City Commission Workshop on 2025-05-03 9:00 AM - Budget Workshop - May 03, 2025

to get started 20 seconds 20 seconds somebody spoke i didn't see working we're going to go ahead and get started with this may 3rd 2025 budget workshop if i can please have the

city clerk call the roll commissioner villa vasquez present commissioner colwell here commissioner howington here commissioner lulli commissioner santiago vice mayor harriet here

mayor villa here if we can please stand for the pledge and i'll have uh vice mayor harriet do the pledge okay this time we're going to go ahead and start with business fiscal year 2025 through

2026 budget discussions thank you mayor everybody this morning i appreciate you coming out on the saturday morning for us this is the first of numerous budget workshops i lost my voice a couple days ago so now i sound like suzanne plichette just give a heads up on that um this is the cip capital and service enhancements uh this is generally i don't want to use the word wish list because it sounds like unnecessary things are absolutely uh necessary items equipment as well as projects but we don't have the final budget which we're going to be working on uh bringing to the commission and having several discussions over the next several months this is big picture stuff to say uh is are you pleased with what we're bringing to you are the things that you would like to see uh are the things projects that you would not like to see at least in this next year's budget so when we get done with all the details of line items for each of the departments we'll be able to look back then and say okay here's the projects that we discussed at this meeting and how we can fit them in as we combine the projects with everyday operations and have a final budget by august september october in place on october 1st so uh today's just uh overall discussion i'm going to ask john to uh to speak to go through as much as he can through the the actual slideshow and then maybe go back to questions afterwards so we don't get hung up too much on the first second slide and third slide and so on uh but maybe as you're going through if you can make some notes on your slides and then towards the end uh with questions we can go back to slide two slide seven and uh you'll have your notes right there what you wanted to ask at that point unless it's something obviously operational that you need

to ask that moment so john mckinney finance director good morning mayor commission how are y'all doing today good morning um the first thing i'd like to point out i handed um three replacement pages for you um the first replacement page is regarding station 62 as part of the general fund project list and fund 301 and then the last two pages we updated just reorganized it by fund and it's the last two pages of your binder okay there's been no other changes um at this point i've also um handed out mayor um the master capital outlay and fleet replacement and capital outlay to the public so they all have an overall copy of what we're discussing today they don't have the binder but it is available online okay okay um the first thing i'd like to do is you know number one thank um the the finance team tori and keong for helping to get this presentation and this book put together as well as all the department directors and their staff over the last few weeks putting this together as well so today we're going to talk about the overall parameters the various capital improvements of the various funds capital outlay enhancement requests affordable housing city fees and special assessments so the parameters today is that you know as i spoken about back in february the budget process is very fluid and the city manager just stated that as well all the requests presented herein are preliminary and contingent upon the results of forthcoming rate studies anticipated internet agency revenues and the approval of the operating millage we truly won't know where we're at with our taxable value until we get our pre-preliminary numbers the first day of june the property appraiser has been given it out earlier and earlier but you know they typically put it and give it out in june and we won't even know where we are with our state revenues typically until mid to late july so i just wanted to just kind of throw a couple of terms out there so that it kind of frames how we put this um this workshop together the binder that you all have before you capital outlay is spending to acquire capital assets vehicle and equipment so when you see in here the term capital outlay we're talking about vehicles and equipment construction and progress or cip capital improvements those are projects to enhance the community roads facility infrastructure could be a new building could be a new lift station water plant sewer plant it could be piping you know culverts etc under the road it has a far-reaching impact to the city of deltona and its citizens over just basic capital outlay o and m operations and maintenance that's just routine costs operate and maintain the assets that the city has and then you have your r and r we use these funds to fund major rehab to restore extend the asset life roof replacement hvac upgrade you know painting a wall replacing um carpet you know milling and resurfacing that's really more r and r that is not a cip okay so we're going to go into our capital improvements 301 cip the first thing is you know for everyone in here we've always known 301 is the municipal complex that was originally created back when they built this building you know the municipal complex but we've used it for other things over the years so as part of monday night's mid-year budget amendment it has that new name to capital improvements so just so there's no confusion going forward for anyone and we have three projects online for next year's funding the finalization of city hall improvement improvements related to the building department and the customer service all going down into the lobby area so that we're centralizing the cash collection and customer service citywide into city hall versus other facilities we have the second phase of the fire training complex and we have the potential relocation of fire station 62 maybe somewhere else into the cra district or closely nearby if it remains within the cra district we have the opportunity that we can purchase the land for that station relocation out of the cra and cdbg funds potentially because it's not only within the district but it's in the census tract for the cdbg so with that again this is all based on preliminary funding but i can tell you that all of the funding for these three projects are fully funded using prior year fund balance that's available within the general fund next we're going to go to parks capital

improvement again that fund are we going to do questions on each slide or do you want us to

wait till the end probably i think it's better if we question as he goes along because we're going to

lose just so we don't get hung up on one slide for a half hour it's going to be a long long day but certainly if there's something that's hot that you need to talk about at this moment but because i have

questions at this also so you go first

do you have questions on that slide yeah the only question i have is a three million for fire station 62 you've got land acquisition design and construction um is that for all three phases or

just for this sir that's just the overall project title that's taken from the five-year cip so if we just took the title from your tab one page one perfect that's a good point so that it's only for land acquisition for year one perfect thank you that's all thank you mayor um i have a

question two questions do we have a location yet for the fire training um complex or are we still

looking yes ma'am uh niles road did i say that correctly chief day road oh okay behind the um the post office and the church that is correct and and any questions that um keon tory i can't answer then we always have all the department directors back there as well okay my second question is the

fire station which is on diamond which is district three is this cra funds going to the cra board for

approval because this is not a commission approval that is correct so the next stage would be when we bring this back to the board for their budget approval um we're looking at taking that the first meeting in august so that would be something that obviously has to be approved by the board first then it would then relate to the city budget thank you appreciate that but we have been

in coordination with john cox on all of this good commissioner um on the renovations at city hall or the city hall improvements building department does that include the i know we're talking about moving the water department over to this part of town too does that include those improvements

that is correct and some of that is also this is to finalize it and um we have additional money that is part of the mid-year budget as well monday night on monday night okay yes sir so because i know the project is going to cost well over 100 000 that yes sir uh there's 250 000 um for the mid-year budget for next monday night all right thank you this was just hopefully phase two that if we that if we do need it it's there but if we don't need it then it will be removed towards the end of the fiscal um the year before we adopt this budget good we can move forward okay okay let's make sure we

use our ipads go ahead commissioner what is the total cost of the city hall improvements because we've

already started some of those renovations have you not we're upstairs yes ma'am um i believe that budget was we can get back to you i want to say it was 140 000 but that had nothing to do with this portion of the project this is a brand new project so this is separate from that completely separate

and are we under budget on the other project or are we over budget where do we stand we're under

a budget we're under budget okay thank you please continue okay moving on to fund 302 that used to be also named parks project so to be have continuity um parks capital improvements so that we're keeping the same naming so within the parks improvement specifically right now as part of next year's budget we have west cryo park dewey boster thornby park between those three and we're looking at pavilion improvements restroom replacement and playground replacement then the last couple of days wednesday thursday night there were some additional um workshops that were held talking about major improvements of tom hoffman park festival park harris saxon park keysville park and manny rodriguez park all of these projects for next year add up to 8.25 million dollars that as well as completely funded by fund balance if that's the way we choose to move forward so these are projects

are 100 funded commissioner colwell i think commissioner the uh the keysville park improvements

i think the the dog park that's the dog park correct yes we're putting um a track pavilion

and a playground in there at the dog park yes it's a large park if you're familiar with it there's a walking trail now but it's just dirt as you walk around so has there been a request for those to be put into that yeah these means public means were just the last couple days it's going to be coming back to the commission the designs to see if you'd like to move forward okay right now we're still going to be putting all the numbers together we just want to see what the community said first about it but they seem to be very pleased with the overall designs all right thank you thank you commissioner

viva vasquez and commissioner howington thank you mayor so i did a presentation on thursday in west crowd park i thought it was a great presentation i was a little disappointed that there are not one park of district three i have four parks in my district two are in desperate need of upgrading one which disappears from the map during flooding and i was just disappointed not to see van park and lake gleason park in that project i was also disappointed not to see lakeshore part of that project although i got a reason for lakeshore but i just want to understand what that

reason is if litigation or something i can speak about that if you like van park is is one also that there's not much you can do other than the asphalt parking lot so they're not running through ruts other than that it's pretty much a flood zone when it floods it's taken over so that wasn't brought up to me we tried to limit how many parks at one time to bring to you guys and the commissioner may decide only to do one or two of all these parks uh the uh gleason we haven't gotten into details yet on that also that's one that's that's a flooded zone also lakeshore park is uh worked we're trying to finalize the numbers now of going backwards with this 4b project as everybody knows about we're trying to finish the construction first before we go and redo that park that park's going to be a potential diamond for the city it's not something that we want to rush anyway just have a community meeting and let's do whatever we say uh because or at this moment we don't know what the final project's going to look like potentially because we're still trying to figure out where the pipes are going for the straw to move the water out of the lake we're even talking about possibly another location on the lake which would free up lakeshore as an entirely different park having a ramp in another area of the of lake monroe so uh that's why that's not part of it that's a much bigger diamond for the city as opposed to just a park with some some basic upgrades but uh as we said we right now this was just kind of to touch a few parks uh just to get started and then um then come back

over time i was feeling like a stepchild because you know only district three parks were not touched uh i just want to understand on the master plan spreadsheet you have festival park improvements twice uh we have playground replacements and then you have park improvement is is not the same thing

yes ma'am but on that for project number five which is um for fiscal year 25 26 then the other festival park is a project that's not until 29 30. so just based on what we received over the last week on festival park that project that's listed in the out years might actually go away okay this is information ma'am that we just received middle of this week so where we added all of these projects so all the out years things might not have been changed yet okay does that also apply for number two or

dewey buster you have restroom replacement and then you also have on 14 dewey buster wait not 15 um 10

restroom replacements isn't that the same thing that is correct same thing we were additional projects were added this week so we have to go in and fix the out years so we were when we were putting this presentation together this week we were only focused on the funding for fiscal year 25 26.

okay okay thank you commissioner howington then vice mayor harriet manny rodriguez park i've had a lot

of reports that we have a lot of stormwater issues over there and they've had a high water table that's causing flooding within the restrooms and i've heard that there's a raw sewage issue over there is that included in some of these repairs i see it says and more but are we addressing these issues

should you like uh mark please uh give an overview good morning mark manning uh the stormwater issues

are not part of the parks there was an issue after the last storm that was rectified immediately and that has not happened since the park improvements you see from manny rodriguez do not include the stormwater the restrooms are new there they were put in two years ago and we had a flooding issue after hurricane milton because there was a stormwater issue that was taken care of by the stormwater department that has has not happened since we don't have an ongoing issue that was a

one-time thing are you done commissioner okay vice mayor harriet yes um on on lake shore um are we still looking at the possibility of relocating that road with the county and moving the boat ramp shifting the location of the boat ramp that is an option we're we're in discussions with that yes okay we also bring

the residents of that area into discussion yeah thank you can we continue yes sir one thing one

thing john um if i may please um at mid-year um we will also as we go through the process we look at all the funds there may be some park funds that we bring back to you all that are left in the current year that we can allocate to some of your parks and some of the parks that haven't been identified but it's early on the process for us to be able to do that but we hope to be able to do that hopefully by august time so we may start some of the other smaller parks or that money may go to lake shore that'll be your decision but there are additional funds that we haven't brought to you yet but we don't know where we're ending this year so there's a little bit left still there also if i could mayor

just um veterans park i met with them on sunday afternoon the the veterans board to discuss the sidewalks not being ada and some other issues of possibly joining the two buildings together so the museum could be expanded that isn't necessarily a public meeting that's not that they asked the question why isn't that on the list also because that's part of the veterans a group that's there helping to run the place and really we're talking about hard infrastructure as opposed to adding activities and things to veterans park but that'll be another part that's going to be on the list

overall mark correct me if i'm wrong didn't we take care of that ada issues at veterans park because i remember it coming to the commission and probably the uh the sidewalks tweaking but the ramps

or two there are still some issues with ada um we are working on those there was some minor repairs done but we do need to do a much broader as doc was saying there are some other issues we have to

deal with as well i think they shaved some of the sidewalks that are raising so yes chairs can move but there are some issues we have to deal with moving forward yes yeah all right okay please our next

fund is the transportation capital improvements fund 303 for next year we've added in there the rhode island extension um start up on this the study regarding the extension that's part of the existing just under 15 million dollars of funding that's already in place so this is actually putting it back on the budget it's currently within the city funds as a reserve now we're putting a million dollars of it into the budget for completing the study then we have catalina boulevard and el cam boulevard those are two items that are coming before you on monday evening for a cost share agreement with the florida department of emergency management for two roadway elevations so we want this is therefore will be part of next year's budget we'll be approving the um the agreement with the state of florida but we're actually putting the funding for it in next year's budget that's part of the funding that we got from fd up or fd florida department of emergency management which is a pass through from fema

okay doc um and then i'll go to commissioner caldwell can we not look at on el cam possibly putting a bridge versus an elevation you know water is probably one of the hardest substances and no matter how many times we elevate that road if you drive down that road there's almost if you look at it from one angle there's almost a fight a five foot drop you know that that goes continuously putting a bridge there if somebody made a presentation sometime a year and a half ago or something like that there's grants available that probably cost us a lot less money than elevating that road uh it's

actually an item that's on the agenda for monday also to uh accept the funding to move forward with the study so that could be one of the results that comes out but yep absolutely got it go ahead

commission same lines are you know i have some concerns about building a road up elevating the road and creating a dam so to speak and back in the water farther north when we get a severe storms as

we did last year well they either way should have culverts underneath the water to flow running all

that water in the two six inch culverts create a backup i think back to the water out somewhere else

maybe even higher on the lake yeah i believe the culverts are there now currently what we're losing is the road itself possibly for months at a time because of the flooding so if the road's elevated

it would be the same when the high water comes in the water flows over the road naturally because that was a lake bed at one time yes so by creating a dam there i'm going to push water further north

i don't believe it's a dam anybody else yeah it'll create the dam essentially because you're preventing the water from flowing over the road correct but i've had a i've had a conversation raising up you're putting more culverts you want to have the same so the water is still enough

yeah i had the i had this same this conversation with um with staff and with the stormwater engineer and um also with um to talk about the blue way project that was looked at a long long time ago and so i think that there's the conversation is being had to overall increase the size those culverts so that you could possibly get a canoe or a kayak through it if they can um to add that

blue way component i think that was a discussion for alcohol correct yeah yeah commissioner howington

where do we stand with the blue way project do we have any updates is that being accounted for because to the mayor's point if we focus on something like that rather than taking a kayak through a culver it may be better to go under a bridge i don't know if i want to risk running

into an alligator in a culver bridges are considered entirely ridiculously expensive i don't i don't know how we would put a bridge in without acquiring property so that's not entirely true there are

there are a lot of grants out there we're looking at a call i mean if you want a nice fancy bridge that looks like altamont obviously it's going to be expensive but a regular bridge with a sidewalk on each side just think about how much money we're spending on sidewalks how many times have we done

those sidewalks on l cam well we're not we're not doing the sidewalk we're not talking about elevating l cam which portion of l cam are we talking about elevating because my understanding is that the portion of l cam that we're talking about elevating is the portion closest to howland so we're talking

we're talking about l cam where it floods that we're yeah which is closest to howland yeah which

is closest to howland so in order to put a bridge there you'd have to acquire property for an

entrance and going up and going down so phyllis wallace public works um l cam has two sections that we have uh submitted to dem for their consideration uh one is between the lack of a better word between montecito and ben allen not the entire section but a portion of it the other section is down near oneida court those were the two areas that we we struggled with the flooding on for ian nicole and milton and for catalina it would be a section near um catalina and six you know that that not the whole entire road it's just a section just so that that road does not flood and we are not impacted with having detours that took people sometimes nine miles out of the way oh that's right that was me

all right okay so moving on within our transportation um we made a few maps for you this year so um kind of show you where these the projects are so you have you know catalina boulevard up there within district one um el cam is there in district two and then the rhode island extension is also in um two as well and we have the boundaries so you can see in a nice little graphical representation and where the

projects are within transportation hey john on that slide i think you have one and two flipped two is should be one and one it should two could be okay thank you then also as part of transportation

improvement fund again road resurfacing is more of an r and r versus capital but we do complete it within fund 303 is we have the various roads to be resurfaced for next year and we have it split out for you by district so you can see the recommended streets for next year commissioner avila vasquez has

a question and then commissioner hollington thank you so um catalina i see catalina here for next year um we're going to be uh making some changes there as far as the bridge or whatever is it that's decided to be there are we holding off on the pavement of the streets those are different areas of catalina so it's yes oh so that's on the uh side of where the new catalina development is coming up like helen osteen yeah but that's what isn't the weather flooding takes place it'll be from there to

but isn't that where the flooding is well we did have to shut down from yorkshire down so that may be what the confusion is but the sections that are up there are outside of where we're proposing for the elevation and obviously if this elevation project proceeds and we get that positive thing we will we will spend the money in the most prudent way where we're not duplicating efforts six months down the road or 12 months down the road thank you commissioner howington as we do the

road resurfacing are we building in looking at the new crosswalks potentially adding the colors things

like that is that being accounted for absolutely in mondays the presentation will definitely give us some information on how to move forward on that very good thank you okay we can continue

by the way this is great information this is great i would like to do a big shout out to nicole

and um planning and gis she's worked very diligent with us these last couple of weeks coming up with all different scenarios and formats so we're very appreciative nicole's a new employee with the city just last few months i told her she was um you know outstanding so you know it went a long way no ma'am no ma'am but um when i did i provided her with um this presentation yesterday so she was like thank you for including me in this so you know it goes a long way absolutely she is a resident of

deltona and probably watching or listening so she was going to just asking because it's nice if we

get um introduced to new staff that are working during commission meeting it used to be done at

one time thank you all right let's continue okay um now we're switching over to fund 402 again this is part of monday night's present budget amendment as well making sure that we're compliant with um our bond docs and whatnot we've split out um the capital improvement element of water sewer back into fund 402 the way it used to be so again these are all preliminary numbers um they've requested specifically these projects for next year part of the item for the fisher plan i want to point out of the 44 million dollars is because we anticipate to get the the actual um agreement and we need to just be able to show it within the budget so that it's there and also the fact that it's going to be more than the 22 million receiving from you know the grant looking at another 22 million dollars in potential debt issuance so those are all things that are being taken a look at by our rate consultant as they're putting together their rates for the next five years so that's all included in there we have other items going on at the eastern um water reclamation plant office design and construction of a dewatering building the official plant chlorine relocation various wells rehabs throughout the city lift station rehabs throughout the city continual rehab of our sewer collection system continual water main replacement and additional um aquifer aquifer storage and recovery at the alexander rib site so all of these again uh we want to put these out there so that as our rate consultants putting together um their final recommendation that i come to you in the july time frame that it's it's um a feasible project

in the eyes of the commission perfect uh we got are you finished with that part yes sir all right

commissioner vila vasquez and commissioner hollinson thank you mayor um so with the fisher plant any of this work that you're doing going to take care of the smell that comes up in the summer we know

that's all i'm talking about uh yes i do commissioner jim parrish uh deputy utility director um the smell normally that you receive usually happens after we have a large rainstorm which kind of throws the biology of the plant off which makes the the odor um the particular type of plant that is is uh being explored for the advanced waste treatment uh is the same exact treatment that we have at the eastern which does not produce the same type of issues whenever you have large range rain events so it should take

care of of those odor issues that we have i hope so i mean this is my second term and since i got elected this has been the biggest complaint of providence boulevard near this fisher plant

having having in the summer having a plant like that it was such close proximity uh where residents are at can create that nuisance odor yeah thank you commissioner howington i wanted to go back to

the fisher plant also can you elaborate a little bit on the agreement that you mentioned and how much of the 44 will be expected to be grant versus provided by the city so we can kind of just get a breakdown

of the idea so so whenever we uh we went for appropriation funds for the design of the fisher plant and then also for the design of the expansion for capacity at the eastern plant the the contractor the engineer of record that we're working with on fisher because of the tight window for for any sort of funding which happened the windows already closed for it they went out which was meet and hunt they went out and solicited for water quality improvement grants and we were fortunate enough to receive and we've received notification from dp that we did receive 22 million dollars of funding for this plant um that that is a a grant for the construction portion of it so not only do we have uh 50 grant for the design permitting and engineering we also have 50 for construction as well so then does that mean

that it would be 100 covered by grants no no it's it's 50 percent 50 covered up to 22 million dollars for for for grant funds so would the city be then making up the additional 22 that's what

i'm just trying to do it would be and one of the things that john mentioned is that we have to show the entire 44 million because it's it's a reimbursable thing so we we pay the 44 million and we get reimbursed the 22 million dollars okay perfect thank you yeah if we only show the project being 22 million

we're only going to get reimbursed 11. so we have to show the full potential of the um plan expansion

and part of the options that we have would be srf loans so i think that's one of the options so again that's usually what you want to look at lowest interest rate available for our water wastewater programs so if we can't find additional grants we'll definitely look to srf before we look to other types of debt but srf usually is something you all have seen in the past and it's something that we've you know everyone uses it you just hope to be able to get through that as quickly as possible

and our engineer record meet and hunt are very good at securing srf funding if it's available

i i have one one question have we ever thought about maybe acquiring some of the properties around the fisher plan i i mean i'm pretty sure everyone here has already but we visited i visited personally both the eastern and the the fisher plan and eastern is we walked right over the top and you could hardly smell anything but when we visited fisher

it's because it's a completely different process um meaning the bio biological process works in a different flow than what um biological nutrient removal is which is what we have at the eastern facility um we're also exploring uh options as far as um you know that that that nuisance odor to be able to be taken care of um with the plan improvements as well so jim didn't we purchase uh one or two homes

around around there uh one point to um i think something uh that we were doing with the fisher plant and we needed more room or space didn't we purchase i think i remember coming uh approving

at one point uh there was the there was the talk of one because there was a house that was available right across the street and there was a lot that was available those but those were not purchased by

the city okay but jim correct the uh overall plan here is actually building entirely the fisher

plant over at the rib site i didn't want to give away that that uh okay that until we were totally fixated on it but there are there are conversations with the engineer of record to actually move that plant over to the the alexander avenue facility which is a lot more acreage away from from where the the uh residents are cats out of the bag what's that alexander where alexander avenue the rib site that we have it's at alexander and mobley i mean it sounds to me like you're moving one smell to another no it's no we've got about 90 acres there do you know you're moving from an area that's that's about 10 to 11 acres to an area that is uh matter of fact you can see it on the on the map right there it's it's a very big facility uh that green space right there so fisher now fishers down to the to

the uh left right right in there right there is that all is that of doyle like no no it's right

there at anderson where anderson and alexander is we have a 90 acre facility that backs up to

discovery elementary to check it out and that would be a that would still be a new plan anyways correct

so it would be the new design yeah it'd be a new design that we are that's where we have the stormwater augmentation uh that that's what that facility was originally built for for the 4b it was a 4a project so we're the the conversations we've had is it taken to move the the wastewater process over to the alexander facility uh there that's still of course if dp would approve you know that move so there's there's a lot of permitting requirements that we would have to meet to be able to do that um but so that's not a not 100 percent said so i could talk about santa claus and the easter bunny

and the tooth fairy if i want to ruin those cats out of the bag uh for the fisher point if we do move to the rib site can we potentially look at doing something similar to like the nature area that they have out on christmas what's that i'm sorry yeah can we look into doing something like the wetland park out towards christmas where they've done some nature preserve areas around the facility

what's that for i'm i'm not understanding which one part they use it as a surface water they essentially take the wastewater clean it filter it through a wetland system and then release it in the saint john's down by highway 50. i would we would have to have a discussion with saint john's

on that to be able to use any sort of wetland area well they've also opened it as a nature

center that's available to the public for hiking and things like that so i'm just wondering if we're doing a design if we can look into options that might be available to help utilize the

property more than just one way yeah any any time that you have any sort of expansion or anything like that you have to have effluent disposal uh dp requires that you have an equal amount of effluent disposal is what you're actually going to be processing um so so we definitely can look into that uh we have to have a method to to to get it there so you're you're talking about the cost of the piping and so forth land for for any sort of um mitigation or any sort of effluent disposal

but we can we can certainly look at that stormwater capital improvement cip for next year we have identified two projects the citywide drainage pipe rehab and the pond gc4 water quality improvements those two projects add up to 1.2 million per current rate study that was presented to the commission last year this is roughly how much money we have available to us for capital and cip projects for next fiscal year that's basing it also we'll talk about um the current fee versus proposed fee for stormwater for next year in a upcoming slide but this is what we currently have available next year

quick question ma'am sorry oh where's he going oh so you just mentioned a rate schedule that was presented last year and i know in my meeting yesterday we discussed that there was a an option to look towards increasing by twenty dollars every single year for stormwater costs that is correct

is that the rate yes ma'am i have an entire slide on that coming up i can move to it now see

we're here and so while we're here let's not meet yet let's make sure we get available yes so if we're

going to be increasing by the 1.2 each year will we have specific projects tied to each one of those 20 increases each year or how are we going to be managing that if we have it set up as a rate schedule where we intend to increase because i intend or i believe that the intention is to eventually get to the maximum rate that we can increase to over the years yes ma'am as presented

last year the maximum rate to go to would be 250 annually so this 1.2 million as you're increasing it every year obviously your o m is going up your salary and benefits are going up so the 1.2 million per year is pretty steady until you and actually if you go to the last page of your tab six it specifically shows that for fiscal year 25 26 there's 1.2 million in 26 27 and 27 28 1.5 28 29 and 29 30 there's 2 million available so when you look at those out your fundings you can see that on the master five-year cip the funding the use of the funding is far greater than the money coming in so in speaking with the department director and city manager and deputy more than likely we would have to look at a debt issuance so that we can go in and do a mass of projects up front and then pay for it over time with the revenues coming in from the stormwater fee we currently do that already we we have debt outstanding for prior year projects so it's very common to either use a combination of debt or a lot of municipalities and and deltona no different has utilized general fund monies to fund projects as well so you know just in 26 27 alone there's close to 16 million dollars in recommended projects with available resources of 1.5 million now i'm going to address something that i know

everybody hates to hear me talk about the impact fees obviously we are putting these increases which over several years will end up being fairly significant because i believe we're about 180 and we're going to about 250 over the next few years so when we do this how soon are we going to be looking at our impact fees to ensure that the new developments are being accounted for because we all know that as we cover our land we have more and more water issues which are driving more requirements for new water projects which should be being paid by the new development that's coming into our community so what is our plan rather than just putting this cost on our residents backs to actually shift this to the new development that is actually impacting our community yes ma'am so on monday night as part of

the budget amendment i've placed sixty thousand dollars for a rate study for municipal impact fees and speaking with various firms we're looking at a six to nine month window for the study to be completed so we're currently working on a scope of services so that we can solicit quotes or if the anticipated amount exceeds a hundred thousand dollars then that will be a competitive solicitation it's not required by our purchasing policy but i had a consensus given to me a couple of meetings ago that to put this out on the street so that's what we're working on i just got to work with procurement staff and the departments to make sure we have appropriate scope of services okay thank you

you're welcome commissioner vila vasquez thank you mayor um so i for i know that in my district when i drive around during rainy season and stuff like that um the right-of-ways are always flooded and sometimes i stop and there is a drainage but it's all clogged with the you know grass clippings or whatever residents you know blow out from there so is there a plan um in here to uh help because it

is that is part of stormwater yes ma'am so that's part of the overall maintenance of the city stormwater drainage system so i'll defer to public works on that response it could i mean okay i just personally

i do not know the schedule for the various i mean your staff gets out as often and as frequently as they can as you just mentioned commissioner we do struggle with our residents who don't want clippings on their property so they blow them out into the road that not only gets into the stormwater system it gets into the swales it creates a hazard for motorcycles that are out there we try to do the education with our residents we can certainly enhance that and kind of ask our residents when a storm is coming if they see something try to go out there and clean it up because we can't be everywhere we just don't have the staff in which to be across 47 miles of the city of deltona but anytime we get a call about something we look forward to those calls because our residents know quicker than we do something that's not right in their neighborhood and we will dispatch people immediately to get eyes on it and take care of that situation as quickly as possible thank you

because that is an issue and i try to uh when they tell me things i try to tell the residents you know right away whether even though it belongs to the city it's your responsibility to you know to maintain it free of the breeze and stuff like that so i'm glad you second that thank you phyllis do we have

a um an actual schedule like right before a storm something that we can um look at for certain areas like when we're you know doing the um to make sure like the the drainage fields are all unclogged are we do we have like a scheduled maintenance we do have a schedule it goes by sectors for everything

that we do um but we also know those areas that the rain just seems to want to focus on that area you know we all know some of those areas l cam and lake helen osteen so we kind of dispatch in advance if we think a storm's coming and something that you may not know is the majority of your stormwater staff and public works lives here and you have staff that will get out on their own time and check things out so we do the best that we can but we do need the help of our residents as well if there's something clogging out there just a simple raking it out of the way is certainly helpful um not leaving piles out there for the garbage men to pick up on yard waste put your piles in a bag so that it doesn't get distributed all along the roadway and into the system i just want to give our residents

that peace of mind obviously we we can't be like you said everywhere at all times right uh but if residents do see an area of concern they can definitely report it to us we can put eyes on it because i know last storm we had one or two areas they called me i know i called the the city manager and obviously i cc public works in it and you guys were out there right away yes sir um so i think that's important residents so if they see something just report it and staff will definitely take care

see something say something i know it's not quite in this environment but hurricane season will be starting here in just a uh a couple of weeks and uh it becomes a very heightened sense of of urgency so

i gotta tell you that uh one of my residents i told him there was flooding in there right away and i said to the i asked him is there if you walk down further you'll see that there's a drainage at the end and he did clean it up he did sort of um lower grass and he said to me thank you so much i mean the water just as soon as he cleaned up a corn you know of course three neighbors got together and they did it as soon as they cleaned that up the whole flooding just you know rushed down the uh so it does work it does work it has to be it's usually beneficial to everybody it's mutually beneficial to

our residents our business owners and as well as staff if we work as a team because you know you know more hands makes it much easier for everybody to to stay ahead of things correct commissioner

howington the vice mayor no i'm good can we uh share the stormwater schedule the maintenance schedule so that maybe online kind of like we're doing with the building permits and things like that so that people know sure we can definitely work on getting that out there yes ma'am thank you

so mayor moving on now to our capital replacement equipment the first thing that i want to just point out is that everything that you see on here for capital replacement for equipment and vehicles is in accordance with our current vehicle replacement policy that is an administrative policy that was concurred by city commission on the november 23rd of 2015 commission meeting so just so that we have all that that we're keeping within the schedule the other thing that we did on this is we took a look with fleet to make sure that even though it might have complied with the 10-year replacement window that if it was still in good condition both mechanically and aesthetically you know looking to push it off so we have met numerous times with fleet and departments to make sure that everything on this list is needed to be replaced so we've also split it up if you go to the next couple of page we also have in here the funding so of the vehicles and equipment 3.2 million is from the general fund 290 000 from water wastewater 425 000 from the stormwater utility fund the general fund is 100 funded for replacement as well as water wastewater we're just looking to see where the final numbers come in from for storm water because either that will need to be either potential capital lease or potential funding from the general fund in order to maintain that replacement cycle because as i stated previously we have 1.2 million dollars so we're taking a good look at that the other thing that i just want to point out is that we do utilize various existing contracts whether through the sheriff's bid source well etc but also as we get this if we need to look at our our basic white fleet looking at the local preference that mill stated any specialty equipment is obviously it's much cheaper to get it right off the particular contracts and a lot of our local vendors are a part of those contracts so we always take a look there other things that we've taken a look at too is the fact that when we look at a fire engine um you know replacement you know that's not something that we can just go down the street and procure so we also have to make sure that when we're looking at fire engines transports brush trucks etc um some of those have long lead times um the fire engine that we just received um a few weeks ago we actually ordered that back in um 21 so it's taken a long time for this equipment to get here um other than that um i have nothing else mayor on the fleet and capital vice mayor can you share with us the um

um not not not now but uh can you send us the statistics on the vehicles being replaced please

absolutely um if you look in um tab seven of the binder that we put out we we gave it to you in three different formats i gave it to you by fund i gave it to everybody by maintenance acquisition cost i want to just kind of point out that we have vehicles that we have spent close to 183 percent of acquisition costs and maintenance so you know that's something that we also want to take a look at in the fact that once it reaches around 75 percent that's another little index that you know we need to add to our replacement policy because you know the current policy has mileage hours but we also need to add a component in there on maintenance to acquisition costs you know so we'll be amending that administrative policy as a result of the meetings we've had so i wanted to make sure you had that and then we also gave it to you by age so the average age of what is actually looked to be replaced for next year even though our policy says 10 or closer to 15 years so you know we do stretch the vehicles out here in the city long past the 10 year mark but that's our guide in case you know we do need to replace it you know it's there so um and then the very last couple of sheets within tab seven is our entire fleet to include vehicles and equipment so that's one of the things that we're looking at from the budget team as well as the fleet department to make sure that we have everything in the appropriate life schedule for replacement and that's something that by the time we come to you in june um everything that we've started these last couple of months we'll have in more detail of exactly um what kind of funding i know i said to a couple of you um last week you know even though we have a capital replacement program you know we looked at you know what it cost back then it used to be when you bought a new vehicle you could add two three percent a year you know um i know we spoke the other day is that you know you know in 21 i was buying police vehicles completely outfitted for 43 to 44 thousand dollars last year it cost me you know 75 thousand dollars for the same vehicle just four years newer you know so you know that's the reality of what vehicles are costing us you know i mean i remember fire engines back in 21 i was doing you know po's for 40 50 000 you know costs of just you know you we can't keep up with it so you know that's where we have to truly look at what we have set aside for capital replacement to see if that's the method we should utilize i would tell you that my prior financial advisor at my prior city actually made the statement that you know know vehicles under 100 000 need to you know be switched to pay as you go versus vehicles that or a hundred thousand dollars or more should actually be looked to be um debt financed you know the outcome's the same whether you set aside today for replacement from 10 years from now because you have to come up with an assumed rate of return or you just pay um interest on a loan so you you know you still come out roughly the same either method you use it's just that you know it's hard to you know set aside what those resources are going to be okay commissioner vila vasquez thank you mayor and

i just want to give a shout out to uh chief schneider because i believe this is one of the vehicles that we knew that we were not going to get it um immediately it was going to be a few years before we got it but if he had waited we would have paid doubled so buying it uh early four years ahead of time we saved a lot of money is that the vehicle chief um the fire truck or the ambulance that we

purchased but we had to wait for it a couple of years yes right so even staff on their side is

always keeping an eye open to save the city money so this was a good good purchase from their side

and i'll just also point out if you recall from the procurement policy that was just approved in march is we actually put in there that vehicles that have a long lead time we might need to bring them forward to get permission to order them so you know it doesn't really have a real budget impact today you know because we put it off for a future year encumbrance but it does give us the ability if we do know there's a long lead time that vehicles that need to be replaced four years from now we're actually going to have to look at you know next year's budget or the following year's budget to actually get those orders put out there okay then we have miscellaneous equipment so one of the things that we did in putting this one together is again because we will not know what our true funding availability is until late june to late july we went out there with the departments and we asked what the priority was so if it's a high priority it it needs to make next year's budget if it's a medium year priority and the money comes in short then that would simply be we would look to put that off until mid-year to see if there's monies that were left over from the prior year and if it's low it doesn't mean that we don't need it it just means that it would be pushed off to the following fiscal year and then the following fiscal year that would more than likely become a high priority you know so that's where the high medium low comes into place so everything again for the general fund we have the appropriate funding from the available prior year fund balance to fund we just have to look at storm water water wastewater okay commissioner real bascos quick question um jonathan the um

the city-wide water meters is that are we finished installing the new water meters or is this something just just putting in stock replacements in case some need to be replaced for for the uh the water

meter project that we have from vanguard to replace all of the meters we're down to about 3 500 meters that are left to go so we probably within the next two months we're going to have everything replaced this particular line here for water meters is for any new meters that go in so say for example we have some new houses that are built we have new developments that come in we have to have those items in stock however those items are also dealt with with impact fees and with the portions whenever there's new connections but this is for stock items that we have to have for those new developments

correct absolutely commission yeah i was going to ask because i know that when my house was built two years ago they put in an old water meter and then immediately put in a new one within about six months which seemed inefficient and so who's actually paying for those costs when they build a new r-pud we have a lot of housing subdivisions that are trying to come in is that our job to

install those or is that the developer we do the installations however it's it's funded through

impact fees and we won't have any more issues where we're putting in an old meter and then

changing it out six months later correct because the way that the way that this project went was based upon the billing cycles for a particular area so whenever whenever that project was moving through your area whenever it was first built we weren't into that portion of the project the the project actually started after your development was was put in um so that so that's why it kind of goes in phases because it's based upon the billing cycles for that particular area thank you

and i'll point out mayor too um the rate study being done by gov rates also includes miscellaneous fees and impact fees so that again is something that looking at to make sure that we are capturing the full cost of putting in a meter at a new residence thanks mayor harriet the uh jim while you're up there

the other portion of the water meter project where we put in the receivers or the the residential dual check that flows yes is that um no the where where we the system that reads the smart water meter mm-hmm okay so is where are we on that okay so so that project uh we approved at one of the prior

commission meetings uh this past week we had our kickoff meeting with ferguson and with neptune perfect uh so that is that's in the works so we should be completed within the next six months and have it on uh the ami radio towers however as i mentioned before the portal for the residents to be able to access all of that information comes after we get that network up so we're looking at probably around october november for the portal to be accessible by the residents okay thank you very much and the

tyler munis portion of that project is actually on monday night's agenda meeting as part of mid-year so everything has to tie together so you know we have that funding upcoming for your approval i tell

you i feel a lot more comfortable now that we have like staff that knows everything that's going on i don't feel like anything's falling through the cracks lately so thank you guys okay john one thing just

to mention in reference to gov rate um that studies will be finished earlier so just we want to provide the commission that date when we believe and i know it's rough because those impact fees will be brought to them earlier than the other impact fees just because the study's been underway

since about january earlier earlier than that and when we do have those dates we will also be through our our monthly utility bill putting out that public notice of when the discussion for rates as required by law cool okay then our next portion is enhancement request an enhancement is something that's not in the current year budget it's something that's above and beyond our current levels of service so these are various things that staff has recommended one of the things that i want to point out every one of them is important but i want to point out that the tyler munis erp cloud migration tyler actually came to meet with us a couple of weeks ago stating that you know their premise how they do business is focusing more to the cloud versus premise so this cost of 800 000 it's not just that that that's additional but then there's also costs and we have um internal already that goes towards tyler so that when we come back to you in june we'll be able to share with you what the offsetting cost is that would no longer be a part of if we move towards the cloud also the sandbag storage if y'all recall um y'all um approved the same bag machine a couple of meetings ago um i hear some really cool apparatus uh keon tory and i are going to go out there and do it for phyllis for a while so um but now that we're talking about pre-staging things we now need to have a storage shed for them so um so that you know once they're pre-staged and it rains they don't get too wet that they're too heavy to handle so again talking about the fact that um you know stormwater funding this is slated for the general fund to pay for because again we feel that's part of the emergency management side of the the house as well so paying for it out of the general fund is more than appropriate um then um all the various other items in there the fiber initiative so that we can be able to um connect um various city facilities on on high high speed internet versus um um keon tory and i still use dial-up we just want to make sure it's um a lot faster to communicate between the facilities um are there any questions on anything

up here vice mayor here thank you uh when you spoke about the tyler munis item it sounds like we're going to have some offsetting costs that will be coming off does that now that we're going to the cloud what is going to be the annual costs moving forward that is what we're currently working on with

them um as as you're aware of we're doing quite a few enhancements in-house between um finance hr uh utility billing planning etc fire pretty much every department within the city is currently doing items so tyler munis has to go in and look at all of that so that they put the appropriate schedule together um subscription based is is not new you know you know if you can you can no longer buy a lifetime you know um microsoft office you know so this is just the way all software companies are going one of the first things that you know i want to just you know maybe dispel is i had tyler munis previously in the cloud and except for a time where there was a microsoft and aws outage we never had an issue of continuity um on on day-to-day operations so moving to the cloud on our erp solution

i'm not um worried in the least bit excellent and then on the sandbag storage are we is that going to be like a full-on building or are we looking at like um like an awning system that could then house more

equipment basically the way it was stated to me and um they can speak up is basically two big car ports back to back with sides on them awesome perfect commissioner bill vasquez i don't know

if this question is you know for here or towards you but with all this upgrading with the it department with the fiber and the cloud is there a plan for disaster recovery and testing uh yes ma'am um a

lot of the information under the new standards we're not really supposed to elaborate what our backbone is i mean the it director can come up here but because of cyber security those type of conversations are not typically had in the open anymore right i was just asking is there a plan

for disaster recovery testing yes ma'am okay john thank you very much for not um putting that sensitive information out there you're welcome go ahead okay um other enhancement requests so we just

have a couple of other items um regarding fleet stormwater and water wastewater one of the things that i want to just kind of point out with fleet um most people might not um know but um we have a phenomenal fleet department here within the city they pretty much handle everything from normal routine maintenance pms major overhauls etc unless it is a um a warranty item or something that's just beyond our capacity everything's done in-house i know a question was asked about um alignment machine everything else like that we just don't have enough vehicles to justify the cost to have an alignment machine when you know you go to just had an alignment yesterday um you know so you know when they're doing you know 20 30 a day you know when we might do one to two it just doesn't um there's no cost benefit there um so again maintaining our fleet equipment goes a long way uh the slope mower i've said it already about stormwater um that's why we have that as a low priority is it's needed by the department but if we cannot come up with a funding then it would be pushed off a year and become a high priority in the future year and i want to give a big shout out to the utility department and the fact that when they brought this enhancement to us it's they're going out there right sizing the fleet they have vehicle excuse me they have individuals that are out there driving um big utility box trucks when they could potentially be driving f-150s or a maverick something like that so mr parish and glenn they're really looking at right sizing the fleet and the reason why this is an enhancement and not a replacement is we have more than one vehicle that has doubled up with manpower in it and that these eight additional vehicles would be to allow people to split up and not have to drive together so that we can go handle potentially you know items you lift station maintenance and well maintenance when it only requires one person to do it and multiple people multiple people are out there doing it so we can

do our maintenance on a quicker basis vice mayor harriet john is uh the slow mower is that something i see it's a little priority but is that something that could also be accomplished with the minzy muck truck because i know that that has a mowing feature and all kinds of other things the answer is yes

but then that minzy muck is a little slower to get from point a to point b so if you have a slope mower that's more designed for that versus getting down into ditches it you know it just again helps to get our stormwater conveyance system maintained much quicker with the additional pieces of equipment and the fact that we have you know contractors that are um you know assisting you know our staff to get work done that just gives us more tools in the bag to get the job done good and here's the total enhancement request by fund um i can tell you that um if you know you'll concur with the enhancements within the general fund we have enough money from prior year reserves to fund it fleet is funded by an allocation of all operating funds based on the fleet by department um stormwater utility we've talked about it water wastewater again gotta have to look at where our rate study comes in but once this is done and we get a preliminary nod to move forward with them then all of this goes to the rate consult rate rate consultant towards their plan okay so the affordable housing why this is up here is it was brought to my attention when we were doing the budget process that back in 2022 the ahac recommended that the city reserve one percent of its annual budget to facilitate and establish a community land trust as part of their annual report then we found that in 24 they amended it it didn't have the actual statement to set aside one percent of the annual budget it just made the statement that it's highly recommended that they set aside money per their 2022 report so i wanted to just bring that to the commission to see what the you know the guide was as we're building this year's budget so that we make sure we hit the appropriate targets so we put together a couple of um options so um in my opinion um you know the uh you know the this committee you know it's kind of hard for them to say the the entire city budget you know because it's you can't really set aside well the city commission can absolutely set the money aside but it's not typically typical that you would set aside one percent of water storm water solid waste you know building etc that it's typically you know when you set up a land trust it's typically based off the general fund so my recommendation would be that if we're going to set aside one percent it would be based upon the tax proceeds from ad valorem because we have so many revenue streams that come into the general fund that are you know restricted for certain items only so where you where you have complete utilization of the funds is is on the ad valorem side so my recommendation would be if we're going to adhere to the recommendation to to create in a community land trust then i would do it based off the taxable value so at our 5.1 billion dollar taxable value at seven mills that brings in just under 36 million dollars less than 95 percent that i'm supposed to do so a little over 34 million dollars less the portion that we have to transfer to the cra as part of the tax increment and debt service related to the general fund that was based off of ad valorem as being the um the funding source that would mean that there's 333 000 that could be set aside as part of this community land trust if you were doing to do it based off of what the um um the recommendation was the citywide budget and that's down to one one million dollars if you look at the entire general fund budget less debt service contingencies transfers out etc it's just under 600 000 so this is look to buy as was said earlier you know you know land for the future so if you're going to do it i i think that doing it this way is the um least questionable methodology that's just my my opinion this this land trust are we

looking at this for affordable housing for high density development essentially um i would defer that to jordan back there that's a good question what what kind of affordable housing what would this money be used for specifically what types of projects how would this money be used um the intent is not for um high density multi-family it's more for single family okay so it would be more of a um like a buy and refurbish type project where we would buy houses refurbish the houses sell them for no profit

for for as affordable housing correct that's one option also to um acquire land as well okay um and to

the land lease okay thank you jordan i got a comment to that so to clarify the definition of affordable housing affordable housing is not and i'm not making this common um as disrespect to section a affordable housing you have to qualify for a mortgage you have to pay whatever the mortgage amount is you get

no help from the government as opposed to section a yeah i understand that and i i mean i think a lot of us qualify are right around the am i or within the hundred and there's others right it's not it's not

section eight it's a much larger discussion it's right i mean you have to qualify for mortgage you have to have an income and qualify for mortgage and if you see the chart that's put together by the state not the city you would wonder how in the world can it be called affordable housing because it is not affordable just wanted to clarify that thank you that's a good clarification and also uh this is

right along the the track that um mr smith mentioned was what i was thinking of what i my preference for affordable attainable whichever buzzword we want to use housing where it's not sectioned off it's it's amongst the community you can't say at no point will a child get picked on because they live in an area that is affordable housing yeah so right you know it's it's spread amongst the community you

can't identify it from from the neighbor yeah one of the things that i know myself when i speak to developers is i try to get them to include affordable housing in their projects haven't been lucky but um you know that's one of the projects that i will have loved or still continue to hope to see as part of in you know developments and stuff like that commissioner howington commissioner vila vasquez i don't

want to put you on uh on the spot but when you look at this with your experience with a hack out of the recommendations and the options that are presented to us would you have a preference based on your

knowledge your you know communication and participation i think the recommendation is fair and and i just want i'm looking over to my shoulder because uh commissioner colwell is my backup uh you know and we represent the state right you know i represent the state so that's commissioner colwell i think recommendation from the the um the staff is fair and i know that jordan was part of this so i don't think jordan would lead us down the wrong path um so um i think it's fair absolutely thank you i mean considering that we have nowhere to build affordable housing at the moment right um you know and looking at land lease would be our next option hopefully but i think we have to be re-educated as far as what land lease really is so yeah i think that's a great option that we can

look at in the future and i love the idea info lots so thank you i i value your opinion that's why i wanted to get your input thank you and this would be a really good job and mayor this would be an

annual amount so jordan and i would probably just come back and bring a resolution so that that's in place so that it makes a statement if the option one or the staff recommendation is what everyone agrees to then we would just want to probably memorialize it with legal in a resolution

and that would be one percent annually not so that is that is correct that is correct and you

could all you know again it's a recommendation so you could always just make this you know statement that 333 000 annually or 350 000 or 300 i mean you could just do it as a flat amount if you wanted you know again it's a recommendation but you're correct is ad valorem increase then the amount going

into it would increase as well that's correct and also just to piggyback on your question um currently we do um the local board they do buy uh homes and they refurnish them and sell them as affordable housing um you know around the city of deltona all right yes um now would y'all want us to obviously

there would be a restriction on the usage but would you want us to also put it in a max so you know if we collect money for five years and we now have two million dollars and there's been no land available to purchase do you want us to put a ceiling in the amount that we would collect i think i think uh

and i'll get to you vice mayor harry but i think we we probably should also consider uh revisiting this subject every three to four years or something like that vice mayor i'd like to see us revisit it

every year just for the discussion um and then also something i think a three years collection if we're if we've collected three years worth of uh one percent and we haven't bought any properties or

we're still carrying a large balance i i we need to yeah i just think every year maybe it's a little too too much if you think about 300 and 300 000 that's not in some cases not even a house you know so i to to not put too much stress on staff i i i would recommend just as a suggestion maybe every two to three years so at least there's some funds in there and we can have an idea of what we're using i mean staff can always come back and give us a couple options you know they have to come back

for the budget yeah right so we can also bring it when um jordan and his crew bring in the report we can talk about it then and then it can then fall into the budget process makes things a little

kind of smoother at that point yeah because it's in in my way thought process it's goes along with this workshop annually you know because it's money set aside for uh acquisition right in in fyi

when i we have state meetings uh quarterly and i can tell you deltona is the only part the only city that does not have affordable housing so it's a shame you know when i have nothing to report on

deltona so go ahead john okay uh mayor would you mind if we take a five minute break let's go ahead

and make it a ten minute break and that way everyone can use the restroom thank you so we'll reconvene at i can see that watch this it's 30 after 10 40. oh we're the tag team we do the we got to schedule it again we do the uh diabetes uh yeah we do the diet we do a diabetes town hall every year so type one type two bring awareness listen i'm almost pre-diabetic so i'm reversing mine go ahead john okay sorry you're not sidetracked

on the odd chance all right guys on the odd chance that my wife is listening to this which i highly doubt i won't say you were back there eating all the stuff you're eating but i want to tell her happy 29th anniversary so we both got married we both got married at 10 so you know but no i just want to i you know so anyway um now mayor we're going to kind of change we've talked about cip we've talked about capital outlay we've talked about enhancements now we need to talk about how do we pay for everything i'm glad i can get a you know laugh out of you know paying so anyway so as y'all i've said this several times today um we're ongoing with a water wastewater um rate study um that should be completed here in the next two months we will make sure that the appropriate public notice goes out to all of our utility customers so that they know that it's coming up so if that gets approved then obviously the budget book that gets distributed in august will be based on those fees so that when we come for the public hearing in september then that budget is based on those those fees the fees would be implemented based on current practice october 1st so any bills that would go out after october 1st would have the new rates built into it we're looking at the review of our building permit fees and all of our miscellaneous fees those fees once they go in we have to you know set everything and get everything within our fee schedule set up those fees would more than likely we would recommend going into effect january 1st of 2026 give me one john i don't mean to interrupt you just can we

make sure we uh some of the people that want to speak can't push the button so try to go out and

go back in this is why we need the fiber upgrade because we're still on um dial-up

in the chamber okay go ahead john i didn't mean to no worries mayor in the meantime if you want to

speak just put up your go ahead john then we're looking at the impact fees so you know so we already talked about you know the fact that we're implementing that then we would then if we get the study later this year then we need to give time for jordan to work with the developers and contractors so that they can get the word out there over impact fees if it comes back that the impact fees exceed the threshold allowed by law to increase in one year then we also have to build into the account that it might require a three-year phase in period and i don't have that written in front of me but i i forget the percentage of the fees increase you're required by law to phase it in over three years so isn't that requirement yeah i think we're all on the board no no hold on finish let him finish when he's done then we go over the questions so that's where we are with our current fee study not assessment studies or anything like that just existing fee studies that's all i have

on this topic mayor all right so on the board is vice mayor harriet then commissioner harmington

so i wanted to ask about the timing because we have an exception we have not increased these fees in 10 years so with that we are not held to the constraint of the the slow rolling of increasing our fees because we have the exception so it was confirmed to me by zach that we can actually do a full increase based on what is recommended from the studies so i want to make sure that we are focused on that rather than doing the multi-year implementation because this is a problem our infrastructure is is is failing and having issues and we're not keeping up with the new development so we want to make sure that we capture as much of the impact fees immediately i don't i i i'm concerned because i keep hearing conversations saying well we can't exceed the cap well the cap doesn't apply to us because we are an exception many communities across florida are dealing with this right now and they are getting exceptions because they are in the same exact position as us so we have some that are going up three times what their current rates are so i just want to make sure i only play an attorney on sundays

so i will discuss it with zach only because again yep that's what that's the portion of the statute that i see and again i'm not an attorney but if there's an exception then absolutely um zach would tell us what

we can and can't do yes please just make sure that that stays on the radar and that we focus on the

exception because we don't want to drag it out so zach and jim are definitely involved when we send out the information we get so they will stipulate the proper way that we're expecting the exception to be considered by the additional or by like the the vendors that we're looking at or the consultants in this situation so thank you we definitely work back with them on that thank you vice mayor harriet

do you still want to say something yeah i did the uh thank you commissioner howington for bringing that up that's that was something that uh i also wanted to mention the other thing i'd like to mention or i'd like to ask staff to look into is our user fees so for our fees for our parks and for all the services that we provide if we can just take a look at those and make sure that they are reflective of the of what goes into that so that is also part of monday night's budget so that's being

looked at as well and we've actually um dana in my office and has been working with every department putting together a master fee schedule also that we can bring everything instead of this individual this rezo that rezo it will be one rezo that we look at annually perfect and to the mayor's comment earlier um it actually puts into there that you know the rezo would be set that this requires an annual review on these fees and you know three years on these fees you know so that it's set in stone for future staff to know when they're to do things as well so that's all built into that fee schedule sir moving on to our special assessments so last year the rate consultant came in so that we would by fiscal year 2029 have a maximum 250 per year stormwater fee one of the things that staff we looked at these last couple of months is that for next year it was stated to go from 170 to 200. so we took a look at it because it makes it easier for people to plan if you had a set amount per year so our record staff recommendation after speaking with um gov rates was to do 2020 2020 so that by 29 we got to 250 annually um so that's you know then when we send the letter out in june we were a were in the past we've always sent a letter out every year the letter that's been drafted for this june would stipulate that the maximum we would could go to without further you know distribution would be 250 per year what that does is you know i haven't looked at the fee here but when i did this in my previous employer which we had 10 000 or less parcels the postage alone for that letter is just under 20 000 so it's probably about 25 30 000 here so we instead of doing that annually we would just capture it in one letter through 2029 and it's very clear in the letter that looking at 20 a year maximum of 250 and we've also drafted it such that it um spells out the benefits of that the public gets as a result we talk about the number of miles of drainage ditch the number of pond so that they see that there is a cost involved in maintaining the stormwater conveyance system okay um did y'all have a or is commissioner howington has a question okay go ahead yeah so so in general would y'all be comfortable with us reducing it the 20 increase versus the 30 for next fiscal year that's a yes for me but

commissioner you have a question on this specific yes thank you mayor so i think i caught at the end

you will be notifying the residents once a year of the increase for the mailing we currently do it

every time that we increase it we're allowed by law to do one letter that encapsulates all future years that was based off of a race study so seeing that we had a rate study completed that stated that it was 250 dollars per year by 2029 and it specified the reasons why we could do one letter to save us immensely versus doing a single letter every year for the next four years 120 000 that's correct so we can instead of spending 120 000 i could spend probably you know 20 to 25 000 somewhere in

there to capture at one time okay so if you have a new resident that moves in within the middle of

those years how are we going to notify then when they come into the building department to get their building permits or whatnot they can they hand it out and it's on our website we have everything would be spelled out on our our websites and any brochures that are handed out and we could actually have within now that customer service will be here within the building we can even make sure that we have the letter that we distribute readily available for anyone that comes in the building when they establish

a new account so we have a mail out in the water bills yes ma'am um i don't know i just kind of feel that one letter for five years or four years it's a little bit um i cannot include the storm water um bill

or message within the water sewer bill it has to be sent to all parcel owners addresses that own property within the city limits of deltona the other thing though is i point out in that you know seeing that the majority of our citizens you know out of 40 000 parcels 25 000 parcels are single family residents with a homestead exemption so that means the overwhelming majority of our property owners or full-time residents so it doesn't preclude us from putting in and my past preference has always been anytime that we're talking about any type of changes and fees for water sewer storm water solid waste i give a cursory message on the utility bill so that our customers are aware of it so this you know so even though we might only send one letter out there would be some kind of notice that we would put

into that's what i was referring to when it came to the water bill that is correct but but just so

that i'm so for the compliance portion of florida statute i can do it by one one letter yep good

vice mayor and and the other piece of that is um anybody moving into the city that's where our realtors really need to step up and and be accurate about what what the taxes are and what the fees are you're not assuming the tax bill of the person selling the house your tax rate will go up this is something i've got some passion about because i i have seen far too many times where a realtor provides an estimated tax bill based off of what the previous owner was paying and then the assessed value refreshes with the sale price and then everybody gets like shocked so the realtors need to step up on that one i'll be i'll be frank to say that so okay okay so mayor on solid waste we

currently pay 235 sorry we currently have an assessment of 235 annually for residential properties waste pro charges commercial properties directly so we have no you know even though we see the rates all that same all that's handled separately we're currently in negotiations yes i was trying to get tori sorry no not really um the we're currently in negotiations with waste pro for next year's rates there's some local municipalities that have gone out for rfp so we're taking a look closely at those fees as we do the evaluation of next year's rates we have already been informed that the tipping fees are increasing with volusia county because we pay the tipping fees directly not through waste pro so we will have more information and we're looking to bring that back to you no later than the second meeting in june for their waste pros new contract okay commissioner howington did you want us so

i've mentioned this a couple times in meetings are we also looking at the option of potentially increasing service because if we're going to be raising rates for people but not offering additional service are we going to be given options to look at or is this just going to waste pro and that's it because i would like to see options for us and have community input from our residents would they like to see two days a week service if we're going to raise the bill if for an extra four dollars a month they can get a secondary pickup would that be worth it to our residents as well as getting recycling added back there was two days a week no it's we only get trash pickup once once a week and then we get yard waste once a week there are communities that aren't paying much more than the rate that would be expected in this new negotiation that would allow two pickups plus yard waste plus recycling so i just want to make sure that we're not being closed-minded and that we're looking at all the

options for our residents so i do believe the recycling is actually um they're considering removing that entirely i mean with the challenges with dealing with some of our foreign countries who do not they're no longer taking the recycled products um even some of the other company or cities local cities that have recycling are having to look at closing those programs so i would say right recycling is probably not something that will be on the table from waste pro or or even waste management now i'm just not thinking that we need to stick with waste pro entirely i'd like to look

at everybody because i know i've just looked at some of the recent rfps that went out and communities are paying between 28 to 32 dollars for two days a week service plus yard waste plus recycling and so i think we're currently at 19 do we have an estimate of where we might land at all because

i think the numbers i've heard have been somewhere between 23 to 25. so i i we have been speaking with them and we've given them a rate based off of a recent proposal and we can't say publicly right now

because obviously we're negotiating with them but uh there are other cities that we're bouncing off of to try to come up with the lowest rate possible but certainly if you want to pay more for more services that would certainly be acceptable but keep in mind this is a seven-year contract so everything has gone up in seven years so there's definitely going to be some slight increase no matter

what we do but if we come back and tell people they're going to be paying 25 dollars with maybe three dollars more they can get double the service it might be worth it to our residents and i would

love to hear from them on that those numbers are correct but we know some are at 32 dollars

some communities in this area that's why i said some are i've seen some at 28 and up to 32 so somewhere in that four dollar range i'm just saying let's not be closed-minded let's we're trying to be open-minded and look at all the options that are available to us certainly i think people want to go as cheap as

possible but uh going 32 or up in that area could be a possibility but i don't think it would be acceptable to that as it is but certainly well if they didn't increase the service i could see that

being the case however if we offer additional service that would that would justify an increase

in cost so we would have to double the trucks in the city if we went to twice a week service and statistics have shown that whether you're at two weeks or one week a typical household does not increase their tonnage at the street you know so not that you know we give each individual time but the the tipping fees and what we tip does not increase going to twice a week so that's just been the recommendation listening to whether it's waste pro waste management all of them over the years where there's been a push to go to the once a week pickup and the other thing that was pointed out to us on the whole recycling is that if the recycling is dirty it's already being dumped at the landfill anyway they don't go in and try and separate it out so it actually would then winds up costing us more money to do that versus just you know taking it straight to the dump so you know there's just no there's no money and they don't recycle glass anymore and there's no nothing there's no money in plastics or cardboard either so it's becoming harder and harder to find an outlet to send that

those commodities to so all i'm asking is that we're given options because i would like to hear from the community as to what they would like to have rather than just cramming a rate increase down someone's throat if there's an option for better service i would like to look into that option i don't know do any of the other commissioners feel differently i mean well i just i just want to

say that um deltona is has the largest residential daytona beach service deltona has the biggest residential and even though palm coast is in flagler that would be probably the next city that we can probably compare to deltona as far as residential um and i can tell you that my son lives there and he

pays double of what we pay and they use waste pro so i found out the reason for that commissioner they actually transport all of their trash from palm coast to the tomoka landfill that is why their rates in palm coast flagler county in general are so much higher they do not have their own landfill and we do yes well deltona doesn't we we take it to the tomoka landfill off of 415 so but it's not ours it's not ours right it's a lot closer so you're saying they're charging because of the mileage yes ma'am every truck has to drive from interior palm coast all the way to south of daytona

there to the tomoka landfill yeah and and also um we since i've been here we've been through a lot of changes with waste pro um they wanted more convenient trucks then they brought the trucks that loaded the garbage by itself then they wanted they felt that that wasn't sufficient because um they wanted somebody to physically you know empty the garbage truck the garbage cans into the trucks so they took those trucks out after they spent the money to bring them into deltona they brought the old trucks back with two people now on it um and i think at that time didn't we have two twice collected garbage just garbage twice a week with the new trucks and then going back to two people uh we cut it down to one garbage and one um you know the other wednesdays well for me it's wednesday um and we got the best rate on that so we also have to remember that the more we request from them the higher they're going to charge it the more they're going to charge it so you know just uh we've been through a lot of and i can tell you i'm not advocating for waste pro but we've had um other bids and waste pro has always come in with the best rates and the best service for the city of deltona um so the more we ask of them the

more we're going to have to pay we will put together the options yeah waste pro comes back to us but yeah that's what i was going to say i'd like to see some options i mean it doesn't hurt to see

maybe the option is just a single pickup a week but we don't know unless we look i don't hear from

a lot of people that um they want twice a week pickup for garbage um i think primarily for most of the residents that i represent district one i think keeping that bill as low as possible is is the most important um but i have heard from a few that have large families that would benefit from

twice a week pick up so um i just want everyone to keep in mind yeah exactly if we do to go to twice a week just remember it's twice the usage on our roads twice the usage or twice the emails i know i have one or two residents that have consistent issues i don't know if it's a truck that's in that specific route or not but the oil spillage the hydraulic spills i mean i'm again everybody here knows i'm not advocating for waste provider but if it's something's not broken let's not try to fix it so we'll get the additional options but if if at the end of the day the lowest form to our residents is to stay with one day a week then we should probably not try to deviate too much from

that so out of curiosity to your point that you just mentioned if they have newer trucks if we go to the two-day-a-week service could we potentially mitigate some of those issues if they are using the newer trucks they're not using the newer trucks well not today right but but i'm wondering why what would be the reasoning because if they were able to do the two days a week before you know maybe that is an issue that needs to be dealt with if they're using antiquated

equipment to service i mean i will i will let them speak on that behalf i'm not sure about their trucks i'm just when i was mentioning the trucks it was uh the trucks that automatically pick up the garbage and they don't do that anymore right so i wouldn't i don't want to speak on their behalf i think they should you know come up and do the explanation i'm just glad i don't have to pick up my own

tracks and take it out to the landfill so one of the items as part of the negotiation is new trucks nothing more than a certain amount of months old and that they keep them within a certain period of time so that's already included in some of our conversation um so that that will definitely be

part of the options that we'll bring back and they're having the same issue too is that they they're ordering them and they're the lead time is far greater than it used to i mean it's a universal

issue on all big equipment i believe it's the converters the catalytic converters and some other parts

so street lighting mayor we have quite a few street lighting districts within the the city limits so we've been informed that we're looking at a 12.93 percent increase um potentially from fbl so we've been speaking to public works think it might be maybe half of it potentially but we have to be prepared that whatever that increase is is a pass through to the districts if you're a duke customer then you're looking at this point in time a two percent increase so when we come to you in july for all of the special assessment resolutions to send to the property appraiser and tax collector we will have that um ironed out hopefully by then um then lake mcgarity i think vice mayor has

and then i have requests as well on street lighting the single largest request that i hear from residents in district one and myself is residential street lighting i'm not talking about the big lights on the corner that are fpl and duke i'm talking about the ones that are in front of houses that are on the sidewalk so that neighbors have a lit path when they walk in the evenings um so whatever we can do to look into that i i would like to prioritize that at least in district one i don't know if that's something other commissioners hear about but yeah i if i'm sure your district yeah which lightens are

those because i mean there's houses that have the streets i'm sorry inside the streets on the streets not on the property the ones that are in front of their house yeah not the telephone that's on the

residents that is they pay for that but i guess what he's asking is um to get some put in and then i guess the residents because i know the one by my house i pay for it because no not the ones on the

telephone poles like we have one in our cul-de-sac that's on the telephone pole no it's on your property

the one i'm talking about is a lamp on your on residence property that you have to call directly and they'll install it for you and then you're responsible for it yeah i'm not talking about that

those okay i don't think i don't think that that's what i'm talking about i know that commissioner howington you live in a newer subdivision that's that's the street lighting

that i'm talking about okay so i i could actually speak to that because i do we have an hoa we actually pay for those directly we are not one of the communities that run through the street lighting program with the city but if i'm not mistaken most of the communities that do those are actually subdivisions aren't they i think it's like kensington estates is one we can do the same thing more or

less with uh street lighting assessment for the residential benefit units right and so if we did

that city-wide though then that would have to be something that would be charged directly because this is like you said it's a pass-through correct and we're billing directly to the people who are

getting the benefit and i don't know that it makes sense to do it city-wide right off the bat i think if we put district districts in or smaller areas in because it's going to take time to put them and put them in it needs to be coordinated with the sidewalk installs because they there's no sense in putting street lights in if it's not a sidewalk associated with it so it i'd like to see staff put together a plan to put in sidewalks and street lights and specifically the street lights and and understanding that that cost gets charged back to the residents in a in a fee a lighting assessment fee rather than

ad valorem what is the maintenance on the program managing the program from an accounting standpoint is it that's like this like the street light that we have in our neighborhood yes correct yeah i think it's like 20 25 dollars per light or something yeah but and i think we have like

a hundred in my neighborhood every other house that's putting that cost with two houses and it's

all right it gives usability to the community city manager you're up and that used okay so i i have two two requests i'm gonna ask you directly because obviously um can we can we get some type of uh since we're down by street lighting what it would what would it take for the the the lights specifically on the main roads to go underground because that that would be very beneficial for hurricane season uh even for flooding i i know i've reached out specifically to both of the companies and that that actually would protect us in those in those two cases we'd have to put all the power we'd have

to put all the power underground because they're largely on street light or on telephone poles or the

power poles so so that's one and the other one might not be a very popular one but i'm looking at fpl tends to be from from the bills that i've seen tends to be the more affordable electric option what the reasoning is i have no idea what can i get some type of uh i guess budgeting or whatever it is on what would happen if we were to remove the franchise fee from customers bills and the utility tax as well our ad valorem would go up a lot well just like you guys want something i would like to see

what that would look like i understand just remember when you take away from one you have to increase

the other so just letting you know i understand yeah i just what what irritates the living life out of me is we literally have this negotiation with fpl and duke energy and we say collect a franchise fee and we promise not to start our own electric company but we're they're not paying us the franchise fee they're putting it directly on customers bills so essentially we're getting our residents to pay that fee so we don't start our own electric company so yeah i understand why you're

why you're asking the question i think it's a good question to ask but we also need to keep in mind that that that fee gets passed on to every user if we assume that fee and pay for it out of ad valorem then that now will get pushed off to half of the properties what is that fee well that's part

of the question what is that fee really is being used for because technically the fee is so that we don't start our own electric company that's what that fee specifically states that i understand but

we we only collect we collect the majority of our i'm not trying to do this i just want something in return i understand i i just want to make sure that everybody not not you but everybody understands that we collect ad valorem revenue from like half of the parcels in the city half of the parcels pay the bulk of the ad valorem revenue so anything we add to ad valorem we're taking off of everybody equally and putting it on so that's why i want to see what that's specific what the utility tax

pays because i'm sure that pays something but what is the franchise fee specifically what does that pay

for so one of the things um that city manager and i spoke about that as we go through the budgeting process we have dates in june july and september but as we go through the next few months if there's highlights as part of the budget process that i might be coming up at the end of commissioner meetings yes to answer these questions so i would just give you in a nutshell our general fund budget for this year as adopted not amended was 71 million dollars our ad valorem proceeds was just over 33 million dollars so between the user fees franchise fees state revenue share etc those are the income streams that make up the difference that pay for parks general government fire etc so it would have a pretty dramatic impact to reduce it because as the vice mayor stated you know there's a lot of individuals um within again we are predominantly a residential community and we have a lot of you know parcels here of residential parcels that um have a lot of exemptions for this reason or that reason that i'll bring back more detail in june but um as the vice mayor stated these user fees the sales tax that we pay that we get from the state of florida the franchise fees it gets charged universally to everybody um no matter whether or not you have an exemption you know so if you if you reduce those fees then what that does is it simply means that we have to increase potential ad valorem the millage rates and then that only gets charged by the people um the citizens parcel owners based on their taxable value less than the exemption so it just spreads the burden to a more smaller group

restricted group of people okay i understand i just i'm curious to what what those amounts are what they pay just because on duke energy i've seen the bills with my very own eyes and i'm looking at people between those two fees on their electric bill alone not exaggerating some of them are paying upwards of 108 just on those two specific fees and i'm sorry but when you have a family regardless of the size and just paying a hundred dollars i think fpl the average i saw was about 25 dollars it's not bad right even though that's a month but with duke energy a hundred dollars a month just on those two fees that that that's just something it shouldn't be that high and if

there's any way that and i can give us a copy of them then we can get with our representative with fpl on that if there could have been a bill is it a flat fee or is it it's a percentage it's

a percentage so how does that work with people who have solar panels and end up only paying the 30 35 a month are we in the same boat as like people with electric vehicles not paying fuel taxes is that so welcome to the world well no i'm just asking the question yeah i don't have solar panels

on my house but it'd be curious if someone does i do i can provide my bills awesome i have thank you

do you have duke or fpl i know i know somebody with solar panels on fpl yeah i'd be curious to see

um the three of us would be curious to see those they credit you back right they credit they credit you

back um about how do they credit how do they charge the fee right it's the fee so how is the franchise fee

being charged because if it's a percentage of our total bill our minimum bill is thirty dollars so i typically pay thirty five dollars because there's usually taxes and such but it would be interesting to see you know to compare how is this working for somebody that's solar panels versus somebody who doesn't and maybe that maybe we pick some of that up in the permitting fees

when people get solar panels but i'm glad that you um get that explanation because i don't want residents to think that um these fees are not being useful for the city correct thank you for that

thank you okay and then our final special assessment is the lake mcgarity so the residents um around lake mcgarity they have an enhanced level of service that they pay for exclusively that they created their and um non-avalorum tax to get the the pond maintained currently they have over ninety five thousand dollars in fund balance um you know and where the maintenance is ongoing there's been no reduction at level of service it's just based on the fee charged it's it's added up so public works has recommended next year to reduce it from 60 to 30 dollars per parcel i'm seeing that it's their money and it's there so um staff definitely how long is this this is once a year once a year so

this is a good example for the the affordable housing one percent where you could see a natural

reduction absolutely okay nobody's on the board so you can continue okay um future rate studies so we've talked about it it's all part of monday night's agenda we have um requests for my monies to pay for the building general and impact fees those are all um items that will take roughly six months to complete um just based off of the fact that other municipalities already have it in their queue for this year's budget process so we would be a little um later coming in and then i will get with zach um on implementation requirements um for the impact fees um any questions on this one nobody's on the board okay fire assessment discussion um so that's in here as a a separate slide simply and there's no funding for monday night on this it's more of an open discussion to see how to move forward it's been asked what would a fire assessment fee be used to pay for it can be used to pay for new and remodeled fire stations apparatus and equipment within the stations whether new or replacement it can be used to pay for the debt service on any um outstanding debt related to fire stations equipment excluding ems you cannot use it to pay for an ambulance we call them transports it can also be used to pay for salary and benefits of firefighters not on an ems unit or any position where it's strictly related to ems um i've heard it said um a couple of times in the day's um session is you know a fire assessment fee is universal across all parcels there's typically one rate that's paid for the residential a different rate for commercial um churches etc there's also when you get into the detail of it there's also um if it's put into the study then if there's exemptions based on need for low income there's methodologies that are utilized that if someone has a true um income based request for a reduction um they're in there um i think that um just you know as you're going to see at the june workshop just how our parcels um you know you know out of 40 000 parcels 25 000 are homesteaded there's 13 000 parcels alone that have no exemptions or they're commercial so they you know they pay a much larger percentage of taxes than you know someone just used me as an example of the double homestead exemption you know so there's 50 000 in my taxable value that i just don't pay towards you know any type of tax to my municipality or county so when you have a fire assessment fee that's something that can be spread out over all the users of the system and i can just tell you from prior experience you know where i had a fire assessment fee is that you know the difference between a fire assessment fee and someone paying a property tax based on their value is it can amount to anywhere between you know 50 and a thousand dollars difference just depending on the value of your home so there in my opinion it is something that we might want to look at just to see what the benefits of an assessment might be it wouldn't even if we look at it it doesn't mean we have to go to it it just means we have the hard data to make an informed decision on whether whether or not it's beneficial

to beltona commissioner howington then commissioner vila vasquez so this was one of the items that i

had asked the attorneys to go back and look at the exemptions because one of the exemptions that we can offer is to our 100 service-related disabled vets my concern with this and i and i understand the purpose and what we will be using it for is we're actually taking expenses out of avalorum which by all means somebody like me is going to benefit greatly because i do pay seven thousand dollars a year in taxes and we're moving it to the much larger pool of all the homes within deltona so we are spreading the cost out by creating an assessment i'm curious what is the level of effort that's required for accounting because now we're going to have to start if we were to go this route we would have to start itemizing expenses versus fire ems that sort of thing and we have a lot of paramedic firemen who kind of do double duty so how do we start accounting for that cost are we creating new need for accountants and things like that to man to maintain this and then also that concern for our churches and other organizations that are going to be impacted by this that may not currently be impacted so essentially we could be taking half of the homes in deltona and saying you're not paying this tax but now you are because this is already an existing expense on our part the expenditures already exist for our fire we would be moving them outside of avalorum into non-avalorum

correct um yes ma'am um so currently several of your questions so um division 221 is fire operate i'm sorry fire admin 222 is fire operations going in the next year's budget 223 will be um transport services with the fact that um in july august we're going to the new ukg time system we will we already have an easy mechanism by which to keep track of the six individuals a day that are on transports plus the one or two people in admin that are part of the ems system in terms of um accounting um it would not increase other than you know the chief staff and you know making sure that bills come in get charged to the 223 account and that's going to be not a huge impact and we have 1033 veterans and disabled exemptions currently um we have 130 charitable organizations receiving the exemption as well so we would be taking that information and providing that hard data to the company consultant that would be doing any any of this so you know um you know there is a lot to be said and i was going to bring that up during the june workshop but homestead alone has 692 million dollars of assessed value that brings in a 4.8 million dollar tax savings as a result of that exemption the veterans and disabled have an assessed value of 232 million and that's a tax saving of 1.65 million and 130 charitable organizations is valued at 212 million and that's a savings of 8 million dollars in taxes and then you have the over 13 000 parcels that have no exemptions that are valued at 5.7 billion and you know and again you know being deltona is predominantly a residential with minimal commercial you know that's where the the majority of the tax burden exists it's even on our solid waste you know typically speaking you know higher commercial um customer account helps to subsidize the residential in this case we don't have commercial so it's the residentials that subsidize the commercial you know so all of these are things that would all of this data would be taken into account by the consultant to see is this the right mix for deltona it might not be um you know but we have to make sure that between the the veterans and disabled and charitable exemption status is out there we have to make sure that we account for that on any type of um fee structure that we put together thank you the options that we would look for would

be uh possibly could include um as john mentioned earlier that if we set a limit like an income earned that you would bring your w-2s in or your your tax paperwork in we would have a small program that could incur a little bit of uh staff um we've been there before so it's not heavy but it would allow those who are at a level that they don't feel that they should or could pay that amount and we can respect that then we would administer that program on an annual basis um you can also set a different rate and that's what they would come back and provide us as options a different rate for your charitable versus your residential um not necessarily the best way but it is a way that you can consider it but you also can look at all the apparatus we're going to have to buy in future years also seeing programs where we've definitely used those dollars for apparatus so that you are taking that out of your tax burden and then you look at your tax your military how do you want to distribute that you have a leniency then to do something from your from the dais as to what that military might look like in the future if you do um adjust your fee schedule right or adjust your your dollars um but the the biggest thing is really what are the outlook for these six stations if you're going to build stations how are we going to pay for them are we paying for them out of avalorm or impact fees or something else so there will be a cost to do that or even if it's remodeled one or two there's a cost so just looking at that big picture will bring you back ideas there will be a lot of options um they're they're accustomed to giving you multiple ways to look at that you can also limit so these are programs that will be brought to you that could have a three-year limit could have a five-year limit some of them will go with a let's say it's a 20-year build so it'll go with a 20-year build if you're looking at building stations but we'll bring you lots of options um so the public can look at that but as well as um you to consider that as we may move forward so that will probably be an ongoing conversation through june and july and we may bring some of those um options it may take longer than that to i believe they were looking at six months before they could give us really anything if you all want us to go that direction because they're not ready to provide us that information right away

that's correct so we don't have to have the complete study just a needs assessment so if the needs assessment shows that it's you know a path to move forward in then there are just certain key things that have to be done in the november december time frame by meeting mandated statutory requirement newspaper postings five weeks um leading up to a resolution being passed no later than the second meeting of december so that we inform the property appraiser tax collector of a potential non-avalorum assessment um so you know as we go through this budget process i'll bring more information to you

you know on what any required steps are and even if we do meet that requirement and advertise it if you decide at a point in time later again that can just become null and void it's not a big deal we just need to meet the requirement if you're moving us in that direction and still deciding we need to meet that requirement but then we can always back out of that if that's something you choose as a

commission thank you commissioner vila vasquez and vice mayor harriet thank you mayor but i got my answer

okay vice mayor so i i would really like to see what that looks like the fire assessment fee i think um what i'm looking for is to spread that burden since it's a service that everybody in the city receives every parcel in the city receives i'd like to see that i'd like to see that paid for by every parcel in the city um i would also like to see as part of this a corresponding reduction in the general fund village that's that is a priority for me to make sure that that uh we are spreading that cost to every user every benefit unit um and then reducing it you know an equitable reduction from the general fund millage yes absolutely um and i saw that yeah and uh commissioner howington to your point uh i'm extremely supportive of our our military veterans that gave it all or or gave a significant portion and are 100 service disabled um and i think it's important that we do have a mechanism for those that are financially constrained so that we're not putting an undue burden on them uh since they did give it you know their time to allow us to be here so i would like to see that mechanism for them to have uh the hardship um assessments more or less we're seeing that we're doing the

mid-year budget monday night would there be consensus for me to add funding for this to be looked at yes for me okay okay well then i will amend um the backup for monday night and i will get that to you all first thing monday morning which would incorporate um that additional um fee so just

remember mid-year is on the consent agenda so if you have any questions ahead of time and we can answer those please reach out to us but i think we've gone through with several of you that the agenda so it would just be adjusting it by this exact amount that's needed and we would make that

change but not change it from consent perfect okay so mayor in summary uh this morning's um presentation includes 71.7 million dollars in capital improvement across numerous funds and funding sources most of it within as stated within the general fund and a good portion of storm water and water wastewater is completely funded as is we have over five million dollars in capital replacement for vehicle equipment most of that also is funded from prior year appropriations and set asides over 2.1 million in enhancements and we've talked about planned fee implementation between october 1st of 2025 and april 5th of 2026 that's a monday so unless there's any other questions regarding that we will look to start putting all of these items items in the planned budget um document that will come back to you in june so that you can see the funding and where it would come from where it would go to um unless there's any questions

questions about storm water yes sir i had them in my notes in the back and i thought we were going to ask questions at the end

and by the way i think we're still doing questions yes sir i can wait i can wait i can wait till the end that's fine okay

yes sir so our next um budget workshop and action dates are as follow on june the 23rd at 6 pm we will be coming back discussing revenue projections operating and capital on projects that we've placed in the budget on july 21st we're setting the maximum millage as well as we will have all the required resolutions for the various special assessments that we have to inform the tax collector of for the trim notice and then in september we have two required statutory regular public hearings the first one will be on wednesday september the 3rd at 6 30 pm and the final public hearing where we set the final millage and budget would be monday september the 15th at 6 30 pm

um i have nothing else at this time mayor i'm in the stormwater section 422 as far as the funding for projects there's no funding for the amboy used to be called the amboy project the midway project i think

we're calling it the pump station yeah so i will refer to um obviously staff but um i'm not sure all the

naming it's under the rib commissioner if you don't mind um we're looking at other funding opportunities as well besides just the city uh we'll be making application with the county for transform 386 for this project along with multiple projects we've made applications with appropriations for that for the design engineering and permitting component of it um so we're looking at different opportunities and just not you know trying to hit it all at one time but because we do not have this project design engineer to permit it that's kind of our first step so okay and we're hoping to hear

from tallahassee first also before we come back to the commission to say there's no other options

and i have one other question as far as the amboy area the piper road where there's the stormwater drains constantly back up after heavy rains is there anybody looking into that i know all the residents are using sidewalks they built sidewalks across the the swales to get to the mailboxes because

it's going up with water i thought we spoke about that my team has been out there but i'll double check on that next week and i also want to bring up to everybody's attention um through the division of emergency management and hazard mitigation grant program that some of their funding has opened up statewide and then countywide so we're also working with our consultants it is doesn't necessarily have to be mitigation for stormwater we're looking at making application for permanent generators at our traffic signals so that we're not running around the temporary generators trying to keep traffic signals moving and other things and see where we can maximize those applications and hopefully we'll see some positive outcome but those are long and arduous programs they don't happen overnight so i don't have to stand out there with a yellow green red you still have to do that so we'll make sure

you've got safety equipment as well so and and mayor i might point out monday night also we have nine hundred thousand dollars that is going before you for approval regarding the transform 386 that is for the providence watershed basin mcgherty watershed basin and gleason gleason watershed basin so we have quite a few things that are part of and we have additional um as part of the hurricane milton fema reimbursement we also have stormwater pipe repairs etc so there's a lot of items on monday night's

budget amendment related to stormwater so thank you a couple things and then i'll get to of course not everybody wants that question first um let me let me ask a couple questions and then i'll get you guys as well but relating to the budget the black the backflow preventer project and the future cost

to that are we taking all that into the account what somebody else is okay i'm backing as far

all this okay for for which which the backflow projects backflow project you're talking about the the budgeted item on here yes that is that that's a a city cost uh not reimbursed by any any other entity uh one of the things that that we found with the way that our system is set up say for example our meters you have one meter box and in that meter box you've got two services okay so whenever one person is not using their water the other person turns theirs on there's a small amount of backflow that can go from one home to the other to keep any house from from having any sort of hazardous material introduced to them by something that their neighbor is doing they have a residential dual check backflow which is a lot less expensive than the uh rpz or reduced pressure zone backflow that we currently use everywhere in the city so that project that we actually approved last year though we had a much higher cost last year that we've begun implementing in the the community those are only for low hazard situations so there still will be instances where some residents will need a rpz installed but we have to have our cross connection control program rewritten and approved by dp and then approved by the commission in order to move that forward but those particular backflows that we're talking about are to protect our current residents and it has nothing to do with any new

development i just want to make sure that the future costs of these backflows are being accounted for

in in the budget that's my concern any any new any new uh development uh those cost of those rpz's or or any sort of backflow is captured by impact fees from that developer this particular piece here is

for existing homeowners to protect their their health okay and then on um on some of our lift stations are we are we trying to budget for us making sure that each of the lift stations has some type of

generator preferably one that's not standards standards standards today already uh they already say that hey if you have uh so big of a pipe then you have to have a permanent generator or bypass pump installed so that's what our standards have been up until now we're rewriting our standards to say hey any new uh any new lift station that is put in by development they bear the brunt of the payment to

put that bypass pump or that generator in but on the older ones are we budgeting are we putting that somewhere in the budget because hurricane hurricane season is around the corner correct i know we can't do nothing between now and then but for for for the next coming years are we making sure we are uh rectifying the situation so so that our lift stations have a permanent generator we've

currently submitted for those hmgp funding for uh some of those to be installed in some of our uh most hazardous locations uh the other ones we stage during storms we stage portable generators at those high risk areas uh and we can always shuttle portable generators around to keep from having any sort of sanitary sewer overflows the last couple hurricanes we haven't had any sanitary sewer overflows because of flooding of a sanitary sewer lift station okay uh i have two other questions and i

believe that's for the it's mainly for the fire department doc when we're looking at this new fire station right for budgeting reasons are we looking at the big picture as to do we need to relocate more than just one fire station so strategically we can make sure we're reducing our times to get to whatever incident we have and not just relocating one because if strategically relocating two makes more sense and is more cost effective to get everything done all at once i think for for under a budgetary reasoning that that would be a lot better than just looking at relocating one so i want to make sure that for budgetary reasons we're looking at the big picture of this is the map of the city here are the current five fire stations we have we want to add an additional one but do we need to relocate another one just to make sure that we're covering the city in the way we're supposed to to because one of our big responsibilities as commissioners is safety and that's that's a big

part of it uh just the staff is discussing it hasn't brought to the commission yet but we're looking at some one station that would turn into a little more north a little more south so it'll be better coverage for more responsiveness other new station possibly up north where two stations are trying to go through some side roads to get up there and one on fort smith we would actually build look the new one right next to what was apparently a temporary fire station 25 years ago is still being used as their temporary fire station so it's a little mixture of everything but certainly the numbers and responsive time is is the number one item that we're looking at as far as staff but the fire station will be doing a fire department be doing a presentation to the commission and in their

future to see where you want to go because we could be applying for there's grants there that would cover for example we i mean this is just my opinion but we should have at least one transport unit in every station amen right and there are grants that cover uh what is 75 of or 50 of that person's salary the first year and it's like a scale you're talking about safer yes so those those are those are things that i believe would help our budget i mean if we can start looking at that it will in

the beginning but long term you just had a whole lot more cost just just so you're aware because i've

heard from different firefighters that they get to a scene in the big fire truck they're putting wear and tear on it and really what they need is a transport and and i know that a lot of that has to do with the cost but if we make sure we have a transport in every single uh fire station i think that would help reduce a lot of the wear and tear on roads to wear and tear on these vehicles are extremely hard to receive which is one of the reasons why in that one budget meeting which i've told the chief a couple times i wasn't supportive not that i wasn't supportive of the one fire truck we could have just paid essentially for two transport unit versus a one fire truck

yeah as the commission knows we can't really transport without county's permission so that's a little something else out there but up to 80 of the calls are more paramedic than fire so certainly the focus should be on the paramedic side correct my last question uh john what would it

look like for us to do a one percent of the budget kind of like what a hack is doing right um for debt services i mean is that something that would even be feasible for the city if it's going to help

pay off our debt a lot quicker so you let me make sure so right now we have 400 and something that

goes to debt services correct if we implement a one percent that's an additional three hundred and something thousand roughly right because it'll vary um that would go to debt services as well only for the general fund or all funds no no just just the same way that affordable housing

so only okay uh we'll look at that and um i can provide it to doc on monday okay as part of that can we look in to see what the savings would be on the interest interest page thank you for that

vice mayor uh commissioner howington vice mayor harriet and commission for a breakdown i've heard a lot of

costs from prior years or sorry reserves are being used for the upcoming year i'd like to see what is the breakdown for the current year expected roll forward versus what might be prior to current year probably have something like that so just so we know and then how much is going to be expected from grants and any state federal funding just so we can kind of see and maybe even help residents understand what is the breakdown for what the city and the residents are being expected to bring forward versus what projects we expect to be funded elsewhere so i can just on a quick recap

the fiscal year 9 30 24 audit is not complete should be complete here in the next couple of weeks but just looking at where we're at right now we have 78 million dollars of prior fund balance of that 16.8 million has been utilized in the current year budget we have restricted reserves of 12 million dollars for economic emergency 10.3 million for natural disasters just under 400 for grant match 1 million for economic development 1 million for infrastructure reserve the set aside for the 26 vehicles of 3.2 million the required reserves of 10.7 million the money that's part of the next monday night's budget for the building an opioid of just under 2.6 million that leaves 18.7 million dollars of unrestricted fund balance once the audit is completed then that number will be provided in a much clearer defined detail but that's rough as of today good job thank you that's it commissioner

vice mayor harriet then commissioner colwell and then commissioner review the last ones

um i just wanted to make sure that we were still looking at uh or have submitted for the lake helen osteen el cam intersection for transform 386 yes it's going in okay do we need to allocate any budget for that this year any cost share match again i believe that's the items that's on mid-year so

there it's on there awesome even better for the for the to recognize the 900 000 it's on there let me this would be an addition to the only the 900 is being recognized right now okay um and then i had

another question but i can't remember right now okay i'll come back to you then no don't worry about it it we'll i'll email staff if i when i remember commissioner colwell then commissioner this

question is for jim uh back to the backflow uh preventers you had mentioned that there's some when there's a dual um valve in a in a location that's there's some slippage that comes back correct so does that mean at some point everybody's going to require to have some type of backflow that that

that's what we're doing with these these residential dual checks is we are slowly implementing them into the the existing water meter boxes to keep that that small amount of backflow from happening is there a cost to the residents there's no cost to the residents it's it's a public safety it's a public safety issue so so we want to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to keep the public

as safe as possible awesome thank you commission rila vasquez thank you mayor um so we've gone first of all going back to the uh opiate funds where is that allocated to so we've received from um the state of

florida and the various um companies that um settlement of 135 000 were required by um administrative requirements to the state of florida that have that in a separate fund so that is completely restricted wasn't that awarded to the fire department it can be used for several things but one of the things that i'm speaking to the fire department about is additional um equipment maybe looking at aeds that might be out of date here at city hall and other city facilities we just had a grant from the county which is the same pot of money but from the county side that we just purchased they're not lucas

did we have to find us all with that i think too yeah i forget the name started with an a

what was the brand of stuff we just purchased a couple of meetings ago instead of the lucas cpr

it's all auto polls but it is using is it is being used on the fire department that is correct okay no problem so i've heard of every department in the city of del tono that's being helped or funds or whatever i've not heard anything we call compliance does that mean that they have they don't need any

help there's nothing to be changed there's nothing to be added no actually we just ordered vehicles for them here last week we have more vehicles that are part of next year's vehicle replacement and

they're part of your mid-year there's a couple changes in there for mid-year i believe they'll be an operating function that we'll bring back to you for for june and july okay and i don't know if

this is the proper place to mention it but it's body cams body cameras we're including also for code

enforcement for safety and that's going to be in another budget monday night we have body worn cameras for animal control and code enforcement where we have some money set aside for brand new tablets whether they're android or ipad i'm not quite sure but we have quite a few items for them i can tell you right here yeah between the vehicles

correct and that also will include animal control yes ma'am most of the items as it relates to animal

control because they don't truly have buildings they sit within city hall or 255 enterprise there's not a whole lot of cip related they're mostly r and r and maintenance items so it's more in the operational budget versus a capital budget okay but the only thing capital for them would be their animal control trucks and code compliance vehicles that's correct and if you go to tab seven you can see in the very last page pages you can go in and see all of the code compliance animal control vehicles and the anticipated year that they're

to be replaced okay because we didn't you know we didn't go into that conversation so is that um is in animal control funds are we still keeping the tnr program in there yes ma'am and that will be part of the june budget workshop okay um the other question i have is we have um the uh the uh space that we keep the animals at uh which is near festival park or something like that am i'm not if i'm not mistaken is that uh being upgraded or because it's it's kind of old i'll defer to danny on that question

ma'am daniel ron co-compliance um the structure we have here uh currently it's for meant for four animals and it's it's it's in good shape uh we have plans to move it from current location to to 255

enterprise row okay because i know that that was built quite a long time ago so i believe it was

built in 2016 2017 area but it's in good shape it's in good shape we maintain it okay and i was

just questioning because i didn't see you here danny you know i care about you oh thank you but

yeah like i mentioned there was the vehicles uh we are adding body cameras for the officers um also update the tablets that we use to enter the data into the system thank you appreciate those

information thank you all right this time we're going to go ahead and go to public comments

okay this time city manager comments yes mayor appreciate uh council uh commission for everyone uh today going over some of these topics but as always uh give us a call uh go through the books and look for questions in detail i'll make sure every staff person's available you know no matter what level to make sure any questions are answered and we go through this process over the next few months with all the information that you guys need to make some solid decisions appreciate it

before i hit the gavel uh vice mayor nothing else all right meeting adjourned