City Commission - Regular Meeting - May 19, 2026

good evening ladies and gentlemen welcome to the city of delray beach regular commission meeting this tuesday may 19th if the clerk would please call the roll deputy vice mayor market here commissioner mullica here commissioner cassell here vice mayor burns here mayor carney here we have a quorum thank you very much if you could all rise please for the pledge of allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay agenda approval there is um we're taking 6e off correct correct yes uh and can i speak to that mr moore for the future those kind of things should never be on consent so so acknowledged thank you very much i appreciate that's why it's being pulled um could i pull 6p3 for one question which is who p3 it's the uh station 112 okay 6p3 i would i'd also like i'm going to also pull um 6p1 for discussion because i'm trying to understand that a little bit better mayor mayor yes so 6p3 will be 7 double a yeah i don't care which we do you want to make sense 6p1 will be 7bb all right so 7bb oh so you have to rush to get it in so you get hurt sooner i got you okay it doesn't matter i can go second um and i'm going to ask of 6a i when i was given my book on friday you know supposedly my complete book it did not include the minutes from the the minutes that are that are described you want to put that on well yes because i like to read the minutes before i approve them i agree um and it shouldn't be up to the commissioners who would given a book to go search and look for it online so i expect everything to be in my book when i'm given my book so i'm going to ask that 6a um we can either pull it or we can just say we could move it to the next yeah then i'd like to do that uh 6d um only because i have a question on it i don't need a whole presentation on it but i do i'm going to ask anthea a question on 6d she's here so 7cc i'm sorry 7cc 7cc is that 6e is 7cd oh i'm sorry e we took off d 6e is already removed 7cc all county paving that's just a general utility easement i have a question i want to ask about and it's not just that there's another question on the plat that i'm going to ask okay because they're adding something to a plat um that's all i have so far so that's 7cc are there any other um can i just comment that those meeting minutes were on the uh website i mean they were uploaded just for our clerk's benefit no i'm not saying they're not but when i'm giving a book of all the backup and everything and it's not there then it's i don't i bring these with me i don't go online look up stuff so so in other words when i have my book if you if it says attached here too i'd like it attached there too of course okay um any other any other comments and i need a motion to approve the agenda as amended so moved second all in favor aye any opposed we are approved all moving forward all right um 4a this is an additional which which um actually there's an additional presentation there's an additional presentation right so you want to take care of the additional presentation now if it's no trouble i would like to go ahead and do that one now thank you mr mayor ladies and gentlemen good evening so the city of dairy beach is actually pleased to share that the international city county management association is recognizing the city of dairy beach for 80 years of commission manager form of government recognition milestone so one of the first cities in the state of florida to adopt the council manager form of government or in the case of dairy beach the commission manager form of government back in 1946 so that's been the legacy and it's a tremendous accomplishment across the board likewise we have leadership from the florida city county management association board of directors ms tracy stevens and andrea mccue i believe is here as well and former dairy beach assistant city manager who's pretty active in the profession is with us as well mr bob barzynski who i have an opportunity to interact with fairly often so they are here to offer a few words of recognition and i think a photo opportunity would be appropriate as well ms tracy stevens ladies and gentlemen and thank you all for coming today thank you mr moore good evening mayor vice mayor commissioners city staff and the residents of delray beach my name is tracy stevens i'm the town administrator for the town of haverhill and your district four director for the florida city and county management association and as mr moore had indicated i have several of our colleagues here with me tonight on behalf of the fccma board of directors and more than 600 members we are honored to present this certificate recognizing your 80th anniversary city of delray beach's operation under the commission manager form of government as recognized by the international city and county management association this important milestone must surely be celebrated and is one that we as professional managers are very grateful for icma was founded with a commitment to the preservation of the values and integrity of representative local government and a dedication to the promotion of efficient and effective management of public services the commission manager form of government provides for separate oversight of the administrative functions of municipal and county governments as professional managers we recognize the value of public service with the goal of improving the lives of those that we serve we strive to maintain and enhance public trust and confidence in local government through effective administration and delivery of programs and services while creating communities where people want to live learn work and play city manager more brings extensive municipal management experience to delray beach public service often involves navigating complex and challenging issues and throughout mr moore's career he has shown a commitment to practical solutions that strengthen the communities that he has served we thank you the commission for recognizing the importance of professional management for our communities and on behalf of fccma and its members we congratulate the city of delray beach on this milestone recognition thank you very much there's a photo op of here commission she definitely needs mr moore thank you 國家 thank you thank you thank you and i won't be your left shoe is untied thank you all okay we're now moving into item 4a Kenya Madison will be making this presentation you'll be actually doing 4a and 4b right okay that's correct if I could please just take a moment and ask all the folks wearing green to please stand thank you and if I could have Brianna come with me thank you good evening afternoon I don't know if good afternoon it's still afternoon good afternoon mayor vice mayor commissioner supportive city clerk thank you so much for all your hard work city leadership community partners youth elders and residents of Delray Beach thank you for this proclamation recognizing May as mental health awareness and trauma informed care month and for continuing to support the get your green on campaign a movement born right here in the beautiful city of Delray Beach through vision voices and the courage of young people in community as I stand here right now with so deep gratitude and humility for the as a fourth generation Delray Beach resident and the granddaughter of a farmer who came here exactly a hundred years ago on the back of a tomato truck from Quitman Georgia leaving behind the hardships of sharecropping in search of possibility with family already established here in 33444 Delray Beach became home for me it became hope it became fertile ground for resilience and now generations later I stand here a daughter of this soil raising a fifth generation carrying for the lessons of perseverance faith hard work and community care that were planted long before me I dedicate this proclamation to my mother a hard-working entrepreneur and master cosmetologist who taught me that anything in this life was possible with determination compassion and purpose and my godmother taught me to read at age three okay I think about the young people who inspired the beginning of Get Your Green On back in 2016 at Atlantic High School and Village Academy and I will state restate and forever state village academy um a young young folks who simply wanted their community to pay attention to mental health and wellness and here we are today still growing still reaching still healing together this year's theme rooted in resilience with a focus on resiliency and nature is honestly um there is no better place um than our village by the sea Delray Beach teaches us resilience every single day the ocean reminds us to keep moving the trees bend with storms without breaking and gardens bloom season after season with our rains nature teaches us that healing takes nurturing connections sunlight rest and care and people do too mental health matters for our youth trying to find their way for our elders carrying stories and silent burdens for families navigating uncertainty and for those who feel unseen unheard and overwhelmed so tonight I simply ask our community to show up and show up for one another check on your people check on your people create safe spaces lead with kindness and of course wear green um remember that resilience does not does not mean that we are never to struggle it just means that we never struggle alone thank you to the city of Delray Beach for continuing to stand with us in this movement and for helping us shine a light on awareness advocacy and action through our get your green on and through get your green on 365 together let's continue building a community rooted in resilience healing and love thank you and right now I would like to um invite miss Brianna to the podium who will accept our teen proclamation that was created by the palm beach county behavioral health coalition's teen coalition in action good evening everyone a proclamation from the teens of delray beach and palm beach county declaring may 2026 as mental health and trauma-informed care awareness month whereas mental health is just as important as physical health and everyone deserves access to the support they need to heal grow and thrive and whereas life is full of challenges and as teens we experience stress anxiety and struggles in school at home in our social lives and whereas one in four teens will experience a mental health challenge yet many do not seek help due to stigma fear or lack of resources and whereas trauma including bullying loss family struggles discrimination substance use and violence affects many of us and can impact how we feel think and succeed in life and whereas healing from trauma and prioritizing mental health requires strong support systems including friends family schools and communities that understand and uplift us and whereas talking about mental health openly learning coping skills and reaching out for professional help when needed can make a difference in our well-being and future and whereas we recognize that youth leadership and advocacy are key to changing the way mental health is understood ensuring all teens have the resources to navigate challenges and heal from past experiences and whereas we the teens of palm beach county stand together to break the stigma around mental health and to promote trauma informed care that acknowledges our experiences and helps us build resilience and now therefore be it proclaimed that may 2026 is mental health and trauma informed care awareness month in palm beach county florida we call upon all teens to check out the back in with their friends and seek help from a trusted adult when needed we call upon all families to create open and supportive conversations about mental health we call upon all schools to provide resources and safe spaces for students we call upon all communities to promote awareness and accessibility to mental health services and we call upon all places of faith to offer compassion and support to those struggling together we can build a county where no young person has to struggle alone thank you thank you very much thank you very much we're now going to item 4c which is the 2026 historic preservation board awards michelle hoiland you have the floor good afternoon good evening each other Hoyland principal planner for the record can you hear me okay better better yeah okay um so first thank you for having us here okay so may 2026 is national historic preservation month this is deemed a month of celebration by the national preservation trust and i'm here pleased to present the 2026 historic preservation board awards every year in may the communities around the country celebrate historic preservation month with programs like this an award ceremony and different types of events honoring the efforts of historic preservation in their communities the national theme this year for historic preservation month is all people are created equal and we join with these hundreds of communities as we celebrate so with no further ado the board deliberated on six categories for historic preservation for contributing and non-contributing historic non-historic structures and this is our first award winner the property owners were nikki amani and i'm sorry nikki mercedes and sandra amani this house was built in 1949 it's in the west settlers historic district 108 northwest fourth avenue and it's a masonry vernacular home they improved the structure there was a long history an unfortunate long history on this property with the previous owner so these new owners came in and did quite a nice job it included front improvements to their landscaping their architecture they also had a very large addition in the back with in mind keeping in mind the size of the house a new pool as well was added and so these property owners sandra amani and nikki mercedes won the award for residential contributing additions and rehabilitation next we have 503 northeast second avenue this is a 1947 streamlined modern home and this is the property before the owner's mjz properties which are jeff and mindy wooster some may also know them as rtg homes a builder in the community and they purchased this property and brought life back to this little streamlined modern that was built in 1947 you can see they restored that porthole window to the side of the front door a complete interior update occurred which was really cute it's period appropriate if anyone's curious to what it looks like you can go see it on zillow this is looking at the property from the south they added some ribbon strips for the driveway a new pool in the back and so we awarded the property owners and j-z properties the residential contributing exterior alterations award for their work here in preserving that home in delida park interestingly that property on the east side included additional lands that the property owners carved property owners carved off to create an additional buildable lot and so they came through it was a bit of a fight with the board back and forth they came to the board three times the board's concerns were massing and different items relating to the size and scale of the structure so again mjz properties won an award for 209 northeast fifth street for the new build that they did in delida park and here again this is one of those properties if you're curious to see what the finished result looks like you can also see this on zillow or realtor.com and that's an aerial view which i think is pretty impressive just seeing the tree canopy that exists in our historic district up in delida park so congratulations to mjz properties who won for residential non-contributing new construction this property is quite interesting at 403 north swinton avenue it's owned by alex and margot platt and many of you may remember this was a dentist's office for as long as i can remember this little home the plats came through a home but it was an office to utilize it as their commercial real estate office for compass real estate where where they have their business this little house originally was located at 74 northeast fourth avenue and was relocated in 1975 50 years after it was built in the 1920s and so the plats invested heavily in the exterior new windows new roof landscaping updating their parking lot in the back they've done a lovely job and it's a great property that kind of serves as the welcome to historic preservation districts in delray beach as it sits on the corner of swinton and lake ida congrats to margo and alex platt then we have the cra with 98 northwest fifth avenue this structure was a mixed-use building that existed here for about 50 years it was built in the 70s this is a non-contributing or not historic structure you'll see some of your names on the plaque near the front door if you were to go visit and also the property is named the edmund baines building for notable member of the community the black community and this is in the west settlers historic district originally it had parking underneath that's all been enclosed for use of retail or commercial business and then there's a co-working space on the second floor of this building it was on the cusp of becoming historic so it's pretty cool that they did some improvements that may allow it to become a contributing structure in the future so congrats to the cra and the hard work of many of you as well serving at the board level to invest in the west settlers historic district next there's two more this is our second to last as many of you know this is the sandaway discovery center the property is owned by palm beach county leased by the city of delray beach and subleased by the sandaway discovery center this is at 142 south ocean boulevard we were contacted by the sandaway discovery center who really needed to be able to create a cool temperature wise space on the interior front porch so they enclosed the front porch screens with windows added new doors that are handicapped accessible along with the ramp our partners at the sandaway discovery center consistently invest in this property maintaining this sam ogren resort colonial style structure in good shape and form so we're so grateful to them sandaway wins in the category of commercially individually designated for their rehabilitation next we have the colony hotel and i did see that miss hillary roche is here in the audience with us so the colony reached out via roy simon god rest his soul and i know his daughter laura is here to come through and build a new maintenance building in the rear of the property and roy envisioned a building that would be in keeping with the 1920s architectural style here which is spanish colonial or even mission revival in influence this was one of mr simon's last works he was a great consultant to work with still drawing by hand which revisions weren't always easy because it took time for him but the the utmost respect for mr simon he was a consummate professional we had a great time working with him and congrats to the bouton hotels for their continued investment in this historic property this is a quick photo here of the award winners the night of the hpb award meeting earlier this month and i know we're on a quick timeline but if i could cover the next slides i'll move quickly i left a handout at your seat that you can read later but it's for the colony hotel and we would be you know remiss and not identifying and celebrating that they're at a hundred year anniversary of this hotel the history is compiled some from research we did and from their website but i thought we could just cover a quick quick history here this is not an actual photo of george and agnes bounton this was a photo i found online the hotel was originally built in 1926 hence the 100 year anniversary it did not sustain the great depression and it eventually sold and went to foreclosure the boutons bought the property george and agnes when they were coming through the area on their honeymoon um they they happened upon it fell in love and this was in the 1930s it's been in the bouton family since the boutons also own a property in kenny bunkport maine also known as the colony it's their sister property they have invested over the years and purchased land on the oceanfront where they have the colony cabana club and you can see from pictures here these were a few photographs we found of george bounton and agnes winning a golf award trophy here upon their passing the property was inherited and moved into control with justina bounton their daughter and hillary roche their niece who have continued to maintain this property update it it is a very popular destination for many people you'll many people i think will remember spending time on the front porch and listening to music and having a drink with george i think it is at the bar so we're grateful to our partners at the colony hotel for their continued investment in this historic hotels of america property and it serves as a landmark here on the local register of historic places so congratulations and thank you and we did not um get to give miss roche the award on um our hpb meeting so i was hoping i could ask her to come up and accept her award another photo and for those interested you could go back and watch the may 6th hpb meeting where we did a more elaborate history on the colony hotel you can find that on our website i'm not going to go into the full presentation but i encourage everybody to take time to go walk through the sunday village site yes um which the main block is complete uh block 61 the windmill has gone in and the pedestrian via and um we are seeing the near completion probably early summer of block 69 and block 70 which is southeast these businesses and the historic homes will be opening soon we're working with the owners so i won't go through the whole thing but go back and watch the may um 6 meeting for hpb where we had a time lapse of the construction it's pretty cool thank you thank you very much and congratulations to all of those who were recognized today we really appreciate what you do for our city can i just quick can we give a shout out to our very own renee jadasing for the award that the cra got that was quite an amazing award and you know all her hard work and her staff and i love this presentation every year when we have this i just think it's very uplifting to see the possibilities thank you great thank you very much okay we're reaching the portion of the agenda where there's going to be comments and inquiries i'm sorry 40 40 40 for who it's my item oh your item oh well i didn't see you down there i'm sorry i'm not feeling it today mayor i apologize and i know you've been preparing we talked about it so i know you're ready i'm ready and so is mr dearman who's approaching the podium so this is mark dearman he's our outside counsel um he has been handling our pfos our forever chemicals litigation and he's doing he and napolei skolnick who's the other law firm he's working with have been doing an amazing job we received another check today for a half a million dollars um from our participation in this lawsuit and mark is uh going to very briefly um discuss entering another litigation city would be a plaintiff it would be at no cost to the city mr dearman would be uh spearheading it on behalf of the city and as you know he does an incredible job for us thank you hon uh mayor vice mayor commissioner staff i'm mark dearman with me is my colleague robert gittleman who's with the napolei skolnick firm um i've had the the privilege and the pleasure of representing the city for about 10 years now uh we're representing you in the national opioids litigation and as lynn said we're representing you in the pfos litigation the litigation that i'm going to talk to you about now is essentially a continuation of that pfos litigation um with that check today i think we're at a close to a total of about just under 10 million dollars for the pfos litigation money that is coming you know directly to the city that litigation which we filed back in 2023 the beginning of 2023 involved the manufacturers of the pfos chemicals the next phase of the litigation is to go after the actual polluters and so what we propose is and it's essentially just a continuation of the existing litigation is that you allow us to perform additional investigation on your behalf identify potential polluters uh add them to a complaint and uh bring them to bear for the pollution that they caused talk about brief that was excellent so today i just need your consensus to move forward with this litigation the way we've done in the past and then we'll bring you periodic updates do we have consensus from the commission yes oh yeah yes we do good luck thank you thank you all for the uh the trust thank you gentlemen and i will add that this litigation and the result of this litigation would not have been possible without the indispensable help of your legal department uh lynn has been fantastic she's great to work with she's very proactive and uh you all are very lucky thank you very much thank you thank you and super quick we should recognize miss carter and mr hajimiri on this one too because i sat up here when you when we first talked about this and i think that there was this was a collaboration in the city that's pretty amazing mark and mr hajimiri have become very fast friends um because hassan i don't know if he there he is he's hiding he's the worker bee in all this he's the one who collects everything provides all the studies provides all the information and i never get an email can you follow up on this can you find this out i mean so yes we would be remiss i did not see mr hajimiri here but i did give him a call last time absolutely another indispensable the water department they're just fantastic people thank you and i wanted to point out to everybody that the new water plant that we are building is is we'll be having the filtration system to keep all these kinds of contaminants out of our water so i want to thank this commission i want to thank the prior commission and i want to thank the the city staff who really put together that project and we finally have it on the way and we will have clean water in a couple of years for the record we have so i want to give a shout out we have clean water we're going to have clean water now we have clean water but not more clean water cleaner water cleaner water more clean sorry poor hassan was falling apart i'm going to get i'm going to get a letter from hassan somewhere you know it is clean i personally use it every day and i can vouch for it i'm going to get a surcharge on my water bill from the water department yes you are we will see to it yeah i'm going to save you all in another photo op okay oh no we feel like this is worthy great thank you uh we are now to the portion for public comments we begin public comments with an update uh from the city manager with on special event activities for independence day so before i begin with that mr mayor if you all don't mind i have a couple brief updates i'd like to share with the commission the commission and the public okay one and this was brought to my attention earlier today pertaining to the george bush boulevard bridge so the bridge will be undergoing repairs to the deck of course implemented by palm beach county which will remove the need for temp which will remove the need for a temporary safety place that are on a westbound lane some preparation work is anticipated to begin later this week but the actual project will begin june 1st and last approximately seven weeks so message boards will be placed to notify the public beginning sometime next week the detour will be similar to that of a couple years ago when the bridge was closed for a number of months for repairs so that's pertinent information i thought we bring to everybody's attention because of course george bush boulevard bridge is heavily utilized and this is something i think that the commission and the public needs to be aware of so the implementation to begin soon but full-fledged activities monday june 1st so it's anticipated the bridge will be closed for seven weeks is what you're saying thereabouts sir yes okay thereabouts so appropriate detours signage and other information for the public benefits will be executed in collaboration with palm beach county secondly you all heard from miss pauline hutchison during the workshop meeting the workshop session of the this evening's meeting and it pertained to park involvement specifically merit park there was a specific observation relative to construction activity it's important to note that small portions of merrick park or some portions of merrick park are actually being used as a staging area to help support the new water treatment plan facility given the approximate location in that regard likewise i would like for the public to please rest assured that that will be improved to every extent necessary so that we can resume full and normal activities that also brings to mind the fact that a number of residents in the immediate area at least a couple had asked about the possibility of equipment particularly at the mini park located in the area roseland mini park not too far away and a mini park is really designed for limited use quite frankly and in the case of roseland park is really for walking purposes to benefit immediate neighborhood activities however the full scale of improvements or equipment for individuals who are limited mobility those opportunities are in fact enjoyed over at merit park and so we really need to continue to do the absolute best we can to make those opportunities available and given the context of the water treatment plan implementation i thought i'll offer a global update in terms of the work that's being done to make sure we're squared away in that regard so with that miss hutchinson i hope that's very helpful and to others in the immediate community in that general vicinity who had a concern in this regard please rest assured the same so thank you with that i did ask director of parks and recreation sam mitod to be with us this evening to offer a brief update regarding special event activities for independence day of course this is a milestone in that america will recognize 250 years of existence 1776 to 2026 mr mitod if you would please yes good evening once again mayor commissioners sam mitod director of parks and recreation just real quick dovetailing on that merit park discussion not only that you all just recently approved um a new artificial field for merit park too so when that comes back online fully that's going to have an artificial field walking tracks and be completely restored it's gonna be better than ever all right uh mr moore asked me to just give a brief update on the timeline of the day's activities for the fourth of july so i just wanted to run down the time for us the the day for us on the fourth of july starts with a 8 a.m to 12 p.m volleyball tournament down at the volleyball courts on the beach and then the at 10 a.m it's the return of the sandcastle contest on the main beach so so from 12 10 a.m to 12 p.m is the sandcastle building contest and from 9 to 1 down at cause arena across from anchor park there is also snorkeling excursions our aquatic team does snorkeling every year where we take people out to visit the delray rec those are the morning activities and then the rest of the day is mostly planning and staging we start the evening at 5 30 on the main stage there right at the a1a in in atlantic where we're going to unveil the time capsule we've removed the time capsule from here in front of city hall and that's where they're going to unveil everything that was inside the times capital at 5 30 and then we do our traditional flag raising ceremony at 6 p.m at gleason in atlantic i think you guys will be excited we we the big flag that we use we actually have the betsy ross with the 250 on the flag this year so we're excited about that should look very very impressive over the ave and then the entertainment begins at 6 15 on the main stage and everything goes that's when we have all of our vendors in place for food beverage activities event stuff um and that's throughout the the ave right along the everything along atlantic all the way down to the a1a and then that concludes at 9 p.m and when fireworks begin at 9 p.m and the fireworks show is a 25 minute show um off the barge you know not anticipating any weather concerns um it should be an impressive show like always so that is the our traditional fourth of july with a little bit of extra in there for the 250 um and then all related but not on the fourth of july the drone show that you guys approved just at the last meeting is part of that company's what they're calling their 250 tour so that show at the end of july is also going to be a big celebration the 250th year thank you very much thank you very much i yoda at this time thank you mr okay uh we're now ready to enter the meeting for public comment if there are members of the public wishing to speak on an agenda item uh please come we don't have any quasi judicial or public hearing so so anyone wishing to speak on an agenda item please come to the lectern give your name and zip code for the record and you will each have three minutes um my name is pauline hutchinson um 33444 hi again um i don't even know if this is on the agenda but i i did speak with the parks and recs uh director and um everything is he told it was um was great it was great news i really felt at ease um i was kind of feeling like you know block 48 was like the stepchild of delray parks and recs and now i find it's not so i'm happy about that um i wasn't born in delray i i moved to delray 20 years ago and um i still have fond memories of just pulling up on atlantic and parking in front of any restaurant i wanted but um that's gone now um i just had a couple of questions and i don't know if this is the proper um time to ask it but um i wanted to ask about parking that um as additional construction projects are being approved um are these contractors being obligated to provide parking not paid parking at 35 an hour but um just you know parking for residents who maybe just want to run in and get a slice of pizza at sasio or you know pick up dinner at el camino's you know just something that the regular delray resident not necessarily someone looking to party all night can go and support our local businesses like columbia house coffee and and things like that i have a question about that i also wanted to know about the cost of the residents regarding the budgetary item for the meter replacement will the residents have to pay for any of that um i also wanted to ask about the credit card fees to the customers when they want to pay for their water bills is it possible for the customers to bear the cost if they want to pay by credit card um their water bill is there any way to pass the cost along to say if i want to use a credit card that's my choice i don't know if all the residents of delray should bear the cost just because i want to use a credit card um and also i had a question about the water utilities it says 11 customer service and billing but our billing is handled by a third party so where do those 11 employees work and and that was it uh well we don't answer the questions from here but your questions are so noted and the city manager next week or the next meeting soon here soon we'll come up with some answers and we'll address your questions thank you and i appreciate your time all right thank you good evening mayor vice mayor council men and women my name is james taylor i'm with the palm beach county sports commission and uh firstly just want to say on behalf of the sports commission we want to thank the city of delray beach for your continued partnership and support for many of the unique sporting events that we bring to palm beach county and many of them happen in your city uh the reason why i'm here today is because it was brought to our attention that there has been some consideration for developing of some croquet lawns and willing to just speak about some of the uh growth of croquet within our county so uh anchored by the national croquet center of course the 19 000 square foot facility uh 2025 saw tremendous and explosive growth for us as a county tourism marketing agency and in 2025 we hosted seven international and national events that generated pretty close to almost 2 000 room nights with a significant economic impact so on behalf of the sports commission just want to say if this city uh does consider to develop anything that provides the tourism access to our county then the palm beach county sports commission will be here to help and support thank you thank you very much hello steve english 33344 and i'm coming in support of the opioid settlement recommendation from the opioid task force to see those funds get fully dispersed into the the fire department's fte allocation for mobile response individual i understand from chief martin that two ftes would be approved by those funds i myself i'm in long-term recovery i came to delraya in 2014 as a result of the recovery capital of the world and i can say for certain there's a wonderful expression in the recovery movement the opposite of addiction is connection and that fte allocation will allow for that those two individuals to ensure connection of people who are in the throes of addiction get accurately assessed and put into recovery resources both private pay or community-based care options to ensure that they have a out of bat to save their own lives the miracle of recovery is unparalleled to watch the lights come on from someone who has been in the throes of addiction is unsurpassed in what you could get from that and these monies that were derived from such a scourge on this nation to have them not be allocated for direct response resources for people who are currently being assessed and having the issues with addiction i think would be an egregious slap in the face of the people whose monies or people who had died from this addiction you can go down the end of this street and go to a smoke shop and get what they call gas station heroin like this delta eight or kratom and all these things that are heavily addicted so when we had the upswing when 2016 ariana if i'm correct we had 88 overdoses in one month 11 people died if you don't think those numbers can return you're fooling yourself if we don't have someone out there connecting with these people and getting them into resources we are bound to repeat history so please do what's right get these people connected and get them to save their own lives thank you thank you very much ironic um mayor commissioners everybody here i'm yvonne odom 33445 and we're back behind each other but i'm on the opposite end uh years ago i'll give you a little bit of my history my biological mother um suffered with mental illness i had no knowledge of her nobody talked about it i was raised by a dad five of us and mental illness became very important to me the older i got and i realized it i was on the original committee with kenya and all of us and delray made mental health one of our mantras and then as a teacher in palm beach county i was one of the first teachers that was trained by handle hazelton in what is called the disease concept of alcohol and drug addiction and you talking about an awakening because you know people in your family they get drunk you think it's funny and then when you learn that it is absolutely a disease and that's been my lifelong lesson to try to go the prevention route and i use the analogy of a vase a vase that you pay a dollar for as a vase but if you pay five hundred dollars it's a boss so i want you to protect it and and don't allow it to drop because now you're trying to glue it back together and you can't so prevention to me is the key even though i understand how we need to get those who did fall into it but when we get kids we got to be honest we got to educate them if they granddaddy or they uncle or they auntie suffer with drugs they don't know that's an addiction but just because you uh inherit those blue eyes and that black hair you can inherit the addiction uh gene or equality to become addicted so education to me is the key and then if they do get into it then of course the recovery is there it's our responsibility so as a long-time educator some of those funds some kind of way the education piece has to be put in there and i thank you for your time thank you very much hello uh i know we're skipping around here a little bit um my name is alex berry um and i've been asked to talk about the item 5b on the agenda um first off it's great to be in a city building and not be referred to as the defendant could you mention your zip code of address i'm sorry 33460 i'm a current uh 5b i'm sorry which what's the item it's i believe it's 5b the croquet oh that's 7b oh that's 7b yeah you're welcome you're you're fine okay great great so um as i said my name is alex berry i've been a palm beach resident since uh ronald reagan's um first took his inauguration in 1981 um i've been a delray resident from 88 to 96 i got married in 92 um at the first presbyterian on gleason street here so i i know a thing or two about delray before my career in earnest started i was a popular bartender at places like bush's before it became deck 84 um the seagate hotel beach club um and a number of other places so i was just asked to speak a little bit about croquet um it is a sport that i've actually just fallen in love with and there are people that are with me here today that can also attest to that passion for it um the interesting thing is i don't really have a dog in this hunt in that i'm already a member of the national croquet center which is a few miles up the road and i'm also a member of the club that has the closest croquet facility to where we're all sitting here a place called the little club where i'm actually the current um men's champion you'll also be hearing from the current female champion women's champion at the little club as well who's going to be coming up shortly behind me as well as a great presentation i know from uh the folks at the national croquet center um so what we found at the little club uh having had those courts built nine years ago there was a lot of resistance and pushback thinking that it was just going to be a waste of money and nobody was going to use it turned out again that's a little bit of a microcosm versus a whole city but the economic impact was swift and immediately shut the mouths of people who were objecting to it because it had people flocking to it it's a sport that can be enjoyed by people whether you're nine or 90 um it's a very simple thing to produce there's only eight wickets there you can make them removable and use the court for other items as other uh mixed use um ideas as well so um the sport itself and this isn't just from me this is uh from what i learned by the miracle of ai and google uh is that um croquet has experienced uh participation surge uh of 200 over the last decade and a half so okay it's not it's no pickleball but it's it's awfully it's awfully popular and it's getting that way because it can be enjoyed by everybody so that's all i got and i want to thank you all appreciate it thank you very much sir thank you mr mayor mr vice mayor and members of the city commission i'm barbara baker uh i am chair of the croquet program at the little club and also a person who loves croquet uh today i want to talk to your zip code what's that your zip code for the record uh three three four eight three yeah um i want to um i'm not we're not referring to backyard croquet that we knew as children we're refer i'm referring to a beautiful game played on manicured lawns with crisp attire colorful wickets and blue red black and yellow balls uh it's a game of strategy and precision it's good for the brain uh this afternoon i'd like to talk about something quickly even more important and that is croquet is a game of connection in many ways this may be the games the sports greatest strength it certainly has been for ron baker and me who's uh joining me in the in the in the audience um sorry um so how does croquet foster connection uh let me count the ways one of croquet's unique qualities is its pace unlike fast-paced sports like golf and tennis and basketball and pickleball where players rush from one moment to the next croquet gives people a time to interact um players walk the lawn together they watch each other's shots they talk between matches they might even share a meal and in all cases conversation happens naturally and comfortably croquet is wonderfully inclusive as alex mentioned few sports allow people of different ages genders and experience levels to compete together a grandparent may play with a grandchild a bitter beginner may enjoy a game with a more experienced player men and women compete naturally new players feel welcomed rather than intimidated in croquet success is not based solely on strength and strength and speed the game rewards patience strategy judgment and sportsmanship it's kind of like a combination of chess and billiards played on a lawn you don't have to be especially good at croquet to enjoy it for many people especially older adults adults croquet might be the magic elixir that combats loneliness provides gentle exercise you can take 2 000 steps in an hour without straining the knees or risking falls and it fosters strong human relationships there are certainly challenges to starting a croquet program as i'm sure you're aware but but i believe that the outcome and the effort is well worth it thank you for your time thank you very much good evening everyone my name is cynthia ridley i live at 33444 zip code today i'm standing here um to let you know the elders table is putting on a good uh having a get the green um event on may 28th it will be held at the drug abuse foundation um so we hope you will come we are going to move and we already have about 30 or 40 people have registered for this event i'll get your green on we want to continue that because i like miss oldham i feel that mental health is very important and um i'm glad to be at the elders table because we take on different events and action in this community so we are stepping strong on one of the coal um co-chair of the elders table and i believe in moving and shaking and doing some different things besides just sitting around doing nothing so i hope you would take advantage and come to this event it's put together by dr ashley ridley and the set um the set of health team so we do have a set health team has really put this a great event on um may 28th the doors open at 8 30. we have some flyers she told me that she emailed each and every one of you so i hope you take the time and respond to her say yes to know that you're coming but we hope that you will stop by to see what we're doing about mental health at the elders table thank you would you let it's going to be at the elders table or is it going to be at drug abuse foundation the drug abuse foundation okay on swinton right yes swinton avenue and um we hope we will stop by mayor oh you're staring at me mrs ridley no i'm staring at you the door is open at 8 30. at least come by and have a cup of coffee we'll have there as well so it's over to everybody so please come by and just meet some of people that will be there so it's going to be a fantastic event thank you so much and here go some of the flyers and you can do it online thank you so much good evening ladies and gentlemen how you doing my name is john arbo i'm sure some all you most of you know me i love this city i've been here with this city when you go through a lot uh a big favorites early and but none of them that's just delray you can go i was up last night on my honeymoon walking up the avenue even on a monday or tuesday people happy all the restaurants there's no better place than delray really but anyway that's enough for one day thank you very much thank you very much you too sir good evening my name is cabino rangel my zip code is three three four four five and i'm here on behalf of a friend of mine who was former employee and it's on the cola agenda or anyway she texted me and said if i could share this with you guys and this is how it goes i worked for the city of delray beach police department from 1984 to 19 to 2014 during my years of service there were several periods when employees did not receive raises unfortunately that directly affected my retirement pension when i retired i was paying approximately 450 dollars per month for health insurance today that cost has increased to more than 800 per month while retire retiree insurance costs continue to rise pensions have not kept up with the increasing cost of living the cost of living today is significantly higher than it was when i retired yet my pension has remained the same with no meaningful increases at 61 years old i have had to return to work just to make ends meet something i never expected after dedicating 30 years of service to the city i i understand that general employees may soon be receiving significant raises and i am truly happy to hear that however i hope the city will remember the retirees who helped build support community for decades retirees deserve consideration as well especially those struggling with rising health care costs and inflation please vote yes to increase that that will show the city of delray beach still appreciates the retirees thank you patricia rashkin id 261 and thank you very much thank you very much good evening commissioners city manager city attorney i'm dr spencer 33445 so what would it say about delray beach if we became a city that made primary prevention our number one strategy no reaction not reaction but prevention early coordinated and community-wide because every parent in this city wants the same thing for their child they want them to grow up healthy they want them to grow up safe and to grow up strong and we know that the key years that kids are forming these habits and identity are actually our greatest opportunity to build resilience mr moore priority that you identified as part of the city plan so this is how we strengthen it and i and and the thing is um yes you hear me talk a lot about schools and the work that of course we do in schools but we also do work in workplaces that support parents imagine if in our city we had a community-wide approach that included our restaurants with family dinner time right and a family box that they went home with imagine if we had a city-wide message that we all could unite around that said we are the set to the sea a community fighting addiction together because what if delray beach redefine the right of passage for our young people not risk but resilience connection and strength and with lsis you have that infrastructure in place this is how we reduce early substance use strengthen families and build long-term community resilience and as you consider the opioid settlement funds it's important to remember that those funds as mr english indicated they do represent lives lost they represent families in this community who've experienced the unthinkable and stories that have already reached a point where we can no longer go back so a coordinated upstream prevention strategy that reaches children early supports our families and strengthens our community before risk begins this is what the funds were meant to do in delray beach you all have the opportunity to lead by investing and prevention and protect the next generation thank you very much dr spencer good evening mayor commissioners i'm mavis spenson 33445 last week my husband went to the gas station to put gas in his car and he paid four dollars and 17 cents a gallon a couple of days later he went to fill my car up with gas and paid four dollars and 27 cents a gallon and he had a conversation with the lady at the pump next to him and they were talking about yeah paid 417 last week and she said i know did you ever think we have here see the day that we would be excited about having paid 417 well today i passed by and that same station it was 459 a gallon so now i'm wishing that i could be paying the 417 or the 427 instead of 459 you know where i'm going with this when individuals are spending more than expected or more than normal just getting downtown any additional cost at the destination this destination becomes a reason for them to second guess to rethink do they want to spend the money to come downtown our merchants are already feeling the decrease in foot traffic on the avenue so i'm here once again on their behalf i know you're going to be speaking about parking and perhaps things to do during the summer and i've asked once before and i'm asking again if you would give consideration perhaps to having the garages perhaps free for the summer and the surface parking lots at least during the day to help retail traffic that seems to be where there's a missing part component that that's hurting us more than helping us having those metered lots so if we could consider having those not metered during the summer months it would be greatly appreciated from the merchants um i do speak on their behalf and you are our partner uh as a city and i know you value them and they value you and what you do so if you would give that consideration we would greatly appreciate it on another note i just want to remind you that friday night we have are you going over this oh okay well i'll let laura but we've got great reasons for everybody to come downtown go shopping go have dinner come to two great events in the next two weeks so thank you thank you very much good evening mayor and commissioners hi my name is delores rang out and my zip code is 33445 i am here to speak on agenda item 7c my purpose being here today is to risk we respectfully request the commission when they review this ordinance that's coming up before you item 7c i ask that i know it says it's a 2.5 i'm asking for consideration of a 3.5 increase for the retirees and i'll tell you why because uh this ordinance is to be reviewed every other year i believe our unions in speaking with one of our commissioners um had a concern and rightfully so our um contract um employees they receive a one percent cola every year or one and a half a two percent two and a half percent is really very nominal this is the first time general employees would ever get a cola on their pension and um the reason um the economy is so vital right now as we all know health costs bread milk everything gas in um 2003 i believe it was as general employees went without a raise for six to seven years depending on when your evaluation date was and we general employees agreed to it because the economy was so bad we were in the recession and they were going to start to lay people off so the general employees came together with the then former city manager david harden and we agreed not to have raises for six to seven years that impacted our retirement uh pension now we're not asking to go back and make us whole that's not possible i would like to see a 3.5 tonight i'm asking for i've spoken to a lot of my former co-workers a lot of retirees they couldn't come and i know some uh had emailed a lot of you but i hope that you will really consider a 3.5 or revising the resolution to make it every year to come back because now it's every other year and if uh and if uh our police and fire are receiving one and one and a half percent yearly that would be basically what we get as well i appreciate your time thank you thank you very much my name is chuck ridley 33444 um i decided not to get gas before i came here i'm a little nervous because i paid five dollars and 49 cents maybe i just don't need to drive a cadillac anymore i'm here to stand in support with those who spoke about a different consideration for the cola for the retirees i did read the study the study appears to be thorough um and i'm speaking in my seiu hat now here's what the study didn't take into consideration it didn't take into consideration the current economic pressures that you heard the people in front of me speak of it is real i don't have to make that case to you that insurance property insurance has escalated gas prices has escalated the cost of living period has escalated um and the folk who gave many to be able to get this pension gave their life to this city deserves better now it's one thing to be fiscally sound we get it but it's also important that you recognize that your biggest investment are the human assets that make delray and all america city you do not get the accolades that you get on a regular basis without the sacrifice that these members bring to you and you know they go beyond the paycheck that they bring home this is your time to send a message not only to those who've given greatly to you but those who are in the pipeline and on the way that if you work for this city when you leave this city if you've served this city we're not going to forget you you can send that message someone that's a consultant wants to be your consultant again and tell you what they think they you may want to hear but i'm your former and current employees need to hear is that a commission you value them each and every day of the sacrifice they've given you thank you for letting me share thank you very much good evening everyone laura simon with the downtown development authority and um i have just a few things i wanted to mention one first starting with 7h which is the parking consideration for summer which totally appreciate um on behalf of the downtown the downtown stakeholders since downtown is literally the only location in our city that has paid parking um we really and summer started back at the end of april and we are really seeing a huge decline when you can cross the street and look down both ways and there's not a car coming on fourth avenue and atlantic avenue that's at one o'clock in the afternoon it's troubling on a tuesday so we really encourage that we have consideration for a summer rate our board is supportive of that and i know our constituents are which is the surface lots free parking free starting at four really as we said our daytime we're already hearing that some of our restaurants will be closing for lunch and closing for multiple days of the week just based on volume so it is we're not a 12-month city we are very very seasonal and this is when uh we as an organization as downtown we're really ramping up to encourage our locals to come back downtown love on our locals welcome them here encourage them to um find ways to uh that it's accessible for them to navigate and enjoy all those beautiful places we have here in dollar beach restaurants shopping um and lots of things to do this weekend we are kicking off we've got a craft show on fourth avenue there's also um a concert at old school square it's free um and next week we are having our art and jazz on the beach side which is from sea breeze to a1a we aren't closing the bridge we are um we take right in front of the seagate hotel all the way to the um opal we're closing the street uh dancing and moving miss ridley can come out and move um on the avenue and enjoy um discovering the beachside community with art and jazz on the avenue and then also we just really want to congratulate um hillary and the bouton family and their amazing investment into the colony hotel for the past hundred years and one of our legacy uh contributors to atlantic avenue uh for setting the pace for um our success in this community and uh kudos to you and your family and um here's to the next hundred years so thank you thank you very much good evening city commission uh my name is christina morrison and my zip code is 33483 i just wanted to amplify what dr spencer was talking about um creating an atmosphere prevention rather than um having drug treatment not only after it started drug drug abuse has already started um just going to give you a life example my children grew up in an era in the era when um drug abuse was rampant and they went to great schools but it was still rampant in their schools in pennsylvania um my son had to have his wisdom teeth removed and he had already lost a couple of friends to drug abuse and he wouldn't even take the medicine for when he had his his wisdom teeth removed because he was so afraid of being addicted so he had to learn from having dead friends i think that we've evolved to the point where in our community perhaps we could have our children learn the pitfalls of drug abuse while they're in school through lessons rather than having to lose friends so i highly recommend you award some of the um opioid money to um prevention rather than just treating the abuse thank you thank you very much are there any other members of the public wishing to speak seeing none public comment is closed we now go to the approval of the um the agenda right consent agenda of the consent agenda as amended i need a motion please so moved all in favor all right any opposed okay thank you all right we are now going to to former item 7p 6p3 you know what i can cancel that uh i had a question because the agenda cover sheet says funded through cip but then i went red down at the bottom line it says the g the public safety bond and that's what was my question why aren't we doing this out of public safety we need a motion to approve it so moved second second thank you all in favor aye opposed okay uh now 6p1 7bb i pulled it and i pulled this i just really have a question um we have we entered into a lot of these uh these agreements with consultants before we had an auditor it seems to me that when we talked about having an auditor we discussed how the auditor would be able to review some of these contracts and review some of this stuff um as part of the the audit function so i'm wondering why we need to pay somebody forty nine thousand four hundred dollars when i think we could our own auditor could do the same canvassing of no you know that's not what this is for florida law requires a study that our own auditor could not do then that's an answer to the question i need a motion to approve so moved second all in favor aye okay great moving right along seven cc which is former six a i think i pulled that one too because i had a question these are going to be real fast um oh we already did that with 60 60 60 60 is the easement of the uh okay yeah 60 i have a question on this um i i looked at the plat that's in the that's in the exam i have no problem with the easement but i'm i was wondering why in the plat that we didn't continue on the eastern side of the plat the 25 feet if you go if you go to the plat go to the thing on 6d because when we do when we used to do plats and it's page two of the plan you you see on the bottom we have there's if you go to the eastern part of the plat there's a 25 foot um right away why didn't we why didn't we consider that the a right-of-way easement which would go all the way across to the property line all right there were two plots on the agenda and i'm just looking through to figure out what was the original number 6d 6d 1180 southwest 10th street it's yeah it's all county paving and it essentially you see on the east the eastern part of land you have that 25 foot right away so why why why don't we why wouldn't we continue that right away all the way across the road i mean what it across the property so that would give like because otherwise it makes the eastern part of the right away of no i mean it's a right away to nowhere so the right okay um so the plot that is here um you're talking about all right so there's a five foot limited he's been along this then there's track day then there's where's the access he's going to parcel a on page two there okay parfait go to the bottom yes all right of the plat and it's just the thing property kind of juts out their bit but that that is a 25 foot right of way easement just um you you see the 25 so they they had to give additional right of way correct why didn't we try to why didn't we carry that right away all the way across the to the property to the property line so there's i mean the the boundary of the it it was the property line so the boundary of um they gave the additional right away that boarded their property right um there that is taken about the center line of the road and then you take it for the property that is proposing to develop right so it it kind of does because then there's another lot that's plotted the heavy line goes around it it's not their property in other words you the 25 there's an interruption of the 25 foot right of way because that that you don't have it there but to the to the west of it you have it to the east of it you have it so i'm not understanding why it doesn't go all the way across i'm still not understanding because the boundary of the property in play is where where it was taken along along the bottom of it yes along the bottom you see to the to the east east you have a 25 foot right away on the south side of that property right if you go to the to the west of the property line then you're in to but there's another 25 foot right away so your 25 foot right away is interrupted in this parcel and i'm just curious why we didn't try to continue the the right away easement it's continuous to the corner of genzel and gen however you say it genzel avenue and then you and i are not understanding each other the heavy line is the property in question so are you checking him out i i i i can approach him he can just point to it i'm not following i'm sorry come here yes so turn right to the bottom now you see what i'm saying because i got the 25 feet going here and i got 25 feet going here and there's it's like it makes those 25 foot right away worthless i need a motion to improve it so moved yeah second okay all in favor aye okay that's fine is that the last one that we had we have a 7 dd i think that's it that was it okay we're now going to 7a resolution number 88-26 the resolution of the city commission of the city of darry beach florida amending its budget for the fiscal year beginning october 1 2025 by providing for supplemental appropriations in the amounts identified in exhibit a repealing all resolutions consistent herewith providing an effective date and for other purposes so miss carmen aleman who's deputy chief financial officer is available to offer the presentation but for the most part they're pretty straightforward we can go through it we i don't need one but i did have one question if i may just the uh 92 924.27 the special projects fund the 115 we're doing that before we're discussing the tree planting program yes ma'am so that was the question in essence that that is to question yes that is really to take care of the finalization of the contract relationship with community graining okay could i just shoot out a question before we go forward is this are we overdue paying them because i'm reading this exchange email and it sounds like this is not for future payments but it's current year and we're late correct but then the cover the the item you have on the agenda implies we're talking about future considerations so is it future considerations and current considerations no it's current because the relationship actually expires june of next this next month okay so it's simply for that purpose so we have a current contract and we owe them this money yes ma'am that is the balance for the current fiscal year beginning the 95 is the balance for the fiscal year 92 and change no the city it's not 92 and change that's what i'm trying to understand you're doing this full transfer a portion of this is for the current year's payment correct and a portion of it is to contract out in the future that is i would like an answer thank you so the there if if you transfer the 92 000 there's a balance around four thousand dollars that would be left over right the contract expires in 26 days so it you could potentially use it for those 26 days but the way that the agreement the rfp was written originally there's no additional renewals there's no additional extensions it ends in june so i think you need to be mindful of that because the what what is being transferred is appears in excess of what we have the two invoices that i i think i provided to you yesterday i mean i suppose we do the transfer and then have i just think that the transfer maybe should have come after the conversation about what we're doing going forward but that's just my opinion fair enough nevertheless that's the recommendation but of course any other commissioner comments no i i'm just i'm i'm going to say once again this contract's ending in less than a month and it looks like and and we don't have 90 we only have 60 something thousand in the tree fund right so in other words we're going to have to hit general fund to pay this additional 32 000 am i correct on this okay and you are saying that this is already owed for work already done because he's only got 26 days left in the contract so they're not going to be doing when you look at the whole contract amount 92 000 worth of work in the next 26 days mr chittister provided me with two invoices the most recent being dated may 6 that provide for there were labor services provided on may 6 2026 and there were services provided in february of 2026 right and so technically only one is past due yeah but i mean i listen it's sort of like that 3 000 pages i went through and every fifth email was we're looking to get paid we're looking to get paid it's strange to me no offense carmen but i feel like when people are submitting bills for service and the service is done and the payment should be made and then it's not and the money's not actually in the account that's concerning um because we're supposed to pre-budget for expenses so i think we all need to understand the tree fund and what's going on i know at one point we transitioned and we started utilizing the money not just for planting but also for maintaining but at the end of the day when that was being done that should have been with the consideration of the money that we owe them they shouldn't be going that long without getting paid for services they've performed nor should any other vendor in the city truly what would depend on the terms though right with their net 30 or net 60 i mean it was net 30 net 30 net 30 well they just submitted the invoice so although the february one the february one is past due the the most recent one is not right i mean candidly when the agreement was approved and it was done administratively because you did give the manager that authority that's when the budget transfer should have been done because we had an idea on what the value of the agreement was right once you have that understanding that should immediately come before this commission so that you can ratify it and then we have good faith right i mean we should we shouldn't be signing contracts and agreeing to funds when the money don't have and we have the money it's just not properly appropriated so i don't want to make it sound like it's not there it should be in the line exactly well i look forward to the discussion in seven sheet when we get there i think i did did any other objections can we have a motion i don't i don't think i did oh so moved second all in favor aye any opposed okay seven b mr mayor i'll take this one so considerations and update regarding croquet field presence and potential opportunities this is in response to consensus offered by city commission to evaluate the prospect of a croquet filled environment of presence in this regard and of course the department of parks and recreation did some work to review and evaluate that they do not have a formal presentation at this juncture however we do have guests from the international croquet center who's available to visit with us to talk a little bit about those respective opera observations additionally mr mitot will be available for any specific questions mr mitot to speak first before the gentlemen speak um would that be okay i mean i feel like the city presentation probably should happen first even though he doesn't have a formal presentation i understand but here's the thing excuse and sorry sir i apologize thank you i apologize we have this on our agenda to have a formal presentation from our staff at the last meeting and for reasons unknown because the day the agenda came out i reached out to staff and had a lengthy discussion about this item so for reasons unknown on the evening of the meeting it was pulled and then you had to go out and find somebody to come and speak on this subject and i'm not quite clear on exactly what's going on but i think our staff should talk first on this because we had a lengthy conversation and there's reasons why and i appreciate croquet and i'm not discouraging it but there's reasons why if we're going to do this we should be looking at the golf course as a legitimate location and while except we can't do the golf course i don't unless you're unless you're advocating that the that that the golf course be redesigned which will affect our bond and we'll delay let's let the city staff talk about what their findings are because it doesn't really work at this location so if we want to do it listen there's one right down the street and there's one in west palm if every if this commission by a majority is so inclined to do it then let's find the right location but in speaking to our staff there's serious concerns about this location and i would like mr me talk to go through thank you if you don't mind i'm sorry to put you on the spot but i would have preferred a presentation from staff because mr moore the direction was for our staff to go out and get the information and provide it to us uh good evening again mayor commissioner sam etop director of parks and recreation um you know my stance on this is not pro or against right it's simply things to consider when you evaluate this presentation um you know when looking into this a number the vast majority of these uh facilities are are partnered with golf courses because it kind of overlaps with a membership um standpoint of the golf courses that uh country club type of feel um logistically for us one of the one of the things to consider is that what we don't have at veterans park is a maintenance type of facility um or maintenance personnel right now anything is achievable there's ways to accomplish this but of course it's it's mostly a financial commitment if you so choose right that is some kind of maintenance shed the maintenance equipment and maintenance personnel that would be needed to hire to maintain the facility and then also an operation of that facility those aren't pros or cons it's just something you have to consider where again not that we're saying it has to be the golf course or not we're saying at a golf course we have the appropriate equipment you have the maintenance personnel that's why those things tend to overlap those who aren't who maybe aren't super familiar it's the same type of grass facility or bermuda grass it's cut very very fine a lot like greens at the golf course that's why that equipment and maintenance personnel kind of works hand in hand it tends to be a value added facility to your golf course resort type of culture club again it's not saying that you can't do it it's saying if you are to consider this those are some of the things you want to consider and then how that operates within a veterans park might uniquely be different than you know a 12 facility a 12 court facility up in west palm that's dedicated for such and the parking was one of the things that we talked about that would be a problem could you explain why that's an issue well currently you have a parking constraint there because of the construction it causes a lot of parking concerns but just in general there is not a lot of parking at the facility between people visiting the downtown for public parking to visit the other restaurants but also the delray lady atlantic lady delray and then just visiting the park for any other activities at the community center parking is something that to at least consider in your evaluation and then construction is going to continue on for how long so this determination if you're trying to make it now you're still looking out how many three to four years before that construction is going to be done and there's going to be you know any kind of understanding of what the parking will look like and what the rest of the place would look like i don't have when that construction is set to conclude at atlantic crossing but it's certainly not soon they have a lot of projects still to build so um yeah that construction that parking situation in the current time frame just adds to that constraint and that consideration okay thank you and there was a size issue right with the measurements did did you did we say there was a size issue i would like to hear from the sam he will tell you he does not know croquet when we spoke he said i don't know anybody who plays croquet the measurements i want to hear from the people from the national croquet center who are experts you know we were dealing with a guy who's not an expert can we see the presentation from the experts you commissioned him to go do this and he came back with a position and you don't like his position save the money okay it's not just to be clear money um i'm not a croquet expert and i'm not taking a position just to be clear um what is true though is that after this we have to be able to operate it as a parks and recreation department and that that can come one of two ways right we can do that in-house by hiring staff or you can contract out those services like you do for the management of the golf course or the um tennis centers right so you don't have to be the the croquet expert to manage it but what happens though is one way or the other there's a cost factor and again i'm not taking a position i'm just saying those are the things the five of you need to consider when it's not just the build number right it's not just the construction of the facility number that we want to discuss we want to talk about what that looks like for increased maintenance and how you increase the uh ftes the full-time and part-time employees that takes to not just maintain it but to operate it again not taking your position not an expert thank you but manage a number of different facilities and how we have to manage that so if i can just don't go away if i could have the national code case center you you've got a presentation you want to make is that correct yes okay well you need a microphone if you've got to identify yourself for the record i don't think we need your zip code then i think is it on you're on hi my name is david mccoy i'm the chairman emeritus as of january i guess it is after 20 years and i'm here with the ceo of the croquet center frank menier who is a delray resident and if it's okay i'll just go through the presentation as you wish as you wish sure yeah and we'll get into the issues you've raised you've already heard a lot about croquet and advantages i'll just run through these it's the healthiest sport i'll take that position and defend it it's outdoors fresh air sunshine highly social it's fun it's proven to increase longevity not croquet as a sport but the social aspect of the sport which is very high it stimulates the brain it slows which slows cognitive decline it's good low stress exercise it's low impact and low risk of injury and you get frequent positive rewards because every time you score a wicket you get a little a little joy even if you lose the overall game so it's and it's quick and easy to learn uh at any age doesn't make a lot of noise playing croquet people so the people around that there's there are no issues there it's family friendly as you heard from 9 to 90 actually we have at the national croquet center a member who is over 100 she just turned 100 this year and she gets out and plays a couple of times a week and she attributes her longevity to the sport and players once you're a croquet player you can play anywhere in the country we have handicaps and so you get put in your skill level and you can go to any every club has its tournaments and you can sign up for those tournaments and play in some wonderful clubs around so i heard about this opportunity and so i want to talk about why croquet at veterans park as i know it's a delray beach it's a delray beach oh i've got to move this forward don't i how do i do that yeah forward there okay so that's not number two i just wanted to show you some of the croquet courts around here clubs there's the beach club everglades in mar-a-lago uh in palm beach out in wellington we have the palm beach polo club which i started which is where i started national croquet club in west palm and just above here is the little club in st andrews we'd love to have it at veterans park and there are clubs down in boca raton and hillsborough probably a thousand players or more in this range and it's uh it's growing and it's very uh popular um we have a hundred members in the at ncc the national croquet center club um who live around this area and there's a large potential market uh uh especially just right around the uh the veterans park area itself so i do hit this what do i hit the the big one okay so why why should you have it at veterans park and recreation recreation center it's consistent with your mission to provide recreation and a meeting place for the community and as i said i think you can expect a very high utilization it might help solve one of your problems of people having to increase activity in the downtown area for merchants and restaurants in that area one of the things you can do with croquet is is uh you can have groups clubs and that sort of thing can come and have their croquet events which you have them around lunch time or whenever you want them and and and bring people to the neighborhood i think you have an ideal existing layout there i've been down to see it uh it would be an easy conversion and uh dealing with your uh the issue you raised about maintenance um you don't really need um that if you invest in the artificial turf uh you don't doesn't uh it's very low maintenance uh there's there's really none you put it down and it's there essentially so i think that can solve that problem um so then talk a little about artificial turf it's it's professional in appearance it looks you can't tell it from grass basically it's gotten so good um it provides a consistent playing condition it it requires minimal really minimal maintenance uh there's no specialized ground keeping uh and upkeep there's no damage to the turf to be repaired or anything like that it doesn't have to be mowed you don't have to have expensive mowers and equipment and so uh and if it rains uh you can play immediately right after the rain stops or during the rain as we do it lets you have a predictable budgeting uh situation you can see what's coming down and what little repair costs or maintenance there is and you get it is marginally more expensive than turf initially but you get a good return on your investment because you don't have to have all of the people involved for mowing irrigating fertilizing reseeding or repairing the turf and as far as um operating uh you can operate it as a as a club is probably the the best way to go about that but uh franck living here is very excited about the possibility of helping provide those resources we can provide operational expertise program development program development instruction and player development tournament and event support community outreach and promotion uh staff and volunteer training partnership opportunities people collaborate on this sport it's very social and we have over a hundred volunteers the national croquet center and we do events practically every week with outside organizations who come in and want to play learn how to play croquet we give we have free lessons on every saturday morning and people we're over oversubscribed from who we can bring in so it is a way to attract people to the area and uh i think putting an artificial turf is the way to go there you have room for two beautiful courts and uh the people will organize and run the activity themselves and with uh electronic means now with the online activity you can schedule matches there you can have someone that doesn't have to be physically on site actually other than the normal person you would have there you can keep track of of um who's who's using the court so i think it's very doable and uh at the the croquet foundation our mission is to promote and develop the sport we don't really have a incentive about this but we we would like to see croquet in this area uh to support the sport and we'll provide the uh support for you happy to answer any of your questions i'm sorry would you like to yes i would love a question first of all um like how would how do you envision it fitting in the site because you said two courts where could you have any drawing of that yes uh you can describe where it is i believe uh it's what there's there's the the the current facility there's there's a shuffleboard court got it yeah i know there's five or six of those and then on the other side there's what has been used for for for the lawn bowling it's it's where the lawn bowling thing they measured it out we all we walked the site and there's room for this croquet court which could fit two fields for for a play so it would be basically where all those abandoned shuffle boards and whatever's well no the shuffleboard is kind of on the other side so the shuffleboard could be repurposed into doing lawn bowling if somebody really wanted to do it because nobody's the the the shuffleboard court's been used three times in the last five years and it's all by the same group that palm trail people come and they play they take one night there and they play and it's been would you say that's accurate statement pretty much um so nothing is being used so the whole idea is to create a recreational activity there no i'm i'm excited about creating any kind of activity there but i'm just trying to envision like where it would fit on the site i wish somebody had drawn that out for me well you can draw it out mentally talking about the north side of the current building i'm talking where the lawn bowling is the north side of the current building so you're saying two croquet can fit where the current lawn bowling is and we're moving the lawn bowling then if you want to move the lawn bowling if you want to retain lawn bowling there are people that have actually used it for years a team i mean i'm not saying you know i just think there there has it's been it's used it hasn't been well maintained but they still utilize it what you want the lawn bowling yeah what's the cost of this to install there's there's there's about 10 people that use the long bowl i know they've been doing it there forever they have like six months and this is how they play all year i think it's the same surface actually so the lawn bowling is uh like in new york fine rock well no if you did the artificial turf they would use the artificial turf to play the law which they do use in new york city there are four croquet or there are four courts that they're both the same size courts what um is the cost two of them are lawn bowling and two of them are croquet and they uh when one has a tournament they take turns it could be worked that way okay thank you that's great to know um what about the cost to install it's somewhere around two hundred thousand dollars a court okay so four hundred thousand it's it's hard to say whether that would probably be less for two courts than just a single court how do we park how many people would be moving how many what's the i mean you have a lot of so you'd be competing with these other places basically four people on a team there are four balls that are played i'm just wondering i go down to that area all the time and there's the the parking the people using the parking all in there go to the new two new three new restaurants the all the workers park down there there's never parking in that area i don't know how we can incorporate something in there without having a much broader plan about parking and i understand what you're saying about about the golf course but if you can just throw artificial turf down then i'm sure we could find some place at the golf course where it could work even with our current plan without it becoming thank you for your input i appreciate you um it's you you actually the design of the golf course is done i know but i'm sure if there's space at veterans park for this i'm sure there's space at the golf course so i think we should if you want to talk about this and everybody wants to talk about this i played croquet as a child i love it i agree with everything you said you can play it all ages and it's there's a tremendous amount of pleasure in playing well but i just think we need to find the right location i'm trying to go back to the legal point you keep saying we can do it at the golf we have a design there was a bond purchase agreement bondholders have paid for it if you change the design i'm not saying we have to change the design at some there's got to be an area we can put it in at some point if we can throw it in veterans park the best location for the croquet is is downtown where people can play and then utilize the restaurants and utilize the downtown if they're at the golf course and they want to go to lunch after the game if they have to get in their car and go they're not going to the boutique golf course there's going to be two different dining places at the goca raton resort boca raton resort i'm going to just say one thing i don't let you speak boca raton resort and i spoke to uh dan hosteller who created this court there uh and we all got a letter from the guy today and i haven't gone through the whole thing i had spoken to him about it um they started off with six players and within 18 months they have 36 players and it's artificial turf they started out with grass at boca they changed it to artificial turf which by the way a lot of players prefer because it's a truer role it's the the real experts the pros don't like it because they like to be able to play the curves and stuff but for the average joe player they love artificial turf because they hit it straight it goes straight and and and so boca has changed it to be artificial turf and they're getting and now they have teams and i don't object to it i'm just trying to understand what the best place is there is no parking down there none zero first look you know there's and it's not going to be four years till there's going to be i'm sorry would you like to be recognized i would tom was i'm sorry oh no it's okay answer's good go i just i wanted to ask um if this if we decide on this what is the timeline for installation and getting this thing up and going like this can't be done tomorrow so what's the timeline yeah there's no budget for this that would be a budget consideration for you to consider in a new budget cycle and then you know contracting it and getting it done you're probably looking if approved and you know the financials are there for including it in the budget you're probably looking somewhere in spring to summer of 27 at the earliest that's what i thought okay that's what i thought um and also are there fees associated with playing um this game yeah for instance players i i want to what's that that's your decision so that that would be on this the city the city would collect fees for or determine fees yeah that's it i heard it all right um yeah it's my understanding that would be more of a our decision on how we want to operate that on the day-to-day um again many of these are part of a club already so you're already paying a membership so that's why i mentioned earlier this is like a value-added facility that wouldn't be the case here so we would have to consider how we want to um look at that um and then the other thing i would i would just like um to hear from from them just so you're all clear too it's my understanding and why i talked about the the grass versus the artificial because we've gone back and forth with this uh with fronk in that is many of the event and tournament options um are maybe not happy with going artificial so some of those things go i just want to make sure they still want to play on that type of facility world championships uh where they were there it's just extraordinary yeah there's plenty of tournaments played on on artificial turf yeah absolutely make sure i got that out of the sarasota people that i spoke to okay all right thank you i'm sorry mr marker yes finally yeah it's finally my turn um i want to start out by saying i'm not i'm not for or against prok in fact i think it's kind of a cool idea it might be better for me than golf however as i sit here today we're in no position to debate this any further um we just came out of a session where we spent an hour and a half talking about a zero based budget and that means if this is going to come in for four five six hundred thousand dollars something else in that budget's got to go away right so that that's the reality of the game that we're playing in the city right now so you know what's going to go to pay for this we that that's something we're going to have to wrestle with here um there is no plan that's been built out i i in the business world i i would ask you to go away and come back later on when you have a plan i didn't see a staffing model i didn't see a construction model i don't see a location model i i heard the arguments about the golf course and i i was down at veterans park this weekend with price patent and looked looked around myself you know the turf thing came in today that's maybe a good thing that's not something we've considered um but i i have nothing to look at i haven't i don't see the build out costs um i don't see the ongoing costs i don't see the model i haven't seen any information about could we privatize this or this is something the city has to operate and it won't be it won't be free to operate i mean that doesn't work in our city somebody's gonna have to be there manning this and having the ball i mean that's and we don't want the equipment walking off i mean there's there's a whole host of things and i just don't think we have a plan here guys this would be a flat out go away and for me in the corporate world my former ceo days not ready i mean there's we have an idea here but we have no plans and you you can't possibly expect any of us up here to to make a decision on this today i mean i i got to see business plan can i can i can i interject one thing no okay of course you can i'm gonna do it anyway so you may as well let me go baby um we actually have funds available so it's not going to touch the budget okay anybody we we have which caught we i went through all the numbers i went through all of the numbers i went through all of the numbers we have excess funds in the parks bond that can be used for this thing so it's not going to touch the budget our city's attorney's shaking her head saying no we can't use it for this the parks bond is very specific about how we could allocate i know but there's a there's a portion of it would explain what we discussed we'll be coming back to clarify this in the coming weeks but another meeting on this subject i'm speaking about the parks improvement bond we'll be offering a brief presentation concerning i'm sorry no you just looked at me funny i'm just surprised because we we haven't had this discussion i've been very very adamant that we have every meeting is just like very deliberate and that's where i'm going so the parks bond the residents were sold a certain set of projects for these bonds and we are not able to just willy-nilly just change that that's not fair they voted on certain projects those are the projects that either you do them or you don't you don't have to spend all that parks money that there's no requirement to spend all that money but when you do spend it it has to be on things that were advertised to the residents so that when they voted for this they knew what they were going to get out of it so respectfully mayor i apologize we did not have this discussion i don't know i i reviewed and i myself i have in turn starting bond council for like 20 years we've been very clear on this and like i said i regret putting the language in there that said other parks projects or miscellaneous because i knew at the time it was going to be misinterpreted i don't think it's fair to the residents they this was a referendum the residents came out they told you what they wanted based on the representations from city staff during the numerous public hearings the numerous town halls and to do a switch now i don't think it's appropriate or fair to the residents so i'm sorry i have interns starting in two weeks that one of their main tasks is going to be to go through every single public hearing and decide what was discussed concerning those parks projects and we're going to make a list and i would just ask that any further conversations about the parks bonds wait until that task is accomplished because this is now the second time that we're in a public meeting and i'm having a concern about how those funds are being used and i just want to be very very deliberate and fair to the people who are ultimately going to have to pay for those bonds thank you um i appreciate your position um i disagree with your position um i i know the language in this plain reading plain reading of the language what it says the bond council i referred to plain reading is what it says you're welcome to go out and get an opinion of bond council which i would recommend that you do if you're very good if you're concerned concerned about it and but even so what we are saying we we spent last year spent last year on hilltopper 168 000 it generated revenues of 4 000. we spent the year before we spent 25 000 on katherine strong and it generated 4 000. um so you know recreation is something that you put together because you're trying to develop an activity that can be used for the city to broaden the appeal of your city the amenity to the cities um west palm beach or palm beach county is really the home it's the home of the of the of the national croquet foundation right um and it is the sport which is booming down here uh and one of the reasons it's booming is because it is um it's it's into the for wellness and all this and the camaraderie and the and all of this all of the demographics suggest that this will be a great success it'll be something that brings people downtown and something that will when they're downtown will stay downtown and go utilize the facilities around it this is what everyone is saying these are experts that are saying this and it's because it's a low impact sport you can be someone said you'd be 9 or 90 and what the guy told me from boca raton which i found very interesting because they had the same arguments back then do they want to do it boca raton resort would not have they're very frugal they would not have put this in there unless they thought it was going to work and not only has it worked but it has eclipsed every anything that they thought that they said and the guy told me he said you know if they they had this joke going back then that if they build it they will come they use the whole thing this is the only time it's ever happened when they built it they all came and this is exactly what they will do here it will be something that delray does not have now it's an amenity for a group of people that will play it that have the ability to stay in town and it you know with the artificial turf it's going to be very low maintenance very low maintenance um the cost of maintaining this will be a fraction of the cost of maintaining merritt park or katherine strong or any of these are a fraction and as for the equipment walking away most of the people these croquet players own their own equipment they bring their own equipment and so it's not a function of your your stuff walking away because the people it's like people have their own golf clubs they just they they want to have their own they own their own mallets and you'd have to be an extra long one but i mean it might be good mr mayor and and one of the reasons that one what i found interesting from from from what uh what was told to me by the by the president of the book or tone resort that this location next to the intercoastal would be such a great venue for people to come and play that they will come and play and it will utilize the courts that are not currently being utilized everyone can say well you know this and that at some point we have a piece of land there that's not being utilized and i don't consider 10 people playing five times a year or 10 times a year and and um shovel board courts being paid once a year you know it's really defined as real using the of the facility this would bring people here it's it's it's it's a social one of them said it's it's a social sport families play you know you know and and it's it's an opportunity to bring something different to delray i understand it's different i understand it's different we've always been known for trying something different so i think we i think we should we should give it a try look if it doesn't work you've got an artificial field there which if someone wants to reconvert it to something else they can reconvert it to something else but it's going to get used and one i mean they could they could they could share it with the lawn bowling they could share it with every all this can be done but we got to do we got to go do something first i'm sorry did you want to be recognized i did thank you you can actually give me a nudge mr mayor if i can have next please yeah i just i wanted to just say that you know i'm not being i don't have an athletic bone in my body however this sounds like a look is low impact sounds like something i really need to get involved with um because i could three lessons every saturday morning i couldn't handle pickleball at all that was too fast moving for me um however um i like what i heard my colleague down here um tom market said can we suggest that we come that we be presented with a plan that involves you know the whole layout with the budget included timeline can we can we put together a plan and and then a plan b presented to us so that we can actually have something concrete to to vote on because this really doesn't say vote on it it says considerations and update so if we could get a plan in front of us so that we can say yes or no to this it looks good it doesn't look good mr mayor if i may please did you want to say i just wanted to comment on a couple of points uh tom you you brought up the uh the cost uh you mentioned a number 800 i think if you get the bids and they come in and they just the company that puts down these courts they just come and do the whole thing is there i think the number would come in more like four four hundred thousand for the two courts and that may even be generous so that's that the other thing i wanted to mention is new york city um has uh i mentioned they have four courts there in central park and uh the park supports the activity but they have a croquet club that basically runs the situation they have uh they have a small locker room uh situation there in the restroom but you already have that um and they lock their the balls and the the wickets well these wickets would be permanently installed uh but they uh the club runs the whole activity and at the moment it was central parks are well funded so they they don't require the club to pay them uh they just have it as an activity of uh provided by the city does it require a clubhouse doesn't you need a place to store the balls and uh and that's it basically because i went in the locker rooms they're tiny they're ancient i mean if it you don't again this is part of what angela and i think i think you don't need a lot i just need to see what what the cost looks like including a clubhouse whatever the necessities are sure then then i got something concrete i can react to so there's no there's no need for a clubhouse it's nice to have for a locker you can leave your equipment there but if people mallets all you need and uh you'd have a lock box with a with the balls in it that's straightforward did you want to get recognized i do if i may please thank you so to be clear this was not intended to come before the city commission with a defined plan set of recommendations any way whatsoever so of course it's appropriate to have that information the background the data analytics to support that consideration i will also say that i do support the office of the city attorney and their task regarding the review and analysis associated with the parks improvement bond relative to any ancillary abilities if at all possible to get to a place because quite frankly ladies and gentlemen given the workshop meeting this evening as well as two weeks ago i would not be inclined to make a recommendation to impact the general fund to finance this particular operation i don't think we're in position to do that given all the other interests given all the other obligations given all the other requests coming down the pike so if there is an interest to get to that place we have to complete that exercise first go about that analysis which of course will i'm sure will be soon enough and we'll be able to offer that presentation and clarity in that regard but i am supportive of us to that effect because it's good due diligence and that does a lot to alleviate concerns meanwhile i will be providing a a brief summary in terms of park improvement expenses to date because soon we will be proceeding with the second half of the 20 million dollar parks improvement bond transaction because of the various other commitments haven't been made so we need to get to that place we need to complete that analysis and therefore i am obligated to support what the office of the city attorney just talked about in terms of analysis relative to the minuscellaneous category etc so that's where we are in that regard so we complete that exercise and that's appropriate that's fair and supportive but again this is not appropriate for a general fund expenditure quite frankly so let's see what other opportunities can be made available until such time we complete the due diligence having just been discussed so once we get to that place we'll be able to offer some other specifics and quite frankly i would like to have support that we all are in alignment to be able to proceed as i've just outlined excuse me may i make well i mean man speak who's i would like to to see if we can i'm sorry yeah thank you who's the bond attorney that told you we could use the bonds you said you spoke to an attorney my guy up in boston what's his name i'm just saying have him send us a letter as i'm sticking with what the city attorney is saying and if mr moore and if he's saying there's nothing in the general fund why would we have these lovely gentlemen go do all this additional work for us you're talking about scheduling another meeting it would be our fourth on this subject and while you are absolutely lovely and i definitely appreciate you and the other gentleman who sat here one night till 10 o'clock and then got up and spoke we don't need to have another meeting on this if we don't have the money if mr moore is saying no i don't want to do it i haven't made it clear i think everybody else you don't want to do that hasn't we don't have the money i don't understand where we're going to find it and i do not think if three of us are saying we don't have the money that we should continue to ask these people to engage and come back and give us information we agree we don't have the money i would love it if somebody could provide you that and then you can call us out and get a consent but to have another meeting on the same topic over and over again before you have the money wastes their valuable time and frankly ours so my interest is to ascertain the financial piece and another note miss barletto did text me i wrote to her and said could this be at the golf course and she said yes and that has already been discussed so just as another option but until we have the money i don't think we should have another meeting on this that's my feeling and no disrespect well i would like to see what i would i'm going to tell you one thing though if you put it at the golf course understand you are not doing anything to help downtown what you are doing because when they play course concession you're helping if people have to get in their car to go to lunch they go to lunch right there you want this is a sport you don't know anything about which respectfully and that's okay a lot of people don't i've played it probably more than you but that's the experts will tell you the experts will tell you that the croquet people go they play and then they'll go out to lunch they'll walk to a place i'm very concerned about the parking down there i know there's always a reason well that's a very good reason that's okay let me finish i'm there all the time let me finish but what you do if they have to get into their cars to go to lunch they're not driving downtown just understand you're not doing anything to help the downtown businesses nothing you've got land that's laying fallow they're doing nothing and you seem to be happy with that i'm not happy with that but i would like to know where the money is coming from and i don't think but if we have to invest like we like we spent 156 000 for the hilltop seacrest and we we spend money all the time on recreation i don't disagree with you but no return when we put that budget together hang on you can't do that miss please don't talk please don't talk thank you please don't talk please when we do the budget these are the discussions we should have so when we have let's have this at budget time and then if we find the money then take the next step i want to see do the illegitimate oh mayor i'm sorry business so my interest in this at all is seeing like you said this empty land of course there has been construction construction going on but it's such an underutilized beautiful waterfront park whatever you could do to bring somebody and i envision when i was knocking on doors at the beach everybody's active and walking i envision more people walking to it although you can't just discount no parking i mean the parking has zero parking addressed but is i don't want to take up anybody's time but is there any way to get more concrete information at the same time we're getting more concrete information on both things the money and the project mayor that's what i'm asking for as i said i just don't want to schedule a meeting as i said you walk with mr patten which is he's got his own view as head of the preservation trust he wants to preserve lawn bowling that's what he wants he wants to preserve lawn bowling for the 10 people that play there used to be 12 but two have died so so mayor so the remaining the remaining there the that's that's that's who's playing and the shovel boards are not being used we have a piece of property here that's probably worth 35 million not being used people talk about a return on investment i want this property used i want to create a recreational something recreational downtown it's going to bring people downtown people that go to restaurants people that spend money that's what i'm trying to do can we get a consensus on getting a report yeah just get the report to mr moore to bring us the plan to show us everything and i'm happy to do that in alignment with what the city attorney discussed as far as the review process relative to those abilities on the bond process we have to be in alignment in that regard and we are we've had those discussions in general so we will get to a place in which we can connect the dots in that regard and i would accept that if it costs us money if you can't use the bonding if it costs us money then we need to then we need to weigh whether or not creating this recreational thing which will benefit downtown they benefit the city what you need to create is part and you know and probably and probably get more than the 10 lawn bowlers to play you're so negative about them it's not polite ladies and gentlemen i think i've heard from you all i received consensus i'll proceed accordingly and work with everybody involved and i can prove it if you'd like to prove it i'll prove it prove what that the lawn just like that that's what i gotta ask sam about the shuffleboard three times i totally agree with you three years nobody's fighting you about that my general concern is cost and parking it's not is the commission interested in maybe if there's a management type agreement that exists would you like that information as well which one like a management type agreement no let's just get the cost the woman who's who's from the little club has offered to they've offered this these are often they're managed by the people that play what you know you're not you we have a staff person you just you just want you just want a site plan along with proposed costs general that's it well as i would say as whatever funding opportunities we need to do this we need all the data so we can make an informed decision we keep having meetings after meeting without all the information all the time we have a little sliver right now yeah okay so there's consensus for that okay you also have a large apartment building going up there correct two different buildings are going there and that there's your there's your croquet club right there well let's hope then they don't they'll be part at this point no no question so ladies and gentlemen to conclude funding opportunities specific site plan possibilities as well as proposed expense thank you so much so we'll be in touch to that individually with that information and then we'll discuss the future meeting thank you thank you good to see you again angela and i will be there i'll need i'll need those lessons yeah i'm a low with i can't even know anyway thank you very much okay we're on now to 7c um which is consideration regarding the general employee retirement plan cola actuarial analysis mr mayor i'll take this one for introduction purposes if i may okay can i i just want to know is this something i hate to use we're being asked to make a lot of decisions on on these these funds tonight and and and and whether we're going to be adopting colas and and everything are we going to i mean are we going to are we talking about not being in a position to make a decision i i i don't there's so much about this that i don't even understand and the question is should we be really having a workshop dedicated to these points so that we can fully understand what it means i don't know what the budget impact is yes sir which has also in creating something which automatically goes to you know following a standard of 2 3.5 or whatever without regard to you know you're doing it on an annual basis or you want to do something i don't know that that's the right thing and i hate doing across the board um on a pay plan increase because each component within that thing made some of them deserve a higher thing than others so i i i don't i don't well if we don't we we can't determine our budget till we make these decisions i mean you don't these decisions will dictate what more additional money we need in our budget so we do have to look at these separate from the budget but in the second instance it's really just the um salary schedule it's not guaranteeing that people are getting additional money it's just looking at the salary schedule as it compares to surrounding cities based on that study the second item seven day i said the second item i know but he's talking about all three of them um collectively but we need to keep them all separate let's keep talking about 3.5 cost of living you know for the and each year thereafter that's what the resolution is if you look at the next line though mayor um respectfully i'm sorry for interrupting it does say as appropriated by the city commission if you're not comfortable annually thereafter that's fine we mirrored the language that is in the bargaining agreement but it does talk about um appropriations thereafter so it would be automatic for this year but then um after this year it would be subject to appropriation by the city commission and that language was intentional unless otherwise directed by the city commission during the annual budget process the cola established hearing shall be separate from and in addition to any performance-based merit increases so you would still have to appropriate it and every year you'd be charged with determining what the cola is so mr mayor if i may be recognized please for introduction purpose the principal reason this is being brought before you all at this time tuesday may 19 2026 is because when the ordinance was adopted approximately two and a half years ago on a biannual exercise for a natural area analysis it yielded a commitment to have this completed by april of the subsequent year in this case april 2026 so the information letter report dated may 1st 2026 included the report outlining the actuarial analysis as provided by the city's external consulting firm for actuarial purposes gabriel roder and smith and i've asked jeff emrose who you've had an opportunity to interact with prior to be here to briefly offer a summary in terms of what this looks like we're simply following ordinance obligations and commitments having been made back in january 2024 ladies and gentlemen that's why this presentation is before you at this time notwithstanding the clarity offered by the city attorney relative to the proposed budget process any given fiscal year but again we do have an obligation to make this available to the city commission based on the april time frame so for that reason we scheduled may 19th for this purpose as i've outlined via the information letter report of may 1st 2026 therefore i'd like to give jeff emrose a few minutes to offer a brief presentation and the city commission can offer direction from that standpoint so that's what the ordinance outlines that is why we are here at this time excellent good evening good to see you all again i think it was here last year or the year before so nice to be here with you um just by way of background jeff emrose um i'm a senior consultant and vice president with gabriel roda smith and company the lead actuary for the general employees pension plan are you a croquet player just but it sounds really cool good you're going to have to start if you want to keep this employment going um just by way of background give me two minutes just to talk about the pension plan then i'll get into the cola um we service about 140 pension plans throughout the state sorry no worries that better we service about 140 pension plans across the state of florida and this plan this particular plan is the envy of a lot of them and i say that for for several reasons number one the funded ratio how much of the liability is covered by the assets in the plan it's actually more we're overfunded we have more assets than liability that's really good and it's a position that other plans would love to be in second is the required city contribution to this pension plan is about 10 percent of pay so meaning for every active employee this is every dollar they make 10 cents goes into the pension plan for uh for to properly fund the plan i have other plans i'm across the state that the contribution rate is 20 30 50 70 even 80 or 90 percent of pay um so this plan is in very good shape there the next thing is volatility the volatility of the required city contribution is very low so that's a good thing you sort of have certainty not certainty guarantees but you have a low volatility and it's been within a certain range for a long period of time and last thing is the assumptions used to determine all of these things whether it's a funded ratio or required city contribution are all in a range of reasonable lists again this plan is very well funded low contributions low volatility just wanted to at least give you that background before we get into the um call analysis i am not here to advocate for or against the cola but i just wanted to have that as background just so you all understand um i think you all have our our study in front of you and the cola like mr morris said you know this is part of the ordinance so the the ordinance requires an analysis to be done of a cola potential cola biannually so that the time has come we were requested to prepare the study that you see before you the april 24th study and just to give you background on what it is this is a cola study a cola is a cost of living adjustment obviously in the world today we have inflation when your pension benefit stays level and cost of living is increasing the purchasing power of that benefit is decreased there's no obligation to change that or to increase it or um or or you know to increase it but oftentimes and i see it around in other cities that there is a lot of pressure from retirees who who have gotten a benefit that they are losing purchasing power um so what we studied here was um and what was requested was to give retirees and not active members so current active members wouldn't get anything members in your drop your deferred retirement option program they're still working for the city but they're essentially retired for pension purposes they would not get anything the only ones who would get anything in terms of a cost of living adjustment are current retirees those currently receiving x dollars per month but whatever their their pension benefit may be and what we were requested to study was a one-time two and a half percent cost of living adjustment which means that retirees would get a two and a half percent increase in their retirement benefit so for example suppose a retiree is receiving two thousand dollars per month right now if this were to pass they would get a one-time increase of two and a half percent and they'd get two thousand and fifty dollars per month that would stay at two thousand and fifty there's no future increase on that that's guaranteed it could come before this commission every other year certainly but that the two thousand for this sample employee would go to two thousand fifty and then stay there until there's a decision to change that again in the future the total increase in benefits for this would be two hundred and fifteen roughly two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars meaning you know when you count up all the the employees who go from two thousand to two thousand fifty or from three thousand to three thousand sixty whatever it may be the total increase would be two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars so let's talk about the cost impact the increase in the liability in the pension plan would be two point two million dollars for providing this one-time two and a half percent cost of living adjustment now there's different ways of funding that two and a half two point two million dollars just write a check today you pay two point two million dollars it's funded you're done alternatively what we would recommend is a five or a ten year funding period if you fund it over five years the contribution would be let's see where is it would increase the required city contribution would increase by five hundred and thirty three thousand dollars per year keep in mind the required contribution is about three point six million dollars now so it would increase by five hundred and thirty three thousand dollars for five years if the decision was made we don't want to pay it off over five years we want to pay it off over ten years well then the contribution increase would be less it would be three hundred and ten thousand dollars for ten years obviously like a mortgage the shorter you pay it off over the less interest you're going to pay so if you had paid it off over five years it would essentially be four hundred and seventy thousand dollars of interest if you pay it off over ten years it would be about nine hundred thousand dollars in interest so that's sort of how how it would work um but i'm happy to field any questions or concerns anyone may have could i ask a question yes how did you um determine how how did you decide to use the 2.5 percent yeah that was requested from us we didn't make any decisions on the level um that the so the city manager requested that yes you know what generally speaking this is one of those things where you probably would get a consensus ahead of time as to like what we're thinking before you make a determination because i might have liked to have seen other formulas produced but now all we're working off of is this report and this information and if i may the basis of that consideration consumer price index analysis and that information it was not a random figure it was not us taking a look at any particular calculation it was based on a consumer price index and there's a reference and a practice that that is being done so mr ambrose if you can comment to that effect please i think that would help yeah so our assumption in our valuation report is that inflation will average around two and a half percent per year so that that's essentially in line with with our assumption in our valuation report and there's nothing to be said that has to be that or it can't be anything different but that's um you know so if we're looking for a gauge at what long-term inflation is expected to be two and a half percent is a reasonable number disagree with that thank you sure i have a question um currently are there are police and fire colas are between one and 1.5 is that right that's correct those why was why is there such a disparity just for the record those colas are guaranteed annual colas that happen every year so there's nothing like this that we go and we sort of you know have a a presentation to the commission to get it approved or not this is very different this is a one-time um cola increase again my example 2000 to 2050 it stays forever in the other in the public safety plans there are annual colas that are pre-funded and pre-approved there's no approval process so it goes up by one percent and the compounding effect of that or one and a half percent whatever it may be the compounding effect of that is much more valuable than a a one-time two and a half percent goal if that makes sense and this group has never received a cola yeah not since i've been um working on the plan i don't have all the history but i think that's accurate okay thank you explain that compounding thing again sure sure so if you're getting um a cpr a cola of two percent per year every year then you start with two thousand dollars so it goes to two thousand forty dollars then it goes to two thousand you know eighty dollars and eventually and the power of compounding is after 20 years that will be you know and this is just a one time this is just one time and and that's it if there was anything more and that's a big big point you know if there was anything more to be approved would again have to come before the commission based on the ordinance and so you okay the fund is in very good condition and this is a very very moderate to the city so considering a higher cola would require what um higher than the two and a half percent right yeah i mean it's just a decision we could go back and and and you know revise this based on three three and whatever the decision was and we could show you the financial impact um so that that's something that and ultimately if it's passed i think there would have to be some sort of ordinance i guess adopting a two and a half or three and whatever the decision was made for a one-time cola and then we would prepare what's called an actual impact statement which if it was two and a half would be in line with the information that i just gave you just now if it was different than we'd have to go and revise it which is based on the consumer price index okay yeah yep so today you would simply just if you're satisfied with the 2.5 percent you could give direction to proceed with an ordinance change if you wanted um mr ambrose to provide you with other scenarios we could we could order that and and have another discussion can i ask a question this biannual review process has this in the past were there no colas given it was that this is the first time the exercise has taken shape it was adopted in january 2024 so the biannual exercise bringing us to early 2026 to have it completed by april right 2026 so this is the first experience for us all right and thereby the incorporation of the consumer price index as referenced accordingly was the metric used to get us to this place however you have the discretion however of course we have to prepare financially as well right but just pointing out that this is not going to be the first consideration we'll be doing this every two years so this is our starting point that is correct so two years from now they'll come back they'll come back they want another every every odd number every odd number okay got you um mr moore will request the study so october 2025 i requested the study i provided an update in one of my weekly reports that that was done the way that's typically about a six month commitment between october 2025 we were mandated to get this completed by april 2026 which we did and thus tonight's presentation so really following those obligations in that regard and do you so do you need us to choose a percentage and then choose if we're doing the five year or ten year or who's determining the five to ten year i would think that that would be ultimately the pension board that would determine that thank you yeah sure thank you for that so any direction to this effect will likewise transition to a dialogue with the pension board so they can come back with a specific recommendation with respect to a five-year amortization or a 10-year amortization again the five-year amortization based on the analysis about a 533 000 impact for five years a 10-year a 310 000 impact annually for 10 years so the pension board would go about their exercise of reviewing both considerations based on the content of your report and advising the commission accordingly so if there is an interest in proceeding in this regard we would then make arrangements with the pension board to begin their work soon so that you can come back and offer appropriate direction not to mention the options that miss jellin just discussed as well so tonight we're asking to approve the five percent adjustment no 2.5 based on cpi well it says five percent so that would be the 2.5 no you're on the second one different item 7c that's 7d we're talking about 7c okay it's the 2.5 2.5 got it for the general employee so our pension council would prepare an ordinance um they would ask the pension if you decide on this whatever you decide on we would ask the pension board to order the actuarial impact statement because with every ordinance you do need that impact statement and then they would read the ordinance and then we would bring it back to the commission for ratification into the code okay so assuming we go with 2.5 and i'm not saying we are but the issue we would have to we want to pay it over five or ten well mr amos is saying they remember the pension board is a separate legal entity so they manage the actual funds and and i think they would make the ultimate decision as to um whether or not how long it would be amortized for either five or ten your your decision they'll make that as a right right would be the pension board your decision is the actual amount of the cola what if they have a higher yield they'll do it sooner if they have a lower yield they'll stretch it out right exactly yeah i would like to see uh it go higher but i would at least um be in favor of the 2.5 and moving forward with it i believe these people that haven't had a coal adjustment since they retired deserve that absolutely and no raise in 75 to seven years lots of sacrifice they got paid double dip for eight five years before they retired one time one time so the motion would be um to approve a one uh 2.5 percent cola for the retirement discussion oh i was just going to suggest a motion thank you and then um and then direct staff to prepare whatever ordinances are necessary that would be presented to the pension board and then at what point do we consider a higher cola in the next that would be for the next so it would be the next odd numbered year so it would be 2027. okay slow down miss burns well no i mean you know you could kill it all with one one stone if you can so vice mayor burns october 2027 so a little less than a year and a half from now we'll be back at that place for consideration okay well i just want to say to those that are here i i am in support of um giving this first time you know minimum of 2.5 cola um and considerations for um going higher in in the next two years but for tonight so move what the uh what the uh second it what our city attorney said you're moving the resolution yes moving the resolution moving resolution does um no no this one didn't have a resolution it's just a consideration right was this just a consider rather it says a resolution eight now you're on it's 7c 7c 7c considerations okay so so you want a motion to you've got i would i would prefer a motion to direct me to start the process to formally ratify this and obviously it'll be brought back before to you before the the new fiscal year we have a first and a second on that correct yes would you like me to articulate exactly what you said or can we just say okay thank you then i need all in favor aye aye any opposed it passes unanimously okay just one question if i may um lynn and terrence will you communicate with lisa casanova okay we will very good very good we'll do right there he heard the whole thing so director of human resources dwayne d'andre is on board in this regard so duly noted we'll touch base tomorrow morning and take it from there very good thank you okay so um we now move on to 7d which is resolution 100 thank you thank you very much for your presentation a resolution of the city commission of the city of darry beach florida authorizing a five percent adjustment to the city's salary schedule for general employees for the fiscal year commencing october 1 2026 through september 30 2027 as specified herein authorizing the city managers to take any actions necessary to effectuate the intent of this resolution providing an effective date and for other purposes good evening dwayne deandre human resources i have doc bast here with me as well um i have a powerpoint up here i believe you all are very familiar with and i am addressing 7d and 7e officially so okay so then i should read 70 yeah read it 72 it's one it's one powerpoint a resolution of the city commission of the city of delver beach florida authorizing 3.5 cost of living wage adjustment for all general employees commencing october 1 2026 and each year thereafter authorizing city manager to take any and all actions necessary to effectuate the intent of this resolution providing an effective date and further purposes thank you all right so this powerpoint i believe you all have seen but we'll go ahead and start with it it's an analysis and considerations to support non-represented employees those that are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement which is the largest portion of employees that you have here at the city of delray beach next slide so delray beach general employees current salary increases are governed by a policy per4 which is the classification and pay plans and they're rated on their merit so employees in positions anniversary date receive a merit increase from zero to five percent based on their performance evaluation and the average merit received for general employees is 4.2 percent next slide so the results of the 2024 class and comp study and collective bargaining ratification a couple things happened there were 387 employees benchmarked against other municipalities at that time 118 employees received salary increases as a result of the study and approximately 30 percent of the general employees received a reallocation you may remember as a result of the pba contract specifically the lieutenant's compression issues involving command staff were addressed at that time by increasing pay grades maximums of 124 to 136 of the general employees play plan by five percent each so what did the study recommend the study recommended a salary scale adjustment annually it's recommended that in subsequent years after the adoption of the recommended pay plan the city should adjust the entire salary scale by the cpi annually as budget permits the annual cpi for 2025 was 2.7 percent next slide as you know we did some benchmarking with some other municipalities for the 2025-2026 fiscal year one thing that we'll address right now is the pay grades that they moved that's the to the far right you can see the maxes just about all moved for all the municipalities by a good pretty good percentage and if they didn't move uh they also moved the minimums as well if we look at the increases you can see that some municipalities um gave a across the board which is what we're talking about here a cola c based on either an arbitrary number or the cpi for example green acres gave a four percent across the board and the merit was 2.5 and four to 4.5 and the average increase per employee was 7.5 percent that was last year you can see royal palm beach was seven percent they were the only ones that specifically used the cpi the cpi that was adjusted for january or for 2025 was adjusted in january 2026 to 2.76 they rounded up to 2.8 so that's where they got the seven percent if you go to the next slide please dot we did do our due diligence and looked at the cost for these adjustments if we're to ingest the general employees by the cpi adjustment that would be a one-time cost of nine hundred thousand dollars if we're to adjust it by the 3.5 cola adjustment it would be 1.2 million again we're proactively representing the i mean talking about the general employees the folks that have not had a cola um in a decade or more and it's the largest portion of your employment or employees here at the city of delray beach can i ask a question yes this is is uh is this the one that moves uh employees who've topped out on their salary so that's a great question that's one of the reasons that we are addressing the maximum of the pay grades it'll be for pay grades 101 to 123 we've already addressed 124 through 130 whatever i said it was 136. so to answer the question is yes 7d as in david is the one that addresses the top house that's where we are that's where we are he did both together he did both together that was my that was oh okay remember this presentation it's still got your coffee here all right yeah all right i'm ready to make a motion so the cost if i may mirror for the um d is uh going to be 900 000 and the cost for e is going to be 1.2 million so we're looking at 2.1 million that's incorrect so this this is just for the cola adjustment yeah this is not for the max you you mentioned it correctly earlier when you said no one's going to get an increase just because the max is raised but why did you assume the 900 000 in that we didn't assume we worked with our finance department to do what the cost out would be for the 400 employees if they received the 2.7 uh percentage adjustment to their salary right okay but that's what i'm saying so that's he's providing just two scenarios right exactly 2.7 yeah it's not it's not combined right so we do the two two five right two seven or the and the seventh day if i can clarify ladies and gentlemen that's not a direct financial impact so i have no concerns about that at the particular point this provides future opportunities and is to be managed over time this simply addresses essentially what you talked about vice mayor burns in terms of creating opportunities for those who have been maxed out so 7d quite frankly i think is a fairly easy consideration based on what we talked about and therefore all is well well it is a fairly simple consideration but are you once this is implemented you begin the process of looking at everyone in evaluating their salary or are you just doing this for future reference for future opportunities for growth future opportunities to move forward above particularly those who have been maxed out based on the market starting october 1 2026 yes ma'am okay so basically what happens is if you make fifty thousand dollars and in your particular pay grade the max is fifty thousand dollars let's say you get a five percent merit increase because you're just a great employee now your salary goes up to fifty five thousand right you can only get five thousand dollars as a top-out bonus right and so for pension purposes even though you made fifty five thousand dollars that year your pension is only going to reflect 50 it's not so these pay grades need to routinely be increased otherwise we're not keeping keeping um track of them and then employees are essentially working without benefiting their pension got it i think and commissioner burns you're the one who yeah i'm on it that's what i said i've experienced all of this i'm on it um are you ready for a motion or you need to make some comments i was going to see anybody else anything to say otherwise i need a motion okay i make a motion to approve resolution number 100-26 authorizing five percent adjustment to the city's salary schedule for general employees microphone i'm going up to make the motion microphone i made the motion we have the motion then i'll second it your microphone is not on it i mean i know it's a complicated day speaking to your microphone aye aye any opposed that is adopted okay 7e do you want to make that one too sure motion to approve resolution number 99-26 authorizing the three and a half percent cost of living wage adjustment for all general employees commencing october 1st 2026 and each year thereafter anybody else want to jump in with a second wait somebody else wants a second you did the first anybody else want a second or do you want to just second it i second that all in favor aye any opposed okay done thank you very much thanks okay this is number 7f the presentation of the opioid settlement uh advisory committee uh jeff jeff left in here yes i don't see him he's already still on the corner he's hiding oh he's around the corner okay i just that's why i don't see through the walls thank you hello hello all right i'm jeff left and i'm the uh director of behavioral health at dowry medical center i'm also a deputy with the sheriff's office um and i'm here as a representative of the of the opioid settlement advisory committee and what we wanted to do is bring forth our recommendation as the committee so it's our recommendation that we um use a hundred percent of the voice of the available opioid settlement funds for mobile integrated health program through the dollar beach fire rescue we brought this recommendation uh or an option for a recommendation to the meeting in february want to make that recommendation formal today i'm not in favor of that recommendation i apologize i oh i thought you were looking you looked at me so i thought you were calling on me direction but i was i apologize every time you give me the stare i think you're calling on me i'm sorry uh uh vice mayor burns who's has some strong views on this yes i i'm very concerned about using okay so i heard something different just now i heard a hundred percent of the available funds so um we got what what are the because i'm not in favor of a hundred percent of this going to this project i am i i think that some of it needs to go to education and prevention and and i do not support 100 of all of the opiate funds going to this to this project but i just heard you say available funds so once we give a hundred percent of what's available future funding that we get that come in does that all is that also allocated for this or do we have other opportunities to put that money somewhere else that would be what what what is the is the recommended when you use the to when you use the word available as you as you said in your remarks what does that mean so available right now are funds that we're um brought over from past years and then future funding um for the pro well at least for right now anyways available funding that's available right now so commissioner burns's point that so the additional funds coming in later would be included into your definition of available i think we need to um i'm pretty sure that we can relook at that every year and take a look at that the thing is though once we fund this from the from with the um fire rescue we'll be looking at additional funds also to help support this program um i think that that's going to be something that we're going to have to look at every year when when the funding comes in okay commissioner casal did you have it did you want to get recognized just did you have something you wanted thank you right just let me if i may yes the the committee has set up that they will make an annual recommendation to you for the expenditure of funds that are available okay commissioner casal yeah i mean here's the problem and mr moore is in here but mr orris you are we've had two or three discussions on this you came forth with no monetary information at the last meeting and we made a determination without any understanding of the cost so when you look at this march 3 2026 memorandum this is a ton of money well exceeds what we're getting annually right so the taxpayers and and and honestly i've been saying from day one i think this money presents us with a grand opportunity to work in our schools on prevention with our children the idea of you know i appreciate what you want to do with this program if someone has a problem in the city they find themselves in our ambulance we help them those may not be our residents most all the time right i mean those are not always our residents that will be getting help correct i mean i'm not sure right if they're getting in an ambulance they could be someone who is dining downtown they could be someone who's not a non-resident anyone who gets in the ambulance with that kind of issue will be someone that this program attempts to address and not that i'm discouraging us from helping everybody but at the end of the day i would like to see the money go to our children in our schools i think that's where it would best be served and when you talk about these costs it's very concerning highest and best one million five hundred forty one thousand dollars five hundred and sixty eight dollars level two this is that's that's if we want to give the highest and best cost level two cost six hundred and nineteen thousand level three minimal cost four hundred and twenty four thousand that's not even what we're getting annually on this correct lowest level basically scraping the bottom of the barrel four hundred and twelve thousand six hundred dollars why would we want to even do that at that point if we could take this money and potentially affect somebody's life before they have that encounter a child i just i feel very strongly that i'm not saying this program isn't a great program i if we had unlimited assets i would be encouraging us to do this the money is not enough to actually do this well and i think when you look at that memo and how it's mapped out we won't be able to do a good job with the amount of money we're getting and in the future mr orris and i'm not mr more i direct this to you i do not want to have another meeting where we are getting partial information you know this was given to you march 3rd 2026 this memo and yet at the last meeting we had this information we're not getting the accurate information and all the information we need because we probably wouldn't have made the same determination or might not have at the last discussion had we had all this information and going forward i keep on asking for the same thing we need to be provided all the information thank you thank you mr i am curious how i think the totals in 2025 is a hundred thousand how they can pay for the you know level one the low level but i'm i'm i'm also very very interested in preventing recidivism and getting the help for the patients that have sought out help how did the board come to that decision and i'm sorry when you introduced yourself i forgot to write your name down my name is jeff lefton l-e-f-t-o-n okay and then what did you say about delray medical i'm the director of behavioral health services at the delray medical center um so how did the the board come up with their determination that that's where the money should go because obviously you you know what you're doing so we we um we went over this in the last meeting we we took a priority list um i'm sorry i'm new that's why i probably didn't hear that from the drug task force it's all that croquet talk too i mean i've already bought my membership while i was sitting back there um so we're already getting members i know i don't even know what it is it sounded like a lot of you haven't even built it it's a very social thing i heard um so we took uh we we took the priorities from the drug task force and we there were four recommendations um and then we took those recommendations it was paramedicine it's it's this program that we're talking about uh removing employment barriers affordable and supportive housing and prevention and those were their priorities those were what they recommended we looked at all those and as a committee we prioritized the paramedicine program do you mind commission so let's just talk about who was a part of that conversation oh introduce myself my name is chuck grizzly um i tonight i'm a um i'm serving as a 36 year um recovering addict um you had the leading voice forces in the city sitting around the table not just the folk that you recommended um but folk from um drug abuse foundation folk from the task force folk who actually work in the industry those who like myself are people with lived experiences and we looked at every available option the option that we're bringing towards you is not to we are clear that there are just not enough opiate settlement dollars we asked you to work with the community and find creative ways to understand the complete continuum as i shared with you the last time i am a from there's you won't find a bigger advocate for prevention than myself but there's a continuum that you need to look at and if you only look at prevention while important you do a disservice to this entire public health issue that is in front of you and so yes we're suggesting that you look at more than the opiate settlement dollars now only you can make that decision but we tell you that you also have a generous community you have other providers that you haven't utilized your bully pulpit to leverage what's available to you now we can only do what the committee is charged to do which is make your recommendation on the dollars that come from the opiate settlement dollars but y'all know y'all got other funding streams you know that you know that some of those funding streams could be used um towards prevention you know that you know that there are other providers in this community that may even bring dollars to the table what we are basically saying that we are not authorized to say because we can only bring you the recommendation based on what's here is what we have in front of you but you are smart people think outside the box and see how do we utilize this to make this happen so we're saying 100 percent because we think that of those dollars that are coming from the opiate settlement funds that's the best place to use those but we're not asking you to lock yourself in that bucket as that as that though that's your other option now that was the spirit of the conversation so i saw when i was understanding the mobile integrated health program it was also um for an elderly person that needed you know some some care or follow-up to make sure they followed up with it and a partnership with with uh medical center might fill that gap right because medical center doesn't want to see the same people coming back over and over same way we don't want to keep sticking in a hot in an ambulance so i'm thinking outside the box mr ridley could i ask a question are you saying that the money could be utilized outside of opioids for elderly people that get in the ambulance it could um benefit both i think it could benefit i don't know that no no not at all but the concept got it the concept right not these funds to additionally point out in the chief's memo to us it says there would need to be facility augmentation costs which is estimated at uh 700 700 12 500 i mean this this look i'm not saying we shouldn't be thinking about doing this but i don't think in this current cycle of money we can do it it just it doesn't it's that's right now talking about augmenting the facility and just going with your lowest level which is two employees and some you know training and equipment you're looking at one million one hundred twenty five thousand one hundred dollars that's that's the price and how much money do we actually have in that right now one hundred thousand at this point with next year's allocation i think we're somewhere about 300 and change there was some money utilized for already that's correct yeah yeah and that was taken out let let me also share with you that this was designed as a presentation of their recommendation there will be an item i believe it's on your june 9th agenda we'll have it on there for you to discuss how you want to spend those dollars so we can submit our expenditure plan to the state you don't have to do what they say you can do something different we'll bring you as much information we have i know some of this information has changed over time yeah it's ever evolving um we've had conversations with outside entities on what costs might be how this could look what the easiest way to do it is what other partners might be interested and quite frankly i i know you keep talking about not having the information and i don't have a dog in this fight this is the recommendation yeah but you have the information and we didn't we didn't one thing over another i'm not suggesting that although i did listen to the meeting where people said you should get the monetary information together for the commission and you said no they're not going to go for this anyway i listened to the meeting but i would rather not you and i can discuss that privately in the future if you'd like for here today do we have a certain amount that we have to spend in this current fiscal year because that's my understanding is this has to happen in a year-to-year basis correct so what is our current amount to be spent in the current fiscal year so here's one of the really tough things there's no real hard and fast rules on spending this money other than we need to submit an expenditure plan by july one no no there are hard and fast yeah well on on what you can spend it on yeah those are hard and fast rules i'm still trying to get a hold of the state to find out what if we don't spend all that money can we change it i feel like that's a really important i don't have those answers we use it for prevention programs yes here's the thing that what i was suggesting that we do this year is miss spencer has an amazing prevention program i visited her facility i think we should allocate the money present moment to prevention and when we do our budget we need to have a serious conversation if this is going to be our priority and then look at what the funding that we anticipate we're getting from the opioid settlement how far out we're getting that money because if we implement this program if we retrofit our facilities hire even at the lowest level two new staffers and get new equipment we're not doing it to do a one-year program we're doing it as an ongoing program because we're committed to it and i do believe we need to figure out as a commission as a city if we're committed to this then at budget session put our money where our mouths are and put this program together whether it's the lowest or the super duper highest but right now for the time being because we have money to spend i think we should allocate some of this and start the prevention and then engage in that conversation okay that's my commissioner burn yeah you know i i don't know i guess it's the the hundred percent that's getting me because you know i i agree that um you know this money needs to go back to those that were affected and and and um i i i like the program however i'm looking at the sustainability of the program and the cost of the program and i heard you mr ritley saying there are other funding sources but they're not being presented to us to say where those those other funding sources are coming from and i would hate to start a program and not be able to sustain the program because it it's very important you know that these individuals are are helped my problem is with 100 of the money going to this um you know as it is very expensive um and i just i don't see figures or resources that's going to sustain it um and you know and i'm i'm i don't know i i like i said i i i i support this program um but i just have a problem with 100 of it all of the money going uh to um to this program i'd like to just jump in with a quick question if you did the program as your best year as you propose would that require uh so uh hiring somebody on the other end because if so when the money runs out what if we've got an employee now that that it's not going to be funded by the program anymore so what do i do with that employee it's going to cost me i mean i'm just saying that i i i i don't see i mean it does it does require staff it requires it requires equipment and then so now i'm putting on staffing minimum of two people they're they're respectfully i love talking about then they're all on the pension plan and they're all on this and so they just and then you hate to say i can't get rid of them but it's very hard once you're you hire somebody to disengage them from employment so and they've specialized too and it's a it's a specialized um skill i'm not saying it's not a value it's not a valuable program i i i i hate giving 100 to to them one anyway i mean i i i think that um i mean i've always been one to believe in prevention i mean there's a lot of programs out there to help the person that's already been lying on the side of the road so to speak there's fewer programs to help the people not be the one to you know applying on the side of the road i mean you had great prevention programs that were you with your i mean to get you off of what you were i mean yeah it was i don't want to ignore that that we're having exactly the conversation we had hoped to have but the conversation that we're charged to have and the one that we need to have we really need to decouple our charge was to bring you back right but let me just because i want to get to the next one next part but we need to have the broader conversation right and because of limitations what i hope is to start a much broader and deeper conversations about the continuum my fear is isn't that you don't understand prevention clearly you do and the most important thing we can do is on the prevention side but this is a disease that takes a public health conversation that needs to happen and if you could consider maybe a workshop that allow the recovery community and those of us that are in that industry to have a much broader and in-depth conversation with you than the one that we can currently have given the limitations of this ordinance i really believe we will hit the mark because you have more help that we can bring to the table the opiate is completely and too often ignored in these kinds of settings i agree look i'll teach the people to grow the doors and said and when budget time there are i don't have a dog we're talking about the mobile integrated health besides the fact that the group liked the idea was also because there was a recognition a recognition at the last meeting we were sitting on a significant amount of karen dollars that are designated for education prevention education so this money is probably about a third question why are we still sitting on all that karen dollars if it's when we could be spending it on education education prevention now do we need to look into that though because this is not i mean yeah you could take some of the karen dollars and put them into the education aspect of it but you're still talking about not enough money regardless to fund this program even at the lowest level with what we're getting that's the point so even if you say we won't we won't incorporate we'll take the karen dollars and we'll use that for education and we'll just use this money exclusively or 100 percent you still don't have enough money commissioner my point was only to say that was one of their i know that was one of their considerations when they were talking about why they didn't i appreciate that education was just because that recognition got it thank you that makes sense so any other committee any any other comments i agree with commissioner casale and i i we should commit to you that we will get together on this and and work on a longer term plan and i'm in on that i think i think you've made a great case for that so we're not adopting this resolution tonight let me just read it you're not making any decision it's just a presentation yeah we'll come back to you uh with a chance for you all to make a decision on what the expenditure plan expenditure plan will be for the following for the upcoming but do you want direction from us on like where we think you want to go i think we should give them some direction are we considering the the the workshop or the conversation that mr ritley suggested i would like to have that as well um and i think that um there was some legislative change on the karen foundation i do think that we should go ahead and utilize those funds for uh a prevention um education and prevention um i just when she said that i remember there was um some change on that so it is allowed for education and prevention so i think we should go that route i believe that's correct i'll double check i know i sent everyone an email about it i'll re-forward it so are we do we want to do we want to direct the city to engage with miss spencer with respect to moving forward i think we should do that at least let's we've had committee have we received a proposal with the cost of what a program i think it's it depends on how much we're going to give i mean i think the program would like how much would be done would be dependent on how much we're willing to allocate i think i mean that's how i would if i was is is there an application process not really we just what i would imagine just come up with a figure maybe the committee can ask staff to you know put out feelers put an application out and see and have the committee vet them because they do seem to be our subject matter experts based on their life history experience and then they can vet those applications and then bring them to the commission i mean we do this with other grants and to me it would just seem like a cleaner process you would be able they would be able to evaluate these applications on your behalf maybe rank them for you and then bring them back to you so that you can make a final decision you can give direction on what kinds of programs you're interested in prevention what what whatever you know education whatever you direction you give to the committee i mean you've assembled this group of very um you know with very specific professions and i know that that was a very deliberate decision on your part use them you know like use these they want to help i mean i don't even know how many meetings you've come to mr ridley to impart your information on us so maybe staff put something out it doesn't have to be very formal but at least you can get some proposals okay let them review it vet them and then bring that back to you and maybe we do a joint workshop with the committee and then we'll have a round table discussion to finally finally finalize this yeah and get the money out there where it can be utilized thank you yeah i like what i would suggest okay so that's done is that what you want to do huh thank you are you clear on the direction yes i'm simply asking for formal consensus to that effect thereby i don't think there's a necessity for june 9th at this juncture or not we still have to submit a plan to the state by july 1. well we can accomplish that i know i recognize that we have a deadline by june 30th july 1st of this year nevertheless we have a lot of flexibility in terms of what our update to the state will be and much of that can be based on the guidance we've just provided this evening this is what we're looking to accomplish this is what's happening etc so i'm not sure that i i think they look i think the statute i think it has to be specific the statute gives you yeah it needs to be a plan with dollars attached to activities is that something we can do in that period of time so on that note we will come back then during the june 9th meeting as initially contemplated and we'll talk about some specifics and the other again i i've got a call into the state i'm still waiting for a return call i want to ask them the opportunity to amend the plan once we've adopted it and submitted it and i think that says an awful lot about what we can do and what we should submit when i have that answer can you send us the documentation this feel i thought it was like an annual thing where you could allocate the funds annually utilize them next year you can do whatever you want like it's not you're committing to one year and once you commit to give some small amount of money to somebody it's pretty much done that's the way it's designed we have a fluctuating amount of money that comes in each year the state requires us to submit an expenditure plan to them by july 1 and all it is is an upload into a computer software and that's what we got that's the regulations we're working under i'm trying to get some more clarity on what if we don't spend the money in that time frame what if we choose to do something else this is why it's not in written format anywhere of how you do this all we got was information that says upload your plan to here by july 1. so we'll offer a preliminary expenditure plan via the june 9th meeting we go from there otherwise the remaining consensus so be it i mean i don't want to blow a deadline with this you know government and we won't i will make sure that the committee convenes and gives you some suggestions on how to move forward with uh with caring funds if you'd like i want to know how much it costs to run these programs yeah okay thank you okay thank you commission thank you very much thank you all right so the next item is strategic considerations regarding community tree planting program who's going to be doing this is this anthea this is chris chetister mr chris chetister if you would pull again please i'm chris chetister interim sustainability officer just here to give you a quick synopsis of how the last year of the tree planting program went and i'm handed off to community greening to kind of highlight some of the successes of the program over the years so our 2026 program was 455 trees fell a bit short of our 2000 tree goal as of last friday all 455 trees have been delivered and this is what that earlier budget transfer is to pay for all of those trees were drop-off program we reduced it we didn't do the giveaways this year we didn't do any uh proper city or partner planting sites and they were all 15 gallon native shade trees and this year we introduced the seven gallon fruit trees which were a big hit in some of our lower canopy areas that we were trying to target this is the final contract new year and it does expire next month this is a map of our tree inventory that was completed in 2019 you know the clumps of green show all of our city trees obviously no private trees were accounted for we had about 149 different species in the city now you can see this is what our tree planting program added not only did we get a much needed increase in diversity of species but you can see that based on between here and here we've got trees all over the city and a significant number amount in our low canopy areas so that was big success of the program so the tree planting program creates long-term municipal value through stormwater interception stormwater and air quality improvement heat reduction energy savings public health and increased tax base so far we've invested about 1.2 million dollars and planted over 8 100 trees that return three to five million dollars a year in community services by 2050 that 1.2 million investment is projected to generate up to 64 million dollars in cumulative community value that is a lot of dollars for your investment all right with that i'm gonna turn it over to community greening and they're going to highlight some of the best parts of the last five years okay uh good evening mayor vice mayor commission city staff i really appreciate the opportunity really just to come up here and update you on really community greening's work and what we've done with the partnership with the city of delray beach um so let me see if our slides are up here next um so here we go that was actually a picture oh this is just going forward there we go no okay sorry uh so that's a picture of the community grove one of our first projects in the city of delray beach and so we started community greening in 2016 and really that was because i mean there was a concerted effort of of residents that were upset about trees coming down uh that there was really no initiative to be continuing to plant trees and um and you know we we worked in tandem with the parks department on how can we engage and we can really kind of um you know get residents to help us plant trees so started it with matt shipley long time delray beach you know family resident here third generation and really we went around the country and we looked at other urban forestry nonprofits and i grew up in indiana there's a group like this that's always been there and we went and just kind of looked at their programming and what how they did that and partnered with their city to increase the tree canopy um so we did that with the parks you know we planted in orchard view we planted in barwick park we planted um you know in knolls and that was really with the parks department uh the sustainability officer at that time on us they they conducted a study to see like where are we really with the tree canopy we need to know what the baseline is and what the goal is and so they did a tree canopy assessment and we found that we had a 23 tree canopy at that point and that uh they came up that you know this was done by e-sciences which is now res and it was that we can increase the tree canopy we really have possible planting area of 39 canopy we could have they came up with a conservative goal of increasing the tree canopy from 23 to 28 that was that five percent increase was 10 000 trees or is 10 000 trees and that's kind of how the city then adopted this campaign of 10 000 trees and that's why it was kind of you know incremented in 2 000 trees a year that's what we always worked with um and how we could do that and we did that and we planted you know like josh will talk about we planted all the public parks we planted all the public schools which was a big win and one thing that it says in that tree canopy assessment is you have to engage city residents like you have to plant on private property in order to increase the tree canopy because public property is only a certain percentage which is much much less than residential property um so we have that's the purpose of the tree giveaways and and now what we're implementing was this drop-off program which is basically a delivery program and that's something that we saw in california that they're doing and that's how they're increasing the tree canopy it's not just the tree giveaways it was to go out and do that so that's just a little bit of a background and kind of why we're here tonight is because as you as chris just said this current program fell short it was 455 trees and and um it's just kind of make you all aware of that and that we are currently out of trees and so there is no real um option for residents or for if there are projects like last year we just planted 50 right of way trees on congress linton and lake ida and so i mean we can use this for different ways of increasing the tree canopy so that 23 this kind of gives you an idea of where we're at we're now probably at 25 percent um and with the effort that we've made over the past 10 years and um you can see i mean there's a big correlation with with the cities and and how they what efforts they make to plant trees so that's why you know we have to kind of keep the effort ongoing because we um florida is always in the top three states of people of states losing green space and losing tree canopy it just makes sense people are moving here and we need the land but there are places that we can plant trees as long as there's a you know a team effort that we're all working together on trying to preserve and plant trees this is kind of shows just a snapshot of some of the 8 000 trees so that goal was 10 000 where we kind of this is where it it is right now at uh 8 100 trees and um you know that you can just imagine of all of these spots that this program has planted if you think of like you know the schools of village academy and carver and spady which josh will talk a little bit all the public parks or even just like some of the green spaces along lake ida if you're talking about may check and then right in front of spady elementary and then the one right past that on lake ida also that we you know planted and then um you know the the county park and boland and it kind of continues on and on on debarwick we've really planted a lot of trees because of this program that i don't know if we really would have done that if there wasn't this big team effort and increasing the tree canopy um so it has had a lot of successes like chris kind of mentioned i mean people in cities and states are doing tree can tree canopy planting programs because of all of these benefits so i mean one of the biggest benefits is the extreme heat and you know that's really one of the main reasons people want trees along sidewalks near bus stops you know and get to people outside i think it really engages and activates a lot of our um a lot of our public spaces and like you know 1.6 and stormwater benefits um and and it increases property value everything shows that you know people would spend more money on neighborhoods that has a higher tree canopy or even on lots that have that we sometimes jokingly say we're tree evangelists because like we could continue to go on and on about all the benefits of trees and green spaces but we'll you know kind of let you look at that and i mean even down to food and food security and providing fresh fruit to to people um you could go on and on about these benefits which we won't but uh i will pass it on to josh wiener who is our engagement and communications director he's been with community greening the past five years just to tell us some of the impact that we've had and i could just again imagine like this is a lot of you have come out to our tree plantings so i mean this is also not just trees like i really view it as as an investment in the community because these are families these are kids these are school teachers these are all these people who are coming out to our as the police department has come many times with us and planted out you know at uh mike may check and at barwick a lot of these things are are people kind of investing in our city and um working together to improve it so that's just that's a little bit of that background here's josh thank you i appreciate you guys having us so like mark mentioned we have planted every single public school in delray beach that means every student that has gone through the public school system has gotten to experience the trees that we have planted uh right above us is a map of carver uh and this is a more focused version of that colorful map that we saw a minute ago and this is literally showing you the exact location of those 218 trees and we go through we have walkthroughs we have certified arborists on our staff we work with the principals at these schools when we're doing a school planting so they let us know hey this is where the kids play or this is used as a soccer field or a football field we can't plant over here there's a very concerted effort to plant the right trees in the right places here's a picture of village academy every single tree in this picture was planted through community greening tree planting there are over 275 trees on this one campus you can even see one of the chairs right there uh the principal let us know that the teachers sit there because it is too hot to be able to sit outside and watch the students they needed those shaded areas uh so this is really changing the experience for these students um and allows them to be outside we are now getting into the uh higher parts of the year while the school's still in session i know that my daughter has not had outdoor play every single time and part of that is due to the extreme heat and there not being enough shaded areas uh outdoors for our students here's one of the examples at the many parks that we have planted uh barwick park everybody's very familiar with this uh you can see the picture of those exact slash pines uh when they were first planted and now they are 20 plus feet tall um again i used to take my daughter there when it was barren there was that dinosaur slide and nobody was ever there and now this is arguably the best gem of a park in all the city uh i don't have to explain that to you guys you guys just installed a library uh storybook walk there part of the reason why that happened is because those shale those trails are shaded with the trees that got planted so here's just another uh picture an example of that really showing that impact because even if the tree started small they will grow and they are critical green infrastructure to now it's the point that people can't even tell that this was a recent tree planting site another great example like we touched on with the first picture is the community grove this is what we call an urban orchard uh this is right across from catherine strong splash park and as you see from the top picture it was an illegal dub site you can see this right off of 95 you can even see the sound wall that was not painted prior to all this and now it's home to dozens of fruit trees so it's completely revitalized the space uh one of the coolest things i like is if you go on google street maps you can literally stand at the corner click one way it shows you the old version you click the other way and shows you completely transformed and that is changing that neighborhood we've heard it from residents there all the time um and again providing fresh fruit access to food uh and reducing food insecurities uh our youth tree team is uh meets there on a regular basis our youth three team is paid high school interns that work with us out the field caring for trees learning about environmental stewardship uh and most of them live in the northwest southwest neighborhoods attend uh atlantic high school uh and this is where they uh meet up when they're coming to work it was also named by the way uh the urban forestry program of the year in 2023 by the florida urban forestry council just another picture of the grove uh and then as we've highlighted we've switched towards a large focus on residential property because like mark mentioned there's far more private property than there is public property um and we got a pardon the pun but a lot of low hanging fruit with those tree plantings in the first couple years of planting every single school all these parks the number of uh presentations that we listened to and highlighted places that we've planted is insane the winner of that historic uh homes contest uh has trees planted from one of our distribution events sand away which got mentioned earlier has home to dozens of our trees on top of all these other places um and this really has become a focus so that there's less of a burden on landscaping staff our crews do maintain every tree that we plant on public public property for an entire year there's a year warranty with that we are watering we are mulching to ensure that those trees get established and it's not just a waste so if that tree dies 11 months in we still come back and replace it at no extra cost that is part of that whole process that we've been doing after that year it is city property and we understand that there's also landscaping costs that might go into that and that's part of why we've transitioned into focusing more on the residential side as well in addition to those reasons that there being more residential property but this reduced that cost it also allows us to get more trees into the ground for that same budget uh so like mark mentioned uh we had been doing 2 000 trees uh each year uh in 24 25 we did about 1600 primarily through deliveries and then just this past fiscal year we completed 455 trees and again that was only done because of the lack of budget there is an immense demand i constantly get applications for the delivery programs even though it is now saying that it is a wait list for this uh and we are seeing this across the board uh in neighboring cities that we work with delray beach is not the only one and we are also bringing outside funds for a lot of this as well in addition to just those 2 000 trees per year this is our our last slide here um and just one piece about that because i know it's been mentioned before is we also received funding from the usda the florida forest service and we did long-term maintenance on all the trees we planted in delray beach it was actually matt shibley as a certified arborist did that about a year ago we assessed all the trees that were planted we had higher than 80 percent survival rate of all the trees that were planted in the 10 past 10 years a lot of the projects that chris recently assessed was a higher than 90 survival rate so i mean i know that's a question that you would have but we take a lot of pride in keeping these places um you know as you know keeping the trees healthy we're invested a lot so i mean obviously we've had trees that don't make it but that's what happens when you're planting a lot of trees and they're living things and you know could be the species didn't work in that section or you know or we've learned over the 10 years of how this is but um we do i mean pride ourselves on that success rate that we've had and that's i mean that's really why we're here today is just to let we wanted to make everyone aware that you know this is where we're at in the program we work closely with chris we you know work closely with the city manager and um you know it's in there are some possible solutions of of how to continue it because really what the problem is is that the tree fund isn't isn't getting you know payments aren't going into the tree fund and so you know like in some other cities it's funded by the general fund i mean i know that's uh a challenge in how to do that but that is something that would make it keep it more consistent because we know uh we're going to continue to have requests and have demands from residents for trees whether it's a public planting along lindell or along low sim that we're already getting or if it's a residential program that like they heard about their neighbors getting at or an hoa um and then another thing that other cities do is reduce the size of the tree that's delivered so instead of delivering a 15 gallon tree we can you know make it a little bit more economical and deliver like a seven gallon tree um like you know where we just uh recently did with the fruit trees and um that's that kind of concludes our update of where we're at and you know hopefully that we can think of solutions on how to continue the program okay you finished your yes okay yes commissioner no i just i have a silly question so there are trees planted along lake outer road in the i think it's a retention pond about sd spady what what was the rationale behind planting trees in the retention pond well the right that was one of our earlier projects that was funded by td bank and um that that is done i mean it's a it's a debatable way of planting trees it's done in some places it's not done in others so being a dry retention area we did plant a certain amount at the bottom which are really thriving the cypress trees and the red maples that are there um and then a couple of them are up on top of the berm and we weren't planting on the slope to that's what we're advised by engineering to not destabilize the slope in any way so um the the purpose is really i mean it does filter storm water it beautifies the area and you know like i said it's there's some people that are for it and some people that are against it because they could say it takes away the volume of how much that the that the retention area can can you know absorb but and then the people that are for it say it absorbs more water because of what the roots do and that it you know kind of intercepts some of the rain so it is a common practice in some places and i think it's really beautified those two areas for sure but i mean obviously i'm biased i just see it it's i live only god and i see it every time i pass and every time i pass i stop and look so it's something about it bothers me oh bothers you oh really okay yeah something like i don't know because i don't look at everything that way but every time i see those trees i go and and i well the trees that are planted at the bottom are usually like water loving trees so a lot of times people are like why would you plant trees in there but something like a cypress and a red maple it it likes to be down there so if it's not too dry and too high like we've experienced in some other places where it didn't work well thank you for answering my question commissioner first of all thank you for everything you've done for our city thank you very much i personally have several of the trees that you've either delivered or i've picked up um one of the things i noticed on your slides is when you were talking about the percentage of shade like the wealthier the community is the more shade it had and i don't know if it's because of that it's but that's that's kind of interesting i mean that's a nationwide trend where it is correlates with race and income with tree canopy and i mean there's a lot of reasons for that or redlining or you know disinvestment or all all these different things but um you can see that on that slide and you know it's the same thing if you start taking it that's just the south florida percentage but if you're looking at you know um dc has a 35 canopy atlanta has a 40 canopy savannah obviously tampa bay is somewhere in 30 plus canopy i mean it is it's something we need to continue to protect and invest in and it's you know a green infrastructure of our city so we were at 23 our goal is 29 and we've made it to 25 correct yes percent for what they can for what yeah the latest state data is yeah last question just what are the other cities like what's boca doing what's the county doing yeah so for example the boca is doing now is is about triple the size of our program of del raise program and it is a portion of delivery delivering trees uh a tree giveaway and then a tree planting at a park every year and also neighborhood planting so they're doing two neighborhood plantings where we plant trees in the swales and then the neighbors get a certain amount of trees as well and that's how they're doing it with the county what we're doing is we have a big project where we're planting 1500 trees at all the county parks so our biggest project is a dire park we're planting a thousand trees there that's our you know our biggest partner right now is the county parks and rec um and and planting places like john prince park san lucius haverhill um you know lake lidl um and so yeah the county is focusing on increasing the canopy in the park system but you've done all our parks and you've done all our schools so now we need to do with the private land correct that's what the initial tree canopy assessment said and that that really is i mean there are still projects in delray i think like i said like that will come about that are on public property that we can do this we didn't mention the um the lakeview golf course we also plan 150 plus trees there that are all thriving and surviving and that was requested by you know the area and then also the golf course that we did that so i think that there are always going to be opportunities to plant trees on public property it's not going to be like low hanging fruit like at the beginning where we were able to just plant the parks and we could plant the schools but um the residential area is i think is what we need to focus on and the demand is so high we are you know through this through the amount of trees that we're budgeted for at this point that that's what could always you know it could it could continue and hopefully it does just a question so the the only source of revenue that you have is is is the city or in this i mean it's this delray revenue for us is probably like less than five percent of our total budget uh so but to to do city programming yes it's usually funded by the city depending on the city that's what i thought so but at the you know at the beginning um enterprise rent-a-car funded the project that village academy kane anderson td bank they did a lot of this funding did they get like naming rights for that was there a not not so much they have they'll have like a whole nationwide campaign uh like something like td bank or or enterprise and then we'll go for those grants i asked because i i worked at i was the cmo at office depot for five years and we used to do stuff like that right as long as we got naming rights yeah you know for stadiums for plant programs like this yeah anybody i would say thank you for the presentation and all the planting it's nice to see that chart i think so we have things that we need to do to go forward we need to look at our budget i need a better understanding of the tree fund why i think at one point we started uh using the money for maintenance versus just planting and that's where we lost some funds is that correct in essence yes so i recently offered an update regarding the tree trust fund balance being about sixty six thousand dollars thus the offset in the budget adjustment process we talked about earlier and quite frankly the principal purpose of this presentation is to bring the city commission up to speed in terms of the scope of work having been accomplished to date as well as to ascertain expectations for a continuous etc but of course the contractual relationship with community greening as we clarify several times this evening will be coming to a close in a month so in the event of any interest in this regard we would be obligated to proceed with a formal selection process regarding opportunities for partnership or engagement before we can get to that place so while i'm not particularly concerned about a specific allocation at this particular point in time because of course the due diligence process that will be required that will be a forthcoming consideration and i would just add one thing to this um your solutions you talk about reducing the size of the trees to enable a greater quantity of trees i think what we've talked about here is that we would be willing to forego the number of trees for larger trees and more mature trees i think we transitioned in conversation and i say we but because i can't even remember which with whom i was sitting here when that conversation started so forgive me but um i think going forward the city would be better served there's trees and i uh jess souards called them chandelier trees over by the hampton inn on on uh fifth if you look at the side street these these beautiful trees these beautiful trees and they have a large canopy for their size but yet they allow for full visibility around the corner because the canopy starts closer to the top and they're stunning i think if we're going to be planting i don't i think we got to get away from planting palm trees and look at big shade trees trees that will help us get to where we're going and i for you mr moore when we're having this conversation whatever way we we are looking to go with respect to trees i think if we're um putting money into it i would like to see bigger trees bigger shade trees that's my and but i thank you for your um i thank you for your hard work in our city and i know you've gotten a lot of money that we didn't provide to come into this city to plant and um you've been a good partner and i've appreciated our time with you thank you thank you i think that um i'd like the idea of larger trees and i like the idea of shade trees i just think they go they go along they're i know you've heard the things but you've heard me say they're twigs and i know they're not twigs but they're but they when you're driving by they look like twigs so i i want to be i'd like to see if we can figure out a way to get larger trees and i know that's a function of dollars yeah i think it's a function of dollars and i've thought about this a lot i think the other thing is is that once the tree is bigger because we've planted a lot of trees that are now you would call them big but you don't notice those because they're just part of the landscape no he's thinking redwoods i'm just saying that there's a lot of trees that we have planted like that are now providing that shade but it just doesn't catch your eye of like something you just showed barwick park which you made beautiful yeah i was there for the opening apartment park for the for the for the but i mean that's why i would be happy to take a great job any of you guys on it because it's it's i think it would be it would be enjoyable for all of you to see what the city's done too because those trees are bigger i mean they've been in the ground for 10 years i think what you're noticing is that small percentage of trees that might have been in the wrong place or might not have you know grown over this amount of time but the ones that have grown and that are shading it's almost you know surprising to me be like oh yeah i remember mitch cats planted that tree in 2000 and you know whatever 17 in eagle park and now it's it's huge or you see trees that you know all the kids have planted and now so i think that's the the criticism obviously i i i'm not but i'm just saying like there are a lot of bigger yeah yeah exactly i just want to think so you know i don't mean any criticism either i'm just saying like there are a lot of trees that are now grown but we just don't you don't see them because now you just imagine them that they were always there thank you very thank you very much for the presentation if i could just add something real quick to that um we do not plant palm trees as well we only specialize in florida native shade trees with the exception of our urban orchards which are florida friendly trees uh so the whole issue of palm trees we are not for palm trees not even a tree we can have that conversation a different time the other element of planting smaller trees is there is science behind the establishment like i talked about in that year that we are taking care of those trees that we help plant on city property the establishment period is key if they do not establish properly you will never have a big tree and the larger tree that you plant the harder it is to establish and the more shock that it takes on top of that we plant the about the largest size tree that you can plant using a just human power and especially with volunteers that you've seen at some of the schools that we've planted at you cannot go larger and not use heavy machinery which then you're talking about a different level of budget and different level of people who can plant those not to mention when this is on your own property and we're talking about and this is also why we've gotten into the delivery system is not everyone can make it to a tree giveaway that's on a saturday morning at the green market we are making it more accessible for them and if we increase those trees even larger they won't physically be able to plant that and then there's an added cost that they now have to hire somebody to be able to do that so part of that whole uh concept on tree size goes along with the right tree right place concept and ensuring that we can hit those numbers on survivability in those 85 percent because in many places they are far lower i acknowledge that thank you thank you thank you very much for your presentation thank you so ladies and gentlemen in that regard given some of the feedback having been offered we can evaluate the prospect of a formal selection process regarding future opportunities and that i think before you begin that process i think you need to give us uh some history tree fund history documentation i'd like to see maybe the last three years of the tree fund what's coming what's going and how it's being allocated and then i think we can come back and talk about what our next steps are once we understand and also potential what is the potential for future funding into the tree fund because if there is none then we are going to have to talk about if we want this program to continue then it's going to have to come from the general fund so what i like this in phases sure what i'd like to do is come back in the next couple city commission meetings to give a brief overview in terms of what that looks like i think for and if you could send us a printout of that like an excel or something so i can see the numbers on paper before that meeting i would appreciate that sure thank you you're welcome miss burlato if you would please final item thank you good evening again mayor and commissioners um no worries this is only 50 slides kidding it's just just a few slides so at the um just a little bit of history about why we're here this evening the issue of providing a free summer parking program for the downtown area has come up several times in in conversation the parking and curbside management plan is what governs the the parking program in the city it um it was formally adopted by the commission in august of 2025 in april of 2026 the city commission approved um the permanent downtown employee parking permit program that was a mouthful um on uh on may 8th during the goal setting session you the commission talked about providing the potential for a free summer parking program and gave consensus that you would like to see us bring back what the cost of a program like that would be and then on may 11th at the downtown development authority meeting the downtown development authority board discussed the the project and um and agreed that they thought it was a great idea and they clarified the request that it would just include surface lots and parking garages so i am going to provide you with some of those numbers now the first the first thing that that we're going to look at from from this program is the projected loss of revenues and i want to temper your expectations with this data as i've brought all the parking programs to you in the last few months i know that you're anxious to tweak and to make changes and to do other things but i do not have a full year of data yet under the new parking program so um this projected revenue loss is just for june july and august is based on on um prior year and in looking at the attendance in prior years before the new parking program was established because in june july and august of last year the surface lots were all actually free and time limited so we didn't start the new parking program until october but in looking at what those occupancy rates were for those three months of the the last year we would be looking at a total reduction in revenue to the city of around 669 690 it's just projections mind you additional costs that would be incurred by um by changing the program would be we would have to create new signage and install it in the in those areas um there would be limited staff time involved in reprogramming meters and redoing the website and that kind of thing that cost for the signage and labor is right around 5 153 dollars as you all know we have a parking app that tells people where parking places are available throughout the city in order to keep that parking at app accurate we will still have to pay park mobile the 35 cent transaction fee for each activation of the parking space so when somebody pulls in when somebody pulls out even though we're not we're not charging the person in that car the city will still need to pay that 35 cent activation fee so the parking fees will be removed from the from the meters but um the total fee across the three months of the summer june july and august and i know you know there's potential i was kind of blind gathering data for this because i wasn't sure how many months you wanted to do i wasn't sure of a few things so um so this would be for um for the the three months total about thirty seven thousand thousand five hundred and sixty eight dollars that's that's um assuming only one turnover per parking space each day if indeed there are two turnovers per day then that number is gonna the thirty seven thousand dollar figure is gonna gonna go up depending on how many how many there are so looking at it from the best information that we can bring forward without any solid data set the total estimated budgetary impact for doing a summer parking program letting the the surface lots and the garages be free and this is all day not just not just from 4 p.m on we'll go back to charging part of the the problem for us with not not doing doing it all or nothing that partial time does increase the amount of of revenue possible but it also increases the amount of confusion to people parking in the downtown area where one of the big um complaints that we get on a regular basis is that there are too many rules there are too many um different confusing parking areas and and so there would be additional signage and that sort of thing so we just went with the full the full the full you know free in the surface slots and free in the garages so really that is all the information that i have brought forward i do have um i do have some data that would reflect our current parking program that would be the the half day um the half day situation but it is not from summer months it's from it's from october november december and october really can't count because that was a trial period so but for november december january which is season so those numbers don't really reflect what the parking program could bring in during this summer but i'm happy to share them with you if you're interested in that yes finished yes i am so finished thank you very much um uh book is not reducing theirs boyton's not reducing there's not one community in palm beach county is is doing this but again everyone's pushing we want free parking i'm not prepared to give seven hundred thousand dollars away i'm just saying i mean we're sitting here with budgetary questions and you're saying nobody else is doing it and it's great for us to do it we love doing it dda wants to free parking everyone everyone's free parking i mean i want free parking the reality is we have to monetize our assets that's my opinion we have an asset we should monetize it because otherwise we're asking the taxpayers well we're going to charge you more but because we want to i'm sorry you know we have to be monetizing it just like everybody else that's my opinion um i i know that you can't compare the season half day but i think that the seven hundred and eighteen thousand or whatever this slide is off that speaks for the full day doesn't speak to the summer program option right so like if you look at your season numbers and you do the half day is it like one half or is it three quarters it's not too difficult to say it's yes okay it's too difficult to say because there's more more people downtown in the evening i understand yeah so the summer months that that you um estimated what how are you estimating that since we don't have the data or do we do we have the data last summer we have the parking numbers data we have the occupancy rate so we went through a mathematical exercise to apply the the current rates to that okay got it um i just wanted to to reiterate some of what of the options could be if we decided to go with that and i i think that that 700 000 number doesn't reflect the savings or it doesn't reflect the full cost but i do think that right it doesn't it's going to cost us more no i don't think so no because if you charge at night you're still regrouping some of that 718 because we didn't consider that in the in the formulation when you said all day well can um can you um i mean that it would be the entire from the entire parking period from morning until until we're not charging no parking yes right that's not that's not the proposal it's not the proposal so if you'll look at that there's just a rough sort of what um the dda recommended what the um the chamber recommended what the businesses are begging for because already they're emptying out and it doesn't it isn't the full day they're asking for the surface and city um garages to be free just during the day until 4 p.m kind of like they used to be right didn't it parking used to start charging at four they used to in the garages in the garages and then after four they charged a flat rate of five dollars so that's not comparable to the current rate system which is a dollar 50 an hour yeah i'm totally fine with the current rate system after four right i mean i'm just trying to help businesses out i personally have a parking pass so um and then uh uh maybe designate one free day like a sunday fun day or monday fun day to make people come into town um and eat and park i think it's a flick of the switch isn't it how do you do that it's a programming um thing for the meters we actually have to work with the company called t2 that we buy the meters from they're located in canada it's it's uh it is more than just a flick of a switch but it's still not that complicated okay um the complication would be communication to the customer right yes absolutely that is that is the bigger deal i mean if if it was going to go to just one day a week we can you know throw some signs up that say free on sunday or free on on monday um however you want to do that and we can just bag the meters those days okay i think that's a great idea if we could choose one free day and then at the very least maybe just the parking garages if we can't do the surface lot if that's too difficult to have free during the day so people come and shop into the shops i just think they pay too much rent and it's not anywhere else they can go i can go to target and park free i can go to the mall and park free but if i'm going to shop downtown well i don't count because i can walk but if people are going to shop downtown they want they want to be able they don't want the inconvenience of paying for parking we need to do anything we can for our businesses in my opinion well i just want to say not 718 000 your target your target shopper is typically not our downtown shopper hey i do i know i i swing both ways i go to target so i'm telling you this i mean or marshals um but but okay that's fine commissioner casal then commissioner marker what would be the if we were going to do the one day option because you know we just we just got done with the budget meeting we know we have budget problems right now of that there there that seems clear but that aside if we're going to do one day what would be the what's the ideal day it it really is your choice i think that the um well the goal would be to drive traffic so what i think i would actually probably defer to the merchants which day of the week is the most beneficial to them um if we're gonna not charge parking one day of the week then could laura simon speak to that are you guys mind okay yeah i i would is that okay boss yeah that's fine i mean i i you know my views so i yeah just give us the goal um no i i appreciate all the consideration um and as i think as a day um i would say anywhere from tuesday or wednesday you know weekdays are are time to get people down there um right now some of the closures are monday and tuesday we're seeing some closures from monday and tuesday opening back up on wednesday um but i would say tuesday monday tuesday wednesday are are critical days to get people into and any incentive downtown would be great sunday was traditionally a free day um and that was very helpful and we did see um impact on that day but it isn't this isn't really also just around our merchants i just want to be careful clear on that so our residents 600 people responded to a survey your residents and said we are no you're not coming down here anymore 65 to 68 of them said we're not coming down because this is an inconvenience we were coming down for lunch we were coming down to shop and we're not we're choosing to go other places so it's not just the business it's our residents that are impacted so if this would be a benefit for them as well as an incentive and to help make you know dalry beach a destination not boca not point and we want dalry beach to be the destination during the summer and the the residents make the businesses survive but also people in west delray too which aren't necessarily our residents we need them we need them here how many polls have you seen where the people say oh yes please i want to pay for parking anytime you ask someone can i have free parking i can give you their answer residents non-residents sure i mean that's why it was free we actually created parking for i'm just saying so i mean i'm not surprised that was your answer because what are they going to say oh no please charge me their answer or my answer their answer the residents yeah their answer their question i i i i i'm surprised it wasn't even higher i'm just saying they did the same this is the same this is the book the story seven years ago same story boca does have free parking they have free parking in their garages right exactly so they don't have to change it that's at meisner meisner it's a private there's a private lifestyle center we have a downtown it's different in trouble there kind of yeah it's different so they're really desperate anybody commissioner burns i would just um say that um you know i would be in support of a free day with the um makeshift sign that so that you don't have to change everything and you know like you said we're looking for budgetary concerns right now but um i would be in support of a of a free day that we could put up a sign you know temporary sign that we don't have to change all the electronic jiggle modules could you consolidate your thoughts yeah no i was just trying to remember and i was thinking i could find it in my notebook but i can't where our reserves are pretty solid right now at this present moment because we're talking about the current fiscal year summer is the current fiscal year and then you end the the fiscal year ends at the end of september so by then your summer's over and hopefully you're moving into your busy season if you're talking about doing this one day for through the summer one day a week through the summer and we have that extra reserves the consideration of the loss of revenue should not impact our budget on a surface that's correct nevertheless when we have our scenario discussion three weeks from now all points will be taken under consideration right but those scenarios are for the next fiscal year i'm just talking for the next fiscal year if we make this determination we're not impacting our current budget because our reserves we have some padding in our reserves no we we well yeah yeah but i mean i'm just saying mayor if you wanted to do it if you wanted to do it and i do think i've been walking my puppy downtown every day to acclimate him to people and sounds he's so cute he's so cute he loves ice cream um i talk i'm talking to a lot of people in there it's very slow like the restaurants are crazy slow there's seats in every restaurant open the stores are quiet it's it's a fact so i and i do think because we won't experience a budgetary impact because of the reserves you know i'm i'm not i'm not as concerned i think if we're going to do this and i think we should try it the time would be now summer benefits the downtown and it it doesn't hurt us because we're still in our current fiscal year so do we have consensus to do one day i'm a yes i'm a yes that's all i get well i'm a yes on the one day so i'll take that i'll do a yes on that take the win but we really do got to pick the day carefully let's pick the right day so that we maximize sounds from what um from what laura testified to it sounds as if probably wednesday is going to be our best day on the day that the restaurants that and businesses that are closing on mondays and tuesdays on the day that they reopen we don't want to have to encourage people to come on downtown because parking is free now can we have a motion to make wednesday a free day during the the month july what are the dates you wanted i'm sorry june july july starting june 1st ending august 31st yes i need a motion motion can i ask a question yes if we're only going to do one free day of parking is it going to be limited to surface lots and garages or are we going to include on-street parking also i would just i would not i'm not people who are on street parking always pay i mean they they just know okay they pay for this because the real convenience to be in front of the restaurant right so okay that i agree so so it would be the yes the surface lots and the garages wednesday can i have a motion people know that's happening i mean how will people know it's going to be hard it's going to be hard it's going to be hard that's the whole point but we well it doesn't then it doesn't we don't reap the benefits i mean they don't reap the benefits of the sacrifice if it doesn't work we can change it i think we're going to have to advertise it i think we can get the word out it won't be perfect it never is but we can we can put signage out that says free parking wednesdays um there's lots of things that we can do the the signage itself is not that expensive and we can we can we'll figure ways to get it out okay so i got a motion do i have a second i don't think he made it it was very close he was very close it was very close so a motion to approve uh free wednesday parking june july and august of this calendar year for all parking garages and surface lots city-owned city-owned city-owned right right oh yeah the private lots too don't we love you sorry it's going to make up the private lot revenue second all in favor all right any opposed okay fine that's adopted thank you very much thank you i'll go downtown on wednesdays now that's all we have no first readings no second readings so public city manager comments and inquiries on non-agenda items i yield at this time thank you okay city attorney i have three very quick things first i'm requesting a shade meeting in the case of uh keith tommy versus city of delvary beach which is 50-2024 ca 005926 pursuant to florida statute 286.011 i'm requesting a shade meeting to last 30 minutes um to discuss litigation strategy this matter is now scheduled for trial june 23rd in attendance would be mayor kearney vice mayor burns dodi base mayor margaret commissioner casal commissioner malica mr moore myself and our outside counsel tanya hadad and a certified court reporter um in speaking with our outside counsel she asked um that we would schedule on june 9th at three o'clock which is 30 minutes before our workshop i it will not go that long i just need an opportunity to speak to the commission i think i've discussed it with each of you individually but if i could just get a motion um to schedule that so moved second all in favor okay i also discussed with each of you the highland park townhomes which is located at 395 northeast 6th avenue it was a development that was approved in 2022 a 30 unit townhouse development they did record a plat according to our ldrs there is an expiration on that staff is currently working on an ordinance that will be coming before the planning and zoning board next month thereafter it'll come before the city commission that will be very specific to platted townhomes with the development approval it'll allow for an extension of those um development approvals and so in light of this development this development will also provide some on-street parking in the area that's located near subculture so there is a great benefit to the city in allowing this to move forward um and mr mayo um and so i'm asking for permission in your consensus understanding that this ordinance is coming before you i don't think it's going to be controversial if this developer uh could just submit his application for permit review pending um the outcome of that ordinance need a motion motion so moved second all in favor aye okay and the last one is i've discussed um our outside counsel sanos allenpor and i discussed with each of you the highland beach matter i'm requesting permission to um she did reach out to the attorney for highland beach we haven't heard back from him um i think she's going to receive a call maybe next week um i'm requesting permission in order to preserve our rights to be able to file a complaint in court for breach of contract we would not serve the complaint um on the other party it's just to preserve our rights at that point we'll be able to have a shade meeting get direction from the city commission and then move forward at that point with hopefully a resolution and not having to go to court so i just need that request so moved thank you for doing that second all in favor aye any opposed okay lastly mayor i owe you an apology i did not mean to um get upset about the bond issue however and i'm sure you could all sense this i was just very frustrated with this agenda i felt like a lot of the material that you needed was not provided to you ahead of time and i felt like when the bond issue came up it's just something that we've discussed i promised you all that i was going to assign an intern to review this because i do think that is a source of a lot of confusion and i want to just get clarity for this commission so that going forward we don't have these issues so i apologize if i got animated but i do feel that we do need to have that clarity and when things come up because you don't have all the information and then your colleagues don't have information i don't think it's fair so i apologize um i know we're going to do better on these agendas i do feel that um but i do apologize mayor and i will provide you that clarity and i will get an opinion from our bond council okay commissioner comments well the only comment i have is that when we were talking about um activating the park i've had a lot of people that do a lot of walking of their dogs down there that wish there was not a full-blown dog park but like a fenced area where their dogs could run i'm sorry are you talking veterans i'm talking veterans yeah for clarifying pardon me no i didn't know which oh i'm sorry yeah yeah it's fine veterans park so thank you i don't know what that would entail legally and would love to look into it um we would have to instruct parks i love the idea you do great amenity yeah i love the idea people who have dogs all the time you're walking all over the place dogs and croquet it's perfect right they can chase the balls we want to be i'm in the community gathering places and it's a community gathering kind of activity you know you'll have to figure out how you're going to fence it off i don't know what i'm running while on atlantic avenue no i know obviously oh my goodness gracious yeah go fetch so there's consensus do we have consensus sure great we got three come on you can let your dog out three oh you're scared oh my baby no no no i carry him right oh no i'm kidding he's perfect thank you that's all i have you know community together you dog people i'm not a dog person but i know dog people they they that's what they like dogs like to be out of the leash so we have you have consensus so anything else no thank you thank you good chief hunter's giving me the evil eye so no further comment i see you back there commissioner burns yes um speaking of t-point i wanted to uh thank him he and i um were we went to actually we went to a ribbon cutting at the delray medical and dental office they added a division to their medical center out there it's a great facility they have it's a one-stop shop for anything medical and cosmetic that you want to go to uh so we went to the ribbon cutting and we met eric estrada there and oh eric estrada yeah yeah yeah yeah chips from chips right wow and he looks good yes um so um and then we went back chief hunter's idol yeah well hey he got a picture he he got a picture with him yes he was and um and he's helping out he's supporting that medical center out there so he's he's around um and we also went back on yesterday to talk to the seniors and just give them an update on what's the great things that are that are going on in the city and answer some questions for them so thank you chief hunter for accompanying me out there and i also wanted to get a consensus um you know in keeping with our conversation and concern for um improving educational outcomes in our in our schools here in the city i wanted to request the consensus to invite representatives from the junior achievement of south florida to give a presentation to the commission i believe that um this is a an appropriate way that we can stay uh in in sync with city support while making an impact on our students uh in our community they are an established they already have an established uh memorandum of an understanding with the school district of palm beach county um vetted out throughout throughout of the years um their program focuses on workforce readiness financial literacy entrepreneurship and life skills that can directly um benefit our students so um as we're continuing you know educational initiatives and supporting educational for our kids i would like to have them to come and um give a presentation to the commission just to show their program i would love that yeah thank you thank you okay and and other than i had um i had hassan on here for those pfas settlements but we already did that so yeah i'm done thank you commissioner casale thanks um i was going to say again about the pfas because it's exceptional um lynn you know you were you got a seat at the head of that table early on and that was so instrumental for us to get all that money and mr hashemiri i always appreciate you thank you mr moore also um i want to talk about so when we we had an item on our agenda um 6j hvac it's like over a million dollars at one point when mr edwards was here in the sustainability department we had talked about engaging in a program that was free to us where the company would tell us how to save money across the board in the city and also reduce our emissions are we still doing that in his absence because when we're making all these purchases i'm not sure you know if we're doing that based on that protocol or if we have not done anything more with that program but we were pretty excited to engage in that and it was supposed to be a cost savings over a long period of time and a reduction in our emissions over a long period of time and i have no idea where we're at so the um high ticket item in that in that particular agenda item is for a new chiller system at the pool at the golf course clubhouse that will replace a number of what they call split units that have air handlers and and chilling i'm not concerned about the cost of the item it will significantly yeah it will significantly lower the power usage at that building okay and we do get rebates for um for low energy cost uh through fpl so that program was run through fpl you don't this is as far as i know i think missy this was through the sustainability office and it was a sorry say that it's the peace program correct are we doing the program i'm sorry i didn't mean to cut you off but that was not i wasn't questioning that purchase or any of that i was questioning if we continued on with that because we approved that program some time ago and it was to benefit us in multiple ways with no cost so direction is imminent to re-engage the program it had been for a little while no offense i'm sorry the program is in place there were issues um that we were trying to this is from when mr edwards was here we needed the county's assistance um it was like some type of an enforcement issue i am happy to pull up all the emails and brief you on it but there was an issue with so we're not in the program currently okay could you just do me a favor just forward the email so we can look at them and see if there's if there's a justification to try and do the program or continue on if it's just a small hurdle or maybe it doesn't make sense sure but when we're buying this i'll send it to everybody thank you on the same page um we talked about that um recognizing different churches i did one you did one can we recognize temple sinai next time uh because they do a ton of work in the community and then you can jump on and get the next one you got the last one i think it's coming up at the next meeting right yeah right and after however many if we're spacing it out after that can we thank you can i get a consensus on that i didn't hear who you meant temple sinai yeah yeah um right about most correct okay this is something that i was hoping we could discuss the dda contract has this 10 uh profit sharing we have um from the original amount of money we were giving them we've reduced down over time we're giving them less money than the we were the the CRA was giving the prior organization they're running it 50 times better and there's this uh there's ongoing friction mayor i don't want to debate this but you know we've had an audit with them they've been audited by audit our auditor the accusations were you know family members were getting benefits and commingling of funds there's a state audit going on and it's i mean i know you called the state auditor to try and talk to her about the audit which to me is cons odd yes the state auditor said that um i called her correct the state auditor i got a message to call from the state auditor well that's not what she's saying they wanted to know about my letter to the editor the point i'm making is this is untenable in terms of our partnership with this organization and now we have our city manager has i believe maybe our auditor has done a little work on this 10 thing you called a meeting with cbiz they are not only our outside consultant but also the dda outside consultant which seems like it's not appropriate and i don't even know what they would even give to that conversation there seems to be a question of is it gross is it net i feel like at this point it's the relationship is untenable that organization is ready to walk on us and i know having sat up here before we don't want anybody walking because we don't have a plan in place and i'm my my what i'm thinking we should be doing because they are doing a very good job over there and i don't think anyone disputes it who's gone to any of the events is just modify the contract take out that 10 profit sharing we're already giving them less money they're claiming they're not even making a profit so we're not losing any money if they're not making it and stop the like constant what i think looks like you know there's a constant back and forth with this partnership that shouldn't be going on and when i talked to the city attorney i asked can we just modify the contract and take that out and she said yes so let's just do it and then let's just you know figure out our next move and stop the countless meetings that are going on behind the scenes that make no sense and are not using good taxpayer time in my opinion because there's way too many meetings and conversations on this subject matter in my opinion and if there's no money to be had and we're fighting over this 10 percent in the contract then let's just take it out and stop the fighting anyone you finished yes on that subject i think i have one other item let's get to your other item so okay it is the uh write-offs mr moore after the last conversation we had up here where i listed out all the things that concerned me including the write-offs you and i had a conversation and i wrote to you and said i appreciate our conversation my understanding in our discussion is that you're not recommending this what i emailed to you and will not be writing off outstanding balances related to old school square events which totaled 31 405 and it's no offense judy i just every time you say no i don't mean it though i'm saying that to you well i mean it honestly and i said additionally i understand based on our conversation this is what you said to me that no action would be taken on the proposed write-offs of the roots cultural festival and i have to say again no offense because it's your organization but the problem is i do but in my opinion writing off things like this creates a perception this is what i wrote to mr moore that members of the commission um can receive preferential treatment because the policies are very clear and mr moore and i had a very what i thought was a really productive conversation about this i uh documented it in writing because he told me he was not writing off either of those and you never responded and i cc the city attorney on that and mr dakowitz but i want to make sure that your office is not writing off things that they shouldn't be writing off and i have to know where you're where you're at with that please i have not so as far as clarity with all speaking with everybody individually it turns out that per collections protocols in that regard if an event or transaction is over five years old it may there and i'll not be collectible so that would be an element of a city commission discussion soon so we do have to come back and address that so it's not the large 155 000 transaction consideration it's more like about a third of it so we'll be offering some clarity to that effect as we go forward it's not as large as that and therefore we do need to offer some direction right but and i'll just say this once again that's your job in your department is to just say we're if someone's if there's an organization that's active and has money then the city should be making efforts to collect it and you know there weren't efforts to collect it policies were not at all followed and now you're dropping a political hot potato in our lap and i'm just saying again i don't appreciate it and i i hope your statement about what you're doing is is what you're doing i'm done thank you okay um first i had some great reviews of our chief hunter for a visit he took out to shady woods the other day in front of 40 or 50 residents going through the crime thing they all loved him they said he was fabulous and you know he's i think they're going to put a monument for you out there with your picture you know like like churchill you know doing all of these anyway so but i appreciate you going out there because i actually helped arrange the meeting they called and the chief was very good to go out there and it was it was apparently it was a very successful uh successful meeting um i'm not going to comment on the on the what your view is on the audit uh there is a state audit going on we'll wait to see what the state audit says um auditing policies and procedures is not a forensic type audit so we can argue whether or not you think no i'm not saying anything about the audit i'm saying about the relationship my turn my turn my turn i didn't talk to you um so but there is a state audit and i'm not commenting on anything so as it relates to um uh the the management fee which is what it's referred to in the contract a management fee and in my experience when we would pay people a management fee you you your your revenues started with dollar one so the point is no matter how much you're paying that your revenues start at dollar one you don't get to say we don't have to start paying you anything until we make seven hundred thousand back no it's you you're it's it's a management fee so we can argue that point gap is on my side so i'm happy that with general accounting principles on my side so that that's fine i do agree with you that the accountant the account the accounting firm is in conflict and it may take a third party to review that so that's a separate matter can we get a consensus on my request though before you i'm not taking the 10 out um okay can i ask the others to ask let's wait to the others let's that's that's that's not give away more money it's not there's no money to be given away it's it's their revenues they don't have any revenues so we're just stop doing free concerts so wait the free concerts we asked them to do for the taxpayers with the taxpayers we asked them to do the free concerts for our taxpayers this is my turn i just didn't get a consensus though so after you're done i'd like to ask for a consensus you may um i i i'm gonna go on a different subject i had a bunch of calls interestingly after the i made the comment about moving city home there's actually a lot of interest in moving city home it wasn't where i thought it was going to have to go but there is other properties in delray the police department is interested i mean there's there's a lot of different variables i would like to set up a workshop to discuss the future city hall i mean we may decide we don't want to do a thing but i think it's worthy of a discussion because everyone is saying to get everybody together in one building is actually more efficient you know um and converting this piece of property now into a property that would be a tax paying property would be interesting i don't know all the answers but i would like to certainly see if i could get a discussion about what are the benefits or or or or pitfalls of trying to move city home that's that's you know is that something you would be interested i mean i would be open to discussion i don't know if it's a good idea or a bad idea i'm i'm open to it i think we should look at it i i mean i think everybody's got opinions on it but i don't see i don't see the harm in having a a neutral look at it and figuring out upsides and downsides and what it would be worth you know for the money what it would cost if we have how we could pay for it or what you know the whole thing are you considering selling off with the land this land you would be selling off which which might not be at all feasible given our relationship with the tennis center i mean there's a whole lot of spider webs here guys like we're gonna we're gonna solve this at 9 50 at night i think in a city of this size with such limited property the city should not be selling its property i think that we should there's other ways to fund city hall even if you're looking to build a new one elsewhere where we selling property that's one of your biggest assets for the future of your city it's your residence asset i absolutely it's like that's what you that's what's called tax revenue that's what you call there's other ways to get tax revenue and and you know there's there this is a discussion i'm willing to have but i think it's a last resort like a desperation move to sell property i'm in favor of the conversation i'm i just i just think that you know we've got a lot of staff that that can't there's not enough space forward there's all these other kinds of things it's trying to figure out a way because everyone says it's better if they're all in one building i mean well they didn't they i don't know if i don't know that who everyone is that's saying that and i that everyone should be making that determination the idea of selling property is in the back as an example three or four times a day okay two or three times a day that takes her 20 minutes 15 minutes she doesn't come two or three times a day well how many times a day yes she does yes she does i mean why doesn't she do zoom calls i mean that's ridiculous you know excuse me you have you have consensus for the discussion yeah so i mean so if you take that under the course of a year that's a lot of time if she were in the building yeah i don't know why she wouldn't just zoom as opposed to 15 minutes i zoom from home all the time i i just whatever so that's why i would just like to have the do a workshop so we can figure out because i just want to do that so and everything else was answered i the the agenda clarity is something that i want to discuss with mr moore and and really the clerk because sometimes and i made a bunch of notes here and i'm not going to go through now but i will share them with them but you know when you have a um some of these motions we we were doing we should actually say what the resolution is so people so someone reading this understands that we're talking about you know the hvacs for example hvac to redo at the golf course just you know so then they would do oh we're talking about the the air conditioning to the golf course so taking the section from the agenda and pulling it out do you think enough people read that to make it i mean that's enough so that people say to me where it is you know i mean if they click on the link they see the additional information the agenda cover sheet is very thorough so i don't i think anybody who's looking at this knows enough to make that click i'm just saying this with comments that i'm getting and i don't think it's hard for example you know to replace golf to add to the resolution is to replace hvacs in the golf course or when we talk about motion to approve a hold harmless agreement for property located at well it should say hold on to to hold the city harmless for something in the city right away it's a short little thing but everyone would read that and know exactly what it was you don't have to go online and look it up they know it just makes it easier anyway so i won't go through that with them because i'm trying to make the the agendas clearer for the people that read them i understand that we get the book no i just i i i don't disagree with you that it clear clear would be better i'm just not sure i don't know that i think anybody who's reading it knows to i wish that i wish that were so but anyway i have no more comments could i just ask did i get a consensus can we discuss this 10 thing to just stop the fighting with our partner because at this point they are saying there's no uh we're we're operating without enough money so they're not saying my view is let's wait there do we have an auditor looking at this you know let's let's not i'm concerned they're going to throw the keys at us at one meeting because the relationship is untenable they work i don't know how often you go to these events you go to the museum events the whole crew's there they're there till 10 o'clock at night then you know what's going on the concerts we asked them to provide free concerts mayor excuse me we asked them to provide free concerts that's why they're doing it and when you see the staff is there till 11 o'clock at night and sometimes all day is there a consensus are there two more people i would like i want to wait and see what the auditors i think that i mean but if she's asking for i'm asking for a consensus so we can just stop the fighting so you want to wait till the audit i think yeah i think we should how do you make decisions it's our contract it doesn't really have to do with the audit is that in scope for the i think no it's not in scope for the audit no the audit we're having auditors look at the provision in the contract provision is being examined who asked to get the consensus for that right exactly going on boss i didn't i wasn't aware of it right so what mr moore is saying he doesn't know who authorized that the audit is a state audit now we're talking but he's talking locally the contract whoa no no no no are you saying you don't think that you don't think i didn't vote on this you don't think that's not that's not the point you're you're being a lawyer that's not the point the point is you said this somehow this got communicated to go forward and it i don't remember coming in front of us and i don't remember he's talking about our auditor working on the audit that was going on was on expenses now suddenly the scope of that has changed with the state audit interpretation that the our outside auditors are looking at why are our outside auditors looking at the contract interpretation we did not give approval yeah they were mr moore you would schedule the appointment and they brought up the concern relative to the potential conflict and so that was it right but the point is excuse me gentlemen did you order what this audit that he's talking about i've not ordered any or you made the appointment with cbiz and asked her excuse me mr market it was a general conversation we had they braced the concern and then i said no so mr moore scheduled a meeting that included the external auditors that we use cbiz cbiz also does the audits for the dda and the cra correct i i thought that was a conflict of interest and the mayor agrees with me and as he stated tonight and so i i expressed my concern and finally the auditors agreed not to participate in the meeting the genesis of the dispute was there's this clause where the city thinks it should be getting 10 from dollar one and dda says no well technically mayor the the and the manager he was there he negotiated the net he negotiated it it says revenue now from your point i guess the interpretation could be well what exactly is considered an expense that should be reduced from that revenue but i don't think our auditors are in any they're not in any position to be weighing in on that the fact that they were the meeting has been canceled ridiculous my understanding it has been canceled i don't know that's correct elena can speak to whether or not she's been asked to look into this but no i'm just trying to figure out whether when do you get paid from dollar one for whether you get paid from dollar seven hundred thousand i still want it's the way he negotiated it it's dollar seven hundred thousand it's defined as a management fee under gap he negotiated the contract general accounting principle it's not don't please don't throw out those listen that what i care about is you're destroying our relationship with our partner with every one of these fights the contract was negotiate no you are because you're encouraging him to do this no one gave him consensus to do anything it's a contract interpretation mr moore you feel like i'm finished with it ladies and gentlemen if they're saying yes it's a constant it's constant are you looking into problems going on with the dda there no there's a conflict with that meeting in the meeting it's constant and they're not happy and they feel like they're not you know i don't want to speak for anybody else but i'm concerned they're going to say we're done and we don't have a backup and if we're fighting over a contract that mr moore negotiated that that implies the way i read it that you start with the profits after that then and that's how you you negotiated it net profits the issue is that the dda is taking the contribution from the city and using that as the baseline number to offset there to they're using you can't use it that's a contract here's the concern and so when you're using that you're never going to have a revenue because you have to get over the eight hundred thousand dollar hurdle to begin with seven hundred thousand whatever it is whatever it is you have to get over that hurdle and then anything over that would be what's considered the shared that's a failure that doesn't make sense contract management fee which is separate apart from a revenue my point really is at this point how much money are we going to look to get from them what are you assuming is the additional revenue that ten percent that you'll get is it worth this fight is it worth them potentially saying take the keys we're done because i feel from my conversations that that's about where we're at so i'm asking us to make a decision we're gonna we can fight for six months over what the ten percent is and continue to fight but is it a number mr moore that's worth this argument for our taxpayers because i've been sitting up here when that building was dark we don't have a backup plan we don't you may have one in there and maybe that's why at or every corner this woman is getting whole other reasons and you know uh again i was here they were they were fired so we can talk about well how they got into that position and why we ended up having i'm asking do we want to be in that position again because i was there but it's also a fact is it not that the dda came in and rescued us yes and they're paying getting paid less than the previous operator it's a contract ladies and gentlemen we can amend the contract that's all i'm asking to do ladies and gentlemen ladies and gentlemen i apologize may i be recognized please so to answer the question somewhat rhetorical but i'll answer it anyway seven hundred thousand dollar outcome from the city of dairy beach to the downtown development authority for the oss operational school square campus environment etc so the maximum outcome for the city of dairy beach based on that ten percent is technically ten percent of seven hundred thousand dollars seventy thousand dollars it could be down to thirty five thousand dollars it could be a smaller number whatever the case may be however given the consensus being a question do we not agree that all the money they're getting is going back into that they're not pocketing that money correct the organization isn't taking that money for other things you've done if i may ladies and gentlemen a concession contract it's it's regardless and you pay them a management fee there are partners i get my income from dollar one ladies and gentlemen let me tell you what i intend to do there are partners that came in and helped us given the consensus offered by the majority of you all to allow the state process to take this course i don't know if that's the consensus i'd like a hand raise on that miss mollica do you have an opinion on taking this ten percent out i would like to i when i was talking about an honor i was talking about the state audit i thought that's what audit we were waiting for well that would be that would be i would wait for the state audit personally i would wait for the state audit that has no relation to this ten percent though i don't understand what what relevance the state audit has to the contract in the ten percent so my interest in separate and apart from one of us has gone on record i won't name his name is saying when this audit is done if it shows there's nothing i'm gonna i'm going to ask for our city to go back and categorize all of our expenses that went into this audit and i've already told senator bernard i'm going to ask the same for the state because i felt this audit was unwarranted from the word go it it's not going to turn up anything and we will have spent countless dollars in our city and at the state level and i've already told senator bernard i'm going to demand a full audit i'm just the point is we cannot take stuff we cannot do stuff like this on a whim and we did you want to demand a full audit you got it you you want the state to reimburse us no i want the state i want to find out how much money went into this audit so i'm going to get salaries for all the employees that touched it all the employees that got interviewed i'm going to ask the state to do that and i'm saying what the end game is a reimbursement no to prove what a waste of money this whole decision was ladies and gentlemen just to conclude please i feel it's bad mayor i feel it's really bad i feel it's worse than bad you know worse than bad wait till you start to see what the state spent on this audit ladies and gentlemen up 25 come on now we're better than this and i agree with what julie said just cut the bleeding we have a good partner here and we have we're not treating them like a good partner in any way shape or form ladies and gentlemen how do we have nothing to do with others they don't have anything to do with the other that's the point it's our determination how our contract reads it has nothing to do with the audit at all that contract was done by the city and this we never had the profit sharing with the former com the organization that was there we did not have profit sharing and they were paid more money and we're getting a lot of amazing services for residents out of the organization i just don't see the need to constantly be creating friction and fights with them they're undergoing three separate type of audits right now as a result of this ladies and gentlemen may i say this just to conclude this late interestingly enough i made a commitment for monthly meetings with leadership of the downtown development authority i share with you all as part of my weekly report to you all the contents of those meetings so the next visit is june 1st my interest is to do as much as we possibly can as a city to be on the same accord with the downtown development authority as it pertains to this and other subjects so that coupled with the separate direction to await the state's review process in that regard i'm sitting inside in that realm so with that i'll be cool and i will achieve while working closely with miss simon and all involved and that's it so are you going to then hold off on looking to collect that 10 is that what you're saying and continue this dispute with them i said i'm not interested in the dispute i've never operated from the standpoint of a dispute so in essence that's what i'm looking to get to i don't think that meeting that had was suggest exactly that and i'll just say that honestly to you having that meeting with the auditor and trying to figure out a way to look at this contract differently it doesn't suggest a nice partnership it was a genuine question and i'll clarify that moving forward which i already have and therefore that's where it's at so prospectively that's already been contemplated so that's where i am so that's it so okay otherwise a way to separately the state do their work whatever the case may be and that's the outcome in that regard but that's where i am so i'll leave it be and i will make that clear with miss simon and all others involved i appreciate that so that's the purpose of the monthly meeting so let's try to cool things off again we've done a lot of good work in that regard so i understand that and that's the expectation most of you had of me in this regard that's the monthly meeting engagements etc however that analytics metrics etc we do have to take a look at that and that was really the genesis otherwise that's where we are so with that mr mayor ladies and gentlemen i yield i think we should have a good night call it good and that's the direction off we go thank you all set you