BUDGET WORKSHOP - Aug 06, 2025

to our city commission budget workshop number two. Clearly we're not in a circle again. So next year that will be our goal to have our circle back. But staff kind of semi-begged not to have to put them through that with all the meetings we have this week. And that seemed fair. So anyway, so we'll be fine up here. But just remember, I mean, it's kind of a little more informal and just want everybody to feel like they're getting what they need off their mind as we walk through this. So on that note, I will turn to the city manager for her opening remarks. Yes. Good morning, mayor. I'm good because, you know, I forgot to send that memo about what I was wearing today. So good morning, mayor, vice mayor and commissioners, staff, members of the board of finance are here. Good morning. This is your second budget workshop where we have a very busy day, as you can tell from our agenda. We have a follow-up and I'll just kind of run through it. We have the follow-up from the budget workshop number one. And it is attached to your agenda item in Granicus. We had some items that we need to follow up and we have some answers for you. Others we do not. We need more time. And Les and Gina are going to go over that. As I said, the board of finance is here. Members of the board of finance. And they're going to give their annual report. We're going to do the general fund update. You'd ask for some additional information on the general fund, which Les has provided. We're going to run through risk health, the pay plan as well. And that's going to be the Dr. Smalling show. So that'll happen later on today. Those are obviously critical pieces of information for you as you draft the budget. Item number eight is the PTO program. And that's actually a follow-up from the budget workshops last year where you asked us to investigate a PTO program. We did some research. We did not do a deep dive. Question is, do you want us to continue or put that on the shelf for a while? And then at a time specific, which is one o'clock, we're going to have the aid organizations. The committee has met. We have made our recommendations. We had a very large number of applications requesting a lot of funding. And so we're going to run through staff's recommendations for aid to org and then receive city commission direction. I understand from Commissioner Dugard that he has a hard stop at four. Yes. Which I think would suit all of us as well. Scheduled to four, right? Yes. We'll schedule to four. And so with that, I'm going to hand it right over to Les, if that's okay, Mayor. And he'll start in with a follow-up. I just want to commend Commissioner Dugard for making sure we're done at four o'clock. There we go. Well, you know, he mentioned he had a hard stop and I jumped on that. That's good. Okay. Yeah. Let's go to Les. Les and Gene. Great. Good morning, Mayor, Vice, Mayor, Commissioners. Les Tire, the finance director. I'm here with Gene, our budget manager. The first item, as Jennifer mentioned, is our follow-up memo. And if you'd like, I can walk through each item or the commission can ask specific questions. I think there's 12 items, so I'm happy to walk through them, but it's up to the commission how you'd like to do it. So anyone wish to have anything pulled out or do you want to go over every one of these or? Mayor, if I may. Yes. Yeah, we don't need to go over it, but I just wanted to clarify. I believe on there where it talks about an additional employee to look at multimodal. So I wasn't applying an additional FT, you know, full-time, just somebody with passion and vision. So that was the only clarification I wanted to make. I was not asking for a head count. Oh, okay. Thank you. Anybody else? So I do have one question. We're looking at the Mardi Gras issue. Is that, I mean, that's just going to be whenever you guys review everything and figure that out? Yeah, it is. I mean, we have the package that the Chamber of Commerce submitted, and I was actually waiting for Tony to start and get his footing, and then we'll start evaluating the package. And I'm not assuming any end goal. I just, at some point, we want to give an answer so that that process can move forward from anyone else's end. Will that decision be, is that going to be part of the budget, or it's going to be a non-budgeted item? It wouldn't. I don't think that I can actually get the evaluation done before we adopt the budget. So I think that we can get something close to it and have a pretty good idea. But, you know, I mean, it obviously needs to be a deep dive. And so, you know, as far as staffing goes, I just, I don't want to rush it either. I just want to mention, we are proposing that we add a new business initiative called Review of Special Events. That's one of our BPIs we're adding. Called what? Review of Special Events. We're proposing a new business initiative to review the special events during 2026. Which we were going to initiate, though, after the new year. Right. So we need to look at Mardi Gras first, but we want to look at all of our events. Yeah, that's what I thought we were doing. We can't put that into that. Because, I mean, obviously no one wants to lose Mardi Gras. So an answer, you know, whatever the answer is. I mean, I've certainly set the tone. I'll say it right here publicly. I've set the tone with the chamber that we've got a tough budget, you know. So looking at us to try to take over something like that, that's a heavy lift. So I'm not presuming anything. Just that it's important to get an answer back at some point sooner rather than later. But I would like a better understanding on if we're going to budget something for reviewing special events, what that budget amount would entail if it's just a review. We have not budgeted anything. It's going to be staff time. Right. Okay. So anything else from the follow-ups? Well, actually, can I just get clarification on this? Well, we are going to discuss this at some point today, I think, right? The special events? Or at least... Okay. So we are going to discuss this at some point today, right? No. No? I do not have it on the agenda. Okay. No. All right. You mean the Mardi Gras or special events overall? Well, a little of both. And this doesn't have to be... I guess what I would think would be just to maybe toss some ideas out on what we can specifically look at maybe in a shorter time frame. That would be my input. But we have a city commission discussion at the very end, if you'd like. We can do it then. That works. Or whatever. You know, we're here for you. I'm moving at 3.30. Well, and I think the only thing with the Mardi Gras specifically is we were going to wait for staff to do their review. But I think, obviously, all of us are like, you know, again, we need to respond to them sooner rather than later so they can move forward with whatever it is. Yeah, I just... So I think that's my expectation. When reasonably can we talk about that so we can give them an answer? Yeah. And I would say, no, and I totally... I'm not trying to accelerate this process. I would say, though, that perhaps there's elements of a brief discussion that might shape what it is we're specifically analyzing or evaluating. Anyway, that's my feeling. Yeah. No, I got you. Sometimes hard facts from staff can help that along, though. Or it gets too far ahead. Yes, Jennifer, with the same blouse on, is agreeing with me over there. Thank you, manager. Off to a good start. And it was very eloquently done. I'm sorry. No, I think that there's a should we and a can we. And those are two different questions. We've been handed an opportunity or a problem, depending on your perspective on it. Clearly, if there were no financial strains on the event, I doubt it would be handed to us. So, should we do this, I think, is a commission question. And can we do this is an administrative question. And that's kind of where I am my colleague asking a question here. Okay. You two have really differentiated yourself. I'm impressed with that whole... Well, I would say my colleague just articulated this so much better than I did. In my defense, I had to rush from Rotary to get here this morning, so I'm still a little bit on Rotary time. But, you know, with that said, no, that's exactly it. And the context of this really boils... I'll save the commission comments. Yeah. No, I... Yes. Thank you, city manager. I think, again, we've got a lot to do today, but certainly appreciate, respect what you're saying, both of you. So, okay. Well, we're out of the gate pretty well. Yeah, we're out of the gate. It's a slow gate, but we're good. We're good. We can keep moving. Let me just restart the meeting. Let's... Les. Okay. Thank you. The last item in the follow-up memo, we do have a couple slides on that we wanted to walk through. And this is... During workshop number one, we discussed the storm activity, and there were questions from the commission, and we thought it would be good to show a general fund scenario with no storm costs. So, that's what we've done here, and we did this to sort of just show what the general fund would look like without any storm activity. And if you go to... Go to the next slide. Would you go quick? Thank you. This is the information we presented at the first workshop, and this was the storm impact that is in our general fund, in our proposed budget. And if you go to the far right column on the bottom, you can see that over that four- or five-year time frame, there's about a $917,000 net expense. That number is an overall expense amount over that full five-year period. You can see, if you go to the far left, in 25 and 26, that's where most of the activity is at. We have, in 25, we've got... It shows a bracket there, a credit, and that means there's, you know, over $2 million of funding coming in that year in 25 that's flowing through the general fund. And in 26, it's the opposite way. It's an expense. That $3 million number is an expense, and each year is a little different, but the total impacts $917,000 over that time frame. And so we wanted to show this again, and then also going back to the other slide again. Thank you. This shows our general fund with no storm damage at all in the long-range plan. And as you can see, if you look in fiscal year 26, you can see that our available reserve is 17.7%. In our proposed budget, it's 15.7%. So it's a little... Our available balance is a little better than it is in our proposed budget because we've got about a $907,000 difference there between our proposed budget, and that's that 25 and 26 activity flowing through in the storm that's in our proposed budget. If you look at the outer years out to 2031, you can see that our outer years don't change much, really. We've still got about the same shortfall out in the outer years towards the bottom. The yellow row at the bottom, it shows that $5.8 million. So one of the reasons we want to show this slide is first to show the activity without the storm with some of the questions that came up at the last meeting, and also to show that the storm activity is pretty minimal and doesn't have much impact in the outer years. It's just sort of most of it's in 25 and 26 and minimal after that. The other thing I wanted to mention is if you look at the far bottom number under 2031, it's the yellow highlight. It's $9.4 million, $9.4 million number at the very bottom under 2031. That number is $917,000 more than the proposed budget. Again, that same number again, that's the difference between the activity over the long haul. I do want to also mention that, you know, that $917,000 is that net expense. The other piece of it is that we've, in our original budget in the current year, 2025, we had $1.5 million budgeted for our peer replacement general fund, had the peer replacement budgeted in 2025, and that is being paid for by FEMA now. So FEMA is paying 87.5% of that. So assuming that FEMA reimburses us as we expect, which would be the 87.5% of the peer, we would actually, we will actually be better off long-term by about $632,000 pre-storm because of the fact the peer was in before, the peer is out now being paid for by FEMA. So overall, big picture impact, assuming FEMA pays us back, we're actually better off about $632,000 than we were before the storm started because FEMA's paying for the peer is the reason for that, or 87.5% of it. So, and there were also questions at the last meeting about, you know, what does 26 look like without the storm? If you look at 26 there, you can see that the estimate is that that $4.7 million red font number, the estimate is revenues are $4.7 million less in expenses in 26. That number was a lot larger in the proposed budget because of the storm activity, but I also wanted to point that out. So just wanted to show this. Are there any questions? I know it's a lot of information, but we thought it would be good to see the activity without the storm information. Any questions on this one? Anybody? Okay. So keep going. Okay. Hold on. We've got Commissioner DeGarden. Second thought. I'm trying to, can we go back to the prior slide? Thank you. I'm trying to understand if we're dealing with a expense explosion or a revenue shortfall that's driving us to these numbers that are diminishing our fund balance. Right. So help me understand as briefly as you possibly can where that's coming from. Yeah. It's mainly the expense side. On the expense side, we've got our labor, our labor's increased some compared to, and looking at 25 and 26 budgets and long-range plans, our labor's increased a little bit. Our labor's increased by about a million dollars over that five-year timeframe. That's a small piece of it. The larger piece is our operating costs are about $4.9 million more in this long-range plan than the one adopted in 2025 back in September. And that is mainly due to the fact that our operating costs are $1.1 million more in 26 budget than they were in 25. And that $1.1 million increase in operating costs is mainly due to we had an increase in the cost of replacements for the fire department of about $440,000. We had an increase in property insurance that we talked about a little bit last meeting. That's about a 9% or 10% increase in 26 over 25. And we also had an increase in our sheriff contract, a much larger increase than normal. It was about 8% in 26, and it's normally been 4% or 5%. So those are the big ones. But the operating costs are up $1.1 million, and that $1.1 million extrapolates every year. So it's $1.1 million every year throughout the five-year, six-year model. And then we also have the other large item is capital projects. The capital projects that are in this general fund over that five-year time frame are about $5.4 million more than last year's five-year plan over that same time frame. And a couple of large projects that were added that weren't in last year is the Waywood Bridge project of $2.5 million. That was not in last year's long-range plan. We also had some projects for parks and rec for some lights over a five-year period, and that's about $800,000 over the five-year period. And then we had a few others, $800,000 for a storage building. So the capital increased quite a bit over that five-year time frame by about $5.4 million operating was about $5 million over that five-year time frame. And then we had about a million-dollar increase in labor. So those are the key drivers. That's very helpful. My concern, as we try to find a solution to the shortfall, is that we are finding a long-term solution for a short-term problem. And when it's capital, you can easily do that because your capital expenses have a very high delta. And one year you may have $10 million of capital. Next year you have $2 million. And so I'm worried that if we don't approach this understanding that delta of change that's going on in our budget, we can make a mistake elevating our tax levy that would then have a long-term effect for a solution to a short-term problem. So having those two discerned is very helpful to me. Thank you very much. One more thing I'll mention real quick is just regarding that question is if you look at our total revenues from 21 to 26, that five-year time frame, our revenues, if you look at 21 revenues versus 26 budget revenues, they've increased by 38 percent. So our revenues in the general fund have gone up 38 percent over that five-year period. Our labor over that same five-year period has gone up 45 percent, and our operating costs have gone up 49 percent. So those, I think, are two key drivers to be aware of, too, because our operating costs and labor has gone up quite a bit more than our total revenues over that five-year time period. Liz, could you walk through those operating side? One example, you had the 8 percent for the sheriff's contract. What were the other ones, not the capital, but just the operating part that were driving the increases? Yeah, the key drivers were the sheriff I mentioned, and also we had a large increase in our fire department contribution for their replacements for their vehicles went up about $450,000? Yeah. Yeah, $438,000 in 26, over 25. And that's because their vehicles have gone up a lot. The three large fire engines, the prices have gone up dramatically in the last few years. And we're trying to get in front of that, the fleet department is, so they make sure we have the funding available when they need to be replaced. And then sheriff was $456,000 increase year-over-year, and insurance premiums were about $300,000, roughly, you know, year-over-year with that 9 percent increase. And again, property insurance has pretty much tripled, 100 percent increase in the last three years. That's been a big driver of our operating increases in the general fund. Any other questions for right now? Nope. Commissioner Sandberg? Can you clarify the difference in the debt service real quick, 38 to 446? Just one sec here. Debt service in what year? Sorry. 2025 versus budget 26. It's highlighted in green. Yep. I know one of the increases is we're starting to pay for the fire engine, but I can pull that up and see what the other increases. Just one second. Yeah, part of that for sure is we have our first $150,000 payment for at least for the fire engine. That's part of it. Gene can double-check the other to be sure. Thank you. That's him. Quick question. Okay. Commissioner Walker, you were done? Commissioner Sandberg? Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I just want to just do a clarification on something you said when we first started this. So the no storm scenario, you had made reference to the pier and specifically how that cost was being covered. We had budgeted for it originally. Now FEMA's paying for it. What line item does that factor into in this spreadsheet? Well, the pier would be part of the capital projects, and it would be part of the CIP capital line of $9.835 million. We didn't show all the – we're not showing all the capital project detail here, but it would be in that capital project category. Okay, so that's – with FEMA covering the cost and anything we get – else we get back from the Fed, basically that reduces it to roughly about $600,000. Right. Right. Okay. Okay. Thanks for that. Yeah. Thank you. Mayor? Sure. Vice Mayor? Les, you had mentioned that labor's increased 45 percent over the long period. Yeah. How much of that is – what's the impact on health insurance? Health insurance has been roughly – I was talking to Teresa about this yesterday – last four or five years, like averaging 5 percent increases roughly. We're, you know, pretty fortunate. Now in 26, we're looking at 14 percent increase in health insurance. So I'd have to do a little analysis to give you a good average, but it's been pretty close to 5 percent the last five years. Is that right? So I don't – I think in 26, that's really hitting this, but I do think the prior five years, you know, it's been roughly 5 percent health insurance increase. That's not bad. Okay. And do we know – the increase in 14, I know it's hard to predict, but do you know where that's going in 27, 28, 29? We have no idea. I think it's really hard to predict. One of the thing – one of the drivers that's increasing 26 so much is our 25 actuals for claims are up significantly from prior year. Our claims this year are much higher than last year to date, and that's part of what's driving that increase next year as well. So I think it's hard to say with that because it really changes every year with claims. Thank you. Health insurance claims are that much higher? Health insurance claims, yeah. All right. Do you know the driver of that? You know, Teresa can – Teresa can be going over that later, but she can – Well, we'll talk later. Yeah, we'll wait on that. That's fine. That makes sense. Okay. Good question. Okay. Anybody else? Are we good? Good to go? Good. Thank you. Okay. Next is the Selling Center boat club discussion, and I'll turn that over to Jennifer. So, thank you. And it's not really a discussion as much as it's informational. This is our final budget workshop, and so I had wanted to share with you the conversations that I've had with the bridge and board of the boat club moving forward and an agenda item because it will impact the budget, and we are going to be looking for a kind of late coming, if you will, capital project. So, you're going to have on September 4th a letter of interest from the boat club, and the letter of interest is actually very simple. It's kind of who, what, and how long, and it's the commission agreeing with the boat club to give them a location, which is where the existing boat club is now, or was, and a time period in which to raise funds, and the recommendation is a three-year period in which to raise funds in order to build the boat, the sailing center, boat club sailing center. I don't have the agreement before you. I couldn't get it to you earlier because they had submitted a letter of, like a letter of interest that was more like a memorandum of understanding. It had a lot of information that we just don't have and aren't prepared to put before the commission yet, as far as method of delivery and so on and so forth, construction. So, they are very eager to get moving on the fundraising while they have everybody's interest, if you will, and it's still relatively new. So, one, I've seen a building elevation, which we're going to put before you on September 4th. It is very similar to the previous boat club, but it's elevated. And it's mostly open to below. And there's an opportunity at the open to below to provide a public restroom and a kind of outdoor shower as well. And I think that that's badly needed on the peninsula because, you know, you have Dunedin Youth Sailing, you have the windlasses, you have all of those activities out there. So, and that is a public restroom which would be operated by the city of Dunedin. And so, there would be a commitment for the city to add to their fundraising, if you will, for that public restroom itself. So, they're currently reviewing the letter of interest. I actually anticipated having it in hand the next couple days. That's what Craig Polito had committed to. I'm putting it before the city commission. It doesn't bind the city in anything other than providing the location. But if I do put the letter of interest before the city commission, I'm going to have to budget something in the outlying years for, you know, for that restroom moving forward. So, as I said, this is, you know, unfortunately, it's awkward because it's part of the funding process. We're deep into the budget, but it's kind of just the way that these communications are going with the boat club. So, you know, I'd wanted to put that before you to recognize the fact that you're probably going to have a late capital item in the budget, which we're going to recommend. The, you know, the boat club has, and sailing center, they have a lot of momentum right now, a lot of attention, as I said. They have other groups looking at, you know, jumping in with them in that area as well and working with them. So, I'll know more in the next couple weeks, and certainly by September 4th, you'll have all of this before you as far as, you know, what fiscal year we think that this is going to hit and that type of a thing. I also, I'm sorry, Mayor, one other thing. I want to acknowledge on the public record, too, that we have a budget of money funding through ARPA and the General Fund in order to, and that was originally to do a survey of the building to find out whether or not it was, whether or not, you know, we could use it or rehab it, if you will, moving forward, and now we know that we can't. So, we rolled that into the budget for next year. And after, you know, you kind of cobbled together what we have, we have about $63,000 ARPA General Fund, we have, we have insurance monies. We have $29,000 that, that if we rebuild it, that, that we'll get from insurance. So, we have about $140,000 already set aside for the city's part in reviewing design and that type of a thing, so. Okay. Any questions or comments? So, do we have a number that we're looking at? If we have, we're $140,000 prepared, do we have a total number that they would be looking for? So, we do not. And that's, that's what I need to bring forward to you. So, and, you know, they actually, they're, they've got estimates for how much, you know, the building's going to cost. And they will fundraise. And then, kind of in the DFAC model, they'll build it and then turn it over to the public. So, it would be a publicly owned building. So, but the conversations that Jorge and I have had with them last week, it's, you know, as far as the fundraising goes, fundraise more. Because it's going to cost more. And you're going to need a contingency and so on and so forth. So, they're, really, they have an architect who's working on it. They're working on, on putting together their estimates based upon that design. And then we, for our part, if, if the city is going to construct it, which I think is the way that we, we would probably do it. I mean, we need construction management. We need, you know, review of their design for a proper estimate and on and on. So. Okay. We, is it five minutes enough? Yeah. We need to take a five minute break. We've got a little technical thing going on. And so, five minute break and we'll be right back. And restart the meeting. I think our technical issue is resolved. And city manager's stepped away for a minute, but should be. Oh, so I, we can continue without her, can we? All right. Let's just assign her a lot of stuff. Oh, here she is. Too bad. We were deciding whether we could continue without you then and we're going to assign you a lot of stuff and then you came. So, yeah, just, anyway. Right, exactly. So, Les, I'll just turn it back to you. Okay. Our next item is the Board of Finance report. And we have Christopher Cramper, the Board of Finance Chair, and Catherine Harvey, the Board of Finance Vice Chair, with us today to present the report. And I'll turn it over to them. Good morning. On behalf of Chris and I and the Board of Finance, we thank you for allowing us to come and share our thoughts on the budget. And, as well, we would really like to sincerely thank Les and his team. They've been great partners to us and have been extremely helpful in getting us the information that we need in order to evaluate this. So, before we dive into this, are there certain areas you would like to focus on or just have us hit the highlights? I would say hit the highlights, but is anybody else thinking differently up here? I'd say the highlights and then come back with questions. Yeah. Sure. Go ahead. So, basically, we looked at this by saying, first of all, we wanted to budget, get to a balanced budget. We also wanted to increase the reserve levels in the general fund, which you guys have already been discussing. And then, of course, be fiscally responsible about what we're going forward with. So, you have already been discussing the low reserve levels in the general fund reserves. So, all of these recommendations will help to bolster the reserve levels in the general fund. So, the first thing that we talked about was the carry forward in the capital planning process. So, on a budget for 2026 of $59 million of capital budgets, that also includes an additional carry forward of $35 million from the prior year. And that's kind of a consistent trend. The year before that, it was $30 million. So, this has kind of become a standard practice within the city. I think there's a widespread belief among the staff that they have to budget the entire amount of a project in the first year, rather than parsing it out into when the payments will actually occur. There are some instances where this is needed. If you're looking for grants, it's a requirement for you to book everything in that first year. But that doesn't prevent you from rebudgeting once you get the grant. So, really having this huge amount of overflow from year to year makes it really hard to determine what you're actually going to spend. It's also impacting the timing of debt obligations because we're taking out loans for this entire amount when we're not going to spend it until subsequent years. So, even though the debt proceeds are being put into interest-bearing accounts, it's obviously pretty unlikely that you're going to make more in interest than you're paying in debt service. So, it is costing the city money by doing that. We also think this will help to balance the budget if we get a little more disciplined about the timing of payments. The aquatic complex is a prime example that we put in our letter where the entire amount is budgeted for the coming fiscal year, even though it's an 18-month project. And it sounds like it's even going to start later in the year. So, if we could even get half of that budgeted amount put into the next year, you would have a balanced budget. So, I think to help at least with the perception of how the city is being managed, that's something that we really would like to pursue. We also think there should be more of a rationalization process, if you will, of prioritization. There are some departments that kind of chronically, their eyes are bigger than their stomachs. And so, they budget for all these projects and don't actually get them done. So, in order to kind of, an artificial way of managing that would be to look at what they actually have spent in each of the last five years and average it out, and start with that as a ceiling. So, it causes some prioritization. You know, you can go over that if you need to, but it kind of forces them to ask the question about what really is needed here, and to time the payments appropriately. We also would like to see, based on the lengthy list of projects that are subject to this carry forward provision, of revisiting all of those. You know, periodically, you can determine, or the finance team can determine, how frequently that should be done during the year. But during the year, there should be some continued reconciliation of what the budgeted amount is versus when the payments will actually occur. And that will, again, help with this carry forward issue. And lastly, on this topic, there are instances, although I will say, the city has gotten much better about having capital projects come in on budget by a significant amount. And I think last year, they hired a number of engineers that helped to manage this, and so that's gotten much better. But for projects that come in over the original targeted budget by 10% or more, we suggest that it become a standard procedure to do a value engineering process, which is really going through where the scope and the costs can be modified to bring the scope back under the budget. And it's happening in some cases now, but not all the time. So we just think that should be a standard process. You've had some discussion already this morning about labor costs, and we definitely think there's some room in those numbers to come lower. Right now, there's a 3.5% increase budgeted for non-bargaining employees, even though the plan is that employees can get up to 3.5%. So in order to have really meaningful merit-based increases, we believe a budget of 3% is more than adequate to accomplish that. There's also a lot of ways employees are getting additional compensation in addition to their base pay. There's this laddering process that they can earn more money by getting more training or education. And if you look at the line, that particular is not broken out in the budget, but if you look at the line items that are special pay, as well as the retirement contributions, they are also up significantly. So there's a lot of pieces to this. We did look at headcount, and you may have already discussed it, it sounds like. But there's a lot of reclassification of positions that creates a lot of noise in there, but pretty much bottom line, the costs are flat associated with that. Benefits, we've been talking about that. At the time we wrote this, the estimate was that the health care cost increases would be 11%. They've actually come in at 14. That is pretty high. And the budget is assuming that the city will absorb that entire increase. And rates really haven't changed premium rates for employees in quite some time. Last year, there was a restructuring, I would say, of the rates. There used to be just employee plus dependents, and they broke it out into employee plus children and employee plus family. But the city's paying the full cost of two of the three benefit options for employees only. And then prior to that, it's been since 2019 since they had a premium increase. So we would like to suggest that the city fund half of benefit increase, and the other half the employees absorb either through benefit changes and or premium cost increases. And these are all general fund expenses. So as you look at the reserve levels in the general fund, this has a direct impact on that. So lastly, we believe there should be a backup plan for the FEMA liabilities, the just in case, particularly since the city is planning to take out debt in the hopes of getting paid back by FEMA. We think that before that debt is incurred, you should look long and hard at what's going on and feel confident that the city will get all of that payment back. If you don't feel confident in that, we would suggest that you look at other capital projects that are budgeted in the same fund and either delay or delete them in order to avoid taking on that debt. And Wes's thoughts were we would know probably by March if we think we're going to get paid or not. So those are our comments. We believe we should be taking a conservative approach to spending right now, as I think you all would agree. And I'll open it up to questions. Chris, is there anything you'd like to add? Yeah, I just wanted to add a footnote. Again, thanking Wes and his staff for his infinite patience, as well as all the other directors and leaders of city departments that have come over the past year and addressed the Board of Finance on various projects or answered questions or concerns about things that we might have. Just as a footnote, I told everybody on the Board of Finance I was going to work it in. We know that we have an ex-officio member of the Marina Advisory Board. And since we've been looking at the acquisition of the operations of the golf club and the enterprise fund coming online, we're very much looking forward to an advisory board for the golf club itself and also ensuring that there is some membership ex-officio from the Board of Finance, since that is going to be another major operating enterprise fund for the city moving forward. And then that's essentially it. We've got a lot of new members. And I know I've seen a lot of members of the commission as well as senior staff members from the city that come and listen to our meetings and participate, and I really appreciate it. Thank you. So before we go to questions from the commission, I just want to, on behalf of the commission, thank you. Thank you for the very thoughtful memo, for the very thoughtful presentation. Just for the public, if they don't know, the Board of Finance is the only charter committee. So it's a very elevated, critical committee of citizens that provide kind of an outside look at our budget. And I know there's a lot of very good professional people on this board, and we appreciate how hard you guys work. So very much appreciate it. So I will go to just some questions from the commission, starting with vice mayor. Do you have anything? I really don't have any questions, just to echo her comments on thank you very much for your hard work and your memo. It's good work. Thank you. Mr. Sandberg. Well, I know Kathy's background, and I've got a pretty good idea about Chris's, so I trust everything that's coming from that table. Les, did you, was there any consideration about the, I think there were some questions about the health care employee contribution in the city? Did you look into any of that? Yeah, we'll be talking about that. But Teresa will go over that later today, the options for that would. We're going to be taking a deep dive into that later. Yeah, I know her background, so I had a feeling that whatever she came up with, it was pretty accurate. Commissioner Walker. Thanks, Mayor. Yeah, related to that, what are your thoughts with regards to some of the recommendations on the carry forward? Because that sounds like a very compelling and thoughtful comment. Yeah, we had a lot of discussion about that, our finance staff with the Board of Finance. Yeah, I think that, you know, I've talked to the city manager about this, too. We, you know, we started trying to rebudget when possible. In other words, Kathy mentioned, you know, we have these projects. We think we're going to get to them, we don't, and we're really trying to rebudget and not carry over. And we started doing more of that, and we want to continue to do more of that because, and we ask, we always ask the departments, you know, it's six months in advance, but where do you think you're going to be at the end of this year? Are you going to start this project? And if you're not, let's rebudget. So we want to really continue to do that because there's no point in having to carry forward if we don't need to. So we agree with that comment for sure. And I do think that we, you know, we do, we also could look at if we work with the city manager, when we have the carry forward, we share that with Jennifer, you know, and we don't really, we go through it with the departments, we go through it with Jennifer, you know, but we do our best and we'll continue to do our best to try to not have something carry forward that we know is not going to get started or during that year. May I add something to that? I think it's a really good comment, and we've had, as Les said, lots of discussions based on that. And I think that we need to look at it project by project because a lot of times, as you know, we can't enter into a contract unless it's budgeted, and we show that it's budgeted. So in, and so that's why, you know, you see a lot of these projects are front loaded because you adopt an annual budget. You don't adopt, you're not adopting the later years, as you know. So, you know, and I don't know if we can, we can make that commitment through a covenant to budget to satisfy those requirements and that type of a thing. So, you know, I think that there's a lot of work to be done there, and we will definitely respond to that comment from the Board of Finance. Yeah, well, and I appreciate that because there's an upside and a downside to that. The upside is always that, you know, our financial position improves over the course of any given year, and that's, I think, in large part probably due to the carry forward that we do. But to me, and this just comment on this is that, and I completely understand what the city manager just said. To me, this is more of a correction halfway through in proper project management. And not proper is the wrong word, but diligent project management. And so that's that. I do want to just say that, you know, I've just always been very impressed with the Board of Finance. Kathy, Chris, you guys do an amazing job. I read all the minutes that come out when I can't attend the meetings. And I just, you know, think that, you know, a lot of the recommendations and the discussions and everything else are so relevant to what we do. And I, for one, use the output of those committee meetings to shape my thoughts and opinions. So thank you for what you do. Commissioner Dugard. I find your communication to be very thoughtful. I find the work of the committee to be very sound. Appreciate the time you and the Finance Committee spend on putting these together. I've enjoyed sitting in on several of your meetings. Enjoy is not exactly the right word. Nonetheless, and by the way, it is a sacrifice of time that you're doing for the city, and we're very grateful for that. And I will take seriously every one of the recommendations. Thank you. Well, I don't really have a question as much as good. Obviously, like, you know, when I was going over the agenda right away, I want to read what the Finance Board says because I know that you guys have drilled through all this. But I am particularly interested in the first comment with the ups and downs because of the capital projects. Because I do think, like, when you look at it and you look at the capital number for, what, 2026? So, all of a sudden, capital jumps from, what, 3,800,000 in 25 to 12,275,000. And, of course, it's driving so much of the, you know, at least the perception of what the issues are. And so, I think that, kind of going back to what Kathy said, you know, we don't want to have this perception that we're just got a huge structural deficit and we're out of control. Even when some of the capital numbers are, like, at least driving that perception of the numbers. And I also think I don't, and I've had some discussions with you, Les, you know, I don't want to cloud some of the other issues where we really, we need to rein in some costs. So, we're being smart about where we're going for the future. So, I think that you guys have brought forward some good stuff. And I know that's something that you've talked about over the last couple of years, but really articulated it well this year and appreciated. So, I guess we'll. Mayor, if I may, I think Jorge wants to add something. Sure. Go ahead. Good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commission, and Board of Finance. I just wanted to clarify a couple of comments that carried forward. And having spent half my career in the private sector, I can share the frustration related to public sector procurement and how we go about awarding projects. But one perfect example, and Kathy spoke to value engineering. So, one of the projects that was actually awarded during 2025, which will make a big dent in that carry forward, was our wastewater treatment plant electrical project. That was a project that we bid three times. We value engineered a couple of times, removed some components, rebid it, finally got it awarded at $16 million. Originally, it came in over $19 million. So, in an effort to get it manageable and try to push forward and probably maximize what we saw as being trends of maybe some of the construction costs going down, we kept repackaging it and rebidding it. So, we did award that. So, that will be a big chunk out of that carry forward that's shown in 2025 because we actually awarded it in 2025. But with respect to, again, having worked in the private sector quite some time, you know, a developer would award a project because they knew, for example, the wastewater electrical component project, that's a two-and-a-half-year project. So, you don't come up with all that money up front in the private sector. You pace it out because you know you're going to have monthly draws and an X amount of dollars, so you finance and you budget for it accordingly. Unfortunately, the way public sector financing is set up, in order to award a project, you have to have all the money encumbered. Even though it's going to take you two-and-a-half years to pay it out, but you have to have all that money encumbered in the fiscal year that you make that award recommendation. So, those are some of the challenges that we deal with, but duly noted, engineers, we tend to be a little overzealous on what we can get done. And so, we try to manage those expectations every time we sit down. And I try to tell them, okay, how long is it going to take you to bid it? When do you think you can actually get it out the door? We need to budget that in this. There's no way you can do that in the current year based on the staffing that we have. And then, you know, in this past year, our folks were otherwise occupied with other priorities related to storm recovery that took them away from the projects that they were currently working on. Thank you, Jorge. I mean, you know, and the other thought, too, is, you know, when you talk about perception versus reality, you know, is there a different way to communicate it in the document somehow? So, you know, it highlights it in a way that, you know, doesn't look so shockingly stunning because, you know, in reality, it's going to work itself through. So, I don't know, just some things I think we should really put some thought on. And, I mean, we have, I think, a great budget communication document, but maybe there's some ways we can actually, you know, that can help it if we change the format a little bit. Just some thoughts. Any other questions or thoughts on Finance Board? So, well, thank you very much. And are you going to stick around and just kind of be here all day? Well, as Steve knows, I'm getting ready to go on vacation to Wisconsin this afternoon, his old stomping grounds. Erin and I are from very, we grew up very near each other. That's great. So, I'm just a couple miles from where I grew up. Enjoy. Well, I certainly appreciate that your last stop before vacation is the City of Deneen budget meeting. Shows my level of commitment to you. Well, we appreciate all you guys doing. Please pass that on to the rest of the committee. So, thank you very much. On Wisconsin. Yeah, have fun. Beer and cheese, right? Okay, Les, it's back over to you. Okay, thank you. Okay, next is our general fund update. We've made a few changes since the last meeting, and I just wanted to kind of highlight those. We went through and looked at revenues, and we made a few adjustments to revenues. First thing, we mentioned last meeting that the assessed value increase in 2026 for the county was about 5.2%. So, that increased our property taxes by about $74,831. We made that adjustment in 26. We also increased our interest earnings estimate for 25 estimate by $100,000, knowing that it was – the interest earnings have been good in 25, almost as good as 24. And also, we increased our half-cent sales tax in the general fund by $100,000. So, not large increases, but we did look at the revenues and make a few adjustments for the presentation today. And on the expenditure side, we had an increase in 2025 for interest expense for the interfund loan from the fleet fund of $157,000. That's something that we had missed in the proposed budget, and we wanted to get that in there as part of that storm information. In the long-range plan, we updated the health costs. We mentioned that we had budgeted about 11%. It was 14%, so it's about a $98,000 increase in 2026. The risk fund, we updated that charge. That was about a $15,000 increase for the adjustment, and we had a decrease – I'm kind of covering the highlights here. We had a decrease of $20,000 for the work planning and management software of $20,600, and that was just due to more costs being allocated to future years, more in the outer years than 26. So, as you can see, the summary of the changes is pretty minimal. It's about a $2,800 difference from the last presentation on July 18th with the general fund. So, our available reserve is pretty much exactly where it was when we discussed this workshop plan at 15.7% available reserve, which is, again, above our target. Our target's 15%. Also, you know, going to the next slide, this is the general fund long-range plan with those small changes I just mentioned included, and our 26 available fund balances, as I mentioned, 15.7%. Our shortfall that we discussed earlier is still about $5.8 million in the outer years. And I wanted to mention, again, we talked about this a little bit, but just wanted to go over it. I thought it might help to go over it again. About last year, our shortfall was $2.1 million in our final budget that was adopted in September. So, we had a $2.1 million estimated shortfall in the outer year last year. So, now we're at $5.8 million. And we talked about it a little bit earlier, but I thought I'd go over the highlights again as kind of what transpired and why we're at $5.8 million compared to $2.1 million. You know, first is on the revenue side, our assessed value, our property tax revenues are less than last year over the long-range plan. Also, we've got other revenue sources I mentioned last meeting that are flat or actually, unfortunately, declining some. In other words, declining compared to prior year actual. So, we've got Duke Energy Electric Service Tax is trending slightly under what we budgeted in 25. So, that has been reduced some in 26. Moving forward, we've got our sales tax revenue in the general fund, which is our half-cent sales tax. Even though I increased it by $100,000, it's still less than last year's budget slightly. So, that's trending lower in the future years. And also, our revenue sharing, which is revenue sharing comes from the state. And that really is about 80% sales tax and 20% gas tax. So, that's trending down too as well. So, we've got some of our larger revenue sources that are slightly trending down. So, the net impact of that is over that five-year time frame, our revenues are about $3.3 million less in this long-range plan than it was a year ago. About $3.3 million. And I mentioned, we did look at revenues. We made small adjustments we just talked about in the prior slide. And we will look at revenues again. We always do. I'll look at revenues again with Gene before we do the tentative. And if we see that something should be adjusted, we'll make that adjustment and present that with the tentative budget to the commission. And on the expense side, we talked about this briefly earlier, but I'll go over it again. Personnel costs, mainly health costs, health increase we just talked about, and Teresa will cover more, we're up 14%. That increase throughout the five-year time frame is about a $1.3 million increase over a prior year, same five-year time frame for labor. Not a huge increase, but with some. The operating costs is one of the larger ones I mentioned. Operating costs are $4.9 million more in this long-range plan than a year ago. And, again, the drivers for that are, the key drivers are our internal service fund costs for fleet replacement for the fire department. Sheriff costs are up $456,000 in 26 compared to 25. And our property insurance premiums increase of about 9% in 26 over 25. And then also on capital, I mentioned earlier, we've got more capital, about $5.4 million in this long-range plan compared to last year. And some of those key projects were the way bridge replacement of $2.5 million and the Fisher League complex lights are $837,000 over that five-year time period. Both those projects were not in our long-range plan last year. And also another project that's new is not a new project, but new to the general fund, is the aquatic complex. The aquatic complex has been in the penny fund for a number of years, as you all know. But to fully fund the project, the estimated construction number we have now, we've put an $8.3 million expense in the general fund. Now, that's offset by a bank loan proceed. So we've got a $7 million loan proceed that covers most of that. So it's not a big hit in 2026, but the debt service payments for that begin in 27, and the debt service payments from 27 through 31 are about $870,000 a year. So that's about $900,000 a year from 27 to 31 that was not in the long-range plan last year. So I wanted to point that out. And I want to mention again, the plan for that would be that when the project does start or whatever, once we get the bids and the project is approved by commission, whenever that is, you know, we will issue debt financing only when we have to. We will not issue the financing until we know construction is going to start. We do try to be very careful about not issuing debt before we need it because we don't want to pay interest. And Kathy made the comment about that is a good comment, but we do really try to make sure we don't issue financing until it's needed. But we're proposing in the budget a 10-year bank loan for that. We have about a 4.5% interest rate budgeted for that being conservative. And the plan would be assuming penny five passes. I think we should know that in November 28 is the most recent information I heard. It will be going to the – I had mentioned I thought it would be going to the voters in 27, but it's actually going to be 28. We just – Is that true? It has to be a general election. That is killer. It has to be? It's required to be? Is that new? Is that new? I think that is new. Yeah. It – well, it just – I mean, normally it's done three years ahead, which not really three years, just over two, so everybody has time to plan. And so for it to be done that late is – it just – it hurts planning for cities. It really does. Wow. Yeah. That's a blow. Wow. That's disappointing. Is that a new state requirement or something? Right. But I just wonder if that's – It is new, but this – because last – I don't remember that ever – 24 was 2017, right? Yeah. I think so. Yeah. It was 2017. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that just makes it hard on cities. That's disappointing. Okay. And so we're assuming – assuming Penny 5 passes, the plan would be that that revenue stream would begin in 2030. We would move this – that service payment to the penny fund to make the payments from 2030 through 20 – to 2035, the 10-year time frame. If Penny 5 did not – did not pass for some reason, then the general fund would make the payments for the full 10-year time frame. You know, so I just wanted to mention that. The goal would be to put it in the penny fund as soon as, you know, when the revenue stream started in 2030. Well, that's a gut punch. That's a gut punch. Just one clarifier. So with the pool, the $8 million that's in the 2026 budget, okay? So are you saying that that full expense is in 2026, even though we're going to be paying $870,000 a year in payments? We're not actually putting $8 million out. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, right now we're budgeting in 26 – The full amount, even though that's not what we're going to do. That's right, and that's a good question. That's something that I talked to the city manager about a little bit, and we – what we may do for the tentative budget is the loan proceeds will stay at – will stay at the front of the project. In other words, at some point in 2026, assuming the project moves forward like we think, we feel that – it could be later in the year in 26 that we may be getting financing in 26. We'd have all the – we'd keep the $7 million debt financing, but we could – we may move the expenditures to 26 and 27 because the project's not going to get started at the start of 26. It's going to be late 26, so we may move the expenditures, leave some in 26, and then put the remainder in 27. That's not going to change the long-range plan at all. All that's going to do is have 26 – 26 will have less expenditures, 27 will have more expenditures, and it will net to the same. Now, for the debt service payment, that's the project cost. Now, for the debt service payment, when we issue debt – if we issue debt in summer of next year, say June, as an example, the first payment would be due six months later, and we're just having an estimate here right now of, you know, roughly – the annual debt service will be $870,000 based on our estimates, and, you know, and we'll – we just got that assuming that it starts in 27. It may start in 28 or late 27, but for now, we've just got it, you know, $870,000 a year every year out to 31, being conservative at this point. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Did you have something? No. Oh. He explains it so fast that I was – if you missed the first sentence, you're pretty much done, so, yeah. You want him to restate it? Because it's okay. I mean, it's an important issue. So that pool is in the CIP? Is that – okay. Yeah. It would have just been so much easier if I would have just heard that. Yeah, the pool – go to that project page, would you? Yeah, we'll go to the project page. We have the full general fund here. We'll find that project page and show you where the pool's at. It's in here. In here, yeah. Yeah, Larmage Plan. Yeah, we've got – we have all of our – in this version, we have all the CIP projects that are shown in, and within the CIP, we have the Ocrotic Complex of $8.3 million in 2026 budgeted. Okay. It's not on that page. There it is. Okay. So that's – and right now it's in 26, and I need to talk to Jennifer about this, but I think we may, for the tentative, to be a little more realistic with expenditures, keep some of those capital expenditures in 26, but then move some to 27, because we know the project's not starting at the front of 26. We know that. And it's going to be an 18-month project, best guess. And if I may, I think that's a really important distinction, is that in moving projects out like that, it may help the carry forward, but it doesn't help the long-range plan. Right. Yeah, no, I get that. So, yeah. I get that. True. I'm still shocked about the penny, so that's – geez, oh, man. That is so bad. Okay. Sorry. I'll try to get over that. And also – now, I mentioned those different changes that we had. You know, we've got the operating cost up $4.9 million, the capital cost $5.4 million, the labor's $1.3 million, and the revenue's slightly under last year in the long-range plan at $3.3 million. So the total of all those is about $14 million. So we've got $14 million net expense more in that five-year time frame than we had last year, and that average is about $2.9 million if you divide that by five. So that $2.9 million average increase is really what's – high level is what's increasing that shortfall from $2.1 million last year to over $5 million this year. So it's – and part of it's capital, but, again, you know, a lot of it is our operating labor and – our labor and our operating costs. You know, I mentioned earlier that our revenues have gone up 38 percent, but our operating and personnel have gone up 47 percent. So over the last five years, so that trend's putting pressure on our available fund balance. And also it's putting pressure on, you know, as you see in the long-range plan, we've got the red font numbers. It's putting pressure on those revenues being less in expenditures every year. So, you know, I mentioned at the last meeting that our approach to, you know, is to, you know, beginning – as soon as this budget's over, maybe sooner, we've had – I've had discussions with the city manager about this. We actually talked about this a little bit in a department meeting yesterday with the directors is, you know, we've had a shortfall move around for a number of years. You know, we've had a very – when I first got here, we had a difficult time balancing to our reserve – a 15 percent reserve we've had since I've been here, our target. And it's kind of moved around. ARPA helped us out a lot. ARPA helped the penny fund out, and ARPA helped the general fund out some for sure. And now that's, you know, pretty much all obligated and spent for the most part. There's a few dollars out there still. And also we had some really good revenue years the last couple of years. Even without ARPA, we had a couple of years where AV growth has been good, as you all know, up until, you know, this year was slightly less, but we've had some good AV growth. But some of our other revenue sources grew a lot, you know, from 23 and 24. That's kind of not happening right now. It's leveled off, and we're not seeing that. And so, you know, that's putting pressure, you know, and part of this discussion. And our labor increases, you know, we've had our salary, our large salary survey project done a few years ago to, you know, and we made those adjustments that impacted all funds, including the general fund. We had our labor negotiations last, you know, last year that impacted the general fund for fire. And then we had done laddering through the city that was mentioned earlier. We've done laddering. Then some of that affects general fund. A lot of it affects enterprise funds, but still some affects the general fund. And so, you know, and again, that's really all just to make sure that we're competitive in the market, you know, and we're making sure our salary and benefits are similar to others around us. And I mentioned again, we've had the increases in our operating costs. And so our approach is, I believe, and as Jennifer to add to that is, you know, we're going to look at expenses first. We're going to look at all of our operating costs in detail across all general fund departments and work through with departments and really, really look at where we can reduce operating costs as much as possible. Then we'll look at, we want to look at our revenues as well. We want to look at our user fee revenues. We want to make sure that our user fees for our key departments, such as Parks and Rec, Fire, and others, that we're getting our costs reimbursed. Because we, some departments are fairly current with that, and I believe some are not. So we really want to look at that with our departments and make sure that we are charging a fair price to recover our costs for our programs and different fees that we have. We want to work through that beginning next year. And then I think from that point on, we mentioned earlier at the last meeting that we would, the goal would be to provide buckets, you know, ideas to bring to the city commission. In addition to what I just said is, you know, what do we save by closing down all city facilities on weekends? What's that save? And provide that information to your city commission to consider. Also look at, you know, looking for any efficiencies. Do we have any efficiencies in departments that we can correct? And look at, do we have non-essential expenses or services? And then maybe then strategically look at, you know, what programs maybe aren't being used like they could be and strategically look at, you know, what service reduction can we do, should we do to reduce expenses, you know, and try to get those down as much as possible. And then bring those buckets to the city commission to consider and look at. And then once that's complete, you know, then whatever we save in expenses, then we can have the discussions and back into, you know, what sort of a millage increase do we need and when do we need it. That's kind of big picture. Jennifer, you want to add to that or? Nope. No? Okay. Okay, that's the general fund? So any questions for Les on this one? Go ahead, Steve. Yeah, just real quick. Or comment. Yesterday when Duke was here, obviously they were dancing around a rate increase. As the rate increase goes, so does the income to the city of Dunedin? Yes. Yes, that's correct. Yeah, we get our percentage. We get our franchise fee and then we get also our 10% for the electric service tax. So, yeah, if their fees go up, our revenue goes up too. Yeah, but we also pay more. We pay more, yeah. Yeah. You mean we as a user or what do you mean by that? As a user, we pay more. Okay. And license permits and fees, anything there that was skewed by the number of repair permits and things that would have been tied directly to the hurricane, is there any factoring or consideration of that? On that, in the general fund, no, because I believe no, because most of that activity flows through the building fund. Yeah, not the general fund. And I want to mention that for Duke Energy, the franchise fee is 6%, 6% franchise fee on everyone's bill. Just wanted to mention that. That's all. Thank you, Mayor. Okay. Vice Mayor, did you want to do? I'll just kind of do the line. Thank you. Since it's a big, you know, it's a big fund. To echo the Mayor's comments, yeah, the whole penny going to 28 is a gut punch. I was really counting on it, at least understanding on whether it passed or not, and then making plans on that. I have huge concerns over the pool aquatic center. It started out in the budget before I got here at $600,000. I'm sure that was probably just design. But then it went to $6 million, and now it's at the cost of City Hall. And one of my questions is, for an amenity that is insanely necessary in a community, the city needs a pool. And we don't have the privilege of having two, so we've only got the one. But when does it get too expensive? What is a price that's too high? What does that look like? Or is it because we need the pool, we're just going to do it, is my real concern. And those are more questions for the Commission, because we're the ones that are going to be deciding on this. Is there the opportunity to stage the building of that pool? I know we kind of talked about it before, but then it was like, no, if you're going to do it, just do it. And actually, I was on that bandwagon. But now when it gets to the price it is now, it's like, I don't know that we can do it. When it comes to the lighting of the littering fields, it is staggering. It's how much can we do each year? I understand that they're at the end of their useful life, but can we stagger that even more every other year that we do that? I shared a story with some people. And I know PSTA was privileged to have a state legislator some years ago get them enough money to purchase 60 buses. And wasn't that cool? They get 60 buses. But the challenge with that is what you do with those 60 buses that all have the same end of year cycle and the financial pressure that puts on it. And so that's where PSTA is now. Well, they were able to get some more money to repurchase those 60 buses, but they were smart enough to order them in increments to stretch that out over five years. And so that's helped them, even though not enough. So that next iteration is going to be even longer. And so I wonder that while we aren't doing all the fields at one time, can we stretch that useful life so now it's every other year? So you're minimizing the impact on the fund. Oh, and the idea of diminishing or cutting back on service. Just as a resident of this community, it's like, okay, we take all the tax money to buy all these wonderful things, but sorry, we don't have the money to operate it, so we're going to close. To me, it doesn't make sense that if we're going to have these nice things for the community, then the community needs to have access to them. If you don't want to have the entire community center open, then maybe we should look at how can we have self-service passes into the fitness center, you know, those places where they don't need much oversight, but it allows the community to have some access. I certainly don't want to close a library on Saturday or Sunday. I don't want to close the Hale Center on Saturday. I know that it's probably closed on Sunday. I know that the community center is closed on Sunday. We do open both of those buildings for special events, and I understand that, but just as an overall operating standpoint, we're supposed to be here for the community, and so I think we should, so I am concerned about closing any of those amenities, and so I understand that also I'm terming out next year, so I've got this year and next year, and I'm fine this year, so I could just close my mouth and not say anything because there's no revenue concern this year, and probably next year, but I'm concerned for the outgoing years as a resident and for the security of the commission so that they don't have to make hard decisions. So that's where I am at the general fund. I really appreciated the finance committee and their thoughts on carry-forward. Les, you and I had conversations on carry-forward, and mine were much more harsh than what the finance committee was suggesting, so we'll just go with what they said, but I really think we need to look long and hard at our capital projects. What is critical, what is truly critical, and then what is things that we need? Not even talking about wants, but things that we need, but what's critical, what's what we need? But those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Okay. Again, questions or comments? Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah. So comments related to the carry-forward, because I completely understand the need to encumber, and I don't want to beat this dead horse, but the thing that I'm stuck on here right now is the fact that we're realizing the full expenditure in 2026 when we know that's not the way it's going to be executed. So I don't know how we get past that, because that skews and makes the numbers here look a lot worse than they really are. And so I don't know, and I know we've talked about this, but so I'll give you a perspective in terms of what, when I was managing government programs, essentially we had our budget and then we had our spend plan. And the spend plan was really more the execution side of how we would fund and execute the projects. And I think there's got to be some measure of visibility into that part of it. So, and then related to that, I do have a question on debt service. In 2028, we go up from $857,000 to $5.4 million. What is the forcing net factor there? And I know it's an out-year question. Yeah, no, that's a good question. That is part of the storm damage, and that's the payment back to FEMA for the, is that right? Yeah. Fleet. Yeah. For the line of credit. I'm sorry. We're going to be taking our line of credit from the bank to do, for instance, the peer. And FEMA will pay us back. And once FEMA pays us back, that's us paying back the bank for that line of credit. So that, that's what that, that, that large increase that year is us assuming that in that year we pay the bank back for that line of credit. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, good. Okay. That's, I appreciate that. And so I'll go back to Kerry Ford here real quick. Yeah, and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not disputing the way we, we do this. I understand. I think we've got to have a, I believe, a happy medium between essentially fulfilling the fact that we are recognizing we've encumbered the full amount of the debt proceeds in the capital project. I'm just thinking there's got to be a different way to show this. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good question. On the pool, I am recommending if, if Jennifer agrees that we, that we, for the, for the next, for the tentative budget, that we, we make an adjustment and we move, we move the, we leave some expenditures in 26 and we move, we move some of the expenditures to 27 because that's a more realistic timeframe when the project's going to be done. So I do think it's a good comment and I think we should show that spend over two years and, and, and if Jennifer agrees, we'll, we, we will present that within the tentative budget. So we're spending that over two years and not one year and make it more realistic. Yeah. Well, perfect. That's, yeah, that, that, that's the way I would, yeah, good. I appreciate that. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Degard. Thank you, Mayor. Accounting standards are important to have and they give us a construct and a picture about where we may be and where we are. The problem with the constructs is they're flawed. Um, when you ask what reality is, you say, okay, this is reality. And from that construct, it is, but it's making us treat capital expenditures in a certain way because of the standards. Unfortunately, that is a bad tool when you're trying to deal with a contracting environment from a revenue perspective, because it causes you to believe that you are in greater trouble and we have to act as much as we can on a reality basis. Take depreciation, for instance. When you ask, what does this building work? Well, some people use straight lines, some a balance, some of all kinds of things. And by the way, all are acceptable, but they lead you to a different place. The capital expenditure side is skewing our budget. That's my belief, and until I get a handle on that, I'm going to have a hard time making tough decisions in a contracting revenue environment and an exploding expense environment. So my, I can't constructively approach this unless I remove the capital expenditure part of the equation. And then I can begin to see in the operation side what's really going on and where we need to make some adjustments. The finance committee made some excellent suggestions a minute ago. I agree with most of them. And we'll have to deal with health care costs. We will have to deal with salary performance. We'll have to deal with number of days of operation. By the way, a little concerned about your answer on that, because weekends are some, for some of our facilities are actually their peak periods. So instead of going to a five-day work week concept, I would rather go to a five-day operational service of need concept and try to save money that way because of the various nature of our facilities and our service needs. That being said, I have to back away from this a little bit. I have to back, I asked a question a minute ago of the manager about whether I can have this so I can actually start removing, now I understand I'm working outside of accounting standards when I say, let's move that out. Because accounting standards require you do it a certain way and I fully recognize that and I realize that that would be considered sacrilegious in the accounting world to do what I'm about ready to try to attempt to do. But I've got to remove that in order to get a feeling for what we have to do operationally and from a capital perspective. I happen to own a 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee that I've patched together for the last four years to keep it running because I know what a new car will cost me. And I've had to make the calculation on that Grand Cherokee of okay, if it's going to cost me X to keep it running, is that beginning to equate to a car payment or not? I don't know that we've made those kind of calculations relative to capital replacement. Can we patch a new fire truck for a little longer or are we breaking some kind of ordinance that I don't know about our law? We're going to have to have those questions answered because particularly in the capital area, and I've been assured from some good people I trust in Parks and Recreation that we've been band-aiding the pool for a long time. And that keeping it going without replacement may be more expensive than replacing. So I don't know how to make that equation, and I'm going to be leaning on departments to try to make those kinds of decisions. But that's where we are. We're making some tough decisions right now because to simply do a going concern approach to what we're facing doesn't make any sense to me at this moment. We can't just say we're going to continue to do what we've done. I liken this to what happens when you fast. When people fast, strange things happen in the body. And we may be in a fasting state for the next few years from a budgetary standpoint. That's where I am. But right now I have trouble making intelligent decisions because I look at this capital side, and I need to remove that from the equation to keep operations going. That's all I have, Mayor. Thank you. It's kind of interesting the path you went down because just before, during the last break, I jumped down and I was talking to Les about just that. How do I get, I got to get this capital stuff and all the ups and downs of the capital stuff out of my head because he's also telling me there's a lot of the operational drivers that we've got to get a control on, and somehow the capital ups and downs is getting in my head too much that I can't totally see it. And so, but, you know, I had this discussion with Jennifer the other day. I see these numbers and the alarms are going off in my head, and this can't be business as usual. This can't be wait until, like, we can't just say, oh, half mil and then a half mil next year. I know you said it, and I know you're being harsh and transparent, but the reality is, like, that can't happen. So, which means we've got to really, we've got to have a plan, and we've got to know what we're doing. Had a very, you know, tough talk with Jennifer the other day about, like, what's the plan? I mean, you know, but I do think, and I totally agree with you, within that, and I'm so glad the finance board hit on it too, is, like, just somehow getting that capital piece out of the way to fully see, you know, what the operational components are that we've got to really try to be creative about how we're going to do. Now, I will say Jennifer had some really out-of-the-box thinking about, as we move forward, some of the plans, some of the things she's thinking. But again, you know, it's stuff that they've got to bring back to us, and I appreciate that. And I know that, you know, we're not going to, so, so again, I think my expectation, of course, is that today feels like the beginning of something, not the end of something, not the last budget hearing. It feels like the beginning of a year where, like, we're going to have to be fully engaged in how we're going to get things where they need to be so we are living within, you know, our means. But continuing to be a quality-of-the-life community, because that's what people expect, too. But I think, you know, we've got to be really working on those levers, and that doesn't mean we can wait until next May and just wherever we are, we are. It means that whatever the plan is needs to start as soon as we get past this budget. And, okay, what's the plan? How are we going to bring in some costs in a way that doesn't overly harm our quality of life, but actually helps us to live within what we can do so that we don't overburden our citizens in a way that we don't need to? So those are some of my thoughts. I mean, obviously, when it comes to the pool, everybody knows I'm a huge, huge, huge proponent of this pool that has waited its turn forever since I was a staff person. Probably for 30 years this pool has waited its turn. It's been a hole in the ground. It's leaking like crazy. And, yes, I want to do the pool right, and that's how I do my house. If I do it, I want to try to do it right and stretch the corners because I'll regret it later if I don't. And I think there's a lot of cost recovery that can happen within that. But I think what's killing us right now, of course, is the penny because we are – the pool is bleeding into our general fund, which is our critical area, and we're seeing the effects of that, which is why I was extremely looking forward to a November 2027 penny for Pinellas vote so that we could then at least know where – okay. Now we know the funds are going to be there. We expect it to pass, but you never know. And, I mean, I can tell you that when the city built its community center, and I think that opened in 2007, I think. And, I mean, when it built that community center, it was not guaranteed that the next penny was going to happen, but they needed the next penny to happen or else it would have been pretty tough. But that community center was in such a bad condition, the commission at the time just went on faith. And I can tell you, like – and I don't necessarily think that's what we should do. I'm just saying historically sometimes it's scary to reach out to do that, but I can also tell you that every community in this county would be in dire straits without that penny continuing because it's the main funder of critical infrastructure and capital. So – but, okay, so I think I've kind of said my piece, but I do think and have felt and had this discussion with Jennifer heavily, like, you know, today's not the end, it's the beginning of, I think, a really deep dive. And, Les, I appreciate you jumping into that a little bit. But, yeah, we have to know that it's not business as usual. It's, you know – and at the same time, I'm not going to sit up here and blow up the city when we are who we are because we're a quality of life city. So it's going to be some tough surgical thinking and how creatively, you know. We're never going to get the kind of bang for the buck that we got when we contracted for the sheriff, but it also helps me sit up here and knowing I don't know how else to do a cheaper law enforcement, and law enforcement's going up 8% in our budget. I don't know. There's no other way to do it. We've already done the big controversial deep dive and got rid of our police department and went to them. So I don't know what else, you know. But I do know it's got to be surgical. You know, we have a great community. But, again, we've got some hard, tough decisions. So those are kind of my comments. Mayor, may I? Sure. Thank you. So I remember last year when we had a similar discussion. We recognized and identified the deficit in the long-range plan. And I remember reading the subsequent article in the Beacon, and it was essentially like we're in crisis. So I want to be very clear. The you, before you, and your first budget hearing, you will have a balanced budget with a proper reserve per our policy and no deficit. So, and a deep investment in infrastructure, in critical infrastructure, that the City Commission has approved, and a CIP plan that supports that critical infrastructure. The, we have identified areas of opportunity. We have, you know, that we've had some very good discussions already with the department directors and with all of you on the dais about how we're going to surgically identify areas that we can decrease expenditures, increase revenues to address that deficit, and still be able to move forward on a lot of our CIP, you know, as we've envisioned it. I recognize the comments of the City Commission in terms of really have a look at what we need to replace, repair, and so on and so forth, make sure that it's in the proper year. We'll take that to heart for sure. However, I view this as more of an opportunity than a problem. You know, in talking to the department directors yesterday afternoon, it's going to take all of us to do this, and we're going to put a plan before you that's methodical. If we decrease programs, you can decrease staff in those programs, and that decrease would be by attrition and so on and so forth. So, already this year, you're seeing no new positions. You're seeing reclasses. Recruiting is completely different now than it was when I first started my career and when I first started here eight years ago as well. So, you know, the budget as drafted right now supports the employees, which is, you've said many times, you know, our number one asset in the city. So, recognizing that we need to maintain the employees that we have, we're not looking at new positions this year or next year, unless it's critical to that infrastructure, critical to operating essential infrastructure. So, you know, in short, the message that I want to convey to you is this is a good budget. This is a balanced budget without a deficit for this year. That's before you to adopt. And we're actually accomplishing our spend plan and our capital projects, our deep investment in central infrastructure, after having experienced two storms right in a row. And so, this moving forward, addressing this deficit, and Les has been very transparent, and I appreciate that in terms of... Grim Reaper. He and I have had some... Grim Reaper transparent, yes. ...some long conversations about this. So, you know, we have a lot more to do for the rest of the day as far as this workshop goes and talking about health and pay plan and so on and so forth. But I just want to be very clear the message that we're conveying to the community with this budget and what we're going to be doing as a staff moving forward. All of this will be before you, long before you are looking to reschedule budget workshops and so on and so forth. So, we're essentially going to be budgeting all year long. Sorry, guys. Next year. No, and I actually appreciate that because I think... And I think that goes to the heart of sometimes the capital projects are kind of clouding the complete vision, which is obviously got us asking a lot of deep questions about that. And so, that's going to help a lot. And I'm also just going to say this because, you know, Tony's sitting out there and he trusted to come to the city of Deneen. So, I'm going to tell you, like, you know, I came up through the HR rank and I'm always going to be thinking about the marketability of who we are and our number one asset being our employees. So, you will never see me as mayor going down any kind of archaic route of not valuing the importance of our competitiveness for our employees and how we take care of them. Now, I expect a lot from you guys, but, you know, I'm going to support you. So, I just want to make that clear, too. Commissioner DeGuard. Facing hard times is a little scary, but I think we've got one of the best staffs in the state to do it with. But the reality is that pool is going to cost $500 per citizen, per citizen. That's what the pool costs. And in light of what we're facing, we've got to ask ourselves some very hard questions about the pool. If you were to ask for a referendum from the people, if we were Switzerland, and ask, okay, do you want to keep the pool because it's going to cost all of you $500 over the course of the next five years, I wonder if that would pass. Just those are the things we're facing up here when we look at these numbers. It's going to be tough. The idea that we're going into this with what I consider one of the best staffs in the state is comforting, but it doesn't make the problem any less that we're facing originally. That's all. Commissioner Sandberg, do you want to add something? I wish we'd have had those soothing, calming words before the storm. No, I mean, you know, it's like that elephant in the room is that 8,301,965. I mean, it jumps right out at you. But, you know, I've shared with you, Mo, you've been around a long time. I took scuba diving lessons in that pool in 1982. You know, my kids learned to swim in that pool, so I do have, you know. I look around to see people who have been here as long as I have. I mean, that pool is important. Yeah. I mean, it went from the lazy river that floated around to at least it's kind of coming together. But, yeah, thank you for those calming words, Ms. Jen. Thank you. Commissioner Walker. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. I, and I, and Jennifer, I greatly appreciate those words because I think that is exactly the path forward and what we need to take because I will say this, and this is my observation, but, yeah, I look, I look at the fact that we do have some challenging decisions to make. But, honestly, I, I don't see anything based on my past experience with the city here that is going to deter us from overcoming this. I, you know, and the communication is key. Do we have some tough decisions? Yes. Are we in crisis? Absolutely not. And let's, let's be clear on that. The pool, I, you know, and again, this, this really goes back to the enterprise nature of, of the pool and some of our enterprise activities. Um, I, I think, I think there's more that we could do with the pool, uh, with regards to bring, realize more of a payback, um, and I, I think that there are things that we should consider with regards to that. Um, and I'm going to just put it out there. We've been approached to develop a world-class competitive swimming program, and I think that we need to provide some element of, of consideration for that, because that will bring money. And, anyway, more to follow on that. Um, but I, I think it's important that we think in those terms. So, anyway, I, you know, again, I just want to pile on here and say that, you know, I, you know, we got, we have some challenges, but I, I don't see anything in here that is absolutely, is unachievable. So, thank you. Thank you. And, Vice Mayor, you probably maybe get the last word here. Yeah. Oh, no, no pressure here. Uh, I always get the last word. No, that is true. That is true. Uh, yeah, as you can tell from the tone of the conversation on, on the dais, a lot of it is about the CIP and operating. Uh, thank you, Mayor, for your comments about staff, because that, that can't be ever overstated. And it's been nice that during the, the course of our conversations this morning, uh, staff concerns on, on budget has, has, has never been part of the conversation and that's, and that's where it should be. Um, I also want to recognize, uh, excluding myself, this is one hung of a commission and I just really, really like the way all of us are focused and it's not an ending, it's a beginning and it's a, and it's a positive opportunity to look at things, which is the approach that should be taken. And if I started out as the rain man, I do apologize for that. That wasn't my concern. Um, uh, but, uh, yeah, that, that, that's it. That's it. And I, and within the commission, I also did want to extend that to the city manager as well. She's doing a fantastic job. So thank you. Well, I, I will say, you know, my last word is that I do think that one of the reasons that as much as we have our job to do and we have to do it and we have to be hard on it and we do a lot behind the scenes with Jennifer, um, I do think when we, when you have, you know, you know, Jennifer and Jorge and Les and, and Jean and the staff we have, I do think we're very lucky that they do think very proactively when I had that discussion with you last, just before the meeting resumed, like I said, what's the plan? And you laid out all kinds of stuff. That's the plan. And I appreciate you're not trying to throw us in panic here. You're just, you've got the, you know, you're, you are going to, you're going to help guide us through this. And again, you know, we've got our challenges, but it's a balanced budget. We're going to get there and it's going to be fine. And we'll figure it out. So, so I appreciate it. Okay. I think it's a good time to take a break, maybe break. Yeah, I think good. Okay. So we have 55 minutes and I think we're at the risk update. So you go for it. Okay, great. Yeah. We're at the risk fund now and, uh, just some highlights of the risk, risk fund long range plan. Then I'll turn it over to Teresa to go over some of the detail information. Uh, the total expenses, uh, in 2026 are about 400,000 more than 2025 budget. And that's due primarily to, uh, we have, uh, property and liability claims increased by the claims increased by 24% compared to last year, workers comp increased by 11% compared to last year, the claims and property insurance premiums increased 9% over fiscal year budget, over the fiscal year 25 budget, uh, with liability and other premiums increasing by smaller amounts. So with that, I'll turn it over to Teresa to go over some of the highlights. Good morning, Mayor, uh, Vice Mayor, Commission, Teresa Smalling, Director of HR and Risk Management for the city. Uh, with our risk fund, I just want, what you're looking at are, is our schedule of insurance premiums. Unfortunately, uh, there's, some of them are still estimates, uh, specifically the insurance, the property insurance, uh, FMIT has still not given us final numbers. Um, the total insured values shows the same as last year. The biggest change is that the, the boat club is the only property that's not technically in place anymore. Um, most, and the marina is in, uh, does need some repair, but, um, the 18%, we, we were conservative and put it a little bit higher than we're expecting it to come in. We're looking at hopefully somewhere closer to 15%, uh, but we won't know those numbers for now. Uh, pretty much everything else, they, because of the way that they renew, uh, some of the items are estimates and some would be paid in this year and some paid next year. Any questions on the risk fund? Questions? Yeah, I did. Um, so if you look at the, uh, the policy limits, a hundred million AOP, I would say, something at risk. It's got, AOP, that term is usually used, all other peril, but in this case, it's showing as a limit. Is that the total look blanket for the city of Dunedin property? Uh, pretty much for, yes, for the no, the name storm, it's a different, so that's what it, it's, it's calling out, that the name storm, it's 5% of the property values, the, the building's value. Okay, because the way that's written, NS, I knew that would be named storm, but it looks like the, the total amount of insurance is reduced by half in the event of a named storm versus a, a non-named storm. That's the way I'm reading what they have there. I don't, I, I would have to talk a little bit more with our consultant on that because with the name storm, it, it, the, the dynamics are a little different. So there's not a, there's not a representative here from Gehring this morning, is there? Not on the risk side. Why isn't the Florida League of Cities writing the city of Dunedin? It does. That's FMIT. Okay. Right. The Florida Mutual, it's a Florida Mutual Insurance Trust. Trust. And Gehring operates as a, like our risk management? Our consultant, our broker and consultant. So the, the property insurance is underwritten by FMIT, which is part of FLC, Florida League of Cities. Okay. Because I was reading about their insurance program last night. And there's, they have local brokers rather than having to go through Gehring. Because obviously they're, they're getting paid for their services. They've ever been considered to, to buy direct? Um, we could consider it. Uh, we have had, our Gehring group has been our consultant. So they actually went out and shopped for the best property insurance for us. And that happened to be FMIT. So to arrive at that $100 million worth of coverage, is there a schedule of buildings? I mean, is that, and I, that might be a tough question, but how did they arrive at that $100 million? We have, uh, what they call the SOV, Schedule of Values. Schedule of Value. Right. And that's how they come up with the TIV, the total insured value. So based on, we actually did an appraisal, uh, I think probably two, two, three years ago, FMIT sent out an appraiser. And then we did an independent appraisal and, um, agreed on what should be covered as insurance. Because as you know, we are self-insured for liability. Right. So there are some things that we cover under insurance and then other things that we, if, if it gets damaged, we would just pay it as, uh, out of our liability, the risk safety fund. So we insure, we self-insure from $1 on a liability claim? We take over from $1? Yes. For, depending on the claim. Yes. We do fully insure for some of our other assets, uh, but for liability, we are self-insured. There was, um, I could spend two days talking to you about this. You know that. You know what I came out of it. Yes. We were going for the speed round. Yeah. Um, no, Viti, and I, I noticed that we have, um, it's called, um, well, the whole coverage and protect, protection and indemnity. Is that the fire boat that we insure? Uh, yes. We insure the fire boat and also, uh, there are certain things over at the marina. The marina has a boat. We insure that also. So. Okay. And is it possible for me to have access to go through these policies myself? Or is that, is that, is that public record? Uh, I believe for the most part it is. Does Goering ever send a representative in that we could meet? Yes. We have had, um, they've come for the board of finance. They, they can come whenever we need them to come. Okay. Good. That's all I needed. Thank you. You're welcome, commissioner. Bringing that expertise in. Here you go. Um, um, any other questions? Anybody else? Let me ask one thing. Um, what, what are we paying Gearing now? What is, how do we pay Gearing? So we pay a maximum of 95,000 per year, less any commissions that they get. So at the end of the year. And then that's for both the risk and the health side. No, that's just for the risk side. Just for the risk side. And then, and then, so what is your, so what is it, what do we get for that? We get the insurance brokerage services. We get the risk management consultant. Uh, we also have access to their online learning platform. Uh, you know, they do all the, a lot of our, they help us with our annual inspections every year. And, um, they're just basically a phone call away from if we need any additional expertise. They also help us with our professional liability claims in, uh, kind of, um, kind of being, making sure that the, the, uh, carrier is, you know, uh, performing according to what we need for the specific claim. Um, so if I give you the, um, if I say, yeah, by saying this, wait, I'm just going to like knock on the wood up here. Um, so we have an unnamed storm and it's $150 million of damage citywide. What, who pays what? How does that work? And an unnamed storm. So we would go, they would look at the deductibles. Yeah. That's what, can you walk us through how that would work? Yeah. They would, they would look at the, the damage for each. So it would almost be like a name storm. Only the valuation would be different. So they would look at the value of, for each of our assets, we are, there is, uh, an appraised value or replacement value and then the deductible that's associated with that. So, um, we would pay if it, if the damage is more than the deductible, then they. Just to say we all agree $150 million, non-disputed damage, who pays what of that? I think it would depend on the damage, the amount of the damage. So it would be anything less are deductible. We pay the deductible and they pay for the damage. For example, with the marina, if there had been a fire at the marina, we pay the deductible on the marina. Which is what? The, um, I don't have the value of the marina offhand, but I think it's, uh, maybe I don't, I don't have that number offhand, but once we pay the deductible, any, any repairs to the marina would be covered by the insurance up to the hundred, a hundred, well, I think it should be possibly a hundred thousand, but I'm not sure about that. I think that's just the, that's our deductible. I'm sorry. So the deductible is a hundred thousand up to a hundred thousand that we would pay out of pocket for apparel. And then for no name storms, the 5%, I'm sorry, for a, for a, um, name storm, it's 5%. Yes. So we're, we're liable for the first hundred thousand of, if it was, like I said, the fire in the marina, and then they would cover the remainder for up to the value of the property. Okay. Okay. That's all I, that's all I had. You know, I tried to prepare so much and that was not. Yeah, no, it's fine. It's, it's, yeah, I was just getting in the weasel. Thank you. My brain feels fully exercised now. It's all, it's all good. Mayor, if I can. Please. Just that on, if Steve asked to have Garen Group come in that needs to be during a workshop or commission, so I can hear that conversation. I don't want it to be. For sure. I would just love to hear him go at it. Well, I, I actually think it, I think it'd be pretty healthy for us to actually go through all these and make sure we all have fully good, you know, good understanding of, you know, what we're paying and what we get and, you know, the ins and outs and nuances of it. I think that could be a good work session. Yes. Workshop item. Okay, so, so just to nail that down then, you want a workshop item to essentially go over this schedule. Yeah. Mm-hmm. All right. Do you want that? Well, usually every year I bring it before the commission because to say not to exceed so that we have the leeway to, to get the renewals not to exceed these amounts and if they go over, then we would come back to commission. So that's perfectly fine to have a workshop on it. I want to see Commissioner Sandberg and work over the Gehring consultant representative. Oh, yeah, and some of the, we have a significant fleet of vehicles. I'll, I'll, yeah. I'll make sure they watch this. That would be an enjoyable afternoon. I'll make sure they watch this, uh, recording before you. Bring, bring my popcorn. Yeah. For sure. Oh, yes. Commissioner Degard. Oh, I really think that would be constructive for all of us. I hate to say it, but I do think so because if you take a look at the percentage of change, you know, you've got six items that are over 10%. So this is an area where shopping makes sense and really understanding it makes sense as well. That's all right. And I think it's, it's, it's good for you to see their process in, because they do shop for the insurance unless it's, you know, they know that it's going to automatically increase everything. Great. Um, okay. Anybody else or we're, I think we're good to move past this. It looks, you know, that, that fund looks healthy right now. So let's keep it that way. Okay. Okay. Next is the health fund update. And, uh, just if I'll go over the high level long range plan, then I'll turn it over Teresa to go over more of the details. But for the health fund, uh, I mentioned earlier that we're, uh, looking at about a 14% increase in 2026 over in 20 compared to 2025, and that's due mainly to the increase in medical claims. The budget for medical claims in 2026 is significantly more, 14% more than 2025. Uh, and with that, I'll turn it over to Teresa to go over the highlights. Thank you, Les. So these are pretty much what we're going to, um, try to stay at a high level on, uh, if we could go to the next slide. The current medical plan offerings remain the same as before, uh, with, we have three plans, the high, uh, what we call the consumer directed health plan or a high deductible health plan, a buy-up network and a base, um, in network with an HRA, health, health return, uh, health reimbursement account, sorry. And then, uh, if we want to go to the next slide, uh, we, when we established the high deductible health plan, we basically wanted to give some seed money to employees, uh, to put in their health savings account to help pay for this plan. Uh, so what we have done is we took the difference between the base plan and the, the premium of the high deductible health plan, and we put it according to what you see here into an HSA for the employee that selects the high deductible health plan. Next slide, please. Uh, with our wellness program, uh, our vitality, through vitality, we also have an incentive to put, uh, monies in either the employees HRA or HSA. Uh, they have to participate in the, in the, uh, wellness program to get any kind of incentive. And basically all they need to do is an online health assessment or, or annual biometric screening, which we bring to the city every November. And this just tells you the participation levels and the amount that goes into the, the employee's, uh, applicable account, uh, each year. Okay. Uh, we, I want to quickly, um, talk, oh, um, next slide, thank you, uh, talk about the claims experience update. And for that, I want to go ahead and bring up our, uh, executive vice president, uh, Sean Fleming of the Gehring Group, uh, risk strategies to talk to us a little bit about it. As you can see up there, uh, it shows the claims, um, our claims experience and our pharmacy claims have increased and we're trending a little bit above what the, the national and Florida trend is. Good morning, mayor commissioners. Uh, thank you. Sean Fleming, senior benefits consultant with the Gehring Group. So heard in some of your earlier discussions, you know, some questions, kind of what's driving costs and wanted to take a little bit of time to, to talk into that. Uh, a little bit about that. There's some on the slides and then some I'll just talk about. So taking kind of step back industry wide, um, this year, kind of end of last year, we've really seen sort of a global increase in costs, um, that's impacting the city as it's impacting most of the other cities and entities that we work with. So what's really driving that, uh, couple factors globally, which is also impacting the city. We've got kind of two major categories. Uh, the first one is cancer and the second one is diabetes. Um, as, as you dive in and. Can you say again what the second one was? I sneezed and I missed the second one. I don't know. Diabetes. What is it? Diabetes. Diabetes. So, um, what's really interesting, we dive into a lot of data as we look at that, um, we look at both costs, which obviously we told you are going up, but also frequency. Right? So how many people are impacted by cancer, by diabetes, some of those things. So we look at the data for the city, especially as an example, um, you know, you look at breast cancer over the last five years. You don't have any increase in the number of breast cancers on average each year, but the costs have gone up five to ten times. Um, same thing we have as you look at your data, some prostate cancers. We don't have an increase in a, in a overall, there's not a lot more people being afflicted, but the costs have gone up exponentially. So what's driving that more than anything is it's medication based. Change in treatment a little bit. So we have individuals as an example, there's a lot more new oral chemotherapies. So now you don't have to go to the hospital and be, get a chemo infusion. You get this medication that you take home, but it might be $20,000 a month where it was quite a bit less in the hospital. And a lot of times it's more effective, which is fantastic for the outcome. But that's really driving a lot of the pharmacy increase, or cancer costs increase. So diabetes, same thing as we look at it, I am sure that everybody's seen a commercial for Manjaro, Ozempic, Wagovi, any of those if you've watched the news, a sporting event, any of those items. We don't have more individuals in the city that are now diabetic than five years ago. But where the treatment going back was maybe a $10 generic medication. Now we have these new medications that run $1,200 a month that individuals are using. So when you look at those graphs and you see kind of the increase, pharmacy, even if you look at the bar graph on the bottom, you'll see the pharmacy is becoming a much bigger portion of the overall spend. Medical claims are up if you look at that top graph. But candidly, those medical claims being up are basically driven by two what we would call catastrophic claimants. So it makes that chart go up, but we have stop loss that covers the bulk of the cost on those. So it isn't as bad as it looks on that particular graph because of the reinsurance. The medications, however, most of those don't come to a level where that reinsurance kicks in. So the city with the fund is picking that up. So that's really a high level. I could go into a lot more detail if I wanted to put you to sleep quickly. But that's a high level on what's driving those claims. And I'll just add to that, overall, that's relatively consistent across what we're seeing industry-wide. So it's not that the city is necessarily an outlier in that. I know that's not good news because sometimes we'd rather think, hey, we're just a one-off with that, but it really is affecting kind of the market globally. Any questions on that piece? Could you go back and you slipped in that term stop loss real quick. Was that specifically about this account, the city of Dunedin? Yes. The city of Dunedin has a self-funded medical plan just for everybody to pay Cigna to administer it and pay the claims as they occur. So what we have on there, I always use the example of let's say we get a million-dollar premature baby. The city only pays the first $130,000 of that claim right now, and then the reinsurance picks up the bulk of that. So $130,000 though, that's our stop loss here? That is your current stop loss here, yes, sir. Okay, it is, and I hate to even imagine what the monthly premium is on a group this big. Is it somehow rated based on the age, and I think male, female rates are different age. Is that how it's rated on a group this size? So when you get to this size, the predominant rating, so stop loss itself is a pooled product, right? And what that means is they're looking at a group the city's size and saying, we're going to look at your past experience, but we also kind of have to look at what are the probabilities of these one-offs, the premature baby example, based on, you know, every 10,000 people we look at or 100,000. So when they derive that, that reinsurance, that stop loss rate, it's partially based on past history, but it's predominantly based on what do they think the probability is of you having one of these events, you know, based on their data across the whole market. So it's a little bit of both. Where your history or experience comes in is more if there's an ongoing situation, right? So a premature baby is the opposite example, right? Once that claim happens, person is in the NICU, they get released, that claim's done. Let's say, you know, I have a scenario where someone is on a $100,000 a month medication every month. So that is going to be built into your premium a little bit if they know there's ongoing risk with that because they can account for that. So it's a little bit of both. The good news is you guys do not right now have any of those known ongoing potential 10, 15, 20-year claims that are impacting those premiums. That can obviously always change. You know, we can't predict the future. But right now, the bulk of your rating is based on that kind of pooled industry number. And is our census looked at monthly? Or is there an annual review, renewal, extension date? There's an annual review process. So they start working typically in about May. And they look at, in health insurance, we always look at the most recent 12 months of data. So if you move that up or back in a month, it doesn't really move it that much. You know, you kick one month out and pick one new month up. Okay. Yeah, that's all. That's it, Mayor. Thanks. Okay. I'm going to keep moving unless somebody's got something else. We will have a chance. Where's this in? Everybody good? Okay. Go ahead. All right. Moving to the next slide. So just a quick look at our renewal information. Most of us, most of the, with the exception of vision, life, our basic life, and our short-term, long-term disability, we have guarantees through for the next two years. We are still looking at the administrator for our flexible spending accounts and our HRAs. Just so for ease, we've been having some issues with Cigna, and so we're just trying to have more ease of administration for our department as well as for employee access. Then moving on to the next slide, I know there was something I've said about 14%. We actually put it at 15% of our increase to our rates based on medical inflation and reinsurance, which is stop-loss. One of the things that we opted to do this year, or recommend in this year, is to increase our stop-loss from $130,000 to $140,000. It increases our liability, if you will, by $10,000, but there are some premium savings of just about $47,000 and change. So we are proposing that. And then on to the next slide. So as we do every year, we ask the Gehring Group to run a bunch of different scenarios as to how we should take care of any increases to our medical claims. So what you see in front of you up here are the four options that we decided to look at. And I believe you have a handout that shows the breakdown of the cost share for each of those options. So if you would, I'm going to go ahead and go through each one separately. So the first scenario is if the city absorbs the entire increase right off the bat, you're looking at approximately a 17, a little over a 17% increase. The employee premiums do not change. And the increase overall is, oh, it's not up there. The increase overall is about $750,000, a little over $755,000. The other one we looked at is number two, option number two. So with our buyout plan, the premiums are higher. However, it's the employee only pays co-pays. So no matter what the procedure is, you know, if they go to the, if they have outpatient surgery, they only pay $500 total for that claim. But no matter what the claim is, they don't have a co-insurance. They don't have any other, any deductibles or anything associated with it. So it is a pretty rich plan. So we are looking at possibly saying, okay, to help with expenses, should we pass on some more of the premium to that plan? Or should we look at eliminating it altogether? For this option, we just looked at if we just increase the premium on that plan. So that's where you'll see 0% for the high deductible health plan, in which the employee would pay more of their claims, even though the premiums are less. Or the base plan would we, if we just charge it 10% to the base plan, and then we added the 15% to the buyout. So with that one, which is the second page of your handout, you're looking at approximately the employees overall paying about 10.2%, and then the city would cover about 15.7%. Now on the far right hand side of the handout, you can see the changes to the employee premiums over if we make any of the changes. So if we went with the 10% for the base, you're looking at an employee and spouse would have about a $14 increase per pay to their premium, and the family would be about $28 increase to their pay. And then on the buyout, you're looking at significantly more numbers. The employee and spouse would be $43.65, and then the employee and family would be about $76 per pay increase. Okay. Now moving on to the third option, where the employees would take on half of the increase, or 7.5%. In looking at this plan, overall, the increase to employees would be 7.5%. The city would be about 16.1%, and the dollar amount on that is about $48,000. The impact to employees works out to about $48,000, just under $49,000 for the year. As you can see on the far right side, an employee and spouse on the base taking the 7.5%, their premiums increase just under $11. For the family, it increases just over $21. With the buyup, it's about $21 for the employee and spouse, and then the employee and family would be about $38. With this one also, there would be increases to the high deductible health plan. Employee and spouse would increase about $9, and then employee and family is about just under $19, and then the final scenario, number four, is if the employees and the city share the increase, meaning that each side would have a 15% increase. So if we did that, the employees would see a 15% increase, and the city would be about just under 15%, as an example, the employee and spouse under the base plan would be paying $20 to $1, just under $22 per pay extra, and the family would be paying just about $43 extra per pay. On the buyup, it would be about $44, almost $44 for employee and spouse, and $76 for the employee and family. And then under the high deductible, it's about $18 for the employee and spouse, and then just under $38 for the employee and family. In looking, discussing these options with a city manager and finance director, we looked at the 7.5% option. When you look at the amount that would be covered by the employees, as I said before, it's about $48,000, give or take. We have, for the past five years, we have not passed any increases on to employees. For a number of reasons. In 2020, we had COVID. 2021, 22, we were going through our class and comp study and, you know, coming out of COVID. And then 23, we had a lot of market, 23 and 24, we had a lot of market competition. You know, we had the conversation with the class and comp study that as soon as we complete a class and comp study, everyone around us does their class and comp study. And so then we're playing leapfrog with each other over and over. So we have seen using the amount that we pass on to the employees as an opportunity, if you will, where we can't pay more salary, we can at least alleviate the benefits if we can. So as Les mentioned, our increases have been anywhere from 4 to, I think the highest was probably 6.9, I'm sorry, 6.3%. When we went from Cigna, from Humana to Cigna, we actually had an overall decrease in the overall premiums. So in looking at this option, again, being fully cognizant of what the Board of Finance has recommended, you know, for the 48,000, we do believe that once again with inflation, we are wanting to not pass that amount on to the employees. But with the proviso, if you will, that next year, you know, we will be looking at everything. We'll be looking at premiums, plan design, whether we're keeping the buy-up or we're doing something else. So that is our proposed recommendation to the Commission to absorb that $48,000 increase. Questions? No questions. I mean, I should have asked this on the previous conversation about diabetes and things of that nature, but industry-wide, I'm sorry? I couldn't hear what you were saying. Industry-wide, I've seen more and more insurance companies get involved in encouraging employees to be healthier to, there's all kinds of awards for walking and things of that nature. And I'm wondering, are we able to see impacts of that industry-wide, not just the city of Dunedin, but are companies showing that there's an, that employees are getting healthier and thereby impacting insurance rates? That is a fantastic question, Vice Mayor. So here's what I'll tell you, and I don't think I have a perfect answer for your question, and I'll kind of explain why, and hopefully it will help a little bit. I think as you look at statistics and you look at a lot of those things you're talking about, right, the wellness programs, different things that we can do to move behavior, they're able to look in there and see improvement in health outcomes and some of those things, right? So if I take somebody, let me make an example, they had a high BMI, you know, you had X percentage of the population, and you put these programs in looking at do they see improvement in those things, right? Which is kind of what you're asking, right? So we took 30% of the population that was high risk, and maybe we moved them to medium risk. There's definitely data showing that. The second part of that, though, which is kind of what I think you're more getting at is, is that saving money, right? And what's happened is the costs on some of these other things have gone up so much that, you know, you do see some of these improved outcomes, but now you've got a condition that cost five to ten times what it cost five years ago when you started looking at that data, so we're still spending more on those individuals, even though we've got an improvement. So do I think all those things are worth investing in and make a difference over the long term? Absolutely. But can I tell you how much it's going to save, or industry-wide, how much it's saving? Not really, because some of those other costs are just going up so much they're dwarfing those things that you do. It's, you know, kind of a easy old example, right? People would say if, you know, if we got someone to stop smoking, how much do we save on the medical plan? Well, there's a lot of variables that go into that, some of which could be how long is that person your employee? But logically speaking, we all know that it's probably a better thing if they stop. It's just quantifying it gets very, very challenging. And some people may stand up in front of you and say, oh, you're going to save X if you do that. I'm just not, I'm just going to be honest and tell you, I think that absolutely it makes a difference. But how much and how much money it saves you, I can't really tell you long term, because the costs are just dwarfing all of those kind of improvements. And I think for us, the whole philosophy of having a wellness program is what you can't see. You can't see the diabetes that didn't happen, and the heart attack that didn't happen, and the stroke that didn't happen. And you can't quantify it, as Sean has said. But, you know, when employees, you know, are creating habits, healthier habits and eating, more aware of what they're eating and, you know, how much they're exercising or not exercising, I think that in itself, you know, does help our overall program. Just because of costs and there are some things, no matter how healthy you are, you may still get some illness or disease that was exclusive of what you were doing. Now, is that because those conditions can't be quantified, or is it there just hasn't been long enough period of time? I think we can say that lung cancer, and I don't know this, lung cancer has been reduced if you look at what rates were 30 years ago, 40 years ago, compared to today. So we can see there's data that shows smoking is bad, not smoking is good. And so maybe it's just we haven't had a long enough period of time of those wellness programs, because I'm a believer in health care. And so I'll ask another question that probably can't be answered. Of that information that you can't answer, is there a difference between industries where companies bore the burden of the insurance by themselves, or are there better outcomes when the employees are invested and share the burden of those premiums, right? If the City of Dunedin doesn't pay, takes on all of the insurance, right, is there any incentive on the employee to self-care, whereas if they share in that burden of paying the insurance, there are better outcomes, because now they're invested. Yeah. Can I? Can I? Okay. So I'll jump in on that. So plan design, I think, has something to pay, because, okay, my premiums, they haven't moved, but if I go to the hospital, right, I have a coinsurance that I have to pay, I have a deductible that I have to meet. So it's not as if it's like, you know, the buy-up is an example where, okay, I go to the hospital and I pay, you know, $500 and I'm done. Yeah, I don't really have a big investment, but if I have to pay a coinsurance, meet a deductible, then I think, and I'm eating into my health reimbursement account that I have to go into a wellness program to fund, then maybe it does make me think a little bit more before I just, you know, not care about my health. But, Sean. I was pretty much going to say exactly the same thing. I think plan design is the measure that drives that, potentially, your co-pays, your cost share. From what I see, you know, premiums, what you charge, I think, play more into overall recruiting, retention strategy. You know, I think as employees go out and look, you know, if they look and compare you to the next city over the counter, one of those things, I've found over the years what employees look at more than anything is what's coming out of my paycheck, right? What's coming out of my paycheck if I work here versus what I work there? Now, your small percentage of the population that, you know, I'll call high utilizers that really, you know, they may look at plan design a little bit more if they're evaluating, you know, one job over the other. But I think 90-plus percent of the population, they look at what will come out of my paycheck, and I think that's what drives. And a lot of that's education as well, right? And also age, right? 20-year-olds don't care, right? 40, 50, and above. Yeah, we care. Right. And a lot of times, you know, we do exit interviews when people are leaving, and we'll ask, do you know what the benefits are like where you're going? And a lot of times, it's like, no, no, I'm sure it's, you know, it's okay, or I'll find out when I get there. So there's just, as Sean says, it's just how much more are they going to pay me to go work for them, and how much you're paying me. Thank you. Commissioner Sandberg? Is there an incentive, let's say, you know, it's a weekend and an employee has a sore throat. I mean, if you go into that emergency room across the street, it's going to be very expensive, versus some type of a walk-in clinic. Is there an incentive in our policy, and how would the staff know to take advantage of that if there was an advantage? There's not an incentive, but we educate. So we, every year during open enrollment and throughout the year, we talk about the difference between going to an urgent care clinic versus going to the emergency room. Of course, if you were having heart palpitations at midnight, we don't want you to say, okay, there's no urgent care open, so I'm just going to wait. We want you to go to emergency care. But if you, you know, you just, you have a, your hand hurts, you know, at midnight, maybe you might want to wait until 7 a.m. and go to the urgent care. And we kind of try to show the cost difference and the hit to the, because so we do educate about the fact that we're self-insured and how it impacts our, how we figure out premiums and claims. And the list of, and the location of, is available to the entire staff, so there's no confusion on their part? Yeah, that means, yeah, Cigna has such a, their network is so huge that there's, I wouldn't know of any places that you can't go to that doesn't take Cigna, but yeah. Okay, good. That's all I had. Thank you, Teresa. Any other questions? Mr. Walker? Yeah, thanks, Mayor. Yeah, so I'm having a hard time with the numbers here. I think you probably tried to explain them, but I'm still not getting it. Um, so I, I'll just make it easy. Number four, employees and cities share the increase, but yet it looks like both the city and the employee are paying a 15% increase in their premiums. Why, why would that be? So, and I'll maybe jump in because I think kind of sometimes nomenclature maybe gets a little bit. When, when we're using in that term, as far as share the increase, we're talking applying kind of that overall percentage to both sides. Um, you know, the, the other way that sometimes people would interpret that is, you know, there's a, um, you know, a total increase of 700 something thousand dollars, lop 350,000, you know, give or take, sorry for my math, 325, you know, wherever the number is there, um, you know, lop that dollar amount on the employees and divide it out and the city, you know, that would be sharing the dollar amount of the increase. But if you were to do a scenario like that, um, that, that incremental increase to the employees is going to be significantly more than 15%. Is that kind of what you're asking, commissioner? Yeah, I think so. I think I, I see what you're saying. Um, so for option number two, that, how does that get to 10.2% for the employee? It looks to me like, what it looks like is, is it's basically changing, changing the coverage entirely when you're offering the buy-up plan, which, and again, I'm interpreting that to be a 15% increase from current. So it's still the 15% overall. So as, as you look at the three plans, they're, they're weighted a little bit, right? The, the base plan has 242 of the 296 employees. Um, so they're getting kind of that 10%. That's why overall you're looking at about 10%. Um, the people on the buy-up would be getting a little bit more, but when we look at in total what the employees pay today versus what they would pay in that scenario, it's approximately a 10.2% increase on them. But if you chose the high deductible in that scenario, you get no increase. So the census does have something to do, the, the census of who's in what plan does have something to do with the final percentage. And I know there's a, a ton of numbers on there, but just if, if it helps on the left where you have the three plans and you see the tiers, um, that number to the right is the current, as of last month, the number of individuals that have, you know, that's 16 on the high deductible plan. So 16 employees only covering themselves have the high deductible plan. Just so just, uh, just if that helps anyone interpret. Yes. Yes. On the handout. Okay. Yeah. All right. I think basically pay attention to the employee annual medical cost is the number that we're focused on here. Okay. Um, and what was staff's recommendation on there? Is there a recommendation yet? Yes. So, uh, staff is recommending that the city absorb the 15%. And I, I just want to, if I may put a little context on that and why we're recommending that because it departs from the recommendation from the board of finance. So we respectfully depart from their recommendation. And the reason for that is, is that, you know, the plan with, with where we essentially split it in half, you know, we pay 7.5, they, you know, uh, the city pays 7.5, the employees pay 7.5. Um, really what we would save will be $48,000. Um, and, uh, to me with the employees, uh, you know, our merit base increases up to 3.5%. So essentially we're giving and then taking away. Um, that, you know, that, that's very simplistic, but that's the way the employees look at, look at them absorbing some healthcare costs. I would rather this year, as I go through my employee communications, um, tell the employees that the city is absorbing the 15%, that next, we're putting together a plan for next year to, to, uh, address our deficit. And we may ask the employees in future years to absorb a portion or all of the increase, but we're not asking that this year, um, until we have a chance to have a real look at, at, at the benefits, uh, and the impact on, on the employees. And so I think we need to be careful what the message is, the messaging. It's a small amount of money. Um, and we, um, we have traditionally absorbed the increases and, and I'm going to talk to the employees about that, how much that costs the city. And that is a, that is a tangible benefit to the employees. Uh, and it's one of, one in our bucket of benefits for all of the employees, but I'd much rather be able to talk to them, explain what we're doing this year and explain what we're going to do moving forward than to say across the board, you're going to have to absorb, you know, this less than meaningful number this year. No, I, and thank you very much for that explanation. Um, let's see, because I understood if I, and let me know if I didn't get this quite right, but I think we, next year, we have a review period on our coverage. Is, is there some milestone coming up next year? No, we're just going to, we do it almost just about every year, but I think we're going to take a closer look at, for example, should we keep the buy-up, should we, you know, should we change any of our deductibles, our coinsurance, just take a closer look in terms of how, you know, as, as Les was saying, how do we help our expenses? How do we make sure that we're, you know, we have an efficient, um, medical plan? Okay. No, that's, that's what I heard. Yep. Thank you. Um, yeah, go for the questions. Thank you. Commissioner DeGuard. Thank you, Mayor. I was just commenting to the manager that I should probably keep my mouth shut on this one. I'm going to follow, I'm not going to follow my own advice. I didn't say anything. Yeah, probably smart, very smart. I'm going to, I'm going to just say a couple things that are from a macro perspective. When I started a thousand years ago as an employee, healthcare costs in this country were six to eight percent of GDP. They're now 18 and we have no better outcomes. That's a fact. We have just as many cancer deaths as we had 15 years ago and that's with secession of smoking. If you just look at the evening news and see the advertisements in there, you see all kinds of new drugs. In fact, 50% of ads are for new drugs. Those drugs are very expensive. Some are designed to make you skinnier because obviously you're overweight. We have a healthcare crisis in this country and it's showing up on our bottom lines. The sooner we understand that, the sooner we'll be able to take care of ourselves because we're not. We're eating the diets they tell us to eat. And by the way, between those advertisements that the healthcare industry puts in our face, we have the lawyers telling us about suing other people, which is also showing up on our bottom line. And which one does the better job of petting a golden retriever? So this makes me angry. True. It's comic and tragic all at the same time. I encourage the employees here to look at their diet from their own health perspective. They've got to. I didn't up to about four years ago and then I began to. I lost 50 pounds because I began to look at my diet differently. What's on TV is not the diet you should have. What's in the store, 80% is not the diet you should have. They're unhealthy. So that being said, from a micro perspective with what we're dealing with here, I agree with the manager on keeping this where it is, that we pay, because the savings does not make a substantial difference. However, I think the warning to the employees is if we don't change a couple things, we can't continue to do that. Sorry about my diatribe. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor Mayock. Yeah, but first I just want to say lunch is canceled because it's chicken, meatballs, pasta. There is salad, so we'll just have the salad. They're running to get it before it's taken away. Yeah, no, if you want to go and then I'll make it. Lunch is followed by a nice walk. That's right. You know, just thank you, Tom, very much. My head is in the same space. I was just nicer about it. So, but thank you for your comments. Back to my earlier questions, we talked about what the employees really care about is the actual dollars in their pocket, right? When they come to, if I understood that correctly. One of the things. One of the things. One of the things. Yes. That insurance, when they are being interviewed and they come on board with the city, and it's not just the city, Dineen, it's just any industry, any job, you're more concerned about what's my paycheck, right? And so if, and I don't know, certainly insurance is second or third, but I think there's a big difference. And so my question is, is if, if they are concerned about their, their, we're absorbing, are we absorbing a cost that the employees don't care about? I think the, as far as absorbing the cost, I think you're, we're looking at more the employees that are here. If, you know, they, they understand what they're paying for. They understand, you know, the, the plan. So, so it's more for their benefit. As far as a recruitment tool, like we said, when somebody's looking at a job, half the time, they're not looking at the benefits. When they get here, they go, oh, you have this, oh, you have that. We do have more people coming in from the private sector and they're like, wow, you, you guys have good benefits, you know, but at the end of the day, they still look at what's coming into their paycheck. So, um, Mayor, I find that during my employee communications that the employees know exactly. They understand their benefits much better than I do. Actually, sometimes I can't answer the question, especially the fire department. So, um, it is about the bottom line, but it's also about, um, it's also about the healthcare and the support of the employees in terms of, of, you know, the, the benefit that the city extends to them. You know, in the public sector, as you know, you're in the public sector as well. The benefits we have are, are, you know, they essentially accommodate the, the lack in salary, but then the, from the, uh, and the stability in, in the public sector. So I think they understand, I think that they'll certainly understand this. And don't get me wrong, because I think they will, because I think there is a huge difference between being employed versus the recruiting tool. Yes. And, and it's, but, but, but it, but it sounds like a change is coming regardless. And it's, and thank you for that. But it just put insurance, I, it puts it in, in, in a precarious position. I think that, right through Tom's comments about that, we do have a health insurance crisis in our industry. And we all, first we didn't recognize it. Now we're recognizing it. And it's, the next step is, what do we do about it? You know, and I know that there's lots of things outside of our control that, that need to be done. Uh, and self-care is one of those. And thank you, Tom. I'm down 30, 30 pounds. So I'm, I'm, I'm working hard. Uh, even put a piece of chocolate down about 10 minutes ago. Uh, and so it just, I'm, I'm certainly in support of the city taking this on. Thank you. But I, I do find it interesting as far as what employees care about, what we do for recruiting. You know, there seems to be, we're trying to play both sides that have different concerns. And, and how you balance that moving forward, I'm, I'm not quite sure about. Um, but those, those are my comments. Well, if this is a Weight Watchers meeting, I'm up five pounds, okay? I'll just say it right now. Anyway, you know, Mayor, I'm glad we're talking about this. And I, and I really, I, I, I like the conversation. And Commissioner Dugard and I have had lots of, uh, discussions about this. And I've changed my diet as a result of some of the things that, that he has been, uh, telling me about his research, but I also think that, that, um, you know, one of the things that we can look into, and I've done it at previous cities is get a nutritionist here to do lunch and learns and those types of things. And, um, I remember at a previous city, we actually did, uh, yoga and we did it at lunchtime in the city commission chambers, which is not exactly where I go to relax and do yoga, but, you know, um, so, but there are all sorts of different things that we can do in those terms. I, as you know, I, I value, celebrate and practice physical fitness to the maximum extent possible. And so, and I, I convey that to the employees as well, I hope, but, you know, maybe we can do, you know, a better job with that. And, you know, nutritionists may come pro bono because, you know, they'll, they'll, uh, essentially develop business that way as well. So we can look into that. I like the conversation for sure. And let that in also involve sunscreen. Yes, absolutely. Right, right. Yeah. So Jorge, I just want to see if you remembered when Bob LaSalle did yoga out on the island. We had to like boat out to the island and do at the county. It was a county thing. I learned I didn't like yoga. I didn't like yoga. I always didn't say that on camera, but anyway. We can go for goat yoga. Anyway, they'll just be chicken and salad for lunch. No pasta, no meatballs. Yeah. Okay. Um, so I just, I had a couple of questions. Um, so the total cost increase overall is the seven hundred and seven thousand. Seven fifty five. Just seven fifty five. Nine fifty six. Yeah. Okay. And, and, and so, um, so it was never really a realistic consideration for you guys to do fifty fifty. Share the total cost. And right. We, I mean, we, you know, we looked at all the options. Total cost, yeah. Yeah. Before we. But what you thought would be potentially reasonable was the seven point five, but then it's like it's not that much savings. Right. So, why give away, give the increase and, okay, okay. Yes. Um, and, and, and individual employee only is not charged anything. So, yes, if you remember last year, that was an added benefit that we did, um, where we made the employee only zero starting last year, starting October 1st. Uh. It was like 20. Yeah, it was. Twenty two dollars, I think, essentially. And why did we do that? I don't remember why we did that. Our surrounding cities, a lot of them were doing the employee only. As a no cost. Because, you know, a lot of our surrounding cities have more than one union. Uh, so that was part of the reason why we did, uh, going to the employee only. Yeah, I mean, because like, I know Pinellas County charges the employee only. I'm not saying we should, but that, so, so competitively, I guess, I'm asking you, I'm asking you, I'm asking Sean, like, competitively, are we within that margin of reasonableness? Absolutely. I mean, we look at the data every year for the cities around, um, and as we look at you guys and we look, there's different ways to look at it, you know, do you look per check? Do you look at overall? Um, but when you look at, uh, most of our, most of the cities around the state, and not all, but a lot of the cities have zero dollar single coverage, and then varying levels of, of family coverage. The very small cities typically aren't able to subsidize towards dependent coverage. And then as the entities get larger, you tend to see more and more contribution. Um, but your percentages, I had a graph up, you know, your percentage is really right in line with the bulk of the market, um, in that regard. Okay, well, you know how strongly I feel about our employees as the number one asset, but at the same time, I'm all about, we need to be competitive, you know, we don't want to lose people to the county. We want to be smart about it, so we don't shoot ourselves in the foot. So, I'm certainly on board with what you're suggesting and then, and how you look at it to the future. Um, is, is, uh, Moffitt part of our network? Yes. Okay. Like, for some reason that keeps coming up, uh, and I just wanted to ask, so, um, one other big picture question though, when you talk about, you know, the increases in medical care, which, you know, seems like it's going to eat up all our GDP at some point, um, because of the increases. And I'm, I'm just curious on your thoughts, Sean, about the impact at the national level with the cutbacks, however you want to define it, you know, the, uh, the effects on the Medicaid expenses and how that will affect our hospital systems. And then ultimately, cause I'm thinking if there, if there's truly a lot of cuts, particularly nonprofits, but you correct me if I'm wrong, we'll then have, I mean, they'll still have to do the medical care, which will raise up everybody's rates. Can you comment on that? I, you know, very high level, cause there's probably people that are a lot smarter than me that are looking at that. You know, what I can say is, is globally, when you look at the industry and these hospitals, you know, facilities, um, on average, you know, commercial insurance pays close to double what they get reimbursed via Medicare. So, you know, private insurance, like the city has, like all the cities around you have, counties have, is, is basically subsidizing those hospitals in terms of, of Medicare. So, logically, you know, and I don't know the specifics on some of the other cuts, how that impacts them, but logically, you know, I look at it and say every dollar that they aren't getting for Medicare or Medicaid or any of those, they either need to cut or make up somewhere else, just like y'all do with your budget. So, I think that's, you know, an area of concern. Um, and, and it's always been an area of concern. It's just, is it more amplified? Um, and then, you know, we've had some executive orders on pharmacy, pharmaceuticals, you may have seen where they, I think they called it favored nation pricing, right? We're not going to allow you to charge more outside of the country than inside. That, I think, is a little too early to see how it plays out. Um, me being skeptical of anything new, you know, one thing you're playing, you get what's called the pharmacy rebates on any brand name drugs that are filled, um, that ultimately offsets that cost. So, with that pricing, you know, do the cost of the drugs come down, but the rebates just go away, and then are we really at the same net place? You know, that's what I think we still have to see, how that plays out. Um, I think plan-wise and, and the future, just talking about that, with these, these medications, it used to be that the expensive medications for, were for rare conditions. Now, we've got expensive medications for day-to-day conditions, and I think that's the biggest threat and challenge, you know, to the commissioner's point about eating better, taking care of yourself. Um, you know, I think that is what is going to have to be tackled going forward, because it's, you know, it's unsustainable to have, you know, $30,000, $40,000 in medication costs a year, and you only have one visit to the doctor. And, and we see that now with individuals. Like, that's, that's not sustainable for the future. Question is, you know, in future years, do we adjust the plan design to further incentivize that without penalizing someone for something they can't control? And that's kind of the balancing act. So, sorry, I went off a little tangent there. No, no, that's, that's, that's fine. And, it's a great, it's a great discussion, because, I mean, obviously, it's, it's a, it's a national issue. It's everybody's issue, so. Um, uh, anything else? I think, because we got a, we got our lunch that now is a shrunken lunch. Uh, but, uh, the one other thing? Okay, go ahead. Yeah, and I, uh, I mean, this, this is a no-brainer for me. I, I think that, uh, we absorb the cost on this. And, uh, because our employees are, are, are number one asset, number one resource. And I, you know, I think this is not, uh, this is not a big stretch to absorb this. So. Is everybody else there? Okay, so I think you have your direction on that. I do, and thank you very much. We're very grateful. Okay, all right. I think it's time for a locale lunch. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm going to get restarted with our budget workshop. And, uh, gee, let's see what could be next. Hmm. Yeah. Uh, City Commission Fiscal Year 2026 Civic Partners in Aid to Social Cultural Nonprofit Organizations. And we're going to start that out with a staff presentation by Les and Jean. Okay, great. Thank you. Uh, some brief background. The, uh, the aid organizational subcommittee that we have met on July 8th to discuss the 2026 Civic Partners information as well as the aid organization's grant submittals. The committee consists of, uh, the city manager, uh, library director, uh, Phyllis Gorshi, and the finance director, myself. Uh, the fiscal year 2026 total proposed budget for civic partners and aid organizations, social cultural organizations totals $222,000 in our budget today in the general fund. Uh, the staff has increased the amount by $14,000 over the 25 budget amount. Uh, this includes, uh, $37,000 for civic partners Dunedin Fine Arts Center, $37,000 for civic partner Dunedin Historical Museum, and $37,000 for civic partner Dunedin Cares. And we also have $106,000 allocated for the aid organizational cultural, uh, grants for all the other nonprofits. And we, uh, we've set aside $5,000 to be available, to be awarded during 2026 if other nonprofits were to come forward. Uh, last year we set aside $10,000, but we set aside $5,000 in 2026. Um, uh, also want to mention that, um, if you look at the slide before you, we've got the civic partner request and on the far left column, we've got, uh, the recommend, the, uh, far left is, is the amount that they had asked for and the far right is the amount that's recommended by the subcommittee. And the recommendation is a total of $111,000 and that's $37,000 for each civic partner. And, uh, moving to the social culture, nonprofit organizations, uh, recommendations and, and requests. We had, we had a lot of applicants this year. We had like, I think, uh, 11 new, 11 new applicants this year under this category. And, uh, the far left column shows the grant request for each of the, the agencies. And the far right column shows the subcommittee recommendation, uh, before the commission today. Uh, the total, the total, uh, there's two pages here. The second page, uh, the total for all of these is $106,000. That's the bottom far right number. And we have representatives from many of the nonprofits here today that would like to, uh, speak to the commission and I'll turn it over to, for questions. Thank you. Before we go to input, um, from organizations, does, uh, anybody have any questions or need any more detail? Okay. Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. Um, just real quick, Les, um, based on the totals for, uh, our civic partners and the aid to organizations, those are pretty much flat from last year, right? Yeah, they're, uh, most of them are very similar to last year, uh, as far as what we were awarded. We, uh, some had adjustments, uh, that the total amount that we're awarding, uh, is, is slightly more than last year. About 14,000 more than last year in total. Uh, uh, we did have more requests, like I mentioned, uh, and, uh, uh, uh, some of the ones that did request last year did, uh, did also request this year, but we did have quite a few new, new ones this year that we, that we, uh, are recommending funding for those two. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Oh, Commissioner Degarden. On the evaluation process, was there a specific criteria we can be made aware of as you evaluated each request? Just a couple things. We look at, uh, we look at first, if, if they were, if they're new, we look at, uh, you know, kind of, uh, what their purpose is and what their goal is with the funding. We, we also look at the financials. We, we, we look at, uh, we ask them for financial information, their budgets, their, their, uh, either their budgets, their audits, if they have them, or their tax returns, whatever they can provide to show their revenue expenses and, and their, their cash position. So we look at that, uh, and take that into consideration, too, looking at their, their cash reserves or, or fund balance reserves. So we look at the financial aspects some, but we also just look at, you know, what the, what the purpose is and, and, and that sort of thing. Any other questions? Um, and I assume everybody has been, all the organizations have been given the recommendations? Uh, yes, yes. Everyone received, let, we let them know the, the, the meeting, the meeting today and invited them if they wanted to come and let them know what the proposed recommendation was for them. Yeah. Okay. Great. Okay. So we'll go ahead and turn to our input air time. Don't anybody feel like they have to talk? But if you wish to, we welcome you. Um, so, uh, any, so come forward three minutes. Uh, name and address organization for the record. Thank you. Who's back there? Uh, Terry is the woman that's in charge of this grant. She does field trips, adopt a class, those kinds of things. So the guild and the commission, the city has had a long, uh, history. We've given, uh, over the years, uh, half a million dollars in scholarships to Dunedin's high school students. Um, we have built and supported playgrounds, Harvard street playground, the youth guild park, the Moffitt playground at Weaver park. Those are things that the guild did. The guild did. We actually started the parade, which you all very graciously took over. We appreciate that, but we do help organize it still. Um, we have enrichment programs from adopt a class arts, uh, athletic teams, summer camps. We bought the Dunedin high school football team helmets. We bought the cosmetology students, those little heads they practice on. Those are the kinds of things we do, but this money, what you want to know is what we did with the money last year and what we intend on doing with it this year. So we have given, um, this year $11,000, $5,000, which came from you, which we greatly appreciate. But that money that you gave us funded nine educational field trips. Four hundred and sixty students attended those nine field trips. We visited twelve cultural and education sites, the Dunedin Fine Arts Center, the History Museum, Honeymoon Island, and local academic competitions. Um, yeah, $11,000. So, next year we're going to do the same. It's going to be elementary, middle, high school students field trips. Um, Terry is the one that actually vets the applications for all the grants. Um, tells people what they can and cannot do, finds that they're out of our scope, and then makes sure everybody gets the money and it's attributed to who it actually goes to. So, what our concern is this year is transportation costs for the education students is going up. So, we're going to keep a close eye on those costs to make sure that they're spread evenly. Other than that, we appreciate it a great deal. And we are negotiating, I understand, a capital project for a park with the city. Great. Thank you, Linda. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for all you guys do. Okay, um, anyone else wish to come forward? Um, three minutes, uh, name and organization? I don't, no, you can't. That's, as a matter of fact, we're going to down you to one and a half minute. Okay, one and a half. I can just say, thank you, thank you, thank you. If you'd come to Rotary this morning, I might have given you six. Oh, I was watching my grand babies, they made me this. I do want to say, before I let Steve talk, that I was always a friend of Vinny's. And when Steve asked me if I would help the History Museum, when I got there and I discovered what Marcia does for the chapel, what Patty does for the shop, and Vinny, who knows everything about everything in Dunedin, I have found working with this group and with our young Daniela, who I don't know if she came, absolutely inspiring. And now I consider myself like a chief historian in a way. But I'll turn it over to Steve. Thank you guys so very much. It's a total pleasure. Thank you, Georgian. Georgian. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, staff, committee, thank you so much. As we put the team together, starting about two years ago, a new team at the History Museum and went to move it forward and modernize it more, these funds are just priceless for us. We continue to. We're expanding the center areas you see in the center room. We put a new flooring. We've made it available for meetings. And we're getting ready to put exhibits that are mobile in there so we can still use that room for the meetings and other things but then have exhibits that we can roll in and out and expand the History Museum. We're doing more. We did our History Maker program where we bring back people in the community while they're still alive, not after the fact. And trying to bring our younger people into the History Museum. You know? Yeah. Most histories, it's like you got to die and then you become history. We're trying to do history while you're still alive. So, but one of the things we just did right as the boat club was being taken down, we actually went over and filmed it and did a whole history of it and that's going to be coming out soon. We're doing more with the baseball team and Vinny's done a ton with that and has a ton on the whole baseball and the history within Dunedin. So, our mission is just continually improve the History Museum and tell the story of Dunedin. And it just continues. We, you know, we have TV stations reach out to us constantly. That's the value of that museum. We just had ABC in there about a month ago and then Channel 13's coming in soon. And they do things and they always talk about Dunedin and it's pushing and it just drives people. So, we feel the History Museum, as I know you do, is priceless and we thank you so much for those funds and we appreciate all you guys do. So, thank you very much. Thank you, Steve. Thanks for all you guys do. And I'm even being lenient on the clapping rule because, you know, we're all friends here. Good afternoon. There you go. I'm going to be on with the Dunedin Film Festival. I just wanted to take a moment to thank you all face to face for this historic moment for the festival. It's our eighth year, if you can believe it or not, that we've been a non-profit here in the city of Dunedin and this is our first time receiving a grant from the city. So, I just wanted to show my face, say hello to everybody and thank you very much for honoring us with this money because it's going to go to building our theater that we have to do year after year because we don't have one yet. So, thank you so much. Thank you very much, too. Okay. Anyone else wish to come forward? Name, organization and three minutes. Good afternoon. My name is Camille Hepting. I'm with NAMI Pinellas County. I wanted to thank you all for the opportunity to introduce our organization and the work that we do. So, NAMI stands for the National Alliance on Mental Illness and that is the national organization, which is actually the largest grassroots mental health organization in the country. And so, while we enjoy the sharing a name with them and the recognition that it helps, we are a local organization. NAMI Pinellas County is a local 501c3. Our mission is to improve the mental health and quality of life of individuals and families affected by mental illness in this community. And we do that through education support and advocacy. So, the funding that we're seeking will support an already established in-person monthly support group that we hold on the third Wednesday of every month at the Dunedin Community Center. It provides survivors of suicide loss a safe space to navigate the complex emotions that follow the loss of a loved one to suicide and the resources that they need to process that grief and move forward positively and with purpose. Why is this important? Behavioral health was actually identified as part of Pinellas County Top 5 priorities in the Community Health Improvement Plan from 2023 to 2028. And suicide is actually a critical concern. Our Pinellas County suicide rate is 20.3 per 100,000 resident, which is much higher than Florida. Rate for Florida is 16.9. And then the national average is 14.1. So, there's definitely a problem here. And that same report also revealed that 11.5% of our county residents experienced suicide ideation or thoughts of self-harm in the past year when that survey was done. So, these numbers show something that we already know. We are definitely navigating this persistent mental health crisis, and so we really want to do something about it and emphasize the need for community-based support and education, which is what we do. And we do believe that this work directly relates to your goal, which is A4 in the strategic plan, your 2024 strategic plan, which was to establish robust public safety services with the emphasis on community connectivity. So, we look forward to continuing to do that, offering a safe space for folks to connect and be vulnerable and heal and recover together. So, we appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else wish to come forward? Hello, everybody. Christina Garcia. I'm the Executive Director for Dunedin Cares Community Food Pantry. So, I just wanted to thank all of you for your support. For Dunedin Cares, because of you all, we were able to feed over 29,000 people in 2024 and distribute over 1,619,000 pounds of food in 2024 to families in need. We value our relationship with the City of Dunedin, and I just wanted to thank you. That's it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Did you want to say anything? I sure will. I never pass on a microphone. Christina is our director and does phenomenal. She doesn't give herself enough credit, but she's done a phenomenal job over there. Again, modernizing the organization. We've had to get more modern as you start out and you have a bunch of volunteers and it sounds great, but then you get to where you've got to have job descriptions and you've got to have time clocks, and she's done a great job of getting all that done. But, you know, representing the board, and that's why I'm here, is the organization, there's a myth that I want to go through here that everyone comes outside of Dunedin for Dunedin Cures. I can tell you if you'll go over there any Saturday or Monday night and sit there, you're going to see 70-80% of the people are Dunedin faces. And there's so many people that food insecurity affects. It's everything from people that have seasonal type jobs where it's teachers, situations like that, or you don't, and then people will say, well, they drive open a brand new BMW and all that. You don't know their situation, they might be bankrupt for all you know, and that's just all facade and they're desperately trying to eat. And so we go through all that and we do it. It's, Christina and the prior people that put it all together, it's very non-judgmental. You come in, there's no judgment, and they love it. You get to shop and they treat you like a human, we walk you around. Christina has a team there that walks everyone around, they get to shop for their goods. So we'll say, today you can have two meats, you can have one peanut butter, so many cereals. We have all the other food banks that she passes out so they know where else they can go in the area, because just about all of them have, you can come once or twice a month, because it's just not possible to give them food as often as we would like. It's just not physically or feasibly possible. But we have a lot of community partners that donate to us too to make it happen. A lot of organizations, neighborhoods, all that, and we so appreciate it. And this goes far in our mission there to continue to provide for the food insecurity. Thank you very much. Thanks, guys. Thank you both. Thank you. Anyone else wish to come forward? Name and organization in three minutes. Hi there. I know several of you. I'm Susan Glerscheid with the Tampa Bay Ukulele Society, and this is Dave Helm, who's our treasurer. I'm also on the board and would like to thank you all for this opportunity to speak to you about Tampa Bay Ukulele Society, a much lighter topic than what we've seen and heard here today, and also for considering to fund us for our upcoming Tampa Bay Ukulele Day, which is March 27th through the 29th, 2006. Yes, 2026. It will be our ninth annual. I learned about this funding opportunity last August just having tea with Jeff Gow somewhere in Scotland. I don't know where we were, but he's mentioned that there's this grant opportunity for non-profits in the area. And Tampa Bay Ukulele Society has over 4,000 members, believe it or not, crazy ukulele enthusiasts, and I lead for 10 years in January the Dunedin Ukes, which meets regularly at the Hale Center every Monday night. So the funds will be, will, is, are earmarked for both the rental of the Hale Center for Friday night, the 27th, all day Saturday, the 28th, and also for Pioneer Park, which we use for the open community on Sunday. And we typically bring in for our, for our event one nationally known ukulele player and a couple of regional or state level ukulele players. And so we do have paid participants that are in the Hale Center for workshops and concerts. And then it's open to the community on Friday night and also all day Sunday. And we advertise, we have little flyers that we give out. And we do restaurant support. Yes, restaurant vendor support for this. So the, the amount we're asking for is a little less than one third of our total budget. So we have a pretty substantial budget for these events. So we have a pretty vibrant ukulele community here. We have a lot of fun. I know some of you have been to Tampa Bay Ukulele Day and we hope you'll all come. We would actually love to have you come and speak and, and own the fact that you are part of Dunedin. We are part of Dunedin and we're all in this together. So thank you very much for hearing us out and, uh, considering funding us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any questions? Uh, yeah, we're good, but thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay. Anyone else wish to come forward to speak on the organizations? Happy one month anniversary. New retiree. Thank you. Wow. Welcome, Joan. It's wonderful to be here. Name organization and... I'm Joan McHale. I'm with the Scottish American Society of Dunedin. And I'd like to thank you all for the opportunity again to apply for this, uh, wonderful grant. Last year, we spent our grant, we split it between our education and our Scottish events. For the education part, we sponsored a genealogy instructor who comes to our hall once a week. She took a DNA mapping, uh, workshop. We continue our subscriptions and credits for the genealogy resources for that weekly work group. We sponsored a week-long Highland dance camp at our hall, and we gave out many donations to students to the tune of about 16,000 bagpipes, drumming, Highland dance to the band and to the students. Uh, we also split the money between the education and our heritage events. We host traditional Scottish holidays, St. Andrew's Day and Robert Burns Day. We have celebrations with Scottish music and Scottish foods. We hosted, uh, for the first time, we had something different. It was called the Hebridean Baker. He's the number one cookbook author in Scotland. His name is Cognac McLeod. And he was on a North American book tour, and he started it here in Dunedin for us. Uh, it was sold out. We had a Scottish gathering and book signing. It was showcasing dance. You're smiling. You were there. It was wonderful. He was great. Yeah. Um, we'd love to have him back. He's now, uh, booked for a TV show in Britain now. So, uh, we also host our Hogmanay, which is a New Year's Eve party with traditional music, dance, and a meal to bring in the New Year. So that was last year's award, and this year we have plans to also continue the education program and programs and events. We're bringing in a, uh, Heritage Day. We're gonna try it during Tartan Week next week, next year in April. Um, it's gonna showcase what we do and for everyone to experience Scotland in Dunedin. Um, we're gonna help cover the costs of our program entertainment. We bring bands from Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and, uh, around the U.S. Our education program, you just can't go wrong with that. We, we've, we keep growing in popularity and in numbers. And the Scottish arts here begins in middle school with the pipers and drummers. And it begins even earlier for the dance with the, we have some children down there three years old. Um, continue to support those who attend for lessons, uh, the middle school and the high school. And we wanna increase our incentives to provide more materials and subsidize classes at our facility for low to no cost. Our students win awards nationally and around the U.S., um, all representing the city of Dunedin. So, us, we've had a great year. We've gone from a snowbird-type facility to opening almost every day. Over a year ago, we, we began something called Friday. Is that my three minutes? Oh, no! Yeah, gotta get you to wrap up. Oh, well. Okay, thank you. Um, thank, oh, okay. Um, your grant's gonna help in so many ways, to wrap it up. We thank you so much. Um, we're, we're so proud of what we're doing. I have the whole board back here. Um, we're doing really good. And thank you, thank you. We'll be grateful for your approval of this recommendation. Thank you, Jim. So, thanks. Name organization. Good afternoon. My name is the Reverend Whitney Burton. I'm the rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd right down, um, on Edgewater. We are applying for the first time this year, um, for funding to help with our PACASAC program. As many of you probably know, PACASAC provides weekend meals to children who might otherwise go hungry when school cafeterias are closed. It's a simple concept, right? We fill a bag with nutritious food. Um, and the schools distribute those to each child on Friday. Um, but its impact reaches much farther than what's in the bag. It means that no child has to face a weekend on an empty stomach. Um, and, and that, uh, families feel supported. And it means that together we are able to meet a very real need in a very tangible way. This program hits, uh, close to home for me. I have two very young children, a six month old and a two year old. Um, and I know that even just feeding their tiny bellies, uh, the cost every time we go to the grocery store, um, is rising. And so there are many families in our area, um, for which this really benefits. The PACASAC program at Good Shepherd has been, um, uh, running for over 17 years. And so it has a long history in our community. Um, and last year it expanded to reach 135 students on a weekly basis. Um, covering Dunedin Elementary School and San Jose Elementary School. Um, we anticipate, we don't know the numbers yet this school year, but we anticipate that that will likely, unfortunately, rise. It's run by volunteers from Good Shepherd and the wider community who gather each week when school is in session, um, to pack food into bags and then distribute them to each school. As is occurring in many other areas, we are experiencing a significant increase in the cost of food. Um, which has, of course, a direct impact on our program. Because the church provides space and volunteers, um, we operate under a low overhead, meaning that, um, if awarded this grant, all of the funds will go directly to purchasing those food items. Um, and so we are grateful for your consideration, um, and really, um, are hopeful of the impact and the way that this can help impact our PACASAC program. Hopefully, uh, our program can, can continue for years to come. Um, can feed hungry children, um, and help families feel, um, seen and help their needs be meet. So I just wanted to, to come and say hello, say thank you. This is again our first time, um, applying for this grant. Um, but we're very grateful for your consideration, uh, just down the street at Good Shepherd. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks for everything you guys do for our community. Thank you. Okay. Name and organization. Good afternoon and thank you so much for inviting me to attend, uh, the budget workshop today. My name is Lindsey Marshall and I am the proud parent of, um, a Dunedin High School freshman who is a member of several of the, the Dunedin Highlander Band Booster Club 26, uh, school year. I'm honored to be here to briefly share the purpose. Your 2026 organization has not received prior funding in recent years. Dunedin Scottish Highlander Band Booster Club is a non-for-profit exclusively to support performing arts music education at the Dunedin High School instrumental music program. The organization is comprised of dedicated parents, alumni, community members. We coordinate fundraising activities, manage equipment, purchase, and oversee uniform, uh, and travel arrangements. Hold on one minute. I think we're having an issue here. I know. I'm not sure what's happening. Your iPad is pressing the button. Oh, I'm so sorry. Technology at its best. I guess I'll hold it to the side. I can't, I felt like it was coming and going, but I didn't know what was happening. I'm sorry. Can I get a little extra time? That's okay. We had the engineer who came up and figured it out. There we go. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. So we're an organization comprised of dedicated parents, alumni, and community members. We coordinate fundraising activities, manage equipment, uh, purchases and maintenance, oversee uniform and travel arrangements, and ensure that every student has access to the resources necessary for musical and personal growth. By shouldering these responsibilities, the booster organization allows the band's instructional staff to focus on artistic excellence and student development. As many of you know, for more than 60 years, the Dunedin High School Scottish Highlander Band has served as a living testament to our city's rich Scottish heritage. What began in the early 1960s as a modest Scottish pipe and drum ensemble at the junior high level blossomed into the comprehensive program that includes marching band, concert ensembles, a championship level Scottish pipe band, and Highland dancers. This evolution has unfolded in tandem with Dunedin High School's own history, fostering a sense of tradition and pride that resonates throughout our community. This rich history is exactly why my husband and I chose Dunedin for our daughter's educational pursuits. I am so proud to share that I lead a new group of motivated board members who want to support our new band director as we align to foster new growth of this wonderful program, and seek the involvement of our city, residents, and alumni. One way growth is encouraged is through competitions with other larger school bands and popular contests that bring attention and interest to Dunedin's unique historical program. Are we getting close to the wrap-up? Yes, ma'am. I certainly am. There's nothing quite like seeing Dunedin High School Scottish Highlander Band perform around town during events in their fully authentic Scottish uniforms. The cost to outfit each student in their uniform is approximately $1,000, with great effort made to keep the components authentic and sourced from Scotland. To be competitive, the band needs to replace older instruments and keep the uniforms in excellent working order. Just as a wrap-up, moreover, this grant will enable the Booster organization to expand our community outreach initiatives and reduce financial barriers to participation. Thus, welcoming more students from diverse backgrounds into the program, ensuring that every young person with passion and potential can experience the transformative power of music. And thank you for your time today. Thank you, Linda. Thank you very much. Linda got a little extra time because of the glitch. Oh. It's all good. So don't anybody, you know. All right. Well, thank you, commissioners, vice mayor, and mayor. I am Andrea Knowles. I'm the executive director of the Dunedin Fine Arts Center. It's an honor. You all know what a culturally vibrant and just arts-appreciative community Dunedin is. And that's why the Arts Center exists. So I am proud to say we've just had a banner year. We have serviced over 40,000 students and campers that participated in our programs. We hosted over 1,000 unique classes and workshops. So banner year. $60,000 were awarded in scholarships, so we were able to make the arts accessible. And we were able to calculate, due to our new software system, that 85% of those scholarship recipients are Dunedin residents. We launched 30 new classes, most of those in arts and wellness, which really promote kind of self-care and the idea of taking care of oneself. And we recently celebrated our 50th year anniversary. And really, a large part of that is because of you all. So thank you so much for the support. Thank you for the consideration for this upcoming year. And we're really excited to have another banner year. Thank you, Andrew. Thanks for all you guys do. Okay. Anyone else wish to come forward? Name and organization. Mayor, commissioners, Vinnie Luisi, city historian. I just wanted to point out working with the Dunedin History Museum for 2026 is a lot of activity this year. For those who don't know, our mayor will remember, 1999 we celebrated. 2026 is the 100th anniversary of the city of Dunedin. And the museum plans to work with the community, the schools, the churches, and other organizations to get involved with celebrating our city's history for its 100th anniversary. But also, next year marks the semi-quincentennial, the 250th anniversary of America's birth. And we plan quite a bit extensive planning for that, which includes working with the schools, the library, the churches, particularly programs that we're having with the community at Dunedin to get involved with America and its celebration of its beginnings. So, we want to let you know that this museum is planning a lot of activities and a lot of community involvement throughout the community in many, many ways for these celebrations. So, thank you. So, don't go anywhere. I have one question for you. So, you need to explain, as the historian, the difference of celebrating the 100th year centennial in 1999 versus celebrating the 100th year in 1929. For those who were around in 1999, yes, we celebrated the hogs. The town was instituted in 1899. It became an official, it became a town. But in 1926, the town converted into the system having a city manager and changing the system of how they work things out in the commission to become the city of Dunedin. So, that year, it changed with the way, basically, how the government organization worked. But again, in 1999, we had a huge celebration that involved everybody. So, we hope to have something similar like that for the city of Dunedin and celebrate our city's history. So, thank you. It would have been the biggest parade ever in Dunedin if the thunderstorm had stayed away. It was a memorable celebration. Yes. So, we'll have to maybe shoot for that. We'll bring out the hogs, though, too. Okay. Thank you, Vinny. Appreciate that. Okay. Anyone else wish to come forward and speak on behalf of any of the organizations? Okay. Seeing no one, I'm going to bring it back to, I guess, city manager and Les. So, you're looking for us to just approve this? Yeah. Approve any questions. Yeah. Okay. So, I'll just put it out. Any questions before we go to comments? Any questions? Okay. So, I'll just go to comments. And along with that, just say whether you're in favor or not. So, I'll start with Commissioner Walker. Well, I'm absolutely in favor. And I do want to say that one of the best things about this job is that we get a front row seat of all the good that happens in this community. And everybody in this room is responsible for that. And it's an honor. If there was ever a question of the uniqueness of Dunedin, that answer is right here in this room. And what you guys do, what all these organizations do in terms of what you give and the support that you provide the community, priceless. So, I just want to say thank you and thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner DeGuard? Thank you, Mayor. This is when you wish you had a lot of money because there's a lot of great value in what you bring to the table here. It changes lives, increases the quality of life for all of us. I have some familiarity with the problem we face because I used to be a United Way exec. And we would sit and look at organizations comparatively, and that's why I asked about the criteria a few minutes ago. We have a recommendation coming from the subcommittee for $106,000. And I wish it was for $610,000. And if we had it, we'd do it. It's hard to choose amongst such a great group of organizations. But I'm in support of the recommendation. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. When Vinny came up to speak, you know, it's interesting with Vinny. You don't know whether it's going to be Vinny speaking or one of the many members of our history as residents going to get up and speak to us about the railroad or something like that. So, it's always interesting with Vinny. What an exciting day it is. This is just one of the true pleasures of sitting up here on the dais. And it's nice that if you look at the list of organizations that are receiving funds from us, they all serve a need in the city of Dunedin. And if it weren't for you all, those needs would not be met or it would be just an insane burden on the city to cover these. So, thank you. Thank you for what you do. Whether that's true meeting the needs of feeding people or mental health or quality of life in Dunedin or supporting our Scottish culture and heritage. It's all there. Everything about Dunedin is on this list and it's just amazing. So, thank you all for being here. As previously said, we wish we had more money. We certainly know where it would go. It would go here. But I do have one ask. And that because you really, by what you do, does take a burden off the city. And so, it's actually our privilege to help sponsor you, support you, is actually you truly would think of the city of Dunedin as sponsors and partners. And whenever you have a list or flyers that go out and you've got a list of sponsors on special events that you would truly consider putting the city of Dunedin up there as one of your sponsors. Because that certainly helps us and creates a better quality of life for everybody and gets our name out there as well. So, thank you all for what you do. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner Sandbergen. You know, I think sitting up here and watching the city give back to those who give back. As a resident and a city commissioner, I could not be more proud of all of you. I know most of you and I've seen your accomplishments. And thank you. Keep up the good work. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Well, I'd like to first, I would like to thank the city manager and Les and Phyllis for being the committee. I know it's a lot of things to pour through and look at and kind of balance because it is very, you know, we've got so many organizations. And again, like you said, what, 11 new ones to put in? So, but, you know, I wrote up here as I looked at it, all of you, you know, this is who we are, right? This is who Dunedin is. We are just a uniquely, a unique city that has so many passions and so many pieces of caring. And, you know, whether it's about food or about mental health or about, you know, our cultural issues or our arts or history, we bring all those things together. And that's what makes Dunedin special. And so I see all this money, you know, as kind of our seed money, our good faith money to, again, continue to give back in some small way to who we are and to the passions that you all bring to all of our citizens. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Can't say it enough. And obviously it goes without saying, but I'll say it again. We wish it was more. But thank you very much. Mayor. And obviously I'm in favor of it, but city manager. Thank you very much, Mayor, Vice, Mayor, and Commissioners for your support. And it is our pleasure, Les and Phyllis and myself, in the same spirit as all of you, to just work with these amazing organizations. But really, Tammy Richardson, Washington, who's sitting right behind there. She keeps us in line and, you know, compiles all the applications and schedules the meetings. And there's a lot of paperwork and a lot of communication with the organizations. She does a super job. So thank you, Tammy. So Tammy does the hard work. Sorry, Tammy. Next time you'll be first on the list when I thank you. Okay. We're good. So, okay. Thank you, everyone. And you're happy to, you can stay if you want, but I would recommend you probably don't want to. But that's up to you. Oh, yes. We got one more. Commissioner Degard has a final comment. Just so you know that it is decorum for us not to applaud. Yeah. Because it just shows some bias. But I'd like to recommend that Commission stand and applaud all of you for what you do. That's a great idea. That's great. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, everybody. That makes up for Tom ruining lunch, right? Right. I noticed when Whitney said something about nutritious snack packs, you know. I'm like, okay. Gotta be nutritious. Okay. We are gonna move to our, yeah. We'll slowly move to our pay plan. So we can give everybody a chance to move out. Yeah, just give it a sec. We'll wait for the kissing and hugging in the hallway to stop. Would you give me a Diet Pepsi? Not that I need more caffeine. The office building is designed. They stand right there. It's his hand. Love it. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Stand here. As soon as Vice Mayor gets back, we'll start. Well, not normally, no. We may start in a moment if he's not returning momentarily. Yeah. That's correct. I think it was Diet Coke, wasn't it? No, just kidding. Okay, here we go. That's how he disguises it. He's got the coffee mug in here. Can we see him? Thank you. Okay, so, yes, and thank you for that last note of clapping for the organizations. And obviously, I was a little lenient on the clapping overall because it was one big happy family here, and I didn't see the same Robert Shrull's need. So, okay, we're going to go to the pay plan. I guess Teresa or right to Teresa. Hello again, Vice Mayor, Commission, Teresa Smalling, Director of Atron Risk Management for the City. Just a few more items. The proposed FY26 pay plan and the only changes that we're recommending is an update to our current promotional policy. At this time, we have 6% for the first grade and then 2% for each additional grade to a maximum 12% or the minimum of the new grade, whichever one is greater. In line with some of the career laddering and pathing programs that are, you know, have been rolled out or are in process, we want to increase our initial movement from 6% to 10% for the first grade and then add 2% for each additional grade. To a total, a maximum of 14% or the minimum of the new grade, whichever is greater. And this does, this change is exclusive of any career ladder programs that are in place or will be in place. So any of the career laddering programs already have the progression built in so there wouldn't be an addition once they move from up to their new grade in the program. Any questions on that one? Questions on that? What was the biggest driver for doing this? Sort of. So as I said before, our career pathing programs, for example, the utilities ladder, career ladder, once they move to the next grade, they get 10%. And the general employees who are not in that program get 6%. So we thought, you know, to maintain equity that we would increase it. And we, you know, kind of looked around a little bit to make sure that, you know, our policies were in line with, and, you know, we thought it was a good move. Yeah. No. I get it now. Okay. I don't have any other questions. Anybody else? Okay. Just keep going. Oh, Commissioner Gardner. How many possible grades are there for a position? We start at 49 and we go up to, I think it's 64. 64 grades? No. We start at grade 49. Uh-huh. And then we go up, I mean, 11, 51, 10, 20, about 20 grades, I think, just under. That's impressive. Thank you. Okay. All right. And then the, we will continue as, you know, when we rolled out the class and comp study, we talked about the career pathing and succession planning. So that is what we're talking about with the career ladders. We continue to work with the various departments to develop those progressions that would be relevant to the various departments. All right. The next thing is our personnel request. We just wanted to bring it back to you. Um, I think I, we could not remember that there had been any, uh, consensus direction. So we just wanted to bring it back as a reminder of what we're doing for our personnel request for fiscal year 26. Uh, with the, um, change in, in command at the, the upcoming change in command at the fire department. There's been with the reorg. So you'll have a deputy chief of EMS, um, and then a deputy chief of operations. So the fire marshal designation that was attached to the deputy chief now, uh, reclassifies the deputy fire marshal to the fire marshal position. And then in facility, uh, facility services, we're going to now have two foremen. So it's a reclass of one lead crafts worker to a foremen position. And then the only other change is with the, the golf course, um, as they've, um, progressed through their season, they've realized that they need four more, uh, bodies, if you will. So without a change in, in finance, in the budgeted amount for personnel, they're just requesting four more people because of the, you know, they get a lot of seasonal, um, employees. So they, they want to sort of have a, a bigger pool of people to call on for the cart range attendant position. Any questions? Um, any questions? Yeah. Commissioner Degard. As we are currently trying to, um, hold personnel, um, these are considered new positions. Is that correct? The, the, there's no fiscal impact in terms of adding more personnel. What they're doing is they have a pool of money that they use to hire cart range attendants. At the moment they, they, when we, when the golf course first opened, they started with 12. Okay. And, um, based on the, the employees that they have that have been filling those positions, they realize that they need a, a, a better pool of people to pull from. I got it. So in essence, we have only one new position that I'm seeing. Is that correct? There are no new positions in there. So this position. Okay. Yes. We've got people in the old classification, if you will. Right. We're reclassifying by this. We have one open in fire and parks and rec is, um, it says new position. So, so the way that reclass works is you're taking a current position and you're upgrading it. So it's, you know, it's not like you're adding a new position and then you still have the old position. You're taking that old position, making it into a new position. So it's a net zero. That explains all. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Any other questions? Okay. I have a question. Um, page 73 of the budget. Oh. Equivalent positions by department. It shows, um, total citywide full FTE 415 in 2025, actually 415.99 to 430.59. So an increase of 14.6 FTEs. And so I'm just trying to jive that with the, we're having no more FTEs. No increase in FTEs. No increase in FTEs for FY 26. Correct. Okay. So I just need to understand then page 73. Theresa, we, I think we need to expand on the VODs. Remember, you know, we changed the VODs in 2020. Oh, right. How we calculate the number of FTEs. Right. Yeah. Right. So the, um, in, we did an audit of the VODs, uh, in recreation. I mean. And just, just for the public, explain what a VOD is. Oh, I'm sorry. A VOD is a variable on demand, uh, employee. So they are, they, they're seasonal. They're your, your rec leaders who work the summer camps and, uh, the before and after school care programs. They do, they are not eligible for benefits. They just work on demand. Um, hence the variable on demand. They typically paid for through fees. Paid through fees. I mean, before and after school. Usually. Yes. We, um, they were, there were, used to be that there was, um, they just, recreation would just allocate a sum of money and they would add, um, variable on demand as needed. Um, I, I would think about maybe eight years ago, the board of finance recommended that we actually put a number down for VOD. So, hence we have, we, we have that distinction now. Uh, so, um, what in order to, um, incentivize the year round VODs, because some of them work year round, even though they're considered variable on demand. What would be an example of that? Uh, before and after school care. Okay. Yeah. And they, so they'll work before and after school care during the school year and then they'll work the summer camps and the, all the, the holiday camps. So basically they end up working for the city all year. So, um, to incentivize, uh, retention, we, um, worked it out with recreation that if an employee, a variable on demand employee worked year round at least 20 hours per year, then they could be considered a part-time employee and that would give them, uh, prorated amount of benefits. So that sort of changed the composition of regular FTEs versus, uh, VODs. Okay. I'm just, just trying to really image how to, this was brought up to me as like, what are you guys talking about? You didn't raise FTEs? Well, you did. Look at your own budget. So, so I don't know if it's a communication method that we need to deal with within the budget or. Can we, Mayor, can we staff work on this and maybe put a note on that? Something. Or something. I just think, and, and, and, and, you know, again, maybe put the citywide FTEs, I don't know, but again, you know, it's kind of goes against what we're saying and, and I, I, truthfully, I, I couldn't really answer it. That's why I wanted to bring it up today. So we will put together some verbiage and include a note and run that by you in the first public hearing. Okay. That'd be great. And, you know, and I think that's what makes it hard too, because, you know, people, people look back and they're trying to compare. So I just, I just want to make sure we're keeping it level. So people aren't. Yes. Thinking more, you know. Right. At one time we just put the number of employees and then it moved to FTEs, which then makes it a little bit harder when you have a VOD who may not consistently work a certain amount of hours per week. So you have to estimate like the maximum that you think they would work. So the, the FTEs may be a little bit more overestimated than what we're, we actually have, but the bodies remain the same. Right. I guess that's the way to look at it. The number of bodies remain the same. And, and for me, I'll just speak for me. I want to make sure whatever we're having the budget, if we're going to create a magic number that's like, hey, we're, we're not going over FTEs now because we are, you know, kind of a pullback mode and we know the magic number that the VODs aren't throwing it off. It's kind of like the capital thing is clouding some of the, you know, what we need to do on the operational side of the budget. Same thing. VODs can cloud like this is our number. Mm-hmm. This is where we're staying. Mm-hmm. Unless we add a position and, and I don't want the VODs to cloud it. So, yeah, if you guys can work on how that moves, that would be great. Okay. Mayor, can I ask? Sure. Vice Mayor. Again, Tracy, just to clarify, for the VODs that can be considered part-time, the number of hours they need to work per week is 20? Yes. Okay. I thought I heard differently and I didn't want the public to hear something different. So, thank you. Yeah. These are the ones that we, we promote, if you will, to part-time status. Any other VODs, it's whenever they're needed that they would work. Okay. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Great. Any other questions? So, I guess we keep moving. So, Mayor, just to clarify now that we've put the reclasses before you, we're going to move forward with the chart or the table that we have here. You support it? Oh, yeah. I mean, does anyone have any questions or issues with this? Are we good with this particular chart moving forward? I'm good with it. I do have just, for the name of the employee that's there, for me, it would be helpful if those names weren't there. So, now it doesn't become personal. It's about the position. Sure. So, yeah. I think that's a good point. Good point. Anybody else have anything to add? Yeah. I mean, I'm just, I think it's important we're not adding anything this year. We've got to, you know, start to think through that. And so, I'm good. But anybody, everybody else good? I think we're good. You have consensus to move forward. Okay. But the next slide just shows the impact by fund there. So, FYI. Thank you. I'm moving along to the proposed changes. We are increasing the allowance of our paid parental leave from six weeks to eight weeks. And… We're proposing that you do. We're proposing. We are currently working with our employment attorney on updating our employee service system rules as well as our progressive discipline policy. The last time the ESSR was updated was 2018. And then it's been longer for the disciplinary policy. So, that's just as an FYI that we're working with that. And the ESSR comes back to us for final approval. Yes, it does come back to you. And I think it is approved by resolution. Okay. Questions about the paid parental leave or the ESSR? Is that paid parental leave any federal regulations or state regulations we have to follow? Not really. It's a benefit that, you know, from time to time you have benefits that pop up based on probably to some degree employee demand as an additional benefit to attract and retain employees. And that's something that a number of our sister cities as well as nationwide has adopted. So, there are rules towards it being eligible for the paid parental leave. Okay. And that would also include the father, if the father was an employee here in the city? Correct. Okay. Yes. That's all. Thanks. Anybody else? So, if the mother and the father both work for the city, different departments obviously. Right. They both would have, they could take it together, they could take it separately? We work it the same way as FMLA. So, under the Family Medical Leave Act, they would have to split. So, under Family Medical Leave Act, you're allowed 12 weeks for the birth of a child. If both parents work for the same organization, then you'd have to split the leave. Yeah, okay. So, whether it's the mom gets eight and dad gets four or however you want to do it. So, you know, I believe, and I'd have to go back and look at it, in our paid parental leave policy, it does talk about splitting it, but I don't think we stipulate about at the same time. Because the main goal is for bonding with the baby. Right. Right. Good. So, Commissioner Sandberg? Does that also include adoption? Not for the paid parental leave, I don't think. It's been a while since I looked at the policy, but yes. On the FMLA, you can get up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for the adoption, birth, or placing a child as a foster parent. It says unpaid leave, but we allow you to use your leave, your actual leave, if that happens to you and you qualify. Can we clarify that, though, about adoption? I mean, if you're adopting a newborn, you'd have the same issues of bonding, and I just, you know. Yeah. I don't want to treat those different. Yes. I mean, fostering to me is different. It's been almost a year since we wrote the policy, so I don't. Yeah. Can somebody out there get in and have a look? My computer is acting the fool, so I'm sorry. Right. Somebody out there, there's 20 people can look it up, I'm sure. On your marks, get set, go. The librarian? Is the librarian looking it up? Or he's sitting there like this. He fixed the microphone, so he says he's done. He's done. Yeah. That's right. I'll just grab my phone. Yeah. I was waiting for one of my staff to do it for me, but we'll see. Well, and competitively, I'm assuming other cities are doing this or they're not? Some are. Yeah. I mean, and personally, I'm just going to editorialize since we've had a few editorializes up here, you know. Yes, it does cover adoption. Thank you, Alex. That sounds great. Adoption, foster, or birth. We did follow the same guidelines as FMLA. I just didn't want to talk out of turn. Okay. And I'm totally for this, and I've discussed this with city manager. I think it's, regardless of who else is doing it, to me, it's a very proactive, you know, we want to get younger people certainly in our workforce. And, you know, I mean, this is the way of the world. I mean, we need to take care of our kids first, and we need to, business places need to support it. So I think this is great that we're doing this. I'm extremely supportive of this, so. Can I ask a question? Yeah. Teresa, why would we do this and not just FMLA? What's the benefit to the employee? Well, we do FMLA. Right. The thing with FMLA is it's unpaid leave. It's unpaid leave. So, yeah. So, and we do have them use their leave before we use the paid parental leave. So it's sort of give and take. Okay. And just to clarify, FMLA is unpaid unless you've got the. Leave benefits, unless you have leave on the books. So this is whether or not you have the leave or not you get. Yes. And you, you, we have the eligibility as you would otherwise qualify for FMLA, which means you've been employed with the city at least 12 months with at least 1,250 hours of work and so then you would qualify for the paid parental leave. Okay. Maybe I missed it, but we've talked a lot about birth, adoption, fostering. Are there a list of criteria or is it for any reason? My mother's sick. I need to take care of my mom. No. Paid parental just for birth, adoption, foster care. Yeah. Commissioner Sammer. If, could it, could an employee file for like a short-term disability or short-term disability? Is that what it would be if you, if you help fill in those blanks? If you're the mother, you, you would, you'd be eligible for short-term disability after the first 30 days after birth. There's a 30 day worth? Yes. Okay. Unless you're otherwise qualified. Okay. Yes. Just trying to look, make sure we can, we take care of as many, you know, take care of the staff, correct? So, thank you. I mean, this is a man-friendly thing here, guys. And it's, you know, so I should be, four should be overwhelmingly yes. Anyway. Okay. Any, any other, are we all good with the paid parental leave increase? Okay. Okay. Yeah. Just, just a comment. You know. Just to be able to, not that in favor of it, right? That's right. Not they're all gonna, you know. I think our leave's a little different anyway, so. Absolutely. Commissioner Dugard. But it is nice, Mayor. Just a quick story. My oldest just gave birth to her second. And her husband's in the military. And I, I want to say it's three months he gets, it's an insane amount of time. And so it's just so wonderful that they both get to stay home and really bond. And just, you know, what the next generation will be able to bring because of that. It's just wonderful. So, so we're doing good things. Thank you. And I think Commissioner Dugard, you want to say something else? I'm very familiar with the European model on this, which is actually much more generous than what we've got proposed here. And part of the reason of that is they're into a population contraction. This country will begin to experience some of that in the near future if we don't change birth rates. And the reason birth rates are down is because of the expense of children and not being able to enjoy your children. So, I'm very much in favor of this. And I compliment you on making sure we have it. Thank you. That's good. And let's not even get started with support for childcare in this country. But, okay. Let's just move forward. Okay. So, yeah. If you're going to be family friendly, be family friendly, right? And nothing else on the SSR that will come back to us. So, okay. I guess we can keep moving. The next item is the PTO program, as Jennifer mentioned this morning. Last, at our 2024 last budget workshop, the commission directed staff to look into a possible paid time off program, otherwise known as PTO. So, the first thing that we did was, and this is thanks to HR manager, Alex Simpkins. She did an exhaustive survey of surrounding cities as well as cities throughout Florida to find out more about how many people were doing the PTO and the guidelines that they were using for their PTO policies. So, as you can see, hopefully, in the slide, this is just a snippet taken into consideration, the surrounding sister cities. There are more entities throughout Florida. There are not too many that have the PTO program. And one of the things we did learn is we do have a PTO program. It's just the way we have it, because you could have a PTO program with a bucket or a PTO program with two different, with annual and sick leave. And we happen to look at the counties, and the county has a bucket of annual leave, and then they have holidays, and then they have personal leave days. So, you know, it's however you customize the program. Basically, if you have paid time off program, it's just however you customize it. So, this is, right now, as far as we've gotten, I think we would like to know if the commission would like to get commission consensus if we continue going on, or what we would like to do. One of the concerns is, you know, if we move from the model that we have now to a more contracted one, that there may be expense based on paying out employees with, you know, leave if we change the maximum amount of leave that's allowed at this time. Teresa, are we hearing anything from staff? Are we? Hearing anything from staff? It's varied. I mean, I've heard a number of people say they like what they have, and then some people, you know, want to explore it. I think the attractiveness of when you say a PTO program is now you perhaps do away with sick leave, so it's just one bucket, so, you know, I can use my leave for whatever. I don't have to justify if I want to be out sick as much. And, but, you know, the other concern is, you know, sometimes you get carried away using that leave, and then you get sick, and then there's nothing because you don't have that kind of rainy day savings, if you will. That's kind of what sick leave does for you. It's kind of like, okay, if you're sick, you have this, and then you can use that other stuff for going on leave. So if you do get sick, it's there. Question, Mary? Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. I noticed that many of our employees are working really bizarre hours and might work one day 12 hours and things like that. Do we compensate them later for that time? How do we deal with that? If an employee is hourly, paid hourly by law, if they work over 40 hours a week, they get overtime. For exempt employees, you know, you work until you get the job done. So we instituted what we call job basis leave, where you can get 20 to 40 hours, 20 or 40 hours, depending on your grade, as a kind of compensation for knowing that you do work extra hours from time to time as an exempt employee. Thank you. Mr. Walker? Can you refresh? I know I remember the discussion. I just don't remember what it was that we were looking for. Can I jump in? Mm-hmm. Can I just jump in? Because I was one pushing to look at it. Okay. And that's really, and Jorge knows, because we worked at the county. And the county, and I know Bob loves this idea, right, Bob? I'm just kidding. I know you're not. Yeah, I know you're not. But, and I only say it as because, you know, I worked under the Dunedin system. And then I worked under the county system. And I loved the county system. And they had paid time off. And you got one lump group of hours that wasn't sick and annual. And so, obviously, that's a bigger group. But then you basically, you know, you didn't have to worry about justifying, if I need a mental health day, you know, and I'm not really sick, I just want a day off, well, I can take the day off. And it's because it's all one pot. It's not you got to prove you're sick because you get one pot of time. You know, and I know that in our system, you know, you wait till the end and you can get a big payout. But, you know, they would have, the county had, the way that they structured it, you know, you could take some of your money every year if you weren't using your leave. There was a certain payout amount. You could still walk away at your retirement time with it. I think the max was like 600 hours. And, of course, they had a, you know, they did it before I got there. But I know they had a huge, the transition from their old system to the new was fairly complicated. And, obviously, it did cost money because you did have a whole, you know, system of one way and you didn't want people to feel cheated as they moved it to the next system. But people loved it over there. And that's my takeaway. Employees loved it over there. Because you just, you know, all of a sudden your sick leave was also your annual leave. So, you know, if you're not somebody that takes off a lot, you got more time to go have fun with your time. So, I don't know, does PSTA have, what do they have? No, we have the sick and vacation. Yeah, you have the sick and vacation. So, you know, I've just been under both systems. I thought it was great with the county. And, again, it just gives you more ability to have vacation time versus a bunch of sick time that you may or may not use, which to me rewards the employees that are never sick. So, and saying nothing about people that obviously are sick, you know, with diseases or whatever. But I, so I just thought we should look at it. I know that back when I was still working in Dunedin, when I was, you know, over the HR department, we brought it up. And at that time, the employees were like, oh, hell no. And we backed off. We said, no, not worth it. And I just think we've, you know, I think the, the programs that you see out there are more sophisticated and, and designed well to transition over. And I thought at some point it is, I always believe the city should do it at some point. I think it's a more proactive system and, and it incentivizes the right thing. But again, whether that's worth our time and energy right now without any big outcries, I don't know. I don't know. One more question there. Go ahead. Sorry. Well, you know, yeah, I, I totally, I get that. In terms of the sick days, so it's a, it's a finite pot of days that an employee gets. You accrue over time. So the, yeah, the, the average employee accrues about four hours of sick leave per pay. And for our new, newer employees, four hours of annual leave per pay. Okay. And, and there's, there's a, there's a justification or some sort of substantiation that has to occur with that. Some sort of excuse, no from your doctor, if you will. Yeah. I mean, we allow employees to use their sick leave for doctors, dental, vision, appointments, illness of their, a family member to take a family member to the doctor or whatever. So it's, it's pretty, it's, you know, everything is per supervisor approval, just like the annual leave. You know, I mean, you can't just get up and say, I'm taking annual leave today. You have to go through a leave request process also. Okay. So it's just that if you see that an employee seems to be, use, for want of a better word, abusing their sick leave, then you can start requiring doctor's notes and, you know, other justification. Yeah. I, and I appreciate that because I, I've never had that option and it's always been PTO. And so the, basically those sick, sick days then offsets the vacation leave, I guess, right? It's kind of a, it's a commensurate number of hours or, or days if, you know, we were just strictly PTO and is that pretty much the case? Right. The, the model that we've looked at, it's, it's a, you could do a pot as, as the mayor was saying, just one pot of paid time off and however you want to do the accrual rate. And that's some, another decision that you would make. Um, if you want to have a maximum per year, what, what is the payout? If somebody leaves, is there a payout? Does it roll over every year? So there are, you know, a lot of considerations. Uh, the, um, I think another, what sort of, um, initiated the, the conversation also was we had brought, we brought two, um, policies forward. One was a leave conversion policy where we would allow employees to convert some of their leave to cash and they could use it to fund their 457 or pay for premiums or just take it as cash. And then I think the other one was a buyback, sick leave buyback. So I think that sort of generated the conversation of, well, instead of doing all that, why not just do a, you know, put it all in one bucket and do a PTO program. And then I would also think, I guess there'd be two, two things that would have to occur. One is, is that if we were to do something like that, there would have to be this transition plan because I can see where that might be fairly complicated. I'm going from our current model to just a PTO. Uh, the second thing would be is an evaluation of the cost of it. And I don't know if there's any sort of cost comparisons at this point in terms of benefit to the city. And I, I see a benefit to the employee because PTO, they could actually cash that in at some point or parts of it. Um, so anyway, I guess those are two considerations, but it sounds to me from what you've said is, is that the employees are kind of, you know, lukewarm on it, I guess, uh, or Ambivalent. Ambivalent. Yeah. I, I think you're dependent on who you speak with. And just up there, we have the, the next steps. If you are going to tell us, ask us to continue, um, you know, we would have to, as I said, look through all, you know, how we would do it, what it would cost if we move from, because you're going to move a number of employees from a bigger pot to a smaller pot, and then you need to do something about what they're going to no longer have. Uh, and as you said, what is the cost of the city? You know, is it, you know, how do you set, uh, a maximum amount of PTO that you're going to have and the overall rates? Right. And the rollover rate, too. So, you know, in some cases, I've. Right. Use or lose, or, um, a maximum amount of PTO that can be. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, I appreciate that clarification. Thank you. And I was just going to add, too, because I think, to me, um, you go from the bigger pot of vacation and sick leave to a smaller pot, because sick leave, vacation is yours here. Sick leave is not. Sick leave is just, you know, you have sick leave. If you need sick leave, um, we don't, we don't do any buyouts of sick leave, right, except at the end? You get a payout. At the payout. Yes. But the most you can get is 50% of $1,600, if it's the way it used to be. $800. Okay. Yes. Up to $800, I'm fine. Well, isn't it 50% of $1,600, so $800 is the max payout. Up to $800, you can get it paid out. Right. So, um, so again, again, it's, it's based on the principle. Of course, it's smaller, because now all that paid time off is yours. If you walk out the next day, you, you take all of it. And, and of course, uh, our sick leave has payouts based on years of service. So, if you're not here to those level, like, you're not gonna, you know, you're not gonna, you'll see a very small percentage. I think 25% it starts at it. Right. Like pros and cons of it. Right. Yeah. But again, I mean, I'm, I'm not, I personally loved it, which, but that doesn't mean our employees will love it. And, and, and I, you know, we have so much bandwidth here with what we're doing. Um, so I think that probably becomes more of the decision. Like, when do we want to kind of put our energies to even, you know, kind of looking at the pros and cons and whether that's good overall. So, to me, it's, you know, you talk about anybody who's a sick leave abuser. Okay. It's your vacation time too. If you want to go ahead and abuse, go for it. Yeah. Right. Commissioner Jugar? Does this apply to commissioners? No. I'm sorry. I knew you. About ready to take a PTO. So, we don't have a financial picture of impact at this time? Not at this time, no. No, not at this time. Okay. Um, do we have any feedback from management on how they would like to see this go? Uh, we have, we have not, I, maybe Jennifer has been speaking. We really wanted for all of you to have the conversation, um, today, you know, because we had it exactly a year ago today, um, and it was still hanging out there. I, I would like to actually request that the city commission set this aside, at least for another couple of years. Um, I, I think, you know, the benefits to the city are essentially in, in when you're going to institute the program, you slowly institute it, and eventually we'll get all of those hours off the book, books and their liabilities for us. You know, people who, who carry a huge number of, of hours. But that said, to begin with, it's, it, you know, to fund the program, I mean, you, you're going to have to buy some people out. And, you know, when we're talking about the budget and putting together our plan for next year, right, as far as how we're going to address that deficit, it would be hard to consider going to a PTO program and addressing that deficit. Yeah. And I think that's, that's, I mean, I'm, I'm good and everybody else can say they're, they're two cents. But I also think, I think what drove this too was bringing other types of proposals that are pieces of a PTO without actually doing a PTO. And to me, that can be driving expenses without gaining the benefits, um, both ways to the city. And so I guess that's my comment to that. So as long as we're in the same place on that, I'm good. But anybody else feedback? I'm good. Okay. Sounds good. Okay. Good. Uh, we can, if you want to, uh, comment on it if I could. Okay. Um, go ahead. In light of what we're facing and the many unknowns, I think the manager's comments about pushing this to the back burner makes impeccable sense. Thank you. Right. Vice Mayor. And that only one adds to that is the number of other cities that are still sick in vacation. So we're not behind anywhere. So I'm, I'm going to pull that off. And probably a little bit more input and direction from the staff to see what they'd like, what fits their lives the best. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, he does. Yeah, he does. Yeah. And, and I agree with that. I mean, I think again, as, as staff learns, as staff learns the systems, you know, it may become, you know, once you work in it, like I love to get having it. Um, but again, it's about what makes sense to our employees and, and, uh, um, and the, but the only other thing as I would just say that it's, I think it's important to me, like, I don't want to see bits and pieces of it without holistically saying, you know, let's look at the whole thing, the pros and cons. So. Okay. That's good. So we're going to hold off. Thank you. Okay. So we're going to go to what's next. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I have on my sheet that we are going to ask, is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak on any issue that we've talked about so far? Okay. Seeing no one, I'll close that public input. And, um, we've got city commission direction. Since we don't have commissioner Walker, do we want five minutes? And then we'll finish up with our final comments and direction. We're going to, we've got city commission direction to staff. Um, is there a presentation to that or I have. This is actually more city commission discussion. It'll be the time to talk about Mardi Gras, which is. Okay. Commissioner Walker. One thing of the day is city commission direction. Uh, and, uh, I guess before we do that, Jennifer, you kind of want to set the stage here? Certainly. Thank you, mayor. So, uh, last part of the day, city commission direction. We start off the day talking a little bit about the subject that, that, that, uh, we had deferred to the end, which is Mardi Gras. Um, and also this is an opportunity for you, for you all to talk to each other as well, about some of the programs, uh, perhaps that we're missing. This is the last, um, last workshop. As I said, we move on to first reading of the budget, uh, in September. And so, um, anything on your mind, anything that, that you want us to look into, um, feel that we haven't touched upon, uh, then we'd like to discuss that at this point. Okay. So, uh, based on that note. Uh, I guess. And nothing would be fine too. Okay. I just, yeah, I'm just kidding. I guess we can start with commissioner Walker since we know he's going to bring up Mardi Gras. So, but, or anything else or your final comments about the budget, blah, blah, blah. So I, you know, so first and foremost, this is a budget workshop. And, uh, one of the most important things that we need to accomplish here is to understand what's in the budget, uh, provide direction in terms of the elements that are going into the budget. And, uh, so with that said, um, you know, I, I'm, I'm pretty, I'm pretty satisfied with, with where we're at and what we need to do. Um, I guess if, you know, my, my short list would be, uh, you know, I, it's been a little while since we've revisited the downtown park, the, where the old city hall was. And I'd just like to get an update on that at some point. It's just, you know, kind of on my list of things to, to get some information on. If I may, Commissioner Walker, I think we're able to do that right now if it's all right with the mayor. Okay. Bob's definitely all right with me. What? Give Bob a chance to talk? I know. Well, Bob's happy. Bob's happy now. All of a sudden it's four o'clock. Look at it. There you go. No. Bob Ironsmith. There you go. There you go. Six minutes now. Bob Ironsmith, economic development director. Yeah. We're finishing up design on the old city hall. We're looking to get that thing started in construction in late fall. I know it's been a long, protracted time. We really want to get that one going. So that's where we are. But it's going to be a beautiful park. Brick Pave is a pergolo. All seating areas, all that good stuff. So we'll hope we get that construction started in the fall. When's it done? When's it projected to be done? Well, I'd like to get it done hopefully by the end of the year. That's what my goal is. End of year or first thing in next year in January. Now, there is two components to it. There's the component of the pocket park and then there's the bathroom component. Now, the bathrooms take eight to nine months to order. So that won't happen until very late spring of next year. So we'll get it done. We'll have it stubbed out. But the bathrooms will be later. Yeah. Great. I appreciate that. There are two elements to this. One, I was fortunate enough to get a tour of the Coca-Cola facility this last week. That is a big thing. Well, yeah, it really is. And here's the, you know, I was just telling my colleagues, there are two employees still there. Well, they're not there anymore because they retired on Friday, but they were the caretakers through the course of the transition of the property or all the equipment that's in the property and it's all gone. And this tour came up as a result of being invited by Vinnie Luisi. He's got some definite ideas about, you know, what the disposition of some of the stuff in the building. And that did tie in, in some measure, to the downtown park. There's murals. Anyway, we can talk about that offline. No, I appreciate that. One of the things that we've been looking at, to be honest with you, with the Coca-Cola, we certainly want to represent what they've been. We're looking at a spur off the trail to have some type of monumentation. I know I've talked to the city manager, some benches and things and historical type plaques to represent Coke. Right on the trail as a spur since it's right adjacent to the property could possibly be an interesting concept. Yeah, I would agree with that. The mural in there is definitely something that's noteworthy. There's a couple of vault doors that are also very, back in the day, this was during World War II, the payment was made in cash to the employees. And so they had to maintain a vault. And there's some vault doors there. But we can go over the details. That's not really why I'm bringing this up. Sure. There is one aspect that I do want to bring up that I think is important for public consumption here. They think that this is going to go on the market probably this month and be on contract by the end of the year. Now, I don't know if there's. Excuse me. No, that is not the case. Okay. You know, I've had detailed talk with the city manager. It is not on the market. They're looking to go through things that they need to do with the Department of Environmental Protection, DEP. They need to get what's called final clearance. Jorge probably knows a little more than I do. So it is not on the market. They have not selected a broker. And I would expect this wouldn't happen until next year. Okay. But we're keeping a close watch to it. The city manager, you know, is often asking me, you know, what's the contact? It's Coquelena that we're dealing with, so. Okay. Well, that probably explains a lot. Because according to the information that I received, the environmental remediation was completed. And it doesn't sound like that's really the case. It sounds like there's still work that needs to be done. I think they made, Jorge, I think they made great headway relative to where they need to be. But they still need a final step. And I forget the acronym for Jorge. Thank you. I forget the acronym. But, Commissioner, if you recall when we recently brought before the commission the land donation, the 1.6 acres adjacent to the wastewater treatment plant that the Coke donated to the city. So we're proceeding along that process. There's an update to the phase one environmental assessment that needs to happen within 90 days of closing as a result of that. And that whole negotiation process with Coca-Cola that went on for well over a year was actually to protect our interest. And it had to do with our sign off or our lack of an objection to DEP issuing them essentially a closure letter for any contamination that may exist on the balance of the property. So that whole negotiation process and agreement that was tied to the land donation is kind of a prerequisite for them to ultimately get that DEP approval. And I think the communication that Bob is speaking to with Coca-Cola Atlanta has to do with once they get that clearance, then they'll market the property. But they're still in the process of doing that, which maybe the local folks here, this is what we've done today to get us to that point. But there's still that whole process with the DEP in order for them to be able to market the property. Commissioner, if I can just add, what they're dealing with from environmental is arsenic in the soil. Arsenic is naturally occurring, it's just at a higher level. So I don't want anyone leaving today thinking this is glowing in the dark type stuff. That is just not the case. So it is arsenic at a higher level, and that's what they need to remediate. And of course we're going to work on the developer when they get them in place. Yeah, well, and I appreciate that too. So having that information is, you know, going to be important, especially in light of the fact that, you know, how you get told something and it kind of morphs into something different. Sure. We're keeping a database. We do have leads. We do have people calling us. We do provide the two coke. At this point in time, things are kind of in a pause mode. It's just taking much longer than what we anticipated. Okay. And I guess the takeaway on this would be is that it's good that, you know, we're leaning forward on this, because my understanding is that do we think that we're going to have to work with the county on the re-zoning of the property, reclassification of it from industrial manufacturing to mixed use? Yes. Certainly, Commissioner. It is industrial. Our zoning is industrial. That certainly could be a very good fit. But we've already explored, both myself and George Kennedy, Community Development Director, about perhaps maybe a mixed use could be a little bit more appropriate. Ford Pinellas is receptive to the idea, but certainly nothing has been done at this point in time. So we're still going forward with the industrial. But if we can't get where we need to get to, I think that's on the table. But please note, land use, zoning, that can take nine months, ten months. That can take quite some period of time. Yeah. Well, so I guess then we're already positioned to make sure that we have some measure of influence over the. Absolutely. I mean, the city manager myself, definitely, we've already met with a developer on this property. Of course, the things that are a big concern for us is scale, size, mass, traffic, impact, all those different things, job creation. So we're going to have to certainly, this will be a big item for the city and certainly for us to bring to you as a commission for deliberation. Yeah. Okay. Great. I appreciate the update. Thank you. You know, we touched on it this morning. I just want to thank you and the staff for your meeting with the boat club on this. I will say, and everything you said today is my understanding. So there's real, really no question on this. But the thing is, is they are, they are committed. They would, they want to see this happen. And they're, they're very, very passionate and have a lot of energy. So anyway, I think you guys probably experienced that firsthand. I've noticed. All right. So sitting down, I'm addressing all the third rail issues. The other one would be, I do want to bring up Mardi Gras. And I, I truly understand the budget where it currently sits. And I think we've all been party or present at the meetings that have occurred with the various entities in town. My goal on bringing this up is just to generate some discussion. And I'll just give you my thoughts and then we can figure out what makes the most sense. I don't think we're going to, we're going to solve it today. But I think the goal and the intent would be at least to frame this and shape it so that we know exactly what we're, we're, or have a general idea of how we're going to scope this. Because I think at the end of the day, I think it's achievable. I think it's a partnership with the city and the chamber and sponsorships. I don't think it necessarily needs to be the, the, the scope that it has been, as big as it's been. And here's, here's why I think it's important. There are, there are certain events here in Dunedin that really make Dunedin special. You know, we have one of the largest Highland games in the nation. We now have one of the largest Mardi Gras in the nation. And then we've got a whole associated number of events focused on the arts and other things. But I, I just think it's important that we have a discussion about this before we start making some decisions that may possibly eliminate this. And I, I worry because of the fact that I think the discussion needs to happen earlier. Because if, the longer we wait, the harder it's going to be to get this organized. You know, at the end of the day, I, I know where we're at fiscally. And I, I don't think that we can take the whole thing on. We certainly can't take the whole thing on at the scope that it currently is. But, you know, if you look at some other models like Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans even. There's a street closure for a parade. We don't, I don't know. Maybe we don't need to close all of the streets. Maybe it's a promotion about our businesses. Maybe it's during daylight hours and maybe a Saturday and not during the night. There, I think there's ways we can reduce the cost on this. But I, I think just, we need to have this discussion sooner rather than later. And that's, I'll, I'll stop talking on this and open it up to my colleagues. I mean, whoever wants to go. I mean, I'm happy to go. Is the topic Mardi Gras? The topic is Mardi Gras right now. We'll come back to, you know, everybody getting a chance to get the, the side issues out. And then we'll have final comments. But right now Mardi Gras, so who wants to go? Looks like Commissioner DeGar is ready to stand up for the mic. It is clearly an event in this community that has importance. And if I, I'm sorry, Commissioner. I just want to remind everyone. Our last direction to the city manager was to do a objective review of this. So we'd be clear on all the issues before we got ahead of it. So, but I appreciate what you're doing, you know, to get stuff out of the, the cobwebs out. But I just wanted to set that, Commissioner DeGar, it's all yours. I won't interrupt again. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Rob makes a very good point because an event like this does not happen overnight. And so therefore we can procrastinate this thing into a grave if we're not careful. And so we need to be cautious about our timing. On events in general, data indicates to me that there's event fatigue in Dunedin. And so therefore, I think that having a, as the city's now pursuing, a study on events in general, our obligations to those events, and the obligations of other parties needs to be examined. And we need that kind of report back. That being said, if we don't think that report can come back, that between us and the Chamber, an agreement has to be made on how we go forward with what would be ordinarily Mardi Gras. Because I don't want to procrastinate this thing to death. That would not be a good outcome for any of us. So as far as Mardi Gras is concerned, that's my position. Thank you. Well, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I certainly agree with my colleagues. It's an event that needs to be discussed. I do find it interesting that the way we got, and it was a shame that on Tuesday we didn't get a chance to get to the business survey. Because I think that this conversation would have been had Tuesday morning, not today. Because I do find it interesting that we are being asked to put on this event because the downtown merchants could no longer support it, either financially or time. But yet part of that survey was, we like our events. So that really did part of that business survey kind of confused me. How well, you know, we like them, but we don't want to put them on. You know, I don't know what the questions or conversations were behind that in the survey. Certainly, I'm all in favor of Jennifer and city manager and staff discussing it. But I don't know that I want to put a time label on that. I know that everybody got excited when Tony came on board. Tony and staff could do this event with their eyes closed. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But if we're going to do it and we're going to talk about Mardi Gras, but it doesn't have to be the same size. Or it can be like, how do we make it family friendly? I'd rather take a year, a budget cycle. It doesn't mean we take a year to figure it out. But take our time to make sure if we're going to do this, do it right. Not just slap dash, cut it down. As far as being a smaller event, I don't know that Dunedin does anything small. On everything we do, we swing for the fence on everything. Tony is laughing. And so I can only imagine whatever event takes its place, whoever puts it on, it will end up being as big as Mardi Gras is. And so we need to at least understand that as well going in, that we don't do small. But I'd rather give Tony the time to get acclimated with the city and the events that are currently under his direction now. And let him be involved in that decision making on what is the appropriate event? When is the appropriate? Can we do that? What's it look like? Where's it held? And all of that. I know the chamber is desperate. And I understand. I understand the chamber's direction. But in their passing over of that event, to go, it doesn't have to be the same. It can be family friendly. You don't have to hold it downtown. It can be on. It's like, now you're just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. As opposed to some really thoughtful thoughts on what it looks like. So I'm certainly moved forward. But if it does involve the budget, I think it needs to be part of the budget. We need to have that discussion as part of the budget. If they just want to look at it and see what it looks like and give it consideration for next year, let them give the time to do that. And we can talk about that when we start the next budget cycle is my thought. So thank you. Commissioner Sanders. I saw in the business survey, I think it was 40% want expanded events. And I've been attending the Mardi Gras for many, many years. And I think I would be in favor of figuring out a way to keep it going. I think maybe it needs to be revisited, maybe readdressed a little bit, tame it down. I don't know that it's as out of control as it's been made out to be. I mean, I live downtown, so I see it. But maybe a little more family friendly, a certain time of the day where maybe we could eliminate some of the problems. So I would be willing to support whatever idea to make it work. And I understand that it may not be something feasible by the money coming out of the city. And I think there could be different alternatives to keep this thing going. Thank you. I have no opinions about this. No, just kidding. I have a lot of opinions about this. Yeah, I mean, I'll go back to what something Vice Mayor said. I was kind of chuckling at the proposal about, you know, taking this away almost at first feeling like, well, maybe it's at its time, but we want you guys to do it. And then the business survey shows that. Commissioner Sandbergen said it too. But also then I started to get lobbied by businesses. You can't let this go. You can't do this. Well, we're not doing it, first of all. We're being asked to take it on at a time we have our own challenges. You know, whereas, and hey, I love our chamber. But again, they merged with DDMA. These are two known events of DDMA. So I just, I don't want it to turn into our problem, even though we are the leaders of the city. So, of course, it's partially our problem. You know, as somebody who was here for the very first Mardi Gras, I couldn't believe it was really happening in Dunedin, because Dunedin was just like Deadsville then. And I, yeah, I mean, I love the Mardi Gras. I personally, I don't think it's too wild at all. I mean, early on, there were some early years that it definitely got crazy. And the times were pulled back and different changes were made to keep it under control. So I, you know, I mean, I think you have to ask your question, has it had its day? You have to do that. But personally, I would hate to see it go away. I think it actually does have value. I think it's kind of a trademark for Dunedin. But I also think we're not in a position to, you know, take it on. I do think there's some give and take here. I think there may be some give and take, and staff will look at that. What I heard, they're most afraid of the parade in terms of trying to run a parade. But, yeah, so I mean, at that, I'm not going to say any more. I think that, you know, as I said earlier, too, sooner rather than later, we need to decide what we can and can't do in terms of any even modest type of partnership to keep it going. I mean, I personally think the leadership of it needs to stay with the Chamber. Are there some things that we can do to be helpful? You know, I think that's where I'll turn to staff and I'll leave my comments at that. But so you take that ball and run with it, girl. Yeah. I mean, just if you kind of just look at it functionally, I don't I don't know that. Well, I don't think the city is is the right organization to lead this effort. But the mayor touched on the point of that, you know, we could take a larger supporting role. And that is where I think the value would be best most best felt. You know, and just to kind of tee up the idea of scaling down the scope, you know, maybe maybe we don't close down all the downtown streets. Maybe we just close down one for the parade and leave leave the leave the east west street, the main street open. You know, because one of the comments that I've gotten back from the businesses is is that it's a mixed bag. Some of them like to have the street closed off, but there are others that don't because it impacts people coming to their shops and their parking and all that stuff. And again, I don't know how exactly we do this, but, you know, I just think that we could we could look at the options. Now, with that said, I I'm not one for making this a singular singular evaluation or a singular analysis, because the same consideration that we're talking about here for Mardi Gras applies to every event we do. And I don't want to just we need to look at this holistically and not so much individually. Mardi Gras just happens to be, you know, a Dunedin signature event that rivals other celebrations in some major cities. And, you know, this is it's part of our fabric. And I think my my objective here is is to figure out how we can come up with some options fairly, fairly quickly. And, you know, the next few weeks, several weeks, whatever, but sometime before February 25th or 6th to kind of just play out, lay out the possibilities now. But this there there's no way that I in my city cannot take this on. I totally get that totally one of the, you know, taking it all on. So this has got to be a collaborated effort. And that's the only way I see it working. But I don't want to close our minds to this only because of the fact that I think we could be have a larger supporting role anyway. So anyway, those I'm sure the direction there is. Well, since I'm since I'm the mayor, I'll take the last word. I also don't want to close the mind to we just put a lot of pressure on our city manager and our staff about what we've got ahead of us. So whatever your evaluation shows, you need to be honest and transparent. And that includes, you know, includes the our staff. You know, we, you know, we have to be careful what we put on our staff as well. So. So again, you know, you guys do your objective review. And I just think you have any sense of when you guys could do that and come back and. No pressure. No pressure. Or do you have any other comments? You know, what I'd like to do is I would like to meet with staff. I want to talk to Tony. I want to talk to Jory. Just about a time frame that we can come back with a solid answer for all of you. And and that review was going to be based upon the proposal submitted by the Chamber of Commerce exclusively. I still want to look at all of our events, which is a business plan initiative after the new year. And, you know, and maybe we might move forward with with a one year proposal until we can, you know, look at all the events holistically. You know, one of the things about that proposal from the Chamber is is that the city would incur hard costs associated with that parade. Because those employees that and we are compensated, but not, you know, it's really not even at cost. It's not even full cost recovery. But we are compensated. Those employees are in overtime. And and there are quite a few of them, as you know. So the in the equipment and so on and so forth. It's not really just a matter of pulling a generator and plugging it in. I mean, it's attached to a lift station or it's a tower, you know, something like that. So there's a whole lot more involved in in that analysis than then, you know, just saying it's go no go just scale it back. And I think what what makes me nervous is that we have spent the entire day essentially saying that we're going to need to scale down on our levels of service. And this is not scaling down a level service. So I understand the the and I've spoken to the Chamber of Commerce, the huge impact that Mardi Gras has on the community and the economic impact that Mardi Gras has on the community and the businesses. And I understand the pressure that the five of you are under from the businesses as well, who who who love Mardi Gras, who want Mardi Gras to continue. And also the legacy that the DDMA created when they started the first Mardi Gras when, you know, Bob's tumbleweed picture was was a prevalent look and in downtown. And and that's that's kind of heavy on my heart as well to be instrumental in in the end of an era like that. You know, so let me sit down with staff and then I will come up under separate cover, you know, with all of you with a timeline about how we can, you know, bring that analysis back to the city commission within a time frame that that that, you know, could help all parties to make, you know, those decisions and get, you know, whomever we need for for Mardi Gras moving forward. So, you know, the other thing is, I appreciate you mentioning the employees to we we serve the community. We serve it. You know, I serve at the will of all of you. We serve at the will of the community. But predominantly in that employee survey, they felt there are too many events and it had, you know, it was voiced over and over again. And so you pile that on top of hurricane season, you know, and and we get to a breaking point right around that Mardi Gras time, unfortunately, you know. So because we're going through the busy time in the season with the Blue Jays with the, you know, and so on and so forth. So but I do feel we have to have an ear to that as well and and what our capabilities are. And maybe it's a matter of hiring a bunch of VODs, you know, to put on the event or whatever. So but anyway, yes, we will do the analysis and I will get back to you with a time frame, a realistic time frame for how we can get this done and arrive at a recommendation for the city commission that that has is objective. And has looked at all the viewpoints here. May I say something? Sure, go ahead. Commissioner. Last time this was brought up, I think you used the time of two months to review. And that's where I got back to. I know I know I was contacted about that. Are you still holding to that two months? The direction I'm getting from the commission is no. The direction I'm getting from you is do it as quickly as you can. And the direction we're getting from constituents is, can we have it tomorrow? And the answer to that is definitively no. And I understand that. And I think the answer to the two months is definitively no. Right. I got it. I understand. No, and I'm going to be candid. I mean, when this was informally being brought up to me before the proposal, I said, we don't have the bandwidth for that. We don't have the money or the bandwidth. And so I've done nothing but discourage it, quite honestly. And that you took over DDMA, you've got to do this. But again, we all know we're a great partner with the Chamber. You know, we've done great things together. And again, they took the time to do a proposal. And to me, it's on us to take the time to give it serious consideration and see is there any way that we can bridge some of the difficulty of this and still, you know, have a win-win. Thank you, Mayor. I got a little confused in this timing thing here in this last conversation. We're being pressured to get an answer back to constituents on this issue? I wouldn't say that necessarily to answer that question. It was a group that came to me and said, I mean, what can we do to make this happen? What can, you know, you as a city commissioner help lead this into the future? I'm sorry. I have some very mixed responses to that because it's like somebody just handed you a hand grenade and said it has a five-second fuse. Don't feel real good about that at all. I don't feel real good about how it was presented to us. I understand the value proposition of Mardi Gras, but I don't appreciate the fact that somebody hands us the issue in this way and then begins to say it's on a clock. As we just discussed a moment ago, we don't want to procrastinate so that the event gets pocket vetoed. That's not our intent. We will study it, but I'm just not reacting well to what I just heard. That's all. Anybody else, Vice Mayor? I think you're the only one that didn't have a second round of comment. Do you have anything? Well, just to clarify, it would be wonderful if we could say yes, and I think we all want to say yes, right? It's a fabulous event. It would be great to take it on if we could. But time commitments, budget commitments, it's just not that easy. So just having the city manager review it and look at it and come back with an honest answer would be wonderful. Okay. Good wrap up. I like that. Okay. So that discussion is closed. Okay. Now, where we ended up was, I think, Commissioner Walker, you had a few kind of issues still logging around in your head. I'm good. So I think what we're going to do is I'll go to the rest of the commission, any issues that are still logging around in your head, and then I'll give us a chance for final comment direction. So this is just any other issues that you're kind of outstanding in your head, Commissioner Degard. Thank you, Mayor. We are an incredibly flexible institution, and our budget is a complex and definitive tool. The only thing I'm worried about in the concerns we have toward making sure we stay within our means is the fact that it may limit our flexibility. And this Mardi Gras question brought flexibility right in front of us so that we can't react to opportunities. I don't want that to be the case, and when opportunities present themselves, I'd like them to be presented to this body and also from this body from time to time. So that's my great concern at this moment. Thanks, Mayor. Okay. And Vice Mayor? Thank you. You know, it's actually exhausting as today has been. It's been a good day. A lot of good, honest conversation. My focus is always going to be on reserve levels and going forward. Something that I didn't talk about this morning, and maybe I should have, but we heard during what are some of the costs that are really driving our concerns. We talked about salaries, but we also talked, sorry guys, but we talked about fire and fleet and their service vehicles. Yet we are proposing for a new vehicle this budget year. I can't remember the name of it, but it's for stormwater or for hurricanes. But also just the size of fleet, and I've said it before, we should be thinking smaller when it comes to apparatuses. They used to be fire trucks, and then they became fire engines and other apparatuses. Just thinking smaller, I think anything can do it. And it would be nice if we could truly investigate smaller types of fire engines and fire trucks that do not hinder safety. Still put safety in public on the front burner, but also can we think smaller. That's it. Okay. And again, we're going to go full round for final comments. So anything that's like working around in your head that you want to bring up or have a question about overall? I mean, just anything right now. I heard that some of the lanes may be open, Jen, on Skinner. I know we were told it's going to be February opening, but at least the driving lanes will be open. Yes. Actually, I thought I had originally heard the end of September, the end of August, and now it's September. So, yes, we are looking. Okay. Can we have a ribbon cutting? Don't let me take away from you. Yeah. But that's huge. That's a big deal. Landscaping. Right. I don't care. I think that we can do some sort of celebration ribbon cutting, but we're going to need to do another one where the landscaping's in and street lights and all the side, you know, street furniture, because it's going to look beautiful. We should celebrate it every day. Yeah. Maybe I'll have ribbon cutting every day in the beginning. Yeah, I think so. Do you want to experience a vibratory compact? I know we've, okay, because I heard that's, you know, especially because it'll be. We'll do something fun for that. Yeah, it'll be, well, you know, it'll be getting a little more busy downtown. And the other thing, I know we've been talking for almost a year now, that in August things would begin at the marina. How are we doing on the east wall? Has there been any? Actually, we're in a pre-construction meeting right now. Yeah. Yeah. As we speak? Yes. Good. That's as good of an update as I could have had. Thank you. Great. Okay. And I don't really have anything moving around in my head. I feel a little, you know, brain dead. So I'm just going to move us on to final comments. And I will start with final comments and direction. Vice Mayor. No comments. I'm done. Okay. And Commissioner Sandbergen. I think I've talked myself out today. Thank you. Okay. And Commissioner Walker. You know what? I think this has been one of the best budget workshops we've ever had. I think it was clear, well presented, and greatly appreciate all of the effort. And I know there was a lot of effort that goes into this. And I just want to say thank you. You guys are awesome. And thank you. Cool. Commissioner Degard. There's no way to follow that. Yeah. Well, I obviously, I want to thank Gene. First time out this time. And you did a great job. And of course, Les, I've said it every year. I'll say it again. You know, the way that you handle the budget, you don't have an agenda. You're just factual. A lot of integrity. Sometimes you say things we don't really want to hear, but that's your job. That's why we called you the Grim Reaper. But you are invaluable to us very, very much so. And thank Tammy, since I hadn't thanked her before. And city manager, you're the leader of the team. And Jorge and all the rest of you out there in the department directors. We certainly value what you do. We know what you do. And, you know, again, this is the end, but it's the beginning of some other tough work. And I think we talked through that enough. But, you know, slow, steady, stable. And we look to you to work hard with us past this budget and figure out kind of the next steps we got to do. So very much appreciate it. Mayor, did you want to call for public input? I can. I called for public input before the last, but I can do it again. Is there anyone in the audience who wishes to come forward and speak on any issue that we've talked about? Seeing no one, I'll close it. You must have been getting coffee or something when I did it before. So, yeah. Anyway, did you have, did you want to make any final comments? No, I thought it's been a great day, great discussion. And thank you all very much for your time. Yeah, I mean, I want to top all onto that truthfully. Like, you know, first time running these for me as mayor. But I, let me say it for that. But I just, I love how the five of us are just very real in how we talk. I mean, we're on camera. We're, you know, we're just, we say what's on our mind. We ask the questions we're thinking of. You know, sometimes we editorialize, but that's part of who we are. And that gets some good stuff going too. But I just think, like, that's what we're elected to do. And to be real up here to ask those really hard questions. Don't beat up staff even sometimes when we've got a hard question for you. But we say it politely, but we dig for the answer. And I just, I think that's what it's about. And I think, Jennifer, you set that tone with your staff. I think the five of us, you know, that there's a respect there. But even though we have very different opinions on some things. So I really appreciate it. Thanks for everything. And let's close it. So, yeah. Thank you guys. Oh, wait, wait. One last. There's something I just. Oh, don't do that. This isn't. It's not about Mardi Gras though, right? No, absolutely not. Okay, good. And now I want to say something. I know, right? So. I mean, it's kind of like, amen, and then you go, oh, I got one more. I know, right? I got one more prayer of that. So I was going to save this for tomorrow night. But I have a feeling tomorrow night's going to be a long evening. But with that said, I think you probably all had heard that Drew Gracie's dad passed away. And there's some key dates here. The family is hosting anybody that wants at Maas Feaster tomorrow starting at 5 o'clock. And the funeral mass at Lady of Lourdes is happening at 11 a.m., followed by a wake at the golf club. Yeah, and Friday is the Our Lady of Lourdes funeral. Right, exactly. So I did want to say that we made the announcement. Drew is a, his dad was too. He was a Rotarian of Rotary Club of Dunedin North. And it was, Drew was at the meeting today and very gracious and very open in terms of wanting to have participation from the city at his dad's funeral. So I just, God bless him. Yeah, and you know, I will be headed up north. So I'm going to try to catch it tomorrow night at Maas Feaster, just before our meeting. But I won't be able to do the funeral, which I hate, because I loved Greg and Sheila. And maybe we could add to the prayer tomorrow night about Greg Gracie. That would be, I think, nice. Yeah. Yeah, did we, we should be, should, did we send flowers? Let's send flowers. We'll make sure we send flowers. Yeah, that'd be great. And, you know, you know, flowers make it look good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway. All right. Okay. Anything else? That was good. I'm glad you did it. Okay. Meeting is adjourned.