City Commission Workshop on 2025-07-14 5:30 PM - Jul 14, 2025

All right, we're going to go ahead and get started with this City Commission workshop for Monday, July 14, 2025. And if I can please have the city clerk call the roll. Mayor Billa-Vasquez. Commissioner Caldwell. Here. Commissioner Harrington. Commissioner Lully. Present. Commissioner Santiago. Here. Vice Mayor Harriet. Present. Mayor Billa. Here. All right, if we can please stand for the pledge, and I'll have Commissioner Caldwell do the Pledge of Allegiance. All right, just before we get started, we are going to be having more use of our mics, and they just wanted me to let you know that the request to speak will now be on here. So if anybody wants to click on the speak button to test it out, for example, like Commissioner Harrington's come out, it should be blue, and then I click on them, and then the mic will turn on, and that's how we're going to do it with the new system. All right, we're going straight to Mr. McKinney so we can start with the budget discussions. John's been upgraded, Commissioner. All right, Mayor, thank you. We talked a little bit about the budget timeline back in February and May. We're doing CIP in June, some other timelines and discussions. So tonight, John, for our finance director here, John McKinney is going to give an overview a little bit. Of course, being a workshop tonight, no final decisions are made for anything tonight. This is just to get us started here, and I think John will give a little prequel. Thank you, John. Mayor and Commission, tonight we are here to discuss the fiscal year 2025-2026 budget. We will provide summary information on operational budgets to include revenue estimates, special assessments, and recap of our CIP and capital outlay. As the budget is a fluid process, there will be changes communicated to you up until the final public hearing on September 15th. I want to thank all of the department directors and their staff for meeting the zero-based budget target. I want to thank finance, specifically Keong, Tori, and Audrey, for all that they have done these past two weeks to assist me with getting the executive budget summary and presentation completed for tonight. All this within two weeks since we wrapped up our annual audit and submitted to all required parties of the ACFER. My staff and I go from audit to budget and vice versa. I just scheduled interim audit for the beginning of September. Next year, I foresee a big change in timing when we are fully staffed. This is caused by finance struggling to fill the multiple vacancies. Like everyone, this causes finance to prioritize based on due dates, so I really appreciate finance staff stepping up to meet all our deadlines. At the June 23rd meeting, I was asked to set up on the city website a location of all budget-related documents, and we have posted all documents back to February 3rd and to include tonight's presentation and executive summary. Finally, per my email last week, I'm available to meet with any member of the commission this week to help you make an informed decision about setting up the maximum millage at the regular commission meeting scheduled for next Monday, July 21st. I have a quick question. Commissioner Villavazquez. John, I have a quick question. I know you sent some updates through email. I didn't have Wi-Fi in my house through the whole day. Is this it? Is this what you sent? No, ma'am. What we sent earlier today was just the presentation. So even though your copy that went out earlier didn't say 4 p.m., there hasn't been any changes. So I made sure that what I gave you last Friday in your binder on today's copy, it specifically says as of 4 p.m. today. So that way, if you see both copies, you know which one you're referring to. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. You're welcome. Mayor, I just wanted to start with, you know, so this evening as we're talking about the summary budget and everything and the city manager stated there's no final action, this is all leading up towards next Monday at the regular scheduled commission meeting. We'll be setting the maximum millage and setting the maximum assessments that will be included on the trim notice when the property appraiser sends it out in August. Okay, Mr. McKinney, just so the commissioners know, you all have notepads and pencils for your questions. It makes it easier. So when we get ready to ask questions, we're organizing because of the time constraints. And then on August 25th, I anticipate having the final budget workshop. As was stated to you previously, we'll be receiving revisions from the state revenues up until August 15th, which is our last scheduled meeting. So any changes that we receive from state revenues, we have until the 15th to get those from the state of Florida. And then September 3rd at 630, we will have our first public hearing to go over the tentative budget and tentative millage. And then on September the 15th will be the second public hearing where we'll go over the final millage and final budget. So we'll have a budget overview. We'll go over some key drivers. We'll go over the funds to include operational budgets and then the next steps. The adoption of the annual budget, the city by Florida statutes required to adopt and amend the annual budget by resolution. So here at the city, we have within our code of ordinances that the budget is adopted by resolution. The estimates provided are the recommendation of the city manager for fiscal year 2025-26 to allow the city commission a comprehensive overview of the various divisions and departments of the city to adopt the budget at the fund level in September. As I stated, the budget process is fluid, and until the final public hearing, there will be changes brought forth to you over the next couple of months. So the budget that was provided in the executive summary, which is available on the city website for everyone, it's over 100 pages, so we did not print them. The overall budget for fiscal year 2025-26 is stated at $234,051,275. The general fund is $76,663,842. We balanced this budget at 6.75 mils. There are enhancements in this budget of just over $2 million. Investments in capital, our capital improvements project is $73,720,000. That is exactly $1 million greater than was provided to you at the May 3rd workshop, and that's specifically for land acquisition of $1 million related to flood-prone areas if this program gets approved as part of the budget. In addition, the capital replacement is just over $5 million. That includes all the vehicle replacements, as discussed May 3rd, but we've removed a couple of vehicles for positions that did not make the budget for next year, and those would have been new vehicles, not replacement vehicles. Key drivers, the most recent available CPI from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is 2% as of May of 2025. The fire union city manager's office is currently in negotiations with the fire union, so that's to be determined. We have not set an increase for the fire department as of this time. General employees, which is everyone other than the fire staff, including fire admin, is budgeted at 5% for next fiscal year. This is just getting out of prior years where the city wasn't keeping up with the surrounding municipalities and other key employers, so this is just bringing employees to the minimums. This budget also includes a balance to make it right, so we do have money set aside and non-departmental. As a city manager, this deputy and the HR director go through and do an assessment to see if there's anyone still under market for those positions to be brought to market. Insurance, property casualty, we're looking. I've got to get used to this new system. Let's try to do questions after each topic. Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. Property casualty, as I stated, is in here at 10%. We will not have the final rate of increase where we are until mid-August. Health insurance, we budgeted flat, but I will make this statement. We have done a request for a quote through our broker, and based on what we're going to be meeting on tomorrow, we're looking at a pretty hefty reduction in our health insurance by putting it out to market. So that will be reported next week when that agenda item goes before the commission for approval. This budget also takes into account a state revenue, a municipal shared revenue reduction of 10%. We've only received a couple, and there's no increase at this time. So we've kept it at 10% just based on what we've heard in the news and from our lobbyists over the past month and a half. Did you want me to stop there, Mayor, before I go to the next page or keep going? Yes, please. We're doing key drivers next? Next, we're on the rate studies. Next page. No, we're going to stop. So we're doing the stops for questions after. So the next chapter would be key drivers. Okay, and that's what I just finished. Oh, okay. So Commissioner Vila-Vasquez, go ahead. Can you hear me? Because I can't hear myself. Okay. I have two questions. One with the general employee 5% increase. You mentioned to bring them up to the minimum. Is that the minimum per category of experience? We still have the $15 starting salary, right? Yes, ma'am. We have a minimum starting salary of $15, which is the 15 goes into effect in 2026, so we're ahead of schedule for that. But with all the other municipalities and major employers in the region, we have to make sure that we can at least bring people on within Parks and Rec, water, sewer, just to be competitive because we have several key vacancies. And in order to stay competitive, we have to make sure that our beginning rate of pay is competitive to the market. Correct. So when you say $15 to start, salary begins next year, what do you mean by that? Because this was approved. Yes, ma'am. Where I go to that, back in 2020, I believe it was, there was a Florida referendum increasing the minimum wage that had to increase by certain amounts annually, so that by October 1st of 2026, it was at a minimum of $15 an hour. We've exceeded that $15 an hour already. Okay, so the starting salary is $15 minimum for anyone who starts at any department, any level. That is correct. Thank you. The health insurance, how many times do we change that every year, health insurance program? We recently changed within the last year from Cigna to United. So we took it out to market, and there's several people in this room that are on that evaluation committee, so I really shouldn't go into detail on that yet. No, I was just questioning because I know that in that change, it's my understanding that there was a lot of changes that were not beneficial to staff. So if we can keep that in mind, that we go from good to better, and not reduce or take away what staff is already getting in their insurance. Absolutely. I believe what the city manager has stated, we're going to be an employer of choice, and everything that we've received in line with the proposals received is exceeding the city manager's requirement of employer of choice. Right, because I don't want to see a member of the city having to drive to another county to be taking care of emergencies. Absolutely agree with you. I believe that you will find that what we were presented brings several enhancements to our employees to include the ability for our employees to provide health care for their dependents at a more affordable price. Thank you. Appreciate that. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. John, thank you for going over all this. Can we go back to the budget overview where you have the capital replacement at $5 million? Yes, sir. You had made a comment, and I missed the number. That's just replacement vehicles and equipment. What is the new equipment amount? We will provide that for you and send that out first thing tomorrow morning in detail. Okay. Does that $5 million include new equipment also? Yes, sir. That is all in back of tab 8 within the executive summary, and I can provide a detail of that to you tomorrow. Okay. So the capital replacement fund also includes the purchase of new equipment? That is correct. Not just replacement vehicles? Yes, sir. Okay. Does it charge the cost back to the cost center that it goes to? So as part of this year's audit, we took a look at what was set aside and paid by the various operating funds for the past few years, and those funds are being returned from Fund 501 to those operating funds so that, as we stated previously, 501 will be going away. Yeah. And we're keeping all of that funding within the various operating funds. Okay. Awesome. So we're fully funded. The only fund that has, as stated previously, not in this meeting, the only fund that I'm having to look at specifically for next year's budget is stormwater. Okay. I have one vehicle and one piece of equipment that's in this budget that's $310,000, and staff is looking to see if that is still a reasonable quote, and that will come back to you in August. Okay. Is it a budget amendment? An amendment to this proposal. Okay. It's in here at $310,000. So it will be included in the proposed budget for F-1. That is correct. That is correct. Okay. The proposed budget document will, so this is executive summary, once we have the maximum millage established, then that's when we turn it into the proposed budget, and we will have everything from this evening plus that vehicle will be addressed in the proposed budget. Okay. Will that proposed budget, when it comes to us, have the line item detail or the account level detail? I believe that if you look in here, everything that's in here, sir, is the exact same level of detail as provided in previous year's budgets. So what's in this presentation is very summarized. What's in here is two line item specific. Gotcha. So I can tell you right now, I've already spoken with the Public Works Department. I've already spoken to Parks, and they've already given us stuff since Friday, reductions. So we have more reductions coming. Okay. And all of these reductions, is there an impact to the service level? No, sir. Okay. On the key drivers page slide, you've got the general employees with a 5% across the board increase. What's that 5% based off of? Because last year we did, I believe, 10%. Didn't we do a flat across the board of increased larger than 5% last year? You did. You did a 10% increase across the board. We looked at the other cities in the surrounding areas. We've also done an analysis of what salaries we have. And right now the typical COLA, looking at where we're at also, would be about the 4% to 5%. So we've loaded in the 5%. We still have some adjustments to make just on a few, I would call them technical positions. We probably don't have them at the right salaries. But other than that, we think we'll have everyone up to par with the time we get to this point. Can we get a vacancy report from the departments and programs also? Yeah. HR will be able to provide that. So we'll send that out. Thank you. And then on the health insurance item, does that, how are we going to, do those reductions that you anticipate seeing, do they correspond to reductions in the level of service? And I know Commissioner Vila-Vasquez kind of touched on this, but I just wanted to confirm that we're not reducing the level of service and coverage for employees. Okay. We've taken a couple of looks at deductibles and co-pay to market. I'll just. I don't want to put anybody in it. When we meet individually, I will give a more summarized information of our insurance benefits. Again, there's more than one people on the evaluation committee, and I shouldn't be giving. I understand that. I appreciate that. Does the new, or the programs that we're looking at for employee insurance, does that include a, what am I thinking, some sort of wellness program or wellness incentive? Everyone has submitted some type of wellness program benefit. Okay. I do not see a benefit from a lot of wellness programs. It's a lot of hoops to jump through, and you end up spending more money going to the doctor to get physical or, you know, whatever else it may be that you would normally otherwise not see. So, and all the examples that I've seen where wellness programs have been implemented, it has jacked up the cost to the city without any actual impact to the claims. So, I will tell you, both companies that we're looking at does it completely different between the two. The one actually puts the wellness on the individual, which has a benefit versus going through hoops, trying to obtain money through a website or an app. So, they are both viable options that are a reduction to both the city and to the employee without any reductions in the level of benefit. Okay. Do they require that an annual physical be done and points be earned? The answer is no. Okay. But one of them does provide a monetary benefit if you do that. Okay. That's just their national programs. A fat tax for employees, essentially, then. Commissioner, I will say that on the committee that we have put together for the insurance, we did pull in members of our team, so from operations in the field, from parks and rec. So, we pulled in some of the members that were struggling with the cost of insurance as it was presented. So, we've got a variety of employees on the evaluation committee. That's correct. So, the team is made up, I don't remember now, seven or ten, but seven. Seven, okay. So, we did spread the wealth in the sense of having others involved in that process. Okay. I appreciate that feedback. Thank you, guys. Every department, to include staff, managers, and directors, are represented on the team. So, it's not just myself, the HR director, and the deputy city manager. Everyone is a part of it. Commissioner Howington. Thank you. Back to the general employees with the 5% increase. I am concerned about seeing that across the board because it looks like we still have some market studies to do to look at who might be under the market rate. But, given that we did a 10% increase last year across the board, to give another 5% across the board this year to hopefully bring people into the market rate when we only have, I would assume, a portion that are still outside of that market rate. Or do we even know? Okay. At this point, the 5% will just really bring the rest of all of our employees, not just the rest, but it will bring all the employees back in line with the new projections that Deland, Deberry, Port Orange, Volusia County. So, that 5% is really in line with keeping all of our employees aligned to each other. That does not have anything to do with really the adjustments to make it right for those employees, technicians, as I mentioned earlier, that are needed. That will be the make it right dollars that we'll add on top of the 5%. The 10% was really last year. We were that far below, actually, probably closer to 12% to 17% below a lot of cities locally, from an admin position all the way through our water plant, our public works folks, all the way through our parks folks. So, this will really just get us to a point where we're catching up to those other cities. So, the 5% was really what you will see from the other cities. So, one of my concerns is that we have residents here on fixed income, and they just got a 2.5% increase in December. So, now we're looking at telling those folks that just got 2.5% that now you have to pay your city government 5%. There's a discrepancy there. And especially when we're looking at a CPI report of a 2%. Just because other cities are doing it doesn't necessarily mean we have to do it too. We have to look at the finances of our residents as well. So, it's, I mean, 5% is great, but I'd like to see it closer to 3, 3.5% for across the board. So, I believe when you look at the vacancy report, you'll still see the challenge we're facing with the vacancies. As finance mentioned earlier, four still open spots in which we're finding the challenge to have enough people to actually do everything that's needed. So, I think as you don't keep up, again, that's your decision as commission, and I totally respect that. As you don't keep up, the departments will have problems filling what positions they do have if we're not competitive. I mean, you know how that works from a competitive perspective. We're still running into that today. We'll get an employee or somebody, a potential employee, will come in and interview. They are torn between someone across the bridge versus someone down the road, and we're not competitive in our offers. So, as long as we see open positions, when you see the vacancy report, the challenge we then run into is service levels. But, again, we'll be glad to give you that information and bring that back to you, and you can make your decision from that point. Yeah, that would be appreciated, because I remember at one of our previous meetings, we had discussed how, I think, last year we had some significant amount of open positions, if I'm not mistaken, somewhere close to 30 or 40 positions. And now we're down to a much smaller number, which means, obviously, we're becoming more competitive if we're able to backfill those positions. So, that further brings me into concern with the continual increases of 10% to 5%. Thank you. Commissioner Lilly. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to make sure I understood this correctly. So, the proposed millage rate is 6.75? That is what we've balanced this budget with the use of fund balance. Yes, sir. Okay. Do you know what that percentage that is, or what is the rollback rate? I mean, I could do the math. Yeah, 6 point. I have it right here. Oh, if I'm ahead of myself, we can stop and just go. Are you going to cover that? Yes, sir. Okay, we can cover that when it comes up. Thanks. Commissioner Vila-Vasquez. Thank you, Mayor. Question on the salary. John? Okay. So, just to clear my thoughts here. So, the 5% is based on an individual's annual salary as a whole, and not everybody makes the same salary, correct? So, it doesn't mean that everyone's going to get the same raise, because everyone here is under a different category, or grade, as we used to call it where I used to work. So, I could be a grade 45 and get 5% and get $100, and the mayor could be a grade 52 and get 5% and get $100 raise. Is that more or less what you guys are doing? So, the salary increases are, yes, by individual and grade, but we do, if we have some individuals that are very tenured, and they've capped out, then you could have that, too. So, then there would be a cap on them. But, yes, it's per individual, per grade. We have just classifications also. So, not one person is always going to be making the same salary, even though they can start at $15 an hour. It depends on their grade. So, some individuals who come in to a grade level could come in at the same salary, let's say $15 an hour, as we talked earlier. Start with a higher salary. So, that's right. If they bring in seven years' experience and the other individuals bring in zero experience or one year, so there's some availability for the department director to hire them and pay for that experience. We have really just been looking at that this year. I would say in past years, we probably have not looked at that as much. I think we have some, and like our operators, I think that the utilities group has had that discretion to be able to do that because they couldn't fill the positions. But a lot of our positions, we were not able to pay in past years for that experience. We said, okay, here's our beginning rate. Take it or leave it. So, that's part of the make it right that we're trying to clean up also, but also just the tenure. We had several years, and I'd have to look at the charts, and I'll do that when we look at the vacancy rates. I don't remember how many years we had of no pay increases. So, when you're trying to catch up with the – so, the CPIs in those time and the increases in the other cities might have been two to three to four. I don't know, but we had no pay increases. So, I don't have a history there, but I'll look at that as part of the vacancy and send that to you. Okay, because I know the $15, $9, was because we were losing a lot of staff to Amazon because that was Amazon's starting salary at that point. I think I saw an article the other day. They're at $19, if I'm not mistaken. I saw that. Thank you. Mr. McKinney, you have to push on your button again so I can let you – there you go. Our next item, Mayor, is the rate studies. We're looking to bring to the commission in September, October, the water sewer rate consultant that has been working on our water sewer reclaim fees that will be brought to you for implementation January 1st of 26th. The impact fees we met last week, we – the selection committee recommended the firm Rafatilas for their rate consultant, impact fee rate consultant. That's on the July next week's meeting. The building in general rate consultant, I need to put that together. It's over $25,000, so I have to bring that back to the commission so I couldn't get it for next week. That would be the first meeting in August. And then the fire assessment rate consultant, that, again, was an item that I need to bring back to the commission for approval. It's over $25,000, so that would be on next Monday night's commission meeting as well. So we're looking for all of these on the impact fees. It's roughly a 12-month study period, so that would – the impact fees would go into effect for the fiscal year 26-27. The building in general, that would go into effect more than likely April 1st of 2026. And anything that we do for the fire assessment, that would also go into effect for fiscal year 26-27. So for the most part, none of these are for the current fiscal year beginning October 1st. They would be phased in January 1st of 26 and later. When it comes to state revenue estimates, sir, we do not have all of those at this time. They have only started to release them the other day. We haven't been able to change the budget document to reflect that, but we don't anticipate to receive anything related to the state revenues and completeness until late July, early August. So, again, that's why we haven't – are unable to put the proposed budget book together, because there's still too many uncertainties related to state revenue share. Thank you, Mayor. John, with the water sewer rate consultant – well, with the water sewer rate, I was trying to find my notes, but I don't have it in front of me right now. There was a breakdown, right, and every year there was an increase. So I just want to clarify, because I've gotten the calls. So I don't have the figures in front of me, but let's say one year is $190, and then the next year is $210, I think, right? That's for stormwater? That was for stormwater? Yes, ma'am. Okay, I only have my notes. Okay, is it going forward? Yes, ma'am. Okay, so then I'll bring it up going forward. I was looking for my notes. I couldn't find it. Okay. When we get to stormwater solid waste and all of those related to assessments, I actually have a slide for each one of those in the presentation. Thank you. You're welcome. Commissioner Robinson. Thank you. So impact fees. We've been having discussions about these, and we were told we were about six to nine months out, and now it looks like we're 14 to 15 months out. So what's changed? That's a lot of money to give up in 15 months. Palm Coast just increased their impact fees, I believe, by $5,000 per household. So why are we going from the six to nine months that we've been quoted? I know I've heard the mayor say we can expedite, we can do all these things, and now I'm hearing 15 months. What's happened? So that was really the quote that what was given to us by the scope of services that was defined and put out there. Don can go over some of the details, but that's what was responded from the four different. That's correct. They were about the same time frame. So we can't tell them where to put us in the process. What we can do is reply, and that was exactly what their timeline that they gave us was about 12 months. And did you add general government mobility as well? I don't recall that one. So we were looking to move forward with this the first part of May. Then I was asked to put this out as a solicitation. So when I put it out for a solicitation, I had to make sure that I had a proper scope of service in order to put an RFP together. I had to put that out for a minimum of 30 days due to the type of solicitation it was. When I received the solicitation, everyone that submitted, except for one which was really in some ways nonresponsive, was looking at 12 to 15 months. So I lost a couple of months in putting this out as a solicitation because previously I was told when I was doing it the other way, I was going to have this information back by the end of December, first part of January of this year. Now that we put it out, they've now put it into their workflow, and no one can get this completed until 12 months out. So it's based on their workflow. We put this out nationally. It went out to well over 200 companies. So every major impact, every major consulting firm that does impact fees received this. And the company that the solicitation committee chose was actually the fastest of all of them. If I may, Commissioner Harington, did we, I don't mean to interrupt you, did we explain to them that we're asking for this to be fast-tracked? I just want to make sure that we put that out there, that this is a request for it to be fast-tracked. To them about that, again, in reference to the scope, did say as quickly as possible, the company that was selected was the quickest company, but the baseline of the selection was not timing. It was based on the scope. But the time did come into play with that. But that's what we had available to us. Okay, so my question was specifically about general government impact fees and mobility fees. Are those being included in the study as asked? We issued it on our current impact fees. When this comes to you Monday night of next week, you as the commission can ask us, because we did it as is, and then now you can ask us to add it, and it will just be an additional task to their plan of action, to their scope, which is this is the right time for it, but we did it based on the ordinances that we have to show that these are the existing impact fees. We don't have the mobility one, and we can add it. We talked about that as staff, and we fully expect that next week when this comes before you, you're going to ask us to add it. Yes, I will, because I did ask that previously when we voted on it specifically, so thank you. And it was discussed. I can also add, just in our experience in other jurisdictions with their adoption of impact fees, many of the consultants look at replacing an existing transportation impact fee with a mobility fee because it is more flexible. So certainly as you all move forward with the selection of consultants, that may be something that they recommend or may already be included in their approach. I would also like to add that it will be very important to discuss with the consultant the general government impact fee. There are only very specific types of expenditures that can be associated with impact fees, and many governments do not have the capital outlay needs in general government to support an impact fee. So that will be a very important discussion to have with the consultant and get their recommendation and interpretation on whether or not that is appropriate for Deltona. Thank you, Commissioner Lawley, and then we'll continue to the next. Thank you, Mayor. I agree with Commissioner Ellington. I think it's a lot of money on the table here, so I'm really interested in seeing the impact fees be expedited as quickly as possible. It sounds like we asked for that, and I'm looking forward to that conversation next week. On the topic of impact fees as well, I don't know if this has been asked yet. Is it possible to, since there does seem to be a long duration for this, are we able to still implement increases that were identified in the previous study, or did that lapse? That lapsed. It lapsed. Okay. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. On to another topic we just covered. We talked about doing a water and sewer rate study. Can the study look at decreasing the rates, or do they only go up? Based on my conversation with the consultant and staff, in order to maintain operations and pay for future capital enhancements, it will require an increase. There's no way at the possible time without making significant changes in operations for us to even come in flat. We're at $17.98 per 1,000 gallons above $20,000. Sanford is $5.17 from $12 to $24, and $7.62 above $24. Orange City is at $11.25. Volusia County is at $10. Daytona Beach is at $9.24. Where we are so up there, that to me is unfathomable. I mean, for me, it's like I could never support an increase in the water. I mean, I've never seen water rates like we have here, ever. It's not our water rates that are high. It's our sewer rate. Oh, I know. Our water rates are high. Out of 38,000 customers, just a little over 7,000 are our sewer. I asked those questions when we met with a rate consultant saying, well, how can we potentially have the water customer pay more towards the sewer side, and they already do. We're already supporting. So for a normal out of, again, 31,000 customers are water only, their utility bill is well under $50 per month. Mine's $500. You have sewer. No, I don't have sewer. You don't have water your lawn? Everyone always tells me I have sewer. No, we have a problem. We're at $18 per 1,000 gallons. I will specifically look at your account tomorrow and look at your bill individually and report back to you. But it's the problem is our rate is $18 per 1,000 gallons over $20,000. So it becomes I run my sprinkler for a night, and it's anyone. Not just me. It's anyone who any of that, and it's $50. So that's a problem. And I just gave you the numbers. We're exponentially. I've never seen water rates like that in my whole history of traveling the country. I mean, I really haven't in that tier. So that's a very important subject to me because it becomes, you know, you're one leak away from bankruptcy, really, because you have a leak, and when you go over $20,000, it becomes, you know, after a few minutes, you're racking up $20 per 1,000 gallons almost. So that's a concern for me. So when I saw that, I thought, how could we possibly be looking at increasing it when we're already at that point? So just something to put out there. Understood. I mean, as of June 1st, customer service utility billing is part of finance, and I've been working with a customer service manager on billings and everything else. And, sir, I now listen to customers speak on a daily basis but a very frequent basis of utility billing. I spent time this morning in the lobby helping customers. So I'm there with you, sir. I'm going to give one more example. I lived in Daytona Beach, water, sewer, reclaimed, and garbage because their garbage assessment was on the utility bill, $110 a month, and you could run the sprinkler 24 hours a day because the reclaim was $9 a month flat. Use as much as you want. So I come with a lot of background in looking at that, and I mean, I have numbers right here. We're so far and above anyone else, and I understand there's a whole decades of history behind it, and I get that. I understand that. But that doesn't take away the impact that we're subjecting our residents to, and I guess you're hearing it now when you get the phone call. So thank you. You're welcome. Vice Mayor Harriet and then Mr. McKinney, just every time we finish the subject, just let me know so I know when to stop. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mayor. John, Commissioner Lowell, you mentioned a rate of $17 or $18 per 1,000 gallons. That's over – what's the base rate? I'd have to pull it up, sir, to provide that to you. Okay. We'll have that for you when we get to water sewer. Okay. That's not the rate, though, for, like, the first 10,000 gallons. That's above 20,000, correct? Yes, sir. Okay. And that's, you know, we have a tiered rate. So, you know, the first tier is low to accommodate, you know, the average two-person household. The next tier would go into a four- or five-person household. The third tier gets into more of your commercial. The fourth tier, fifth tier, that's when you're getting into the individuals that are watering their lawns with potable water. And we do have a program that allows for some sort of balance reduction if there is a leak and a correction made, correct? So, right here, the first 5,000 gallons is $2.53 per thousand gallons. From 5 to 10,000 gallons is $5.11 per thousand gallons. 10 to 20,000 gallons is $8.97. It's the 20,000 gallons and above that $1,798 a gallon. So, the individuals that are going to hit over the 20,000 gallons are the individuals that water the lawn. And the old adage before the low-flow water faucets, shower faucets, you know, et cetera, was 2,000 gallons of water per person. Now, I'm a four-person household. I use around 4,100 gallons. So, that's low-flow everything. I do not water my lawn. I'm on reclaimed. That is a flat fee of $9 a month. I don't live in a community that you mentioned, but I'm flat $9 a month. And so, I mean, it is – I mean, I will say I've spoken to Mr. Parrish. I've spoken to Will. All of them, we have, you know, a vast majority of our customers are less than $50 a month. I'm not $50 a month, but I'm $100 a month, and I water my lawn in the garden. Yes, sir. Tremendously. So, I mean, the – I recall when I lived here years ago is, you know, I asked the question of the old one. It was, you know, not Deltona water, you know, that the average house, you know, is using around 23,000, 24,000 gallons of water to mutter the lawn. Back then, $22,000, $23 a month. So, big difference. So, but we will take a look at this. I assure you our right consultant is listening because he lets me know every time after a meeting, and he will get back to me on this. Well, I'd like to just round up my comments with – I'd like to understand what is being done regionally and what we can do here in Deltona to help address some of those bills. Because I have heard of, you know, some residents having some exorbitant bills, so I'd be interested to see what we can do. I understand that we've got a lot of capital needs within the water sewer department, and I don't want to diminish that or set that back any farther, because ultimately that will cost us more money. And I would definitely defer to the department director and whatnot, but there is not enough reclaim to provide it to the other 31,000 customers when you only have 7,000-something customers on sewer. There's just not enough reclaim being produced to make it available citywide. I understand. Thank you, John. We do have a lot of stormwater that we produce. I will not provide a comment. Thank you, Mayor. The only thing I will say is the last thing I want to see is us go to a flat fee where those that are only paying about $20 on their bill is now – now they're paying, instead of what was it, two-something, now they're paying $9, $10 just to equate everything else. So with me doing something like that, I'm 100% out of that. I will not support something like that, because now we're – in order to reduce other people's bills, we're kind of pushing other ones up. That's an ill-go for me. So, Mayor, the citywide budget, so just breaking this out by fund type, we have the general fund, special revenue funds, enterprise funds, capital project funds, and for next year's budget, the internal service funds. The total budget citywide is $234,051,275. The one fund that we all focus on is the general fund, and the general fund budget is $76,663,842. We'll be going more in detail as we go through the various funds. I'm done on that page, Mayor. Okay. So now we get into the general fund expenditures. I won't go into all of these in detail. I just want to highlight that, again, everything is available in the summary document we've provided. Everything is in detail on the website. I can provide – I brought business cards. If anyone in here would like to email me so that I can provide them the link to all the documents, I'll be more than happy to do so. But you'll see as we go through here, we have our general government. That's your city manager, city commission, legal, city clerk, finance, HR, et cetera. Your public safety, that's made up by police, fire, code enforcement. Transportation is part of public works, so that's your streets, your public works, admin, et cetera. You have your parks and recreation. You'll see as you go through this document to make sure that we can be very transparent when dealing with the public in the same way with general government and public safety. All of the funds is that we've now split, instead of everything being in one department within Parks and Rec, we've got it split by the recreation program, the parks program, and events program so that admin is on its own. That way it makes it a lot more clear how much we're paying for these certain segments of the departments. We also have the debt service set aside. Not only is that our current debt service, principal and interest, but that also has a request by a member of the commission to add a 1% to help pay off the debt sooner. We also have contingencies within the budget and transfers out. The transfers out is what funds, you know, the 301, the 302, IT, fleet, et cetera. So all of this is in complete detail within the various pages. Okay. So now we go into the city commission budget. We can go through it this evening if you would like, or you can provide a comment to me over the next week. The city manager goes through all of his departments in detail, meets with all the directors to go over their individual budgets. Obviously, the city commission is their own budget. So I've provided to you at your desk a couple of page sheet of what the line items are specifically to your budget. So if you want me to come back to the city commission budget at a later date, sorry, later time this evening, we can talk about it next Monday if you choose. But that's all the items that make up your budget. I didn't provide the detail regarding your cell phones or normal office expenses. These are only the big items that relate to your specific budgets. Okay. Within this budget, we had a little over 2.1 million in requests from the commission. We have the AHAC, which is the 1% set aside. I went through the formula. We went the lesser of all of them. We had the fraud and compliance. I put that in there just because, just trying to make sure we have the money set aside for that. The debt reduction and the litigation that was based on recent commission action was advised that I set the money aside in next year's budget for potential litigation. City manager division summary. So, same thing, what we did here is the city manager truly only has four employees in it, but when you added the communication, economic development, everything, it looked like he had a much bigger budget. So, we sat there and we reduced his budget into divisions so that it's a city manager, economic development, and communication. One thing, and I will hit each time we go through these slides, even with adding all his budgets back together, he presented a 23% reduction in the overall city manager divisions as part of the zero-based. First, okay? Mayor, I won't go into, if there's a summary like that, I won't go into the individual sheets unless you would like for me to. Just keep going through each of the slides because I'm sure that, I know I have the vice mayor on here, and I'm sure others will have some questions. Understood. So, we'll just go through all the summaries, and what I've done is I've gone through here and I circled when we had to stop. Yes, sir. So, again, it makes it very hard for me to go through the city manager's budget because when you look at it, because we split it into communication and economic development, I can assure you he didn't reduce $1.6 million. So, economic development, so that allows for John Cox and his crew for everything that he does. So, that's the total budget, $182,000. I have no reference points of prior years because it was consolidated with the city manager. Same with communications. So, those two budgets obviously show 100% increase, but when you go consolidated with the city manager, it's almost a 23% reduction amongst all of them. Your support service summary. Your support service is the way we look at it. It's your city clerk, your finance, which is accounting and purchasing, finance customer service, which is funded by 401, your city attorney, human resources, facility maintenance, which is a new division, and I'll hit on that one here in a second, and your general government. General government is a division that has no real home. That's your IT allocation, that's your general fund, property casualty insurance, your debt service, et cetera. So, it doesn't belong in any operating budget. It's a standalone. Facility maintenance. You previously approved two positions for HVAC and electrical. What we've done is working with Parks and Rec is that we've taken a position from there, move it also into facility maintenance, and a vacant position that was in the city manager's budget to put it in there. There's no increase in the headcount. So, it's just been a reallocation of existing so that we can truly get within the city a facility maintenance so that we can have less reliance on outside contracted services, which would give us, as we view, a much better turnaround to get things done here in the city. Really quick. Commissioner Santiago, if you can push your button right here. That way, when the time comes to stop, you're online. We're no longer doing the iPads. Go ahead, Mr. McKinnon. Yes, sir. So, the only department, the city attorney, that shows a big increase because, again, because we made changes to the city manager, their paralegal was in the city manager's budget. It truly belongs in legal and in general government because of the additions of the AHOC and transfers out to the departments for capital, which is already discussed. That's why you have the increase there. Okay. City clerk overall is bringing a 16.28% reduction, almost $160,000 over the prior year. Finance is bringing in a little less than 1% or $16,700, and that's after a position was transferred from HR to finance, and finance is still bringing in a reduction. Finance, customer service, part of that reduction is the majority of that is in personnel, Mayor, and that's related to the fact that as the positions were coming over to the finance purview, the positions that did not have a financial purpose remained in the 401-360 budget. So, those individuals did not come. Other than that, what we're looking at, supplies, this is funded by rates, not the taxpayers, and we are seeing an increase in what we're paying our outside printing and buying, et cetera. So, that's the increase in supplies and expenses. The city attorney, as stated, their increase is related to personnel. We still brought in a reduction of professional and contractual services and supplies and expenses because we paid for items this year. So, when you look at the increase year over year, it was 12.36% or $68,000, which is very reasonable. Human resources, with the reduction of personnel that was moved to finance, but more importantly, the contractual services that's now not needed because HR is fully staffed, we're able to reduce the additional contractual service where we had outside labor versus in-house labor, plus supplies and expenses, we're bringing in a 20% reduction to HR. Facility maintenance, again, I just want to reiterate, this is not an enhancement. This is just a realignment of staff that is already budgeted and moved from Parks and Rec and the city manager so that we can achieve the goal of providing an enhanced level of service to the internal customers, which will definitely impact our customers that we serve as they come into our city facilities. General government, as you can see, the capital outlay and the debt service is what's increasing over the prior years. All other line items are showing a decrease. So the capital outlay, as we discussed, the May 3rd budget workshop is 100% funded by prior year fund balance, which has been set aside as part of the savings program to pay for the replacement of the vehicles. And the capital outlay that we're doing, that's the CIP portion of it, again, that's why we have the fund balance for those one-time uses. You don't typically want to use fund balance for repetitive use, you know, for salaries and benefits. It should always be a one-time building, enhancing a parks facility, or capital outlay, you know, for vehicle replacement. Planning and development, I was able to set aside all the other departments, divisions within the city, but planning is, you know, out there by themselves. So I want to report to them. They brought in almost a 7% reduction, $49,000 reduction. So, you know, again, everyone, as I stated previously, has been able to hit the city manager's requirement of zero-based budget. Public safety. Public safety is made up from our great contracted law enforcement services that we have with the Volusia County sheriffs. We have our fire services. One of the things I want to point out on the fire services is, we'll hit that when we get to that slide, because I have a statement to make there, our code compliance. So even with the increase of the contracted law enforcement, which is a little over 8%, I just want to point out is 8% is what our target was roughly for our salary and benefits increase. We talked about the 5%, but when you add the benefit increase, which was FRS or our fire pension, that's where we were, every department was seeing somewhere between 7% and 9%, so 8% is right on the money. When you take into account the fact that this current fiscal year, the sheriff's department added four additional deputies to include all their equipment, outfending vehicles, et cetera, an 8% increase is right on target because most of theirs is 8%. We do have a great representative from the Volusia County sheriffs here. I talked at length with him. I can also tell you that a couple of years ago, when they implemented the public safety millage rate, which is countywide, the proposal that was originally came out for the sheriffs was closer to $19 million. And Sheriff, again, if I misspeak, I know he will correct me, Sheriff Chitwood made the statement that that millage is helping support the administration of the sheriff's department, so we're only paying here for the deputies that support Volusia County, or I'm sorry, City of Deltona. I apologize, Mayor. You know, so we are at the right rate of increase, okay? And I just wanted to, you know, here's our historical to show that. You know, we set it up that you can see year over year what the increases were. You can see for several years back in 21 through 23, there was no increase. We had minimal increases in 23 to 24, the big jump from 24 to 25, and then a reasonable increase that goes along with the salary and benefits. That's their increase, their increase for FRS, and their benefits, you know, health and et cetera. So it's reasonable. Fire administration. So this is where we have really looked at, you know, again, how do we fund everything? You know, so the fire administration within the general fund, we had positions that truly worked on residential and non-residential building department. So in talking with a building official, those positions qualified to be paid out of the building fund. So those positions have been moved out of the general fund and are being paid by the building services fund. We've also moved a portion of the admins that are related to transport. Yes. So for the building, I'm sorry, for fire administration, we have a position that can be funded out of the building department because of what they do. They specifically work on plans review, et cetera, which is part of building and life safety. So that is a qualifying expense within what we collect for building permits. We then moved 0.9 position out of fire admin, and that has been moved into the transport division. And I have a statement on that slide that will further explain that so that we're truly getting to, in fire admin, the required positions that are to be there and funded by the general fund. Okay. With those changes, again, you have to kind of look at all the three divisions collectively, but they brought in a 29% reduction, almost $900,000. Fire operations, one of the biggest change here, Mayor, is that we have 18 people that are currently staffed for the fire transport. Those 18 positions have been moved to the new fire transport division that we talked about and was put into the budget as part of the mid-year budget amendment that we did May 5th. So now we get into the fire transport. This is a realignment and enhancement as it's presented to you. It includes 24.9 firefighters, EMT paramedics, which is also, I said 18 previously on the previous slide, plus .9. So this additional six are the additional firefighters, EMT paramedics, for the fourth transport unit. This new division supports the goals of completing the fire assessment study. Fire assessments can only be used to pay for fire-related services, not transport. By separating these roles now, we can ensure that the city stays compliant and sets up a clear, sustainable structure for funding fire services moving forward. So as we go into the study, this makes it much clearer for the consultant when they put together that proposal that you'll hear, the first time you'll hear that, will be the late November, first part of December commission meeting. And again, that's timed because there's certain key things that we have to do by the end of this calendar year for us to notify the property appraiser as they start their process for the next year trim notification. So as we go into the transport enhancement request, the estimated cost is just under $700,000. We anticipate receiving at minimum $430,000 from that transport. That transport, because it would be a city unit, that means that our existing unit, three units, would not have to leave their zone to go serve residents of Deltona here. So by then not leaving their zone, we estimate that we will pick up an additional $120,000 of current lost revenue that is picked up by EVAC when we leave our zone. So when it's said and done, we estimate at least $143,000 would be needed from the general fund to support the fourth unit being put into service. This is all contingent upon commission approval, county approval, to put a fourth unit into service. We talked about the SAFER grant that got submitted on time for the six positions. And this budget document is based on it takes time for our – we hired a bunch of new employees that just came on service this past November. So this means that they finish all of their training so that by January 1st of 26th, they would be capable of performing the duties to run that fourth unit as we're now having to hire the six new people. So the chief and deputy chief have put together a really good plan to put this into service. So this budget is based off of 75% funding, so going into effect January 1st. And then the final item is the Fire Emergency Operating Center. This is our EOC. So this is key in that we're always looking at how are we funding when we go into hurricane season, et cetera. This is setting aside $25,000 that is put into our EOC manager, fire chief, that he has funds that when we have to go and prepare, we need to buy food for staff for the EOC. If we needed to go out and buy some sandbags for some of it, if we needed a new refrigerator in the back room because one broke, we have the funding that we aren't scrambling August 1st because a hurricane is supposed to be here on August 10th. We've already got seed money for that. That money is only to be used for EOC. It is not for any other operating item. Code compliance decreased just under $160,000 or 6.25%. This budget includes code compliance and animal control. Public works includes administration, traffic operations, engineering, and field operations. Altogether, their total departmental budget decreased 5.42% or $193,000. Public works admin, there was no movement of staff between divisions here. So we saw a 59% decrease or just under $397,000 decrease within the department. And, again, these numbers that we're talking about decreases. You put in our last year budget items that we needed to get completed. They've been completed. We don't need to continue it next year. So this isn't money that's just sitting out there. You gave us a purpose to spend it. It's been spent. Budgets are now reduced. And traffic operations, we're looking at that with the department. The department believes that we can come in flat or reduced. So we will be looking at this division. But I just want to point that you can see overall, except for supplies and expenses, we did bring to the table a reduction. Most of their supply and expenses are commodity-based, and those commodities have seen an increase. So we're still trying to bring those in flat or under. Mr. McKinney, we still have quite a little bit more before we get to the very next one. So I want to stop there really quick because I've seen some commissioners have been up for a while. Oh, I apologize. No, no, it's not your fault. I haven't marked one to stop, but I didn't want it to get where they have way too many questions, where it makes it more complicated. So we'll start off with Vice Mayor Harriet, then it will be Commissioner Santiago, then Commissioner Vila-Vasquez. Thank you, Mayor. All right, so I'm going to go all the way back to the city manager division summary. We've got economic development broken out, but then under the city commission operating budget, we still have the Team Volusia expense under the city commission. Can we get the Team Volusia expense under economic development since that's – That would be more reasonable for that to be under there. I agree with concur. And then I'm going to – give me a second. I'm trying to get through all my notes. Okay, and then for the support services for city clerk, finance, purchasing, HR, I'd like to see it for the attorneys if we can, facilities. Are we charging out those general fund expenditures to the user departments? And really the one that I am most concerned are the ones that are outside of the general fund. So we have to do it for everything, right? But the ones that are in the general fund, it's a wash. We're just moving it around. But the benefit comes from allocating those expenses and services to the – Yes, sir. We allocate everything that you see on that support service summary gets allocated out to the user departments, you know, solid waste, stormwater, water sewer, everyone. So, yes, we have a very good – that was one of the first things that I took a look at with Keong when I came. She went through everything in detail, and we have a very good allocation plan here in the city. And then for IT, that is allocated out because now they're an internal service fund. And the same with fleet. Part of the reasons why we put fleet as their own division fund or their own division, there was a lot of expenses related to fleet that we were just absorbing within the general fund. Now that we've made the switch, we've been able to do it that fire has vehicles, water sewer has vehicles, stormwater has vehicles, making sure that we're allocating those costs on actuals. Building has vehicles. Yes, sir. Everybody does. Okay, and then out to public safety, I had met with the sheriff's office last week on the perceived increase in domestic violence cases and delinquent cases and to try to understand what we can do to address that in the city. One of the things that we discussed on the domestic violence side is that we've had, we recently over a few months ago had a domestic violence related homicide in the city, and that brought out a lot of, that scared a lot of people. And we saw a subsequent increase in reporting. That didn't, that's not an, that's not saying that the problem didn't happen before. The problem has been existing and ongoing, but now more people are speaking out. So it really shows what the true problem is. And I'd like to see if we could have a conversation with the sheriff's office about adding a dedicated victim's advocate for the city of Deltona so that we can help address our residents and get to the bottom of this issue. And John, I think there's somebody here from the sheriff's office. So if it's, if they want to come into the podium, they're more than welcome to. So what I'll do is I'll work with the departmental responsible. And as soon as I have it available, I will bring to the table what the cost for a victim advocate dedicated to the city is. Okay. I would appreciate that. And then we're, I think the next comments I have are down on code compliance. The, for the code compliance budget and animal services, does that 6.25% reduction, does that include, take into account the changes with the Halifax Humane Society and taking of animals and the cost to take animals? I do not have that information in front of me, but we will have it for you before the end of the week. Okay. And then that was, is that where we stopped? Did we go into public works? We just finished. I'll hold public works. We stopped at public works traffic operations. But if you want, we can do all the public works after. I'll just hold, I'll just hold off for on public works and go further. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, John. Yes, sir. Commissioner Santiago. And then Commissioner Villavasco is right after. Thank you, Mayor. Just going to go a little bit back on, I noticed that some of the departments had increases and decreases from 5% to 15 and 20. But one that stood out is our city commission budget is at 302% increase. Really quick, the litigation for $1 million, that is specifically for, is that the suing the state of Florida, the SB 180 bill? Is that what that's for? I don't know if I'm, okay. Yes, that's the litigation that's been mentioned at the dais. So we've just accounted for all the items that have been discussed over the last few months. And we've accounted for those in the budget. So from $250,000 that we were told, it went up to $1 million. So we don't know exactly what it will be. I mean, that's something you all can adjust accordingly. But I believe one of the quotes we heard was about $600,000. And that was kind of like just applying and submitting and getting everybody on board to whatever might be heard in this next year. Because we've got, again, a full 12 months ahead of us. So we've estimated $1 million. We can adjust it accordingly. But we feel like that we need to budget something if we're going to have an expenditure at that line item. Okay. Fraud and compliance, half a million dollars. I know we spoke about this briefly in previous commission meetings, and it was about $200,000 per fund. Half a million, that's just a start. And then depending on how many funds are added, it could increase from that. Right. So we looked at demand start on it, I believe. And we saw at least one or two cases out there at $250,000. Yes. And your auditor, we talked afterwards, and he said half a million was a good start. Was a start. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Villavasquez. Thank you, Mayor. I didn't write the categories, but I do have a question. Reduction. Actually, the facility maintenance, is that a new department that was started? You know, the staff that's no longer part of public parts and recs? It's a new division that we took the current two positions that are vacant because we've been unable to fill them, one position from city manager that was vacant, and transferred one position from parks into that division so that we have four people within that division to service citywide facilities. So it's not like you took the one person dedicated to facilities, so it's not like you took the one person dedicated to facilities out of parks and placed them within this division. Okay. There will be no reduction in level of service from parks. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Then I have the same question with the fire department. I mean, you said you moved some four staffs from the fire department to, is those the inspectors? Yes. They're both inspector positions. Thank you. They're plans examiner inspector. Okay. The other question I have ties to VSO domestic violence that the vice mayor brought up. What exactly are we trying to do with this as far as the service department? Because we have so many domestic violence organizations that are out there working on this with the service department. So what exactly is it that we're looking for the city to do? So from my understanding in our conversations, there are a lot of different nonprofits that all do a very small piece of the puzzle. But the required piece that the sheriff's office does, they have one victim advocate for the entire county. And being the largest city in the county, we have enough of a caseload to help the victims that we would benefit from another victim advocate. And that victim advocate would do a lot of things. One of them would be to help facilitate the support services of the nonprofits. So it's not a city staff. It's an additional staff to the VSO specifically for this. Absolutely. It would not be a city employee. It would be under the sheriff's contract. Okay. Thank you. I could elaborate on that if you'd like. I've worked with victim advocates for years until here. A victim advocate provides support and assistance to individuals who have been affected by crime or trauma. They offer a wide range of service to include emotional support, information about the criminal justice process, and referrals to other resources. It's a very valuable position within any police organization that's there to assist immediately after certain types of events that have occurred recently. All right. I have two questions. They should be quick. For the general government, do we know what that percentage is for the debt services that we're going to use to start paying down the debt? I was the one that requested that. Yeah, 1%. That's $343,000. $343,000. So it's 1%. Sorry, $333,529. That's 1%? Yes, sir. Okay. And that was based off of our current debt. Kind of imitating that, the AHAC situation. Yes, sir. Yeah, that's why I just wanted to – the formula is just a little different. That's why I just wanted to point out the $10,000 difference. That's fine. I just – I wanted something in our budget where we can actually start using those funds to start paying the lease debt and then work our way up. Correct. To help our city kind of work that out. And I guess I'll schedule a meeting with you to discuss that a little bit further. For the most part, the general fund, the only debt the general fund truly has is the center. You know, the transportation debt that we have, which is still governmental debt, that's paid by our local open gas tax. Yes. The other question is, you made a comment under the transport enhancement request about, you know, the extra transport possibly staying within the city. Are we going to do anything about the times and we have to leave the city? Because I know that that's an ongoing situation when our firefighters, especially when they get called over to Daytona Beach, right, they get stuck in Daytona Beach for the whole day. Yep. Yep. So, per our agreement with Volusia County, we're first unit response. So, unfortunately, if our unit happens to be at Halifax and Daytona and a call comes out and they're the closest unit, we're going to be sent. That is a universal issue. So, the good news is, is that when we go and transport, we are receiving that revenue from that billing. So, it isn't, we want them back in our district, but there is an offset. Yeah. I mean, I just, I care more about making sure that we have those services for our residents. And obviously, we want to help, we want to be good neighbors, but we have to prioritize our people first. That was my concern there. And lastly, we're just, so we're getting, for next year, 75%, which means we're only funding 25%, correct? No, sir. We're funding, yes, sir. Yes. Okay. So, I'm correct. Yes, you are correct. Okay. That's all I want to know. All right. We can continue. Well, so, out of $700,000, $430,000 will be through transport revenue. Well, several things there. So, transport revenue is paying for two-thirds, one-third, 25 to one-third is paid from the general fund. Now, if we get approved for the SAFER grant, we wrote it to allow for this, that then there would be minimal impact to the general fund for the first year because there's a reduction. They pay the $75,000, $50,000, $25,000, you know, so we wouldn't be paying the full bore for those six employees until three years out. Got it. For 75% funding, we're budgeting 75% of that because it tows into effect at the end of the first quarter. That's correct. That is correct. So, I think we're talking about two different things. Two different things. I agree with you. Thank you. Commissioner Santiago, then we'll move forward. Click on your thing. It'll be blue. Give me a minute. Now, you should be green. Yeah, I'm green. Thanks. Just really quick, I don't want to go over it too much, but with the domestic violence, I have been in contact with certified, Volusia County certified domestic violence through the Sheriff's Department. I will provide you with that contact information, but I spoke with the city manager like a month ago or so about having an office right here at City Hall for survivors that need help. So, I just wanted to give you a little heads up on that. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, Public Works. Let me get back there, sir. We are at traffic operation. Yes, sir. So, I do anticipate I did receive changes this afternoon from the department, so those will be updated after I communicate with the department so that we do that. And, again, I do anticipate within the next few weeks into August, you will get a version two of the executive summary so that it encapsulates everything from this evening and any other reductions received from the department or new information received from the state. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. Public Works. It's not moving things around, you know, intentionally. It's to put the money to pay for invoices. Field Ops, again, that's another department that I'm looking at, division we're looking at. But for the most part, it's in personnel. There's been some of the in public works also that we're looking at is that it's overtime. So once we looked at it so that it was all in one thing, we went back and looked that we accounted for in the formula from Hurricane Milton. So we don't budget for hurricane overtime. It's just standard week to week overtime. If we have a hurricane event that brings in additional overtime, that's when I come back to the commission and ask for a budget amendment to pay for the overtime. You've authorized it through the emergency resolutions for the city manager to authorize the overtime, but not the overtime budget. So we're going to be tweaking that across all the operating departments as well. Parks and Rec, again, as stated previously, everything was part of the administrative division. Now it's been split into parks operation, recreation programs, events, and the center. We've taken a look to make sure also for promotional activities that there's no redundancies. There were a few redundancies. So you'll see also we'll be making some addition, sorry, reductions within the administration budget as well. Again, no reduction in service in any of these changes. Administration, again, it's kind of hard, kind of like we were talking about the city manager. It's kind of hard to really say here, but when you look at all of the divisions within parks, they brought almost a 60% reduction or $3.7 million overall because we transferred it to other divisions. Park operations, kind of hard. There's no reference for a prior year. The same with the recreation programs. But when we get to the events, brand new division, it looks like all of a sudden we've got half a million dollars that we are paying for promotional activities. I wanted to make sure that I put on the screen here, these are already the programs that Parks and Rec are paying for annually that the commission has approved. So there's no change in the events or the level of activities provided to the citizens of Deltona. The center, give Chris kudos there at the center, along with all the other managers. He really brought to the table taking a look at some of the reductions. But, again, to be consistent in how we do everything, the debt service is, again, moved into the general fund, general administration, because that's where we pay all the debt. Because you don't want to see the ebbs and flows, kind of like the fire department. When you go out and buy a $1.4 million ladder, you know, this year it looks really, you know, it's high. Next year it goes low. So that's why we talked about previously, you put all the debt, capital outlay, et cetera, in that general administration so that you're able to get good trend lines year over year in a division department. John, just one second if I can. So one of the things that we looked at for all these operating that you see through this budget is reduction. So part of that happens to be about 10 open positions given up by various departments that we've also reduced that will not be feeling that they'll truly go away. And to the new year, part of that's an absorption of that current department, whatever that department might be, as well as customer service being over here at the city hall. We absorb some of the functions that those folks do. We've gone through cross-training with our building division as well as our code enforcement as well as with the planning department. So not only do we have X number of customer service from water services, we also have other customer service agents from the other departments. So that everyone is being able to, in essence, be able to help with the customer service. We still have a few challenges. Building can't take payments for customer service, but they can still help them. They can still assist a customer as needed. So, again, we're trying to look at efficiencies. We're trying to do more with less people if needed, if we can account for that, if it's not a position that we must have. And we've also looked at combining positions or having others step up and add customer service or other functions to those jobs. So those are some of the things you see reflected in these reductions also will be those positions that we've looked at that we've removed and we'll bring to you at a future meeting to show you the essential costs of those. Thank you. Okay. Mayor, before I go into fund balance, if there was any questions that – Yes, Commissioner Avila Vasquez. Thank you, Mayor. Going back to the major events, those events that you mentioned, are all these events taking place outside of the courtyard? Because there are events that happen in the courtyard as well. So I don't see them listed. So is that because it's more like a logistics kind of – These are the major ones. We also have the recreation division. So the recreation division also puts on events at specific parks as well. And these are really city events versus always in the courtyard. Some of those are outside events, not necessarily. But they are partners with the city. They may be, but these are the ones we were paying for. They're partners of what we as a city you may have collected a fee for or the city paid for internally. Okay. My other question is the amphitheater I see listed here. It was my understanding that a prior commissioner had made arrangements with the county to let the city use the amphitheater free of charge. Is that true or not true? True that – Yes. Correct. We paid for the bans. Okay. But not the amphitheater itself, no. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that that was a correction there. Well, not a correction, but – Sorry. I apologize. No. You're good. We will list all the other recreational programs that we fund within Parks and Rec and provide that to by the end of the week. Okay. The positions that are being filled, Robin, are we also doing in-house promotion to fill those positions? Yeah. Our speaker is not on. Thank you, Mayor. They're always – typically are listed as internal. I think we've tried to post as our policy three days internal, or if we move those to external positions, there are three days, and Pam is nodding her head so that I state that correctly. So we do offer that. Also, we'll have sometimes an employee who may ask for a transfer. They're looking for a promotion, so we always look at that if that happens. The positions we eliminated, though, are the positions that had not been filled for some period of time or we felt like we had capacity within the department to eliminate. That's great to hear. Thank you. And I'm a recipient of a great internal applicant that came from the center and is now an accountant within Finance. So, again, thank you, Chris. Vice Mayor, I hear you. Thank you, Mayor. Going back up to Public Works, we've got traffic and engineering and field ops broken out. Do we have – where does the budget for the stormwater team fall under? It is an independent fund, and we'll speak on that later on. Okay. Excellent. And then going back to my conversation and meeting with the sheriff's office team last week, one of the other recommendations that they had for us to address delinquency within the city and kind of the uptick in mischievous behavior that we've seen is the availability of more youth programs, specifically targeting the children ages 12 to 16. So, if we could look at what kind of programs we can offer for that age group and then some sort of needs-based funding availability program for it as well, because while we have a lot of our neighbors that can't afford to pay for these, there are some that can't. And oftentimes, the kids in those families are the ones that need the activity the most. So, if we could have some sort of mechanism for income assessment and maybe a program fee waiver, I think Marita might have a comment. Commissioner, I really want to ask this. Yeah, so, do we know that we have grants? Because I know we have pretty much a lot of youth programs that have started in the city more than we used to have before. Do we have in those programs grants for kids that qualify for free outfits and equipment? Because I know the other teams that are not part of the city. I know I sponsor one or two kids' outfits and stuff like that. There are grants out there specifically for programs, as you're discussing. Going back to yours, there's also the VOCA grant that we would have to partner with because it really is a service that would be provided by our law enforcement arm. So, we would have to partner with the sheriff's office to go after a VOCA grant, which is funded by JAG, F-D-L-E. So, we would work with them for that grant. So, both of these programs have great potential funding opportunities. Excellent. I have brought that, spoken a long time ago, many moons ago, about the PAL program. And they couldn't bring it to the city of Deltona because we don't have a police department, which I don't think is the right answer. We don't have a police department, but we have a sheriff's department. So, I think that we should qualify for those PAL grants and stuff like that. Absolutely. I just want to make sure we have a mechanism for families that can't afford to pay for participation, that we can verify that there is a true need and we can get those kids involved. Right. But the events are there. Yeah. I mean, Parks and Rec have created a lot of youth programs here in the city of Deltona. All right. Let's move forward because I want to make sure we have enough time for public comment. Yes, sir. Hey, fund balance. If you all might recall, back when we met May 3rd, I stated that we needed to see where the audit wrapped up. This is right out of the ACFER, specifically related to the general fund. So, you can see that we have quite a few set-aside assigned fund balance and unassigned fund balance. I just got back, you know, from a conference. I specifically went to several sessions specifically on fund balance. So, I want to bring something back to you at the August workshop that I believe, you know, would potentially reduce our assigned so that we're in line with GFOA best practices, but also be mindful that even though we're not a direct coastal community, we're not that far inland, that we shouldn't be mindful of natural disaster reserves that we have. So, again, I want to bring that back to you the end of August. I guess we're over. Okay, citywide debt. Don't hit that button again. We broke it down into the four sectors that we have debt within stormwater, water-wastewater, transportation, and the center. The stormwater debt is standalone as well as the water-wastewater. The center and the transportation are both part of the same debt issuance, but we split it up so that you can see which portion is governmental versus transportation. Outstanding debt is just under $144 million. Going to, Mr. Lely, your kind of question, here's our 10-year historical millage rate. As you can see, in prior years, we were hitting eight mills. We've made great progress over the last few years to bring it down to the seven mill range. I can tell you, just from looking at the trends, that is because within the last four years, we have seen some significant increases in new homes that are well over $300,000 and $400,000. The average single-family taxable value within the city of Deltona is just at $123,000, okay? So that means that out of 27,000 homes, less than, you know, half of them are valued at less than $123,000. So if you go back and look, just in 2020, our average taxable value for our homes was just over $60,000. So we've seen a significant increase over the last few years. So when you look at it, and I won't go into all the detail, there is, you know, everyone in this room could parcel out statistics from the Volusia County website in many different ways. But just under 18% of the parcels within the city pay no taxes, 17.78% of the parcels within the city pay no city taxes, 51.98% of the residential parcels fall below the average assessed value of $122,758 and may have exemptions of $50,000 or more. So we have 7,692 parcels that have values of less than $50,000. If it is a homesteaded property and you have the two double home exemptions of $25,000 each, those parcels pay no taxes to the city. The only agency that they would pay taxes to would be the school board because you only get the one $25,000 exemption, okay? So, you know, so, and then we have no resident, we don't have one single family parcel in the city valued at a million dollars or more, which is, you know, not, is very unusual. You know, so a couple of them within there are the multifamily, but the majority of those are all commercial properties, okay? So when you look at using the 24-25 millage rate of 19.1303 for all taxing authorities, the city of Deltona is 36.59%. So the majority of the taxes collected for every residential unit goes to an agency other than the city of Deltona. So, again, I have my card here. If anyone would like to know at the, you know, the staff recommended millage that this budget is built on and 6.75, we have no problem the three of us providing to someone what that estimated city taxes are. Mr. McKinney, give me one minute. If I can, city clerk, how many public comment requests are there? Please continue. Okay. Again, I won't go over this, but here is the 10-year historical so that you could show city of Deltona versus the school board versus Volusia County and all others. The city of Deltona, as you can see, has, again, made great strides in reducing their overall millage rate, while the county and the school board, their reductions have not kept up at the same level that ours has in reducing. Then we have our special revenue funds. I won't go into great detail on this, but this is our fire impact fees, our ship, CDBG, street lighting, park impact fees, local office and gas tax, tree replacement fund, law enforcement impact fees, building and inspections, transportation impact fees, Lake District, and community redevelopment agencies. Overall, we have a projected budget within these group of funds of just under $17 million. Again, you will see next Monday, July 21st, you will see a whole host of resolutions, which are setting the maximum assessments that will be on the trim notice. We're not setting what the rates are. We're only setting the maximum for a future public hearing on September 25th for final discussion. Before we go into the special assessments, I know Vice Mayor is on the board. Go ahead, Vice Mayor, and then we'll look at what the time is and how many public records we have. Thank you, Mayor. I think you actually answered the first couple, the first two that I have. Then on slide 50, the taxable value groups, there's vacant parcels listed at 3,031 parcels. Can we get a breakdown of the zoning of the current zoning for those vacant parcels? You're talking about what zone they are or what their current land designation is? What their land use designation is. Yes, sir, we can. Yeah, absolutely. So that we can see what of those 3,000 parcels, whether they're currently zoned for commercial or residential. Understood. And we actually have a slide that will give some of that detail in a very couple more. Perfect. And then on the special revenue funds and actually the one that just popped up, street lighting, I have had a whole host of neighbors that constantly are asking, how do we get street lighting within District 1? So I am asking the question, how do we get expanded street lighting in District 1? And not the FPL, the Duke light that is on the corner, but the street lighting that is in front of residences along the sidewalks so that their kids can get home in the wintertime when it gets dark at 5 o'clock. So we, I think a couple months ago you mentioned the same thing. So our public works deputy director has worked out some numbers, several rough estimates, and we'll bring that to you as a future work session. I think we're trying to set that up for fall, September, October, November. I'm not sure exactly when that's going to fall out. The sooner the better. But we do have that for you, and we will replicate that for all the districts. I mean, it's, you know, it's a pretty rough number, but we can look at it from all districts so that all of you have that. So we'll look at that sometime in, I'm going to say probably October, November, because we have a pretty full month in September with just budget. But we'll look at bringing that to you in the future date. Some numbers she does have, so we'll refine them a little bit and get that to you. It includes your sidewalk, cost for sidewalks as well as your sidewalk or cost for lighting, and that will be replicated for each of you. And I understand that this is not like, it's not feasible to implement the entire district at one time, so I understand that. I just, I'd like to get the ball rolling so that we can start that process. You would want to, especially as the assessment would be assessed to your homeowners, we would need to have that, again, advertised through the property appraiser by December and have a couple of notices that have to be placed out there. So that's something that, you know, would take some time. But if we can get that out there at least for October and, of course, the sign-up and so forth when it's looking at a development, there's so many homes required to agree to it and so forth. So there's a lot of, you know, work to do, but it's something we can at least start working forward and bring to you for consideration. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, Mayor. Commissioner Howington? This slide brought up a question. Back in the OPEX slides, we saw several departments that were actually reflecting a utility decrease. If FPL is proposing a 13 percent increase in Duke is 2 percent, is it reasonable to think that we're going to have a utility decrease in OPEX? You will see next Monday that we actually have some reductions based on actuals. Okay. Yeah, so we didn't just go and so we set an average of 4 percent. We set that FPL, the state would probably not allow more than 6. Duke was at 2, so we averaged 4 when we did all of this. But we've gone in and looked at the actual expenses for the rest of this year, figuring out what it would be next year. So there's some reductions. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Commissioner Lawley? Thank you, Mayor. Just because the topic came up with the Vice Mayor, and I'm going to put it out there into the world. When we do talk about the streetlights, I actually had been thinking about this a lot, actually, lately. It would be great if we could get, I don't know what there are options or what the options would be for the types of streetlights, because I know that we kind of had, there's a two-fold issue, and I'm kind of of two minds, too. I'd love the streetlights, but there's also concerns with, like, the Dark Skies Initiative and some of the other things that occur with light pollution. So I'd be curious to see what the options are when we do look at the streetlights. I know, at least on major expressway projects, we have the ability to put shields on the lights to focus them more on the roadway surface versus creating light pollution in the surrounding neighborhood spread expressways. So I'd be curious to see that on that topic. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Let's go ahead to public comment, because I want to make sure that we have to. All right. Let's go ahead and move to public comment, and then if the city manager, when is the soonest we can get the rest of these topics on another workshop? Or a deputy city manager, either one. Again, we can bring these. We have the consideration of the maximum military rate is going to be the 21st, so that has to, you know, kind of correlate with state statute requirements. But we can add it to the 28th and finish the conversation on the 28th. But there's some of this that needs to be brought up for the 21st, because the assessments have to be adopted or have to be part of the 21st. So even if we just get through the couple of assessments, we can bring the rest of it back to you on the 28th. I just want to make sure that moving forward, because I was getting into the weeds of policies and procedures, we can extend workshops, and that needs to be a topic in the next workshop that we do, at least adding the opportunity to extend our workshops at least two times like we do with regular commission meetings. So we have to do a hard stop at 730. So my advice would be let's add this, the very first thing, to that workshop, if possible. Okay. And then even if we have to schedule a special workshop after that one just to cover ourselves. But I want to make sure that the residents get to speak out. Can I just encourage each of you to reach out to John McKinney to speak about the assessments if you're not sure where you stand with those, because those are requirements. If we're going to add this to our trim notice, keep in mind we have several assessments here, but the solid waste and the stormwater, that was that $30,000 savings. We're able to show you if we add those assessments on the trim bill, that's a significant savings for us. Hi, John. All of those, like the deputy city manager stated, if you have questions on those assessments, get with me before next Monday. But I will tell you that those will all be an action item that I will speak on. So I will speak on Lake McGarrity street lighting, solid waste, and stormwater. Good. Thank you. Thank you. Can we please do a public comment? And if the clerk, just leave your microphone on, please. Okay. She calls for Courtney Cross-Burgos. And, Ms. Burgos, Cross-Burgos, once you click on it, just the mic will turn green. And if you can just leave it on, I would appreciate it. That wasn't hard. Courtney Cross-Burgos. I have just a couple of quick questions. And if I knew it was going to be time crunch, I could have waited until Monday. But the million dollars in legal fees, could we avoid some of that with not doing a moratorium but still participating in a class action suit trying to repeal SV-180? And that way we don't need another million dollars in legal fees? Yay to the clerk's office for lowering their budget and the city manager, even though I'm not quite sure the way everything's moved around, how much was actually saved. But I'm going to look at it. When I lived in Lake County, when we first moved down here, we had a Deland mailing address. We were right over the bridge into Lake County, Lake Mack. And our power company was Seiko. It was a cooperative. And that's electric. But I was wondering, couldn't we do something like that with our water company since we own it? Couldn't we make it like a co-op so it would be cheaper for residents and we would reap some benefit as well with the city since we were talking about the prices Nick brought up about all the high prices of the water. And I had a couple other things, but they're not important. We'll let that go. But I just wanted to bring that up to see if there was something that we could do, maybe make a co-op out of the water department somehow. I don't know how that works, but maybe that's a way to lower the bills and make it more feasible for everybody. Thank you. Dr. Blodgett, please. Okay, I have a couple of questions. One about the impact fees. We've been looking at raising impact fees now for years, not months, years. When are we ever going to do it? It's killing us. The water costs are going up. We can't even drink the water. It's horrible. Litigation, a million dollars. What can we do to get that down? If everybody stopped suing each other, we'd be okay. Are we going to double the stormwater in the next five years, the stormwater charges? There's a hammer over there, and it keeps blinking, and it's driving us crazy. You can't see it, but we can see it from over there. Code compliance. From what I've heard from people, code compliance has been harassing some people, and maybe they don't need any more vehicles. Okay, thank you. At this time, meeting is adjourned. Thank you.