CITY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING - May 22, 2025

Good evening and welcome to the May 22, 2025 City Commission meeting. Call in the meeting to order and we're going to start with the invocation and Pledge of Allegiance. And Jen, can you lead us? By taking a brief moment of silence and reflection. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. And I think that pledge is more important than ever. Memorial Day weekend, those who gave all. Let's try to remember that as we enjoy our festivities this weekend. We have presentations first and I've got Eric McNeil, president of the Dineen Scottish Arts Foundation, on the Highland Games update. But before, Vice Mayor, did you want to kick it off at all? Oh, no, this is Eric. This is Eric. Okay, I just want to make sure. Jeff is the Vice Mayor. Vice Mayor is our liaison and works hard at that. So, okay, give us hopefully good news. Very good news. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioner, City Manager. I am Eric McNeil. And in addition to working as the drumming director for the Scottish Arts programs in our schools and in the City of Dunedin Pipe Band, I serve as the president of the Dunedin Scottish Arts Foundation. The Dunedin Scottish Arts Foundation, as you probably know, is a non-profit organization in the community who works to organize the Celtic Festival every fall, Highland Games every spring, and fundraise for our community. This year's event was a great event. And we started off with a fantastic evening on Friday night in downtown Dunedin with live music at Pioneer Park. And then Saturday, we moved to Highlander Park for the main event of the Highland Games. I want to particularly thank the city manager and all of the Department of Parks and Rec for all their work to help make sure that the park was ready to go. And it was. Thankfully, it was great. It was a little nerve-wracking there for a little while, but it came together and was awesome. On that, I also want to particularly thank, from Parks and Rec, Danielle Edwards and Jory Peterson, who always go above and beyond and are incredibly helpful. And they are truly tremendous ambassadors for our community. Okay. Between Friday and Saturday this year, some exciting numbers. Our total estimate of attendees between both days is approximately 21,000 people, which is a slight, slight decrease from last year. On the Saturday, we felt that we basically assumed that the extreme heat of the event kept people away. Sales slowed down. Beer tents slowed down. People did not come in in the afternoon like they did a year ago, which was a much cooler, warmer, or a cooler day, not quite as hot. However, it was still awesome. A large part, to share a large part of what draws crowds like that is you've got to spend a lot of money on marketing. And I wanted to share with you guys that in the last 12 months between the Celtic Festival and the Highland Games, the Dunedin Scottish Arts Foundation has spent around $92,000 to market Dunedin. And most of that is targeted to people outside of Pinellas County. We do, about half of that comes from grant subsidies through Visit St. Pete Clearwater. And the other half kind of comes in part from our own spending and some sponsorships. But really, it's a, like when you look at it, it's a tremendous amount of money that we're, and we're very proud of that, to be able to do that and to be able to bring in so many people who travel here from outside of the region to enjoy Dunedin. The Highland Games, well, this year, this year's Highland Games was definitely a community event. We had volunteers, I've got all sorts of numbers here, we had 465 volunteers to help put that event on. That includes 43 volunteer committee members and 11 board members who worked beside people from the City of Dunedin Pipe Band, Dunedin High School Band, Middle School Band, the high school wrestling team, the high school football team, the Navy Junior ROTC, the New World Celts, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, City of Dunedin Deep Program, Countryside National Honor Society Program, the Ladies of Lager, the Isla Sky Highland Dancers, the Welsh Heritage Club. I mean, it's tremendous, the amount of people who come together to help for this. As a result of all those efforts, we had 45 clans and societies in attendance, over 100 athletes, and hundreds of pipers, drummers, and dancers participate that day. The budget to put on an event like that is pretty significant. This year's Highland Games and Festival totaled a final tab of just under $250,000 to put it all on. We are proud to share that a huge part of our spending in that involves doing business with over 50 local and regional businesses throughout the area to help make that event happen. Our friends at Visit St. Pete Clearwater tell us that the total economic impact of this year's Highland Games has reached $10 million, which is very impressive and something that we're really proud of. After reviewing all of our finances and making sure that things are solvent for our next event, I'm proud to share tonight that we have been able to donate proceeds of $73,200 back into the community. Can you say that number again so people can hear what you're donating back? $73,200. That's fantastic. The largest, in keeping with the original spirit of the Games, which is originally a fundraiser combination effort between the middle school, high school, and city band, the largest checks of that pot were for $12,000 each to the City of Dunedin Pipe Band, Middle School Pipe Band, and High School Band program. The additional checks were made to a scholarship fund, which we have now in our second year, and we have noted that we were able to award 15 scholarships this year, which is up from seven in 2024. We additionally made checks to piping and drumming instruction, the New World Celts, the Dunedin Scottish Country Line Dancers, Pinellas County Sheriff Honor Guard, Dunedin High School Navy Junior ROTC, Dunedin High School Wrestling Team, Dunedin High School Football Team, and the North Dunedin Baptist Church, and also Faith United Church for the generous use of their parking facilities on the day of the Games. So it was an awesome day. It was a great event. Next, after this, the next thing that we have coming up, the Dunedin Scottish Arts Foundation is presenting our fourth Dunedin Tide Week, which is a week-long camp for piping and drumming in Dunedin. We're going to host it again, or we're going to hold it again this year at the first United Methodist Church facility there in downtown Dunedin, which we were at last year, and it was awesome. And registrations are rolling in for that, and we have a pretty healthy mix this year of folks who are both local as well as people who are traveling in from outside of Dunedin to spend a week piping and drumming here in the community. So also the City of Dunedin Pipe Band is getting ready to travel to Georgetown, Ontario, to compete in June on Saturday, June 14th. We'll be playing up there. Again, traveling up to Glengarry County for the Glengarry Highland Games for the North American Championships on August 2nd, before traveling over to Scotland to represent the city again at the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow. So, it's busy. Wow, it is. Yeah. The Celtic Music Festival is coming up again on Saturday, November 22nd. We are excited to be back at Highlander Park this year, and thank you very much for all your support. Eric, on behalf of the Commission, I just want to thank you for all you do and all the volunteers. I mean, it's such a part of who we are, the Scottish Heritage. And I did want to say, I don't want to take the thunder from all my fellow commissioners, but if you haven't heard, and this guy was the one pushing us every step of the way, at the next Highland Games, you will have this whole commission in the city kilt as well as the city manager. So, we're getting ready to order them on our own money. Everybody's paying their own dime because they're not cheap, but we love our Scottish Heritage. You make it come alive, you and the volunteers. So, thank you for all you do. Thank you. I appreciate it. As the liaison, I didn't know if you want to say something. You know, it's one of the more prouder things that I do in this community, support our Scottish culture and heritage. So, thank you, Eric, for everything that you do. And I'm just going to leave it at that and just embrace in the moment of everything that he said and the value that your organizations and our Highland Games brings to our city economically. That's pretty cool. And then gives back. And then gives back. Yeah. Just amazing. And for all those volunteers, for everybody who doesn't know, every one of those volunteers is a volunteer. The board is a volunteer. There's no paid employee in that organization. It all goes back. Whatever they raise goes back to the community. It's amazing. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Our second presentation item is the 2025 John Dalglyon Service Scholarship, which was established in 2006 to assist a Dunnean student in the pursuit of college or university-level coursework in a field related to government service. And I will let Jeff, as our school liaison, take over this item. Plus, I think part of the process, too, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. I was part of a committee that chose our recipient this year. But before I bring her up, I just wanted to talk about, right, it's a John Dalglyon Service Scholarship Award. And so, as time goes by, a lot of times, when we name something after somebody, we kind of lose the focus on who this person was. So, just a little bit about John Dalglyon. John gave so much time to this community. Over 15 years as a commissioner and mayor. He worked on a lot of boards and committees. His true passion was for the young people in our community. He gave particular attention to the NJROTC program at Dunnean High School. It was his passion for government, his passion for the citizens of the city, and the youth at Dunnean High School that it was deemed appropriate to rename the scholarship in the John Dalglyon Government Services Scholarship. And so, I just really think it's important to continue and remember. who it was and why we're doing this. So, thank you, John, very much for all your service to our community. So, this year, and I've been doing this for the past four years, I believe it is. And so, it's nice that I get to be able to continue doing this. And so, what I would like to do is actually invite up Isabella Bolazar Lozano, and I apologize if I butchered that, Isabella. So, come on up, please. Everybody, please. Thank you, Rebecca. You know, there's so much to say about Isabella. One, there's a lot to say about all the applicants. And this certainly isn't the first time that I've said this, but so many of us drive by our schools in town and just really have no idea what's going on. But if you would just take the opportunity to stop and go inside, you would see some amazing teachers and some amazing students all doing amazing things. So, please support your public schools. They do amazing work for our community. And so, here tonight, we are to celebrate one of their amazing students. And Isabella is graduating with a 4.3 GPA. And she's absolutely, and she's going to take that to FSU. So, go Knowles. But, you know, Isabella has an amazing story. But I'll just go through her awards. So, her awards, she has received the honor, the AP Scholar Award for 2023 and 2024. Each year, the National Hispanic Recognition Program specifically recognizes the highest scoring academically talented students in the nation. Isabella received the first generation Hispanic Recognition Program Award last year. So, go Isabella. Career in athletics, Isabella works as a recreation leader with a city, city of Dunedin, Parks and Rec, working with children from ages 4 to 11. She played varsity soccer on the DHS girls team. She has volunteered a staggering 250 hours with the city of Dunedin's teen leadership program, counseling young students to develop workforce skills and confidence. Isabella volunteered at downtown events while the city of Dunedin Youth Advisory Committee between 2023 and 2024, plus the Kiwanis Club of Dunedin 2021 to present. Isabella is an outstanding representative for 2025, John Doug Leone, Government Services Scholarship Board, displaying dedication to both education and volunteerism, and just such a reflection of what John Doug Leone was looking for in the scholarship program. So, thank you, Isabella, for everything that you've done. And with that, we have a check. Yeah, right. David. And so, I guess, can we all go down? Sure, let's all go down. Everybody, come on down. Come on down and get a picture. And how many Parks and Rec people do we have here tonight? That's enough. Everyone's at training. Let's get a picture. Let's get a picture. Let's get a picture. Let's get a picture. Let's get a picture. Let's get a picture of you for Sunday groups. Beautiful. Let's do, let's do the break. Let's do that. Come on. Thank you. Get cozy. Get cozy. Thank you. This thing. All right. Thank you. Congratulations. Hi, my name is Isabella. I just want to express my gratitude to the whole city of Dunedin for giving me the scholarship. I greatly, greatly appreciate it. I also want to thank Ms. Susie Gizzi for giving me the scholarship as well. Thank you. And thank you to the Dunedin Youth Guild and all they do for the youth. It's awesome. I also want to say thank you to Ms. Lobato. She's my college and career counselor, and she really calmed me down this whole year. So thank you so much. I could not have done this without you. I also want to thank Ms. Allred, my key club teacher. She just joined me this year, but she's left a lasting impact on me. So I think you guys should recognize her too. And Ms. Lobato. But yeah. I also want to thank my mommy. Thank you, mommy. If you read my essay, you know why I want to thank my mommy. She's done everything for me. And my dad. But he's not here. But it's okay. But yeah, I want to say thank you so much. I truly love the city. I have been blessed to be employed by you guys, and it's awesome. I loved every moment I've worked for the city. So thank you. Thank you, Ismela. We're proud of you. Another example of the future being in good hands, right? There we go. Okay. We're going to go ahead and move to the Community Redevelopment Agency Advisory Committee Awards. We've got quite a few longstanding committee members. And Bob, I think you're going to come up and kind of give out. Do you want me to come down with you? Or I'll come down with you. Thank you, Mayor. Yep. Commissioner Bob Ironsmith, the Government Development Director. Tough act to follow, Isabel, but that's awesome. You're right. That's the youth for our future. But here we have five core members that have been serving on the CRA Advisory for a long period of time, from 18 to 20 to 30 years. And, of course, we have term limits now. We're looking to get the turnover. But here's kind of the five core that really kept things going for a long period of time and have made input, feedback, and provided things that we needed in order to make the downtown successful. So we want to go ahead and kind of recognize them. And the first is John Freeborn. He's got 20 years. I want to give that to John. Chair of the committee here, Alan, is going to help us give that to John Freeborn. John Freeborn, as we know, John's our local downtown attorney, and he's been great with the group. The next one is Patty Coleman, 20 years. Patty's had several business ventures downtown and now, of course, works in a museum and volunteers and helps there. So they're all still very active with us. Next one is Sylvia Tezikas, 18 years. Her son, Ismet, is going to go ahead and accept it. Oh, good. Here's the guy right here. Sylvia has CC Riders, you know, a long-standing pioneer in her downtown. The next is Greg Brady, 30 years. He's the longest. And his mom, Nell, is going to go ahead and accept it. And Nell is your son. Thank you, Nell. Gregory, of course, is at GW Salon. He's president of the merchants, very active in the chamber. So he's still a big presence in her downtown. And then we have Dr. Terry Zervos, 20 years, local dentist, right here on Main Street. This core group has really helped us to get to where we need to be. And we wanted to go ahead and recognize him. I know SuperNet's going to take some pictures. So thank you all from us, from the commission, the city manager, everyone. Thank you for what you've done downtown. So we really appreciate it. And the definition of them being around a while is I probably have a great story on every one of them that I couldn't tell up here. I'm sure you have. I think we've all had fun doing it. That's for sure. Especially Patty. Sure. How about get in front of the dentist? Oh, you're okay. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Get in close. Okay. Okay. John, can you go on the other side of the room? Okay. That is much better. Oh, I can't see the room here. Okay. Okay. We're going to have to deal with the podium, but we'll get up high here. Ready? Okay. Great. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you all for all the years. Thank you, Mel. That's a lot of years. About 100 years there altogether. I guess it is over 100 years, though. That's awesome. About eight years or something. Thank you. Um, okay. We're going to go to the next item, which is the Wendy Barmore Music Scholarship. And I'll ask, uh, Terry Scully to come forward with whoever she's brought of, I guess I'm supposed to say, the Rotary Club of Dunedin. Is that? Okay. I was terrified if I didn't say it right. So, okay. The other club. The original. General, what are you, what are you, my guardsmen over there? Mayor, come on over here. Mayor, commissioners, Jennifer, Jennifer, oh, Jennifer, Jennifer. Hi, Rebecca. I am Terry Scully, and I'm very, very proud to represent the Rotary Club of Dunedin with the Wendy Barmore Music Scholarship. For those of you who don't know about Wendy, you missed out, right? You just missed out. This scholarship is in loving memory of her, whose heart and soul were ever present in the Rotary Club of Dunedin. The community has come together to establish a heartwarming tribute with this music scholarship. This scholarship is a testament to Wendy's unwavering dedication to music and her beloved Dunedin, ensuring her legacy lives on through the support of aspiring local music students. And Dave is here, too. Is he up here? Dave Barmore. Come on. This is Wendy's husband, too. This is our first year giving out this award. Wendy spread music throughout the whole city. She was amazing. And I am one of the people that have been blessed to have known her. She made a huge impact in my life. And we thought it was very, very apropos to have a scholarship with music, because you could find Wendy all over the place with her guitar singing. Every time I walked into Lucky Lobster, there she was, and it was just wonderful. And what's interesting is we were wondering whether or not we could get a student that was going to do music as a major. We were all back and forth, you think. And we got a lot of applicants from Dunedin, from Dunedin High School, Dunedin residents. And I am very, very proud to present Chloe Sturtz. Come on up, Chloe. She's our first recipient of the Wendy Barmore Music Scholarship. There you go, my girl. I will tell you a little bit about Chloe. So when you do these applications, you don't know who's who. Oh, and by the way, I'm sorry. Commissioner Dugard is also in the Rotary Club of Dunedin. That's part of the committee. You're going to hold back, huh? I'm remiss. You mean the other club? But what is, so when you do these applicants, you get them from the Pinellas Education Foundation and you just have information, GPA 4.11, cheerleading, music, theater, all of these things. And you don't know the names. So I am looking at this applicant. And we all unanimously picked you, by the way. And some of the things that she, that Chloe, you wrote in here touched our heart because it's just like Wendy. One of the things that you said, music brings together and just unites everyone through notes and lyrics. And the fact that I will one day get to teach that and spread that connection in the world or school is incredible. The performing arts are what gets me up in the morning and I'm excited to be able to even get the opportunity to make it my career and what I get to do for the rest of my life. Now, she's going to Florida Atlantic University and I hope you do come back here to spread your roots here. But the most, the funnest part for me, I have to tell you personally, she's one of my students at Huntington Learning Center. I did not know that. I was writing and I went, oh my gosh. So I'm so proud of you because she was, she's so diligent. I was actually able to know her personally. And you're graduating when? June 1st? Why is it so late? It was only a date that Ruth Eckerd Hall could provide. Oh, sorry. I digress. So Dunedin High School is on June 1st? Wow. But I'm so proud and on behalf of Kent McRae, Tom Murphy, of course, Dave Barmore, Dave Bramley, Bramley, John Freeborn, and Commissioner Dugard, thank you. Because the city of, you guys may not know this, but the city puts on the music series, Sunset Series, and it's now the Wendy Barmore Sunset Series. And any time you tip them there, it goes to the scholarship. So I really appreciate all the support from the city. Thanks. And would the scholarship winner, do you want to say anything? Would you like to say a couple words? You don't have to, but if you want to. Or sing a song. Or sing a song. No. You definitely don't have to do that. Yeah. I guess what I want to say is, like, the arts are so important within Pinellas County and all the school counties. It really is what motivates me to go to school every day. And I just think that the arts teachers are so important. I just have to thank Ms. Mulholland at Dunedin High School for just, like, guiding me to choose this as my career path. And I do hope that I end up in Pinellas County again to teach. And I just, I really do love Dunedin. So thank you so much. Picture. Picture. We stand here. Otherwise, there's too many of us. Congratulations. Good job. Well done. That was great. Congratulations. Right here. We've got to get Mr. Barmore in there. There we go. How are you, Dave? Good to see you, sir. Absolutely. All right. All right. Let's see. There we go. What was the way? Ready? Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. Okay. It's kind of our night for awards here. So we're going to go to Dunedin Environmental Hero Awards for 2025. And I'm going to call Natalie Gass, David Graves, Lynn Wardruff, I guess maybe she's not here tonight, to present the awards from the Committee on Environmental Quality and Sustainability to the all-around 2025 Dunedin Environmental Heroes, who have demonstrated honorable action in promoting a healthy and sustainable community in Dunedin. So I will turn that over to you all. We've got a slideshow. Yeah, I have it. We can see it, but we don't have it there. There it is. Okay. Yep. You got it there. Okay, good. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioner, City Manager, and everyone joining us this evening. I'm Natalie Gass, the Sustainability Program Manager for the City of Dunedin. And we are so excited to present this year's Dunedin Environmental Hero Award in honorable mentions. On behalf of CEQS, with me is David Graves, who's the Committee Chair and who will be presenting the award this evening. We are here on behalf of the Committee on Environmental Quality and Sustainability to present this year's Dunedin Environmental Hero Award. The committee received great nominations and is excited and proud to see the robust actions and achievements of our Dunedin community members and organizations. Unlike past years, CEQS decided to only select one all-around hero instead of award separate categories. Before we award the 2025 Environmental Hero, we'd like to take a moment to acknowledge our honorable mentions. This year's honorable mentions are Elizabeth and Roland Mulan for their involvement in the Lake Watch Program of removing invasive plants and planting natives along Lake Sondra and Fairway Estates. Julie's case management for their organization's efforts in causeway cleanups and litter collection to keep our beaches and waterways clean. And lastly, Dunedin Cares for their efforts in addressing food insecurity in Dunedin and reducing food waste, which lowers greenhouse gas emissions. A big thank you for all the work they do, they're doing to protect our environment. Now, without further ado, it is my great honor to present the 2025 Dunedin Environmental Hero Award to someone whose dedication, heart, and tireless advocacy for our natural world has truly made a lasting impact. Drum roll, please. Beth Reynolds. As a Park Service Specialist with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection at Honeymoon Island State Park, Beth has gone far beyond the call of duty in protecting and educating others about the unique ecosystems of Honeymoon and Kaladisi Islands. Whether she's rescuing injured wildlife, including birds, gopher tortoises, sea turtles, and snakes, engaging visitors with hands-on environmental lessons, or showing children that sustainability can be fun and meaningful. Beth brings warmth, passion, and clarity to everything she does. In witnessing an increasing number of plastic toys being left behind by beachgoers, especially during spring break, Beth initiated and launched Replay. This is an initiative aimed at reducing plastic waste and promoting reuse by collecting abandoned beach toys and making them available for others to enjoy. Instead of beach toys littering the environment or being collected for landfills, toys are collected and brought to the Replay box at North Beach, where families can use hundreds of usable items like shovels, frisbees, and sandcastle forms that are picked up. The program brings joy to children, supports families who may not be able to afford beach toys, and keeps our beaches clean. Beth has also been instrumental in the restoration of our beloved Honeymoon Island after the devastating 2024 hurricane season. She documented its recovery with honesty and purpose. She turned storm debris into powerful visual messages, making it clear how long our actions linger in nature. Beth's voice, whether on the beach, in classrooms, at community events, or through social media, reaches thousands. Her energy, insight, and leadership remind us all that environmental stewardship isn't just a job, it's a calling. Beth, thank you for being a champion for our environment and for inspiring each of us to do better by the world we share. Congratulations, and please join me in celebrating our 2025 Dunedin environmental hero, Beth Reynolds. Beth, did you want to make a comment? Of course I want to make a comment. Well, it's a very important award, and I want to give you the chance to make a comment. I'm an interpretive ranger. I would first off like to thank my mentor, Dan Larimore, and my boss, Don Bergeron, and all the volunteers that come out who tirelessly work at Honeymoon Island and Caldisi and Anclote. It is a labor of love, but it is a labor. And I am grateful for my job, I love my job, I adore my job, and the people that I get to work with, and the hundreds of volunteers that come out to the park. And it is just a place of great beauty. And after the hurricanes, it was heartache. And we all worked so many hours to bring her back. So come out and see us. Thank you. I love Dunedin. I love my job. And this is a great honor. Thank you. Thank you, Beth. And thank you to the committee and David and all the committee for all that you do, Natalie, of course, but, you know, for making this a thing. Because we know our environment is so important. And by honoring the people that are helping protect it, it's a great thing. So thank you. And speaking of that, we've added a little item to the agenda, because recently Dunedin was lucky enough to get a huge award. So last week, some of us attended the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, of which I am the chair this year, by chance, which is a six-county regional organization that tries to look out for a lot of things. But really, probably their primary emphasis is on environmental sustainability and resiliency. And so they have a conference every year. During that conference, there is something called the Future of the Regions Award. And it's multiple awards. They go to many communities. And many communities won differing awards. Dunedin, I think maybe the first time ever, won the award that is called the McIntosh Award. It's the overall award. And we won it for, and I'm going to have Natalie come forward, because Natalie Gass, even though I think Dunedin leads the charge in a lot of ways in our leadership as commissioners, as city manager, as different organizations. But Natalie is our person, and she shows it again and again. And she submitted this, our Dunedin Resiliency and Sustainability Rebate Program for this award. And it was the overall award. And I still remember the executive director telling a reporter that day about how Dunedin leads the way. There were some things talked about rebate programs, actually in the conference, has been cutting edge. But we've already started to go there. So I'm going to, let me get the plaque. It looks like. It says, Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, 31st Annual Future of the Region Awards, the One Bay McIntosh Award, presented to the city of Dunedin, Florida, a la Natalie Gass. It doesn't say that, but Natalie leads our way. Dunedin Resiliency and Sustainability Rebate Program. Natalie, can you come forward and just say a few words for us? Thank you, Mayor. And I just want to say how truly grateful I am to be part of the team that made this project happen through the developing of the program and even processing the rebates. I'm one person standing up here, but it's about 15 staff members coming together from Community Development, our Division of Strategy and Sustainability, support with Public Works, our admin team, and of course our leadership. And I just want to say thank you so much to all of our leadership for continuing to promote a sustainable and resilient community. This is a really great program that allows residents, homeowners, and business owners to be able to come forward and be incentivized to harden their home for hurricanes and make their homes more sustainable. So it's really about building community and building a strong one. So thank you so much. Thank you, Nan. Thanks for all you do. And we know that with Hurricanes Debbie, Helene, and Milton, hopefully the last hurricanes for a long time, maybe 100 years, right? How important it is, though. We know that. And so, and I also, do we want a picture? Okay. Yeah. We do have the one. Yeah. We have the official one. There's, yeah. Lots of hoorah. So I know that we have a couple of other awards we wanted to recognize before we go to the regular agenda. City Manager, did you want to? Yeah. Thank you so much, Mayor, for a couple of minutes here. Traditionally, I wait until the end of the evening, but I think that's probably going to be 11 o'clock, so, and there'll be nobody here. So I wanted to make some announcements of some awards that we've won recently, and we have, as you know, an extremely talented and committed workforce, and I'm very proud of them. And everybody contributes to things like the McIntosh Award in their own way, and just about every other award that the city gets. There are a few that, as I said, were awarded recently that I want to mention in front of everybody here this evening. The first one is the West Coast Branch Public Works Director of the Year was awarded to Sue Bartlett. Sue, would you stand up, please? Stand up, please. I mean, what that means, essentially, is that we have the best Public Works Director in the West Coast, and that's an accomplishment. So, well done. I would like to note, though, that she walks in very familiar footsteps since Jorge Quintas won that in 2016, right, Jorge? Yeah. A long time ago, but anyway. And the second award is the Government Finance Officers Association. We have won our budget document has been awarded the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award from the GFOA for our last year's budget. So that's also, it's competitive. It's difficult to win that. We have to be exceptionally good at our budgeting process, very clear, very transparent. So I'm also very proud of that. I think, as you know, that's the backbone of everything we do is our budget. And to win a Distinguished Award is something that I think we need to expect of our organization as far as the budgeting goes. But still, it's always nice to win. So well done. I think Les is around here somewhere. He's stepped out. He's working on the budget, I think. He's working on this year's budget. He couldn't be here. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He's back in his office working on the budget, for sure. And then the last one is very proud to announce that Derek Currier was the 2025 Emergency Medical Services Professional of the Year. So one of our paramedics, EMTs, was the Professional of the Year. So, again, very proud of him, very competitive process, and all those things from the City of Dunedin, and its year-to-year, the exemplary staff, and also the support of the commission that allows us to not walk, not run, but fly. So we're very grateful. Thank you so much. Okay. Well, thank you. So we'll move on to the regular agenda, and that starts with citizen input. And so I'd ask if anyone in the audience wishes to speak on a topic that is not on the agenda. Okay. Come forward. Name and address. And three minutes. You have three minutes. Name and address for the record. Thank you. My name's Joanne Holiday. I live at 952 Virginia Street, Dunedin, Florida. I hate to sound redundant about some of these issues I keep coming forward about, but some new things have arised that I wasn't aware of. Oh, one would be these barrels of toxic chemical. I believe it's a Crytek saline coating for pickleball courts. Well, they're about less than 80 feet from my bedroom windows. I don't... They've been there since the pickle courts have been there. And I understand that they're supposed to be in a ventilated, stored in a ventilated location. They should be out of heat. They're highly toxic, cancer-causing. And this really is top of my list right now. Forget about the noise. And I do believe, and maybe someone in the city manager, that they have been removed and they'll only be there when the work is being done. They're still there tonight. If they're there, it's because the work maybe is going to be done. Can you answer that question right away? Because I think this is a secret. Started today. So they did need them. So... So I understand they're going to be used and then... And then removed. Free news will be removed. Yes. Yes. So I fully understand your concern with that. And so... But thank you. Okay. I also understand that the courts are closed and it's advertised that there are other locations they could go to. However, none of the locations are open beyond 8 p.m. So I strongly, strongly request that it's not unreasonable that because these other locations are not near residential area and other people aren't really affected by later hours like we are. And the other thing is... Oh, my time's running out. So I want to request at 8 p.m., please, please, please, for my sanity, for my serenity, so I can... I love Dunedin. In fact, I met Beth Reynolds at the beach several years ago. Just... She probably would never remember me. It was a casual passing. I was collecting shells and she just loved her job and shared information with me. I wish she was here because I wanted to thank her for making my stay at Honeymoon Island. That day, even more interesting than usual. Now, I had a story about birds. If I could just tell you, the birds that were in the Eagle Scout Park, the parrots, the tree was chopped down. We told you that they were no longer there. Well, I found them. They are on the southeast corner of Virginia and Patricia Avenue on a telephone pole. If you count down three wires, you'll see some holes in the telephone poles. That's where they live. And I just want to say, please, let me finish this. You could wrap up. So, on those wires near where they are living now, there were two of them together and they were pushing away a black bird that was disturbing, encroaching on their habitat. I'm sorry. I do need to wrap up. I'm sorry. I lose my birds. And so, I noticed their innate behavior. I need you to wrap up. I'm sorry. Because if I give you more time, I have to give everybody. My time's up, but that's all I needed to say. I'm sorry. But thank you. We understand. We understand your recommendation. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Does anyone else in the audience wish to come forward and speak to an issue that's not on the agenda? Name and address for the record in three minutes. My name is Vicki Stevens. Hi, Vicki. I live in Heather Lakes. Backing up to Eagle Scout Park. I'm just here to reiterate, again, you know, same issues. Nothing has changed. I am glad that the park is closed right now. I went home today and there were birds in the back. I have not heard that in forever. It was nice. It was totally enjoyable. So, I will be sad when Pickleball comes back there. There is no quiet enjoyment. I can't stress that enough. And I know we had talked that there would be hours decided, and I also knew that a group of us would be invited when decisions were going to be made. We are not hearing anything from any of you time and time again. We feel abandoned. Nobody's calling. Nobody's emailing. Even if there was one designated person, we would be happy to share with the rest of us. But we're getting nothing back from you guys. And now the park is closed. I'm sure decisions, some of them have been made. We feel abandoned. Another thing is, is where is the sheriff? On Wednesday, 6 a.m., they were playing pickleball. Nobody checks that place. Nobody, when you call, they don't come until like 30, 45 minutes later. Then it would be 7 o'clock and they'd say, well, the park is open now. Or they don't come at all. That needs to be addressed. People are staying later. It's dark. They stay after 10 o'clock. Why can we not have whatever time it is, the lights need to go off 15 minutes before. And I am also, all of us, we want 8 o'clock. We want it done at 8 o'clock. No other court is open. No other places. Try opening up some of your other facilities longer so that we can live our lifestyle. I've lost the use of my patio. I've lost value to my place. And it just goes on and on. We are not happy. And we want this addressed. People are rude. People come in. The parking is still all over the place. Nothing has changed. We need your help. We need your support. You are elected for the people. We're part of the people. We need your help. Thank you, Vicki. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else wish to come forward? I think we've got one. And then the lady in the black can come next. Good. Hello. Good evening, everyone. Name and address for the record in three minutes. Sure. Renee Chia, 1229 Royal Oak Drive, Dunedin. Nice to see everybody tonight. I wanted to come down today to let everyone know post-election how I feel you're doing. And I wouldn't be here if it was good. So let me just start off with that. I'm not sure if a lot of folks are aware of the strategic plan that is online for the city of Dunedin. The strategic plan was developed by a St. Pete contractor, from what I could see in my research. And there's a lot of plans in the strategic plan to grow Dunedin to be a larger city or have a larger downtown or more, more, more like St. Pete is. And I'm here to tell you that the people don't want that. I don't want that. I want to see. We heard a lot tonight about what makes Dunedin awesome and all the programs and all the people. Sometimes you can grow a great thing too big and ruin it. Rob knows this. We saw that happen to California and a lot of places, which is why we fled here. So I would like to just say don't do that. Mr. Diggard, I voted for you in large part because what you had to say in your materials was that you were anti-gentrification, yet I see gentrification happening all over the city. There's high-density housing going in, these townhouses right behind homes. You guys passed the funding for this massive parking lot. I've never seen the parking lot we already have ever be completely full. Why do we need another big, huge parking lot? I just think you should start thinking a little more prudent about how you're spending the money. I mean, the City Hall is massive. Why? Dunedin is not this big. Do we want to be L.A.? I don't want us to be L.A. So those are my statements for now. I'll hold the rest for when we talk about why you're raising our water rates again, which, again, why do you need more money if you're spending money on all this ridiculous stuff? And I'm not a big fan of spending money on contractors to do studies, which I've seen recently in the papers, too, that you've approved contractors to go do these studies so they could come back and you could say, oh, see, they told us we have to do this, so we're just going to go ahead and do it. Or you just use the contractor that you handpicked to do the study to do the work. So not a big fan of those types of practices either. Definitely watching everything that's being done as I see it in the paper and everywhere else. And people in this town do pay attention and do talk on social media and other means about what you all are doing. So I'll save any other further comments for the agenda item. Thank you. How are you doing? My name is Linda Mipsud. I'm with the First Dunedin United Methodist Church. We're your neighbors at 421 Main Street. And I'm here tonight also representing FAST. That stands for Faith in Action and Strength Together. We have about 40 congregations that are members of our church. And I'd like to ask those who are with FAST tonight to please stand. Last month, Commissioner Walker attended our big annual meeting. We call it the Action Meeting. And he made a commitment to support and prioritize green stormwater infrastructure as part of a final draft of a sustainability matrix update that you all are eventually going to vote on a little later this year. There's still some work to do, and we're here to support you for that. We thank you, Commissioner Walker, for attending our event and showing leadership on this issue. Additionally, we've met with Mayor Freeney and Natalie Gass to talk about the process and to discuss the green stormwater infrastructure solutions as a best practice in Dunedin. We're also believing that this could be a model for other cities and other counties as we move forward. And we want to thank you for caring about water quality and flooding concerns as we do, just as our members of the congregations that we represent here today. And we'll support you in any way that we can as you push this updated metrics over the finish line. And, again, it's not just about one city. It's about being an example and taking leadership. So we thank you very much. And, Linda, if I may, before you leave, thank you to all the members. I think, you know, our churches have such influence in our community, and you guys are leading the way in that regard on an issue that is so important. And so the support is very appreciated. And believe me, there will be a lot of time for that, and we'll be asking for it. So we appreciate it. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And I say that on behalf of the whole commission. So thank you, everyone. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else in the audience wish to come forward and speak on an item that is not on the agenda? Okay. Okay. Seeing no one else, I'm going to move forward to the agenda. Actually, I take it back. I think we need to respond to the pickleball, the status of the pickleball. Absolutely. So thank you, Mayor. Earlier this week, we reached out to the president of the Heather Lakes Condo Association. Yes. And traditionally, that's how we would reach out to a group of people as an official elected by the condo association. And she told us that she felt that you had been hurt at city commission meetings and did not want to meet again. So what I have is that, Natalie, just gave you a piece of paper, give me your emails and your phone numbers, and we'll contact you directly. Okay. And include you in these plans and what we're doing and keep you up to date. Okay. Be happy to do that. But we did reach out. We did reach out. We didn't have a point of contact from before. Got it. Okay. Very good. Very good. So we will definitely do that. So, you know, a lot of times in this situation, you see a lack of progress, but we are working toward purchasing. We are working toward communicating and all those sorts of things. But we will very rarely, if ever, roll out a plan piecemeal. We're going to put it all together comprehensively and then roll it out. And we're also going to talk to the stakeholders involved in that plan. And there's not only Heather Lakes, but there's also those using, you know, the pickleball courts as well. So some of the things that we've done, though, since the last city commission meeting and even before that, we are going to limit these hours. What that limit will be, I need to continue to discuss with staff. And we're going to talk to the pickleball folks that we consulted originally, you know, last year as well about those hours. The parks, my understanding from the Interim Director of Parks and Recreation is that all of our parks are open 8 to 10. So the lights, a lot of the lights will go off if they're not essentially metered and turned back on again. So if you go in there dark, then in some of our parks and so on and so forth. But they are open till 10 for play and lit till 10 o'clock. So I don't think that we're allowed to do the back and forth. Yeah, no, no, we're not going to do back and forth. But just have her update. And if you guys need a meeting after that, we'll go forward. Yeah. So we actually have ordered shields for the lights. Now, those shields can be placed on the lights by staff, which is very good news, meaning by us. We did have another company. You know, just to give you an example of the things that we have to consider when we're looking at this type of a thing, is that the shields, since the lights are brand new, we have to make sure that whatever we do, we use the original manufacturer so that we don't void the warranty when we put shields on and that type of a thing. And so we have ordered four shields for those lights that are closest to Heather Lakes. And we can add more as we go along. We're going to put them on and see how they illuminate the courts and minimize the throw onto Heather Lakes. If we need more, we'll get more. And, you know, if they're impacting the play on the courts, then we need to address that as well. So that's going to be a process. We're going to put them on, see how they perform, and then make adjustments as necessary. So as far as the sound buffering goes, we don't think that the, what do you call them, you know, acoustical shields or anything like that are going to work from the research that we've done. We're looking at additional landscaping in that area, both for the visibility as well as the sound mitigation. We're looking at, you know, whether we can plant them on our side of the fence or work with the Condor Association to plant them. And we're also looking to plant mature trees and not, you know, younger trees that need to grow into it. I did sit down and talk to Captain Harvey, and he is our North District Commander. He's the equivalent of our police chief here. We did put a directed patrol on. Directed patrol means we want officers there at a certain time. In the morning hours, I'll talk to him about the morning hours. We spoke about the evening when the courts closed down. And so we'll talk to them about the morning hours as well. We have Matt Skypack, who is one of our community policing officers here as well. He's listening. But we also had to balance that with resources. We have, we are manufacturing ourselves the signage for the courts. And the signage would be, be respectful to your neighbors, keep the noise down, and that type of a thing. I understand that that only gets us so far. But at least we can remind folks that there is residential adjacent and go at it from that perspective. As far as the parking goes, and I know we talked about reconfiguring the parking. We have not arrived at a conclusion yet, but we'll continue to work on that as well. Because there's residential on the other side as well. So we are actively working on doing our best to mitigate the impact on the adjacent residential as well. And like, you know, I've been telling the commission when I briefed them, we're going to put a set of standards in here, and we're going to get a room full of other people as well. We are. I mean, it's just, it's the way, the way that this goes. So we're trying to arrive at the conclusion that that will at least get you some peace and quiet, which is limiting hours, and ensuring that people leave, and how we're going to enforce it, and all those sorts of things. While still ensuring that the pickleball plays there, because it's got a, it is the most popular sport, you know, an upcoming sport right now. So if I have, if you will give me those email addresses, thank you very much. And you can add anybody. You can forward my email. I'll reach out to you tomorrow, and you'll have my email address, and then we'll set up a meeting for next week, and we can go over whatever else we're doing as well. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Jennifer. I appreciate it. I have separate from you. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And, Jennifer, could you also... One moment, Mayor. I'm sorry, but I... You're Vicki? Okay. And you will coordinate with a group. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Sorry, Mayor. Great. No, that's fine. But I also thought, you know, agree or disagree with our strategic plan. Could you just clarify who did the strategic plan for us and that, a little bit about that process, just to be clear on that? Yeah, absolutely. It was actually a really robust public input process, and we had several community meetings, and they were residents and business owners within the community. And the City of Dunedin, who adopted our new pillars for the strategic plan. We had six epic goals before, and we kind of morphed into new pillars. But we invited specifically the residents and members of the community, the business owners. We had the employees. We had the City Commission. And we actually had a really good response for the community input for the strategic plan. And what we saw was, throughout the entire process, is that it really was about supporting our history. It was about our quality of life. It was about our aesthetic, most certainly, and all those sorts of things. So it really was focused on the residents and what they wanted to see moving forward. That being said, strategic planning is an ongoing process. So I appreciate your input. So, okay, we are going to take a short break before we start our official agenda. So I'm going to adjourn the meeting for about five or ten minutes. Thank you, everyone. We opened the meeting. Thank you for your patience. Our next item is the consent agenda. I'm just going to walk through the items on the consent agenda. Approval of minutes for the 4-3-25 regular meeting. The minutes for the April 15, 2025 work session. The minutes for the April 17, 2025 regular meeting. And then we have boards and committee appointments. Code Enforcement Board. Dunnean Causeway and Coastal Waterways. Marina Advisory Committee. Stormwater Advisory Committee. We have 2C, which is revisions to the easement agreement with the Dunnean Chamber of Commerce in the amount of $1,500. 2D, renewal of the joint use of facilities agreement between the City of Dunedin and the Pinellas County School Board. 2E, award of bid number 25-2516, Washington Street Drainage Improvements to the Tim Group, Stucco Incorporated, doing business as Tim Group Building and General Contractors in the amount of $197,707.29. 2F, approval of the agreement and purchase order with LORIC Associates to implement efficiency recommendations in the amount of $135,322 for Phases A, B, and C and authority for additional optional tasks for Phase D, on-demand enhancements at a cost of approximately $28,000 to $31,000 to be billed on a time and materials basis if necessary and only after a written request to proceed by the Director of Public Works and with the City Manager's approval. And 2G is awarded RFQ-2504 for the repairs to the Brady Drive Box Covert to Harbor Contracting LLC of Tampa, Florida in the amount of $73,914.50, which I know was a storm issue. It may be reimbursed. Anyway, those are the consent agendas. Do I have a motion? Is there anything to be pulled before I do that? Anything that anybody wants pulled? Okay. So do I have a... On 2E, I just have... It'll just be one question. 2E? Okay. Well, let me get approval first for the respite, and then we'll move to that. So can I have a... So moved. Okay. Okay. And is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak on any of these items that we're ready to approve? Seeing no one... Bruce, I thought you were coming up for a minute. You started moving your seat, so there you go. Anyway, okay. Seeing no one, I'll close public input on the consent items. And all in favor of the consent agenda? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And that motion passes unanimously. Okay. And then we'll... The one item is 2E, which is a ward of bid 25-2516 on the Washington Street drainage. And Commissioner Sandberg, do you want to... Do you just have a question or do you want to... May I go ahead? Absolutely. Go ahead. The... I know where this is by that 950 building. Yes. Is... Is it... There's like a small retention area? Am I right? Is that Dunedin's, the condos, or FDOT? FDOT. But we're... Okay. It's going to cost us $197,000, even though it's not ours. Can you just clarify that? Yeah, the $197,000 is to construct... What we're going to do there is we're going to put a curb and gutter system in on the south side, one inlet, a pipe to the pond, and then we need to repave the... That section of the asphalt from Edgewater, it turns into dirt through this. Right. So that... The $197,000 is everything associated with putting a drainage system in there, rebuilding the asphalt. Good. That's all I need. Thank you. Okay. So can I have a motion for the... For 2E? So moved. Second. Okay. And all in favor, say aye. Aye. Mayor, public comment. Oh, I'm sorry. Any public comment on the Washington Street item? Anyone in the audience wish to come to speak? Seeing no one, I'll close. Oh. Oh, you're leaving. Okay. Good. See, you're just throwing me off. You're just throwing me off. I know. Okay. Seeing no one, close public comment, and I will ask... We already got the motion, so all in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? And motion passes unanimously. Yeah. Bruce was really... Yeah. He was just trying to throw me off up here. Okay. Okay. Okay. The next item is the first reading of Ordinance 2504, Water and Sewer Rate Increase Intended to Stabilize the Utility Water and Sewer Enterprise Fund. Jen, could you please read Ordinance 25-04 by title only? Ordinance 25-04, an ordinance of the City of Dunedin, Florida, amending the Code of Ordinances for the City of Dunedin to increase water and sewer rates, providing for publication, providing for severability, and providing for an effective date. Oh. That was Ordinance 2504 read by title only. You caught me. I wait for that. There you go. Okay. And so could I have a motion? So moved. Can I have a second? Second. Okay. Okay. So staff presentation is Nan and Clay. Good evening. Nan Bennett, Utilities Operations Manager. Nice to see you all. So the previous water and sewer rate study was completed in 2020, and it established the current rates that we have for fiscal years 21 through 25. And at that time, the funding was adequate for all of the projected capital and operational needs of the water and sewer systems, all of our services and all of our programs. However, we've been experiencing higher than anticipated operational and maintenance cost increases over these last several years due to the inflation. The fiscal year 25 budget that was adopted last year actually showed the water and sewer fund having an ending available net position in the negative. And so when we saw that those projections were such that the cost of operating the water and sewer fund, we went ahead and initiated a study to look at the sufficiency of the revenues coming in because the water and sewer fund operates as an enterprise fund. We operate independent. We don't get taxes. Everything we do has to be paid for from the revenues that we bring in for the water and sewer fund. So at that time, in June of 2024, the commission approved a contract with Raftelis. They are financial consultants, and they were to provide a comprehensive water and sewer utility revenue sufficiency analysis. They were to look at the rates to determine if they were adequate to satisfy the financial requirements of the utility for the next five years. It was to include the current projected operational and capital needs of the water and sewer utility, as well as assuring the city's ability to comply with regulatory requirements moving forward. During this public hearing and this first reading of Ordinance 2504, Raftelis will provide an overview presentation of their findings and their recommendations for increases in the water and sewer and reclaim water rates through fiscal year 30, fiscal, yeah, 2030. And these findings were previously presented to the Board of Finance at their April 16th meeting. And the Board of Finance voted to approve the recommendations of the consultant to support the water and sewer fund. And then we also provided a workshop to the commission on May 6th, and we had consensus direction at that time. And now, as such, staff recommends that the commission approve Ordinance 2504 upon first reading. And there will be a second reading that will be held on June 5th, 2025. So at that, I would like to introduce, let me introduce Terry Boveri, who's here with Raftelis. And he's going to go over a quick summary of what they were able to find and what the recommendations are to ensure that we have adequate funding moving forward in the utility. Thank you, Ms. Bennett. Can everyone hear me all right? For the record, my name is Terry Boveri. I'm a vice president with Raftelis. Thank you for the introduction. And yes, is it? I think everybody can hear me. Okay. All right. So let's see if this will work for us. Okay. So we have an abridged presentation because, as mentioned before, we gave a board workshop presentation May 6th, and we went into greater detail for this evening. We have a bit more of an abridged presentation for you and members of the public. The scope of the study that we were engaged to do was to review the utility finances for the water and sewer enterprise system. And as Ms. Bennett mentioned, it's an enterprise fund, meaning that all the revenues that we collect come from user fees for the services that are provided by the utility and therefore funded from that. When we have cost increases, we have to adjust that to balance those. And obviously, we're operating in a highly regulated environment from the DEP that stipulates the staffing requirements at the treatment plants, capital investments, things like that. So it's important to do these types of evaluations periodically to reassess the sufficiency, the rates. And we were, therefore, scoped to perform that evaluation for the city. The key objectives were to develop a long-range financial plan. We're really focused this evening on a five-year window, but we actually took a greater look at the 10 years. And in some of the slides to come, we'll talk a little bit about some of those findings and evaluations of the infrastructure and the asset needs of the system and the operating expenses. And from there, we want to propose rates that promote fiscal sustainability and a balanced plan, recognizing the community and the bill impacts to them as well. The methodology that we follow when we do these types of evaluations is, as I mentioned, we'll develop a multi-year projection, but it's based on years of historical data that we study, customer billing data from a variety of your residential customers, your commercial customers, irrigation demands. We'll examine the historical fixed asset records, the current capital improvement plan that's been identified, and what those needs look like. And then we come to produce a cash flow pro forma statement, if you will, that forecasts our revenues under existing rates juxtaposer in contrast to our revenue requirements, our expenses, our capital reserves, our debt service needs. I think it was mentioned that, you know, the last rate study that was performed a number of years ago, we wanted to incorporate a little bit of history about the rates and their increases, as well as the rate structure itself. The table on the left presents for you the base charges, we call them water and sewer unit charges, that are charged irrespective of use on a monthly basis to a typical residential customer. It's the same rate that's charged to commercial customers, except for their units are factored up based on their demand. So if they use more than they have more water units that are charged to them, which is a fairly equitable system, in addition to that, we have a tiered rate structure, meaning that as we consume more water, the rate that we get charged for each increment of water of 1,000 gallons that we use, we get charged at a higher rate. This is intended to induce conservation or promote conservation among the residents, and by promoting that conservation, we're able to extend the assets and spread the cost of those assets over a greater portion of the population. You'll notice that while the water and sewer bill has increased, we've not really addressed the reclaim rate in probably over 20 years, as I understand it, and we can probably get this specific date, but it's been a very long time. The reason for that is that generally speaking, and in Florida as well, there was a need to incentivize the use, because it was sort of a form of effluent disposal, but here, you know, particularly in like Penelope County as well, there's a fairly large demand for irrigation. So, we looked at the reclaim rates a little bit more specifically in that regard, and so we have some findings and recommendations for you in the coming slides regarding the rate. But going back to the water and the sewer bill, and you can see that general increase, you know, we've been raising the rates in step with general inflation for water and sewer utilities for the last several years. However, what we're going to talk about on this slide is how inflation has sort of outpaced that, and I understand that, you know, it's kind of small for you to see, because we're trying to fit a lot of information. But if you look at that chart at the top right, what you'll see are the historical expenses in the form of a bar chart, and so the bars, you know, you can see how those costs are increasing, and then the green line represents the revenue. So, even on that last slide, even though we had been raising the revenues and the bills had been going up for kind of the individuals, our revenues didn't go up necessarily in proportion. Some of that was because we've lost some industrial customers to the system more recently, which have dampened the growth rate in those revenues. And so, the real issue is that even though you've done prudent financial planning, you had a rate study that was done a number of years ago. Over the last several years, we've seen significant amounts of inflation, particularly to utilities. And just to kind of provide some, you know, examples of that, 30% increase in electric costs. Significant rise in repairs and maintenance. I'm going to touch on the capital needs in more detail here in a second. But the point is, is that that shrinking gap between the revenue line and those bars means that we have less money available for anything other than just operating costs. And if you're in a very capital-intensive business, like a water and sewer utility, we have to make reinvestments to keep that infrastructure operating. So, if we aren't able to do those types of things, that you're going to start to have service failures or issues, which can result in consequences, you know, of compliance with regulatory requirements. So, you know, utility operations are pretty highly capital-intensive and require a lot of maintenance and operation. And the costs to operate have gone up pretty significantly in a very short period of time. So, with that said, I'd like to talk a little bit more about the capital needs of the system and how that's impacted. What you'll notice is there's a chart on the bottom right-hand side of this presentation. What that chart presents to you is that over a period of time, all of the capital investment that's been made in utility infrastructure to the system since the 1950s. And what you'll notice is a very steep rise in the mountain graph there in 1990. The other thing you're going to notice are two colors sort of stacked on top of one another. The first color, the brighter blue at the bottom, that represents the capital investments in dollars at original cost, which means that those were the dollars we actually spent in those years. However, with inflation, where it's at today, if we apply, you know, a conservative inflation factor to those original investments, the darker color represents what those values would be in today's dollars. And the importance of this slide signifies that when we see that steep increase, what that really tells you is that that was a big step of capital investment that occurred in the 1990s. And so, if we think about how long ago, you know, that was, that was about 30 years ago. And, you know, utility infrastructure, particularly above ground assets are going to live, you know, roughly, you know, 15 to 30 years, depending on the types of assets and will need to be replaced. And so, not, not that long ago, the city made significant reinvestment into their water treatment facility. And right now, we're facing some pretty significant reinvestment needs for the wastewater system, among other capital need, capital needs that have been identified pursuant to the capital improvement plan. And I'll make one final point on this slide, and I'll move on. If you look at the investment in today's dollars, where we're at today, roughly $382 million almost, if we were to amortize that over a longer period of time, let's say like 40 years, more than the 30 years, to get a conservative number, you might be able to assume that, you know, $9.6 million per year is probably what you need above those O&M costs, above those operating and maintenance costs, to have a fiscally sustainable utility. So, when we set out to do this evaluation, we looked at a number of different, this question at a number of different angles, and we settled on this recommendation to maybe target around that level for capital reinvestment above our operation and maintenance costs. And some of the additional detail was discussed at the board workshop, or the commission workshop, excuse me, on May 6th. This slide presents for you the comparison of the revenues for fiscal year 25 relative to the operating expenses and layering on top of that, that pay goat. And what you'll notice is that we have about a 25% gap between where we probably need to be and where we're at today. Some of the challenges that we've had have been a need to ensure that we're funding enough for our staff, because if we don't keep pace with salary increases for these specialized utility personnel, they tend to leave and go to other utilities. And if we have a loss of institutional knowledge, it can result in higher cost of operations to the utility itself. In addition to that, we've had the need for significant repairs and maintenance, as I've kind of mentioned where we're at. So, a lot of those have been the major pressures on, you know, the run-up in the operating costs that we've seen over the last few years. And that, you know, this gap analysis is there to help us figure out, well, how do we bridge that gap? And we'll talk a little bit more about that in the coming slides. This goes into, this slide goes into a little bit more in depth about the capital needs in the near term. So, we've been able to break apart, well, I'll start with the chart on the bottom left hand of the screen here. This presents for you the bars, represent the expenditures required over the next several years. You know, we recognize that, you know, there's never a desire to want to have to raise rates. We worked very closely with staff. There was a lot of direction from staff to try to reevaluate this. What you see right here on this CAP is actually a phased-out version of the capital needs. So, we could try to phase in rate increases as part of the plan. So, the appropriations and the capital needs are actually greater. But working with staff, we were able to smooth out and push out some of these assumptions to try to help minimize the upfront impact to the rate increases. But what that bar chart shows is the annual amounts that we think we're going to need to spend based on what's already appropriated. And, you know, there's about 10 projects that probably represent 70% of the capital needs. And most of the capital needs you see that have been identified there are all primarily appropriated in the first year of the forecast period. So, even though we kind of phased it out, we're already committed to many of these projects. And some of them are critical for compliance and resiliency, like electrical system upgrades, which are costing close to, you know, $19 million. Oh, $16 million. Excuse me. Yeah. So, bids just came in on that. So, $16 million. So, we have a breakdown in the chart, R&R, regulatory, resiliency, and then so you can see some of the categories. But we do have a breakdown of all of these expenditures by line item in detail to provide some more context. Last point I'll just make about this is, you know, I don't want to belabor the inflation point. But within the industry, and we do a lot of these studies for other municipalities around the state and across the U.S., we've seen pretty significant increases in the bid prices for capital projects. Just in the last few years alone, since COVID-19, we've had about a 22% rise in engineering news record, which is an industry-recognized indice for construction cost increases. So, and in fact, you know, you know, actual bids, I've seen many times 30% or more over the last several years. So, just another point about the cost pressures that the utility is facing. The city does an excellent job with, I think, its financial planning. I think it was mentioned that there was the budget award. This is an excerpt of the business plan that's developed by city staff. It had identified prior to engaging with, you know, our firm that there would be a deficiency in the financial plan if no action were to be taken, you know, with the rate increases, which is one of the reasons why we were engaged to perform this study. So, this was something that was identified as part of the annual budget planning process by staff. And then when we were brought in, we did a more thorough evaluation studying the customer billing statistics, the fixed asset records, operating budget, speaking with staff to develop our projections in the financial plan. So, with that background being said, I want to talk a little bit about what our recommendations were, you know, for the rates themselves. One of the first things that, you know, and I mentioned this before, the reclaim rates, we've not adjusted that, you know, in probably over 20 years. And the reason for that is that we were trying to incentivize customers to take it. You know, when I talked to staff, they talked about the first years when the reclaim systems were getting implemented. And you had a lot of neighborhoods that had to vote on whether they wanted to have those reclaim lines running from their homes. And, you know, during that time, there was a program to help with the funding through an assessment program, I believe. And most of those assessments have now been paid back, as I understand it. So, the reclaim system, though, today is probably viewed very differently than what it was when it was first put in place. And that can be said for many communities across the state of Florida. Pinellas County had one of the first in the entire state, I think, followed by Altamont Springs. I don't know if Ms. Bennett wants to comment about the history. The city of St. Petersburg had the first in the nation. I just attended a seminar that confirmed that in 1982. So, there was a lot of apprehension around reclaim water. Is it safe? Do I really want to be irrigating my landscaping? But people have come to realize that it's very safe, it's cost effective, and that it's a very desirable thing to have these days. The city cannot provide reclaim to all customers. You know, it generally takes about four, you know, wastewater customers to be able to service one reclaimed irrigation customer. So, it's somewhat limited in nature, and the system was basically set back when it was originally constructed. And now we have the ability to serve some more customers, but mainly only through normal infill. We have some customers that have meters but haven't physically connected to the system that might be able to connect. But we're very limited on the amount of supply that we have. In fact, in order to meet demands during dry months, we have to pump potable, or not potable, but raw water. We have raw water wells that we supplement the reclaimed water to meet the demands of the customers in the system during the dry months. What you'll notice in the chart to the right is a comparison of the city's reclaim rates for an average monthly use of around 10,000 gallons. And what we're proposing to do with that rate to increase it by about $1,000 per thousand gallons, which would take us from about 50 cents per thousand gallons to $1.50 per thousand. And with a bill increase going from about $5 per month for 10,000 gallons to about $15 per month. However, you'll notice that we're still below average, although that's skewed a little bit by, you know, the city of St. Petersburg and Clearwater. Now, what I would say is that, you know, this representation of this comparison isn't entirely true to cost of service. You know, many utilities were charging below their cost to incentivize the use of it. And the folks that are charging closer to cost and recognizing the value of the reclaimed water, you'll see them more on the right-hand side of this graph. So what we're doing is raising those rates over time to get more in line with the trend to recover more full-cost service, recognizing the value of reclaimed service, and recognizing that, you know, the other customers in the system that don't have access to this have to pay, if they want to irrigate, the potable rates. So we have some bill comparisons where we can speak to that in greater detail. As it relates to the water and sewer rates, one of the things I want to point out is to explain this chart on the right first, titled Revenue Requirements. And what I'll describe there are the bars first, which represent expenditures. And the first bar, you can see the dark-colored bar represents our operating expenditures, followed by our debt service payments. And then yellow represents the amounts that we have available to reinvest into the capital needs of the system above the issuance of debt. And what I want to point out is that because inflation has been significant, you remember the chart that I presented earlier with how the operating expenses have been getting much closer to the revenues. And although we've been raising rates, our revenues haven't gone up quite as much as what would be expected. You'll notice that in 2025, we don't have enough revenues to fully cover all of the debt service payments after O&M. So that demonstrates to us as rate consultants a need to take more immediate action to raise rates to fully fund the cost of operations, lest we present ourselves with a technical default compliance issue with our bond covenants or our loan agreements. So this is an important point to be made, is that we have, as part of our study, found that we need to take quick action to adjust the rates for the significant inflation that's happened over the last several years, but in order to sort of mitigate the bill impact to customers, we had developed with city staff a proposal to phase in those increases over two years. And I mentioned earlier in the capital improvement plan, we work with staff to kind of prioritize CIP and adjust funding in the years to help facilitate that phase in transition over two years. This proposal is recommending a five-year rate plan be adopted, and that, you know, could come back every year, staff would come back every year to present whether there would be the need through the annual budgetary process, planning process. You'll notice that, you know, after we implement the increases by the second year in 2027, we have a fair bit of funding. Another challenge that we have is that, you know, much of the capital needs of the system, many of these projects, like the, you know, electrical system upgrade projects, those have to go right now, and so we need to ensure that we have funding for that. And we do have some SRF loans. Those loans will allow for us to avoid payments until completion of construction. So you'll notice the debt service payments do jump in 2028, but, you know, city staff has tried to maximize the use of the most affordable debt funding that they can through the SRF program, and is, we identify the need to probably issue more debt to fully fund the CIP, and staff is going to relook at that closer to the time when the need for the debt would be required in the next two years or so. So, but we've made some conservative assumptions about how we're going to do that debt funding, but hopefully there's a way that we can continue to use the SRF program to minimize the increases to residents. You'll notice from this chart by the end, the yellow bar in 2030, that's pretty close to that $9 million figure that we identified for PAYGO when you include the amounts that we set aside for debt service. So both of those things combined together, you can kind of see from the bar graph, runs from about the $25 million to the $35 million. So that's about $10 million, about that $9 million that we were targeting. So that's just a bit of a proof for the target being met. So we wanted to present what these increases might look like on a combined basis at 4,000 gallons with the stormwater and the solid waste charges to show what that combined bill might look like on a monthly basis over the next several years. And that, you know, if you were to follow through with this, we're going to be able to maintain compliance with all of our financial goals and objectives. We're balancing that against the impacts to customers by phasing in the rate increases. And that, you know, we'd recommend a continual review by staff should this financial plan be implemented to review the need for those increases in the future. Here is a presentation of what a typical bill looks like for a sample customer and what that might look like on the left under the existing and then proposed October 1st on the right. And then here's a comparison like we did for the reclaim rates, but for the water and sewer bill at 4,000 gallons, the average use for a typical household. You'll notice that the average for the utilities that we surveyed are roughly $87.58. And, you know, with the proposal, it's a pretty steep increase. We are above the average, but still very close to the average when we do the comparison. When we did the board workshop, we went back and took a closer look at the comparison and we found that one of the rates, I think Tarpon Springs may have been on there indicated at a lower rate than what it actually was. So when we updated the comparison and focused in on some of the neighboring communities, it actually increased the average from what was previously presented. And I think it presents a better picture, you know, in terms of the city's rates being generally in line with comparable peers within the region. However, you know, comparisons are not always the best measure. The best measure is the financial plan and the actual needs of the system, which we're recommending, which is the basis of these recommendations. And with that, I think you would like to open up for any questions and comments you may have. Okay. Questions? I'll start with Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Slide 12. Oh, sorry. There we go. And you might have mentioned it and I missed it. But under the key findings on the left, it says the city can't serve all customers with reclaimed. Is that a current comment or is that a forever comment? I'll let. It's a forever comment. It just takes more water. It takes more customers producing indoor water usage because all of your water use doesn't come back to the to the wastewater treatment plant. Only your indoor usage comes back to the wastewater treatment plant. And the amount of water that the outdoor irrigation is is so much greater than your indoor usage that it actually takes between three and four customers' wastewater to fulfill the needs of a single customer's reclaimed water needs for outdoor irrigation. Okay. And that was my assumption, but I believe it's four gallons of indoor water to make one gallon of reclaimed, approximately? Yeah. Four to one ratio of like you it requires about four wastewater from households to produce enough water to cover one household for irrigation. And we don't encourage our residents just to flush toilets to make free time of water, right? No. Please don't do that. Okay. No. And this might be more to Nan. Nan, right. Due to new state laws, regulations, right, at some point we're going to have to be, right, there's no more discharge that's going to be allowed? Correct. In 2032, we won't be allowed to surface water discharge for non-beneficial use, just some minor incidental. So we're working towards that. Much of the capital that you see, particularly, you know, starting now and going towards 2032, is directed at that regulation that came into effect. It's Senate Bill 64. And so we're looking at other ways to beneficially reuse the water or how to get rid of it if we can't beneficially reuse it, because our surface water discharges will be disallowed. Okay. And how will that work? And more specifically, when we discharge those down, not out into the Gulf, there's going to be a maximum number of gallons per minute or something, or there's going to be some measurement that's going to max out our system. So our plan is multi-pronged to meet that new regulation. The first thing is to optimize our reclaimed water system. And in this next fiscal year, we will be looking at renewing our master plan and looking at how do we maximize, how do we get as much infill customers to hook up and to use the reclaimed water. The thing about reclaimed water is there are periods of the year, such as right now, when there's not enough of it because of the lack of rain and the high demand for water of the vegetation. There's other times of the year, such as September and October, when we have plenty of rain, that people don't want to take it. But we have to do something with the wastewater that comes in 365 days a year. So we're looking at getting as many customers as we can reliably serve year-round. Some of that's using the augmentation of groundwater to make sure that we have some extra water in the dry months. The other thing is to also build some additional storage so that if there's one rainy day, but maybe the next day people will start irrigating again, we'll have additional storage. We have quite a bit of reclaimed water storage, but not enough to keep up with a week of rain or something like that. So as a backup plan to using beneficially that reclaimed water as much as we can, we will probably have to inject some of that down very deep below the drinking water level, way down into this very salty water underground. And that would be a disposal of that water that otherwise we would allow to go out to the intercoastal waterway. OK. And so that system will design just for the C students on the commission. Is that going to be the volume of that? Is that going to be more of the reclaimed water we have in September? Or is it more the reclaimed water we have in May? We have to do it for the worst case. We won't put any more water down than we need to put down, because obviously we'd much rather use the water in a beneficial way. But we have to design for the worst case, and we have to design for redundancy because that's how we're regulated, and that's how we design everything we do. Right. And so part of the plan is to get more people on reclaimed water. Correct. To increase the demand for reclaimed, right? So that's a fine line, because there's times of the year, like right now, that we're getting lots and lots of calls that the people that are on the reclaimed water system, there's no pressure, there's no water to be given. Right. So it's a really fine line as to it's not like we can have enough for everybody all year round. And so we want to be able to serve the customers we serve year round, and that's why we do multiple prongs. It's a dance we have to, right, and I get that. But in order to meet that demand, because we have to store the reclaimed water, right? And so if we increase the demand and then want to meet that demand, now we've got to build more storage units to hold the reclaimed water. Correct. And so it's a cycle, right? Okay. All right. Thank you. That's all that I have, Mayor. Okay. Commissioner Sam Byrne. I had some questions for you, Nan. So the last increase, it looks like it was just because of the inflation post-COVID, it just ended up not being enough of an increase? Would that be safe to say? Initially, it probably was. But, I mean, we've all lived through these last five years, and there's been tremendous inflationary pressures in all different ways. Some of that has been more focused in the construction industry, and we've felt that because we're a very, you know, capital-intensive industry. We have to continue to rebuild because these things, otherwise they would fail if we didn't continue to reinvest. So, yes, our inflationary estimates were not sufficient. If I'm not mistaken, at this moment, we store about 8 million gallons of water and use about 3.5 million a day. Am I close on that? 8, 2, I was trying to do this in my head when I was talking, and I could, we do have 8 million gallons of water storage. I checked that out before I got in here. 2, 6, 7, I think we have 7 million gallons of storage because the turtle tank is only 1 million gallons. The rest of our tanks are 2 million gallon tanks. I guess I'm talking more as a resident than a city commissioner. You know what I found the other day? We have a fire truck in Dunedin that'll shoot 2,000 gallons a minute. So, in the event of a destructive, you know, huge structure fire, it's going to put a real burden on our entire water system because, if I'm not mistaken, the water out of the hydrants is the same water that we drink. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. So, I'm sort of looking at this. If the citizens are going to have to pay more, I want to make sure that we're doing the best we can as a city to get them the most for what it's going to cost. Yesterday, one of my neighbors told me that they parked in my parking spot to come in and walk in and write a check for their water bill. Is there any incentives for, like, ACH payments? Anything we can do maybe to decrease our costs? I mean, it seems like a lot of money for him to walk in, hand somebody the check, somebody has to get it to the bank or whatever. We do not charge in any way for those automatic payments. We pay to companies that handle, especially if it's on a credit card, the ones that come in is automatic directly from your bank account. There isn't any additional charge for that. But, no, some places charge to use a credit card or some other form of payment. We do not charge any additional charges. And we do incentivize, we do encourage people to pay that way if they're comfortable with it. But there's a number of our customers that just really like walking in and seeing somebody and speaking to them. Like I said, the guy was so comfortable that he said, I knew where you were and I knew I could use your spot. You know, I also saw... You won't ask where you were. You know, I also saw that credit card charge. I mean, maybe that's something we should look at. I think we pay a very large amount of credit card processing fees as a city. And, again, now I'm talking as a resident. And we don't charge that back to our customers. That's where I was going with it. We, as a utility, take that on so that we try to make it as convenient as possible for people to pay their bills, whether that means bringing in cash in person or a check in person or paying even with a credit card in person. Or they can pay it automatically, you know, or they can pay it online or they can call on their telephone and pay it. We give them every opportunity. We have drop boxes. Right, I've seen that. That are available if somebody doesn't want to get out of their car, if they've got small children and they can't get out. So we try to make it as convenient and as we try to take on all of that as a utility and make it as comfortable for our customers as we can. I think I read that we have around 13,000 users. Is that what would the word be? Accounts. 13,000 accounts. So just south of us, we have a 500-unit apartment complex. They would just have one metered water account? And how does that work? I don't know which apartment complex you're talking about. McAlpine Place. Pardon? McAlpine Place. They are master metered there. So, yes, they would pay. They have one account. They have a master meter for water and sewer. And then they probably have their solid waste. I don't know off the top of my head, but they probably have their solid waste picked up in big containers. So that would be one account. And do we have proper surcharges for heavy users, heavy water users? I mean, you know, there's two people versus, you know. I think you saw the, it's called a conservation tiered rate, where the more water you use, the more you pay per 1,000 gallons for the volume that you use. There's some exceptions. Like, obviously, if you're an apartment complex, the size of your meter is the base amount. You're allowed a certain amount in your base tier, based on whether you have a 4-inch meter or 6-inch meter or whatever. Because what you're trying to do is encourage people to use the water they need to use. But as they use more and more water above that, then the cost per 1,000 gallons increases. That's considered a way to encourage conservation. Right. By the financial pressure of saying, well, this costs too much. I need to use less water. Okay. That's really all I had. I'll save the rest of it for my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. So on slide 9, going back to that, can you remind me what R&R is? Repair and rehabilitation. Okay. Thank you for that. Then a couple more slides to the right. Yep. Keep going. Keep going. Right there. That one. So if I understand this correctly, basically to get to the revenues at proposed rates, we are taking into account debt service and PAYGO. Yes. Okay. If we were to reduce the PAY, and I'm just asking about this as a scenario that we looked at. I'm not sure that I would be on board with it. But if you take a look at reducing the PAYGO, you know, because that seems to be the variable in this equation right now, right? Right. Okay. That wouldn't change the debt service then, would it? No. No. And I mean, this is the challenge that we had over the last few years, is that some of the discretionary spending that you have is going to be on the capital side, to some degree. Because you have to pay your O&M first, and then you have to pay your debt service obligations next. So the only thing left over after that is going to be the capital. And so what happens with a lot of utilities is that when they're facing difficulties adjusting their rates to keep up with the costs, they'll basically defer capital investment. And while that can be something that maybe works in the short run, it ends up costing more in the long run because it means that, you know, and I use the example, I think, at the workshop that, you know, if you were doing a pipe relining for the R&R, renewal and replacement, if you didn't do that within a certain period of time and that pipe breaks, now instead of just relining it, which is a lower cost, you have to replace it. And that capital investment can be greater. I mean, that's an anecdotal example. But, you know, putting things off that need to be done because we had shown, I think, in the prior slide, the investments, the timing of all those capital investments. If you look at that chart on the bottom right, if you all can still see that, you know, in 1990, we had a significant investment in infrastructure as a city, I presume, was growing with population at that time. And we're at a point now, you know, and then you can see that second spike was probably the water treatment plan or the start of the investment in the water treatment plant side. And, you know, now we're doing the wastewater treatment plant among other improvements that we're making. So the infrastructure is at a point where it needs reinvestment. And if we lower that pay go, what that's going to do is either our cash balances are going to dwindle because we don't or we can't sacrifice pushing off certain projects or it means we're going to have to push off important projects. Yeah. Yeah, I get that. I think kind of where I was going with this was, and this probably isn't consistent with the explanation you just gave, was this basically, again, I'm not a proponent of what I'm about to say. I'm just trying to make sure I understand the variables. Yes. Yeah. So to me, I mean, you could conceivably, and if you just tell me that this is not going to, it doesn't work, tell me. But you reduce the pay go, but maybe take on a little more debt to basically do your capital improvements. Did you guys look at that scenario at all? Because, you know, debt, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Right. I completely agree. I'm just kind of curious as to whether or not you took into account maybe, you know, a little bit more debt service, a little less pay go. We did try to optimize. But then again, it probably balances out, and you've still got that line, right? Yeah. We're trying to target about $9 million based on a combination of the debt service payments or amounts above debt service that can be used for capital reinvestment. And what I would say is that you have used a lot of debt in this plan. I'm trying to get to the slide that kind of shows the debt service. You'll notice that our debt service really goes up in 2028, 2029. And, you know, we need to maintain enough margin over that debt service to ensure that we can repay that debt. Plus, that money is going to be used for capital reinvestment to the system. So if we reduce the rate increases and maximize more debt, there is a tradeoff. It would help you potentially lower the rate increases a little bit, but not over the next two years. You could potentially lower the rate increases in year three, four, or five. But years, you know, one and two of the plan are needed to ensure because you have, in 2028, the spike in that debt service associated with those SRF loans that are currently underway for some of the projects that are existing. So we've got to really start to raise these rates to address that. And if we do it in this manner, really, we probably needed to do it in one year. But if we do it in this manner, it minimizes some of the impacts to the customers, but then it allows us to build up some additional funds in anticipation of that debt service increase in fiscal year 28 and then leaves us some margin. And you can see it's not a big margin over the debt service. Typically, in the industry, the margin you want to have is at least about a 50% margin. So if your debt service payment is $10, you'd want to have $15 of revenue after your operating expenses to make sure that you cover that debt. And that's what's called, in the industry, a coverage ratio of 1.5. So to maintain a high credit rating for a utility system that's very capital intensive, has to go back to markets to get funding, you really want to try to be at that level or above. Okay. Yeah. All right. I appreciate that. That's a very good explanation. Just taking a look, and Commissioner Sandbergen said, you know, and this goes to the question, are we doing everything we can to lower our expenses? The variables in operation cost, in my perspective, are utilities, inflation, personnel costs. What else? Capital expense? Is that? Yes. Yes. Okay. So, all right. Okay. That's, yep, I'm good with that. I think this is, did we take a look at a tiered system? For the rates? Rates for different usages? We did. And, I mean, the existing structure has a tiered structure. We did not recommend necessarily a change to that structure. Some of the challenge that you have when you increase, and I think, I can't remember which commissioner had mentioned it, but I believe it was Commissioner Dugard, perhaps. But we talk about if we raise rates, does that have a pullback in consumption? So, we can, we have a lever, we can increase the amount we want to recover from here, but then it creates more variability in that revenue collection stream. And one of the things that's important to understand about a utility operation is that most of the costs are going to be fixed. And that's a bit of a misunderstanding that we have with our pricing models. Our pricing models are much more skewed to recover the revenues from the variable charges of the system, only to fund costs that are predominantly fixed in nature, labor, debt service, capital. Those things don't fluctuate up or down. So, if we have more, if we, and the reason why we don't have parity between the rate and the cost structure is because water is a resource that we try to price, and we need to have conservation incentives to it. So, if we pull on that lever too much, and we raise those, that structure, and hit the higher users more, potentially they'll pull back, or potentially we're more subjective to volatility in the revenue stream from the changing weather, and that could impact your revenue collection. So, we thought that the rate structure itself had a pretty strong conservation incentive as it was, which is why we didn't, you know, recommend necessarily a change to that. All right. Thank you. Mayor, can I piggyback on that? Do you mind? Oh, yeah, if you're piggybacking, yeah. Yeah, piggybacking. Yeah, that's kind of where I wanted to go anyway. So, with this proposed rating increase, we aren't proposing increases in the incremental increases on volume. Yeah, let me restate that just to make sure that it's clear. We're proposing raising the rates by the same percentage for all the rates, and what that will do is it'll maintain the relationship of the increase between the tiers. Okay. So, on page six, you can go to page six, we're showing those incremental on the right, right? Let's say for block three, 20,000 gallons, Ryan being charged $13.12. With this increase, that increase is also going to, so it won't be 13. It's going to go up. Whatever that new number is. Whatever percentage increase that you're going to have to the 582, which is tier one, you're going to have the same percentage increase to block three. Okay. So, everybody, so what that really means is that, you know, kind of no matter your usage, everybody's going to see the same percentage increase in their bill, you know, relative to the, you know, so if they use the same use from one month to the next month, assuming no change in demand from the customer, and we go from the existing rates to the proposed rates, that customer is going to see the same percentage increase as someone that might not have used anything, you know, for two months, you know, and they only saw their base unit charge on their bill because they were out of town, let's say. Okay. Well, then you're not raising the incremental rates. You are. You are. I'm just saying that the percentage increase for both examples of customers, those who use more and those who use less, are going to see the same percentage increase in their bill. So, you know, if I had a customer whose usage was less and their bill per month was, let's say, like, you know, $60 a month, and you had another customer whose bill was $80 per month, so somebody using 2,000 or 4,000 gallons, let's say, roughly, the percentage increase for both those customers would be the same. So, they would go up by the same. So, that percentage increase that I'm getting in block one. Is the same as the increase that we're doing to block three percentage-wise. Okay. So, it's $2, right? So, to my mind, instead of $582, I'd be paying $782, right? If this goes forward. So, does that mean that on $13.12? I'll wait until you get there. Yeah. I was trying to get to, like, the bill change. And so, what you'll notice, for example, here, this is a bill increase of 4,000 gallons, and the existing bill would be roughly $80. And with the proposal, that would go up to roughly $92. And if we were to have a customer who used more usage, their bill increase would be greater than $12 because they're using more water. But in percentage terms, it would be the same as the, yeah. So, you know, for example, for fiscal year 26, the first block is going to go to $6.69. The second block is going to go to $10.06. And the third block is going to go to $15.09. And the increase in those rates are all proportionally the same, 15%. That's directly out of the resolution, the block increase? Right. That's directly out of the resolution. If it's helpful, we could present the bill impacts at different usage levels so you could see this effect. I'm still not seeing that, but I will move on. Because my question is, right, part of that tiered pricing is about conservation. Yeah. And you made comments about if we increase the pricing too much, then they will reduce their consumption, which will decrease our revenue. And most of the costs are already built in. The system is a system whether they use it or not. And so I do have a concern over this modeling that while we say it is for conservation, at the end of the day, it's how can we also maximize our revenue? And I'm not criticizing Dunedin. I think most cities do this. And so the idea is when does the focus become conservation? And the idea is that we're consuming too much water, whether it's potable or reclaimed. We don't try to maximize, but we do try to cover our cost. We need to have sufficient revenue to provide the water service, including fire service. And so many, many years ago, Dunedin adopted this particular tiered system. And I did ask Raftelis that when we first started. Should we be looking at a different rate structure? And they said, no, actually, this is a pretty robust structure where you've got a balance between the unit charge, which is some of our fixed charges, and the volumetric charge. And that's what we want. We want some that's the unit charge that people get charged whether they use any water or not, because there's a real cost to the utility to maintain the meters and the pipes and to have the water ready for fire protection and all those types of things that we have to do. But then if you're using a lot more water and you're paying more than you want to, you have the ability to dial that back, maybe irrigate less or, you know, limit the time that somebody, some teenager spends in the shower or whatever it is that's causing your particular water bill maybe to be higher than it needs to be. Yeah, and just to add to this, one of the reasons why we felt it was good, just a point of information here, is that if you look at the amount of build water, potable water flows that we have at the third tier, that represents roughly 3% of the total amount of build flow in the system. That tells us that everybody is staying within the first two tiers. 97% of all the usage is staying within the first two tiers. So, you know, if you did do a change or exercise a change to the third tier and raise that, it's not going to produce anything material in terms of a change in revenues because it's such a small percentage of customers that actually use at that level. Okay, so if we did play with the third tier, if I heard that correctly, we could price that third tier, which would encourage people to reduce their consumption without a relatively negative impact on the revenue. Well, no, what I'm saying is that you have, you do not have very many or hardly at all customers that are in the third tier. So, if you were to raise it, it wouldn't impact a lot of customers, and it wouldn't produce any significant amount of change in revenue. Right. Okay. Thank you. Because you all are conserving, you know, through that rate structure. People are staying within that range. Okay. Were you done? Yeah. You were done, right? I'm done. Okay. Commissioner Degard? I just want to make sure. It's always fun to go last on one of these issues. And, boy, the questions I've got, I'll try to conserve time. First of all, as I understand it, we've got depreciation on our line item, but we do not have funded depreciation. Is that correct? We haven't been placing this into a fund as we depreciate? Well, as part of your business plan, you include it within the financial plan as part of the budget. But if you balance your budget and that depreciation is considered expense, where does that money go? Well, the depreciation, when you look at a pro forma like that, would, you know, go towards the, you know, because it's a non-cash expenditure. If you're building that into your financial plan, that would go to cover debt service obligations, like the, you know, the principal repayment on the debt, since interest expense, you know, on an income statement is going to be recorded as an expense. So we haven't been funding this replacement through past rates. We're basically to a place where we're capital in debt because we're going to have to buy new equipment, deal with new regulations, and inflation at a time when we have zero assets from a depreciation standpoint. Is that correct? I think I understand what you're trying to communicate. I hope you do, because maybe I don't. I don't mean it that way. I just mean that, you know, I think that, first of all, depreciation is going to be based on original cost. Yeah. And if you remember the chart that we had put up, I would say depreciation is understating the need. I wouldn't argue with that at all, but we have zero, as opposed to at least the replacement value at 20 years ago. Yes. I understand what you're saying. So when we look at, I think it's fair to say if we look at this chart right here, where we're at right now, we only have enough revenues in 2025 to cover the expenses and the debt service payments. Yeah. We can't unring a bell, but it does appear that we are mortgaging our future by following that practice. Yeah. Correct. Yes. A situation that we're facing today, which, as a new commissioner, I really love. Okay. Let's talk about a couple things. First of all, I'm not sure I followed you completely on your tiered rate study. You did say that only 3% or so of our customers were at the highest rate study, but that didn't mention the volume of water that they used, because that could be an entirely different number. It was roughly 13,000 billing units or thousands of gallons per year out of roughly 500,000 for the residential class billing units per year. Okay. My point is this. We may still want to look at an additional tier. I do know that you've lined up these dominoes perfectly, and you hate to move one, because it has so many effects on the whole chain. Of course. But back to my colleague's statement, Commissioner Gao was talking about conservation. We may have one customer out there using 25,000 gallons of water, and we don't know it. Right. We're doing it at a rate that is actually somewhat subsidized when you look at the rate schedule. So we may want to look at a fourth tier just for those kind of usages. And I think we would benefit from a usage study showing the number of customers, but also the number of gallons used, because that's what we're really charging on, not the customer base. That's one thing. On another basis here, I'm looking at what we're looking at as our operating expenses. And we are coming to this situation with also a sense of tightening our belts around our city budget. And I look at our personnel expense, and our personnel expense is growing substantially, about 10%, as a matter of fact. Yes. While the rest of our employees may only be facing a 2% increase. Now, I understand retention, and I love your team, Nan. I really do. You made sure I love them because you almost made me hug every one of them. And so it's not that I don't love these people, but I also realize that we're about ready to hand a rate increase to people that are facing not just this rate increase, but a lot of other things. And this is going to hurt our lowest income citizens the hardest. It's not going to hurt our upper, you know, they're going to look at this, and they're going to look at the extra 45 bucks a month, and they're going to go yawn. There are other people out there that are right now trying to figure it out, if they're going to be able to keep or have to sell their house this year. That's the people I'm most concerned about. That's the ones that this bothers me the most about. And so when I think of that upper tier user that's not thinking about even putting a timer on his system because he doesn't care or she doesn't care, that's the person I think should do $100 instead of the 45. So I think that we ought to go that direction if we possibly can. So that's one of my comments. I'm also looking at this as a perfect storm. We've got regulations that is driving us. We've got inflation that's driving us. We have the desire for retaining an expert and qualified team. That's driving us. But what's troubling to me is the fact that we could see this coming. We could see this coming three years ago. We knew this day was coming. And we should have been looking at a longer rate study increase over a greater period of time to make the most immediate impact less violent to a person's budget. So that's where I am. And speaking of that flexibility in our pricing or the elasticity in our pricing, when I'm looking at that, I don't know what my fixed worth relative variable costs are. I don't know what I'm going to have to pay no matter how many gallons are used. And I don't know what my cost goes up per gallon when they start using more. So it's hard for me to worry about elasticity when I don't know that particular formulation. That would be helpful, too, as I look at this particular problem. So I think we're in a box, but I think there's some things we can wiggle in this box a little bit. And I want to do that. And I want to do it with a principle and a policy of helping the least of our citizens. That's what I think we ought to do. Like I said, you know, 5,000 more gallons doesn't bother a significant portion of our population. But that extra, well, we're going up almost 50% over the five-year period. That's going to bother some people. So that's where I am right now. Thank you so much. I'm done. Okay. Well, it's good to be actually last, last. And I will say that lots of great questions, so, and I won't repeat those questions. I've got some random ones. So of the residential accounts that we actually have, how many are actually reclaimed customers percentage-wise? Roughly 3,250, 3,250 accounts, I believe. Percentage. I thought it was closer to 4,000 off the top of my head. Yeah, maybe it was 3,750. I'm sorry. I'll get you the answer. What percentage of residential accounts is that? It's about, I think we have about a third. Yeah, we have about 12,000 water accounts, and we have about four, in real round numbers. As you know, every day, people move in, move out. The number changes every day. But in round numbers, we have 12,000 water accounts and 4,000 reclaimed water accounts. Yeah, so it's 3,255 reclaimed accounts as of 2024. 24? Mm-hmm. And, you know, in terms of the potable water customers, we have about 10,300. So, you know, roughly 30% of your customers are on reclaimed system, which is more than that one-fourth ratio we were talking about earlier. I was going to ask that. Yeah. That doesn't jive with the four-to-one. Yeah. The reason why you're able to do that is because you supplement with raw water. Okay. That's allowing you to serve a little bit more than that average because you supplement. But we have no more room to add anybody other than people that are on the existing pipeline. And maybe not that, right? Or do we? This week, no. Right. Okay. In September, we have a lot of extra reclaimed. So it's a balancing game that you play. Okay. So that goes back to the question. But if everybody used exactly like they were supposed to, irrigated just in the two hours, three times a week like they're allowed to within the reclaimed water system, then we would have enough room to build out the system. We've gone through all those calculations when we built the system initially. The Water Management District, because of how developed this reclaimed water system is, has allowed Dunedin to augment their reclaimed water system up to 60 million gallons a year. That's to get us through that dry period, through that hump. And that's what we use that for. And so, yes, we believe that we could serve everybody that has a purple pipe in front of their house. There will be two or three months out of the year, when there's a drought, that there won't be unlimited amounts of reclaimed, but there will be reclaimed so that everybody gets something. So, just philosophically, this may be a really crazy question. So, does it make any sense that you would want to charge more for reclaimed, because it is a way better deal than potable. Therefore, you could put more people that want to be unreclaimed on it and make everybody happy. We don't have enough to, we would make people very frustrated for a longer period. The dry period would spread out. Okay, all right. We would hit that capacity. I just wanted to ask about that kind of elasticity, if there was any sense to that. I didn't think there was. But it is a good thing. I mean, that's why we recommended raising it. Yeah. Because by raising that rate more and getting it closer in line with the average and closer to the cost of the system, it helps us keep the rate increases lower on the water and sewer rates. Right. You know, which is about two-thirds of your residential customers. And for those people that can't afford it, it's a lot easier to dial back your reclaimed water usage than it is to dial back your drinking water or your sewage usage, because those are more essentials. And it's considered the difference between your essential use, which is your indoor use for things like cooking, cleaning, washing, things like that, versus your non-essential use, which is deemed to be like outdoor irrigation. And there are things that can be done to help zero-scaping, things like that. But those take investments to redo landscaping, stuff like that. So you have short-term behavioral changes that can take place, but then you have to have some longer-term investments for you to realize the conservation. And the pricing structure that you have presents an economic incentive to want to make those capital investments. Did you have, Tom, were you asking to? Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Sure. Sorry about the sudden dawning on me. We're using the 4,000 as our baseline, because that's the average customer usage. If we really wanted to push conservation, we'd start our level at two. That would really drive conservation. And it would also help our people that have the least amount of money to deal with whatever rates we have. If we were to start there, that would really drive conservation. And it would also allow a door for our most financially challenged. Is that a correct statement? I see a head shake by Nan. I don't think so. We don't charge everybody 4,000 gallons. We charge people for what they use. Your tier is based on your 4,000 gallons. The first tier goes to 5,000 gallons. If somebody uses up to 5,000 gallons that month, they're in the first tier. So that's where the tier range is? Zero to 5,000. Zero to 5,000. Correct. Okay. I misunderstood that. And then the second block is 6,000 to 20,000 gallons a month. That doesn't change my point, does it? No. Well, if your tiered pricing starts at a lower volume, you will have a greater conservation effect. Theoretically, yeah, you should. Okay. But you would be raising, you know, I think it may be helpful to share that there are a lot of people interested in utility customer affordability issues. Yeah. The EPA has done some work on that when it looks at regulations implementing them, evaluating different ways, and that was updated recently. So they call it the financial capability assessment, although it isn't really a measure to assess the utility bill. It was designed to measure regulatory impacts and affordability within different types of communities. So there are some frameworks that are accepted within the industry to evaluate this. Some of the research that's been done out there in this space have recommended that, you know, your fixed charges and your variable charges, that they kind of float more with their demand. So as a customer is using more, they're going to get charged more. And that tends to, as you say, it would help those that are more economically disadvantaged. Why? Because they don't have a yard to irrigate or they can only afford indoor essential use. So they're going to be at the lower end. So by charging closer to the demand on the system, there is a nexus to the cost on the system and a benefit. And so that's why you have a lot of rate structures that do that. I mentioned earlier how we charge based on demand more than, and even though our costs are quite fixed. But those costs that are fixed in the short run are variable costs in the long run. We wouldn't have to build the plant to the size had we not had the demand of those customers, which is also why we charge those rates. So I would agree generally with your statement. However, I would say that, you know, at 4,000 gallons per month on average, that's a fairly low level depending on the household size for the community on average. And you could make the break point at, you know, 2,000 gallons, let's say, but that's hitting more indoor use than it is going to be, you know, outdoor use depending on the size of your household. And you could have a household that has more people in there. And it can sometimes be a little counterintuitive that you could actually be harming, you know, a larger family, let's say, you know, that has, you know, multiple children, let's say, whatnot in their household. I myself have four children, so I understand the demands of, you know, a family on a household water budget. Your dad never stopped you from standing in the shower, I think. Anyway. We have conversations about that. My point's this, though. Philosophically, I understand why we're being driven to our destination. Yeah. I get that. I just philosophically and on a policy basis want to find the way that most protects our most financially challenged. That's what I'm looking for. And I don't see that here in the way this is drawn. And so maybe we look at our tiered structure and say that person that does holler at Bobby for running the shower too long might get a benefit. Is there any Bobby in here? I hope not. Anyway. But my point is this, though. We can do that and still get the money we need to renew our system. I think that's where I'd like to see us go. Yeah. I've done a lot of these types of studies. And, you know, I think it merits further study potentially. But I would just advise you that, you know, it probably is not going to produce the level of revenues that you're going to need to fully cover the gap that we have on our costs. It's a pretty big gap. And so it might help a little bit, but I'm not sure if it's going to have the type of effect that you would want. And there could be some other things that we could consider to get at what your real aim is, I would say. Yeah. Would you have a quick follow-up on a conservation issue or something? I actually was on reflamed. Okay. Then I'm going to hold you until, I'll ask people if they have any other questions. So, where was I? Okay. So, I guess one question that came to me was, did we know it was coming? Should we have done something different to be less having this level of an increase? What is your view? What is your view? I think that it happened very suddenly. Like, it was identified probably during the budgeting process in 2024, 2025, I think. So, that would have been when you would have realized those cost pressures. You would have seen the bids coming in a lot higher on the CIP projects. And it gave you maybe a year and a half, maybe a year to react. Then the, you know, city went out and commissioned to do the rate study subsequent to that. Ann, anything? I agree. I mean, there was just a really steep increase. You remember when we were bringing you bids that every single bid was over budget. We were having to literally reject bids and try to figure out a different way to make the things more cost effective. The one biggest project that we're about to award. Electrical. It's next time, I think. The electrical. You know, at one point, we were getting estimates that that could have been up over $20 million. We were fortunate after shaving it down and cutting things off. And we're not going to do a few things that we can push out until a later date. We've got that down $16 million. And so, there's $4 million worth of savings. Yeah, that's great. That's real money. Great. May I weigh in, Mayor? Also during that time, I would agree with Terry and Nan, obviously, that it came very quickly. And another big factor, and Commissioner Dugar pointed out correctly, is labor. And we did career laddering, as you know. And that was approved by the City Commission. But we were, we did, first of all, we did the competent class study, and then the career laddering. We had to go a step beyond that, because our employees were leaving and going to other utilities that were paying quite a bit more. And we don't have a choice but to ensure that we have operators 24-7 in both of those plants. And so, the career laddering was successful. I mean, we were able to retain our employees at this point. And that was really just to bring them up to market. So, that was another factor. And that occurred in 24. 23 was the paying. Right. Yeah. In 23 and then 24. You had to do something more immediate while the pay study was being done, didn't you? We did. We did 3%. And as you know, the 3% bump, plus the class and comp study, plus the career laddering, that landed in the enterprise funds, as well as the general funds. So, it was the culmination of a bunch of things. And then, during that 2024 budget cycle, at that point, we realized that we needed to do this and do it quickly. The industry has had such a difficult time getting more, you know, laborers into the utility industry space. I'm seeing, you know, a lot of our clients try to do program outreaches to local high schools and things like that and getting them involved at a younger age. But we just have some demographic challenges with getting more people into the profession. And so, the folks that are there that are skilled, there's a competition for that skill. And we've seen a lot of competition to kind of retain. And that's resulted in higher wage increases. But it's not just utility directly. You know, we've seen in other areas related, like electrical profession in particular. You know, I was doing a study in the Central Florida region. And, you know, they had to have a 20, 30% just to get to market rate for electricians. So, you know, labor prices have been increasing because we've seen a lot of growth in Florida. And so, there's a lot of demand for construction labor and other types of professions. So, it's put a lot of pressure on a lot of the costs. And that's why we kind of see that in the, you know, bid prices as well. And if I could, more for the benefit of the public than for the commission. Most of these positions are licensed and you can't just get the licensure. There's a time and a state test and experience needed. So, I mean, at a minimum, it takes one year to get the entry level licensure. And so, it's not something that you can just go out and find somebody else or attract somebody else. It's a pipeline. And there are minimum staffing requirements for the plant that are set by regulations that you have to have staffed that certain amount of time. This isn't like a business choice that necessarily you can make. Right. Okay. Thank you. So, the rate comparisons review. I don't know what page number it is. I've got it in front of me in print. The reclaimed or the water and sewer? This one? Yes. Right. So, the average is different than when we saw this in the work session. A couple of cities are gone. A couple of cities have been added. The local average is actually a little higher. So, I'm kind of wondering what happened here and why some were dropped, why some were added, and just making sure that we've looked at, you know, the kind of the whole picture. Yeah. I would say that we had some municipalities in here that may not have been representative. Like, I think it was Lakeland that we removed because they were central Florida and didn't have the same types of treatment requirements that you might have. So, we tried to have more representative municipalities in the comparison. This was something that we had thought we reviewed more closely with staff, and we come to find out that it was something that we had pulled, like Reptalis did. So, I apologize for that, because when we give the first presentation, we should have done a better job of putting better comparables together. But we felt like when we came back with this presentation that we had a good, robust discussion with staff and identified those communities that were better comparisons for you that are more in your region or have similar kind of attributes to their system as best as we can. Because we know that, you know, no two systems are identical or the, you know, the densities of the communities can vary, lots of different variables at play. But that's the reason for, you know, dropping some and then adding some to make sure that we had some other Pinellas communities in there as well. And then lastly, I think we had some older rates in there for some of the comparisons. I mean, the rates were based on what rates were published on the website, but the website was dated. And we went back to, we did a much more comprehensive biannual survey that was statewide. And so when we benchmarked to that, we found that the rates went down and we said, how can this be? And we realized like, oh, those are the wrong rates on the website. Here's the actual ordinance or the resolution when we did the more thorough evaluation. Then we updated for today's presentation. So apologies for that. But, you know, I think this represents a better picture for you. And it's why we wanted to correct that for you this evening. Why the heck is golf port so high? I don't know. We can try to study it and comment. Kind of small. Probably small, you know. Okay. They have to pay the city of St. Petersburg to treat their wastewater. And I believe they get their water from Pinellas County. I could be wrong about who they get their water from. But they don't make their own water. They have to go through a middle man. Okay. So they're just, yeah, they're just depending on somebody other. So obviously with a middle person, then, you know, it's that much more cost. Ms. Bennett is an institutional expert. She knows where all the bodies are buried. That's for sure. All the utilities within Pinellas County. So just to comment on the rate comparison. Yes. The only thing I didn't like, and I think it would be a horrible marketing tool, is that it shows the reclaimed customer, and a lot of the increase in the bill is reclaimed. And I think the better marketing strategy, wherever we end up with the rates, is to compare a non-reclaimed user to a non, you know, bill to bill. Because, again, I look at my bill and I say, I get $130 pretty much every month. It doesn't vary from that. Yeah. Right now it's $80 because I'm not back in my house from the storm. But, you know, so I'll be looking, okay, how much has that gone up? Which it looks like, in this case, it would have been more like $13. Right. It would have gone up. And then the other marketing would be reclaimed current, well, reclaimed current, reclaimed new, and if you had to use potable water to do the same thing for your lawn. Yeah. That would be the real comparison to say, okay, wait, I still got a great deal here and a lot of people want reclaimed. Because it would demonstrate the significant benefit that the reclaimed system provides. Yeah. And I think, I don't know that I have any other questions, but I think I have. Let me just make sure. So, Mayor, you and I had a discussion this afternoon. Yeah. And you wanted to see that comparison between reclaimed and no reclaimed, and we did manage to provide that. If you want to. Sure. Yeah, put it up. Yeah. Terry, if you want to do that other slide. That's awesome. So we did show a user in town. We sort of chose it was a higher rate user that would be using potable for reclaim. Well, that bill scares me even currently. That's not my bill. So I have some attachments here that we'll need to add. So that's essentially somebody using potable water in order to irrigate their landscape. Oh, wow. Yeah. Because, I mean, I almost never, you know, just because. That's right. Yeah, that's not my bill. My bill's $130, period. Another one looked like mine. Okay. Well, at least that's more. Yeah. So, all right. And then, and I think we talked about it, but it would be dramatic for a reclaimed user to see current. Yeah, that's for the record and for the city clerk that we provided that slide. That's what you're seeing on the overhead, Mayor. Gotcha. Great. Okay, good. Yeah. Okay. Well, mine would only be 13, so I like that better. Okay. And then, yeah, I think it would be dramatic to show current reclaimed, new reclaimed, and then if you had the same, used the same amount for potable, it would be like off the chart. So, anyway. Okay. I don't have any other questions, but I know, like, I know, Vice Mayor, you had something that you wanted to add. And then I'll give everybody a chance if you got one. If you don't, that's great, but. And actually, this is right where I'm going, so these two slides, reclaimed versus not reclaimed. And one, did you take into consideration on the reclaimed rate increases? Is there any anticipation of reduction, conservation in the reclaimed water? So, we didn't assume from the increase to the rate a significant pullback in the demand, or we didn't plan for that, if that's your question. But it's something that we think that because there's, you know, the increase to the rate, even though percentage-wise it would be a lot, you know, we're going from 50 cents to $1.50, but that's still, you know, as the mayor mentioned, a lot less than the $5 to $7 per thousand gallons within the first tier and the second tier that you'd be paying. So, it's like someone with the potable rate would be paying, you know, five times or more than what the reclaimed customer would for that irrigation water. So, we felt like that probably, you know, it probably wouldn't induce the customer to conserve to the degree. But we wouldn't know until we see that, which is why when we increased it, we kind of phased in the increases more to better assess that, which is why you always want to look at these financial plans, because the one thing we know is that, you know, our projections aren't going to hit like actuals, but we try to make them attainable and reasonable. And so, you know, you always want to come back and reevaluate these things on an ongoing basis. Okay. And the one that we're looking at now with using potable water for irrigation, is that because they don't have reclaimed water? Mm-hmm. Correct. Okay. And so, there's not an incentive for them to go to reclaim, because right now they probably don't have it because they don't have it, right? We don't have the lines. Correct. Yeah, we're all mixed out. Yeah. Okay. So, for this resident, their only option is conservation. Correct. Right. Do you know how many residents? Yes. Okay. About 70% of the customers are on the potable irrigation. If they want to irrigate, it's through potable water. So, roughly 7,000 customers or more. 70%? Yes, sir. So, reclaimed only reaches 30%? Correct. 33, right? Yes. 33%. Okay. So, that would be 60. Then that would be 67%, right? I just want to make sure the math. I was doing some rough approximations. All right. That's all that I have. Thank you. Great. Anyone else? Mr. Sandberg, Mr. Walker, Mr. Begard? If I could just add that I think we... I don't think I asked you, but no, you can. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I just wanted to know that we have a very detailed table that... I know, I know. There have just been a lot of questions about the billing statistics, and we have a very detailed table that spells out all the customers. So, I just wanted you to know that that's available. That's great. Sorry, I didn't mean to... I'm sorry. No, you're good. I'm sorry. I was messing with you a little bit. No, I shouldn't have been interrupted. No, I shouldn't have been interrupted. There's a great proposal in front of us. We've got to mess with you a little bit here. Okay. And you didn't have anything else? Or you do? Okay, go ahead. So, I think I heard you correctly, but in the industry standard, when we're looking at the zero to 5,000, that's kind of what everybody does. Is that what you're saying? Well... Did I hear that right? I would say in the state of Florida, there was a big push in the early 2000s to implement conservation tiered rates. It was part of the... I mean, it wasn't technically a requirement of the permitting, but it was encouraged. It is technically a requirement of a water use permitting. Well, they want you to have things that conserve, but they've indicated that technically you don't have a particular inclining block structure. Not the specific block. That was my point. So, but to get the permit, you have to have conservation incentives on the pricing. So, but I would say in Florida, yeah, you know, it's very common to see a conservation tiered structure. And the block ranges can, you know, the first block ranges can vary with a lot of different communities. And we do measure that, and we report on that on a biannual basis, and we could provide that report to the commission. But from the top of my head, anecdotally, I think zero to five is a very common block range for a first tier. Okay. It is common. Thank you. Appreciate that. So, close the questions, and I'm going to open to public comment. If anyone in the audience would like to speak to this issue, they can come forward and name and address for the record, and three minutes. Oh, come on down. Hi, everyone. My name is Alyssa Medlin. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the agenda item, Ordinance 25-04. I'm a former resident of Dunedin. I actually grew up here. But I am also a current student at St. Petersburg College studying public policy and business administration. This is part of my course. I chose this topic to speak on. I appreciate the chance to provide my perspective. After reviewing the presentation and related documents, I understand the rationale behind the proposed water rate increases. However, I'd like to raise a few considerations. Knowing that there are multiple stakeholders affected by the ordinance, including, of course, the city of Dunedin, its employees, and most importantly, its residents. A 15% annual increase over the first two years and a 3% increase, the last three, could place a significant financial burden on some households. I know that we kind of spoke on that. So, I was wondering if the city would consider implementing a support program for residents on fixed incomes or for senior individuals who may struggle with the rate increases. So, that was one of the things that I'd like to bring up. Also, we kind of touched on this too, but incentivizing less usage. That's also something that I think would be something great to look into. Additionally, if you guys could ensure that there's transparency for the capital improvement projects and maintenance efforts that these rate increases will support, I think that would help the public as well, just to see where that money is being, you know, driven to. And then, finally, if the council would be open to reevaluating the rate structure midway through the plan to assess whether the increases need to remain, if they're actually necessary. I do understand my husband actually works for Pinellas County Public Works, and they did the career laddering and all of that. So, I understand the rate increases for personnel and everything and, you know, staff wages, inflation, equipment maintenance, and federal compliance. You know, it takes up some time. It takes up, you know, some of the funding as well. So, in closing, I hope my comments contribute meaningfully to your discussion, and I thank you again for your time and consideration. Thank you. Well, thought out comments. Thank you very much. What was your name again? Elizabeth? Alyssa. Alyssa. Okay. Thank you. Great. Okay. Anyone else wish to come forward? Renee, I think. Name and address for the record and three minutes. Sure. Hello. Renee Chia, 1229 Royal Oak Drive, Dunedin. Thank you all. You ask very excellent questions. And I hope that you're going to really be serious about those questions and take them into consideration and continue to workshop this rather than vote to just approve it. So, you know, you ask great questions. In other words, don't just say, oh, I asked great questions. Now, I'm just going to say yay, right? Anyway, one of the biggest things that I heard during the presentation is it sounds like a big part of the financial impact is some capital improvement that needs to be done, maybe per regulation or other things. I don't know if there's an opportunity for the city to grant funds for that capital improvement, rather than having it have to come from a rate increase. So, like a one-time investment towards the projects that need to be done for infrastructure. None of us want our sewer lines dropping out from underneath us. Trust me. But is there another avenue that can be looked at rather than just rate increases onto the public? I appreciate your comments, Commissioner Dugard, regarding people on fixed incomes or people who've lived in Dunedin for their whole lives. And, you know, everything keeps going up, up, and up. And that's, you know, a problem that should be addressed and should have a concern. I'm wondering, it sounds like the plan was done based on inflation rates from about 2019 to recently, 2024, around there. And I'm wondering if there's a plan to either re-look at that, expecting inflation rates to drop significantly, as I expect them to, in the next four years. You know, President Trump has been in office for five months, but there's a lot going on with trade agreements and other things that I expect will drive costs down, especially construction costs and capital outlay projects. So if rates are reduced, would there be, or if rates are, if you vote to increase rates, would you look to reduce those rates in the future, as, you know, the other resident mentioned, if the impacts really aren't there? So that's my two suggestions, is to look for other ways to maybe pay for some of that capital improvement plan. Revisit the strategic plan. Maybe don't go forward with some of the other builds or expansion of the city that you're looking to do, and instead address the infrastructure that needs to happen for the residents that are here. So those would be my recommendations. Thank you. Okay. Does anyone else in the audience wish to speak on this issue? Okay. I'm seeing no one else. I will ask the city manager. I think we should, what else have we done to, for other, for other payments? You know, grants, anything like that. You know, what comes to mind is the loan program with low interest loan, but anything else grants that we've gotten to help our own? What are we doing? So we have actually the hazard mitigation grants. We've submitted our list to the working group. I forget the name of it. What is it? LMS. LMS Working Group. Yes. And that includes hardening of the water treatment plant. It includes a lot of those capital projects that we have within the capital plan. So there is one grant, and it's related to stormwater. It's Gabion Repairs Act. It's 4.2 million from the USDA. How much is it? How much? The USDA, and we were just informed two days ago that they are putting that on the shelf. The federal government is putting that on the shelf. But they won't do it? They won't do it. They won't do it. And so that's why we need to bake these things into the rate study to ensure that it gets done. It's critical, essential infrastructure. We do submit for the grants whenever, you know, we can. If the grants are significant enough and relieve the fund, we would certainly be willing to look at the rates in the future moving forward. But for now, we can't rely upon the grant funding in order to realize these capital projects. Anything to add? I'd like to add a quick success story using a grant project. The lift station just completed off Solon Avenue is a grant-funded project by the HMGP grant, which covers 70% of project costs. So that is a recent success story using grant funds. And we are going to start another project using that same grant very shortly in the Greenbrier neighborhood for lift station 32. Lift station 32. Right. So the city is actively using grant funding to do those big capital improvement projects. Right. I think Jorge has something to say. Yeah, he might. Go ahead. I did want to. Definitely bring up the loan program, too. Because I think that's it. Yes. That's one of the things. And one of the items that was mentioned earlier. Jorge. You'll be seeing. I need to introduce yourself because of the public so they know who you are. Jorge Keens is Deputy City Manager. Thank you. So one of the comments that Nan brought up earlier was the water treatment plant electrical system upgrade project. That's actually coming to the Commission on June 5th for your review and approval. And that project was bid multiple times. I believe we're on three or four. Luckily, we were able to repackage it to have a base bid and bid alternate component so that it allowed us to award at least the essential component of the project. And we're actually going to be able to do the base bid and several bid alternates. But some of what Terry brought up earlier is the way we've been able to achieve some of these projects is by pursuing. And that's that debt funding. You know, you're paying the piper now. We pursued these SRS, State Revolving Fund Loan, through DEP. And that is about as close to free money as we can get. Those are very low interest loans. And the advantage to those as opposed to floating bonds is if you go out and you get a bond, you have to start making payments on that as soon as you get the money even though you may not actually start the project until later. The advantage of doing the SRF loans is, one, they're very low interest loans. And you have to front the money, but then as you've got the project under construction every month when you're making payments to the contractor, you can submit for reimbursement. And the beauty of those SRF loans is even though you're submitting for reimbursement and they're paying you to basically backfill those payments that you're making on a monthly basis throughout construction, you don't start making payments on those SRF loans until the project's actually completed. So it's a very low interest loan. Some of these projects are long term. You'll see when we bring you the water treatment plant electrical component project, that's a two and a half year project. So the fact that you can actually start making those payments to the contractor throughout that duration and you don't actually have to start making the interest payments on the loan until the project's complete is another huge advantage. But Terry's point is you have that debt service. You have to program for that. You're going to have to make that payment. So that's why we're having to front end and have these large increases up front because you're having to now make those debt payments. For example, the water treatment plant, that's been done. So now we're making those payments. So we have pursued lots of, I mean, over $20 million on the wastewater side in SRF loans and then the water treatment plant. Yeah. I think $23 on the water side. Yeah. So we have, aside from the HMGP grants like Alex was saying, we were able to do Lift Station 20 and Lift Station 32 with HMGP grant funding. That was actually as a result of Hurricane Irma. We were able to get those two projects funded at 75%, I believe. And then the SRF loans for the water treatment plant rebuild as well as these projects that we have at wastewater. So we've tried to pursue as much low-interest loans and grants as possible to try to flatten out what our rate payers are seeing. Thank you, Jorge. And I would add, too, that we look at our annual budget every year. I mean, that's a minimum, right, looking at the annual budget. But we get a whole view of the funds. And I can assure you, I will lead the charge, but I won't have to. Everybody up will lead the charge that if the costs go dramatically down and we can reduce rates, we'll all be up here leading that charge. I guarantee you that. So all of us live in Dunedin, so we experience the same thing. But I appreciate your comments. Okay. Let's see. So we are going to go to closing public comment, which we already did, and commission comments. And after commission comments, of course, we'll go to roll call vote, just so everybody kind of remembers where we're at. So we'll start off with the maker of the motion, Commissioner Sandbergen. You know, I'm sure five or six years ago the city commission had no idea the rate increase was adjusted and then here came inflation. And it's just, you know, for example, I've heard from a number of people in town over this. And it ranged from, so what? Everything else, everything is expensive. Everything is going up. I expect my water bill to do the same. To another guy approached me and he said, I can't believe it's going up. I can't. I'm having trouble paying it now. So I think we really need to focus on ourselves and our usage. We had a little discussion at my house today, length of showers, half loads of laundry, full loads in the dishwasher. We do have low flow toilets and shower. It's a, so we're going to do everything in my house. I, my water bill is going to go up and I'm going to support this because when the morning when we turn the tap on, the water's fresh, the water's clean and we need to keep up. It's a commitment to the, to the taxpayers. Uh, I, I, I think it's come up tonight up here. You know, the less you use, the less you pay. So it's even though the rates may be going up, I think everybody's going to have to make sure what hoses aren't running and faucets aren't dripping. And, uh, I know it's, it's a tough one and I'm right in the middle of it and I have to pay the same thing, but with what's been brought to us tonight, I, I will support it. Thank you. Thank you. Secondary of the motion was commissioner to guard. This is a first reading. It will come back before us again. Yes, it will. Um, no one's comfortable with this. No one's comfortable with adding a cost on our citizenry, but I have a lot of confidence in this team. Nan's one of the best in my opinion, got a great team too. And I'd hate to see anything threaten that team. It is true that inflation kind of snuck up on us in the last five years. It is also true that the state regulations that have now been, uh, placed upon us could not have been anticipated, but what could have been anticipated is that these plants were going to wear out and we were going to need to have to replace them. That could be anticipated. I am going to vote yes for this because I believe it's the right thing to do to make sure that when somebody turns on their water, they get it and it's clean and it's the best water in the region. And when they flush their toilet, it goes away and it doesn't cause a problem for somebody else. So I have to support this, but I think there's more work to be done in finding a way to make conservation pay off for our citizens, particularly those that are most economically challenged. And I'm not going to stop until we find that. Thank you. Okay. And I'll go to vice mayor. Thank you, mayor. Uh, born and raised here. So I've seen rates from the sixties and on, uh, right. As most of you know, that I had to get another job because I couldn't afford to live here. Um, we have affordable housing issues. And a lot of these, I speak about this all the time. So I apologize for being redundant, but, um, inflation issues, property tax issues, property insurance issues, car insurance issues, college debt issues, early childcare issues. And just everybody just seems to acknowledge that they're there, but we all feel so helpless is to find a solution for it. Um, and, and so we have, you know, the lines. The lines at Dunning cares have never been longer. We have food pantries at our elementary schools, food and clothes shelters or pantries at our middle school. And, and, and so I, I don't know where we're going as a society and I don't know what to do about it. And it truly does keep me awake at night. And, um, I, I talked to the scene manager. She doesn't know what to do with me. Uh, just cause I do, I, I care about all of this stuff. And it is so hard to balance where we are in our economy and our society now versus the needs of real infrastructure. I mean, this is what city governments do. This is just, you know, you can't, our, our, our, our water, wastewater system has to function. And anybody who thinks we can do it on the cheap is wrong. And there are plenty of cities who have tried and they end up on national news when things happen. And that is, that is so undeserving of, of city government in Dunedin. It's so undeserving of staff and the residents that we end up in that position. Uh, part of this issue, if part of this issue is because of increase in salaries, I'm all for it. I, right. It wasn't where there was a time a few years ago when we were begging to keep staff here and doing everything that we could. And the last thing you do is want to have, well, you can't, you have to have them staffed 24 hours. That's not an option. And, uh, so it's, what do we do with this? And the only thing that I can think that we can do is we don't hammer, hammer enough on the need of conservation. We just really don't. And any idea of why we would want to expand unclaimed water when we already acknowledge not everybody's ever going to get it. So, so what would be the purpose of that? We're at 33% or 67%. Where do we go with that? I didn't ask the question about, with this increase in the capital projects in the future, whether the reclaimed water increase is going to pay for reclaimed water projects and potable wastewater increases are going to pay for those projects, or if it's all going into one pool and we'll figure it out down the road. But I would rather see, I'm, I'm going to vote in favor of this. But what I really want to see out of this increase, especially on the, the sample we're seeing right now on, on the system, is we've got to use some of that money to incentivize our residents, to get them to stop watering their lawns, to get them to go with native plants and zero escaping. We all love our St. Augustine grass and we'll water it till the cows come home. And at the end of the day, it's grass. It really is. And, and water is, is getting to be a scarce resource. And, and so it just, it, it, it pains me, you know, and I'm going to have to go and look at my utility bill and, and wonder what I'm going to do. Because I'm one of those people who really, if ever, waters their yard. And certainly the, the billing prices is part of that. But I, I, I do support staff. I do support the idea that we really do try and stay ahead of the game. And we aren't looking at gold plated sewer systems. We really are. This is just what it takes to function. And, and so because of that, I'm in, I'm in favor of it. It bugs me a little bit that we got behind with the debt service. And I, I do question whether pay you go versus debt service and what that balance is. But I hate to ever see debt service pricing the cost of that be part of the reason why we have to increase our rate. That just guts me the wrong way. Uh, but please let any part of this proceeds play the long game and incentivize our residents with grants. We do grants all the time, right? Facade grants. And if you want to go solar, you have some money. If somebody wants to go native plants, you know, here's some money. We'll help you do it. Um, whatever, whatever that costs, but we've got to do something. Um, cause Dunedin is quickly, quickly getting out of control. And it's not just Dunedin. It's just the economy is driving a lot of that, but we are gentrifying our city and it's sad. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. Um, you know, none of us, none of us want to raise rates. Really, we don't. And, um, I will underscore that with the fact that we've got some pretty fundamental responsibilities up here. Number one, and no particular order, but infrastructure is our highest priority in terms of maintaining it now and for the future. Make sure that we have the supply to meet the demand and make sure that it works. And, uh, so right there, there's, there's the, the, the, one of the bigger incentives in terms of how we make this decision. Um, the other responsibility we have is to make sure that, um, our financial position specific to the enterprise fund is solvent. And as I'm watching it and, and I'll get to the factors that really kind of created this, but the fact of the matter is we have to make decisions to make sure that our financial position is solvent. Um, there are things that we can control in that regard. Uh, we can increase our revenues. We can look at a balance between pay go and debt. And I'll tell you right now, incurring more debt is not the answer. Um, we can maybe offset that a little bit by, by incentivizing personal demand. Um, as we've been talking here, my wife sent me our utility bill. I'm sorry, our water bill. And, uh, I have to say, I mean, you know, that, that really, that makes it real. Okay. Cause I'm looking at those numbers and I'm thinking, um, so in, there are things that are out of our control though. And if you take a look and I, I'd say, you know, inflation falls in that category. And if you look at the inflationary period that we're hopefully exiting from, it's not an instantaneous thing. It's like, um, you know, you know, the, the inflationary period probably started in 20, started in 2020, 2021, as we're in COVID and coming out of COVID. And the fact of the matter is it's like a bubble working its way through a hose. And, uh, so, you know, that, that is a forcing function in terms of where, where we're at. Um, however, and I wish, I wish Lisa was still here because she said something that I really, really kind of resonated with me. Is, is that what we can do is lower our expenses and we need to be 110% vigilant on that. And transparency is absolutely imperative in terms of how we do that. Um, I, I am reluctantly in favor of this because I view it as a, as a necessary decision that we need to make. But I would also, I mean, I would really love to see us get to a point where inflation comes down. We've got a, um, and I'm not saying we don't have a handle on the expenses because I think, I know we do because I, you know, you know, having sat through now three years of the budget planning process, I know the element of conservatism that the staff puts into the budget. And I will say that, you know, the, the outcome is always, always better than you think it is initially. So I have faith. Um, anyway, I, uh, I am in favor and, um, it's been a great discussion. Thank you. Okay. Well, I will probably repeat some things I said before. Late eighties, early nineties. I was here when we were in crisis with water and sewer. Um, and I was a young professional and it made a huge impact on me and it was in complete crisis. And we had horrible water and, and people were upset and it was a bad situation. And it's imprinted in my brain forever that I will never be part of the decision-making process that lets us drift there. Um, we have a water sewer, uh, department or programs that are, in my opinion, second to none. Um, we have great staff. Um, we've had to invest more into them so we can keep them. Um, we've had hit with a lot of very legitimate costs. You know, we, the electric was brought up at 30%, uh, the personnel we know, the capital expense, the construction cost increases. Um, and, and, you know, we, we really haven't spent that much time on how much of this too goes into added costs of resiliency, which we know is number one. If we're going to keep our charm and be the community of the future because of the environment. Um, and, um, and, and are the regulations and which are all about making sure that we, we stand track and those regulations have continued increase. Um, and, you know, people complain about regulations, but the truth is regulations usually come out of horrible things that happen around the country or internationally. And so these things happen so we can improve and protect people. So all of that costs money. Um, I agree with everything set up here. We, I mean, it's one of the reasons I asked after our work session, I need to, you know, what's behind the numbers. We got to be as transparent as we can. What are we doing? It was a great point that the citizen made about grants and how we're looking at them. And I, and, and I think that you guys did a great job of expressing some of the things that we do. And I know that because we see it all the time. Um, but this is where we are. And, um, the finance board group of citizens looked at this and, and agreed, uh, that this needs to happen. Um, again, we heard today to significant increases in repairs and maintenance, which of course we all know is a, you know, it's a symptom of something to come because we're not keeping up on things. And, um, you know, ironically, like those water plant plant water wastewater were both what 90, 91, 92. So there. Yeah. So the, all the stuff needs fixed and, and it's not just the plants. It's the underground stuff and it's the, it's the electrical stuff and everything that connects it. And we all know that there's, there's, we need more and more things to protect our resiliency with these storms. So, um, the number one job of this commission is our infrastructure. And, um, I, I think we just, you know, I wrote over here, this doesn't mean I like this. I don't like this at all. I will say though, you know, like I look at my bill now, I'm going to check my bill because I haven't been in my house. So I haven't seen my real bill for a while, but I think it always ran right around $130. And I will say, when you look at my, the, the things that are so high are electric and auto and, and, you know, homeowners. And those are some of the hugest things I pay for $130. I get to flush my toilet and not worry about where it goes. I get to turn on my water and I can drink out of our water because our water is good drinking water. Um, we have good water. It's, it pays for storm water, which has everything to do with our environmental program. And, uh, what am I forgetting? Sanitation. It picks up our trash and it picks up our recycling. I, and so $13, I get it. I worry about everybody in the costs that have been loaded on everybody now, especially at the grocery store. Um, I get it. But again, these are very important infrastructure systems. And if we heard one thing from our citizens through strategic planning and after those storms, infrastructure rules, infrastructure reigns, I do think when we go to talk about the next level of Penny for Pinellas, we should discuss, you know, the potential for using some of those funds to help relieve our utility rates. But we're our, we're where we are now and we need to respond and we need to continue to support what we know are, are excellent systems. So, and excellent people running them. So I obviously support it. And, um, so it's roll call vote. Commissioner Walker. Aye. Vice Mayor Gow. Aye. Commissioner Dugard. Aye. Commissioner Sandberg. Aye. Mayor Franey. Aye. And that motion passes unanimously. And of course, the second reading will be on June 5th, 2025. And, and I just want to say, and I'll say this to the citizens who are out there and the one citizen who was here, um, that on behalf of all of us, I mean, we get it. We don't take any of these increases lightly. We know, we know this hurts, you know, the, the, the people that have the least money and, and it, it has a big effect. And we don't take it lightly and we'll continue to not take it lightly. And I think you heard that theme and I think staffs heard that theme about any way that we can help to buffer this increase and help individuals. And, and the other theme you heard, of course, was conservation. I think everybody has that, you know, if there's some best practices out there for this stuff, let's, let's look at them, maybe educate ourselves over the coming year. And maybe there are some things that we should lead on. So, okay. Okay. Um, all right. So we're going to go to, thank you, everybody. Thank you. See you in, see you in two weeks, I guess. Uh, we're going to go to 3B, resolution 25-15, fiscal year 2025, third budget amendment. And I will turn to Jen. Please read resolution 25-15 by title only. Resolution 25-15, a resolution of the city commission of the city of Dunedin, Florida, amending the city's operating and capital budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2024, and ending September 30th, 2025, and providing for an effective date. That was resolution 25-15, read by title only. Great. And I'm very sorry, because I should have asked you all, would you like a five minute break before we plunge through to the end of the agenda? You guys totally. Whatever you want. We don't have a minute break. Okay. No, I don't need it. Honestly. Nope, I do not need it. I'm good. I just want to make sure. Let's push through. Okay, good. I know. I just want to be, you know, compassionate. That's not the word. Courteous. Yeah. Okay. I need to make a motion for 25-15. So moved. Second. Second. And staff presentation by Les. Yeah. Evening Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners. Les Tyler, the finance director. And I'm here with Jean Horschwater, who is our new budget manager. She's been scored in about two months. Congratulations. You're doing a great job. Great job. Yeah. As mentioned, this is resolution 25-15. This is a third budget amendment for this fiscal year, 2025. The total budget impact for various funds is $3.3 million. The proposed amendments are on pages two through six of the staff report. I'll start with the general fund amendments, and I'm going to go over the ones that are larger dollar items. Nearly all of these have been presented to the commission at various commission meetings over the past six months or so. So I'll kind of focus on the larger ones and answer any questions you might have. The first one in the general fund is item C, which is a transfer of $179,000 in budget for the citywide roof replacement project for the community center repair and maintenance account to the library repair and maintenance account. It was a transfer. The cost of a library roof was higher than expected. The budget was $350,000, so they needed more funding. So it basically transferred from one project to another, and there was no impact on fund balance with that item. And that item was presented to the city commission on December 3rd, 2024. The next item E was a transfer in of revenue for ARPA federal funds budget of $1.690 million. And that was a transfer from the ARPA fund for revenue replacement for our ARPA funds. This increase in revenue was offset by an expenditure transfer of $976,000 for the broadband internet project and also $650,000 for the affordable housing project. This was done back in December and was presented to the commission on December 17th. And this was part of our making sure that we had all of our ARPA funds obligated prior to December 31st, 2024. And that was the reason for that transfer so we could draw those dollars down. The next item was item G in the general fund, and that is a transfer in of revenue of $5 million. And that was an internal loan that we did. We did a $5 million loan from the fleet fund to the general fund for storm damages for Milton and Helene. And that resulted in an increase in fund balance in the general fund. And that was presented to commission on January 9th item. Next item is item J. This was an increase in expenditures of $47,000 in the disaster recovery fund for the purchase of a stormwater six-inch trade wind pump, which had to be replaced because it was flooded during Hurricane Helene. This resulted in a decrease to fund balance. We expect that to be reimbursed by FEMA at 87.5% between FEMA and the state of Florida. And I'm skipping some of the lower dollar ones. And the next item is item S. And this is an increase in the general fund revenue budget of $2,332,000. This was for FEMA reimbursement for expedited funding. We received $2.3 million from FEMA about 60 days after the storm, and that was for an expedited payment for the debris removal. We also, as part of this, have an increase in the disaster recovery expenses of $6.8 million. And that is for Tetra Tech and Crowder Gulf storm-related costs for debris removal and the monitoring of that removal. And that results in a decrease to fund balance of $4.493 million. And we expect the remaining $3.5 million of debris removal to be reimbursed by FEMA at 100%. We expect that to happen hopefully in the next six months, but it could be a year, depending on the time of the FEMA's reimbursement. We'll get 100% of that. And the remainder of that we expect to get 87.5% between the federal government and the state. And that was for various work that Tetra Tech's doing for us and Crowder Gulf. And moving to the building fund, we have an increase in capital expenditures of $238,000 for the purchase of five Ford Lightning trucks that were part of our fleet plan that we presented to the Commission on March 4, 2025. And that was not budgeted in 2025 in the building fund, so we do have a decrease in fund balance for that item in the building fund. And next is the ARPA fund. We have a decrease in expenditures of $1.690 million. And that was for the opposite side of the reclassification I mentioned earlier. We moved the federal dollars from the ARPA fund to the general fund to draw down those dollars prior to the encumbrance deadline for December 31, 2024. So moving that decrease, the expenditures in the ARPA fund to move them to the general fund for those two projects that I mentioned earlier. And that resulted in a net decrease to fund balance in the ARPA fund of $64,709. And that item was presented to the Commission on December 17, 2024. And the wastewater fund had a couple of amendments. First, a transfer of $69,500 for the wastewater collection bypass pumps project improvement other than buildings. This was an accounting entry, just making sure we have it classified in the right account and there's no impact in that position in this item. This item was presented to the Commission on January 21, 2025. Next item is item R in the same fund. We had a transfer of $292,000 from the wastewater pipelining project to the lift station 32 repair replacement project. The lift station 32 project had a $1.8 million budget in 2025, but the bid came in over budget. So we moved from one project to another, and that had no change on fund balance because we had the additional funding in the other project. And that was presented to Commission on May 8, 2025. Next item is item P, which is an increase in expenditures budget of $17,600 for professional services for the Jones Edmonds Hurricane Milton simulations for the stormwater fund. And that was some modeling services that were done in support of the stormwater master plan. Those services were not budgeted in 2025, and that results in a decrease in that position of $17,600. Next in the fleet fund, we had a couple of adjustments, and the largest one is we had the other side of the transfer into the general fund. The fleet fund did an internal borrowing to the general fund for $5 million as a result of the storm damage, and that is a decrease to fund balance in the fleet fund. And that was presented on January 9, 2025 to Commission. And last is the IT Services Fund. This fund, we had a reclassification. This is an accounting entry, a reclassification of $110,000 in capital expense. And we're reclassing that from a machine and equipment line item to intangible assets. And this is part of, we've mentioned before, GASB 96, a new GASB for subscriptions that we have to track now. So we're just making sure this is in the proper account prior to year end. And that results in no change to fund balance. And so those are the highlights of the adjustments. I do want to mention in the last exhibit in the staffing, there is, we have a summary of the fund balance for all the funds that are impacted here. And that's the information that all the funds are meeting or exceeding their reserve levels on the last page, with the exception of the water sewer and the stormwater fund. The water sewer fund, which just discussed tonight for 2025, right now we're showing an available fund balance slightly under the goal. It's very close, but it's slightly under. And again, we're working, the rate study we're working on, we discussed this evening, once that is approved, that will provide adequate funding to support revenues and support the expenditures and ongoing capital needs of that fund moving forward. Also, the stormwater fund is slightly under the target also. The stormwater fund is at 7.5 percent. The target's 25 percent. That is slightly better than our 25 budget. Our 25 budget was at 5.8 percent. And the stormwater fund had a rate study last year that was implemented, and it'll take us a couple of years to get there. But as we move into 26, the expectation is that that fund will be over the 25 minimum reserve because we have rates established for the next few years in that fund, as we discussed today, for the water wastewater fund. But the other funds are in compliance with our policy, and be happy to answer your questions you may have. Thank you. Okay. Questions starting with Commissioner Walker. No. No questions. Okay. Commissioner Dugard. Thank you, Mayor. There's one I have on item P under stormwater fund. I noticed that the services were not budgeted and are not eligible for FEMA reimbursement. Why were they not eligible for FEMA reimbursement as they had to deal with the storm? It was a modeling process, I believe. Yeah. We will request reimbursement for. We will request, but Tetra Tech has told us they think this particular item is unlikely to reimburse us, but we're still going to try. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have, Mayor. Good question. Thanks, Mayor. Okay. Les, for the funds that are under the target market, did we know that this is where they would end up at the time we discussed the item? Yes, I would say so. I mean, yeah. Our, for instance, our water sewer fund, the projection for our water sewer fund right now is actually a little better than it was in our budget that we adopted back in September. And the same for the stormwater fund. The stormwater fund that we adopted had a 5.7% roughly reserve, and it's slightly better here. So I would say that we did know, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, then that's on me. That's the only question I have. Thank you. Commissioner Sandberg. I had no questions, Mayor. No questions? Okay. Great. And my only question is kind of my standard question. So none of this is a surprise, other than you've changed a few. Most of this we've seen before, unless some of them may be under the same type of bid specs. Something came in a little slightly higher, and so you're adjusting for that. But there's no real surprises here. That's correct. Or additions, overall. That's correct, yeah. The ones that had not been presented, I tried to cover those when I walked through this, and yeah, no surprises. Okay. I'm good. So let's see. Public input. Anybody in the audience wish to come forward and speak to this issue, the budget amendment? Seeing no one, I'll close public input, and I'll go to Commission comments. Maker of the motion was Commissioner Walker. I have no, well, actually, I do. Just, you know, this is really just housekeeping, balancing the checkbook, so to speak. So, you know, I appreciate that there are no significant changes, no unexpected changes. And, you know, we, because my process is, is I'll take those actions. I'll go back and look at what we talked about, and it's all consistent. So, thank you. And let's see, seconder of the motion was Commissioner Dugard. I agree that this is basically what we have to do, because sometimes processes don't get completed in the year they're budgeted for, and they have to make these kinds of adjustments. I see nothing here that's irregular. I just hope nothing ever happens to less. One thing I will mention, just one of your comments was, one of the, last year at this time, we had significantly more budget amendments. And we presented those to the Commission, I think, maybe 11 months ago, a year ago. But, and the reason for that, Jen and I talked about it, is this year our, most of our projects have come in on budget. Last year we had lots of projects that were not funded. So, I would say we probably got 10 or 15 less items that we had a year ago, just because projects are coming on budget and we're not having to, you know, move dollars around and hit fund balance like we did last year. Just wanted to mention that. Thank you. Final comments, Vice Chair? Thank you. This is housekeeping. I don't know why it's always a shell shock to me that we discuss these individually and have them come back and one lump sum. It's like, dang, individually they're expensive. You put that all together and it's like, you have to pay for it though. But no, it's just housekeeping. Commissioner Sandbergen? No, I think it's just less doing what less does best and keeping us going the right direction. Thank you. Thank you. So, I would like to make a separate motion that less never gets to go anywhere. Okay. All in favor? All right. Here we go. And Gene, we're glad you're sitting as his sidekick now and, you know, we're looking forward to, well, we're not looking forward to the budget sign, but we have great confidence in the team. Yeah. So, we have great confidence in the team. I don't have any additional comments. I mean, I think there was a part, I forget the numbers, E and F or whatever. It was the ARPA fund thing and I'm like, I went to Jennifer and I said, this is making my head spin. And I know there was a lot of ins and outs we had to deal with the ARPA and what we could spend and where we could spend it. So, it is housekeeping and I appreciate the effort and thanks for all you do. So, we'll go to roll call vote. We'll go to roll call vote. Commissioner Sandbergen. Aye. Vice Mayor Gow. Aye. Commissioner Jagard. Aye. Commissioner Walker. Aye. Mayor Franey. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you guys. Okay. We're going to go to 3C, which is resolution 25-16 regarding application number 25-03V, request to vacate an approximately 89.87 square foot portion of an existing platted utility easement at 2670 St. Joseph Drive West, Dunedin, Florida, as recorded in the Platte Book 60 pages 99-100 of the official records of Pinellas County, Florida. Jen, can you please read resolution 25-16 by title only? Yes. Resolution 25-16, a resolution of the City Commission of the City of Dunedin, Florida, vacating a portion of the platted utility easement recorded in the Platte Book 60 pages or page 99-100 of the official records of Pinellas County, Florida on the property of 2670 St. Joseph Drive West, Dunedin, Florida, 34698, parcel identification number 15-28-15-23220-000-0180 and consisting of approximately 89.87 square feet, providing for severability and providing for an effective date. That was resolution 25-16, read by title only. Yay! You know, I have the same illness as the former mayor because I listened to John Hubbard do it that way forever. So, if I don't hear it, it's not time to go. Okay. I need a motion. So moved. Second. Third. Who was my second? Sandbergen, I think? Okay. Commissioner Sandbergen. Okay. Clay, staff presentation. Yes. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Commissioners. Clayton Watkins, Utilities and Engineering. As the City Attorney mentioned, Item 3C is a Resolution 25-16 regarding Application 2503, which is a request for a partial vacation of an existing utility easement, as described in Platte Book 60, pages 99 and 100. The applicant has contacted local utilities, including Charter Communication, Clearwater Gas, Florida Gas Transmission Company, Wide Open West, Duke Frontier Communication, Crown Castle Fiber, Lumen Technology, and Pike, all of which provided letters of no objection to the request for the partial vacation of the referenced easement. Additionally, all property owners within 500 feet of the subject parcel were mailed letters of notice regarding this application and corresponding public hearing. The City's Utilities Division has no facilities in the area of this easement, and thus has no objection to the request for the vacation of easement. The City's Public Service Division has no maintenance responsibility related to the existing utility easement that will be vacated, nor will have such responsibilities with respect to the remainder of the easement. Therefore, it is determined that there is just no public need for the retaining the full referenced utility easement on the property located at 2670 St. Joseph Drive West in Dunedin, Florida, as noted herein. And as such, staff hereby recommends adoption of Resolution 25-16 and approval of Application 2503-V, the partial vacation of utility easements, as recorded in Platt Book 60, pages 99 and 100, of the official records of Pinellas County, Florida, of the parcel referenced here within. And that concludes my presentation. Myself and the applicant representative is here for any questions. Are you the applicants back there? No. Who's the applicant? Oh, your neighbors. Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. Cool. Just curious. I was just curious. Because I know everybody's had to wait a long time. Otherwise, we'd be asking you why you're here. Yeah, no, no. Sorry. You know. I kept thinking about how long that I went and kept watching you guys, so I didn't know. Okay. Yeah, obviously. I kept thinking. This is the last time I'm going to have something brought before commission. Thanks. Sorry. Sorry about that. My bad. Questions for staff? Start with, I forget which side, Vice Mayor. Is my math correct at 89.87? That's like 9 by 10? The actual number is closer to 4.3 by 20-some feet. I forget the exact dimensions. Yes. That is. But this is a rectangular more than it is a square. That is such a sliver. Yes. And they want us to bake, so they want a deck. They want a deck. They would like to build a deck. Really? A deck? Yes. We're going to give up this valuable piece of real estate? We don't have anything inside of it. I get it. I get it. Right. No other questions. Commissioner Sandberg? No, I have no additional questions. It took me a second to figure out what they're doing, but I listened to Jeff, so thank you. Commissioner Walker? Have you got an answer? So I'm just going to ask a couple of fundamental questions here. So it's an easement. Do we know what the reason was for that easement in the first place? It was just when they platted the parcels, they provided 15-foot for utilities along the backside. This whole platt, sort of St. Joseph West, wraps around. I can zoom back out to the other exhibit that you saw on your vicinity map. If you can see here, the other condos on the west side of St. Joseph, they all have the same platted easement. And then the side yards have easements, but I don't remember the exact dimension. Sort of was planning practice when plotting at that time. So like, and this is going to be, just don't laugh when I ask this question, but an easement, just to make sure my understanding of this is correct, easement is part of the property that is zoned by the occupant, right? Correct. Okay. So they already own that property. Yes. They've just, it's zoned such that they can't develop on that easement unless we do exactly what we're doing right now. It's not a zoning restriction. It's actually just that it's an encumbrance on the property. They own the property, but they can't do anything with inside of it. Oh, I like that word. Okay. All right. I'm good. Thank you. Commissioner Dugard? Commissioner Walker, ask all my questions. He's like that. Okay. And I don't have any additional questions. So I'll open it for public input. Anyone in the audience wishing to come forward to speak on this issue? You can come up. Oh, careful. And just name and address for the record. And I didn't mean to put you guys on the spot back there either. So I apologize again. Linda Iverson. Linda. Island Towers Condominiums. I'm actually 300 Woodett Drive on the board for the Condominium Association. We just got the letter this week. So I'm trying to understand. Is it a utility easement? Correct. Doesn't the utility company care? And? Yes. Okay. So I'm wondering, does all of Island Tower have the same easement? And are there utilities running that we should be concerned about? I did not look at your plat. I'm sorry. I didn't look at that portion. I only looked at that parcel. But, so you see the parking lot there? Yes. I see what you're talking about. A hundred percent. That's us. Okay. Linda, if you just want to ask your different questions and then we'll get them answered after you're done. Okay. So, Island Towers is supposed to be concerned about, I don't care that they build a deck. They can build a deck for all, you know, nice neighbors, whatever. But I guess I was concerned why every resident at Island Towers got sent this. And if we were supposed to be concerned that they're vacating some kind of easement. If there is some kind of utility that, in the future that we need, well, I don't know if it has anything to do with us, but that's all. Okay. Sounds good. I didn't recognize you back there. So, she's my temporary neighbor for three months. So, good to see you. And actually, your question was kind of similar. My brother lives in Island Towers as well. And he's like, oh, what's this about? I don't even understand it. So, can we respond to that? Is there any reason that an adjacent neighbor would need to do investigation or be concerned? I guess that's the question. So, the reason everybody in Island Towers received a mail is that our requirements for public noticing is anybody within 500 feet of the parcel. So, therefore, they had to mail them out. They were mailed. They have to be mailed out at least 14 days prior to today. I think they gave me the mailing notice 15 days ago that they paid the proper postage for that. But I guess the question is, can you think of any reason that would be a concern to their potential easement or where their utilities go? I mean, from my knowledge, I do believe Duke has some facilities along the north side of this. And they did provide no objection to the reduction of the size of the easement. So, from what I have gathered from working through this, they're the only one that's in there. And they are fine with the reduction of the easement. Okay. And if the utilities are good, that means they're going to be able to provide service to everybody. Correct. They're going to be able to provide. If the service provider, any of the franchise utilities provides a lot of objection, we don't take these forward. Gotcha. Okay. Hopefully that helped back there. Okay. Anyone else wish to come forward to speak to this issue? Okay. Seeing none, I'll close public input. And I'll go to Commission comments. Maker of the motion was Commissioner Degard. I think we should support this. I can't imagine that we wouldn't. That's all I have. Thank you, Mayor. Okay. And seconder was Commissioner Sandbergen. Nothing to add, Mayor. Okay. And Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah. Actually, I do have just a quick question on this. Looking at the map, the easement is the 15-foot striped part. Correct. And they're only looking to vacate the blue area. The blue area. Yes. So there's still an easement in the back area. Correct. Okay. And I suspect why utilities aren't there probably because there's a seawall and the dead men that hold up the seawall. Actually, from what we found out, Duke does have facilities that are close to that seawall. Oh, do they really? Yes. Okay. All right. Yeah. No comments. Okay. And Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. No additional comments. Okay. And I don't have any comments either, so we'll go to roll call vote. Vice Mayor Gao. Aye. Commissioner Walker. Aye. Commissioner Sandbergen. Aye. And that motion passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you, everybody. We need to get invited to the barbecue when the deck is built. Okay. We're going to go to 3D. Increase the existing purchase order. PO 250280 with Crowder Golf Joint Ventures, Inc. of Mobile, Alabama by 939,926.30 for a total not-to-exceed amount of $5,250,776.30 for disaster debris collection and removal services as a result of Hurricane Milton. And we'll go to staff presentation. Sue and Bill. Good evening. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, City Manager and Attorney. Good evening, Mayor. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, City Manager and Attorney. Sue Bartlett, Public Works Director. I almost said Pinellas County. That's how late it is. Okay. Good old Dunedin. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, City Manager and Attorney. Sue Bartlett, Public Works Director. I almost said Pinellas County. That's how late it is. Okay. Good old Dunedin. We're—and Bill Pickram from our Solid Waste for Sanitation and Recycling. We are requesting that we increase the PO, which actually came before you with Les' item for the budgeted amendment to pay the Crowder Gulf joint ventures to increase the PO that they had for the debris management pickup. I just wanted to mention that I was just at the AAPWA, American Public Works Association, meeting in Orlando for the state, and we rocked it. I'm just going to say, getting our debris picked up, we—everyone I talked to, we beat them. We got it done. So—and these fellows helped us. They were here when we really needed them, and they came in with Milton and picked up after. We had some issues with the previous vendor, but they did a great job. We are asking you to increase this. It's $939,926.30 additional over what we estimated. Again, it was in that budget amendment and is also attached to this item, the actual total, for a total of $5,250,776.30. And it includes all the cleanup. It has been all reviewed by Tetra Tech and should be eligible for 100 percent reimbursement through FEMA and the state, because we did get it done in time, within that time allotted. And we—you did authorize the previous amount, which is attached. That item is attached on November 7, 2024. And so it already exists. We just need an amendment to that PO. And do you have any questions? Okay. Questions beginning over with Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. Just really one. So what—what was the cost increase? 900. Oh, no, no. I know the number, but what was the reason for it? Oh, more—yeah, we picked up more debris. Milton. More services for Milton. So we—remember—we—we estimated that back in November. Okay. So—and we cleaned up through January. So that's how we got to picking it up all, cleaning it all up. That's a fine line item. Great. And I'll—I will—I will agree with you. You rocked it. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Dugard. I leaned over to the manager and I said, this was the good one. She said, yes, it was the good one. And so what we're looking at is an individual. What we're looking at is an increase of almost a million dollars on the basis of the second storm and what we had to deal with that? It was just the total. Really— It's the total. Yeah. The estimate versus—yeah. Thank you. Okay. It's truing up. Well, the original estimate was based on Helene, right? And we—actually, the PO, we didn't know what would— We didn't—it was—we did—yeah, we knew we were going to have Milton. I mean, but we had no idea how much debris would be there. Right. As we have 100 percent reimbursement, I have no more questions. Actually, we—we—reimbursement from FEMA is 75 percent. It's not 100 percent, but anyway. Well— Yeah, but this is done under the 90 days, so under the Act of the State, they're going to—they would be providing the other money. I wanted to correct your— I stand happily corrected. Sorry. Sorry. I got it. No, it's okay. Save the tape. Sorry. Let's not. I should have let you do that. Yeah. We're all getting a little punchy, even. It's late. I was just so excited about the 100 percent. It is, I know. Dude, I didn't even recognize my own neighbors, so—let's see. Um— I'm shutting up now. Okay. Uh, who am I going to now? Vice Mayor? Uh, no questions. Okay. Commissioner Sandberg? Just, uh, on the summary page— Mm-hmm. Try that again. On the summary—thanks. Okay. Thanks. On the summary page, uh, there was Ty talked about sweeping, vacuuming, hauling of limbs. Was that done by Crowder, or was that—that wasn't done by the city? We—the things that were listed, again, by line item, were done by Crowder. The city did plenty of that, yes. But we paid—what we needed Crowder to do, we paid for that. I don't know if there was any sweeping. It might have been a line item that was available. I don't remember that. Do you— No, they're correct. Yeah, zero. Zero dollars on there. Okay. And that—that, um, that attachment D that you're looking at, that really does tell the story that, really, where did—where did the actuals come in compared to these cost estimates? You could see that, you know, that there's twice as much vegetation. And that's not really a surprise at the end of the game with this, because we had the Tropical Storm Debbie, and then we had two other—we had Hilton and then—well, Hilton. Helene, then milk, Helene, then Milton. So we had two hurricanes and one tropical storm, and the vegetation came in twice as much. And then the other hurt was the HHW. If you can imagine with the amount of flooding we had, it's two and a half times more than what they projected, because it's—we haven't been through that. And you could imagine where everything flooded, it got into the garages with all those chemicals and all the things that—that was the other cost trigger that really—it's like, how is this—what's the story here? The great part of that story is that because of Crowder, this is a direct haul, so, um, you notice this is zero at, uh, putrescent debris. Um, we didn't have any of that because they picked up that—those materials, whether fridges, refrigerators, or whatever it was, and they took it on down and disposed of it. And so we really didn't have, um, anything sitting at the debris site more than 24 hours. It was all less than 24 hours, so we didn't get any of that contamination, nothing. Good. Well, because I had my—in my notes if we were satisfied with Crowder, and obviously I've heard from that table that we are. Uh, we have three minutes before we have to, uh, leave. Sure. Are we, uh—is Crowder contracted and ready to go again in 2025? Oh, yes. We're 10 days away? Yes. Well, my question's for you. Yeah, my question's, uh, I think for city manager. Um, are we going to reimburse for this, and at what percentage? Just kidding. I don't have any questions. I will open it for public input. Anyone in the audience wish to come forward and speak to this item? Yeah. Seeing no one. Um, I actually think that's a better place to sit if somebody actually came. He just bit on the wrong shift. Yes. He definitely did. He definitely did. Uh, okay. Seeing no one rushing forward, I'm closing the public input, and then I will ask for a maker of the motion. So moved. Second. Okay. Commissioner Walker. Commissioner Degard. And final commission comments, starting with the maker of motion, which was Commissioner Walker. No, no additional comments. Commissioner Degard? No additional comments. Vice Mayor? You know, what- You just have to do it, don't you? I do. I do. Right. Well, no, it- It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It really is. No, just to acknowledge the difference between these storms and Irma, right? Where we, we, a drastic difference in the way we handled it. Um, and we are a society of instant gratification. So we wanted that storm to disappear as quickly. And, and we did that. We, so thank you for that. Thank you to staff. Well, well done. And it just shows the expense of doing that. And, uh, thank you FEMA for now. We don't know what happened to FEMA. And if I, I, I just can't help myself, but I have to say is that the difference is the lay down site. Right. And I know we took a hit on Highlander on, you know, social media, that type of a thing, but it was a great decision because it was such a short trip to lay down and then get back out in the neighborhoods and we would do that again as well. Mm-hmm. We should do that again. Yeah. And I can't help myself. If we have to. Thank God Milton didn't blow it all around all the neighborhoods or we would have been toast. Yeah. That's right. Anyway. Commissioner Sandbergen, final comment. I have no additional comments. Okay. Somebody's watching the clock. Uh, 9.59. I don't either. And I'll take a voice vote. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Commission discussion and comments. I will start. I'm sorry. I gave it. I'm not calling on your vice mayor. Yeah, actually, a question for the city manager. During citizen input in the pickleball courts, she talked about the chemicals that are out there, and I guess we're doing some resurfacing or something on the courts. Those courts are brand new. So what are we doing and why and how often are we going to have to do that? So they're, all right, do you want to chat? I've got it a little bit. Short version now, Jorge. Yeah. Steve's got to get home. Jorge King, deputy city manager. So my understanding is this is a one-time treatment, and there's some cracking that occurred. If you remember, there was some deleterious material that they had to remove before they built the courts. So I believe this is supposed to address that cracking, and when they're done, they'll haul away any of the remaining material that's been stored at the one that I was concerned about. Perfect. Thank you. Brief and brilliant. Okay. Nothing else? Okay. And Commissioner Sandbergen? Was that under warranty? I kind of missed that. Okay. Oh, okay. No, I just, thanks again to Dunedin Fire Rescue for allowing me to participate and train with them. A lot more respect. Chad Dennison and Mike Handoga never left my side. Just a couple times I was able to hold myself up. A lot of respect. I thought I was in the athletic and in good shape, but the heat and that equipment really handicaps and evens the score. I, a special recognition again to Derek Currier. You know, when you hear a story about a Dunedin paramedic saving the life of a passenger at 35,000 feet, I told him not only the, you know, his, his colleagues proud of him, but the entire city's proud of what he did. And, uh, thanks to Public Works for the rodeo. I will never, if I lose this job, I will not become a, especially driving that lawnmower and I, or working the backhoe. I, you know, these guys were good with the, with what they did, but, uh, I enjoyed that. Uh, you know, I get to see, really makes me appreciate how good the guy was when, you know, dumping the trash can or picking up the debris on the side of the road. So thank you for allowing me to have that day. Okay. Uh, Commissioner Walker. Uh, I've got nothing for the rest of the group. Wow. Okay. There you go. You want to go home and go to bed too, right? Uh, Commissioner DeGarden. It was fun following Commissioner Sandbergen at the rodeo. And I thought I had a gimmick because I could follow him and see how he did it. And I've, I discovered new ways to mess up after I followed him. Um, it was, it was a great day. And by the way, I, did you win the prize? No. Okay. She was doing very well though. She finished every, uh, one of the events and it was a good day. I was, um, on a more serious note, I was incredibly impressed tonight with our staff, um, in all regards, um, tough issue. Uh, the consultant did well. Um, I just think that we, from a policy standpoint, have to be much more concerned about our financially challenged citizens. And that's the last I'm going to say about that. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Commissioner. I'll let them know you said that. They're asleep. Yeah, they're all asleep. Okay. Except for Clay. I just have, uh, five items. No big deal. No. Uh, so my first one is, uh, but they're quick. Tamboray Regional Planning Council Conference for Resiliency Sustainability. Thank you for attending. Thank you to all the staff who attended. Thank you for coming to Future of the Regents. I know that some people had a conflict, but appreciate all the support as chair. It was very successful. I think everybody learned a lot. We had some fun. And, and, you know, I know how, uh, they separately, uh, do all these awards. And for us to get, again, I believe, first time ever, uh, uh, McIntosh, uh, One Bay McIntosh Award was just amazing. And, and really, uh, kudos again to Natalie Gass and, and all the individuals she works with in the city. Because it's a, that's, that was a big deal. It's a big deal. Very big deal. So, um, second one is, uh, some of you know Gabriela Mullins who passed away just recently. Um, big hit for the community. Um, Gabriela, you know, has fought a long, quite a, quite a long fight for quite a few years, several years now. And, um, unfortunately she lost it, but she's tremendously, uh, impactful in the past to this community, to the chamber. Um, I know her service is this Wednesday at 11. Um, so whoever can attend, I think it'd be great. And I know that Blur is having a thing for her too after that. So, um, I think that's important. Um, but anyway, she, she was a pretty amazing person, big loss. And our, our, I, on behalf of all of us, our hearts go out to Peter and, and her, her, her children. Um, so I also wanted to comment on the rodeo. Uh, yeah, I won't be getting a job anytime soon in public works based on my performance, including crunching to bits a garbage, uh, can that I supposed to be dump. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, yeah. I, I, I said to some of the public works guys when I, when I left just before lunch, I said, I really got to go, but I don't think I'm getting the jobs anyway. And they're like, well, you never know. And I said, yeah, I know you can just tell me now I'm not getting the job. Um, and I will say again, I, I watched you, Jennifer, you know, you did it all. And, um, and I was watching you intently putting a water meter, you know, after it was taken apart, putting it together. And I thought, you know, we really do have a great city manager because it's important to show the team that you get it. And, and, you know, you failed pretty good too. So you have to respect the people that do the job. So it's, so it's, the water meter was two minutes and eight seconds. I'm just saying, well, yeah, I have, I sent you three pictures of that and the guy was helping you the whole time, but you did good. I didn't even try. So I'm going to, he was helping me along a little bit. No, no, you did good though. No, you're, you're a good sport and you're determined. Yeah. That, okay. Sorry. That was probably. Thank you for that mayor though. Sorry. Anyway, um, ribbon cuttings, just very quickly, ribbon cuttings. There's lots of them and they do mean they're very important for somebody to be able to go. And I think commissioner Sandbergen has been great at going to many lately. He's been able to do them. I'll represent the commission and take all four of those tomorrow. If, if anybody else is busy, there's four of them at once tomorrow and I'll take care of it. Oh, four at once. I'll handle those. That would be great. What I'd like to do, uh, I appreciate that and you've covered quite a few. So, um, uh, is have Lindsay maybe, um, do kind of a rotation where somebody, and you know, we'll have to work around our schedules, but if people can kind of like voluntarily say, I will definitely be at this. Then if anybody else comes that's extra, that's great. But whoever, um, but whoever can definitely make it, we at least try to get, we try to get one representative to, to be there at run from the commission and we'll try it. If it gets overwhelming because there's too many, we'll, we'll adjust because we have busy schedules. Um, so. I think, I think, Mayor, if I may, I'd like to talk to staff about that. Talk to Lindsay about that. Oh, I already. And Angelica, just because she could spend a lot of time finding a commissioner for ribbon, ribbon cutting. Um, we could just do a signup. I, I mean, maybe just full transparency. Me doing this is kind of because Lindsay and Angelica approached me and like they want a system. And because I think without a system, they really are spending more time. So, yeah, I mean, we can spend, I just wanted to make sure everybody was open to those options and then we can still figure out what staff went the best. She just puts it on everybody's calendar. And then if you're able to go, just reach out. That's what's happening now. And yeah, and I think that's the problem because then when people can't go and I, and, and former mayor, uh, Bajowski, I know is really trying to make us more involved in those, which we can't do everything and we have busy schedules, but I also know it, if one of us could be at each one, it would be great because, and she wants now, unlike before the most, the more senior commissioner, the mayor, vice mayor, and then most senior commissioner who's ever there, um, to actually say a few words, to welcome the business. So, um, uh, so I just think it's kind of hodgepodgey now and it would be good to have a better, um, we just sign up. Right. I think that what I'm saying though, is that they, they, uh, if we put together a table and here's a sign up and that, that's, um, you all can see the table and who's going, who's not, if there's not somebody there, then, then, you know, but I, I just don't want staff to have to continue to call commissioners to try to get them to these ribbon cuttings. To me, that, that's the chamber, chamber of commerce's job. Well, I know that didn't she, Lisa used to put them on our calendar. There are new businesses. So I think we used to put them on calendars and she would put with it, uh, and some sort of expectation. Yes, you're involved or they just want you there or just FYI, this is going on, but they didn't ask. And to the city manager's point that if it's on our calendars, if we can make it, we will, but if we can't, we won't. And at some point, you know, because we, I, I can't attest lately because of my job, but I thought we all used to go to a lot of them and we, we were always going to. They're actually doing more now. So I think it's made it harder for us to, with all of our other duties. I don't know what the best process is. I just think we should, we as a commission, if we can, right. Considering everything else, because we can, and I haven't been to one for a while because I haven't been able to do it, but I do think it's an honorable thing if we can try to make sure at least one of us is there. And if we don't really know because everybody signs or nobody signs, like that's what I'm getting to. So I got it. And, and so I'll talk to them about how we'll do that. Okay. That sounds good. So can I just add one thing? I only see one on the calendar for tomorrow. It's, it, it, there's, it's in a strip mall, a strip center, and there's four businesses that are going to. Oh, that's what quad means. No, but when you talk about at each one, I, you know, I introduced myself as a representative of the entire commission, welcome to town, thank them for choosing us as a home. And yeah, so it's, I mean, it's like, we're all there. Some of them are small. I've been to one that was very small store. It would have been tough for all of us to be in. So I mean, maybe you just want to do them all. And if we can come, we'll come. I said, no, I'm just kidding. Glad to help. Okay. All right. One of those positions in December that we vote on, who's the delegated liaison to the chamber and ribbon cutting? They're hard and, and I get it. And it's, it's demanding, but you know, we all know it means a lot if you're there. I mean, I used to, I didn't feel like a big thing to go to them at one time because really they didn't make us part of it. I mean, you know, you had to introduce yourself and they didn't, you know, and I think it is a big deal when one of the city commission cares enough that a new business, but I'm not suggesting that this is a obligation we have to do all the time or can miss make everyone, but you know, so, you know, I'm trying to get to, you know, if, if we can at least, if we try a signup sheet that we know like somebody barring any surprises and if the surprise comes, then nobody's there. But if the surprise doesn't come, they've committed, I'm going to go to that. I'll go to that one, like one out of five, whatever. So, okay. And then everybody can go to anyone else they want. And then, you know, if you're the most senior person, I think they're going to want us to say a few words on behalf of the commission. So, um, okay. Well, um, I'm up past my thing. I'm just going to say Memorial Day weekend, those who gave it all to remember what it's about and, um, on behalf of our veterans here. Okay. So that's it. Uh, anybody, wait, sorry guys, I'm off city clerk update. Um, I didn't have anything. I too just wanted to shout out on the rodeo. I thought it was very well done and it was just fun. It was just a great team building that I, I thoroughly enjoyed. Um, you know, I didn't smash the garbage can or anything, but you know, I did have fun. Thank you. I know. I love it. She got the picture though. She got the evidence on me. So that's good. Anything else? You good? That was it. Okay. And the city manager update. He actually only helped me a little bit. Oh, I know. I'm sorry. As soon as I said that, I could tell it was like a dagger, you know? No, I have nothing. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, no, he hardly helped you at all. I was just kidding you. Okay. All right. City attorney update. I have nothing. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else for the good of the order? Okay. Meeting adjourned.