disciplines as literacy robotics science stem arts and culture ese montessori mental health and many more essential needs specific to our local schools as part of our process we have also incorporated accountability and reporting guidelines each grant recipient is responsible for providing us with receipts for any thing that they purchase completing a grant feedback form and during our spring on-site visits sharing with us the impact that each grant has had on the designated areas selected thanks to our collaboration with the city of delray beach the money that was raised this year uh 15 000 of which resulted from the renewal of existing bus shelter agreements the balance of the monies was raised through the generosity of sponsors at our two fundraisers and other small donations throughout the year we feel that the grants are more than just dollars they are an investment in the future of our students our teachers and our community as the non-profit honor of the chamber we also represent our business in the community we want to do all that we can to ensure that every school-aged child in the city of delray beach has the tools the resources and opportunities to thrive thank you for your support your time thank you very much and for all your work your uh your foundation to fund us thank you good evening all my name is ronnie denair i live at 2916 southwest 22nd circle delray beach okay i'm here to talk again about the pride crosswalk uh and everything that we've gone through i was here last week for the meeting which as everybody recalls was was stressful it was difficult um it was very emotional at times however i'm very pleased that we came up with a very good positive strategic move to take everything forward and one that i feel ultimately will allow the city to embrace um values that we all hold including diversity inclusion and respect for everyone okay i've met with a number of people we've done some talks about possible designs what i'd like to do is hand these copies out to the commissioners to take a look and i also would like to introduce my partner who is much better at the design kind of construction stuff that i am to talk about how and why we chose this particular design to have you look at okay hi my name is charlotte dilks i am at 2916 southwest 22nd circle delray beach 33445 the pyramid that ronnie just handed out is something that i came up with without actually knowing that i was going to come up with it when i did a little bit of research after i had thought it might be a good sculpture for delray beach to have i found out that symbolically the pyramid represents obsession strength stability and a very strong connection between heaven and earth and i think that would be a really fine representation for delray beach for not only the citizens but also for the many visitors that we have throughout the year now i understand that that's going to create some difficulties as to how and where my feeling is it would be preferably if we could get it on private property that way the city cannot be blackmailed into anything if we can get a private owner of one of the stores or one of the lots downtown now what i'm thinking of and i haven't spoken to anyone there yet is the little park where park uh restaurant and salt used to be salt is located i understand that that is privately owned now if we decide to go forward with this that would be one of the connections that i would like to make so i i think that we can raise money to help to see this come to fruition and i also know a couple sculptures okay thank you very much for your attention thank you very much thank you very much good evening mayor and commissioners my name is richard lowenthal and my address is 8381 winter springs lane lake worth florida i'm here to explain to you why i appreciate and value the arts garage in delray beach i've been a professor of music for over 50 years with a specialty in jazz and arts and culture have become a meaningful part of my life from the day i started playing the trumpet in the fourth grade and throughout my career as an educator and professional trumpet player and big band leader music and the arts have become a guiding force in my life when i moved to palm beach county i became aware of the arts garage a venue that had music theater visual arts for all ages and arts education with my background i wanted to be able to take an active role in the future of the arts garage i was drawn to the musical programs community engagement and support and the potential for the development of cultural enrichment for all ages i initiated the successful jazz and java jazz education classes that have adult students primarily from delray beach and conduct big band concerts with outstanding musicians in the area i've been an active member of the board of the arts garage for nine years and through my time passion and donations have seen its value in contributing to the cultural vibrancy and economy of delray beach in closing i want to thank the city of delray beach and the cra for your ongoing support with your help the arts garage will continue to be the leading performing and visual arts cultural center of delray beach palm beach county and the state of florida thank you thank you very much good afternoon my name is dr ashley ridley i am here representing the drug abuse foundation we are at 400 south swinton avenue and good good afternoon commissioners on behalf of the drug abuse foundation of palm beach county i gratefully accept the proclamation of recognition of september 26th and 27th of 2025 as palm beach county recovery summit this year's theme is reversing the effects of the crack epidemic treating an illness ending a war we will gather from 9 a.m to 2 30 p.m each day at our location 400 south swinton avenue here in delray beach i would like to thank the mayor as well as the commission for acknowledging both the lasting harms of the crack epidemic and the ongoing work of recovery your recognition affirms our shared commitment to healing justice and community wellness this proclamation is not just symbolic it's urgent in recent weeks we've lost two members of our delray beach community to overdose tied to cocaine lace with fentanyl their deaths are a painful reminder that this crisis is not in the past it's here it's now and it calls for us to come together and act i warmly invite you along with residents of delray beach and palm beach county to join us for two days of keynote addresses panels and breakout sessions as we move forward with solutions rooted in health justice and hope i also want to thank our partners the neighborhood wellness alliance trinity counseling centers and the recovery hub of palm beach county as we stand together to this for this work thank you guys so much thank you very much thank you very much good afternoon mayor commissioners um i'm here to just the uh oh 210 northwest second avenue delray beach florida 33444 and cynthia ridley correct oh that's me cynthia really i'm quite sure they already didn't type it up for me already but i'm here to just thank um our our dairy police department um i forgot to say it last month when they found the person who hit raymond and kept going and i am so proud of my police department who took the time out and then came back to share with us they found a person who actually hit him and hope that they're behind bars so again thank you to our dairy police department for doing some good work for one of our people that live in this community thank you thank you very much good evening nicholas capola 39 30 lowson boulevard 33445 um i am too like ronnie here to thank you um for the continued dialogue about the intersection mayor to your openness and willingness to listen to as many people as possible and i and what charlie brought up is a perfect example i look forward to as many people to share what their thoughts would be for this because this is community driven it's not going to be political it's not going to be associated it's going to discuss our community so again i continue to thank i i look forward to the continued conversation and how we can keep this moving thank you thank you very much mantra benny 323 northwest second avenue as governments worldwide navigate challenges where do you think the united states of america is headed all i know is that if people expand their perspectives and move beyond materialism we'll unlock a brighter future by uniting healing trusting and implementing innovative solutions we can boldly build a better world currently we're fighting for various causes and isolation when will we come together to advocate for the fundamental human rights that benefit our humanity everyone deserves to live in a community with quality living conditions access to care healthy food and opportunities to thrive today i ask that every one of you embrace this day with gratitude love joy and peace take a moment to reflect on the blessings in your life from the simple joys of sight sound and breath to the blood flowing through our veins lastly i attended the citizens academy and i see why we need seven firefighters on paramedics and all those four situations it takes seven people to actually help somebody live it takes every one of those people to help save somebody life so i know y'all did the right thing but watching it live in person really is tremendous to what the fire department does and the great works that they do to try and keep somebody alive seven people is really needed on those trucks thank you thank you very much my name is chuck i reside at 210 northwest second avenue and i am the last of the ridley clan that will be showing up here tonight i want to speak on two not issues but two separate topics um the first topic is on november 9th um sunday 3 pm we will have the first fundraiser f-u-n raiser for post 188 this what's the date on november 8th at the golf course sunday november 9th yes saturday november 8th which is it i'll get there on the 8th and just spend the night sunday no problem lucy what day is it sunday all right so it's i got the sunday 3 pm was right we need as many we need all of you to attend it's a fundraiser but it's also to lift up what we're really trying to do um with a um something that we fought hard and we want to use it as a bridge bring the entire community around veterans um not just those in the past um those who are currently i'm here and those veterans yet to be born the second thing i want to speak on is this saturday we had the home-going celebration of mr willie potts many of you might not know willie potts um good chance the police department would know willie potts um good chance pox and rick will know willie potts um but those of us who live in the set i know my friend willie potts very well he was a strong advocate he he often would not come um to um city um commission meetings um but when he would come he would always speak on behalf of those who voice um was always too often forgotten um and so the elders table i will not let his name not be remembered and we are starting by making you all aware that mr potts was somebody and somebody to be celebrated that concludes my thank you very much for letting us know thank you i did not know he died good evening i am michelle yales i am at 103 northwest third avenue i know that i emailed you this weekend but i thought it was important for me to also bring my voice are you are you going to be speaking about the millage all right actually i'm going to talk about the budget process would you like me to wait oh okay no no well the budget process is fine i don't care about the millage i care about the process at this point well then then that's fine so um the facts are we are growing as a city our base is growing as our tax base is growing as a city but our budget has gotten out of control i hear you as you are asking questions about the expenditures with a detailed budget plan file that that is behind each of these budget requests you wouldn't have to ask those questions it's also a very good accountability exercise for our staff to be able to go through detail by detail and give you that project plan or that that that the business plan followed by the request now when i sent you the email i wasn't sure how detailed you actually did get but hearing you in that last at the end of the last meeting i could hear your questions either you just we don't have that accountability and as a citizen of course we won't have accountability but it would be nice to get our arms around the overall process behind the the budget we have grown i think this year we're looking at a 200 and or 121 million dollar budget that's a lot we started um this is about 70 percent higher than 2018. where is the money going and i think with the detailed plan we can start making good accountability decisions are we doing things that are no longer useful are there things that are redundant are there things that maybe we could do better um i do applaud the um building and record the building department with their new permits process that has been a big a big improvement but we would like to see better services if we're going to keep spending more money thank you very much thank you hello beautiful people it's so good to see you marjorie waldo from arts garage um i wanted to share with you some fantastic news i received from visit florida just this morning in case you don't know visit florida visit florida.com with a corporate office in tallahassee is the state's official destination marketing organization and drives tourism through a public private partnership that is called an alliteration say it three times fast public private partnership you're not going to do it are you alliteration public private partnership oh good job that matches public funding dollar to dollar partnering with thousands of businesses across the state it serves in a leading role within florida's tourism ecosystem protecting and promoting florida's 142 billion with a b vacation brand through global marketing public relations and travel trade efforts additionally visit florida provides critical statewide support after hurricanes and other crises helps destinations attract conferences and conventions and operates florida's official welcome center in 2024 visit florida reported they helped attract a record-breaking 143 million visitors in 2024 and secured number one domestic 15.5 percent and number two international 25.2 percent market share in 2023 all that visitation generated 127.7 billion in economic impact and supported 2.1 million jobs i lost my place in 2023 making tourism a key economic engine benefiting florida's families the florida legislature's independent office of economic and demographic research calculates visit florida's return on investment as delivering 3.3 dollars in return to the state for every public dollar invested making visit florida one of the best performing economic development programs in state history arts garage continues to work to do our part in feeding delray's economy i would be remiss not to add that we feel gratitude and i love you each from the bottom of my heart for all that you do on the dais for your ongoing commitment to arts and culture in delray beach and the continual support of arts garage since our beginnings in 2011 when mayor carney was chair of our first board of directors i thank you all very much thank you very much anyone else for public comment seeing none the comment is closed okay consent agenda we um there have been no modification so i need a motion to approve the consent agenda second all in favor aye any opposed okay adopted thank you we are now in regular agenda item 7a alternate considerations regarding the pride intersection missy barletto are you here there you are miss barletto to be accompanied by director of parks and recreation sam as well i saw sam i was i wouldn't see her so good evening mayor and commission missy barletto public works director and good evening uh sam me top parks and recreation director so tonight we we were challenged to bring you a few ideas for how to replace the pride intersection and we have brought you a few ideas based on that these ideas have come from people in the community who have sent emails to various staff members from some of our non-profit partners and some members of the staff also have come up with some ideas there are a lot of other ideas out there this is just to spark conversation and is not intended to be an all-inclusive presentation one of the first options we looked at is just a pedestal monument a commemorative plaque here you see an example here with a colorful image of the you know the pride intersection when it was bright and vibrant we could put some details on a placard underneath it explaining when it was done what it was for kind of a remembrance and just looking at that as an option where could we put it we're looking at maybe old school square in the north east corner kind of across from peer life if you can envision the area where you're just south of the um intersection so you're still close in proximity kind of a remembrance of the of the intersection all together some examples it's simple easy easily to install it's visually appealing you could look into getting community sponsorships or other funding so that it didn't even come from the city itself it's cost effective we looked in the sign like this you're looking at about two and a half thousand dollars printed made and installed and it can go in quickly so we just look at that as a simple but elegant way to commemorate the intersection so another idea that was bought brought forward to us was to rename one of the streets there um maybe north northeast first street could become pride street um i think i know where that idea came from um so this is this is one of the ones that would be virtually free we can do this ourselves it is a vote of the city commission we make these signs in the city's sign shop this would affect more than one just one intersection technically street signs are included in the mutcd as traffic direction but this piece of it would continue to direct traffic instead of directing people to northeast first street we would be directing them to pride street another another of the ideas that has come forward to us um was that we can replace some of the the um banners on city light poles with the progress pride flag and um and this would be basically sort of what that would look like other ideas that came came forward involving our our street lights in the downtown area someone had said that it would be great if we repainted them in rainbow colors i would hope that we wouldn't go perhaps in that direction because they're all spun concrete they're practically brand new we just replaced them in just a couple of years ago at significant cost but we could actually rewrap all of the city street light poles in different colored lights instead of using the clear white lights maybe we could use rainbow colored lights it is an idea the um the lights on the city street poles as well as the street pole banners are handled through the downtown development authority through contract with the city they um they actually handle creating the banners and placement one of one of the other ideas that i think has been talked about off and on for quite some time is to do murals at the old school square garage this is an existing idea that's been around for a while one of the stated goals of of this in a different iteration was to beautify and celebrate those elements of what makes delray beach special um and also to to enhance the interior stairway stairwells at the old school square parking garage to create crime prevention through environmental design or septed design which you hear about from us on a regular basis the photographs that you see on this um on this particular slide the one on the bottom left is the interior stair stairwell at the west palm beach garage but they have windows that look out onto the street and our garage does not have that so if we were to make that investment then it would be visible only to people who are using the interior stairs another option is we looked at the rainbow uplighting maybe on one of the water towers you know obviously the the rainbow projection of the rainbow colors on the old school square garage um or projection onto the current bright intersection when paint is removed so just some different options you can maybe use with some lighting to get a similar effect on different options without having that permanent paint there this is just the just a way to start the conversation to kick it off and to give you um things to talk about to think about and to give us um direction back on what it is that you like what you don't like what you might like to see happen thank you very much um i i had occasion to have a some conversations um nick coppola was there with us we had um joe saunders who came in front of us here he's the political director for equality florida i also met with kevin mooth who is the delray resident and treasurer of the wgtq plus democratic club and stephen gaskell who works with him at the uh at the caucus and it's very interesting because joe saunders had a very interesting thing that he raised to me and he's the one who kind of is uh the political director for equality florida so he's dealing with the tons and tons of municipalities um they the city of st petersburg decided what they were going to do is they had they had some initial discussions like like we have which i think these are all interesting ideas um to essentially have a community outreach meetings like we do like we did for the golf course similar to what we did for the golf course to generate some ideas uh we were given one tonight which i think is a very interesting proposal um but there's things that they're very concerned to make sure that that it represents and and and and i think that we need to keep into mind what what what's important to all parts of the community so i i think that i mean i'm not the key is to try to i would like to try to get this sooner rather than later to kind of get it off our agendas because we don't want to be talking about this for months and months and months and months so my thought was that that their suggestion at the equality florida was to have some kind of an outreach meeting where we could you know invite interested parties to to meet and throw out ideas discuss ideas uh and then we would you all would take those ideas and put put together some kind of a of a program uh that we could then have a second meeting to discuss with you and others about which is the best path forward recognizing you know there's there's some very keen that it stays as a memorial others are very keen that it's it's it's it's a prominence there's there there was as many opinions as to what it should look like as there were actually there were more opinions of what it should look like and there were people in the room so which is always the way it is which is a good thing which is a good thing because there's a lot of ideas regenerated but i'm just one person here and i don't know what the sense of the of the commission is but i'm just saying that's what they did in st petersburg and i thought it was a interesting idea and i'm throwing that out there for discussion so i throw it out for discussion sure you're pointing at me i pointed at you because you were um thank you for the presentation and you did that very quickly i appreciate that also winnie edwards has a neat idea about wrapping palm trees but you know with the dda when there was the logo question they went out and did a survey right put it all together and created a survey and let people decide i think we should allow the residents to decide how what this looks like we don't need three meetings on the subject we can take this out to the public put it in some survey monkey format have people choose come back to us with the results and then get it done i i think that well i'm just saying from the from the the every one of the their representatives would like to have a meeting where they could come in and express what they would like to see because the survey and their view didn't capture all of the nuances of all the all their views i mean i'm fine with either but i mean i'm just right the residents should decide right though i mean at the end of the day and what happens when you get and you you know you're going to get three different organizations if they want three different things and then you're going to choose from the three well i think that i right now we don't have anything to do well let's do just do the survey and see what it brings back well yes you may just want to say that you know thank you for the work i think these are some great ideas but as both my colleagues said i think that to do this without a public outreach meeting is is we can't do it that way so i am in favor of having a public outreach meeting and there are processes that you go by to come to a conclusion once you have all the ideas but i think we need to have a public meeting so that you know we can hear all of the ideas so i'm in favor of a public meeting to get as many ideas as possible and then staff will come up with the process of you know how we come to the final conclusion as to you know what we do so thank you mr marker just a couple of comments um we had a rough couple of days last week for those of you that were here nick you and i've talked about it multiple times um we had a rough couple days but you know what i love um typical delray we bounce back and we're stronger forward people and i'm proud of our community uh very much so um i love the suggestions guys i think you covered a wonderful array of options that we have like angela i i'd like to see us get get out and immediately do some outreach meetings just to narrow down narrow down the list i think that that's really important but i really want to do it with a sense of urgency i mean we talked about that last week when we we had our bad week that we were going to bounce back we did bounce back and we're going to bounce back really quick and we're going to bounce bounce back better than ever so uh good on the community on this one my my view thank you commissioner long you have one or two views on this subject i'm vaguely interested in this issue um i've been a little outspoken about it i suppose um so this this plan b as we're calling it um this is an extremely important issue to our community i've seen more engagement from our community over this issue than i've seen in my entire tenure up here um so i think it is something that i'm glad we're all taking very seriously and i'm taking it so seriously that i'm going to use the w word up here workshop oh my god i know i know i know let us know when you're out of town we'll have it i know right you just wait till this after december um no i i think we should have a workshop on this i think we should invite the organizations who you met with already mayor and i think the dda should be part of that conversation and then we should afford the public time to come in and speak and and talk about their ideas to me that's how we're going to move this along that's how we're going to have an organized conversation about this i like the idea of doing a survey and having those results be presented at the workshop then we can talk about them all in one form in an organized way and we can start to nail down options otherwise this could be a sort of death by committee situation right yeah i mean um so the other component of this though is i think we this is my opinion but i think we should bifurcate this into a short-term gesture that is maybe more of a pop-up situation or something that's very affordable and very visible and a long-term gesture something that's more permanent like a memorial in old school square in our park um because i don't want us to rush based on a sense of urgency and and throw together something that may not be as permanent as we'd like it to be but i don't want to only focus on something permanent and then it's months months months a year down the road and we have the community who's very engaged on this issue right now not seeing us do anything i think we could do both and i love some of the ideas that staff brought here i know these are ideas that other cities have done i love the idea of pride street i know another city recently did that um maybe more than one and i frankly really like the street pole banner idea those are cheap things we could do right away right away to show that we care about this issue show the community that we really are making an investment here and then we can do the workshop and talk about a long-term gesture like an actual monument in the park and i love the thought behind the sign thing with the picture but that's kind of like a monument to a monument it feels a little meta i feel like we could maybe do something a little more visible as a monument like some sort of sculpture or something like that um and i'd love to to get more ideas on that there's a lot of really clever things that other cities are doing we're not in this alone a lot of cities are in the same boat and i think the more people we have in the conversation the more really cool ideas we could get but is anyone else up here on board with either pride street or the banner idea and discussing that further because i think those are both really cool ideas and easy and cheap for us to do again i i i met with the political director of equality florida for the purpose of figuring out and and and the and as i said the uh palm beach county lbgtq plus democratic caucus and your people my people and your democrats and stephen gaspel who we all know and uh nick coppola and they were very keen on um uniformly there were three things they were concerned with one is speed they want to get it done they don't want it to linger they don't want to death by committee they want to get it done the second thing was they wanted to recognize that the whole purpose behind the original crosswalk the interchange uh was the memorial to what happened at pulse which is a very important uh memorial uh and the third was essentially to ensure that whatever we do it captures the spirit of the the importance of the issue and whatever whatever we end is going to recognize the importance of the issue i'm i'm happy with any solution i just kind of picked up the decided these meetings because you know i understood the importance of the issue and they felt that they thought a public meeting with engagement was an important you know that they that they wanted to go because they they felt that there would we would collectively and not just from those groups but collectively because as i said you know the historic i mean other people are going to come with some great ideas i saw some stuff today that i didn't even think of which i thought were great ideas and the presentation in that that uh pyramid i thought was very interesting very clever uh thing to do so i think there's a number of good ideas out there i don't really we unboarded the workshop to that effect i'm happy to have a workshop i mean i mean if that's what we want to do i'm happy to do that i mean i think i would like to make sure that if we're going to do it as a workshop which is fine maybe we do it in the same as we were going to be having a uh we essentially combined the concern about getting a lot of people in with with ideas with the workshop yeah and that way we could have all of us participated i think we need to do a submission prior to the workshop i agree don't have people come in here with the ideas let them present them maybe a little paragraph about it okay so we have an understanding i mean when charlotte explained that that was lovely look my first my first my first choice was let's have the community engagement meeting come back with some stuff have them those two right there missy and and anyway well i'd like to see a survey from that from the dda like we did before we could see the results i think the feeling was again i i'm happy to do as many things we want to do just that the the feeling was that and this kind of goes with what we always talk about a community engagement you know i you never know how surveys get responded but a community where people actually showing in a in a in a room shows demonstrates a much higher level of commitment than just responding to a survey not that the survey's not i think we make that part of the presentation during the workshop so i'm happy to do whatever anybody wants to do i just as i said i gave you the articulated the three things that they thought were the most i agree with all of them and i'm trying to address but in the meantime what about the banners and the street renaming that's what i'm asking i'm not i'm saying we should do both the whole process we have to go through the commission we have to do all that when there's all kinds of stuff so we want to have a conversation about that process is people on board with the concept of it yeah i mean i mean i the banners i don't i don't think i mean that's something that that we could go up with the dda on the banners i'm seeing a thumbs up over there that thing we can work on so we're on board with the banners i agree and miss burns is saying let's get the community's input i get your desire i don't need the community's input to rename the street we can get the community's input to come up with the specific symbol for the park i think the streets you know we can make that decision i'm not opposed to that but you know i just want to make sure that we have included the community and that they are satisfied and happy with yeah i just don't want to go back and forth i want to just that's what i'm saying is i'm just trying to get it done right and just and schedule the community engagement do a survey get the information back to us as quickly as possible schedule the workshop and let's move it along yeah because no one was happy with how abruptly the the the this was handled and our response is critical right now is is important then our response needs to be rapid which is why i had the i mean i had the meeting as fast as i could arrange i i frankly think of bold gestures needed at this point i really do the entire country was kind of watching us here and i feel like we let a lot of people down frankly um i think renaming the street would be that gesture and i think we need to have the murals and then we'll work on a more permanent gesture that we can have the whole community on board with we need to show as a city that we're capable of making that call i think i just it's just that's where my head's at oh no i understand i just it would rename a street as a bigger process and i'm just i agree can we start that process why don't we just start the process what it means yeah because i mean that i do think there's there will be community input on that and i'm trying to can we can we have that be like an agenda item number on an upcoming meeting i'm actually trying to go the course of least resistance to get something done right i want to move this along i understand i'm just trying to so ladies and gentlemen may offer a recommendation based on the feedback being offered so we're meeting today september 15th our next regular meeting is october 14th so a couple weeks from now we would be in position to offer a community engagement session along the lines of what you're talking about so i think the week of september 29th would be fairly reasonable in that regard enabling the city staff to come back with considerations in time for the next following meeting to the commission so i think that's a reasonable amount of time it is fairly short yet at the same time it's not terribly rushed such that we can facilitate an environment to this effect this would be very much akin to some of the town hall engagement formats that we've come across them too do we want to ask our staff is that reasonable time frame so we're going to town hall not a workshop now but we're going to do both what i have heard from commission is that the first thing we want to do is we want to reach out to the public and invite them to provide us with additional ideas correct so if we were to put that out as a community request for ideas and give at least a week for people to get their ideas into us and then have a week for staff to evaluate those ideas put some some flesh to the idea and then bring it back to commission at a workshop i think september 29th would be um or the week of it acceptable or the week of i mean the 30th probably you're the calendar in your head and i go by what you say on dates yeah because in my discussions there's going to be look there's while there's a lot of members there's four or five groups that represent a great group greater much greater group of people so i don't think it'll be very hard to contact the the the the umbrella organizations the various to generate a lot of response at which we've learned that they have pretty extensive email list so i mean and i think we're going to be able to accomplish that uh i mean you'll you'll you know compass has a whole group uh the florida coalition has a whole group uh the palm beach county human rights council has a whole group we want residents input as well though i mean we want to make sure our residents yes we're saying the same thing we're saying the same thing okay so mayor just to um add something um i i think you also want to have some um suggestions about funding for this um well i actually had that conversation this morning about that that i you know about funding it and and is it going to be privately from what i understand there's already been and then i and also learned uh the day is here there was there was um in my conversation this morning there is people there are groups that are prepared to fund portion you know portions are all of this so depending on the extent of what we're trying to do that is what we discussed on thursday what we discussed on thursday was rather than doing litigation spending those funds towards this i i i that was also mentioned as well but there was lots of discussions about okay so a lot of discussion to be had so do you think maybe you would want the groups that um are going to provide the funding to bring the ideas forward since it's their funding or do you think that's separate apart i don't know why we're talking about private funding at this point though this was brought up as when we decided to pivot to plan b the the agreement was that we were going to to fund it or at least fund part of it that wasn't the agreement if organizations are looking to find of the well we kind of feel a little bit like a bait and switch guys i mean this was how you sort of we all discussed moving to the other option let's have this conversation in the future let's just schedule a date we're having an item to talk about this right now so i'm going to talk about it now um okay well i think it's we just had a meeting on thursday right mayor you said and i quote i suggest we take that money instead of spending on it on litigation and allocate it to redirecting the pride intersection elsewhere in the city right so i think we should be talking about funding if not all part of this maybe some of these other other organizations would match us maybe the dda would work with us but i think it's important that when we start this conversation we are we are talking about our role in providing some of the resources for it we don't know what the cost is going to be though at this all i'm trying to say an exact number i'm saying we need to talk about it in those terms i don't want to slow the process up because we have a debate on because once you start publicly funding things there's a lot of different things but that's what everyone said at the last meeting so now you don't even know how much the things are going to cost you have to have the discussion first so that you can talk about what but if the discussion starts with this is going to be privately funded can we just agree to try to move this thing along ladies and gentlemen and and if if i may yes sir thank you so a principal concern i have many of us now have is that of course it is publicly funded or predominantly publicly funded that will raise a red flag and so that's exactly right unfortunately that is the world we live in goodness help us all so what i would like to said we just rolled the public then at the last meeting when we said we were going to pay for this if i may no i'm not okay with this because this isn't what this commission agreed to and we decided to pull out of the decision that we made a decision was made up here on tuesday this commission decided to rescind that vote with i'm not done with with the caveat that we were going to redirect those funds towards this project now we're saying meh privately funded that isn't what was agreed to up here that's all we told the public we're losing credibility with the public over this that's not what i'm hearing rob i'm not hearing that we're committing or not committing to that that's not i'm not asking for a specific amount i'm asking that we put we agree that we're putting some skin in the game on this project period absolutely then we're on the same page i agree that's it i'm not saying an amount or even a percentage i'm just saying that we need to agree that we are going to pay for part of this i'm recounting the discussion that we had and it was actually brought to it was the offer was there that they have there's private funding available so and we i'm just i'm just recounting this because i'm trying to move this to the next stage i i don't want to dwell on because we both know how difficult it is these organizations to raise money right now it's not realistic to expect them to pay for all of this but if we get the small two thousand dollar monument then it's two thousand dollars i think what mr it's also going to limit the scope of what we can do that's part of the discussion mr moore is making a very good point this wasn't about the location necessarily this is a broader issue if we utilize funds in a way that our state does not see fit we expose ourselves to losing up to and beyond 60 million dollars if a private organization is that was tied to non-compliance of traffic control devices we're not talking about traffic control devices or compliance anymore you can't just make up threats that don't exist that's not real the laws are being enacted now preemptively that are talking about how you're utilizing your money what do you think doge is yeah i'm i'm less concerned with that when we because the way we're trying to do it is on in a public space or even a private space right so let's stop having the conversation about money so on that note ladies i'd rather not be talking about who's going to pay for it and start getting into into the into starting to get the process done well the only thing i'd say is we can't we can't be arguing about who's paying for it just yet i agree with what you said but we have to know what it is first because what it is will drive what it costs and that that's what we have to evaluate so once we know what it is i think then we come back i i heard what you heard we were going to put some skin in the game but i've also heard from some private agencies have said they were willing to chip in i've heard from individuals that were willing to chip in so i think there's a path to get this done so if i can all live this is meant to be a gesture that we're doing as a city right as a compensatory gesture so if we don't start that conversation with we are going to have some skin in the game regardless of what that is we're not starting out the conversation i just think we're we're putting the cart before the course and i'm just telling you that we're going to be dealing with the public funds there's going to be a lot of voices that are going to be having a lot to say about this i'm trying to get it done i just don't want to see this morph into something that i don't want to see where it's a smaller and smaller gesture that we expect someone else to pay for right i don't want to see this change into another thing well this started out as a serious gesture from the city i want to stay that way ladies and gentlemen if i may take it under consideration all the points of view having been raised on the dais regarding the subject so miss burlato did a nice job outlining what the next couple weeks will look like partnership any opportunities to contribute to be involved in that effect has merit so for that reason ladies and gentlemen i as city manager will love to have the opportunity to make time to visit within the individual organization groups persons whatever the case might be who may have an interest in participating in that regard so that we can make that part of the nexus as we prepare considerations relative to what level of investment a la skin in the game might become necessary from the city of delray beach so mr mayor any of you ladies and gentlemen if you have names and addresses of contact people i will initiate scheduling respective meetings and follow-up with them beginning tomorrow the next day it doesn't get much sooner than that otherwise staff will be empowered both leadership of the department of public works and parks and recreation will be empowered to facilitate the trajectory that missy barletta well summarized in her commentary a little while ago so beginning tomorrow i would like to have that as part of the mix i'm looking at probably not the 29th because that's on a monday maybe september 30th or thursday october 2nd somewhere in that neighborhood that's only two weeks away we'll take care of that ladies and gentlemen if we can get consensus but the first sort of business for me in response to all five of your comments collectively is to begin a dialogue schedule a meeting with anybody who may have an interest in making contributions and getting involved to that effect so that when we come back to the city commission after our exercise the first last week september first week of october following meeting we'll have a comprehensive overview so that you all can make cogent direction so we have a workshop meeting if i may please we already have a workshop meeting scheduled to take place four weeks from tomorrow that would be tuesday october 14th this will be one agenda item we already have a previous commitment for economic development synergy we will have both dialogues in that particular session by which time we would have completed all the work evaluating ascertaining any level of private partnership contribution engagement in addition to what the opportunities haven't been expressed publicly so if we can proceed along those lines i think that would be productive and that is a fairly smooth time frame soon as we can in anticipation of wanting to be able to do various things of getting private money in as we do public things you're going to note on our agenda that lynn has been working on um uh item 7d which is essentially going to allow exactly what we're talking about here for private money to come in to assist the city that it does some of the things so this is all this is all part of a grander i mean i'm thinking this i'm just saying this is for events a city sponsored thing it's going to be events but it's also going to be it's going to be also to to it essentially allows if we have public purpose i know it says events but but this is if if it's something that we're going to try to do for a public purpose it's going to allow us we'll fashion language so that it works we're going to be able to get private money in when we're trying to do something for a public purpose um and that's the whole purpose of what it's supposed to be i know we're talking about it at the best but it's it's we're going to try to make the language work so that we can do exactly what we're all trying to achieve here so frankly ladies and gentlemen i'm trying to get it done thank you i would like to have you all's consensus formally so that i can proceed the office of the city manager will get started tomorrow scheduling necessary meetings with all those who may have an interest so i'll work with any of all of you involved who may be able to furnish that information so that my administrative team can get to work in that regard as soon as possible otherwise mr mita miss barletto you are likewise empowered accordingly we'll finalize the specific day sometime during the week of the 29th and that after of course we get the legwork squared away as you've outlined in your presentation so with that ladies and gentlemen if we can be permitted to proceed as outline i think that would be a productive approach yes you have my consensus yes and just a note the cra meeting is on the 30th of course and yom kippur is on the second yes sir yes ma'am we may have to we may have to do another resolution so but we can do that you know as a public because as we could do with like public art and things like that we can we can that's all public purpose so we have to be able to make that okay that's fine so the community engagement aspect of this will take place sometime after those days for the reasons that deputy vice mayor angela burns so eloquently clarified for us but nevertheless thank you well nevertheless nevertheless well in advance days in advance to the october 14th engagement we'll be able to accomplish a lot in terms of legwork but i look forward to the individual meetings my office will host with those who may have an interest in participating and offering some level of partnership whatever that may look like so i'll be in touch in the next day or so to get that all squared away and off we go mr mitot okay miss barletto okay thank you very much very well ladies and gentlemen thank you very much thank you both okay we have um resolution 152-25 you want to read the resolution for 7b a resolution of the city commission of the city of debris beach florida providing for the abandonment of interest in a portion of right-of-way adjacent to 300 grove place totaling approximately 1 354 square feet as more particularly described herein providing for an effective date and for other purposes mayor this is quasi-judicial i got you read the rules first if i can find them i know them by heart this hearing that we're about to have item 7b is a quasi-judicial hearing let me read you the rules this hearing will be conducted in accordance with the quasi-judicial rules the applicant in the city shall be allowed 15 minutes each to present their case the public shall be allowed to speak for three minutes each or a maximum of six minutes if the person represents an organization or a group of people who are present but agree not to speak the city commission and staff and the applicant may be allowed to cross-examine a witness the city or the applicant will be allowed to offer rebuttal testimony the decision to approve or deny an application or appeal may not be legally made upon the personal views as to whether a project is a good project or not nor may a decision be based on the numbers of citizens who support or oppose a particular project the law requires that all decisions must be made on the basis of whether the project meets the requirements of law the comprehensive plan and the land development regulations anyone here who's will who is going to be speaking on this subject if you could please stand and be sworn by the clerk thank you all very much if the if the city could enter the file into the record yes good evening amy alvarez development services the file number is 2025-178 thank you very much uh ex parte communication did anyone have any disclosure of uh ex parte communications i just had a text to the the applicant's uh representative i had a very brief conversation with uh mr costello voicemail but i didn't talk to him yeah jeff and i exchanged phone calls that we didn't actually connect and whatever's on the server so all right mr costello mayor commissioners uh jeff costello jc planning solutions here representing the applicant um this particular proposal involves um an abandonment of a a portion of right away about 50 by 27 feet it's a budding 300 grove place as you see on your screen there um this is all grove estates and this this parcel was was purchased by the development team and then uh also this is some more detail which is just a small portion of right away um unimproved um just north of third court these are just some photos of the area uh proposed for abandonment as i'll discuss in a minute um and there's just some other photos uh of the area and the adjacent properties and rights away um this property this right away was basically goes back to the plat original plat of town of linton block 41 and you see over the years there's been replats and that highlighted area indicates the right away um in question as well as another small portion of right away that's also going to be dedicated as part of this proposal for first avenue so the abandonment again is about 50 by 27 foot area about 1300 square feet um this uh and this does include in green you see the the area that will be dedicated it's a 25 25 portion owned by the applicant um basically this really needs to be first avenue rights away it really is that's how it functions uh the proposed use is to incorporate include this abandonment area into 300 grove place shown here on the screen this would all be one parcel and um the applicant again owns each to the east and west and they're going to convey the entire abandonment area to 300 grove place the land use designation is low density residential zoning rona again now this 300 grove place will now be incorporated into the grove estates development the property will connect to the water utilities within within this uh within the street here grove place and um it provides a required minimum frontage even though there's no access access is purely from the alley however this will then provide the frontage it's in your backup and it's a little bit more detail there's a 13 foot area here this will then all become frontage um over about 63 feet um and then some uh this also also addresses consistency with the uh city's addressing policy as well as fire safety so those are really reasons for this for this request it's an unimproved portion of right-of-way we will uh the applicant proposes uh the 12 foot water and sewer easement highlighted in blue it's the east 12 feet of the abandonment area and then uh with regard to the comp plan policies positive findings can be made the abandon area is an unimproved portion of second avenue northwest second avenue it's not being used as a means of access to a property uh the event will provide better connection to the grove estates community to the north uh when will not uh is not outlined in one of the capital improvement programs for improvement of this street and granting of the the abandonment will not impede use of the abutting rights of way positive findings can also be made to ldr section 249 b6 abandonment criteria as outlined on the screen this is a dead end portion of right of way there's no need for public purpose we uh the uh water and sewer utility easement will be dedicated there is a right of way that will be dedicated for first avenue uh the existing street network and connectivity will be maintained and the engineering division supports the event and so we respectfully request approval of the abandonment and that includes my presentation thank you thank you very much to the city thank you um if i can just for a second um just share good news i'm filling in for anthea tonight our esteemed director is being recognized by the um school of architecture right um so with the centennial uh alumni medals so um that's where she's at so hopefully i can slightly fill her shoes i just need the presentation available unless you don't want me to add anything and jeff did a great job there you go so okay so 300 grove place abandonment right away and i'm sorry i also want to recognize that sis rosenberg who's with me as well she's a senior planner on this project um okay so 300 grove place was actually originally plotted as lot seven of block 41 and that's going way back and we'll we'll see it single family zoned um i know that portion you see it again right at the end of northwest second avenue um there's uh if you can follow the star as we go through some of these uh this is where block 41 started in 1896 and then in 1914 block 41 was actually subdivided into the 22 lots so in 1963 there was a resolution where case on memorial methodist church incorporated they requested they owned blocks one through six of block 41 so they just they wanted um the portion of northwest second avenue that was adjacent to the lots that they owned to be abandoned so that's why um you know i'm trying to get the cursor there um the portion of second avenue wasn't abandoned also next to lot seven lot seven was never individually developed uh so if it ever did come in for a development they needed access so it that never happened but now it's planned to be developed um to be incorporated into grove estates and that's the yellow part on the right side of the screen and so they will have uh frontage into that development as was noted by the applicant them in right away so typically um when you have an abandonment it goes it's it's split in half half to the owner on one side half to the other side but because it's the same owner um they essentially um well they could pick but that would have created a little bit of other issues so they're required to provide everything to 300 growth place uh so they still meet the frontage requirements and don't create non-conformity as far as frontage goes um so again there are findings um whether or not the public right-of-way is needed for public purpose is it preventing access to a lot of record and is it impacting uh provision of utilities or other services and so with abandonment you can provide conditions two of the conditions and those are included in your resolution that you have um it's just that all of the abandoned area be deeded to 300 growth place and that the water and sewer easement is provided and that's in your next item should this be approved then we would move on to that one we went over the comp plan with the applicant planning and zoning board reviewed this august 25th of this year and recommended six to zero to approve and that's it great thank you very much this is a public hearing or any members of the public wishing to speak on this application please come to the lectern give your name and address for the record and you will each have three minutes seeing no members of the public public comment is closed is there any rebuttal um and cross-examination to i think no we're okay all right well then to the commission i looked at this quite a bit i'm fine with this okay mr long i'm supported commissioner burns yes i i think all the findings um have showed that um you know there's no need for public purpose and um the lot does not prevent access to the record um lots of record and um that um the last one it doesn't uh prevent any detriment to um the adjacent property so i'll be in support as well great commissioner gasol can you just go back to the slide one more second i just had one question thank you um so the development 300 grove will be developed but that will be left undeveloped because there will be an easement is that what you're saying the where is the easement located the easement is the eastern 12 feet of the red portion the part that will be abandoned but it will be on the property that is part of 300 grove play okay understood um i don't have an issue with it you know you you would have liked to have seen them put in ingress egress there because i do worry about the the effect of the um stacking on lake ida with this but it's it's essentially they could put a house there either way but this just makes it conforming is that the purpose of this for for right with the abandonment they then would not have sufficient um frontage got it this provides the frontage onto growth i i don't love abandonments because of our comp plan but in this instance i feel like it's suitable um so i will i'm i'm sorry i made the gentleman get up but i will uh agree to the abandonment based on the criteria that you're presenting thank you this is one of those alleys to nowhere so i mean it makes no i mean yeah it's it's a very small part it wasn't going anywhere no it was never going to be developed and you know so i i that's what i think so i need a i need a uh i need a motion one way or another here a motion to approve resolution number 152-25 second please call the roll commissioner marker yes vice mayor long yes commissioner cassell yes deputy vice mayor burns yes mayor carney yes motion to uh accept water and sewer easement agreement adjacent to 300 growth place second all in favor aye any opposed okay 7c thank you thank you thank you mr dakowitz mayor commissioners this is amendment a budget amendment it is um it is transferring two thousand dollars within the um to cover the cost of attendance at the 2025 cradle to career network event the money is coming out of travel and per diem and it's going into promotional activities special events they're just line items within the same uh department can i just ask one question have you met your um uh 60 is it 65 or 60 thousand dollar 65 because we are at the end of the year so you've met that that's why this just didn't get transferred without uh our approval okay thank you i appreciate it that's correct did you need the caption right into the record i'm sorry the caption yeah i want to read the caption for us resolution number 19125 a resolution of the city commission of the city of delray beach florida amending its budget for the fiscal year beginning october 1 2024 by providing a supplement by providing four supplemental appropriations in the amounts identified in exhibit a repealing all resolutions inconsistent herewith providing an effective date and further purposes okay i need a motion to approve resolution number 191-25 second all in favor aye opposed it is thank you 7d which we kind of i talked about a little bit lynn why don't you kind of explain what we're trying to achieve here perfect so um we obtained an ethics opinion from the commission on ethics essentially the police department wanted to find out if they could accept donations for national night out from vendors lobbyists people who do business with the city that as you know from the rules um that we all have to follow is is generally prohibited the commission on ethics came back and indicated that if our city events are declared to serve a public purpose then any of those events could receive donations from people who do business with the city so this the timing of this and the mayor and i were talking about it this morning the timing is is interesting because we've had discussions about potentially seeking to reduce city contributions on some of our special events and this opinion um will allow us to do so um in response to what the mayor was just asking earlier there are some citations in this ethics opinion so i do have the impression that if um for the pride memorial if we do declare it that it would serve a public purpose i do believe that we can um we can seek donations for that but i will clarify that in writing from the commission on ethics before the the workshop to confirm that so we can do this one now but we can come back the next time to to to make sure that that language is covered yes the way i read what the rule was is that if it's a public purpose the fact we said this but the city can engage in a project which is a public purpose and also get otherwise we're not allowed to do it without having a not-for-profit standing between us and the project which makes no sense exactly i mean it is subject to things like um the donations have to be accepted on behalf of the city and used solely for the public growers and there's no quid pro quo the standard language that you typically see so um so tonight's um agenda item is twofold one we are seeking uh consensus to have all the city events that are listed in our special events policy um i can read them to you if you'd like um the st patrick's day festival the spring fest egg hunt memorial day the pride festival and concert fourth of july festivities delvary beach ocean mile swim annual lifeguard competition national night out community resource fair amazing challenge kids fest halloween veterans day turkey trots surf festival family fun day 1 000 foot christmas tree lighting ceremonies and associated city events the holiday parade the menorah lighting and the new year's eve celebration if the commission declares these events as serving a public purpose um we'll notate that in the special events policy and go menorah lighting new year's eve celebration and green market did you say that i didn't say green market and i didn't say delvary beach open because those are not events that we put on oh fine okay so those are the only two i omitted the rest are all events that the city puts on so if we declare those to be a public purpose then we can um seek donations so that's the first part of this agenda item perfect okay how are we monitoring the process and how are we report how's the reporting going to work who's going to be responsible so so you know we have to ensure that we are um receiving donations from entities that have the same values of the city um i think that's important and it needs to be said um people are generous but we also you know for example when somebody wanted to do a cbd float in the parade you know we do have limitations in our rules that because it's a family friendly event we would not allow such a flow to participate so i think this is the same thing my recommendation is i don't think you need to see every single donation that staff receives i think the manager can handle those but if somebody wants to make a sizable donation and i would leave that number up to you i do think that that should come before you the same way that the special events come before you so you can all make a decision that this is something that you know we don't have concerns over a quid pro quo whether or not all the funds are being used for this special event so i would leave that number up to you but i would recommend that just to have a safeguard i don't foresee that really coming before you the event that we're going to talk about that affects national night out or the donation is 4500 so i don't think you're going to see huge huge numbers but i think if somebody were to make a sizable donation i do think that that should be something for the commission to um opine on i talked to lynn about this this afternoon i think the right number might be 25 000 i think if we get a sizable donation that's that big i think the commission should look at it i'm i'm open if we think the number should be higher or lower but i think it should be set at a reasonable threshold that the city team can make the decisions on almost all of it but if we happen to get a big offer that we get a chance to weigh in on it yeah i don't care what the numbers i mean i don't know the reality is we're going to be careful anybody who do we accept donations from so i'm not i think um anything can slip through but i mean yeah i think um to me the more important element of this is that we give i mean it is important that we make sure we're betting who donates we can't find ourselves in a situation where like the proud boys donated to like one of our events or something weird um but like by access we should be careful but like i'd also like to see organizations that want credit for it to be able to say sponsored by a specific organization for the event because that could encourage more more funds coming through that can be done that's what they used to do i don't think there's an issue with giving them credit yeah that's what we used to do everyone got credit so go so lynn do we need a threshold is that something it's your call you know do we care i mean i feel like we should maybe have a threshold and i also am wondering and i hate to be discouraging applicants of course but you don't want to have a situation where you get a big donation from somebody who's got an application in front of us pending review that's just not going to be a good look i think the manager would um would recognize that i mean i think it should be circulated through staff we have a special events committee that it's comprised of different departments so i think they could do the initial vetting and if maybe they don't feel comfortable with the size of the donation maybe they they have the right to elevate it to the city commission that we can even get donations i mean the reality is that 25 000 most of these are way under that so we wouldn't be asking anyway so right so do you want to just leave it if staff feels um it needs to be vetted by the commission they can just bring the donation request to you so that you don't have to put a number on it yeah but maybe we get emails notice notifying us of the donation it could be it could be we can't tell you we'll notify you but there can't be a discussion no no not for an exchange just so that we know what happened though we you know just says i like that idea mayor so any number or just a lot of time on it that's fine any number that's fine because one of us may have an idea about a group that the others may not have any information so it's probably as long as it's on consent yeah that's perfectly fine we can pull it if somebody has a question about perfect okay so with that uh we need a motion to approve the amendment to the special events policy to declare the city special uh city events as serving a public purpose so moved second all in favor aye any opposed great and so because um we do have a donation that is pending for the national night out which i believe is in just a few weeks um the uh the donation is 45 45 hundred dollars from the harvey and virginia kimmel foundation um does anybody have an issue with that no no i have no problem i just want to make sure because it's not going to be on consent so right so thank you thank you that's fine you showed the record so there's consensus we all agree on so everybody agrees on that there's yes thank you great item 7f which is the approval of the collective bargaining agreement between the city of delray beach and the palm beach county mayor e 70. where am i you set up i said f yeah they're two they're the same they're the same but they're two no yeah but i'm you're right okay collective bargaining between the city of delray beach and the palm beach county police benevolent association for the police officers and sergeants that's when i was reading so i was gonna i would have gotten to sergeant's if i had gotten finished yep dwayne de andre human resources department you're very familiar with this uh mayor and commissioners this is the collective bargaining agreement between the city of delray beach and the police benevolent association for officers and sergeants uh the c will the cba will be in effect retroactively from october 1 2024 to september 30th 2027 i'm seeking some motion to approve this collective bargaining agreement is that all we need a motion to approve motion to approve i don't see a number well we can have to discuss we're gonna have we're gonna have a motion a second and discussion so second okay for discussion i am so excited about our new chief of police and i feel like there's a different feeling in there and i'm beyond thrilled about it but everybody knows i'm not i have not been supportive of the extension of the drop program may have gone to six but definitely not really wanting to go to eight and i'll explain you know it the drop program is you get paid retirement for life and now it's retirement for life plus five years but it's retirement for life now plus eight years and there is a cost to the taxpayers i do think it stifles upward mobility for the younger guys and i do know when we got that uh list of the top 50 paid employees in the city some of our officers were making well over two hundred thousand dollars and so you're keeping those individuals potentially on for years uh longer than you would expect to have them and holding down people from moving up so i don't i i have concerns about it and also one of the reasons i have big concerns is it's not optional for the city to say hey we've got a bunch of great young guys who really want to move up we want to encourage them we want to keep them so we can't pause the drop program and say we're not going to uh we're not going to keep people on it once we accept it it is what it is and it's done i know my colleagues i know there's a three vote up here maybe a four i'm not sure but i also want to say to you last night because i swear i have must have the most boring life in the world something inspired me to go start looking at the retirement system actuary reports and it's very concerning because the all these reports we get that estimate what are the costs of this going to be what are the savings going to be are done based on assumptions and if you go through this report reports right the 2023 report shows that there was a net loss of two million four hundred seventy one uh thousand eighty six dollars since the last valuation because um lower investment rate of return than expected and the actuarial um assumption is 6.7 now i remember when the actuarial assumption was seven and i thought that was too high they moved it down to 6.7 and we haven't met it we may have met it this year but we haven't had our report yet there was something in the report from our actuary that when we were considering this but then you go back to the 22 two report loss of three million two hundred ninety five thousand three hundred and thirteen dollars because once again we did not meet our expected uh rate of return so the assumption changed and lowered but yet we're still not meeting it which makes you wonder so that sent me on another quest to look at the quarterly financial investment reports which i found actually kind of interesting because i do have a little bit of knowledge about investments and some of these i couldn't even find online timber we're invested in timber that's interesting we're invested in a lot of things um but the quarterly reports for year uh for 2025 thus far have and i want to read this to you because there's it's 70 pages and you can go through the whole thing and look maybe i'm not understanding this right but there's one section when they talk about our fund compliance and it says total plan returns equaled or exceeded the 6.75 actuary earnings assumption over the trailing three to five year periods answer is no the next question is total plan return equaled or exceeded the total plan benchmark over the trailing three to five year periods answer is no the next question is total plan return ranked within the top 40 percentile of its peer group over trailing three to five year periods and the answer is no so i would say to you that when we're getting these reports about what this pension is going to cost us uh it's based on a number an assumption of returns that we aren't getting and we haven't been getting since well before 2022 so actually i'm sorry i shouldn't say that once in june 2021 we exceeded the 6.75 now i asked mr dakowitz do you sit on these boards because when i looked at the fire and i only it got to be 11 o'clock last night so i only went through a couple of the fire reports mr dakowitz only sits on the general employee i would like a workshop presentation if you're all interested as well i want to understand what's going on because i even if you are if you're uh going at the low end right and you've got bought treasury bonds and cds for safety on the one end of your your investment spectrum they're getting over four percent all the mutual funds that i'm aware of are producing between nine and fifteen percent it's been remarkably successful if you're invested in good mutual funds and even if you have some stocks that aren't amazing they're still doing okay so i am struggling to understand who's making the determinations about where we're investing when when you look at the investments i mean somebody needs to review this somebody needs to understand why we're not making more money on 150 million dollars now it could very well be that there are restrictions on what you can invest in i'm sure there's a certain amount of money that you have to keep blocked out to pay out restrictions but but this to me doesn't make sense okay so mayor can i just make a point of order please so as a reminder we were at a public hearing yeah we were at impasse yep and you voted on a contract which is what's before you i understand i'm just explaining why i'm not voting i don't want the drop i'm sorry i think you'll have your opportunity to vote commissioner cassell but i just i we need to be very very clear right now that what you were going to impose if the union didn't accept this is exactly what's in this contract except for a shorter term so um i just want to be clear we don't need to create an issue um no no that was me asking for a workshop on a separate issue i think we need to understand how these investments are working understood but and you have to remember those are three separate legal entities that are not under your purview that have their own investment consultants and have their own advisors so while you have every right to to we have to invest when they're not making money taxpayers the city makes a contribution but you have to be mindful giant contribution they have their own and the employees that they have their separate legal entities and so as as your control over them is is is more limited than probably most people would think so just wanted to remind everybody that this contract would have been imposed so i just don't want to create a problem up here on no i'm just explaining why i i have concerns with the actuary report because you're going on assumptions that haven't proven out for four years but but the other thing is too is part of this um arrangement that you're going to be approving this evening it does readjust the benefits that the employees will receive in order to try to improve the rate of return and the assumptions and those things so while i completely agree with you and i i know the actuary would agree that these are assumptions and everybody knows the saying about when you assume at the end of the day what the police are contributing is going to be more the officers are going to be contributing and receiving is going to be different than what the current state is to hope potentially improve the the financial scenario that's i've said i'm i'm sorry yeah i guess um you know this has been a frustrating process to say the least i will say um we've had to do it behind closed doors and that's not again anyone's fault it's just the way the situation works right and so people didn't get to see the conversations behind doors they just saw that we were at impasse for months and months and months as we lost officers and morale plummeted and things just kept getting worse for a while and folks would ask me how can this still be going um and that that whole diatribe was an example of why this got extended it's important information it was unnecessary um that we that we did that we did go this long i'm only gonna be here for two more months guys i hope you guys don't do this with fire contract or do this again ever because it caused irreparable dam not irreparable but it's going to take a long time to fix it we lost a lot of officers here you know i think we all want what's best for the cities we have different perspectives on how to get there i hope there was a lesson learned from this this is an essential service in a competitive market period period if we're not competitive we lose officers we saw that i hope everyone uses this this eight months that that we you know got held in this stalemate and got in this position i hope every i hope we all learn something from this collectively and we don't do this again and this city doesn't do this again i'd hate to see it because without our first responders without public safety everything falls apart here so but i am now on a positive note i am so glad this is done i'm very excited to have chief hunter at the helm and i'm very confident that we'll be able to recruit and retain going forward i think that we are now we've agreed on a very fair contract that is going to help us retain and recruit those officers and talent that we need to keep delray beach safe and so thank you to all of you especially you commissioner marker and commissioner burns um for for making this happen but i really hope we all can learn a lesson from this moment regardless of what side of this debate we were on because it didn't have to get this bad it really didn't and i hope it doesn't happen again thank you commissioner burns i'm just i'm just ready for it to happen um just so glad that we finally got here and congratulations and i'm ready i've made the motion my view there was a first in a second the years in the second um my view is i don't think i could be any clearer of my thoughts about the eight year drop than i was by email by dais by balloons in the air and planes carrying around the banner i was very clear we voted and the way i typically operate is when we vote and we send something forward i then try to speak with a unified voice on matters although i might my everyone knows my displeasure i mean i'm not gonna i'm not gonna re-litigate whether i think you were right or wrong on that point so i'm not going to do that let me just say that my view is we passed something we sent it to collective bargaining it was approved so i'd like to speak with with the commission speaks with it was the commission decision i stand by the commission decision whether i agreed with it or not and now we have the decision to ratify the contract so i'm going to vote in favor of the contract to be ratified because that's just the way i think that procedurally i i the way i operate so we have a motion and a second could you please call the roll vice mayor long yes commissioner cassell no i'm sorry deputy vice mayor burns yes mayor carney yes commissioner marker yes motion passed great okay 7f approval of the collective bargain agreement between the city of delray beach and the palmish county police benevolent association for lieutenants yeah mayor commissioners this is this is the cba for the collective bargaining agreement between the police benevolent association the city of delray beach for lieutenants it also would be retroactive from october 1 2024 to september 30 2027 something you're very familiar with seeking looking for a motion to approve this could i ask duane a question certainly thanks duane um i think mr moore you said you put the money in the budget for these two including the increase of the 600 000 that was uh unassumed for the uh upper level individuals in the okay what i i brought this up before as a concern because once we increase the um pay all the way up now we're looking at ladies and gentlemen in the department who are in the department not in a in a managerial position making more than a number of our directors yeah so what's our what what are what is the uh how does that so i'm glad you brought that up you did bring that up at the impasse hearing that miss jelen was talking about and i think i answered it then but i'll answer it again so what we are going to do due to the upward trajectory of the officers and sergeants and the lieutenants we're going to be looking at the executive command staff over at the police department they're in pay grades we'll have to be looking at the pay grades for the probably the maximums to be moved up we're going to be benchmarking with other municipalities and agencies i'll be bringing that to mr moore for some direction there and that'll probably be brought to him relatively quickly after the passing of these collect departments have that money in the budget are you planning on using that additional approximately 450 that we just squeezed out of the budget that won't be necessary there'll be some accumulated savings within the dory beach police department itself to take care of that in particular which is fact excuse me which is factored into 25 26 what savings do you have within the dory beach police department itself as a result of some of the previous vacancies we'll be able to offset from there motion motion to approve second call the roll commissioner cassell deputy vice mayor burns yes mayor carney yes commissioner marker yes vice mayor long yes motion i'd just like to say thanks real quick to the negotiation team for the city of delray beach uh they did a really good job during this impasse hearing and and i think they had a shout out yeah all right i guess i have the gavel for a minute while the mayor's in the restroom um so let's move on to uh public hearing and second readings no number 8b is going to be 8a oh we moved it right yes okay so would you like me to read it yes please so a resolution of the city commission of the city of delray beach florida certified to the property prison tax collector palm beach county the final rates of millage to be levied by the city of delray beach for the fiscal year beginning october 1 2025 establishing the city of delray beach's final general fund operating millage at 6.1611 which contributes to a final aggregate millage rate for the city of delray beach that is 9.37 percent higher than the aggregate rollback millage rate of 5.7329 establishing the city of delray beach's final debt service millage rate at 0.0309 providing for an effective date and for other purposes the intent of the city commission is to adopt an operating millage rate of 6.1611 which is necessary to fund salaries operating expenses capital expenses and the general fund and to adopt a debt service millage of 0.0309 for a total millage rate for fiscal year 2025-26 of 6.1920 0.1920 back to you man yeah you nailed the timing huh thanks so much for that yeah input sorry um this is a so mr dockwitz is the second of two required public hearings first public hearing was september 3rd right i think you're all pretty well versed in the numbers you've seen the millage rates before um the operating millage rate for this current year that we're about to conclude is 5.9063 recommendation is 6.1611 for this coming fiscal year 26 the debt millage rate is going from point 0.0337 to 0.0309 total millage rate from 5.94 to 6.1920 the average homeowner with an assessed value home of 447 888 dollars the city portion of the tax bill is going from two thousand six hundred sixty dollars to two thousand seven hundred seventy three dollars an increase of 113 dollars the last 10 years on the commission's uh goal was to lower the millage rate each year consistently um it went down last this current year from 24 from 6.4982 to 5.94 this 26 proposed 6.1920 is still below the 2024 millage rate total millage rate of 18.4518 is composed of the city of 6.1920 the public schools of 6.3210 and the county of 4.5330 homeowner pays 2773 in ad valorem taxes to the city assuming the four hundred forty seven thousand eight hundred eighty eight dollar taxable value uh by fund type we're looking at the general fund of two hundred one million five hundred thirty one thousand sixty seven dollars the enterprise funds which support themselves with their rates and fees is 140 million seven hundred ninety thousand two hundred and three dollars special revenue funds 32 million four hundred twenty nine thousand five hundred fifty eight dollars internal service fund which supports the other operations of the city 45 million five hundred forty five thousand four hundred eighty five dollars and debt service four million five thousand six hundred dollars um here's a tabular version of those dollars so the revised fiscal year 25 budget that we're finishing this month three hundred ninety nine million nine hundred sixty three thousand two hundred seventeen of which the general fund was one hundred eighty nine point three million the proposed budget four hundred twenty four million three hundred one thousand nine hundred thirteen of which the general fund is two hundred one point five million the dollar change on the general fund twelve point two three million of six point four six percent and overall the twenty four million three hundred thirty eight thousand six hundred ninety six dollar increase is six point zero nine percent the highlights estimated taxable value of properties increased by eight point seven four percent from eighteen point one billion to nineteen point six billion the fifteenth year of growth with values at the highest level in the city's history expected increase of property tax revenue from one hundred three point two million to one hundred eighteen million the operating millage rate will experience a modest zero point two five two increase of four point three percent from nine point from five point nine zero six three to six point one six one one mills after twelve state straight years of declines increase in parking revenue of zero point eight million decrease in projected usage of fund balance reserves from nine point five million to three point four million here are the general fund expenditures by department um looking at the largest we're looking at the police going from fifty point three to fifty six point eight million an increase of six point five million twelve point nine seven percent higher from forty nine point two million to fifty point one two million an increase of nine hundred four thousand nine hundred four thousand nine nine six of only one point eight four percent i'd say chief martin uh should be congratulated given the fact that this incorporates the move from twenty four forty eight to twenty four seventy two parks and rec went from twenty two point three million to twenty three point zero an increase of seven hundred ten thousand three point one eight percent and when you look at the total going from one hundred eighty nine point three million to two hundred one point five million for change of twelve point two three million or six point four six percent highlights on the expenditures personnel services salaries and benefits increased from one hundred fourteen point two million to one hundred twenty point eight million a five point eight percent increase the pva has reached an agreement impacting next year's budget and has just been approved debt millage rate decrease from 0.0337 to 0.0309 due to an increase in taxable assessed value and lower bonded debt service requirements increase of three point three million tax incremental revenue payments to the cra driven by an increase in estimated taxable value from twenty one point three million to twenty five point three million enterprise funds this is where they are self-supporting and their revenues should cover all of their expenses water and sewer rate adjustment of four point five percent to be effective on october 1st 2025 projected monthly bill of seventy two dollars and twenty cents for average customer with six thousand gallons of usage stormwater fund new stormwater rate structure implemented in october 2023 funding of capital projects and grant matches sanitation fund rate adjustment of 2.14 percent effective october 1st 2025 curbside collection for residential single family of nineteen dollars fifty four cents a month municipal lakeview golf course is overdue renovations and repairs and we are in the process of looking at a bond issuance for the delray beach golf course city marina cemetery construction of mausoleum and here we are september 15th discussion i would agree with you that we have to commend chief martin i think coming out of the gate we were expecting about a 10 million dollar increase in that department but wouldn't like to note that i think part of the reason why were there is because we had asked about zero-based budgeting in the larger departments and he went in and did that and that's you know how we find ourselves here so i do think we have to annually pick a big department and and ask them to do that because that's a big savings from what we anticipated thank you for the presentation this is a public hearing any members of the public wishing to come and speak on this matter please come to the lectern give your name and address you will each have three minutes susan hansford 800 south ocean boulevard delray 33483 i'm not sure if i'm speaking at the right time but i did want to speak about the budget and that's i think where we're at um i've had in the last i'm only doing 10 years back even though i've been here since 1992 but for the last 10 years with my homesteaded home my taxes have gone up 22 percent and the the uh all the different figures i saw everything just the costs just keep going up up up up up up which hey we know that from going to the grocery store but we also have so much increased um tax revenue from new residents from all sorts of increases in property value my property value has gone up has even though it's homesteaded it's increased by three percent every single year i think that's the cap is three percent correct on the tax rate yes and it has it has gone up three percent every single year so it's gone up in the last 10 years my tax bill has gone up 22 percent i think that's wrong for a homesteaded uh to go up 22 the other thing is the stormwater charges um i have a lot of people in in my neighborhood and even someone i spoke to earlier here is having horrible uh flooding problems in their neighborhoods our storm water charge has gone up 483 percent since 2023 that is outrageous it wouldn't be outrageous if the problem was fixed but it's not so now in 2022 we were paying 63.96 cents for stormwater and that goes all the way back to 2015 because i only went back 10 years then in 2023 we had a 237 percent increase in stormwater and it went up to 216.38 this year 2025 it's gone up to 373 dollars and four cents that's a 483 percent increase and no results we have no results to show for for that thank you thank you very much any other members of the public wishing to speak on the millage adoption for the city of dalry beach seeing none public comment is closed to the commission need some kind of a i'd like to move that we i would like here i'm going to make the motion that we adopt the millage rate that we have currently in existence of 5.94 second okay um well we can vote on it if you want well can we talk about it because we're going back to the beginning some of the people here probably haven't been paying attention since the beginning um well we have to because if you're going back to his rate you have to go back to the present the first presentation we had on june 10th which showed we have a 26 million dollar deficit 26 point something it's 23.9 but that didn't include the funding for the non-profits and it didn't include the three men on the ambulance so once again mayor you know i came in here i went through the 500 page document i pulled out line by line even down to 50 for steel toe boots uh the seven thousand dollars for the organization that isn't even in existence the explorer program which is no longer i i did my due diligence 108 million dollars the city is required to pay just for safety we're getting 118 million dollars in tax revenue it's not enough money to function our job is to provide services to the residents how do we do it without money i followed you last year concerned i told you when we were campaigning when you get in there and you see how bad the finances are you may change your mind we did it and you made a speech that said we i know i can never do this again because the costs are increasing you said it over six times when we did this but we did it and it was i mean for us it was for the staff it was scary for us it was exciting but we suffered and don't we can't say we didn't through through the course of the year financially and now here we are if i gave a list of five ways that the city can find revenue right development should be paying assessments they're not they should have been years ago i've been asking for this for years it's still not happening fees for services to other municipalities i do not believe we are getting the right fees for our services but i'd like somebody to look into that um are we properly billing for our ems services now the chief says we are but if you look online at the various levels it doesn't appear that it appears we could be billing more and it wouldn't be overwhelming uh relatively speaking um are we getting proper interest i was speaking with henry on this on our estimated uh we estimated your motion is still pending oh thank you no you can't have it back yet um we estimated 2.9 million in 2026 uh for investment returns and only uh three and we had 3.9 more in 2024 so where why aren't we getting more money on our investments there are ways that we can be getting revenue but if we if we don't find it we have to tax our residents and we have yet to find it i made the same plea one year ago and we're still sitting here so the problem is i know what the financial situation is and it's not good we've taken our reserves from 35 percent over the course of four years and i know i said this at the earlier workshop but there's people here now our reserves our rainy day fund our emergency fund was at 35 percent we're now at teetering on 21 teetering we used to buy vehicles outright for the city now we have to lease them because we don't have the money and i am would be thrilled to reduce taxes because i would benefit from that reduction but someone tell me where we're getting the money because 90 percent of our expenses are obligations under contracts and and what are we going to do you just voted in the union contract it comes at a cost the fire union contract came at a cost these have obligations that we have to pay and unless someone shows me you know mayor i adore you but you keep saying we've gotten granular reports i mean the thing was this big i spent two weeks going through it line by line if you have something to produce produce it but thus far you produced an email that was really misleading because you're not you're telling people come out demand transparency demand accountability your email had wrong numbers in it totally inaccurate numbers your email said if we stay where we are at the 5.9 we need we'll get 8.5 million in additional ad valorem revenues and we only need 60 to 70 percent of that number to cover our costs which are our required pay and insurance increases that number was totally inaccurate it's 11.5 million if we stay where we are at right now we cannot afford the cost uh increases to our for to our insurance and we cannot incur the cost of the required by contract increases that our employees are expecting so if you you said oh well we'll just get rid of the teen center 500 000 we don't even have control of that we can't do it you said get rid of the woman in education get rid of the guy in economic development get rid of the person in sustainability those three salaries together are like 360 000 maximum where are we getting the other 26 million 25 million nobody has given a good answer for that mr morse said well we'll just take 8 million from our reserves how are we going to do that we'll cut out the vacancies we'll cut out attrition we we didn't include the third man on the ambulance but everybody came to us and said we want three on the ambulance so we i mean i need i want to be with you on this but i need solid numbers to show it's possible and thus far all we're having is conversation now you said i'm doing all the work no one's bringing in any numbers i spent an hour at the last meeting going through a 500 page document line by line pulling out things that we could cut mr moore thank you mr dakowitz you cut them but we're still coming up way short so show me how this num these numbers work deputy vice mayor burns you have anything yeah i just no it's okay i'm just going to say that um you know with even with the cuts even with the deficits the the the once the 6.1920 is still not solving the problem and especially not increasing services for our residents we're we're cutting we're not increasing so to raise the millage they're already going to have their property taxes raised the sewer of rates are raised this is just not a good time in my opinion to raise any cost and and i understand the deficits but either way you look at it with either millage we're still in a deficit and having to use reserves to um to bring us to the to a balanced budget so i'm still in support of just leaving it where i wasn't in support of the road back in the first place definitely not and and fear exactly what we're going through however but you're acknowledging we're going through that and you're still willing to go but i'm saying that whatever that raising the millage to this millage still does not solve the problem we still have to cope to the reserves we always go to the reserves there it's the money carried over from the last year we just have to keep them out of balance yes you yeah i mean i'm i'm seeking the chair so i got a mass do you want to talk oh yeah mayor it's up to you let me let me just say a couple of things first of a first of all you're right i i said last year that it wouldn't go to the rollback rate i would love to go to the rollback rate now that'll bring it down to like 5.3 that would be absolutely fabulous and i know that's not going to get anywhere so what i'm proposing is that we don't increase the rate that we're having sufficient revenues come in to cover many of the expenses that we're going to have but no it's not just one thing alone you are exactly right and you seem to think that that one seems to think not to personalize but one seems to think that if you don't put a somebody on a budget they're somehow going to act like they're on a budget my proposal would have forced would have forced the city to look within itself to find sources of revenues you say why they didn't do anything why should they do anything we just you know we're going to cover it with the millage why should they look for additional expenses the way you get people to do things is to hold their feet to the fire cut the bring to a village and say you've got to live within this number i do budgeting a different way i i say you got to live within the number we seem to be saying well this is the number so we need to raise the millage no you force your number to go down you find that that's everything is on the table i mean everything is on the table leasing instead of buying okay i mean i think that we're leveraging our assets to do that and i happen to think that's the way everybody's doing it these days um but the way the way to force the city to look for additional sources of revenue to make them have to look for additional sources of revenue we are not doing that we're not doing that as it relates to to staff management we're not doing that as it relates to revenue management we're not doing that as it relates to trying to trying to maximize and to monetize the assets the city has so no i think that we have enough money with the letting them pay the additional seven percent or six point one whatever the number was going to be um additional taxes is enough if you look at just how much they've been paying over the years it's enough it's time for the city to do its job to figure out where they can find the savings we can you know and truly until you put them on their feet to the fire you're just not going to get it because why should they why should they you just keep raising the revenue i mean why should they i wouldn't i mean i'm saying well yeah they keep saying we got to raise revenue but let me just increase the millage we won't have to look at those things well i think we should be looking at those things i think we should be looking top to bottom with with this city in ways you can save money i do believe we can find the money just pretend that we did with a hunt close to 200 million dollars you can't find the money is kind of like with with the growth that we've had in the budgets with the growth that we've had in spending with the growth that we had in in in revenues to say that you don't have the money to figure out where we can cut and streamline i just i just don't buy it so i i you know i understand the way you think this is just the way i think because i when i'm putting people on a budget i put them on a budget so you've got to live within this number and that is the way to ensure that they look for other revenues that's the way they ensure that they look at whatever the structures are within the organization that's the way you get it done my that's my view commissioner marker would do anything to add to this lively discussion i do i'll try not to be too lively because you'll hit me with you'll hit me with the mallet um which i would not you're the least of my concerns understood so for those those of you that weren't here last year uh i i absolutely voted for no increase last year um i thought that was the right thing to do um i'm happy we did it um i knew at the time the following year would be a tough year the the i've been through this too many times i knew it was going to happen and i will tell you the times that we're in right now and the times that we're going in 25 2025 and 2026 um costs are rising um most of you probably been to the grocery store recently huh how's that how's that trip i bet that hurts well here's here's the report from the consumer package goods industry one of the industries that i come out of about companies plans for raising supermarket prices this year there's 11 companies that were surveyed all but one plan on major increases at grocery stores this year those that are going to be increasing them coca-cola colgate palmolive pepsico mondelese nestle kraft heinz procter and gamble and general mills i'm sorry general mills is the only one that does not have plans to increase costs so you know i i watch that those industries very closely they affect my wallet they affect your wallets um and we're going to be paying more and i think that what that triggers for me is okay for the consumers groceries are going to grow but it also means our city costs are going to grow to you it's naive thinking if you don't think we are i you know i mentioned in a previous meeting here earlier today i forgot it seems like yesterday we we buy office supplies a lot of office supplies in the city we buy paper ink toner pens paper they're all going up guys you can sit here and think it ain't going up but i'm telling you right now it's going up um and you know we have contracts we contract with other industries and other businesses prices are going up too people are expecting to be getting paid a little bit more because they go to the grocery store and what used to be 20 is now 60. i get it um julie talked about the reserves this was near and beer near and dear to me last year um i'm not loving the fact we've gone from 35 million to 21 million i i don't like that i brought this up before that's percentages but i don't like that we've we've probably not be on your side yeah no i'd be on my side too i'm sorry about that misspoke um but i don't like that our reserves are are getting down that low we we need those stuff goes wrong you know we need it for bonds there's a whole lot of reasons why um the rate that that i'm in favor of is is on the table on on the on the screen at 6.19 you'll you take a look at that it's the second lowest rate that we've proposed in 10 years so please don't feel like we're trying to go deep and and hard we're not it's the second lowest rate in 10 years it's been proposed um the cuts are hard there's no doubt about that um and and so far a lot of the cuts that have been mentioned in my opinion are vague um that's just my corporate experience coming out um young lady when you talked about the property values that that hit me that was that was you're right there and i'm i'm really glad that we can sit here and our property values are going up that's in general a good thing but you're right every point you made was right your costs are going up a bit and no one loves that and mine are going up too i just got my tax bill from the the county yesterday um yeah there you go so my my bottom line here is um i don't think we can take a flyer on the cost this year i think it's too risky for the city i think it's too risky for for all of us i think the 6.19 is a it's a perfectly good compromise again it's the second lowest rate in 10 years so we we shouldn't feel like we're we're punishing anybody so i i'm in favor of the 6.19 rate chairman all right mr long could i make one comment please of course thank you mayor you said there were no cuts that's not an accurate representation the first round that we reviewed there were over four million in cuts after the last meeting when i went through the 500 page report there's over 460 000 in cuts and in between there were cuts i mean the the fire department cut out eight million dollars we are cutting to keep ourselves within this number going to your number we're 26 million short and i just i i've said to you from day one show me how you can do it and i may come along with you but you've you haven't shown us anything it's just talk and you know the fact of the matter is you're right we've been asking for this stuff and we haven't gotten it but i don't see during the course of the year you know concerns about that it's you can't be fighting this stuff on the day on the eve of the vote it has to be consistent throughout the course of the year all right maybe just one one quick thing and then i promise can we keep it well i do when you want to say i know that's why i'll let you do it i mean i'm this is like the greatest hits right now guys we've already had this conversation you know i know i mean i'm just i just want to point out a couple of small things that we've had you know in the last 10 years from 2015 to 25 we've had a 78.9 percent increase in our budget 78.9 we've had our employees have gone up 24.9 percent over the same period that our population growth has only been 7.09 i understand of course about the pricing increases i would suggest that we don't go to office depot to buy our our things like that but the point is obvious i mean i don't like because i think you have a long-term contract with them i'll leave it at that yeah but we get we get a bulk rate we got but that doesn't matter you know what mayor that's going up too it is but not to the same not the same percentage but that doesn't matter that's not the point i'm trying to make um you know we understand there's this increase in prices which begs my question if if if they're going to be increased prices that i can't control with other people out there to the grocery store clothing store stationary store wherever store they're going to go to then shouldn't i be doing the best i can in the prices that i can control to try to ensure that i get a lower tax rate so give them some kind of relief and by by staying to the rate that we adopted last year they're still going to bring in some millions of dollars is that enough no do we need to do more yes should we can we do more yes i think we can maximize our revenues better i think i'm not going to re-articulate all those things i made my point so i've that i'm just i think this is a really bad time to raise taxes on people as i said we're they're already going to pay if they stay at the same rate they're already going to pay six and a half percent more assuming their homestead and something like that you know and depending on what they're done with the commercial properties which are also being impacted greatly by this all i'm saying is there should be enough money coming in with other things we can do to maximize our own revenues to be able to do that rate so that's that's my story and i'm sticking to it mr chairman all right i'll keep my comments real brief because we've already been over this many many times um so i hate to keep framing this as raising taxes i mean technically that's what we're doing but it's a bit reductive like look at the graph if you look at it we're really lowering if we're looking at nine years we're still lowering millage there was just one aberrant year in the middle which maybe some of us up here advocated against um we wouldn't have to talk about raising anything had we not made that decision last year we would be on a normal trajectory where we still reduce millage every single year so in my mind this we're just correcting it but it's still on a nine year trajectory where we're lowering it and i imagine if we don't do anything you guys don't anything crazy you could lower it by a normal amount next year too and that's how we help taxpayers and still pay our bills here right i mean listen we don't have to we've we've traveled the road but we all have our different perspectives on this at the end of the day no one wants to sit up here and say let's raise millage or let's raise taxes don't none of us want to do that right it's it's politically it's damaging to anyone right it would be god you know how easy it'd be for me to say yeah let's lower them and then ride off into the sunset and you guys clean up the mess i'd love to do that but i'm not going to do it it's not the right thing to do i know you'd love it i'm sorry i'm sorry mayor i can't that's compelling uh i can't do it um so now that everyone's spoken their piece can we call the vote please it's just a reminder the vote is to approve a millage of 5.94 i made the motion there's a second so you can deputy vice mayor burns yes mayor carney yes commissioner marker no vice mayor long no commissioner cassell no motion failed could i get a motion for the resolution that's on the agenda if anyone's interested in making that motion to approve resolution number 197-25 i have a second yes yeah that's correct thank you i apologize i have a second yeah we need a second i thought i heard a second no second could we call the vote on that please mayor carney no commissioner marker yes vice mayor long yes commissioner cassell yes deputy vice mayor burns no motion you've already engraved it with your name on it it's unbelievable pass it back okay we're resolution 8b formally 8c resolution 203-25 would you please read the resolution into the record a resolution of the city commission of the city of delray beach florida certified to the property appraiser and tax collector of palm beach county the final rate of millage to be levied by the city of delray beach within the downtown development authority taxing district for the fiscal year beginning october 1 2025 establishing the downtown development authority taxing district final operating millage of 1.0000 which contributes to a final aggregate millage rate for the city of delray beach that is 9.37 percent higher than the aggregate rollback millage rate of 5.7329 providing for an effective date and further purposes the intent of the city commission is to adopt an operating millage rate of 1.0000 which is necessary to fund the cost of operations and maintenance for the downtown development authority so we have a brief presentation by downtown development authority executive director laura simon in terms of why we are where we are but it is their proposal and requests and therefore before the city commission this evening miss simon if you would please good evening i'm not sure if we have a presentation on file but we are here i'm laura simon with the downtown development authority i'm also joined by our new board chair jim knight and part of my team but we are this is our second hearing for the final adoption of our one mill which will fund our organization's operating budget to be reinvested back into the downtown this is our downtown millage that we are keeping flat at the one mill and we'll look to with a proposed number of which will the avalorum revenue would be at two million uh thirty seven thousand nine hundred and eighty dollars to fund our operations for both marketing economic vitality our place making and our organization to operate this fiscal year budget so we look to um we had meeting last uh week and our board reviewed our budget so looking forward to um funding that for this fiscal year i'm here for any questions and it is a this is a public hearing right this is a public hearing thank you i'm getting there i just waiting for everyone to finish um if there are any members of the public wishing to speak on this item please come to the lectern give your name and address for the record you will each have three minutes my name is suzanne prado i have three restaurants in delray beach and i am so happy to be here to recommend that we fully fund the dda it is an organization that has helped us thrive and i think we all agree that it is run by very a really great group of people that are just very present and in our community making things amazing um i also did want to say that it has changed throughout the years the city of delray beach has evolved and made us more uh present and we we get a lot of notoriety we get a lot of um know us now for our restaurants for our businesses for our merchants that they support for fashion week for savor the avenue for the events at old school square so i don't want to take up too much of anyone's time i just want to make sure that that continues and i'm here to support the dda thank you so much for your time i appreciate there are any other members of the public wishing just yes jump up faster mavis i nearly jabbled you i know gotta be fast uh good evening mavis benson 800 greensward court and i just want to share a letter from another one of our businesses in town in the downtown i'm writing today to express my wholehearted support with the downtown development authority and to emphasize the vital role they play in the success vibrancy and unity of our downtown community as someone who resides and works directly in the heart of delray beach for over a decade i have seen firsthand the impact of the dda's tireless efforts their unwavering commitment to uplifting local businesses fostering economic growth and building meaningful community connections is not only inspiring it's essential the dda consistently demonstrates what is meant what it means to lead with both heart and strategy from creating dynamic campaigns and hosting energizing events to developing collaborative initiatives that bring businesses and residents together they have become a cornerstone of progress in our city their forward thinking and inclusive approach ensures that no voice is left unheard and every business large or small has the tools and opportunities to survive to thrive what sets the dda apart is their unique ability to blend creativity with actionable impact their initiatives aren't just well intentioned they drive they drive measurable results they generate a foot traffic boost local sales and foster an identity that makes delray beach feel like home to so many laura simon and her entire team's passion is contagious and their vision for what is what the city can be is what continues to elevate us all beyond the numbers and economic benefits the dta dda nurtures something deeper a sense of belonging pride and shared purpose in today's world that is no small feat i urge you to continue to support and invest in the dda knowing that their work ripples far beyond any single event or campaign they are integral to the very fabric of our downtown and our future depends on their continued presence creativity and leadership with sincere appreciation and unwavering support dana demonaco dva monaco from the events and marketing manager at silverball retro arcade and if i may add to this i totally agree with what she has said and i would express that the same is true with the way they have managed they have become the managing partners at old school square thank you thank you very much mayor vice mayor commissioners uh jim knight 85 southeast fourth avenue um i am uh the chairman uh honored to be the chairman of the dda board i also am a taxpayer paying the dda taxes i think there's been some questions about whether my lease and so forth included the taxes and so forth it does i do pay the taxes of the dda and i am pleased with the work of the dda board and everything's been going on but i'd like to go back a little bit if i can so 20 plus years ago marjorie frere who was here with a picture with you all earlier um she was heading up the dda and um i was not able to be a board member i don't know if i qualified or not but i was a block and i got to deliver the flyers from the second block so basically where worthing park is to swinton on both sides of the the street well back then we were known as dark dirty and dangerous it's a fact it's just what we were i would take the flyers from one month that marjorie would hand out i'd go to every single stoop of each uh storefront whatever and drop them off next month i'm picking up the same exact flyers they're weathered but the same exact flyers it's so important to realize how far we have come as a city jointly it's the city it's the cra it's the dda it's the historic group it's a team effort we're finally getting to the point we're now getting some pretty significant office businesses to come to town vertical bridge digital bridge and some others now we couldn't get anybody when we lost office depot years ago we went to boca which boca still has the largest corporate presence of any area in all of palm beach county people are now saying i want to be in delray i want my business to be in delray because i want to walk to the shops the restaurants i want to bring clients here also those clients are moving and living here and this is a joint team effort and i encourage you all i would greatly appreciate the support of keeping the one mill and let the dda do its job which has been doing a great job for many many many years and thank you for your time thank you very much good evening everyone stacy dowdle 801 delmar way i just really am here i would like to echo my friend and colleague i had the good fortune of my firm opening an office down here in 1998 i come from the public pension fund side of wall street and i am very pleased to tell you that i am in full support of the public private partnership that i've witnessed take place in the city of delray beach um i actually had a child here she went to st vincent's and she's now a senior at at pope john paul and i'm pleased to tell you that i i'm in private practice now in the non-profit arena and public private partnership solutions and uh my office is in delray beach and i can tell you we are definitely wall street south down here and everyone is coming to enjoy our city from all over and i'm so pleased to say that i've been in delray beach for almost 30 years now and uh it's a pleasure to support all of our efforts um and thank you just wanted to support law and and everyone here in our beautiful city thank you very much any other members of the public wishing to speak seeing none the comment is close i didn't i didn't recognize cole devitt is here he's also our new treasurer thank you thank you for being and our council hi quentin anyone else no just thank you thank you for the public and um i'm here to answer any questions nope i'm going to make a motion that we approve a millage rate of 0.9386 which keeps the dda with exactly the same money they made this year they're doing a great job this year you know i i i i i firmly believe that people are looking at us this is a this is a wonderful entity but it has one of the few ddas in the state which does not have a sunset provision and they're getting looked at real carefully and there needs to be some gesture that you're doing something for the taxpayers because you're not and except raising it and i'm not saying that you're the values added and all that stuff doesn't great value for the city of course it does and i'm not arguing the success that we've had downtown with which as chairman knight said was a collaboration of the of the dda cra and the city but i think that we're not talking a lot of money but i think the gesture is going to be real important that the dda looked like they're they're happy with the money they made this year which which they've done a great job and go with the same money this year which is reflected by the 0.9386 millage rate as opposed to the one full mill and and and adopt that as the millage and let the taxpayers albeit it's a small amount but it's the gesture that's going to be important it's the gesture that's going to be looked at as particularly as i said this is a non-sun setting one of the few ddas that are that are non-sun setting and the way to keep eyes off of non-sun setting provisions is to look like you're doing something for the taxpayers that's my spiel that you know i don't forget a second or not but that's my that's my spiel yeah somebody has to get a second someone second for discussion i'll second it for the you're just just because you already discussed it and now we can discuss it sorry mary what was that number again so i can write it down which one your 0.9386 or thereabouts according to mr dakowicz who i imposed on earlier to give me a number am i that the correct number that you gave me you're not looking but it is it's the number that you provide nothing that is the number so it allows them to get the same revenues against the the higher tax base that it is that they've received this year so that's my motion we had a second for discussion i think commissioner casale wanted to start us off sure i'll start you off um i don't know how we i understand what you're asking her um and the organization but it concerns me in light of all the stuff that's transpired and i want to lay it out because we've all we've had this conversation it started off with you sent out a mass mailing to people in the district and outside asking them to come to the meeting and demand you know that that uh transparency and accountability and that they lower their millage and what resulted was a wave of people coming in here saying we support her we want to pay this millage and we'd be willing to pay more these are the people paying it you made a remark that tal you'd have tallahassee you know intervene i it's not for us this they're a separate they're a dependent agency but they're separate they can vote on their own mail and if you look at our code article 8 2 the downtown development authority 8 section 8.2.2 g reads as follows levy of ad valorem tax for the fiscal year of the authority beginning with the calendar year 1972 and for each fiscal year thereafter an ad valorem tax in addition to all other ad valorem taxes is hereby levied annually for the purpose of financing the operation of the authority and all property in the downtown area is subject to add that is subject to the ad valorem taxation for city operational expenses the tax base shall and you know this word because you're an attorney and we've discussed it up here it's a mandate shall be the assessed valuation made annually by the county tax assessor the rate shall be again shall one mil and that's what it says that's our code they are supposed to tax at one mil according to our code and it says shall which means it's a mandate and i don't know what the purpose of this is why you sent out letters to hundreds of people outside of the district and asked them to come letters to people inside the district emails to people you sent emails to people who aren't paying the mill telling them that they had to come and demand to pay less when they weren't even paying it there was a lot of getting people riled up against us over this millage rate and against the dda over their mill and i don't understand why you made a call for action no one came they came in support hundreds of people we've gotten emails we've had people turn out here we had um a gentleman mr walsh in international materials took his time the guy's running a four billion dollar operation to come in here and say the only reason why i'm in this city of delray beach we were in boca is because of laura simon in this dda she was critical to their location to our city we had windy city pizza come in and say my portion of this bill is 200 and i would pay more for what you've done to benefit the business you know part of the reason why rose's daughter you're here you're three businesses thank you for coming part of the reason why our downtown what is what it is is because all the events all the things we have going on if we eliminate money from the dda and we have a less less events then we we potentially are looking at a different downtown and i just i don't know why you're putting out this call to action and and i don't know why we want to usurp their board's powers their board voted on their own mill and typically that just passes and now when i read our own rules i say we don't have a right and it's a mandate that she gets one mail that's how i read it am i am am i reading the statute wrong that they that they're enabling such whether whatever our code says the statute says up to one mill it says may set a rate of less than one mill for the ensuing fiscal year so it's a may right but your code says i'm looking at 8.2g yeah i know what the code says it says may i printed it out right here okay the rate shall be one mill for each dollar of tax base and you know nobody's saying that the dda doesn't do great work they do nobody is saying that everyone hasn't benefited from what they've done in the past they have i'm just saying it's not a lot of money and it's a it's a gesture that goes a long long long long way sorry i couldn't help myself but anyway that's just why look i've made my point i mean deputy vice mayor burns i just want to say that yeah i i've said this before publicly i think the dda has been doing a great job for our downtown area i mean it just accolades all around great people great staff great board um i think you guys have done so well i'm definitely in favor of the one mill mayor the one ask that i'd have is i know you've appointed yourself to the dda board yes i'd ask you to help repair the relationship with the dda we've met we've i think we've you know we're you apologized it it it felt pretty bumpy to me just as an outsider but i would i would ask you to please work with the dda board i think it's a fine group of men and women that are on that board that volunteer their time and i i just would ask that you help us get our relationship back where i where i'd like it to be understand my wanting to the tax thing is and i understand that because i did the same thing to the city so i mean i'm i'm very consistent in my wanting to help the taxpayers i i got no problem with that but at some point get our relationship back with the dda where we want it to be because they're they're one of our premier agencies we need them we want them we work well together we want just we we want to work with them i'm i'm not disagreeing i'm just you know their budget's up 100 in the same period so you know i'm just saying it's a sir your opinion is welcome i'm just trying to make sure that we i i i just think it's an important thing that we look like um we are trying to accommodate the taxpayers to some extent when it's a day minimum this amount frankly and it's not like they're going to be left high and dry because they're going to still get a million five i mean a million 950 coming in we're talking 100 000 110 000 difference here so i mean it's it's whatever but anyway i've said my spiel i'm done if i may can i just just and i appreciate my all needs thank you um but i appreciate um your efforts mayor and it is it we've we've um worked as a team and as a staff and i do think you know to commissioner margaret's point this year ahead i think is really a very good time for all of us to work together as we come back next year at this point with efforts to bring as a community as our stakeholders listen to them and see how we can move forward in the coming years to potentially lower that as we grow as a city and as new comes and new develops what we need to do but working together for solutions towards that and i think that is something that i know we do and that's how we lead our community and our our our downtown and our team and um we want to we want to work together by what's the best for dalry beach right has everyone gotten to say their piece here now we're all very kumbaya at the moment so um listen all i'll say about it is uh i personally would want to make a decision based on what tallahassee may or may not do i think i've made that point very clear um and i think we need to be just in general doing what we can to stimulate our downtown economy i think the dda does a wonderful job at that i don't think it's uh i think we need to not get in your way when it comes to that um i'll leave it at that i don't think we need to go into any more depth here so can i get uh you call the vote it's not just tallahassee it's the taxpayers too i care kind of you know we can just you know whatever so the motion on the table is for the 0.9386 yeah the mayor had a motion on the table it was for 0.9387 whatever yeah can we get it we call the vote for that commissioner markerts no vice mayor long no commissioner cassel no deputy vice mayor burns no mayor carney yes motion to approve resolution number 197-25 second any discussion call the roll please vice mayor long yes commissioner yes mayor carney no commissioner markert yes motion passed thank you the greatest respect to this um we are now on this is actually the budget resolution so this is this is the budget approval of the budget okay resolution 198-25 would you please read the resolution into the record a resolution of the city commission of the city as i reach florida approving a final budget making appropriations of sums of money for all expenditures of the city of delivery beach for the fiscal year beginning october 1 2025 and ending september 30th 2025 prescribing the terms conditions and provisions with respect to the items of appropriations and payments there for providing for supplemental appropriations reappropriations providing for severability of parts hereof if declared invalid providing an effective date and for other purposes so ladies and gentlemen we pretty much accomplished this presentation earlier when we addressed the military however i would like to add the consensus offered during a workshop meeting for four hundred twenty five thousand dollars and identified efficiencies to also include the net additional allocation for the library at fifty five thousand dollars as well as a seventy five thousand dollar net additional commitment towards the pressure cleaning program as well as a net seven thousand dollars towards the department of neighborhood and community services for the aforementioned training opportunities in that regard for that reason ladies and gentlemen that summarizes where we are do we need a presentation from mr dakwitz or we had have we please i would just point out that the total revenues and expenses after all the changes yes are 201 million 106 067 dollars 21 million how much 201-106-067 so you're going to need a motion to approve the budget of 201-106-067 and this is a public hearing this is a public hearing any members of this is a public hearing any members of the public who wish to address the commission on this agenda item please come to the lectern give your name and address for the record and you will each have three minutes seeing none public comment is closed i will entertain discussion or a motion i move resolution 198-25 for approval second as amended i'll second that or did julie did you i'm sorry julie did that apologies there's seconds coming out of the thing okay call the roll please commissioner casal yes deputy vice mayor burns no mayor carning no commissioner marker yes vice mayor long yes motion passed great budget is approved all right first readings we have none comments and inquiries on none actually we have no the new eight oh yes we have to go back to we got to go back to the other one i get confused i told you to remind me okay there you go ordinance number uh 19-29 ordinance of the city commission of the city of delray beach florida remaining the capital improvement plan schedule and the comprehensive plan of the city of delray beach for fiscal year 2025-26 to fiscal year 2029-30 in accordance with the requirements of policies cie 1.2.1 and cie 1.2.6 of the capital improvement element providing a complex clause providing a severability clause providing an effective date and further purposes and this is second reading public hearing amy alvarez development services ordinance 1925 so this is essentially a formality it's required by our comprehensive plan to adopt the five-year capital improvement plan each year as it's updated and it's also required by statutes i'm not sure how much you want to go in depth on it but um the program is available on our website and i believe you have all the backup of all the um the projects that are included in our five-year plan there are some comprehensive policies that require this the um ordinance planning and zoning board reviewed it and recommended approval at their august 25th the same schedule that you gave us and went through it last week yeah yeah okay do you have anything else to add i do not you do not this is a public hearing anyone who wishes to come and discuss this this agenda item please come to the lectern give your name and address for the record you will each have three minutes seeing none um to the commission approve ordinance number one nine dash two five second uh call the roll please deputy vice mayor burns yes mayor carney yes commissioner marker yes vice mayor long yes commissioner cassell yes motion passed great now i'm moving on to agenda item nine of which we have zero and so now we're going to comments and inquiries on non-agenda items mr city manager you're first i yelled at this time thank you good answer city attorney in response to your inquiry about the names and addresses um i actually did find an attorney general opinion that could support us removing that from the local rules if that's something that you're interested in i would recommend that maybe we have cards where people put their name and email address or some because i know especially i know you mayor you contact people so um so we can make that change if you'd like for the next meeting i think we should consider because they're genuine i mean i think people are these days you say something they don't like in front of a public hearing all of a sudden you don't know they got your name and address for the record so so the standard is whether something creates a chilling effect and maybe in today's right we don't want to show you back in we're streaming you know and so we're streaming yeah they can be at the house by the time i get home yeah so um what's your home address like i'll give yours so if you want to if you want to do a motion to direct me to amend the local rules in that manner i can yeah i will come back with something i mean i would like to do we have consensus here i mean i'm only asking because we'll have to start the next meeting with people giving their names and address so unless we need to adopt it first so you can't just i could make the changes in my office but we can do it that way we'll put them i thought i love the idea that they do with the county where you fill out a card and you do all that because for the purpose of the city we have a record and then we can forego a lot of the details probably in the streaming part of our meeting but just so we're clear though for quasi-judicial proceedings that's a court operation i'll bring those changes back to you understood okay we're all in agreement on that yes okay great commissioner comments uh mine uh mine are quick um the uh davis cup was was over the weekend and i wanted to thank the usta and parks and rec for doing an amazing job it was a world-class event despite the weather and despite america's loss um it was still an awesome event um i was only able to be there friday but i had a great time but i did want to just ask a question that's not meant to be critical um you know we had this um luncheon beforehand in the upstairs area of our of our tennis center and i can tell the parks and rec is parks and rec is they're working they're doing the best with what they got but i think that area desperately needs a renovation yeah it's in rough shape i mean i was looking up and the ceiling tiles are dingy and kind of pushed up in and there was like broken parts to the door frames and and it just it we need to invest a little bit of money in that you know i'm sitting at the table with the mayor of wellington who's a friend and and you know we're like competing with wellington a little bit and i'm like man we could be doing better right now you know we have yeah i mean we have this organization coming in and you know we have we're truly blessed to be able to do these types of events i'd like to put our best foot forward whenever we're hosting folks like that so i think maybe a conversation about injecting a little bit of capital into um giving that a little bit of an upgrade would good for us so i want to throw that out there again not meant as an indictment on any of our staff i know they do the best with the budget they have there um so moving on i was going to congratulate anthea but she's not here but the um the university of miami school of architecture centennial medal which was referenced earlier that's a really big deal and very exciting for us as a city to have just have someone with those kind of accolades working here so congrats to anthea and last thing uh speaking of uh you know our amazing staff i was speaking with captain ferrari who's here in the back um he gave me a bit of an update on the city's technology uh initiatives the especially the ones related to the federal grant he informed me that the department of justice recently approved an amendment to the grant funding uh regarding the equipment being used uh this approval came about a week ago uh and he's actively been working with uh the vendor with bob diaz as well as our i.t department and other relevant staff the vendor is currently in the process of filling uh filing for permits with the city county state as needed it's anticipated the project will be completed within the next four months and this is this is the surveillance uh project that we're doing throughout the city um captain ferrari also um he he to me commended several individuals and i wanted to share that commendation um the teams that worked very hard um and collaborated with with pd which is bob diaz from public works jennifer reynolds and her team from city it and staff from the city and police departments purchasing divisions and the police department it team uh captain ferrari emphasized how much he and his team value the opportunity to work collaboratively collaboratively across city departments and i just wanted to officially thank these folks on the record as well because they've done an amazing amount of work and again i i keep beating this drum up here but this this surveillance project that we are building in the city is a really really big deal for us it's a really big deal uh captain ferrari is there anything else you wanted to add in terms of an update is there anything i'm missing since since you happen to be here not to put you on the spot yeah not to put me on the spot good evening um no just as far as an update um thank you and again thank you to missy and her team you guys have been absolutely phenomenal um as you guys know we have the um state appropriations um it's being managed through fdle the applications with fdle that's for the barry island project the application has been submitted we're just waiting for final approval from fdle however we're moving forward we met with the vendor we met with members from our department to design the project so hoping to get a quote back soon and see how far we can take that and we'll provide you guys with an update and then for this current festival year as you guys know the cra and the dda had allocated money for expansions of cameras on west atlantic avenue city it had created a plan um with bringing fiber and cameras similar to what we did on east on the east side of swinton avenue we're just waiting for the final quote i've been in contact with renee jadison to show her what we can do within that budget and then also what we can do that would help connect the city and create a lot of redundancy which is obviously going to increase the price but we want to see the final numbers and then we'll bring it to the cra or whatever appropriate party to get some direction questions and one more thing i just want to point out real quick the doj grand amendment just so you guys know we found the way to save about eighty thousand dollars by buying different equipment so we can expand the technology even further so that's why the grand amendment came up so thank you very much thank you for your leadership on this gary thank you that's all i got mr martha i'll be quick um a couple things uh rob stole a couple of my points which are all good ones uh went to the davis cup event a couple nights yep the weather wasn't great but boy everything else was good shout out to the police department the fire department for being well represented there we appreciate it you guys play a vital role in keeping us safe in big events like that and i can't say enough also a shout out to all the volunteers that were there see all the the the folks that were in the you know the like they green laura i can't remember green green shirt i mean there were so many of them helping everybody out and it was a big crowd they did just a great job and a second shout out to parks and rec um sam and his team were there all day all night pulling this thing off and it it came off beautiful um anthea woohoo i i know you're listening i'm thrilled for you uh and then the last thing i want to do is is do a shout out to our executive assistant that supports five of us nohemi morgan i think she does an amazing job she manages five schedules she takes sometimes very hostile calls from the public when when things are not going well occasionally she gets a happy one but more times than not rough ones you should call her occasionally yeah but she does she does a great job and as you can see you know we're all perfectly get along and everything so it's it's there's no there's no personalities for her to be right jim there's no personalities to be managing um so i just but i don't want to say thank you to nohemi who does a great job puts in lots of hours and really keeps us keeps us keeps us all real that's it mayor commissioner casal sure i guess you guys covered it all i was thanking the usta and our staff i left i was a diehard i left at 11 30 saturday night and when i went through the back room parks and rec staff was still there working hard 11 30 on a saturday night i mean we have the most amazing employees and the volunteers it can't happen without them some there was a couple i met that came from atlanta flew in just to volunteer because they love tennis and uh that's exciting and yeah anthea congratulations university of miami school of architecture centennial medal it's very exciting for our city um and then i'm glad we covered that uh safety issue i want to talk about visioning because i'm a little you know when mr moore when you and i first talked about it you said there would be a discussion amongst us commissioners in terms of how we're moving forward well we haven't had that discussion at all because from the beginning i was asking i feel like our partners should be part of the steering committee not in the second or third wave of engagement you know we have spady we have historical society we have cra we have dda we have a lot of partners that in my conversation with you you know we were discussing that they should be at the forefront of this process along with the people we have um appointed yet we i haven't spoken to rap telus regarding the process at all i still don't know except for my brief conversation and you've already got the date planned without her talking to us so i i i would like for our non-profit partners at least those that are you know working with the city on a regular basis to be involved in this engagement sure so if i may commissioner casal to be responsive and supportive so rap telus is committed to having individual discussions with the rest of you if that has not yet happened i'll i'll confirm that that does happen that should have happened number one number two with the consensus of the commission i'll offer direction regarding that's all i'm really looking for you don't even have to have her call me at this point because it's already scheduled it is scheduled but i do think i feel that our community partners should be engaged in the process that's totally fine i'll make arrangements with the consensus of the commission this evening will you all be supportive we're talking about dda cra chamber of commerce historical society that's not visioning having been through three of them this is a community i grabbed one of these from 2000 i don't want to argue with you i'm just saying having been through three of them three very successful which exactly were you involved in i'm just curious because i'm going to go look them up because well i was the chair of the one that in for visions 2020 2020 uh 2020. where is that vision well it's in it was provided at the one time i mean i mean i'm just saying all i'm saying is visioning is trying to go to the community your name isn't in this i was the chair it's neither here nor there the point is i'm not disagreeing with you but you're not deciding we should decide as a team this is the point of having raptellus talk to all of us i don't have a misunderstanding i know but just because you brought it up doesn't mean you get to control the entire thing i think our partners should be involved in the visioning process they get involved i mean if the historical society has been here your visioning process of this of the city is what this what the residents want their city to look like in 2035 i don't see how the contribution from these partners doesn't it doesn't provide something helpful you think this baby museum can't provide some input you don't think the historical society can provide some input i think you need to have a long chat well they didn't call me because they only felt the need to talk to you that's fine it's your comment i'm not going to comment anymore thank you mr moore i think you should ask if you have a consensus to get our city partners involved i'm asking if that's the case thank you okay very well however i will still ask michelle ferguson from reptellus to have individual conversations with you all as well as proceed with the consensus noted because that was a commitment i did make previously as you acknowledge i will likewise offer direction to follow up accordingly so in both regards done so the okay you've got the consensus so you'll reach out to our community partners and let them know what the dates are for the we'll coordinate that yes that's november 7th we have plenty of time appreciate that okay and again the consensus i have to have that understand reptellus to follow up with each of you individually for those who have not yet had the opportunity great thank you commissioner burns okay um not a whole lot you guys have covered a lot of it um i wasn't able to attend the davis cup um i was a little under the weather and the weather was bad so i stayed in and didn't come out unless i had to i had to come to those call meetings so i missed the davis cup uh but i wanted to also say congratulations to uh gina and the creative art school for launching your culinary classes great job um and anthea is not here want to congratulate her um and the thunderstorms i don't know i mean i know we got several emails concerning you know uh flooding after the storms i know uh north congress was flooded and i know uh the over at the golf course they had catfish in their pools and yes they had catfish in their pools and then off on the barrier island they had a lot of flooding so i don't know you know how we are addressing this i know that you know when it we had a lot of rain so but um we did get emails from uh residents about the flooding and if i may respond director of public works missy barletto and i met early this morning over at the swinton operation complex to discuss strategies for responding to the very serious events in this regard some of it is related to construction so we do what we can to reach out to individuals experiencing tremendous inconvenience in this regard notwithstanding the heavy torrential rainfall haven't been experienced but in some cases we are at liberty to follow up with residents who have expressed specific concerns taking all other issues under consideration so that is our practice and direction has been committed to proceed thank you and i think that is all okay um first i wanted to thank lynn jellin for all the work you did all that lawsuit and back and forth with all the different parties that were pulling at you uh you kept your composure you were very truly professional and i i i greatly appreciated the efforts you made and i know you were walking a fine line to try to get all the interest to the community members us everyone's interest so i wanted i wanted to publicly acknowledge the hard work that you did so i and i for one really appreciate it um i'm going to just say again i think you read before you start including not-for-profits involved in this process you've got to really you need to understand what envisioning is all about and i understand that none of you do that that's no fault of anybody just i happen to be lucky enough to have participated in three of them i was less so for the first one but for the other two that i did visions 2020 and visions 2010. um many the last comment i'm going to make is many many of the concerns that i have with respect to the budget could be addressed and satisfied should the commission undertake next year to have a true zero-based budgeting process i think it's time we haven't had it in a long time you know people are scared of it you know they think oh we're going to lose jobs the last time i was involved with a zero-based budget we ended up hiring people so i do think we need to understand better all the how each department works essentially you know zero-based budget you just start off with bare walls and you build your departments back that way and then you get you see to the extent that there's duplication or you see to the extent that you need somebody or do you said that somebody else can be read you know redeployed in another department it's not a function of getting rid it's it's a function of trying to make yourself more efficient and it really is time for a city a bunch of our size we really should have been doing this every five years and you know you're fond in the corporate world but they do it in the corporate world all the time it's a it's a it's a and in banking we did it all the time every five years so i'm going to recommend that we that be the way we approach it next year we have to start earlier if we're going to do a zero-based budgeting because it's going to require the office of city manager start going department by department and stripping them down and rebuilding them to find out exactly what we have and that's that's really i think that's i think it's a great idea the fire department did it i requested this for years they did it this year i think you have to take a lot of my concerns whether you're overstaffed or understaffed or overpaid or under i don't know if you can do every department at one time i think you have to take sections of the city and do one or two departments it will be it will be it will be a methodical thing going department by department different departments on an annual basis for a set period of time so right to wrap up we can commit to a discussion in february in which we would start formalities in march the good news is unlike some of the stuff you can do more than one department at the time so we take some of the keys and i'm very confident because i'm sure that in this document you're used to it as a because in connecticut they do it all i mean up north they do it all the time it's almost practically it's practically annual in some of the places but i mean it's certainly they're used to it all the time so we will be able to put together a pretty good thing and i would recommend that we have more than one i mean we have a lot of departments there are some key departments that we can start with ladies and gentlemen we have ideas we'll be proceeding beginning in february i just wanted to go on record yes sir because that's all i wanted to do and that's all i have all right any other comments from anybody we're adjourned