City Commission on 09-01-2026 4:00 PM - Budget Workshop Meeting - Sep 01, 2026

I don't think now we're on are you on now deputy vice mayor marker here Commissioner Malika yeah Commissioner Casale vice mayor Burns here Mayor Kearney here thank you very much okay this is the budget workshop meeting we're opening up the public comments to start if there are any members of the public wishing to address the Commission on the budget matters please come to the lectern give your name and zip code for the record you will each have three minutes seeing none no throngs running to the front we're gonna public comment will be closed follow-up regarding the fiscal year of the 2026 2027 proposed budget considerations mr. Moore you said you wanted to it you had some opening remarks I do mr. mayor thank you ladies and gentlemen I appreciate it so ladies and gentlemen good evening and I see this as an opportunity for a productive ability for Commission to offer its final expectations so that we can hopefully achieve a very smooth September 8th first hearing regarding the fiscal year 2026 2027 proposed budget as well as the final hearing consideration two weeks later September 22nd many meetings have taken place I've had individual dialogues with each of you all to discuss why we are where we are econometrically and financially in addition some other considerations as it relates to amendment 3 and a whole host of other challenges for which not only the city of Derry Beach will experience with other municipalities throughout the state that's widely known that's widely being discussed and actually mayor Kearney you and I had a discussion when we could go yesterday about the merits of a workshop meeting so I like to offer credit where credit's due because of course this is an opportunity as I just stated to productively discuss a path forward in terms of military position and opportunities to get to the absolute best place possible nevertheless both the office of the city manager and the Department of Finance have a cogent responsibility to provide as much information data analytics and metrics as we can so that a sound decision can be made as it relates to the expectation communicated to me by each of you all individually as well as in group settings quite frankly relative to maintaining levels of service and in some respects expanding what we do as a city operation the city of Derry Beach ladies and gentlemen in comparison to many other municipalities in the South Florida marketplace the Miami metropolitan area specifically as it is is quite frankly far more busy busy in terms of project implementation level of service and expanding quality of life offerings across the board as such we take those observations into consideration when we apply econometrics that analytics and metrics to offer proposals for review and consideration part of that does take under consideration a review of the marketplace in terms of what their fiscal policies are and in many respects over the last 10 years as we've attempted to over underscore over the last few months as well as the past couple fiscal year processes we made adjustments that other municipalities did not I think about my previous city manager assignments in which we consider the military recommendation and the goal is to maintain a healthy military position and do what we can to not increase it that's paramount that is appropriate and that has not been the case in this community as we demonstrated via numerous other presentations and various discussions along these lines so some of the information that we'll be sharing as far as our formal presentation may be a bit repetitive however it does underscore the important point of why we are where we are and it's important that we get our arms around that so that proper decisions can be made in everybody's best interest based on the realities of what's being implemented as a municipality number one and number two what the expectations are moving forward so with that mr. mayor ladies and gentlemen thank you for the opportunity to engage and indulge us today nevertheless after the formal presentation concludes it will be city commission's time and opportunity to offer its expectations and from the day is here I'll do what I can to help facilitate a productive outcome thank you so thank you very much I appreciate the city managers in the city's position you have your job we have our job which is to give direction yes sir I will say that one of the reasons that I thought this would be important for us all is that each one of us you know we all speak to you about what we would like to see and all the cuts we want to have but nobody really knows what the other thing because maybe Commissioner Monica has a great idea but I don't know what it is she shared it with you but you don't share it with me because she shared it with you because you're not allowed no same with same with Commissioner Casale same with Commissioner Burns so what I'm hoping is that we can all lay out where we think we can do but and maybe we conclude well we can't do that that's fine but I believe that in budget discussions it's incumbent upon the Commission to understand where all the other commissioners are in terms of where they think they can and they can't save money and which part which what are the priorities and what aren't the priorities so this is what I'm really hoping that we come in and you know I have the one view the Commissioner market may have a different view and that that's fine but then I can understand his view because or he can understand my view and that and we don't know what anyone want to anyone up here thinks about what they would like to cut what they wouldn't like to cut or what they want to expand don't want to expand so I'm hoping that after this presentation we have a really frank discussion up here as to and then we may decide you know I don't know where we decide yes sir so but anyway I'm going to turn it over to mr. dock which now for your so one other statement prior to mr. duck was beginning his dialogue we provided an initial draft presentation Friday we uploaded it as we typically try to do in advance of a regular meeting or a workshop meeting we've been working during a weekend Monday Tuesday providing as much information given the fact that this is a budget workshop I asked for y'all's indulgence and support and us having that latitude because again our interest is to do as much as we possibly can to provide as much up-to-date information possible so it's been moving along those lines nevertheless because this is a workshop meeting I would ask you to view this exercise as a week in advance presentation of the first public hearing as it relates to the proposed budget consideration not to mention what you talked about mayor an opportunity for the Commission to chime in publicly with respect to expectations and direction so that's what this is for please support us in that regard we mean very well got you mr. deck was if you would please thank you wanted to start with the Florida statute and city charter regulations governing budgets and how we operate 2025 Florida statute 166 point two four one fiscal years budgets appeal of municipal law enforcement agency budget and budget amendments three eighth the tentative budget must be posted on the municipality's official website at least two days before the budget hearing held pursuant to 200.065 or other law to consider such budget and must remain on the website for at least 45 days the city of Delray Beach Charter article for administrative executive section 4.05 budget procedure letter B budget submission the city manager shall submit his or her recommended budget for the ensuing fiscal year to the Commission on or before the first regular meeting in August complete copies of the proposed budget shall be on file and available to the public for inspection during office hours in the office of the city clerk commencing the following business day here's a little bit of timeline of what we have been working with in this year's budget on June 9th we had the first budget workshop we presented a PowerPoint summary general fund operating initial budget with preliminary taxable values the capital program was not included it was posted four days before on June 5th with the city clerk through their SharePoint OneDrive July 14th was our second budget workshop it was a PowerPoint summary of the general fund it was the first city manager recommended operating budget with certified taxable values those are coming from the tax collector of Palm Beach County CIP was not involved and several days before July 10th 26 city clerk had the information on their SharePoint OneDrive 7 23 26 we held a town hall meeting it's primarily for citizens taxpayers although several commissioners joined us we appreciated that PowerPoint summary all funds and preliminary operating budget no CIP several that same day we sent the documents to the communications department because it was primarily for the citizens and Gina would take that and make sure it got disseminated or was available to the appropriate parties on August 21st 26 there was no meeting but the preliminary budget worksheets for all funds operating and preliminary CIP budget were sent to communications for distribution it was posted on our finance web page and the city clerk had a hard copy we're talking over a 300 page document so our concept was it's posted on the finance web page communications can distributed through their vehicles and the city clerk had a hard copy for inspection by anybody who comes in person to inspect the budget September 1st that would be today our third budget workshop PowerPoint summary general fund the second city manager recommended operating budget with certified taxable values as previously it was uploaded on the 28th again city clerk SharePoint OneDrive a week from today first public hearing PowerPoint summary and tentative budget worksheets all funds operating and a balanced capital project program again we anticipate uploading that September 4th SharePoint OneDrive city clerk would be the PowerPoint only and the finance web page and city clerk hard copy for the extensive document two weeks later September 22nd the second and final public hearing with the vote PowerPoint summary adopted budget worksheet after your vote all funds operating and balance CIP we would get it on SharePoint OneDrive city clerk the powerpoint only several days in advance the deadline for the finance web page and city clerk hard copy is by October 22nd if we have the final numbers we would upload it sooner than that just want to give you a context we have one senior budget manager and one junior budget analyst and that's it we have a very lean department we spend a lot of time in between all these dates uploading data getting better data from the tax collector from different departments from the state on what they're giving us in grants and it all comes together we feel we honor the duty of communicating along the way and by the end we'll have complete data with a a bound hard copy as well you've seen this slide before historical and proposed operating millage rates actual expenditures and municipal cost index the green rectangles represent the millage rates and we're looking at 10 11 years so as we all know the millage rates have been reduced every year for eight years from 6.9611 down to 5.9063 in the rollback year of 2025 the current year we're in last year's budget cycle we increased the 5.9 to 6.1611 and we're proposing the city manager's proposal for 2627 budget is 6.4371 you can note that's still below the budget the millage rate of 2023 the upper yellow line is the municipal cost index which just shows how costs for municipalities across the country are going up inflation has affected everyone and the orange line in the middle is our actual expenditures here in delray beach if you notice it pretty much models the municipal cost index so costs are going up we have 60 to 70 percent of our budget or salaries which get increases anywhere from three to eight percent depending upon which departments and we have contracts that go up with accelerator clauses we're subject to inflation like everyone is in their personal economy we did a peer review to look at other cities near us so city delray beach in left on the green we have a proposed millage rate this coming year of six point four six six so since 2016 that was that number takes under consideration the debt millage application as well just to be clear so it's the six point four three seven one operating millage in addition to the remaining debt service millage for an aggregate total of the number you just shared just to be clear thank you yes the debt is a separate line item on our real estate bills so the total is six point four six six so since 2016 our proposed 2027 millage is down 10.3 percent the taxable property value in our city is 20 a little bit over 21 billion dollars and a proposed fire assessment fee annual per dwelling unit we have zero let's look at the other cities fort lauderdale their millage is 4.3409 but the growth of their millage rate over those 10 years was a positive 5.4 percent increase and their taxable property value is three times what ours is and they have a separate fire assessment fee of 338 dollars at boca raton again 4.6971 their increase has been seven percent and they have more than double our property value of 42.71 billion and they charge 224 dollars per dwelling for fire in addition palm beach gardens the most similar to us has a 5.0537 millage rate a little bit below ours their reduction over the 10 years is 10.8 their property value a little bit larger than ours 23.57 and they do not have a fire assessment fee pompano beach 5.6063 a little bit less than ours but they've increased it by 2.2 percent over 10 years their property value is 24.68 higher than ours and they charge per dwelling 361 dollars for the fire fee which is built into our millage rates deerfield beach 6.1642 they've decreased their millage rate by 7.8 a little bit less than we have their taxable property is smaller 12.78 and they charge 365 dollars for their proposed fire assessment fee coral springs 6.1813 a little bit lower than ours but their increase in the millage rate has been over 21 percent over the 10 years their taxable property value is about 75 80 percent of ours and they charge 308 for their fire assessment fee the last three cities have higher proposed millage rates miramar 7.1172 boyton 7.75 west palm 8.184 millage rate growth miramar has increased by 5.2 boyton a decline of 1.9 a little bit like two percent of what we've done and west palm beach a negative 3.7 one-third of our reductions the property value miramar is 16.97 boyton beach 11 billion palm beach 27.85 but each of them have fire fees 479 170 for boyton 250 for west palm the two footnotes are the real takeaways most peer municipalities leverage fire assessment fees and maintain stable millage rates the city of delray beach does not collect fire assessment fees and continues to maintain low millage rate so compared to our peers plus minus we're doing better overall compared to almost all the cities except for maybe palm beach gardens which is close you've seen this before when we presented the city manager's operating budget and millage rate so on the left hand side the revenues went from 201 million to 205.8 million as we did our process our millage rate from the current year 6.1611 going up to 6.4371 recommended and we split that into two parts 8.5 million was due just to the increase in the taxable value of our properties which is a good thing property tax revenue from the millage increase was 5.7 million okay but now if you go to the upper right hand corner we show a little bit more detail so we have to when we increase the taxable value there's a reduction because the cra tiff funding has to go down a corresponding amount so this past year's budget with a 118 million dollar property tax revenue the reduction was 25.3 so we netted only 92.7 million property tax revenues with the proposed budget it looks like an increase of 14.1 million dollars from 118 to 132 8.5 from the taxable value of our homes and 5.7 for the millage but then we have the reduction of cra 2.1 million because of the taxable values and 1.2 million because of the millage so the net property tax revenues are going from 92.7 million to 103.5 million an increase of about 11 million dollars if we go back to the left side and we looked at the fund balance the projected fund balance drawdown for the recommended budget for 2027 is 8.1 million so both the millage rate real estate tax revenues and the fund balance drawdown are considered revenues in our budget if you add the two 13.7 million dollars you take the 205.792 at the top and you add that 13 million you now get total revenues of 219.6 million bottom right hand corner let's just analyze the fund balance drawdown a bit we had an audited last year fund balance of 49.13 million dollars the finance department estimates that this year fiscal year 2026 we will draw down on reserves 2 million dollars historically for the last at least four or five years we have not drawn down what we ended up budgeting on drawdowns the managers did a great job coming in with revenues and expenses close to budget and overall we did not have to draw down what we budgeted taking the 49.1 audited number minus the estimated 2 million we project the fund balance uh the end of this month would be 47.13 million dollars which is 21.94 percent as a percentage of expenditures less transfers which is the way um the commission has directed us to make that calculation the projected drawdown which we took from the left side 8.1 million would reduce the 47.1 million down to 39.024 million projected a year from now september 30 2027 projected expenditures at that moment 13 months from now less the transfers for the fund balance calculation are projected to be 214.8 million dollars our fund balance as a percent of expenditures is 18.17 percent i have spoken to the bond rating agencies extensively about fund balance um they say it varies by part of the country in the western part of the country they can see fund balance ratios of 50 to 75 percent they're much more conservative in the northeast where i came from if you got 15 to 20 percent that would be a lot norwalk the city i was cfo of for five years we had the largest rainy day fund balance in the entire state of connecticut 169 towns and the mayor made a point when covid hit that's why we like to have a rainy day fund because it's for unexpected anticipated so as a cfo the higher the better but i believe this drawdown is necessary to juggle all the different demands on this coming fiscal year 2027 budget we're now looking at the delray beach projected operating budget for fiscal year 27 general fund expenditure details by department at the city manager recommended level we did this in size order police budget recommended let's call it 60 million dollars we were asked what was reduced there and what was retained in those numbers so attrition which is the assumption that someone leaves and we don't replace them for a period of time let's say on average three months so instead of putting the full amount into the budget we take out the attrition piece um and some operating supplies as well what was retained were colas two tech support analysts and one evidence custodian next we look at the fire budget 57.3 million dollars we had reductions of attrition the control the bleed program and aed which are the defibrillators some training explorers uniforms for some student program and pressure washing of the fire houses what was retained were colas one lifeguard one special services manager and overtime so it's a balancing act this is the product of five to six months of negotiations and juggling parks and recreation which is composed of four different uh departments uh departments recreation facilities special events cemetery and other recreation facilities 24.8 million dollars so the reduction was attrition what was included um colas one administrative office coordinator repairs to the baseball field um janitorial supplies equipment for new building which was not included in in in new buildings being built uh backflow irrigation maintenance recreation facilities had colas irrigation maintenance parking lot root removal i guess roots from trees which had to be removed and because of higher attendance there are costs associated with that special events had colas also higher attendance cemetery was colas mausoleum maintenance and the fountain other recreation facilities facilities was an increase in the grant to dda public works engineering and parking facilities included 15.1 million dollars attrition was reduced colas were included pavement preservation i believe that was a request of the commission one building maintenance worker from two part times so the additional cost was not that much it's more of converting two part times into one full-time engineering with colas and certifications and trainings which are important to keep that level of uh excellence parking colas and parking management services information technology 6.7 million dollar budget the reductions were attrition attrition near map software which was transferred to utilities so we're keeping the software but it's being paid for from the utility fund rather than the general fund retention was the cola neighborhood and community services five five million the reduction was attrition the retention was colas radios and operating supplies certifications and training miscellaneous was primarily um that's the funding for non-profits which are at your discretion development services 3 million attrition attrition was reduced the retention were colas two-thirds of a planner one-third will be paid by the building fund not general fund one supply service specialist and cry wolf software finance three three million attrition was reduced we have colas true comp labor software this is software that will help us in labor negotiations but also in finance we want to use that to help verify and confirm payroll and headcount expenses so that's a piggyback we are paying 25 percent if you drop down three lines to human resources because it's for labor negotiations human resources picking up 75 percent of that cost city attorney attrition reduction colas included two million city manager 1.7 million attrition reduction colas audio for external meetings i believe when meetings are off-site we have the ability with audio to project it in-house um palm beach county certified city manager association got my acronym um iedc must be something with economic development and certifications and training human resources 1.5 million attrition reduced colas included the trump true comp software 75 percent and some additional job fairs which have been very well received communications 1.3 million reduction for attrition colas creative art school additional offerings it's been very successful we want to feed the good ones and we're giving more money to expand that program city clerk 810 000 attrition reduction colas included purchasing similarly about 800 000 attrition and colas city commission 421 000 internal auditor 306 000 attrition for reduction colas were retained and one outside specialty audit so if there's a specialized audit we might go outside and contract with someone with that specialty grand total 219.6 million dollars sir can i ask a quick question when you use the the word for attrition am i getting the definition right from my past that's when people leave we don't replace them right away and and and we absorb some savings that way that doesn't mean we're eliminating positions no no no that's correct we're talking about from a budgeting perspective that's what i thought historically yeah you would have turnover but you budget every position for the full year correct and you're going to have a savings you will two months four months whatever we are very tight so we went to each department we look at historical turnover and expectations for this coming year that the department heads informed us so we tried to tighten that up and gain some savings savings i get that that's what we did okay so was every department different or did you uh the attrition is three to four months in every department or i think it goes by the department the department itself can fill a position pretty quickly right some take a while um so we just try to use common sense we look at historical trends to to try to as a reality check but we tend to go with what the department head says so they may have two openings they say this one is so critical we're going to fill it quickly and the other one it may take a while it's hard to find a replacement so it depends on the department it was yes by department yes got it any other questions i've finished you that ends this presentation well it was question time anyway so there you go um another question go ahead yes well i'm hoping we're going to have a discussion now about what we just well um so i i and thank you mr moore i met with mr moore uh yesterday and and i asked for these additional slides to be to be put in there so thank you but i want so this is at the anticipated this is at these uh uh considering the millage of 6.437 yes ma'am okay yes ma'am it absolutely is okay i'm just gonna i i want to before we get started you know you you talk about palm beach gardens and i've spent a lot of time looking at palm beach gardens okay you know similar population and all that other kind of stuff um in almost every single category they have fewer people working in there can you go to that slide uh just can we look at the slides while you're talking yeah i'm just i'm just i'm just talking generally speaking in terms of you know they have they have you know 20 percent fewer employees and that's across the board by the way they have 10 or 12 fewer uniformed police officers for example they've got fewer fire people and i understand the dynamics are different of the town because they have more um gated communities so i understand i mean i understand a lot of the distinctions um but city employees they have about a good 20 to 25 percent fewer city employees okay what i just to to address that for a second sure um i think one of the subtle things that doesn't come through is you have to look at the computer systems okay when you have efficient computer systems the workers can do the work faster they could do it more accurately but it takes historical investment of getting upgraded software and training i acknowledge that i would just i would just say that that's something that we don't look at i personally am working on four different computer systems including a full erp change okay so what happens is they have to conduct today's operations on old systems we have an as-400 ibm as-400 which was state-of-the-art in 1990 okay i've told friends of mine and they say that should be going to the it museum okay we're in the process we're in the process i wasn't here when jay stacy came but you can't we didn't get here overnight it doesn't get fixed overnight i understand all i'm saying and i would predict that as those systems come on board and we gain efficiencies we may have real attrition where when someone leaves we can combine some of the tasks and reduce the headcount i understand what what we're trying to get to um and in fact in 2012 when i sat in that chair where commissioner malik is they palm beach gardens instituted online submissions for in the in the planning and zoning department for you know for zoning applications and i brought it up at that point to do and we finally got around to starting to do it some 14 years later so i understand palm beach gardens has been ahead of us for a long time certainly in the in the technology area i think we're frankly a better run city but that's just my own view um but i do worry when we talk about attrition i do worry that you know we we are we we've had a 30 increase in personnel in like a seven or eight year period where the population hasn't been a 30 increase in population there hasn't been you know we we are spending a lot of money and in my view that and no one wants to hear this but we need to start talking about every other company every other place in the country is doing things reducing the number of people that are in their day-to-day engagement and you know again i thought i had this argument a couple years back we were talking about fire about trying to bring you know private ambulance services and to do the non-emergencies you know the person falls off a bike they break their leg i don't think we need a high class paramedic you know to be answering that call but you know it got we can't the viruses they all want to do it so we have all these union people doing all these other jobs and we're paying pensions and it gets very expensive but other places are changing other places are saying how do we save money how do we privatize certain components how do we get instead of having hiring additional people to be inspectors to do outsourcing of that or how they i mean there's so many different ways that people are doing it we don't do any of it we don't do any of it any of it i'd like to take a first stop at that um 50 a presentation that features the city's please i think features what i'm sorry the comparable study analysis oh okay i would just say 53 percent of our expenses is police and fire i'm agreeing okay no nobody's disagreeing and and and let me don't and we're not doing much to try to save in those compartments but my point is you know i come from new york where in politics they talk about the third rail because when you're on a subway there are two rails to get the subway going and the third is the electricity and if you touch it you get electrocuted and maybe die so in politics they talk about the third rail of certain topics yeah i understand that police and fire is the third rail down here in florida we were certainly south florida south florida southeast florida whatever okay um so the point is when we go from 2448 to 2472 because arbitrators are looking at what the other towns are doing and you have to be competitive that's a head count increase that i don't know before we went to 2472 did we not have adequate fire service and coverage i don't know same thing with the police i wasn't here all i'm saying is like willie sutton says i go to the banks because that's where the money is when i look at headcount some of the departments you talk about are very lean they don't have a lot of excess people okay i think that if i were doing a cost reduction study on headcount i would start based on how many people are in which department and then you have to figure out what the appropriate staffing is so we agree on a lot of things about trying i know i see my view is i don't think we should be raising the millage and i've made that point and everyone says oh we have to do it because we had that rollback untrue untrue i've looked at statistics about the the increase in the in the percentage of the property value increases for all these other places and ours outpaced them so by our rollback really only brought us back to where the others were in terms of their increases so when you look at what the percentage of the property value increase was in del rey for that same period we really did great well i mean i think we we were a bubble we did great we did better than boca we did better than palm beach gardens we do actually probably was pretty close um um but we did better we did better i'm sorry yes may i just comment in this realm when we look at our population though everybody says oh you know you've got so much more money coming in and your population hasn't increased that's not at all true yeah you see a six percent increase but when you look at the census the census only calculates people who are permanent residents here what you really need to look at is the development in the number of housing units that have come in to talk about the needs great and we're talking like i'd love to discuss thousands of them i would love to discuss like over three thousand i've actually had this conversation with the city about the number of housing units everybody's always saying oh we've got all this increased housing and all this no we have the actual percentage of increased housing is much less than you think i don't think people are taking four unit buildings and they're building two they're taking two lots they're building we've got all those apartments that are on congress there's over a thousand units in a couple of years approved and developed disagree with you totally those are people using our roads respectfully let me you'll get your chance you'll get your chance mr mayor respectfully i've looked at all those things and i and we i understand your argument i understand your argument and i do understand that a police department needs to have a complement to be able to have not just the 67 000 people that are here full-time residents as we would say you have to account for the 105 000 that are really here because you have all those people that are down here seasonally i understand all that too i've calculated there we have been a lot of a lot of figuring out of what all the numbers are well give them to us let's we are still let's work i want to hear from everybody else about what because all i keep hearing is we have to raise our millage we have to we have to get to the conversation then without any effort to try to get to the meat of it because this the the talking theoretically about cutting it's all great but let's get to the cuts i have some if you want me to delay mr mayor before you all chime in may i offer a point please one of the reasons why page five was included in this presentation the municipal peer review is comparable full service municipalities in south florida for which we are involved and one of the reasons for the millage rate growth metric being incorporated in this regard is because of what i stated during the introduction comments is many of those municipalities all of them in this case with the exception of palm beach gardens maintained millage rates over the last 10 years or more they did not have the reduction that the city of dairy beach experience and that was increasing the base property values and i've got all those i mean that that analysis has been done but they did they actually did they actually did to put the city of popano beach the city of miramar and the city of as comparables is is is ridiculous matt please yes so again with the analysis and again i'm speaking on experience with all due respect so we had illustrated a number of times the decreases in militaries over the past 10 years the past decade or so with the exception of the last year it's week rollback rate included typically what occurs is municipalities get to a place in which they can maintain a millage rate and keep it comparable for the coming years so that any increases in revenue would simply offset the municipal cost index or the municipal rate of inflation that's also i like to put it the term i use so that's pretty much been a experience not only throughout many municipalities of comparable scope emphasize scope not size scope but throughout the country as well and dairy beach is unique in that regard because direction was offered over the last 10 years to reduce the military why why did we reduce our military because we had exploding tax values you did increase in our tax base we had exploding compared to everybody else around us other municipalities in south florida's had a similar experience however they did not tweak it down not we we eclipsed every single one by sometimes you know several digits we eclipsed every single one okay the possible exception of palm beach gardens but that was only because that they had the pga and other things there that were building in those big developments but other than that we eclipsed the property values for point percentage-wise based on our population and things not total numbers because bokeh is always going to be bigger than us but if you look at bokeh's increase in valuation from one year to the next that percentage was much less than the appreciations in delray they have way more commercial property tax revenue tons bokeh has way more commercial property tax revenue than we do we can't keep on arguing these numbers line together you're talking over each other it's really hard right i'm saying one at a time i'm trying to finish but you know i can't i i you know if i could finish you'll get your turn um so i understand the point but all i'm saying is that we are not paying enough attention to try to figure out ways to trim our trim our costs so that we don't have to raise our millage that's that's the sum total of what i'm saying and i believe there are ways to do it now if you'd like to talk about cuts let's talk about cuts i'll do it and i just would say to you though even if we also have to look at our reserves in this and what we want them to be and at the end of this budget you're going down to 18 so even if you cut things out i would argue it would be better to cut and leave things and and allow our reserves to be back up to the 21 percent where we want them to be where we agreed we went we used to have reserves when i sat here last time at 35 then they went down to 25 now they're below 20 that should raise flags for people and and look there are i think there are cuts okay but you have to ask yourself why are the costs increasing because we're making the votes that are causing those increases that's the point we're voting on salary increases we're voting on cola we're voting on contracts we're voting everything in when these costs are increasing don't ask people why we are why that's the point we are the reason the costs are increasing but we can't consistently vote yes to contracts and uh higher compensation additional spending and they're not surprised when we get the bill because you know being fiscally responsible means we shouldn't eat either a shouldn't be voting for those things in the first place or b we pay for them because we did vote for them you and i have been on the same side on a lot of these issues you and i are a lot on the same side on on these cost matters and all i'm trying to do is to get okay let me throw out a couple things i sat with mr moore and i went seriously because i don't know what you said i'm gonna tell you right now correctly he doesn't say well commissioner kasal suggested that he doesn't do that i can't do that i know that right and i won't you're obeying the law that's fine this is why i want everybody to us to know where everybody thinks about okay so because maybe she has a great idea maybe judy has a great idea maybe i don't could maybe i don't but i mean i mean i'm expecting others to have i just make a point on sure on your comment yes um if we reduce the military from what the city manager has recommended it will have a compounding negative effect right not only will it reduce our revenues for this coming year but if the referendum passes in november that's going to be the base which has limits on increases in the future right so if we don't increase the millage rate this year this particular year it has a double effect than any other year and i think secondly you talk about the reserves right we have a whole bunch of financings where we are looking to go to the market we're looking at uh police and fire public safety we're looking at parks we're looking at wastewater stormwater stormwater and we're looking at working with um community redevelopment no yes yes community redevelopment community redevelopment agency so we're working on last week's report yes okay um they and and somewhat not related but in a way it is the remainder of the water utility bond they look at the city's aggregate position in terms of that consideration although that's a separate transaction process but it is taken into consideration that the rating agencies are looking at our reserves especially knowing that florida has this referendum coming right so if we could find savings but use it to beef up the reserves right while we keep the millage rate as high as we can this year so that we don't get double penalized uh it might be an approach that is exactly what i just said even if we make these cuts i still think we leave where we are and we build up our reserves because we are down to 18 percent where we were we were at 21 we were at 25 and just a few years ago we were at 35 so let me go through a couple so people should understand when you're looking at this budget uh 10.54 million of it is just for personnel that's uh pay cola retirement contributions fica insurance workers comp and special pay so what is left over for us to cut isn't very much i was speaking with mr moore because um and i said this in our meeting earlier we were told when we jumped with the fire contract to 2472 we would see a substantial decrease in the overtime yet it's gone up considerably the overtime for the fire department total is um 3.3 million dollars and it was less last year and and less the year before so with that contract now mr moore had indicated to me that he thought that was due to vacancies in the department but it's actually not i contacted the chief and talked to him and what he said is the way you have to look at what you need is taking two individuals in a day for an unplanned vacancy and calculate that out mathematically it comes to 2.2 million dollars he said that he'd like to have a buffer to not be coming back to the commission and asking for additional money and i think 2.5 is a very fair amount you could take 500 000 right there out of the fire overtime and put it back into your budget um and i'm not i didn't go that in depth to the police department but now that we are fully uh you know we we have uh full staffing in in the police i feel like we should have a little bit of money to move in in there as well um there's a few things we could look to do we could freeze portions of the travel training and membership not membership that's required um and we could gain 150 000 we could reduce down some of our professional services by 50 percent because we every year we put in every subcategory professional services and i think those are buffers we could save 390 000 there if we could defer defer some of our equipment in the police department i don't know if we can but chief if you can we could save ourselves some money there and potentially about 400 000 if we reduce our other overtime by five percent not those two departments you'll save a couple hundred thousand dollars if we reduce down our rental and lease growth by 20 percent right vehicles that in equipment we're renting at least you could save 150 000 and if we defer some of our non-critical maintenance you could save 129 000 this isn't a lot of money it's only 1.6 million but if you can grab 500 000 overtime from the fire add it to the 1.6 million you're over 2 million you grab some from the police department you can get yourself to 2.5 million then what you can do is you can go into and i added all that other contractual stuff who i'm sorry i can't you can't speak now i apologize office supplies in some departments are up 40 percent i think that's one of those buffers you could look to pull a little down workers compensation is a varying number in different departments in some it's over 56 percent and in some it's well over 199 percent and 5 000 i can't figure that out but i think workers comp maybe you have some flexibility in there that may be one of those areas where we're padding promotional activities and food seems to have gone up in every department along with um operating supplies and books um and another thing and this is just one silly thing that i marked i have a ton of tabs fika went up in our department 16 fika is across the board 10 so we don't have anybody new in our department so it shouldn't go up 15 but you see the fika number varying in all the departments where it may be is because people are coming going or what have you but in our department it should not be and then there's one other thing and i gave you a lot but page 130 we're buying a special events vehicle for 35 000 and look when we're in the situation we're in here you have to question do we really need that and that's what i would say maybe we don't um my concern is the reserves as i've said so even if we make these cuts this could maybe bring our number down slightly mayor but i still think we have to be monitoring the reserves number and we should be very concerned about it going below 21 percent commissioner cassell i'd like to make a contribution if i may thank you because you talked a little bit about fire rescue and again as you shared publicly you and i had an opportunity to visit previously so a big part of the overtime analysis fire rescue police either you offered a figure of about a half million dollars on the fire rescue side we sharpened that proposal further and we can contribute about six hundred thousand dollars actually right you can actually do eight but six you've got to give them a buffer so they're not coming back in front of us that's correct and i like to go with that and we had a similar exercise working with leadership of the debris beach police department and that figure is about eight hundred thousand thank you so eight hundred thousand for police six hundred thousand all fun over time for fire rescue so that's 1.4 million there in addition to some of the other considerations you discuss that is where we are thank you i appreciate you so i've endorsed that i've met with all appropriate leadership and i think we're all in alignment in those regards there you go mayor i did my job well no you did i mean you had two of the i have these on my that's great i the overtime is real was a real i was i remember the same conversation commissioner burns yeah well the overtime was the only suggestions that i had but i want my concern is that if we go with a rollback rate is it no one's talking rollback well i mean i i would love i would love to talk about my understanding is we voted on the maximum rate right and that if we don't get a super majority it goes to the rollback rate is that correct no no you can't do that's what the city attorney is saying yes you can't do more than 10 percent of your prior year without a super majority that's a no that's a different question the law as of july 1st 2026 ladies and gentlemen in the case of dairy beach florida because there are five board members it has to be a two-third vote two-thirds of five equals three point six which means four if you round it would have to be on the same page you're not allowed to round up i think it's a super majority it's a super majority four out of five four out of five so you need to you you need the four that's correct right and that's all where it offers so ladies and gentlemen why this exercise is especially important this evening is because it's an opportunity to offer that direction as we prepare for september 8th we talked fairly robustly relative to adjustments and expenditures to take a look at that and we'll be able to sharpen our pencils i think we're halfway there already based on what i just articulated in response to commissioner casal nevertheless there needs to be a super majority position with respect to military policy and again we've offered our recommendations thoroughly and eminently and therefore this is why we are where we are but of course there's merit to do what we can to do with the best best possible with with respect to fund balance let me also mention going back to the july 21st 2026 city commission meeting in which we had our presentation from cbiz we talked a little bit about the fund balance position being roughly 24.79 as i recall mr dakowicz it was somewhere in a neighborhood so despite our maintaining a budget position of roughly 21 throughout the course of the the year we do what we can to identify efficiencies and administer financial practices such that we can strive to even have higher fund balance position of which we were able to accomplish over the past couple years and that was highlighted in the presentation as i just mentioned during the july 21st visit so that's part of the rolling process as well this is for budgeting purposes however to be able to demonstrate sound financial management practices in that regard to demonstrate a higher fund balance position from what was initially contemplated in the proposed budget process is a step in a meaningful direction as well and that was highlighted by cbiz during that presentation so that will be a continuous part of our effort and practice as we lead operations in the city thank you um are you finished no i'm not okay sorry i apologize vice mayor burns no i'm going back to my original question so we need a super majority to get to okay and if we don't have that it goes to the rollback rate correct no it goes to current it goes it goes to the rollback it would go to the rollback rate so what needs to happen at this level thank you is a discussion to yield four out of five of you all being on the same page with respect to fund balance policy or excuse me military policy pardon so knowing that it had if we don't come to a consensus on the rate it goes through the rollback so my concern is that is that a sustainable under our financial circumstances that we have right now and you know are we digging ourselves a bigger hole than we're already in i mean we're already saying that we're going to go um 8.1 million for reserves at the suggested millage if we go to the rollback we're looking at a huger amount i can discuss those metrics if you like commissioner malica just commented what would the rollback rate be absolutely one and how much revenue would be lost if the railback rate would be realized the rollback rate would be five point eight five five five five point eight five five five another five another five yep five point eight five five five but you're making the assumption that there's no millage rate adopted because you don't have to adopt the six point four you can adopt the six point two that's correct you can i mean that is correct we're making the assumption that we can't come to agreement with any millage rate and i do believe that there is some number out there that that we will all i mean okay i know okay i would go mr mayor okay that's that's correct mr mayor so i'd like to continue to offer a response to vice mayor that's all i was doing but absolutely correct mr mayor as long as they're four on the same accord with respect to a military outcome that's where we need to be so again the millage the rollback rate would be five point eight five five five that would impact revenue in excess of about five million dollars in excess of five million dollars to the general fund okay so to answer your question in terms of a deeper hole as you eloquently put it so to speak that would be the case right yeah yeah and uh so you know my my interest is just you know based on whatever to maintain an appropriate level of service that we have now and you know okay i'm good i'm good i'm done mayor thank you so very much for your input commissioner i don't have a whole lot of i agree with the thirty five thousand dollar um vehicle that we probably don't need and of course with the overtime although they might need overtime but and and i don't know how much this cutback how much flexibility that allowed those departments to fill in when needed um i also i always think of the teen center as a waste of our money i don't think it's very utilized i don't know what the summer numbers look like i don't want know what any of the numbers look like i just know it's not very used did you how'd it go i didn't go very well let's talk about that 473 000 on the teen center so that roughly 18 kids could use it at the cost of 35 000 a kid doesn't we weren't we talking about one of the a why or somebody coming in and taking there's there are we're a number of people that have expressed an interest in trying to take it over but i i got no word with it so thank you for bringing it up sure actually my office was paid a visit by leadership from ymca not terribly long ago months ago earlier this year and they have an interest in receiving resources from the city of delray beach well and above and beyond what our capacity would be if that makes sense so i don't think there was any interest once they got to that place 473 is that the staffing of it no it's the total cost i mean we there's no it's owned by the women's club women's club and we rent them rent and how much you pay them rent we sub-release it from them oh not it's not we don't pay them much okay so the financial piece you just discussed miss malica commissioner malica pardon me it's actually intertwined with other operations of parks and recreation it's not solely allocated mr meathead i think i may have to secure your help in terms of explaining the specifics behind that since the question came up but it's not all allocated specifically to the teen center per se so mr meathead i need you to help offer clarification in terms of how that actually works and oh excuse me sorry i'm okay thank you need some water until the budget's done yes sir so in any event as well as the relationship with the greater dairy beach women's club if you would please yes good afternoon mayor commissioners uh sam meetup director of parks and recreation um just some a couple points to try to touch on a number of the things you just mentioned is that number is an all-encompassing number that's your staff number as well as you know the insurances and taxes like fika and other things that are covered understaffing as well as the resource needed to run the center itself you know normal routine stuff for the center supplies and so forth um just to remind everybody that part of that agreement is that the women's club hosts all of their meetings there at the center as well as it's a skate park as well and sometimes that gets lost when you look at participation numbers in a camp or summer program so that operates each night and weekend as a as a full-on skate park as well so they have teen programming for different demographics throughout the week where they do different things like one of the new things they've been starting is like podcasting and introducing teens to programs like that where they they learn to use those type of um technologies and more modern settings so it's being utilized by how many students in that programming each each program is a different number and that's what i was just about to touch this one of the most challenging demographics in all of parks and recreation departments countrywide is your teen programming it's when you get the least engagement from teens when parents are no longer registering them and bringing them and it is the most challenging place to get them and you usually don't get major participation numbers again until they get more into their late 20s and 30s where they're settling into programming back into the weather community they tend to drift away in their teenage years whether they're off to college or focus more on high school activities but it does serve a real need for those that utilize it and again that participation number doesn't register those people that are using the facility for the skate park as well goodness to me Todd in addition to all of that some staff actually right we didn't get into the staffing yet but always talking more to those participation each program is a different number we usually average somewhere between 10 kids in a program anywhere up to maybe 30 kids in a program and that's only in the afternoon or summers right it's mostly afternoons and summers or whenever there's school breaks right um holiday dates or you know winter break things like that spring break those are when you get more programs is it staffed during the day when there isn't any activity we have an overlap of staff we have a daytime person that's a supervisor there on a regular shift from eight in the morning until five at night and then an evening shift that comes in midday and covers until the evening overlaps into the nighttime hours we then bring in part-time to cover in the evening as well for in additional staff and then weekends as well as more part-time staff and then there's two full-time staff members at the teen center as well as a full-time maintenance person that's the morning shift the afternoon shift and then the full-time maintenance there's three full-time uh employees and then the part-time staff around that now um so what mr moore is speaking about is the full-time maintenance person assists us at multiple sites right so they they help that maintenance person is more custodial than anything else they help us at veterans park as well as the teen center and anywhere else we might need them um and then the part-time staff we can utilize at other locations as well and then that other full-time position again where mr moore speaking is um we cover certain shifts over at katherine strong so we're offsetting some where we don't have enough staff maybe to cover all the activity at katherine strong they spend two days a week over at katherine strong to cover and that's that's where he meant that it it covers i'm great with staff bouncing to fill in as long as we try to cross train and utilize that um a couple years ago we added pickleball to katherine strong for example and it really increased our demand we went to earlier hours in the morning so rather than hiring new staff we've we've used staff to offset that and and that's where some of that comes into uh play is where we utilize them in other locations so that four hundred and seventy thousand we're using them elsewhere sometimes so that money is going to cover some of our other events correct and one more thing i would add is um not only do all of your staff help during all your special events one of the challenging things about running an operation is if you only had one and say you only had the person come in for the evening and then you didn't have another person any time they're sick or vacation is taken or any kind of issue you don't have a coverage right and that that's one of the challenges if you go down to just a single person running a building whenever they're not there you lose all your coverage so i just caution that to reduce it anymore you essentially can't run a functioning site very well um just every time i go by it there's nothing happening there maybe i'm not going by at the right time no and listen and i i hear this about a lot of things within parks and recreation and this is kind of a a way i put it in perspective so if i go to buy any one of my parks in the middle of the day on a tuesday they're mostly empty right all your sports fields are empty during the day um but if you go there at 6 30 pm you can't park it's hopping right and i use the same analogy at la fitness if i go to la fitness at three o'clock in the afternoon you get on any treadmill you want but if you go at seven in the morning or seven at night you can't get on a treadmill um so that's kind of the analogy i use but depending on the time you go it's very busy and depending on the time you go uh it cannot be okay thank you of course i see where you didn't have any luck last year and i'm not trying to be i'm happy to support you i'm happy to if it's getting use and kids are benefiting from it then i love it look the budget is sitting there so i mean we still have time to make any i mean we're not voting on millage tonight it's that's next week so we're gonna be however i am seeking some sense of consensus so that so what we are to prepare for september 8th and september 22nd and this discussion is productive so we'll be prepared so far we've only saved a couple million dollars to get i mean i'm just saying you know we saved a couple million dollars i'm pretty proud of that i am too yeah and that's some thoughts and ideas could i just to miss mollica you had said you want to make sure there's enough of a buffer with the overtime i did actually i sat down with mr moore in finance and i found the number kind of surprising since it had increased substantially from the past years but i reached out to the chief and that that number will work yeah for the fire and i had didn't talk to the police but our chief is shaking his head and i think that's it's good thank you and then some of the others that were i mean i go ahead and are you miss um i think that's it but i reserve the right to speak again to inject good commissioner market yeah you're out i just want to declare that sorry just before you get going i'm all set oh yeah thanks i'm sorry until you're not so i'll try to let you sit down sam uh a couple things on my end first of all i think the the cuts that commissioner casal outlined are the right ones um i i saw many of them myself when i was going through the budget i think those are those are where we should where we should go i think the challenge um that that we have sitting up here and it was somewhat highlighted earlier is two-thirds of our budget is police and fire basically and those are those are pretty fixed numbers so it leaves us with about a third of the pie that's left so that's one of the challenge that we have and and i would say looking at the budgets myself they they appear very very tight to me and that's why the cuts that have been suggested and um have been discussed a little bit are relatively small um when you use in my experience when you're using attrition as a way of saving that that means your budgets are darn tight so it's not meaning you're eliminating people or you're eliminating events or you're you're cutting programs completely we're not we're we're basically you know as people leave our organization we're going to deliberately go a little bit slow on hiring to save a couple of months of salary here and there it's not a bad strategy but um it's a it's a much harder one um as stated earlier the city right now we are behind on technology i've had a chance to spend a lot of time with jay recently um i think we're on a good path to getting that resolved but we are behind and that's causing us to have people band-aids which we had in the corporate world for a very long time as well not good you don't want them long term but as technology comes along we we need to be we need to be at a level with technology and not not racing behind and and ai is coming very soon as well and we need to be in a position like every every business and municipality uh to be able to uh to be able to adapt to that and and use that where we can uh in many ways i feel like we are victims of our success here um we are doing things pretty darn well and we should not lose sight of that we are we are attracting visitors like crazy we're winning awards like crazy um and it's driving our property values we all know that so let us not lose sight of that that's that is adding to the bottom line of all of our residents and full-time and partenheim residents so we are being victims of our our own success um and by the way i would also throw in we're because of that success we are attracting growth and development we have we have big companies that are making proposals to us um to to come in and potentially add enhancements to our city that's great that means we're we're on target we're vibrant we're doing good um what what i'm fearful of is the next round of cuts will be ones that we're all going to feel um you know we could cut things like parades um the christmas month long event could be a christmas one week event um events like the drone shows could go away so i i think we have to ask ourselves that hard question are we prepared to go backward as a city on stuff like that i don't personally think it's a good idea but some some may um i am a fan of building up and holding our reserves i've talked about this before given the work i do in washington um i am fearful that we're going to get walloped with a hurricane at some point and in fema is not coming we are going to be on our own and these reserves are going to be what is going to get our city through a potentially nasty period of time so i i think it's it's it's good that we have these reserves and and reserves aren't a bad thing in fact they're actually henry and i laughed about this it's the reserves are actually a good thing he makes money on these reserves i mean that money is being managed and that income is being brought to the city i mean so the these reserves are bringing cash to our city so it is like having a savings account at home it's not a bad thing so you know i think we got to be very careful with reserves and lastly just just my opinion to put it on the table given what we're facing in in november uh with the issue that we're all aware of um i think holding the millage is the right thing to do i believe if we don't do that and that uh that bill ends up passing uh we will we will find ourselves very vulnerable to some bad things so those are those are my comments sorry went a little long um i i agreed with every everything i mean um it's interesting because the my number of saving police was about 500 so you you're 300 more than i thought we were going to be able to grab out of them um and i i was i was also at 500 for fire so you picked up so another eight we got another 400 000 added to the pot which is always a good thing um i do think that we need to to look at uh whether we can have additional savings in in police and fire in terms of number of personnel that we have because i'm seeing that i mean everyone i mean everyone says well you know it affects public safety i don't know if it does or it doesn't i know technology can help it uh i know that we're trying to do cameras i think we're doing very well with our cameras we have the best real time i mean our real-time crime unit is really so exceptional compared to what other people have it just puts us way ahead of everybody and and i compliment the police department every day for the work that they do to for that department because we're all safer as a result um you know when we talk about how do you save money uh and someone said well you can cut out the not for i don't want to cut out the not-for-profits we have to support the not-for-profits but i think we need to follow what the rules are as it relates to not-for-profits you know i mean some some of our not-for-profits have a lot of cash but we still give them money um we have agreements with not-for-profits who uh we're not supposed to pay their salaries but we're paying their salaries i mean this is an issue so we have to go back and look at those contracts and say well why are we making these expenditures when the contract says we're not supposed to and i mean i'm gonna i mean i'm gonna no one wants to talk about the library but you know our agreement with the library is we don't pay you know they're supposed to pay their own salaries they are not we are paying them we are paying substantially all of the salaries for the library that's not the deal that's not the agreement so when you look at all these now the library's going to call me tomorrow and they say i can't believe you raised that well i did that's what the contract says i'm a lawyer that's what the contract says you know no not salaries maintenance this that nothing but not salaries i had this discussion with lynn the other day i said look i mean am i reading this wrong she said well no you're not so i mean there are a lot of ways that we can save money for the taxpayers so i don't and i don't think we're sharpening our pencils enough to do that you know i i i personally and i've made this point several times you know i won't get my roll back um but you know i mean i i think we should we should hold the millage we are the only if you go to the delray beach tax bill everyone got their middle everyone got every single person is either at the same they were last year or lower except one line item city of delray beach every single one across the county is this way except delray beach and and i don't want that this is why i did the analysis before i said it they're saying oh well it's because we had that rollback rate we have to make it no because we eclipsed them all in terms of the increase in the taxable base of our city by a decent measurable standard so it was time it was it we were increasing tax we were we should have been instead of lowering if there's one mill each time we probably should have been lowering it two mills or three mills to keep up with where that really should have been but we were so when we do when we do a catch-up it makes it look like oh well you know we no so i i i am i mean i'm very happy with with commissioner cassow's analysis and commissioner marcus announcing commissioner burns analysis commissioner marcus analysis these we you know we picked up a couple of million bucks which is great it's something it's something about 2.5 about 2.5 right 1.6 and then the uh 1.4 you know and and i mean we can we can we each can have a different view of reserves and i mean i'm mr doctor which and i are probably closer to what we think that number is than then commissioner cassow but the point is the 1.4 is the savings the additional stuff is the savings of the actual operating costs is going to be relevant to all of us because i mean look i i am very confident that the city manager and mr docowitz and and the department heads you know overestimate their costs and underestimate their revenues which is which is great because their costs come in less and the revenues come in higher so we always ended up which has been the experience the past couple years and that's sound budgeting that's sound budget yes it is i believe that we have sound budgeting which is why the rating agencies love us because we do actually have sound budgeting so but i i just i just want to try to find more ways well already already we are saving money from where we were when we walked in right so we're we're we're and i just think we can sharpen it a little more and see if i can do a little better we can do a little better and that's all i'm trying to do mr mayor and ladies and gentlemen if i may please at this juncture i'd like to serve as your facilitator slash advisor so i'd like to fully endorse i've already endorsed and prepared for half of them and for half of the identified cost adjustments based on the analysis of overtime on police and fire leadership in both departments are comfortable in that regard we're squared away in that regard in addition to some of the other observations haven't been offered this evening i think we can endorse and support that so as we prepare for september 8th we will have a presentation to reflect that as a start but i'm saying we also some of the other things mentioned that i want to make sure you include is and and it was mentioned by by mr dockowitz is you know a delay in this in in the start of some of the projects you know there's there's things we can push back which we don't have to spend we could talk about you know delay in acquisitions of of of new vehicles we can there's things we can right that was in my leasing program if you go back 20 you save money and all these things are well you know understood if i may sir please thank you so my interest is to take all that into account i think we have the ability to proceed in that regard the interest is to productively prepare for september 8th and september 22nd as i've outlined in my introductory comments wonderful feedback for all of you ladies and gentlemen for that i'm grateful thank you because much of it aligns with some of what we've been thinking as we were preparing for today a lot of police and fire overtime budget adjustment considerations based on calculations analysis etc so we have that there in addition to some of the other thoughts and observations we are prepared we heard all of it for the record we are prepared to offer direction to that effect the question therefore remains what would the comfort level be in terms of military position i've heard all of you speak a little bit about that but the fact of the matter is we do need to prepare for september 8th so an opportunity to strike a balance in terms of what the military would be based on the identified savings opportunities or straight acceptance of the recommendation by four of you all in terms of the 6.4371 as well as to update the reserve the fund balance position based on the savings having been identified i would like to have a productive discussion to that effect so that we can come back with specific formal recommendations first reading a week from today final reading two weeks thereafter so if we can talk about that please we need everybody to be squared away from my from my standpoint you know i i i am not for the keeping the same millage rate i want to reduce the millage rate by how much with that number i don't know yet um i'd like to keep it where it is if you want to know the truth we can discuss you know the whole i mean i happen to think that we were over reserved everyone talks about reserves but yeah but we're not like a pizza store that when a storm comes all of a sudden we're out of money i mean the taxes still keep continuing to accrue and and and every single time in the prior i've gone through several times uh with this it's not like you i mean you redeploy the city redeploys its assets parks and rec gets into cleanup all these people get into i mean it's not like you we are shut down i understand and when there's a there's a worry about whether there's enough money but we still get our tax revenue we still it's not our money doesn't dry up it's not like the pizza store where we need to have business interruption insurance we we are we still have our revenues we still have our taxes so yeah i mean and and the and the standard that they use up there and that that thing that you talked about uh for the whatever that accounting board gfoa gfoa which talks about two months you know we're over two months that's fine i think two months actually works fine i i'm actually looking for a meaningful reduction in the millage rate because we always will have the ability we can always raise our reserve we're at the low end uh when i met with the league of cities you know some years back they talked about you're already in the low end because we were allowed if we had to we could go to 10 mills and tax everybody and pay for all our debts they would hate us not anymore well we can no longer do that doesn't pass if it doesn't pass correct um but we have the ability to raise money when we need to so let's talk about trying to just because my property values go up doesn't mean i should be giving all that that benefit to the city so i'm just trying to find a way to i don't want to do the 6.4 i mean i i can't get my roll back but you know unless you want to give me my roll back i'd love my roll back well i would support holding the line where we are i would support that to stay that's what i want to do so we'll hold where we are now um if i may i need to think about that but with this uh gfoa two months is the baseline starting point you build from there depending on if you're a coastal community or what have you our auditor did a report for us on the reserves and the suggested balance based on the surrounding communities and all the factors that we should consider as a city ourself was 21 that was just given us in an audit report i don't care what they're doing no but you're talking about one community the study presented a bunch of coastal communities that's an expert study done for us at request that suggested 21 and i think that's a good place to be and that's where we should be aiming for is it going to go lower occasionally yes but let's not drop it down to balance our budget and then tell the residents we're doing them a favor because we're not long term and i would just say that i don't think we should be looking at necessarily reducing our police force i take my puppy out and walk at night it's a very different environment in the downtown at night we are unique in that we need excessive policing in our downtown in the evenings and when you're if you take away from our police force then whatever is downtown is not going to be policing our neighborhoods and safety is in every question you ask the residents what's their primary concern safety so and we right now we're in a great place let's keep it going i love it thank you chief so we can't have both guys we can't keep our reserves and then keep the original millage and i think that when we first got the presentation about the original or last year's millage versus this new increased one my understanding is that the deficit was five million dollars but then you just said if we go back to the rollback rate it's also five million so that's a loss of five million plus i mean but how about was i i kind of remember a presentation with with our budget with the last year's millage rate that our deficit was also five million is that accurate or am i hallucinating no you are correct however there are a couple different calculations because we take under consideration what the community redevelopment agency impacts are got it yeah because that wasn't a wash right so that's that first impact in that regard as well yes ma'am yes ma'am so speaking in general without going into specific calculations but that's the distinction we have to get rid of them just kidding no and if i may ladies and gentlemen don't worry about i know maybe there's maybe a way to extend it i have i have a couple recommendations to strike a balance that i like for everybody to consider um commissioner malik any other further observations or questions no just like the obvious mutually exclusive goals mr i'm sorry mr mayor i'm i'm asking to be facilitated you're looking for direction and i think we're trying to give you direction i think and i have a couple thoughts please um mr a lot of personalities i'm going to try mr marker you'll try a balance mr marker so a couple of you all talked about a lower military position from what we were recommended so of course there's an interest to do what we can to tweak the fund balance position on a budget basis given what's been accomplished in terms of public safety overtime 1.4 that would provide an opportunity to bring i gave you the 1.6 originally in that whole list of things and then i gave i had i gave you 1.6 and then the overtime is 1.4 that's three million dollars i got it i got it i got it if i may commissioner i'm coming the interest is to strike a balance in terms of tweaking the fund balance position a bit while coming down on our initial millage rate recommendation based on all the feedback based on honor synergy and the plea for four of you to support this consideration given the public safety side of 1.4 we could proceed with the millage rate position instead of the 6.4371 to maybe 6.3501 that would be the calculation so a millage rate recommendation of 6.3501 and the aggregate savings as i then i'm sorry what's the debt in that part and what's the where which which how much of the debt millage is the debt the millage the debt millage rate is the same that doesn't change that doesn't change that's the total yes so the operating millage i'm referring to instead of the six i'm just making sure it's not a combination of the two you're just talking about operating operating because the middle of the debt is flat that's done that's not to change until it's done so as opposed to 6.3 excuse me as opposed to 6.4371 we offer a formal recommendation next week of 6.3501 based on the public safety adjustments number one the remaining savings haven't been identified we tweaked that and that would go towards supporting a better fund balance position that's what i would sincerely like to recommend you have the ability to demonstrate that hey we reduced the military position from what you tentatively adopted during the july 21st meeting by way of this workshop discussion as well as we'll be able to calculate for you what the new fund balance position will be once we factor those savings if i can have consensus to proceed to that effect i will come back to you all september 8th september 22nd you have a lower millage position from what we initially recommended to our hearts content as well as the ability to to tweak the fund balance position it's a great scenario i would ask for you all support in that regard and we will sharpen our pencils over the next few days to prepare for next week's agenda transmittal please i'm just all i'm going to say is that you keep referring back to the fund balance i'm very happy with the fund balance that mr dockwood's you know percentage that he came up with so if i can i really would like to drop them all into savings for what people are paying out of their pocket because that is what they feel that is what you know as the as they're paying increased uh insurance every every everything everything everything about their daily lives it's gotten more expensive ladies down to without the fund balance with this fund balance at 17 i'd like to look at it you know dude if we if we wanted to keep with mr dockwitz's recommended fund balance whether our financial you know directors i'd like to talk about that for a second please like mr dockwitz i've also spent time with the external professionals the rating agencies and so forth for the past couple years and they endorse us having as high of a fund balance as we possibly can get it if we were to be at 18 19 20 somewhere in that neighborhood is what we're working to accomplish based on the recommendation or suggestion i just offered that would be of immense help so again my interest is to strike that balance because we are on the same court with respect to what that should be and that's the feedback coming back up externally mr moore may i if you go back and look at the bond rating letters when we got the bonds one of the things that they highlighted in those letters was that our reserve level was high enough to justify that bond rating and do you remember what you remember what the the i'm going to put you on the spot here but do you remember when the city projected when they gave the information to the bond agencies what they said that the the reserves are going to be um 30 no no no no no no no we came in with what was it a 10 12 percent what was it i'm trying to remember what the bond things that we it wasn't i'd have to go back and find the letter i'll find the letter i mean i was i was i i was there kind of when we did it but um it wasn't anywhere near 18 i'm just going to tell you that well we could we could argue that point you know but i'll grab my computer right now one at a time let's work on the millage let's get let's get let's get our millage determined first let's i'm asking how much we can save i made a recommendation separate from what i made three point six point three five oh one which is a good start but you know i i think you know i'd like to see where we can do here's the problem if we may i just one second judy if we were just going to have a regular calendar year and there was no consideration of what is happening at the state level then i would say to you we're in a great position today let's kick it down a little but we are facing unprecedented uncertainty and i think it's irresponsible we just this small tweaking we should be celebrating going below that at this point is it is not a good idea and here's what we can do somehow we can figure it out if we can find savings if this doesn't go through maybe we go back and we reassess some of the other billing that the residents are getting somehow i don't know if that's possible but i would say to you we have no idea what's going to happen and we need to be prepared for the worst the worst is a loss of uh 21 million in the first year and 42 million in the second year next year wouldn't be this year but yes i mean i i've absolutely perfect you know i've spoken about this thing right so let's be fiscally responsible to our taxpayers so look as i said i'm just trying to tweak it as best i can and we are we're getting there we're not suggesting going below the 18 percent no we're not no no it's probably going to be higher i have two questions please i'm sorry i have two questions none of it's going to lower the millage or the reserves my questions are um mr doc which you mentioned that we're better prepared at a higher millage rate should the november thing happen why is there only a certain amount i mean i know there's a calculation tell me a new bill that limits your increases to your millage rate and they're using this year's this coming year's millage rate as the base as the base what is that um limited to i don't know you can't do more than ten percent ten percent okay got it without a a referendum right isn't it it needs to be unanimous decision of the commission to go above that increase we've never really done it we haven't done a 10 and i don't want to my second question i think back in unrelated to our own millage does the library have any ability i thought they did have an ability that they could in fact tax a certain millage do they have that ability they would actually become part of my understanding is that they would become of the palm beach county system they have a separate millage rate dairy beach residents do not have that separate millage rate because they have their own separate library tied to a library is 0.5411 the palm beach county library if you are millage i don't know what 0.5411 translates into dollars so you could tell me that off probably you'd have to look it up so i guess my point is we could take that off our payroll and our donation to them makes good sense then just saying no so no i don't i don't i don't i get that i'm not making that a judgment whether or not it's a good or bad thing i mean the the it would be coming out of if we there may be a time when we have to at our own operating budget be able to have more money on our own operating budget and under under the statute we are allowed to let the library essentially be paid for by by the by the county which also does include salaries their their their 0.5411 includes payment of salaries and things such that for the library personnel that's what that's what they do but it would become part of the palm beach county library aside from being part of the county they don't have any ability to okay got it thank you i love having our own library okay here we are the bond rating letter says our very strong reserves which have averaged more than 30 percent of expenses over the past three years right so now we're at 18. when we made the application for the bond rating that's the letter you want to look at what the base number was no i'm looking at their letter that they give when they gave us the rating and their explanation as to why both moody and smp said it was because our hefty reserves i know that's what it said at 30 percent but that wasn't that their rating where it that's two years later we're at 18 so come on and recent discussions with analysts and that ladies and gentlemen they were somewhat critical of the fact that the city would know because they were critical of the city in a way because of our impact to revenue going back to military reductions over the past couple years and so forth that was the basis for it it wasn't because of going from 30 to 20 or 25 whatever the case may be i understand i'm just clarifying however they were critical of the fact that we positioned ourselves to adversely impact the revenue outcome a lot of the military reductions haven't been experienced that was communicated clearly in my engagements with moody's investor service and smp global ratings in particular because in 2025 last year i provided you all with updates via the information letter reports in terms of what the outcomes were and i'm really grateful professionally that we did quite well in terms of the military excuse me in terms of the the rating positions we've been able to enjoy but that was the specific reasoning ladies and gentlemen because there was an adverse impact to the revenue ability the ability to collect revenue as a result of reducing millage rates because as i stated several times now most other municipalities maintain a healthy appropriate millage rate and enjoy revenue increases as a result of maintaining a stable millage rate as opposed to what been the experience in delray beach that was a thorough discussion we've had in our experiences in the last recent time it was i'm sure in mr market's experience certainly in mine and doing finance the auditors you cannot give them enough reserves they just they just love yeah well they do we went from 30 percent in 2020 from 2024 to 18. okay with that with the battle constantly with the with the examiner well you got to do this you know i mean okay fine ladies and gentlemen but those reserves we can't forget this those reserves are not bad things they're throwing off seven eight percent interest i mean i would suggest that the auditors don't care what our reserves are they add up the numbers and present financial statements the bond rating agencies are protecting the bondholders who are lending us money hundreds of millions of dollars and when we have larger reserves that gives them a level of comfort for those investors which gives them a higher rating and we would then be able to borrow money at a lower rate if we deplete our reserves and at the same time cut our our millage rate i i think if the referendum passes i know you don't think it's going to do but i like to prepare for the worst if that passes so we're going to have a hit of revenue right off the top and we're going to have a limit as to what we can cut because we're not allowed to cut police and fire and we're going to have a problem because we can't raise our millage rate then what do you do you're linked with no optionality one of the things we're trying to do is retain our flexibility at this point and i i look you may be right i know i stand alone and thinking it's not going to pass they won't loan us money but i i i i'm just i have to plan that it will pass i know and try to keep our flexibility so if we cut our millage rate we are not only going to return and tell the taxpayers look you don't have to pay as much of an increase as the city manager's recommended budget but by the way it's going to hit you twice because we can't catch up we've never listen we just got to make a decision here where this is uh like let's if you want to think on it but my feeling is we found savings i almost think because we don't know what we're doing we stay where we're at and we build our reserves up and if somehow we have large savings at the end we figure out a way to filter it if this doesn't go through back to our taxpayers either some reduction on their utilities or something like that there's ways we can do this but i think we're very irresponsible at this point to not consider the tremendous loss of finances that we could see in the very near future for our taxpayers i absolutely acknowledge it it's just okay that's where i'm at mr moore so you understand so what that tells me is that you're at 6.4371 yes or not well or the 6.466 up that includes my colleagues yes i am serving back at this i i you know i i'm certainly and all for the suggestion ladies and gentlemen to try to take under consideration so miss burns and that was the suggestion i made earlier about 6.4371 six point three five zero one that one six point three five seven one six point three five zero one that's where that's where that's well i'm at i'm at the current but so okay i'm not changing so well can i just ask you what do you want to cut i mean we i'm not i want to be disrespectful mayor but what how do you gonna how do you want to pay for all the things you voted for that we have to pay for in the upcoming fiscal year you voted for the police contract i didn't vote for it that's his job no it is your job you're voting for these things i i i that i can't we've had a huge i mean over 10 million dollars of the increase is just for our employees at the current level that is the cost of you can argue about the current level then so then make suggestions you can't sit up here and keep on saying you want it lower if you don't have suggestions you keep voting for these raises you voted for the increase all the increases you voted for the police contract which as we noticed in the cra was a 23 increase to the budget staying at the same level of employees i voted against the police no you didn't you voted for it mr no go back and watch oh no no i would no no no you voted for the ministerial part after was approved by the commission i voted for oh yes stop please don't make the nuance ladies ladies and gentlemen you voted for it ladies and gentlemen can't keep voting for the things that cost us money and then not pay for them up here ladies and gentlemen as this is a workshop free flow discussion so that's why i'm inserting myself yet again more or less yeah i may what i think is a cogent reasonable suggestion in terms of a millage rate position in terms of our abilities to update the fund balances as a result so frankly i'd like to hear i've heard from commissioner cassell commissioner market commissioner malica commissioner burns any thoughts regarding what's been suggested one i i think you know i know this is a workshop we're going to come back you know in a week or so on this in a week if there are cuts that we're contemplating i i want to i want to have a reckoning of what those cuts are we're going to summarize that for you as part of next week's presentation i know you can only go down to a certain level but i want to see the the cuts that are sawing through the bone you know and your department heads are going to know what those are so based on all the feedback we've received this evening we'll offer an updated presentation to show what that looks like and what the numerical specifics will be towards what policy consideration on the millage rate on the fund balance position so that's part of what we'll come back with we have work to do beginning tomorrow once we conclude this exercise but again i would love to have your consensus on the millage rate and that will open the door to all the rest please so commissioner cassell are you still at the at the 6.437 um yes yes yeah i think it's responsible and i think we have to consider that possibility at the 6.3501 i'm actually at the current one of 6.1 something but i mean i'm willing to to i'm willing to to look at a higher number um as we as we as we try to address the cost so you know i came into this i came into this with trying to make sure that we we could reduce what was all what was being proposed we've already got a two million dollar give or take uh uh reduction and i made a suggestion to get there which is a great start um i mean do i think that there's more that we can tweak what during this i mean at this point i think mayor i've gone through this document four times line by line i mean i appreciate your comments but i'd like to you know have mine too um uh so you've asked me for my view that's that's my view i mean i'm right now i i'm not at the at the 6.4 i'm closer to the 6.3 so i i i'm going to see whether we can tweak it a little further but i think that we should proceed based on the on the savings that have been identified tonight and you should come back i think commissioner market is correct he'd like we'd like to see it on paper to see what it really what the true impact is so that we can look at all the numbers ourselves because that's you know i mean we're giving we're not we don't have them in front of us so we're all talking you know hypothetically based on what we're so what numbers are we giving him to give us numbers on well i mean i think he's going to come back he's going to propose a budget of six point uh the millage of 6.3501 okay although i'm going to try to see if i'm going to try to come look farther to see if i can dig deeper to see if we can get any other savings that have not been identified tonight that's all i'm saying and i said earlier that i i would i'm okay with holding where we are however as commissioner cassell said we have to pay the bills so i'm willing to go with the the 6.350 one yes i'm willing to go there and the only other thing i'd throw in it's you know it's okay if we come in under budget by the way i always loved that when i was running big companies we've done that a lot just because just because you know we got a budget of x doesn't mean we got to spend it like we along the way if we can find savings and and that happens as a surplus the bottom line that's and we've done that henry will start smiling again no we've done a good job doing that yeah we've done that that was part of the july 21st presentation about c-based that's that's part of the practice underestimating our revenues and we always several departments did that so yeah that's correct that's happening amen okay you know certainly development services came in less than eight dollars came in other people are we good are we done are we i i'd like to if if may i summarize then based on what i'm hearing to come back with a military position of six point three five zero one what the adjustments are in that regard and what the fund balance position will be because it will actually come up a bit higher based on the feedback relative to adjustments haven't been offered this evening some coming from us coming from you all and we'll provide a budget presentation during the september 8th meeting so if i could have consensus to proceed along those lines would that be fair i think it is i'm i'm i'm i'm gonna say that i'm happy with the with the with the i understand analysis that was done by the by the by our finance director and i'd like to dedicate the reductions to saving saving the taxpayers uh money otherwise are we yes yeah otherwise we're fine come back with something okay everybody mr market miss malica um miss burns and mayor said yes and we understand casal so we will go from there yeah i like it thank you wait before we close let's thank the chief for this shirt i'm honored i'll be honored to wear it to the gym tomorrow don't we all get one yes it's in your cubby you have to check your mail it you all have a shirt we have to cut the t-shirts i didn't sorry i haven't been in the office thank you yes can't wait to wear it we are any any other any other any other any other hyperbole going on okay no we return