COMMISSION WORKSHOP - Aug 05, 2025

25 City Commission Workshop. I'd like to call the meeting to order, and we'll start with Jen doing our Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance to the States and to the Republic. Okay, we will go to presentations, and we have an exciting presentation. The introduction of our new Parks and Recreation Director, Tony Mulkey, and I'm going to welcome him to the front, but do you want to say something, City Manager? As we start, we're very excited you're here. Thank you, and good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commissioners. I'm very pleased this morning to introduce all of you once again to our new Director of Parks and Recreation, Tony Mulkey. I just want to talk to you a little bit about the interview process, if I may. This is probably the first time a lot of folks are going to be hearing about how we arrived at Tony as our number one candidate. As you know, we do a 360 interview. We reach out to every level of the organization that Tony will be working with, and that's employees, frontline employees in the Parks and Recreation Department, Management Parks and Recreation Department, City Management, meaning the department directors, and also Jorge, myself, and Teresa Smalling, who interviewed him and sat with the mayor as well, representing the City Commission, which is actually very unusual to invite an elected official in on an interview of staff, but this particular position interacts a great deal with the commission and a great deal with the community, and I wanted to be sure that the commission felt comfortable with our candidate, and obviously the mayor would take the lead in those terms. And so Tony did a fantastic job, as did the other candidates. We actually, I need to start a little bit farther back. We did do a national recruitment for the position. We had upwards of 90 candidates. About 40 were qualified. And then we also, of course, had the Walmart cashier who thought that they could do the job. But, you know, so, and we... Thought he'd be the ball thrower that... Right, exactly. That's fair. Exactly. We shortlisted that down to, I think, five or six, and we interviewed them virtually, and even our local candidates were interviewed virtually, so that the playing field was level for every candidate. And then we invited three back, and Tony was one of those. Tony's resume, and I'm just going to ask him to say hello. He doesn't have to go over it again, because he's done it a zillion times. But just to give you kind of a broad brush perspective, he is formerly the director of parks and recreation for the city of Tampa. He has overseen staff who has overseen marinas, golf courses, special events, and he was, in fact, in charge of special events for the city of Tampa for a period of time. He was director of recreation for Pinellas Park, I believe, as well. So Tony really checked every box. And he interviewed, when he was interviewing, there's obviously the degree of emotional intelligence that we need to see in that position as well. You know, and I've said this many times, that a mentor of mine, a former city manager, told me that there are really two department directors who are lightning rods for you in the community. And one is the director of community development, and the other one is the director of parks and recreation. And so, hello, lightning rod. Thank you for coming. Just because of their interaction with the community. And so, welcome, Tony. I wanted to introduce him to you and to the public. He started on the 28th. He will be reporting directly to the deputy city manager, to Jorge Quintas, and Jorge has been working with him this week. And I believe that Tony has found the coffee pot and the restrooms in the community center and is introducing himself to staff. So, thank you very much, Mayor. And Tony, just want to say hello. Good morning, Commission. Thank you, city manager. Tony Mulkey, Parks and Recreation. I am thrilled to be here to be able to meet with you publicly. I've had conversations with all of you privately and really enjoyed and had the pleasure to do so. I look forward to serving the community. Lightning rod seems appropriate in Tampa Bay. So, I am looking forward to kind of recalculating some of the things I've been doing to fit the community here. And it's been a real pleasure so far, seven days in, and really enjoying it. We have a very talented staff, high level of service that I hope to continue and elevate as much as possible. I'm happy to answer any questions. That's awesome. Well, I'm going to give everybody a chance to ask a question or make a comment. We'll start with Vice Mayor. Thank you. My only question this morning, Tony, is what's that lapel pin that you're wearing? That is a city of Dunedin lapel pin. There you go. All right. Well done, sir. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Sandberg. Nope. I think we covered it all when we spoke. And, once again, welcome to Dunedin. Thank you, sir. Commissioner Walker. Thanks, Mayor. Yeah, you check all the blocks. I'm very excited for your tenure. And I think you're going to do great things for the city. So, welcome. Much appreciated. Commissioner Dugard. Yes. Thank you for joining us. We're honored by your presence as well. And we look forward to getting to know you a lot better. But, by the way, we need – no, I'm sorry. Well, I heard you already got invited to an 8 a.m. chamber meeting where they were – you know, they had an agenda, but you held your own. So, that's good. No, we're really excited to have you here. And, of course, you know, I did have the, you know, the pleasure to interview you as well. And then I saw the skills you bring to the table. And we are a quality life community. So, this position is huge. And I'm looking forward to your tenure here. So, thanks. Thank you so much. Good. Thank you. We'll see you at 2 o'clock. Thank you. Right. Let the games begin. Okay, the honeymoon's over now. Okay, now we have a presentation by Duke Energy. I'm going to let you guys introduce yourselves, but come on up here. And Duke has been working on a couple things, but mainly right now the Broadway polls. I know they actually had a presentation for the community. I went there. I think I was the only one there, unfortunately, even though everybody was invited from the community. But they were ready. And they had, like, 20 people there, or 25. So, anyway, so I'll let you guys take it. All right. Thank you. I'm Katie Christian. I am a director of government and community relations. You probably noticed I look a little different than Jeff Baker, who is on the agenda. But I am here instead. So, thank you, Mayor and Vice Mayor, Commissioners, City Manager Bramley. Thank you so much for having us here. I'm thrilled to be here and have this opportunity to talk with you about the partnership that we've had over the years. I've been here about a year in this role, and I've really enjoyed the quarterly meetings that we do with the Mayor and with Jorge. I see a lot of familiar faces from the meetings with Nicole, and Clayton was here earlier, and Sue. So, we appreciate the work that we've been able to do together on addressing the city's concerns and different projects. And we're really excited to share this project with you. I think, you know, we're continuously making improvements to our grid. And I think the most exciting part of it is we've already noticed that it's really improved the reliability in Dunedin. So, in 2024, we saved 37 million outage minutes through the improvements that we've already made. Outages are getting shorter. They're getting less frequent. And this is an important project to continue our work in the community. Stronger poles, better technology. We have a technology called self-optimizing grid, which makes the power come right back on after it goes off because it self-heals itself. So, we're really excited to share some of those improvements with you. And I'll turn it over to Chris to talk with you about that. Thank you, Katie. Before Chris starts, I just want to make sure everybody knows he's actually also a preacher. So, if he starts to get a certain rhythm, then we might have to hold him up. No, I do try to keep that separate. Thank you, Moe. So, I'm Chris Krause. I'm a senior stakeholder engagement manager. I work directly with our customers regarding our projects when they have issues, concerns, or questions. Specifically regarding the Broadway project, which begins at Union and goes to Scotland, that's about a 1.1 mile stretch. I know it's in a very important area of Dunedin. However, that feeder line has reached the end of its service life. And so, we are upgrading that. We know we had some issues in the very beginning due to the new concrete poles. So, we stepped back, rethought it, and instead we are going back in with wood poles. And that project is slated to begin on the 18th of this month, so just in a few days. In fact, we already have some folks out doing locates and so forth. So, the reason for the project there is to bring that up to storm standards. Right now, that line obviously is aged out. And also, we want to get it up to stronger poles, stronger wires, so that we do not see the outages that we see now. Also, that particular line is part of the self-optimization project as well. So, it's part of our smart technology. And so, with that, as Katie was saying, we have self-healing technology that allows our lines through sensors and such to detect an outage where the problem is, isolate that problem, redirect power from other directions so that we only lose power in a very isolated spot. And that also alerts us to where the trouble is, so that trouble can come out, repair that, and then that things go back to normal. So, this project on Broadway is integral to our self-healing technology throughout Dunedin. So, it is a very important part, and so we're looking forward to getting that all together. So, construction is to begin in just a few days and should be completed in early 2026. Again, there will be wood poles there. They will be larger. We have a representation here at the bottom of what it looks like now and what it should look like once all is done. They're going to be a little bit larger poles. We're going from the horizontal structure on the poles as far as the wires. They'll now be vertical. It cleans it up just a little bit. So, yes, it's in the packet there. I apologize. In your packet, there's some frequently asked questions, and then also shows the route, and then also the rendering of what the project should look like after construction. Now, let me put in there, after construction also means once joint users come off of the old poles and we're able to remove those entirely. Because for a while, they'll be both poles. Yes, ma'am. So, it'll look awful. We'll top the old ones and leave that there until joint users relocate to the new poles. And once they do, then we can remove the old ones out. But as you know, Mayor, that takes a little bit of time. Right. So, as far as communications regarding the project, we were able to collaborate with the mayor and with Jorge in ways to reach the community, which we had the open house on the 8th of July. Sadly, we did not have the attendance we had hoped. So, then we direct mailed the materials that you're seeing to every customer that's going to be affected, every resident, your constituents. And then, also, we will be sending out text and voice notifications throughout the project, keeping the customers aware. I will be on site quite a bit. My card will go out extensively so that our customers will be able to reach out to me in case they have any concerns or issues as construction goes forward. So, with that, I think I've covered the highlights. Are there any questions that you have for us? If I could add a couple things for you guys to go forward. I think if you guys all remember, when the concrete poles started to go up, people were freaking out because they looked so awful. And so, then, you know, as Chris said and Katie said, they stepped back and they looked at the options. The wood poles, which are just as reliable as the concrete, just as sturdy. They are taller, but they do still have that a little bit better look for, you know, the street. And then, but, and I don't know if you want to comment about the undergrounding. It's not like we didn't look at undergrounding. We did look, yeah. But the cost of undergrounding, which would have been borne by us, mainly, was about what? Around $2 million. Again, but in addition to the issue of the cost was also because this is self-healing technology, in order to underground Broadway, we were going to have to put in between five and seven switch gears, which are about 10-foot square boxes that are nearly five-foot tall on private property. So, we were going to have to get easements and, obviously, the impact of the look of those besides Padmount Transformers. Which were above the ground. These are the really big above-ground square boxes besides the Padmount Transformers would be all through Broadway. So, as we looked at that, that was not feasible. Number one, we probably could not get the easements and the visual impact. And another thing we'll add to that is that in the six years since SPP started the Storm Protection Program, throughout all the storms we've had, Duke Energy has not lost a single pole all across the state with this program in place. And so, we've seen great reliability from the stronger poles that we're putting in. Okay. Questions? I'll start with Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. I'm just curious, did you recall the feedback that we received from the community on the concrete poles? What is the disposition of those going to be, then, going forward? Are you pulling those out and taking them somewhere else, far, far away? Yes, they are coming out and wood poles are going back in. Okay. I appreciate that. So, what, in addition to, I mean, these poles, as we're looking at the before and the after, it looks to me, well, obviously a little bigger, so subsequently probably more sturdier. It looks like it's got some different connections on the wires. Does that, obviously that's probably an improvement. I mean, what is the improvement on that? I'm not an engineer, so I'm going to have this little difficulty speaking to that. But we do have, obviously, what we call legacy, which were the older connections and such. Those have been upgraded over time. So, to speak specifically, I couldn't get an answer. I can get an answer back and provide that to your stand. Got you. So, when you look at the mic, just to speak into the mic, even though. Katie. Yeah, sorry. Existing condition, the top one, you can see the horizontal, you know, structure at the top of the pole. It's wooden. That's what we call, we call it a cross arm. And I've definitely, those wooden cross arms, when they get old, they break. Okay. And the line comes down. That totally makes sense. Yeah. So, these types of improvements that we're making prevent those. That wooden cross arm is a very old construction that we don't want to have anymore. So, that's part of the upgrade, is removing those wooden cross arms to put something stronger in place. Thank you. It negates that, where now we can attach directly to the pole with insulators instead of having that cross. So, it's one less weakness in the pole system. Yeah. Yeah. No, that totally makes sense. And then, you know, I think a couple of things, like the metrics that you mentioned, were the wattage, outage, minutes. Was that, that's, that's interesting. So, what do you compare that to? The year before, or, and, okay. And then, the self-healing aspect of this. That's, that's also very intriguing. How does that work? So, there are sensors along our lines, and they can detect when an outage occurs. And this happens very, very quickly. We have a simulation video, we don't have it with us today, but it slows down the process. But they report back to our op centers, and it all isolates where the outage is. With the smart technology, we can redirect power from a different direction, and get power back on, and all this happens very instantly. And then, and it communicates to the op center where the outage has occurred, so they can come repair that specific isolated outage, and get everything back going. And then, and then the grid turns itself back around to feed how it normally would feed, so. Oh, that's fascinating. That's, yeah. Finally, this last question. You know, we've all, all heard a transformer in our neighborhood get hit by lightning. Does this project do any sort of upgrade to any of the transformers, or? The transformer styles will be similar. There'll be new ones, where some of the ones may be very dated that are there now. I could not speak specifically to the technology of the transformers themselves, whether it's much different than in the past. I think it's still pretty similar, but there will be new ones installed to replace the outdated ones. Yeah, we're great. Thank you. Yes, sir. Commissioner Walker lives close by, so he'll be watching. Thank you. Commissioner Dugard. Thank you, Mayor. This is very welcome. Thank you for the amendments you've made to the process. I like the wood poles. They're much more done-eaten. Okay. But our customers and our voters know you by two means most frequently. One, their statement they get once a month. They know you by that. And they also know you when the electricity's not on. Otherwise, you're taken pretty much for granted for all the great work you do, and clearly keeping a robust system well in place. But I'm concerned about three things when it comes to Duke Energy. First of all, I'm concerned about rate increases as they're coming to our customers and your customers. Secondly, I'm concerned about the ratio you have for solar as opposed to carbon-generated electricity. I'd like to see improvements there. I don't know what your current ratio is. I'd like to know what that is. And I'd like to see targets that increase the ratio for solar-generated electricity. And three, and finally, I'd like to see us working closer together. I think you're doing a great job, but I think we need to be a better partner with you. That's all I have, Mayor. I want to let you speak to that. I can talk. Yep, definitely. Appreciate the concerns and being able to hear them and have this conversation. Those are definitely concerns. You're not alone in those concerns. We hear them a lot with respect to rates. Our rates following our last settlement were actually going down in January and February. And unfortunately, with the storm and the money that Duke spent on the storm, now we're seeing rates go back up with that extra storm charge on there. So we do hope that once that storm charge comes off, we'll definitely see some relief for customers on the rate side. And we're always looking at ways to be more efficient, more effective, lower our rates. And, in fact, some of these improvements that we're talking about should, over the long term, benefit customers and see that improvement in their rates. Solar versus carbon, we're at about 3.5 percent right now renewable. In the state of Florida, in terms of our fuel mix, mostly we're natural gas. We have a couple coal plants, a couple coal units up in Crystal River that are being retired within the next few years and will be replaced by natural gas, a brand new natural gas plant that we built up there. So we are continuously working on building solar. We are building a lot of solar. And our goal is to have, I think we're building seven sites over the next two years. So we have this cadence of building seven sites over each year over the next three years. So we're going to see that fuel mix change. We do have a good story, I think, on renewables. And Dunedin, in particular, is participating in Duke's CEC program, the Clean Energy Connect program, and benefiting from the solar that we have specifically dedicated to our CEC sites. So Dunedin is getting renewable energy credits from participating in that program, working hard on meeting sustainability goals. Nicole is here. So I think Dunedin is doing a lot already for achieving its renewable goals. And I think Duke is going to continue to be a big part of that as we get more solar on our system. Do you have any targets on renewable as opposed to carbon-based generation? Yes, we definitely do. So in terms of, I think our goal, it's, we have goals by 2035. I think it's to be at, I want to say like 20, 30 percent by 2035. I'll have to check and make sure that I'm saying the right thing. I'd like to hear updates on that periodically. That's a very big issue. We definitely have some goals to be a certain percent renewable by 2035. Excellent. And we're executing on those goals. It's not just, okay, we're going to do it, but we don't know how. We have a plan that's been approved by the Public Service Commission to install solar sites each year. So we are definitely working on that. Thank you. Yep. Okay. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. I certainly echo Commissioner Degard's concerns about solar and renewable energy. Thank you for upgrading the system in general. It's always important to stay on top of technology and things of that area. Does Duke have a plan by itself for undergrounding? Yes. I mean, will we ever see everything underground or where and when? And is there a timeline? Yes. No, you will not see everything underground. But when we're looking at improvements like what we're talking about here, we look at, you know, we want to harden the system. So we look at how accessible are these lines to a truck, for example. Being along Broadway, we can pull a bucket truck in there and fix a line pretty easily. Undergrounding. So we're looking at, when we look at, should we underground it or should we leave it overhead? How accessible is it to a bucket? If it's not accessible, maybe we will put it underground because then it's easier to maintain. How close is it to salt water? What we noticed in the last hurricane is that it took us a lot longer to restore underground that have been damaged by salt water corrosion. If you look at some, we have some pictures showing our pad-mounted transformers, which is where the underground facilities go. And they are just corroded, rusted, just within a matter of minutes after exposure to that seawater that we got, the flooding from the hurricanes. So we're also looking at where, you know, is it a good place? Is it a sustainable, resilient place to put underground? And does it work with our operations? Underground is a lot slower to restore. If you look at a power line that's overhead, you can see where it's broken. But if it's underground, you can't see where it's broken. So you have to go all the way along and try to find out where it's broken so you can dig it up and splice it. So we're looking at all those different factors when we're deciding whether to underground or stay overhead. And are you also looking at where you're getting that rust or where salt water is involved? Are you looking at the type of coating on the wires or the tubing that's involved to improve that so that you might not have those in the future as well? Definitely. We have some after action, hurricane, you know, things that we're looking at to make us more resilient in the salt water areas. You know, because as I look at one and two and the changes in the polling, sure, I guess. Ugly is ugly. And I wonder if the concrete poles were more of just change from the residents' perspective as opposed to we don't want those. You know, we all grew up with wooden poles. So you swap them out, nobody even notices. If you were not to do this, the residents would never notice that change. And, oh, look, you got a new pole and we've lost a cross arm. They're never going to notice that. But they will notice. The lines are still there. And the challenge we have with the lines, not only is it aesthetically not appealing, but it also inhibits the city from doing what it can when we're living in climate change and temperatures rising and becoming heat islands and what we can do to shade our streets and shade our sidewalks. If you look at any set of trees that are next to any type of lines, just we butcher them all to let the lines go through, where if we had them underground, we'd have much bushier, much fuller trees, which would allow a lot more shade, reducing the temperature, which is a concern. So that does need to be focused. It would be nice, and I know it's hard, that when you can, for instance, this project, and I get undergrounding is expensive. We're feeling that with Skinner Boulevard, and I get that. But if there can't be some sort of partnership, get the state involved with grants and just, you know, undergrounding would benefit us so much more. And I'm confident that as we increase our technology, we'll be able to find those outages in the lines a lot quicker, or at least they'll be part of the process. But the overall concept of undergrounding is good, and we shouldn't let those, well, we can find it faster if they're above ground, yes, but it's still more beneficial to have them underground. But thank you for being here this morning. Yeah, thank you, and just, you know, back to working closer together, definitely we'll continue to work on finding ways to achieve the city's goals of having that tree canopy that provides that shade as well. And I'm sorry, Mayor, that was more comments than questions. We were just doing one round, so whatever question and comments is good. It's good. All right, so I really had nothing with the Broadway Street project, but I had three questions specifically for you. Are our residential customers, you know, are they being brought up on all rebate programs, energy audits, energy inspections? How are we getting word to our taxpayers and our homeowners and our Duke users to make sure that they're getting the best that they can? Yeah, that's a really good question. We definitely have a lot of information on our website on that, and we do have products and services specialists that are specifically knowledgeable about all of our products and services. And if so, if a customer calls our call center, for example, and asks, they will be directed to people with specific knowledge of those programs. And it could go as far as to have someone come out to their house? Okay. Absolutely, if they ask, yeah, for an energy audit, for example, yes. All right, and if there's a streetlight outage, it's my understanding that you at Duke will maintain and repair or whatever. Is that true for all of our above-ground streetlights in Dunedin? And is it very easy for someone to be able to find that number, to find a website, to get that? Because, you know, when they do go out, it does create some dark, you know, shadow spots on the streets down here. Okay, so they call the power, they see it out on Friday night, does it get done next week, or is it within hours? Or is it turnaround time on something like that? It depends. So, yes, there is a website where people can go and report it. There's also a number. It's pretty easy to report. I've done it myself. Okay. And it depends, the time to repair it depends on what's wrong with the light. If it's as simple as just putting in a new bulb, that's easy. That gets done really quickly. But sometimes there's something with the electrical wiring where we need to get a permit to bore, underground, to bore, like, a new service to the light or something like that. And that may take a little bit longer. So it just depends on what's wrong with the light. And the last thing I've heard many times is that myth, my power's out, but if I live by the hospital, it's going to come on quicker. Is there any truth to that? So we were talking about self-optimizing grids and redundancy. Wait, wait, we were talking about what? Self-optimizing grids, redundancy, smart technology, the idea of redundancy, yeah, self-healing. So that's a form of redundancy in our system. You could be served one way or this way. If this side of our system goes out, you can also be served by this side. Hospitals, because of the requirements that they have, generally have redundancy. More so than just, you know, a residential neighborhood, let's say. So I think sometimes, yes. So there is truth to that. So there is some truth to that. That, yes, living next to a hospital, you may get some more redundancy. Because I was the one that suffered for six and a half days after Milton. And my neighbors across the sidewalk, literally from me to you, had never lost power. And it was somebody, I think it was like Appalachian Power Company. Remember them? Yeah. Yeah. I could tell he wasn't from this area by the time. You know, I had a tough time understanding him. And he said, I'll be back in 20 minutes. And my power was on. And I was a little disappointed. I was a little disappointed. And because Duke had been out a number of times, and then my neighbors were continually reporting it until we got caught and were told, stop continuously just, you know, reporting it. So I guess I was just sort of the one that had bad luck. But so there is some truth. If you're, if you're. There's some truth in a storm situation. We have a way that we restore power where we have like critical facilities first, right? So things that are on a critical facility list. And then how, like, can we get power to the most number of people quickly? So like for me, I was out for a long time too, because I was kind of at the very end of a, of a, of a line that was down because of the transformer that was serving me and six other people, right? So if it's at the transformer level, it takes a while. If we can just flip a switch and turn a feeder back on, a feeder serves 2,000 people, and you happen to be served by that feeder, you're back on, you know? So it really has to do with how is your house served and how close are you to, you know, that. And it's really easy to talk about today when we all have power. Yeah. But it wasn't on the end of September when, you know, we didn't have power. My cords were running across my side, my neighbor's sidewalks plugged into their house because they were out of town. And you learn to live on toast plugged into your neighbor's house. So, you know, that's, it is important. It is important. And you, you're a very, you know, it's not like we can go somewhere else. No. I know what Duke Stock is doing because I play it every day. And we expect a lot out of you. Yeah. And I know you've delivered, but boy, we, when we need you, we need you bad. So keep up the good work best you can for us. Thank you. Thank you. So I think Katie was saying, you're not, you're not alone. She was one with you, you know. I was out five and a half weeks myself. Yeah, I know, right, right. So working for the power company doesn't give me any credibility for restoration. Yeah. Sorry. I think I was out for. Sorry. Yeah. I get it. I totally get it. I think I was out for a couple days, like just a couple days during the storm. But I was already out of my house because of the flood. So it didn't matter. But anyway, yeah. But overall, pretty, pretty good compared to what it used to be. Well, one thing, Jorge, are we scheduled to do like an annual thing with the commission? Like I forget where we left that. Right. But then we do an annual and like, when do we do that? I can't remember. Do you guys, I don't know. But yeah, I just want to make sure because I think that goes to the heart of Commissioner Dugard's issue. I mean, so, you know, just historically, you know, if Jeff was here, I'd pick on him again about how our relationship didn't start well. Would you like us to get it back to you? Yeah, right. It was pretty, you know. He doesn't like when I say, I didn't think I'd like you. Irma is a four-letter word. I don't like you now. But, you know, no. So we went through a lot of stuff to get to, I think, a relationship right now that is way more productive, way better. How you guys responded on the Broadway thing, I think, goes to the heart of it. Obviously, there were some steps missed leading up to it that we had agreed wouldn't have occurred. But once everybody was aware, you stopped it. You did what you had to do. So, and I think that as we, you know, keep everybody up to date, because both, you know, Commissioner Dugard and Commissioner Sandberg are newer to the commission, you know, there's been a lot of big problem areas in the city that actually did get resolved as we move forward with everything. So, and that's what it's about. It's about that reliability and, you know, sensitivity to our aesthetics and who we are. So, I appreciate it. I do have one question about undergrounding, though. So, if the self-healing technology is great, wouldn't the self-healing technology be able to tell exactly underground where the issue is versus having to poke around? Yeah, but self-healing is for the, mostly for overhead is what I'm familiar with. But yeah, I think the way we typically have to do it is we, you test the voltage of the underground line. You find out that it's not working. And then you kind of have to, I think there's a, like, ground-penetrating radar or something like that, that we can find it. But you typically have to, like, dig to find exactly where that fault is. Or you just replace the whole thing. You know? Our smart technology doesn't necessarily tell us where the issue is with an underground problem. We can pretty well isolate that. It's just the time it takes to make the actual repair. It's not so much the knowledge of where the issue is. That is a part of it. But it's primarily the time it takes to repair something that's underground several feet versus a bucket truck pulling up and fixing something that's overhead that may be a 20-minute fix versus a one- or two-day fix. So, that's more of the issue. Well, and I know when you do your annual one, you'll come with all your, you know, what you do planned underground and the new, you know, like, how you've upgraded to take care of some of the saltwater issues and because, obviously, you know, and you know this. I mean, some of the communities are looking at running their own electric. It's because they want underground. And so, it's important to stay on top of that, I think, so. Okay. I think, Commissioner DeGarde, do you have one more? My colleague, Commissioner Gao, brought up a very good point relative to shade trees and cover for shade. And I think that's an area where we could partner a little bit better. Rather than have shaved areas, we might have groomed areas so that the power lines are still safe, but we're just not shearing off trees. So, as our partnership grows, I hope that's an area where we can have more communication. No, that's always an issue. But as you guys were talking about that, though, I was, like, thinking to myself, the worst, you know, razoring that my trees got was because of insurance for my, because of the roof. It was like, oh, my gosh. I mean, like, you shade your house, right? And then, all of a sudden, like, to get the insurance, you got to take all the shade off your house. It's kind of crazy. So, you kind of can't win. Anyway, and then the only other thing is, I think we're assigning Commissioner Walker. You're going to do inspection on the crossbars, wherever there's crossbars. Yeah, for a while. Kind of scary. It's really awesome. I want to get pictures of that. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you very much for coming. And, yeah, stay in touch with the community as you do this. So, thank you. We need collaboration. Absolutely. I'm still picturing you in a bucket truck. All right. We're going to go to citizen input. Does anyone in the audience wish to speak on a topic that is not on the agenda? This would be the time to come forward. Seeing no one wanting to come forward, we will close citizen input. Go to our workshop items, which we start with post, let's see, 2025 post-legislative update. And we have Nicole and we have Laura, our lobbyist from the Southern Group. And I'll let you guys take it. Good morning, Mayor, Commissioners. Nicole Delfino, Strategy and Sustainability Manager here with Laura Beamer, our lobbyist from the Southern Group. We're here today to just briefly review the 2025 legislative update and discuss a little bit about what kind of our priorities are moving forward. So, as far as the session goes, I know we all like to look at comparisons. So, I provided some additional information in addition to the bills that were filed this session, those that were passed, and then signed into law. And you can see how those differences have changed year over year, as well as the differences in the budget and the veto items, which we'll talk about here in a moment. And then I'm actually going to pass it to Laura. Laura Beamer, she's going to go over a lot of the content from the legislative session itself and the budget. So, you just need to add your – there you go. Hey, good morning. It's good to see everyone, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Councilmembers. I want to start by, once again, thanking you for the opportunity to represent you in Tallahassee. It's been my pleasure. And I absolutely loved having you all up – well, the majority of you up during the legislative session. And I think it really mattered for them to see – our delegation members to see you in the halls in Tallahassee. So, I appreciate you coming up. And I hope to see you again next session – early session in January. So, I'm not going to go over all of this in detail. But I just want to kind of give you a high-level – a big – you know, as you know, we went into June with our budget negotiations. We thought we were never going to get to go home. And one of the big items of contention was how much money they were going to end up putting in reserves. So, it was a $115.1 billion budget with $15.7 billion in reserves. How do I go back? Thanks. As you know, we got our two budget items not only funded but also approved by the governor. Thank you, governor. So, I'm very excited about that, especially in light of the storm event that we went through with the previous years. So, I know that the departments have already reached out to the city to already talk about how to get that grant funding moving. And I always tell Nicole – and I say the same thing to you all – if you ever have any issues with state agencies, please reach out to me. Reach out to Nicole. We have a direct line into those agencies and to high-level staff. So, we can always help kind of move things along. Can I ask a quick question before I forget the question? We sent thank yous to our representatives that helped us with this, but should we be – did we send a letter to the governor's office? Should we do a letter just thanking him? Because, as you just said, we probably should thank him. I mean, he vetoed a lot of stuff and he didn't veto ours. So, we're thankful for that. So, let's do that one that we can all sign. We can do that. Sorry. Go ahead. That's okay. I will tell you something interesting about the budget this year, too, is that they funded $400 million worth of water projects. The majority of them were not touched by the governor's education, but they took a good chunk of money away from the Resilient Florida Grant Program. And part of that reason is, I think – well, I know – is because a majority – a different government, after their budget items were vetoed last session, they were told, go to DEP and get your budget items funded by these grant programs. And I know we tried this, too, and a lot of other cities and counties did, where they went to try to apply and they didn't qualify. And so, the criteria in those grant programs are such that many of the – especially the smaller cities and counties – were ranking high enough to get their projects funded. So, the legislature decided to put more money into the projects themselves versus the grant program this year. And luckily, they survived the veto. So, one thing – I'm sorry, before you carry on – about the thank you letters. So, we send letters off immediately. And I think that's important. But I think it's more important to send letters on behalf of the city commission to the governor. And those that helped us move everything along from the city commission. Yep. So, we'll draft those up. No, sounds good. Sounds great. Affordable housing. Every year, you know, ship sale. It gets funded. They started the Florida Hometown Hero Housing Program last session. They funded it $100 million last session. They funded it again this year at $50 million. So, that program, I suspect, will stay, you know, for a good time to come. They funded the cybersecurity program, the federal grants, back to $11.9 million. I can't talk to them this morning. And I don't know if that is something that your folks have been interested in. I know that it's been a big issue for a lot of the bigger counties in getting some additional funding for the cybersecurity. I would say the big thing here is, you know, that we care about is the work program. So, the Department of Transportation's total work program was funded at $12.98 billion this year. You can see the education dollars. So, a big issue last year, obviously, was the fact that the governor vetoed the cultural museum grant programs. As you know, the legislature came out in the off-season very supportive of funding the grant program this coming session. It was funded, and it was not vetoed. As you can see, up in the under environment, they funded the Resilient Florida grant program only at $20 million, in the planning grant program, beach renourishment. It was just the $53 million. I don't know if we had talked about this at all during the session because it didn't really apply to us as much. But, you know, after the storms, FDEP goes out. They do an assessment of all the beaches. They put together this plan, the FDEP beach and dune renourishment recovery plan. And normally, after the storm, the legislature will fund additional funding or put additional funding in the budget for beach renourishment, and they did not do that this year. Visit Florida, that's always consensus. It did get funded at $80 million. The job growth grant program got funded at $50 million. Do you want me to go through all the bills? Do you guys want to go through all the bills one by one? I don't think we should. Yeah, I think we should. We don't have very – or just an overview. Unless you think something's completely nuts. Yeah, I mean, I know – so, Senate Bill 180, that was obviously one of the most debated bills throughout session. And the House and Senate had very different versions throughout session. They finally came to a landing spot. There's some language in here that is very concerning for local governments. And that's the second line where it says that it prohibits local construction and reconstruction moratoriums and more burdensome or restrictive complaint amendments and land development regulations. The bill sponsor was Senator DeSiglie from our area. And this was something the House was really adamant that was in the bill. And he has expressed to us that this is something that he knows that they need to work on next session. They need to clarify what burdensome and restrictive mean. It's a little vague. And so, I know that this will be revisited in January. So, we go back into committee weeks in October. So, we'll have to get with staff and find out, you know, what your specific concerns are with the bill and make sure that we take them to Senator DeSiglie. So, anybody have questions about that one? Because we actually even – our city attorney has been concerned about that one for – Can you comment on it? Yeah. So, at this point, basically, just like a little back story on this. This bill actually – there was a preceding bill, the preceding legislative session, and it only affected those communities, I think, that had been affected by EN. And then they went back and clarified it, and I actually identified the counties because there was question as to where 100 miles was from where the storm took, you know, hit. Because sometimes they kind of hit, come back off, and hit again. So, those can be different measuring points. At this point, it's basically a blanket of the entire state. So, for every local government in the state, they're not allowed to – they're prohibited from passing land development regulations or comp plan amendments. It would be considered more burdensome or restrictive. As she said, there's no definition for that. There have been no cases on that. But I believe that there are also – there's also legislation – or, I'm sorry, there's also a law out there that provides that if you did this, that it can be – they can seek attorney's fees from you if the court did find that you had done something that was more burdensome or restrictive. Say that again. Repeat that. That if you were challenged on whether or not it was more burdensome or restrictive, that there could be a recovery of attorney's fees if you lost that. So, it's kind of tied the hands of most local governments as far as that goes. And I think the impetus for it was, you know, a lot of people have really – have felt the devastation from the storms. And so, they didn't want local governments to create it being even harder for people to come in and rebuild and get their life back in order. So, I think that was – that was kind of where they were coming from in passing it. You know, there's arguments on both sides with regard to that because it also could be seen as limiting some resilience efforts of local governments. And, you know, I think this one's really important as somebody who is a victim from the storm who wouldn't want somebody all of a sudden telling me, oh, now you've got to build this way, you have no choice. Like, you're in crisis. You don't need a bunch of extra stuff. But on the other hand, you know, I see a responsibility proactively for us to set some standards that would help people in the next storm. So, it's like – and so – because how long will this thing be in place? Is it – is it – I believe this goes until – they said one year following the declaration of the storm. Yeah. So, yeah. Because, I mean, I get both sides of the argument, but – The other thing I'll say with regard to this is there's also something in there in the same bill that prohibits local governments from enforcing cumulative substantial improvement periods. So, you know, we've talked before about the look-back period. So, those can't be enforced either. And, again, I think that just goes to show – We figured that out. What the intent was of this, which was to give relief to folks who had suffered from the storms. But I do think both locally and regionally and statewide, you know, the goal should be not to kick people when they're down, but to be proactive about the future. So that, you know, because we all – I mean, a lot of my neighbors, we're a lot smarter now, and it – and I think the government should be, too, about how we try to help each other as we move forward. Well, and to your point, Mayor, if there's an amendment or something, maybe a consideration would be the fact of – that those restrictives wouldn't take place for a certain period. So that that way it kind of put that back in the hands of the local government, making a determination of we're not going to hurt those who have already been hurt, but in the future providing for that proper planning. Cool. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. Mayor, if I may. Yep. Just – within the discussion of this bill, was there anything brought up about the impact this would have on our homeowners insurance industry? And I could just see where if you tie the hands of local government and people want to build back cheaper and faster and not looking to resiliency as a private homeowner, everybody in the community ends up bearing the burden of that with higher insurance rates, would be my thought. And I don't know – I'll speak as to whether or not that was even an issue that was brought up during – The insurance issue wasn't contemplated during the discussion of this bill. Yeah, nobody cares. No. I think it's a good point, though. Go ahead, Commissioner. So what I'm going to ask – how does this really – There it is. Thank you. Sorry. We were one of the more progressive communities when it came to permitting after the storm. Does this bill affect us and that activity? Yes. Okay. Tell me how. So as you can see, one of the highlights here is that, you know, we're mandated to develop a post-storm permitting plan in order to expedite that, you know, recovery and rebuilding. So whatever that might look like, there's some details as far as those minimum requirements in the language of the bill. So that's been, you know, our attorney has shared that, her review of it, and we've shared it with our team and community development. So whatever those actions or those steps that need to take place, that's under review within those departments. Thank you. You know, I think one of the things that jumps out at me, and maybe the devil here is in the details, but, you know, albeit that the intent of this is good, I just look at the highlighted language in here, and it looks to me to be problematic because it's very vague. And I think that is what you are referencing with regards to exposure of the city when it comes to this. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. So this is, I think this is where we have that opportunity. We know that that needs work, that language needs work, so we can proactively meet with the author of the bill, Senator DeSiglie, and, you know, talk about what would that look like for us? What do we want it to say, or how do we want it to be defined as far as being able to both be able to conduct our regular business, but also help our residents? So that's why having some of these in-district meetings that we'll be talking about soon, we really have a very short window. Like Laura said, committee starts in October, which feels like it's, you know, next week. So we really want to, you know, make sure that we've got some time to get in front of all of our delegation, including DeSiglie, to have these conversations. And I will add that he, you know, he has, he has agreed that there, this bill needs to be worked on. It needs to be clarified. And I will tell you, this was a very interesting, strange session. I mean, I've been doing this a long time. This is honestly the strangest session I've ever seen. And there was a lot of fighting between the House and the Senate. And this was one of those bills that they really, especially the Senate, really wanted to get across the finish line. Thought it was very important that something was passed. And so, you know, this was a concession that the Senate made to the House to get this, to get this, you know, approved this year. But they will, they know they need to come back and they need to work on it and clarify the language. So we have an opportunity there. It's funny because it brings to mind, somewhere in the, you know, craziness of the early stages of getting my house back, there was something with, and it had to do with the electrical. And it was like, possibly we'd have to upgrade all our electrical. And, but insurance wouldn't cover it. And, you know, it's like you're freaking out. Like, what? Like, what do you mean? How much is that going to be? And you're just in such crisis. And I think that's a lot of where it's coming from. And I get that piece of it, but I also think, you know, we got to help people be smart, too. Because you're also in crisis and you could actually do, I think you're saying that, Vice Mayor, you'd actually do some things that actually in the long run are not good for you because of the, you know, you're in, you're in trauma. So. I will say, and I don't recall if it's in a 180 or if it's in another, but there are two OPAGA studies currently being conducted. One was not in a bill. It was just requested by Senator Disigley. One was in one of the bills. And it is to look specifically at our smaller, like the beach community, some of these smaller cities within our county to see, you know, what services are they providing their residents? What services are, you know, the bigger cities providing to the smaller cities and other efficiencies that can be, be had. And, you know, because I think part of the, the issue after the storm was a lot of these smaller cities weren't equipped to, you know, deal with the permitting issues and those things. And so those residents really suffered. So that is being looked at currently by OPAGA. Great. Commissioner Sandler? You were the only one that didn't weigh in, but I just, I didn't want to leave you out of it. Okay. So, yeah, let's keep going. So this was the, you guys remember this My Safe Florida Home. This is the My Safe Florida Home condominium pilot program. So this allows for those mitigation and grants to be eligible to the condominium associations, not just to, you know, single-family homes. This was the tweak to the Live Local Act, which passed during the 2023 session. I suspect we will go back and tweak it again next session, and the session after that, and the session after that. But this, the language I wanted to point out to your attention was that a local government cannot impose a building moratorium that delays, it delays permanent construction of multifamily and mixed-street residential developments unless it meets certain criteria. And I think you've probably read there are counties across the state of Florida proposing building moratoriums, and so this was kind of a reflection of trying to combat some of that for the development community. Let's see, local government land regulations, this is another, a bill that's- Let me just, I just, Commission, if you have questions, just jump in as we go. I think it's easier that way. Go ahead. But I want to point out the last paragraph. This is the bill permits the local government increasing in impact fee rate beyond the phase and limitations. If the local government is not increasing impact fee within the past five years. So, again, this is another reflection of some of the cities and counties across the state trying to increase impact fees in the specific development communities. I'm going to tell you to pull this. Oh, I'm sorry. Another, construction regulations, plotting. I don't know if you want me to go through all of these, but these are just more of their development land regulation bills that passed during session. I wanted to point out Senate Bill 700. This was the Department of Ag and Consumer Services bill. You'll see that we have underlined that this bill prohibits the use of any fluoride in public water systems, which I'm sure you're all aware of. I don't know if you guys took action before this passed, but that has now gone into effect when it affects July 1st, and I'm sure you have talked about that here at some point in time. Yeah, we're aware. Yeah. Not happy, but we're aware. Only because it should be a local decision. I'm not judging either way on the issue, but it should be a local decision. So, the transportation package, this includes language that, like I said, specifies the authority of local governments to be able to, about e-bikes, motorized scooters, and any other type of micro-mobility devices, unlawful demolition of historical buildings and structures. This bill imposes increased fines if a demolition of a historic building takes place. Can you go back to that 462? Sure. I did have a couple questions on that. Can you clarify what that might mean to us with the Pinellas Trail versus what we have here in Dunedin? Is that something that's going to affect us here locally? I mean, I don't know. I'm not sure I can answer that. I mean, as far as the language is written, it provides you with the authority to adopt an ordinance, obviously specifying a few different items, the age requirements, the, you know, government-issued ID. Now, whether that's enforceable on the county's property based on our ordinance, it's, you know, that's a little bit of a difficult gray area. You certainly have the power in which to adopt and enact certain ordinances within your jurisdiction. The question will become enforcement, and so how that's going to work collectively with regard to the Pinellas County Trail. For instance, I'm sure there would be issues if, you know, let's say one person, one jurisdiction had certain regulations where you had to have a government-issued photo ID in order to ride on a scooter, and the very next one, you didn't, and the very next one, you had to be of a certain age, and the very next one, you didn't. I mean, it would be very hard to identify, like, on the, just think about it from a standpoint of someone who wants to comply with the law, how would you know as you go along the trail? So I'm not saying you couldn't, you certainly could, but there would be things that we would want to work out, and from an enforcement standpoint, I think there would be some challenges. I guess I was kind of hoping maybe that would help with some of the concerns we've had. I know the trail's not ours, and I realize it's county's, but, you know, we hear about it all the time, you know, 30, 40-mile-an-hour e-bikes riding down through there, so I was just kind of hoping maybe that would help us out. Commissioner Degard, you had something on this one, too? I echo my colleague's statements on that, and I also understand enforcement issues, but that does not remove us from responsibility on the issue. Anybody else? Commissioner Walker? Yeah, just a specific example, and there is a question here. Before I was on the commission, the commission had passed an ordinance with regards to the rentable scooter things, and I think having lived in a couple of communities where the proliferation of that particular, I'll just say in quotation marks, amenity became a public nuisance with regards to just the pure number and where they were being left off. And, you know, my comment here is really based on the fact that the city took action on this well in advance before it became a problem, which is good. My question would be, is this, I'm assuming that, does this bill cover that part of it, too? The, the, essentially the, the... Well, it does, it does cover scooters, any motorized scooters, so whatever, whatever, however your ordinance would be written. Yeah, if we hadn't already passed an ordinance on this, we could do that. Yeah. Yeah, got it. Okay. Thank you. And I should have pointed this out. The, the second bullet point, the no wakes, the no driving and wakes or streets, that was something that was proposed by the city of St. Petersburg after the storms because they had vehicles going through the flooded areas and pushing the water back into the damaged homes. So now it allows for law enforcement to, to ticket folks who go through and after a storm and push the water back out. What a period of time when we have no wake zones for our streets. I know. On our streets. And cars. Crazy. And it's, it was an interesting evolution to start it as kind of a, like an ordinance violation and they wanted more enforcement. So they were, we worked with law enforcement to get it put into the transportation package so they can actually enforce it. Wow. And I'd, I'd be remiss if I didn't take every opportunity to throw in multimodal. Just the idea of any, any, any thought about reducing, restricting ordinances as far as those types of transportation. Also want to consider that if we ever do that, we also have to provide an alternative because it's still my belief that e-bikes are on the trail because they don't feel safe in the roads. They don't feel safe in the roads. So if you just restrict them on the trail, that gives them no outlet. So we need to think about our streets. Anyway, thank you. I'm okay if they're on the trails. They just don't be speeding by me. So the point I have to like dodge for my life, but I, but I, I totally get your argument because at first I thought they don't belong on the trail, but I do get your argument because I think it's a good one. Okay. I think we'll keep going. This is my favorite slide. Key legislation that failed. There we go. We, we, we fought really hard against these bills during session. Um, you know, um, you know, the tourist development tax funding changes. That was a really big deal specifically for Pinellas County. Um, there was a number of bills that proposed everything from sunsetting them to dissolving them. Um, so none of those bills ended up passing, um, sovereign immunity, um, it passed the house again, the session, the Senate did not move the bill, but it will come back next year. And I suspect, you know, we'll get, maybe we'll get to a spot, um, this coming session where, um, it's a reasonable, um, um, increase. Yeah. Um, but the Senate had no appetite for it this year. Um, it's a priority of the house sponsor, Representative McFarland. So I suspect she's going to bring this back until she can finally get it across the finish line. Um, and what's driving that? It just, she, she sat on the, um, the committee that reviewed all of the cases and just saw that the, the number hadn't been increased in, you know, 20, 30 years and just thought, you know, at some point it needs to be increased, you know, it's whether it's CPI or how they want to look at it, but it needs to be increased just because it hadn't been increased in so long. The CRA bill, that was a huge fight for us. Um, again, there were multiple iterations of it. It got thrown in the ag package at one point in time. It got thrown on the Senate priorities bill at one point in time. Um, but you know, essentially there are, there are individuals in Tallahassee who just want to get rid of CRAs and they are very good CRAs across the state of Florida. They're doing the work. So we, we fought against that bill and it did not pass, but I suspect it will come back again next year. Um, and then they also, um, had a bill that would actually eliminate the, the local business tax and that also ended up failing. This bill did pass, but the governor vetoed it. It was just to have a comprehensive, you know, statewide, uh, recycling plan. Um, and that was vetoed at the beginning of June, I believe. Cause we can't have that. So that the tax package, um, uh, as you know, we're in the midst of the back of school sales tax holiday, which they made, uh, now for the entire month of August. Um, and then again, we have the tax holiday for hunting, fishing, and camping. Um, the interest, one of the interesting things at the bottom, there's now a permanent sales tax exemption for a lot of the disaster preparedness items. So batteries, fire extinguishers, those types of things, um, have a permanent sales tax exemption. Um, you'll see that the, they directed the governor or they directed a study of the, um, the property tax system and they put a million dollars in the tax package and the governor vetoed it. So there's no money to study it. Um, these are just the additional exemptions that passed, um, in the tax package. And then what's next, we're going right back into committee meetings. So there are already delegations meetings scheduled. I have my first one down in DeSoto County in August. So they are, um, already meeting. I suspect we will see ours probably in September, October. So to Nicole's point earlier, um, we, we need to decide what our priorities are for next session, you know, sooner rather than later, um, because we're going to be right back in committee meetings in October. Or, um, and I will say because of the strange session, the good news is a lot of the really bad bills did not pass, but that means they're all going to come back soon. So, and I also want to just commend Nicole. She is fabulous to work with, to work for. She makes my job easy. She is on it. She knows, she knows her stuff. So I, uh, I thank you, Nicole. I appreciate working with you. Thank you. Now you're just sucking up. Yeah. So, and, and really, and really quickly. As we kind of talk about those priorities, um, I did attach that to the agenda, the 2025 priorities. I know I don't want to necessarily spend, you know, a significant amount of time. Um, we've gotten them, I feel like to a really good point where they are quite general in a lot of the topic areas. Um, but certainly want you to, you know, take a look at those again. Um, we can come back, um, likely in September, um, just to make sure, you know, if there's any refinement, I know there were a few focus areas that we had last year, um, in regards to prioritizing, you know, opening Honeymoon Island, for example, um, as a result of the storm. So, um, we really want to just take, you know, take another look at this. Um, this will be rebranded, um, in our Dunedin brand templates, um, as far as the, the layout goes for this next session. And, um, and again, I, I realize, you know, our legislators aren't necessarily going to read this line for line, but it's just really helpful to have it, especially when we've got our name and our beautiful pictures so that they always keep us at their top of their, top of their mind. So, um, just something to think about as we kind of go into this next, uh, session, which is, I cannot believe, right around the corner. Okay. We have Florida League of Cities next week. Yes. The annual Florida League of Cities conference is next week. Um, I will be attending, I believe Commissioner Dugard is attending as well, as your representative. Um, I, the timing is terrible. Um, they really need to move the date, FLC, because it is really back to school. It's, there's all sorts of things that are conflicting with it, but, um, we will, we will be there. Well, that's why we are grateful to Commissioner Dugard that he's able to go, because the rest of us are tied up. So, um, so any overall questions at all? I'm going to start with, uh, Commissioner Walker. Um, so when, maybe, uh, it would be useful to summarize some of the bills that, uh, the, the bad bills as you, uh, you characterize them. Um, because I, I think, you know, and I, and I, and obviously the, the concern is, is that we all know that there will be some measure of resurrection of those in the next session. Um, any, any additional thoughts on that? That, that was the purpose to having these, um, these items starred here. Uh, there's no doubt that these are coming back. Uh, they have appeared year over year in some cases. Um, so until they get to a point where they are satisfied and can get them across the finish line, this again really speaks to the, uh, you know, the importance of our advocacy early, early and often, um, you know, meeting with our delegation, read, even reaching out to the bill sponsors. Um, we know that in a lot of cases, for example, with the CRAs, they're trying to fix, you know, a few that maybe are not, are, are broken, um, which, you know, impacts us negatively because we're doing the right things. We're doing the right reporting. We have a successful CRA. Um, but we also want that to be a tool, you know, that our neighbors and our, our, the rest of our community can continue to use. Um, so yes, these are coming back, um, I would say without a doubt. Um, and so, you know, having, you know, scheduling those one-on-ones while they're in district, um, I, that was kind of our next step, um, with looking at your calendars, um, trying to get, um, meetings with, you know, with them while they're here. It's good to see them while they're here. It's good to see them when they're, when they're in Tallahassee, um, and just, you know, starting to have these conversations. And if you're interested, I have an exhaustive list of everything we were tracking that didn't pass. Do you just kind of want to take a look to see the types of bills that they were proposing that didn't move? Yeah, I would, I would enjoy seeing that, yeah, just, just for tracking purposes. Um, the, uh, second thing is, and if you could go back to the, uh, museum and cultural funding, I just want to make sure I'm clear on this. Um, most of it was vetoed in 2024, but does that mean that that 40, approximately 40 million is in the, that passed this time around? Yes. Okay. Great. Um, and I'll just offer a comment. Uh, I, I will say that, um, you know, since, since my time on the commission, I will say that last, this last time. We're going to give you a chance for final comments. Oh, you want, you want to do comments? Yeah, because we got to do public input anyway, so. Okay. Perfect, perfect, perfect. So I didn't want you to work up to the steam and, you know, because I could tell it was going to be a masterpiece. I will hold fire. Thank you. Not fire, but I'll, I'll, you know what I mean. Thank you, Rob. It makes me feel like I'm not being picked on. Jen, did you want to say something? I just wanted to hop in and say that, um, one of the attachments is the FLC legislative final, um, summary of all the bills. Mm-hmm. And starting on page 27 and going on are all the bills that failed. So if you want to see that, just so you know that that's available. For some late reading. So. For some late reading, yes. Basically, now we've got two assignments. You're going to be out in a bucket truck looking for crossbars. And you're going to be reading all the, once it failed, give us a report. Okay. All right. Here we go. Commissioner Dugard. Questions? Thank you. And thank you for the fine report. I appreciate it. As a first year commissioner, uh, I must confess that my time in Tallahassee was more like Alice in Wonderland than it was something where I felt like I was making a difference, just to be honest. But I am beginning to engage with, uh, several of our senators on various, I see them at various, uh, events and things like that. And to enable my time up there next year to be more productive. I kind of want to have three points on each of those. For instance, I'm seeing Ed Hooper later this month and things like that. And I know we are all going to be engaging them from time to time. I kind of want a cript sheet that's going to tell me how to converse with him constructively about what we think they're going to be wanting to promote, what we think we need them to promote. And so that would be helpful to me now. Up there, when we're moving from door to door, by the way, thank you for the rope. I hang, I hung on as well as I could, um, as we went from each one of the senators and representatives' office. It's sheer chaos is the way I saw it. Um, organized chaos be it, but it was chaos. And I didn't feel I had the ability to really make a difference. I think we did magnificent work when it came to the CRA, and thank you for your help on that. But, um, that was a defensive move. And next time I'd like to be more constructive about the things we want. Those are my comments. Okay. Uh, Vice Mayor? Questions? No questions. Thank you. Commissioner Sandberg? Questions? Can we go to page three, back at the beginning of that introduction? I just had a couple of, even further. This one had the pie chart, right there. Laura, what is 41% healthcare and 27% education? Could you give me some examples of where that money would have went? Sure. Right. So those are all the different budget silos. So when we go through the budget process, right, so there, that, this is the breakdown of the percentage of the budget that's in each of the budget silos. But specifically in that 41%, what would be an example of what would have been funded specifically? In healthcare? Yes. It's a variety of things. So that's where the Agency for Persons of Disabilities budget is. That's where the Medicaid budget is. You know, hospitals, all of those types of things are in the, in the healthcare budget. So that, that's the largest portion, that's the largest portion of our state budget. I didn't know that. But I'll have more comment when, when we have our closing comments. Thank you. So, and what was the overall increase to the state budget from year to year? It was minor this year. What was it last year? It was a, it was a. Yeah. What was it the last couple of years, too? It was a $1 billion decrease. So last year was $116.5 billion. This year was $115.1. Increase or decrease? Decrease. Decrease. Decrease. Okay. Cool. I don't really have any other questions. So I'll just open it up for public input. If anyone in the audience wishes to come and speak on any of these issues, you can come forward. Seeing no one, I will close public input. And I will go to federal comments, and I will start with Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. And just, just an overall thank you. I need such a, a breath of fresh air from where we've come since I got on the commission. And we were all kind of, everybody was kind of doing their own thing and also trying to do it as a commission. But we seem to have a much more dial in focus and central idea of what we want. And we have as much stronger communication and partnership with the Florida League of Cities. And so, thank you, Nicole. Thank you, Laura. Thank you to the city manager and the city attorney and the commission for who said yes to this. Because it's certainly where, where we need to be. And it's amazing what we might have been able to do had we done this sooner. So thank you for that. And then just on a frustrated note, just, I'm just so disappointed in the legislature that seems to be okay with bad bills when that's not their goal. And the idea of let's just put it out there so we'll fix it later is such a, you're not going to have perfect bills and there's going to be always room to, to work on them. But sometimes when the quality of the goal, the quality of the bill isn't the goal, just to put something out there. And when you make them vague with a very serious penalty is a very scary place for municipalities to be. And so please legislature work on that. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Sandberg. You know, I guess when we went up there to represent Dunedin, I promise next time we go, we're a lot more seasoned and a lot more experienced. And we're going to make things happen. I mean, Tom and I have controlled chaos. You know, there's times where, did one of us go down the wrong hallway looking for the restroom? So we had to regroup a couple of times. So the next time, next time we get a bite of that, we're going to do a good job. You specifically, Nicole, I am so impressed by your work for the city of Dunedin. And you, Laura, I got to admit, there was times I questioned of what you did and why you did. But when I got up there and watched you in action, you got one big fan sitting up here and me. You did a heck of a good job for the city of Dunedin. Both of you did. And I can't say thank you enough. And I think every citizen in this community feel the same way. Thanks to both of you. Thank you. Well, we, you know, Nicole is a home rule hero from Elfell City. So we're very proud of her. She's a home rule hero. She's a home rule hero. Right. Yeah. And Natalie. Good job. Okay, Commissioner Walker. This is your moment now. Thank you. Yeah, right. No problem. What was I going to say? Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to look at every moment as being my moment. But, you know, I, so, yeah, so when I came on the commission, one of my priorities was really to see a consolidation of our advocacy priorities. And, you know, I knew from day one, and, you know, we all knew, it's not just me, but we needed, we needed, we needed dedicated advocacy in Tallahassee. And I will say as a result of those efforts in this last year, I mean, the consolidated approach that, you know, we as a city, we as a commission, our chamber of commerce embarked upon to get some measure of relief from the state was, was amazing. I mean, you start looking. I mean, really the testament and the metric is the amount of money that we received in, in hurricane relief. I will characterize, or I'll carry that, that relationship forward here because there was also some introductions that you made, Laura, and when we were in Tallahassee, with regards to, you know, my role on the PSTA board and meeting their lobbyists and the collaboration that you all did with them was also extremely beneficial to City of Dunedin because of the fact that currently in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Appropriation, which is currently in Senate committee hearings, still carries forward that the funding that our Congresswoman Luna was able to put in there for the ferry dock. And, you know, this is exactly the way this has to work because now, you know, we can, you know, we can, we can start making the things that are important to the City of Dunedin a reality. And it's a consolidated approach. And I will say that, and I'll echo my colleagues in terms of the fact that, you know, last year, this last time around was really the first time we'd ever gone up as a group. And it was just about as productive as you would hope that it would be. And anyway, I'm looking forward to next year and year after. And thank you. Great. Commissioner Degard. Thank you. Can I complain about the hotel now? That's for sure. Jesus. I echo my colleague's statement of gratitude and compliment the time in Tallahassee. I hesitate to bring up this next comment. And I'll try to get comments and questions in the right order in the future. But there is a growing concern about executive overreach right now. And the justification and the awarding of a community tends to be legislative and not executive. However, the executive branch seems to be making it their dominion. I'd like some constructive feedback on how we deal with that. Thank you. I would say, from our perspective, you know, we have relationships, I do, the firm does, within the governor's office, within, you know, the CFO's office, within the agencies, the DOGE agency, or whatever they're calling it now. So, you know, if there are issues that arise when they are, you know, sending their letters and requesting information, if there's anything that we can do to help facilitate better communication, open communication, you know, we're here and willing to help. We're doing it with some other communities right now. You know, just, you know, just being open and transparent. That's what they want. And we can do that. That's all I have. Good. I think the other thing I'd kind of add to that is that I think that we learned even when we didn't want the governor to veto those bills, like, you know, reaching out to some of our business owners and people that could actually have relationships there. So I think, again, it's about relationship. And so, and maybe all of us need to be kind of thinking about who are those critical people in our community that actually can be our advocates from a different realm of thinking, i.e. business ownership or whatever. So, yeah. But anyway, I will echo big time. And since even when we were going to get a lobbying firm, I'm like, yeah, I've seen a lot of wasted money on lobbying firms. But I have to say the Nicole-Laura combination is a winning combination. And I have been extremely impressed and have enjoyed, Laura, you know, the relationship we've gotten to as we work through this. And, Nicole, you're doing a fantastic job. I saw you in action up there. And I definitely, like, you know, it would be great, I think, having four of the five of us up there. And maybe we can get five of five this year. But either way, having almost all of the commissioners or all of us, I think it sends a message. They don't have time to hear a lot, right? So you've got to have your points. But when you have the numbers of the commission, I think, and you tell me, that speaks volumes that we care about our community, we're invested in our community, and we're bringing us all to the table to say this stuff's important to us. To me, that's almost as important as what the message is. And I think, you know, having you all go out to the state agencies, and we went out to DEP and sat with the assistant secretary. I mean, that spoke volumes, too. So we were invested, we're interested in what they had to, you know, to offer us from a grant perspective. I mean, really, in my history, and I've got a long history with the city as staff and commissioner, I don't know any time that many commissioners were up there during the session. And I agree, too, Nicole, where you said, you know, get one-on-ones while they're here. And then getting up there, you know, again, it builds the relationship. And then, you know, they're more educated on some of the issues we have and more open to hearing us. So, and hearing us on behalf of our community. So, again, I just echo that I think you guys are doing an awesome job. And it's certainly proved itself out this year. And so, keep doing it. So, it's great. I promise next year no one will end up in the trunk. I forgot about the trunk, that's right. And the dog's dishwasher. I'm definitely coming this year. I have to say, Commissioner Dugard was a good sport. We weren't sure how he was getting back out, but, you know. Anyway, okay, I think, thank you very much. And I think we're going to take a quick break before we go back into sanitation issues. I do want to say that Dr. Neely has a hard stop at noon. So, we just got to keep that in mind as we go through this one and go to the business one. So, but I'm not going to delay you guys. I saw you patiently waiting out there. So, okay, solid waste service level to unincorporated Pinellas County. We will start with staff presentation, unless the manager wants to say anything first. Okay. Now, we've got Sue and Bill. Thank you. Good morning. Sue Bartlett, Public Works Director, with Bill Pickrum, Solid Waste, I'm sorry, Sanitation and Recycling Superintendent. We're glad to be here before you this morning to go over in a little more detail the agenda item. It's in front of you. We're looking for some consensus direction today as we received last time to proceed down this path. We're bringing you a planned exit for the unincorporated county areas for service level. And we hope to get your feedback, input, questions, comments, so that we can take our next steps. So, how did we arrive? We asked us to come back. So, we came before you to hire the consultant for the Solid Waste Rate Study. And at that time, you directed, asked us really questions, good questions, about efficiencies. And before we implemented any rate changes, so we also came here with approval for an efficiency evaluation. We did all of public works. And during that, solid waste was the primary focus initially when we let that contract. But we did do all of public works. And then we presented those results and the recommendations for opportunities for those efficiency measures. And a consensus direction was to proceed. And we have. And so, recommendation number 59 was actually directly related to this service in the unincorporated parts of the county that Dunedin provides. This is the recommendation as stated in that study and in the recommendations to recover the full costs of the services provided to those areas or discontinue the service to those neighborhoods and reduce, correspondingly, reduce the resources required to service those neighborhoods. What we have, they estimated and we calculated, would be two driver positions plus two actual vehicles or trucks from the routes that would be eliminated. We are currently holding two vacant positions and we will not have any employee impacts from this. They are vacant. And that was our plan also then. The estimated savings annually from the consultant LAC consulting was between $132,911 and $166,139. So, these are estimates. They are gross estimates. They are actually very conservative estimates. But we will be tracking all of the costs, expenses associated with these changes. Every single change, not just this recommendation. And then we will be bringing that back to the city manager. And we'll be reporting it, I'm sure, in different forms to you all. But specifically, this project, we will be tracking separately. And before we get into all the detail, really, that is in your package, I wanted to mention that you have three handouts. They are just blow-ups of some of the information that we put inside your package. There is a detailed map like this solid waste unincorporated service areas with the zones. And we'll get to that and how that, what that means. There is a chart or a table in there that is also, again, in the handout. It will be in the presentation. And it's in your agenda item that depicts or has a little verbiage about what the boundaries of those areas are, like what neighborhoods they are. Just a little description. And then there's one more that's the planning area for the city of Dunedin. This one that you have in your handout right now on your desk is, it has the causeway cut off just so that it can zoom in closer for you. The one in the agenda item and in the presentation here will include the causeway because that is also included in the planning area. But I just wanted to clarify that. I'm going to turn it over to Bill, who's going to talk a little bit about the historical background and a little more about the detail of what we have out there for county unincorporated customers and what is serviced by other haulers. Bill? Good morning. How did we get here? It's on the next slide, page four. The Solid Waste Division has been providing a residential subscription-based garbage collection service in some nearby Pinellas County unincorporated neighborhoods for over 25 years now. Initially, it was implemented to assist the county in supporting its open market plan by providing some unincorporated residents better access to reliable service. At that time, 25 years ago, the division viewed this as a chance to expand its new automated collection routes. Yeah, Bill, I think you're going to move that closer to your, yeah, there you go. Thank you. Yep. 25 years ago, the division viewed this as a chance to expand its new automated collection routes and increase some revenue at the same time. Currently, the division serves approximately 1,200 unincorporated customers. Sorry. Thank you. Here's a breakdown. An overall view on this pie chart, what it represents is this, is that the operational landscape of our unincorporated routes features low route density and significant gaps between stops, making it inefficiency by industry standards. The total number of homes in all unincorporated areas we serve is approximately 3,400 homes. Our market penetration in these neighborhoods is approximately 35%, with the remaining 65% served by nine county licensed private haulers who compete in the open market. Next page. This is an unincorporated county customer map. It's called Dunedin Planning Area. This map is titled Dunedin Planning Area. It's available on the city's website under the Community Development Department webpage. This map does not serve as a routing tool for our program. However, we included it today because it helps identify the many city parcels or county parcels that we work within in the county that can, these folks can, request voluntary annexation into the city. Next page. The next page is a customer map that we use, that we put this together. And the handout again to what Sue explained was you have that in front of you as well, which is the bigger map with the letters by zones. This map is our customer county service area map. It shows the unincorporated service areas highlighting those neighborhoods. We created multiple zones for this project. Zones 1 through 10 are a Thursday route, while zones 10 to 13 are a Friday route. Using blue and pink colors within each zone visually shows the gaps between service stops. It's worth noting that two service areas extend beyond the primary planning zone shown on the previous slide. And that's zone 1, which is Spanish Oaks, just north of Curlew Road. And down on the bottom of the map, it is zone 13. We felt it was necessary to give a little bit different content and kind of frame up where these zones or neighborhoods by definition are. So zones 1 through 9, again, are the Thursday route on this slide. Note how spread out zone 9 is, which is a majority of it is Gulfview Estates up north of Curlew. However, there are pockets scattered throughout on zone 9. Zone 10 through 13 are customers south of Main Street, which make up the Friday route. Perfect. The next page on this slide is the unincorporated zones by defined, and it shows the Thursday route, broken down again by neighborhood, with details of how many homes we service compared to how many homes are serviced by one of the nine private haulers. Zones 2 and 4 combined, you'll note on this page, have two city annex parcels, while zone 5, which is New Athens City, has five annex parcels. Zone 9, you'll see we have 37 annex parcels, and that's mostly those folks that reside in the Gulfview Estates neighborhood. Next slide. The next slide displays the chart for the Friday county route. It's broken down again by neighborhood, details on city accounts versus those by a private hauler. There are no annexations in any of these zones or the Friday route, if you will. Inefficiencies in the unincorporated areas. Our trucks, as you can see, our trucks travel many miles to serve 35% of the customers in the area, in those neighborhoods, causing significant wear and tear on our equipment. Expensing a lot of fuel also raises our carbon footprint. Additionally, it raises liability concerns, as we have three city trucks performing service, driving those county roads, along with the other nine private haulers. Again, what the takeaway on this is that we're servicing in an area that nine county licensed haulers may be driving these same streets any day of the week. We're driving them once a week on a Thursday or a Friday. Sometimes we receive complaints of not servicing, providing trash collections to a next door neighbor, when actually that neighbor is not one of our customers. Our trucks look similar. We all have similar style trucks. But, you know, to our benefit, we have a service verification platform, which is our GPS platform that helps us resolve those complaints quickly. A recommended exit strategy. I think that goes back to you. It sure does. Thank you, Phil. One more thing I wanted to mention that I neglected at the beginning is that there are some minor edits to this PowerPoint presentation, spelling, a little bit of a clarification. The content is the same as posted on the agenda and as you have in front of you. But we wanted to make sure that we were as clear as possible on the presentation. So there are a few changes. So the recommended exit strategies we want to present to you, a little more detail on this. We spent a lot of time planning and looking at how best to do this. But we have determined that we'll have notices that will be sent by direct mail. And then they also will post it on each cart. It's the best way to hit both maybe a property owner as well as whoever has that trash service and they're taking it in and out every day. We have different people that help others out. And so it could be that, you know, they get the notice and they make sure that they tell the person who's in that home. But we also will do direct mail. We have that information from billing. And we anticipate a 30-day notice that includes a final service date so that there's plenty of time for a person to get a different service. A list of haulers that are active in Pinellas County that's also on their website. We have been working with communications extensively on the correspondence and the information on how we would get it out. It's very, very detailed instructions on how to deactivate the account should they decide to discontinue service ahead of their date. They are welcome to do that through our normal process. But we wanted to include that in the information. And then anyone who has deposits of $100, that's our deposit, for some individuals, they can get that back after we retrieve the carts. And we have anticipated that transition to take place over the next five weeks, allowing utility billing to discontinue the services and help distribute that workload, answer phone calls and things like that, as well as notifying our customers, answering their questions. And I'm sure that Laura will be getting a lot of questions. So we do plan to develop a one-page flyer with the information on it so that it can be distributed and available, posted on the web. And, of course, we're going to continue to seek input. We don't have that finalized. Superness and her team has been helping us a great deal with how to fashion that message, as well as the letters that go to the citizens. In addition to this 30-day notice of termination, we will be providing formal notice to Pinellas County through the county manager. Solid Waste, Pinellas County Solid Waste is aware of it, but we will formalize that notification so that they have the information clearly all through the channels there. And then we will be utilizing Solid Waste staff and other public works staff or other city staff as needed. You heard about utility billing, so we've talked through. We'll have regular communications with them if they need support. Leanne has offered some ideas and has a plan if they get inundated with calls, especially at the beginning when the notice first goes out. So, again, we've worked with them on the plan to discontinue or exit the unincorporated county areas so that they can handle that work billing part. So, five weeks includes really everything we need to do, the removing, dismantling, and inventorying of all those city roll carts. About 1,200, it's like, it does vary that number from day to day depending on how many services we are providing. I think I added up the number here at that time, it was like 1175, something like that. And it does include also the reduction of recycling services, so we have already notified our contractor, who is also in the audience, of this anticipated reduction in recycling and pickup of recycling. And then we'd be picking up our carts as well with that pickup. So, you can see we start out with the bottom there, 12 and 13, and then 10 and 11. Those are the furthest routes away from the city. Again, Bill mentioned one of those is not even in the planning area. But in 12, 11, and 10, there are those parcels they could annex in, should they choose. And 13 and 1 are not in our planning area. They would not have that option. Bill mentioned again in history, I just want to say that when they first, solid waste first started going into these areas, and I think Mo actually provided us a little background on some of the things that were happening at that time, and the thoughts of the city, which hopefully she'll share from her first-hand experience. But these, we're going to start with those that are the least efficient. And there's a whole, there's nine approved licensed haulers, I think that number's right, in Pinellas County. And that's a far cry from the one and two that were available at the time that they, we helped out the county and we provided services. And even now, you can see ratio-wise, the greater ratio is to a private hauler. And we have no control over that. We do have a resolution that sets the rate for those that we are servicing that are not in the city limits, that are not a resident of the city. And that resolution would need to be updated if we continue to provide any services to these customers. Right now, the other utilities, it's 25 percent. Our current resolution is 11. And that would be in addition to any rates, rate increases that we bring back to you. So we have taken this before not only our efficiency consultant, LA Consulting, but also before Raftalis, who is the rate consultant. We plan to come back with, in a couple of months with you to present that information. When we first started looking at the exit plan, we were looking at a good period of time over the year. Then we talked to the city manager. She said, can you do it faster? We shortened it up. And then LAC said, can you shorten it up? And then Raftalis said, hey guys, you need to be done with this like yesterday. It's really going to impact our rates. And it can have a big effect. And so they are going to present both of those scenarios to you when we do the rate study, so you'll know what the impact was. But what they really wanted is, if we are going to proceed, they can provide that data. We can provide the tracking and they can actually show citizens the cost savings to our residents by eliminating these inefficient areas. And what the positive impact is to rates. And so that is our plan. If we receive direction from you all and consensus direction to go that direction. So I added these back in. It wasn't a mistake adding them back in at the end. In case you have questions about these, that we can talk about the neighborhoods. If you have any questions about what we're going to be doing next. But we do want to hear your feedback. We would like after we receive it, we'll see how many questions and what things we need to do. But as soon as possible, we'd like to send out those notifications so they can begin. And we can begin the cart removal. Here it says the first week of October. That was really kind of a leftover. So it's going to be dependent on what direction we receive. Finishing our communication plan. Getting those notices out. And then the first week will be effective when we, after we've posted it for 30 days. After we've notified them for 30 days. Then we have five weeks consecutively of picking up. Two days for Thursday. And two days for Friday. And really one day for Zone 9. And so any modification of that would affect that timeline. We also have talked through contingency plans, actually. It says plan, but in case of storms and hurricanes. And we're very adaptable, as you guys know. So we will utilize all our resources. And if we need to contract resources. Either to delay or to speed up the process. So that we are within our communication plan. But that we are still communicating regularly what's going on. And, you know, in Pinellas County as a whole. I think we're getting a little exercise on this one. That we need to adjust when we have a storm. So we have thought that through. And one more impact that will be coming after we finish this. Is a new route structure in place. That's much more efficient for our resident customers. And there will be a similar plan. Communication plan to notify them. Because some of the days that the trash is picked up may change. It will change. Because we will have those resources spread out. And Raftelis has a model. They've already put in some of the new route information. And has shown that we need less people. And less trucks. In order to run those routes. And it will be, you know, across the five days. So there will be a little modification. We'll come back with that. We want to have those days identified. So that after we remove these. But we'll get this project done first. Before we change anything about our residence service. All right. Any questions? So I'm just going to clarify what Sue was referring to. As my memory serves me. I think I was assistant city manager when we started to do the unincorporated areas. At that time we had a sanitation director who came from private sector. And very much felt like the more we, if we can, you know, basically just like a business. The more we can take in the unincorporated areas and fill in those gaps. The more we actually make the rates cheaper for our customers. But, again, it was all based on the fact that you've got to get, you know, you've got to get enough. You've got to get enough of the unincorporated area to make it worth your while. So that was the thinking. And so I'm just kind of filling that in. So I will go to questions. And I will start with Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Sue, can you go to slide 14? 20. Yes, ma'am. And that's where you've got the exit plan. Friday route, week one, week two, week three. There we go. Okay. Just help me understand this a little better. It, I read this as we're attacking each zone per week. So that where is that focus versus, and how much time is the resident going to have to really make a decision? Is it that one week? 30 days. 30 days. They'll have 30 days. 30 days. We will provide 30 day notice. They'll have three days. Correct. Yes. 30 days. So, you know, if they don't get the notice for a week for some reason, you know, that's still, they still have three weeks. But we'll give them a date in that 30-day letter that we will have discontinued service. So they will have a minimum of 30 days. Some of these folks will have more than 30 days. So, I mean, we'll even, it's likely we'll have a little reminder for those in week five. So, if we don't see them exiting themselves or, you know. And so, each week, so Friday, we pick up the carts now from zone 11, I mean 12 and 13. So, the next week on that Friday, we don't have those to pick up, right? So, we just try to allow ourselves enough time in the field to do this because we're picking up carts as we go. So, we know we're going to need more resources on that first route to get those carts picked up. Because it's one thing picking up, emptying the trash. We're actually picking up the carts. We have another truck to put the carts into. And, again, we're doing this collaboratively with our recycling vendor. So, it's a lot of communication. We have a team designated with Brian Rorson and John Haggerty to actually just focus on that instead of their regular Friday duties. And then, and so on. And they'll bring them back. And we have a place to store those carts. And then, you have to go through them and refurbish or, you know, throw away the ones, discard the ones that are not good. So, that process will repeat itself then the next week. So, then by week two, after week two, we won't have a Friday route, right? We'll have those resources to handle the rest of the work that has to be done associated with this. We'll have some notifications and things like that. So, then we'll take a little more time through the Thursday routes. And you can see it says how many customers. So, that first Friday is a more intensive, our first one. It's just more intensive. It's still very reasonable because we started out with a lot more than that in one week. So, this just seems like it's a reasonable pace. So, does that help that explanation? Okay. All right. So. And I'm going to say it's all me. So, and that's fine. So, if I'm in zone 10 and 11. Yes. What's going to happen to me that first week? You're going to get your. And what is this week? Have we, have we already notified? Is this just. No. We have not notified anybody because we're here before you seeking. No, no. It's funny in relation to this slide. I. After the 30 days. After the 30 days. Yeah. After 30 days. Then never mind. Okay. Okay. It's all good. So, the rates that we're currently charging those, I can't say residents, those customers. Are they different than what we're charging our residents? By 11%. Yes. By 11%. They are 11% higher than the residents are paying. Okay. And that's still not enough to cover. The expenses. Right. No. Okay. That is not. Do you know what the percentage difference is between our residents and private industry or our customers in private industry? We anticipated you would ask that question, but they are varied and they're very difficult to get. There are nine different haulers. And so, we've done a little informal survey. Raftalus, part of their mission or their charge and their contract and their study is to compare reasonable other rates, other cities. And they have assured us that we are not near market with our customer services. Largo just increased. And they are doing several studies in the area and have done some other studies. So, they will come and bring that information and let you know relativity. But both consultants have told us that we are not recovering our money. And that is why we are going into the fund. And it is on the decline so that we can provide services. So, we need to even up those rates. And we want to do not just this efficiency, but all the efficiencies that are in the opportunities that are identified and get those efficiencies so we can keep our rates lowest as possible. I get that and appreciate that. Are those customers currently, are we servicing those customers with any other services in the city? Water, whatever it may be? You know Jorge, our deputy city manager? Good morning. Jorge King, this deputy city manager. Yes, Vice Mayor. And some of those customers, such as in the Greenbrier neighborhood, water is provided by the county. Wastewater is provided by the city of Dunedin. And there is a couple of different pockets throughout the city where we provide utility services for either water or wastewater depending on the service area and our facilities nearby. And I know water is a little different than solid waste. You can't just go out and we don't have nine different water sources out there for the right. So, if we lose them as solid waste customers, is that any impact on them on still receiving water from us, on them still wanting to receive water from us? Yeah. Will we lose those, will we lose them as water customers to the county? No. No. Okay. Different service areas. Right. Okay. With the original intent for the mayor on why we kind of started this program, have we continued to reach out to them to try and get them to annex in? Have we provide more services or we just got what we got at the beginning and have just been coasting the whole time? We haven't reached it if I may. From a solid, I'm sorry. That's right, go ahead. From a solid waste perspective, I think the answer is no. There are areas throughout the city's service area. For example, if there's an unincorporated resident that's within our water service area that is on a well that ends up having arsenic issues, then there is an opportunity for us to provide water service, but as a result of that, they have to annex. But as far as a concerted effort to annex certain areas within a certain planning area, I don't believe that the commission has provided that direction to community development. If I may, we did do that with Lofty Pines. You may recall when we were doing the septic to sanitary, and it was not successful. I mean, we sent out a mass mailing to Lofty Pines, invited them to a meeting here. I don't think one person annexed. Well, that's a one-time shot versus a concerted effort over time to remind them how wonderful the city is. And could I clarify that, too? Because I think the other part of the question is the original intent was you didn't have to index. We just, any unincorporated people, if we had, if we got it all, then that would make a cheaper for our, you know, just kind of the scale of, economy of scales. And I think we've stopped marketing it some time ago, right? So we don't, we didn't market it as a service since when? Yeah, and Mayor, as you mentioned, you know, and this obviously predates my tenure with the city, but my understanding was then, aside from the previous director's initial intent to do so, the other reason that we actually started providing that service in the unincorporated areas, unlike today where you've got nine different licensed haulers that are in those areas. At the time, there was a very limited ability to provide that service. So that's when the county reached out and said, you know, can you provide to these adjacent areas? Are you able to provide that service? It's substantially different now because you've got nine different haulers. So talking about a carbon footprint, you've got all these different haulers running down the same road, crisscrossing each other. That was the liability reference that the bill made earlier. So I don't believe that there was a detailed analysis done on how that 11% came about. Obviously, our rate consultant and LAC have indicated that that's not sufficient. And so there is a certain degree of subsidy that's occurring in order to continue to provide that service. So hopefully that answers your question. It does. It does. For those residents who annexed in that are still part of this. So we're talking about the fringe of those. Will those still continue to be serviced? Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So we're still going to be going the distance. We won't be traveling. We won't be spotted throughout the neighborhood, but we'll at least be going to the neighborhood. In those areas where they can't annex, there are certain areas that are outside that they're not contiguous. Right. I understand that. Okay. This one? George, did you mind? Oh, okay. Bill's telling me that we have it on the map. Right. This one? Correct. I will say, you know, earlier during the legislative update and some of those conversations, with respect to utilities, almost in every session, we see these challenges to home rule. Right? Right now, we provide water and sewer service to some unincorporated residents and they pay a 25% surcharge because they're not a city resident. There's almost, on a yearly basis, this attempt to impact home rule where, at the state level, they basically say you're not allowed to do that going forward. So that is an additional concern to continue to serve these areas because whatever we come back with Raftalis on a future rate study recommendation, if these areas that are still serviced, that are unincorporated residents, let's say it's a 25% surcharge on top of whatever rate recommendation comes back, if we have a future legislative mandate that says you're no longer able to charge that surcharge, then there is no incentive to annex at that point. Right? So it continues to be a cost that the city residents then have to bear to provide that service outside the city limits. I respect that. Okay. That's fine. But if we can cover the costs up until, then there's no loss on the city. Right? If we're covering the costs. Then it's a matter, at that time, we have to cut pay. Right? So it's like, if we can't cover our costs, then yeah, then we can't service you. Sorry. The cost is distributed. Yeah, the cost is distributed. So again, it goes back to the efficiencies, right? If we're able to reduce these non-city resident service areas, then we can reduce the number of equipment. We can reduce staff through attrition. We can then manage those costs so that those rate increases are not as high as they would be otherwise by keeping these residents. That's okay, Sue Bartlett. Okay. Thanks. So the rate structure is a result of all services provided, right? So when we have inefficiencies, there's a difference between picking up one home, one place because they're a resident. Then the rest of the residents, the cost is offset by all residents for including service to that resident. There still hasn't, I can't zoom in on this for some reason, but an and blow it up for you to see. But the number of parcels that are annexed that are in those areas is very few, three, I think, five maybe total. And so, yes, that is still inefficient to pick those up. But the relative expenses are much smaller than the expenses associated with all of these that are further away, area one, area 13, that don't even have any opportunity to annex in. So the cost of providing them business, and that includes not just traveling down there with multiple trucks, but also traveling with their waste down to solid waste and disposing it, and, you know, maintenance of those carts. All the same costs, but the extra cost, because we're just traveling to them alone, and then we're not picking up everybody in that neighborhood. The 35% is primarily up here in this area. What is that called? That's called Gulfview Estates. Gulfview Estates. Primarily, those are the majority of them when we start counting our 35% that we're able to pick up, but, you know, you're a few here and a few there in these farther out areas. So the extra cost for helping them, yes, we're going to, that's why 25% extra comes into play. That would have to be a sufficient enough amount to cover so that our residents are not impacted by those inefficiencies. We're not here to make a profit, right? We're, the idea is to provide the service and provide it very well. When we did query other cities about, do they provide services to the unincorporated? And at first we asked our consultant, we were at Reptelis, and they just kind of laughed at us, and then basically shook their head no, and then that they weren't aware of any. And then Bill asked a few of his counterparts, and they're like, we've been out of that business for so long. We don't, you know, City Clearwater's answer was we, they can annex in and then we'll service them. So there are not, these other municipalities are sticking to their planning areas, sticking to their residents that are currently annexed in. And again, we don't, we're Dunedin, we don't, we don't, we want to provide great service to everybody that we provide the service to. We just found clearly when it's identified by two consultants that these are inefficient and they are actually impacting our resident rates, that it's prudent to bring that to you and for you to provide us direction which way that you would like us to provide services. And that's what we put the plan together for. I know it's hard to think of unintended consequences, but can you imagine any, what might happen that we would prefer not to happen by this going away? It could be none, I don't know, but from a city perspective. Well, I do think, if I may, Mayor, and we discussed yesterday during a pre-meeting regarding the subject that we need to reach out to Pinellas County because these are their residents, their constituents, and, and just, you know, by, by way of intergovernmental coordination, let them know. We know the plan moving forward and the communication plan and that type of a thing. But that's, that's, you know, one of the, the consequences of this that I see. And I'm sure that they're going to want to communicate with their own residents as well. So, about this issue. So, that's, that's one thing that we see, we talked about. It's possible, we talked about, it's possible that some of these residents that are in the unincorporated area think they're city residents. Already. Already. So, we, we did talk about that openly, you know, expressing their voting preferences, things like that. But they are county residents. And so, I think that's going to be part of the education, too, to, you know, help them understand, you know, you can be a city resident, but you're not, you're not currently, your property is not. That would be Laura's job, right? Yeah, she, she's experienced at it because of the hurricanes, that we couldn't pick up the debris from these residents either, because we were not eligible for reimbursement from FEMA. The county had a plan, and to Jennifer's point, they communicated with them. We all communicated regularly with them. But we were on different schedules, and pick up, and things like that. So, it. Vice Mayor, if I, if I could, and, and in that communication with the county. And Bill sits on one of the technical committees on solid waste that different municipalities are represented on with the county. And, you know, based on my prior tenure with the county, and having lived in, in Hillsborough for almost 30 years, there are different options available. Pinellas County has not pursued, that I'm aware of, what Hillsborough did. They put out a contract for Hillsborough County to have multiple vendors be awarded. And depending on the area of the county you were in, at the time I lived in Carol Woods, so I believe waste management was the vendor that served that area that I lived in. So, that's one way to reduce the carbon footprint, because instead of having nine different vendors providing service to a specific area, then there is an award that's made to a specific vendor for different parts of the county, and then they provide that service. And the bill, in the case when I lived in Hillsborough, it was just added to my annual tax bill. So, once a year it got paid, just like swift mug gets tacked onto your tax bill and things like that. So, that is an opportunity that Pinellas County could consider going forward. They currently don't do that, so it's an open market scenario. But there are opportunities the county could pursue in order to perhaps reduce that carbon footprint going forward, and then provide that service to their unincorporated residents. And the screen that is up now, is that the city limit border, right, the red lines? The red line, yes. Red line, around, okay. Is it, wait, George is going to answer correctly. So, that's the planning map that's contained within the interlocal agreement for annexation, so. Okay, and so the unincorporated areas that we're talking about are actually inside the city limits. Several of them are, yes. So, our service actually isn't going outside of the city, it's just the unincorporated areas within the city limits. Yeah, I don't know if you extend outside city limits. Yeah, I don't believe Greenbrier is inside the city limits. Is it? Thirteen and one are not. But it is within the local planning area. So, it's servicing something that's within the local planning area. It's those two areas outside. One and thirteen are outside the local planning area. Yeah, outside the local planning area. So, we could not service those. We could not annex those properties. All right. All right. Thank you all very much. I'm done. Commissioner Sandbergen. So, that $132,000 to $166,000 in savings, besides two trucks and staff, how else was that arrived at? So, there's immediate costs and the cost avoidance, and then there's recurring savings. And that includes, well, let's just start with the truck. Okay. The avoidance is if we don't purchase two vehicles, about $500,000 a piece. So, we start out with that already impacting our capital plan. So, those, they're estimated at annual. So, the first year, it's going to, you know, we make payments, right, on those. The first year, it's a certain set amount for both. And so, we don't have that anymore. It's not in our capital. We wouldn't be replacing them. We would just, you know, just surplus them. So, we would receive the disposal monies back. And we would not have maintenance on those. So, it impacts fleet. Part of the analysis includes looking at, then, how does that affect other areas? So, it affects fleet. Recycling is stopped immediately. So, we don't pay for 1,200 customers or 11, whatever. It's the exact amount. We don't pay that fee to them to pick those up. That's an immediate reduction of expense. We don't have the waste to dispose of. We don't carry it down to solid waste, you know, down to Pinellas County solid waste. And empty it and burn it. You know, we don't have that cost. So, that disposal cost plus fuel. And then, the two positions, a salary benefits, you know, what goes along with the position. All of those costs. Those are not enough. Two positions. Not enough to impact our administrative costs. I mean, eventually, there's a balance there, you know. But, at this point, that doesn't change those costs. They will still be there. So, it includes all the, you know, all the costs, any expenses associated with those routes. So, of the 1,200 customers that we would cut out, approximately, what do we generate in revenue from those 1,200? Not enough to cover our expenses. $50 a month? Clearly. $40 a month? What? Zero? And that's why we have a rate consultant doing this study to tell us how much. So, do you think we're jumping a little ahead? Maybe we should put this off until we get that rate study so we can see if we need to adjust accordingly? That is your decision, but I do not believe that because they've been, this was identified before as an efficiency. It's been identified by both consultants as an inefficient practice. And even though the first consultant, which that's what we hired him for, is to make recommendations for opportunities, they did make it a recommendation. I wouldn't expect the ref to tell us to make a recommendation to us, but they asked, can we do it faster? Because they want to come before this board, and they've already been back here. They've been before you with the utility rates, with stormwater rates. They know, right, that the goal is, let's be as efficient as possible, and let's have the rates, you know, fairly reflect the services. And, you know, their instructions to us was, can you get this done faster? Because we want to come to the commission with a record of the savings and how it reduced the rate, that we didn't have to increase the rate to cover that. I can understand Greenbrier. That's a Clearwater address, not City of. We agree with that. But, you know, we probably have no business picking up their trash anyway. We could cut Greenbrier out of this. I guess it just seems like, I think we could be a little more surgical. It eliminated some of these areas that we consider to be non-profitable. But we don't make a profit, right? Right. Right. But we, I mean, it's just a matter of cost, and what those expenses, and what they are, and what they cost. And if you can, I don't know, this one, okay, it lets me zoom in. If you could just look at these grids, and then that's why we do have the charts to go back to on the numbers themselves. But look at 13, look at 12. How inefficient is that? Like, there's so many customers in each of these areas. And some of the parcels are completely colored, and that's one customer. But, again, I emphasize, we're just trying to bring you the facts of what the costs are and the efficiency. I understand. And number 12 is, that is Greenbrier. You know? Yeah. It really doesn't make much sense. Right. And there's. And where it's colored, where it's shaded like that, are the ones in pink the ones that Eden is servicing? Yes. Sorry. Sorry. Okay. Okay. Yeah, Commissioner, I guess to your comment, we've had two different consultants indicate that just because of that hodgepodge approach of not hitting every home along the roadway, that it is an inefficient route, inefficient delivery of service, and thereby impacting the overall cost to the residents that we do provide. So, you know, again, it's. Do you have any commercial clients, commercial solid waste customers that would be affected by this? No. No. No. No commercial. Mm-mm. Okay. What about the guy that puts out all of his, which trims his palm trees, his hedges? I guess that the truck that comes around to Eden, I'd call it bulk pickup or whatever. So these, they're going to lose that also. Well, they, that is offered by the private hauler. I live in the unincorporated county. And they, you know, I, I can decide what services I want from one of nine haulers that are licensed. Or if more get licensed, I can choose recycling, yard waste, pickups one time a week, two times a week. I mean, it's a plethora of services that, depending on what I want to pay. So, and I pay quite a bit more than the service provided. And then even just, just saying one example. So, are you in favor of reducing this from your position? Are you in favor of doing this? Yes. I, and, and here so is, I manage the department as an enterprise fund. I can't compete in the open market within the private sector. They're much more able to be more nimble. Is his microphone on? Oh, it's on. Yeah, it is. There you go. Okay. You got to put it right, right, right next to your lips. How about now? Yeah. Okay. Rockstar. Pretend you're Rockstar. Okay. Yeah. Okay. It's, it's, how I, how we operate our enterprise fund is like a business. However, when we get into the open market, and the county's position is in the open market is they want choice and they want competition. Right. I, I'm not as, we're not able to navigate as nimble as they can. Price goes up, fuel, price of steel goes up. They can adjust their rates quarterly, possibly, or however they do with their pro month or quarterly pro formas. My rates are set every five years. You know, you summer, that was a great answer. I didn't think that's the way you were going, but that really, it really made it a lot more clear for me to understand. Um, and I know it came up about pricing of those private vendors. Yeah, that's, I'm sure all over the board and, you know, the customers, consumers are going to have to figure that out. We are. We're, we're public servants. Yeah. You know, who work in solid waste in our program. Our program, it works for Dunedin. It works for these folks, but they're benefiting quite a bit. You take the level of service we provide each week. You put that to the choice selection, competition selection. I can't say this 100% that I know what the rate would be, but it'd be a lot more than what they're paying now. It could be well over 30, $35 a month. Yeah. And we're at the $26. Well, I think the most important thing is, is we're looking out for the residents of Dunedin. And I did that. I appreciate and love that answer. So thank you. Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. So let me, this is, these are just some fundamental questions because this is obviously complicated. So, voluntary annexation. What I understand is, is that anybody in the unincorporated area could apply for voluntary annexation. If they are located in one of the enclaves, yes, sir. If they're located where? In one of the enclaves that are recognized in the interlocal agreement. Okay. And in that map. Yeah. Okay. And those type, and just as an addition, as an aside, in those type A enclaves they're called, you don't have to have, you don't have to be contiguous. You can actually be in the center of that enclave without contiguity around you and still be able to voluntarily annex. Okay. Is there a cost associated with that? What do we charge for? I don't recall what we charge for an annexation application. Do you see typically about two to three a year? Typically, when they're brought, they're not brought for sanitation service. They're brought for either water or sewer service. It's been extended and then we ask them to voluntarily annex. But we don't run a ton of them and it's actually been a lot less over the last couple of years for some reason. Yeah. So, it sounds to me like there would be a percentage of those that are, let's just say, for instance, they live in an unincorporated area. They desire to voluntarily annex. Sounds to me like though there's some properties that would not be eligible for this. Is that true? There's really no prohibition to annexation if that property is contained within this in our local agreement. And I think there's probably about 450 parcels or so that are currently unincorporated that are within our planning area. Any of those parcels could come in. Now, typically, they're not going to do it unless they're gaining some sort of benefit. Yeah. So, but, and all they're going to get when they annex is the services that are provided to that parcel once they annex that we can provide from a city perspective. Okay. So, they would still potentially have to contract out for other services? Absolutely. Yeah, gotcha. Okay. And I just, sorry to interrupt, Commissioner, but one other thing I would add is you see these annexation petitions as well as a two-read request. So, there are some things that can be considered as parcels come in as well by the commission. Yeah. And that actually leads to my next question on Greenbrier specifically. It, you know, we did, we've discussed, we've annexed properties within Greenbrier. And this is probably more of a, you know, just kind of an educational question, but those annexed properties fall outside of the city limit lines. Does that have any impact to what they are eligible for or anything like that? I mean, in essence what it does is it just changes the tax district. So, now you are securing those city benefits, but you're also under the tax structure for the city of Dunedin versus unincorporated Pinellas County. Well, you're also subject to the code of ordinances of the city of Dunedin. Of course. And all codes and regulations there too. So, you'd be subject now to our comp plan, not the unincorporated comp plan. You'd be subject to our land development code, not the unincorporated land development code. And do they become eligible voters at that point? Absolutely. They do? Okay. So, in terms of the service allocation, I think most of it got, it was answered. But it sounds to me like when we give the 30 day notice, then the residents will have to basically do their research in terms of a provider of the service. So, what that means is that they have a lot more choices available to them, really. That is correct. And we are providing that list to them with the notice. And it's also on the Pinellas County website. Okay. And so, in terms of this, have we coordinated with the county on this at this point? Or are you waiting for the consensus direction from the commission? We, formally, we are waiting for the consensus direction, yes. Bill has had this discussion within the solid waste community. As Jorge mentioned, he's on that committee. And so, they've had discussions. He's trying to find information. But we have not formally communicated that, other than we're going to a workshop. So, our intent is if we get consensus direction from the city commission today, then I will send a letter to Barry Burton with attachments, just informing him what we're doing and what the communications plan is. Okay. All right. That's good. And then, I just want to make sure I'm clear on that 25% surcharge. That is a surcharge that we charge the residents in the unincorporated area to receive services from the city. Is that right? So, for example, you know, George can speak to it being a Greenbrier resident. We keep using that as an example. But, so you're, if you're an unincorporated county resident in Greenbrier, you're receiving water from, water service from Pinellas County, sewer service from the city of Dunedin. So, in that scenario, they pay a 25% surcharge. What the current situation is for solid waste is 11%, and our consultants have identified that that is woefully underserving the cost that it is for us to continue to provide that service. So, assuming that we have a rate recommendation come before the commission here in the next couple of months, should that service continue to be provided for solid waste, then it would be, I'm assuming the recommendation would be whatever that new rate is, plus at least 25%, to be in line with what we do with other utilities provided to unincorporated residents, where we have that ability to provide that service. The only thing I would add is, as it, say, that same Greenbrier resident then chose, say, I chose then to annex into the city of Dunedin, I think then that 25% surcharge goes away, and I'm paying whatever the regular rate is for the city of Dunedin. That's correct. Yeah. Sure. And that was that whole conversation about, you know, future legislative action at the state level could eliminate that. Sure. George, if I could ask a question. On the planning map, if there was any residents in 10, 11, 12, 13, if they were annexed in residence, would the city boundaries change? I want to just clarify for, because we provided those maps, if they reflect all annexed properties. Yeah. This is a living map, so it would be modified with whatever date. So it may be dated, but we don't show any annexed properties in those zones at this, as of the time of the printing of that planning map, which was probably a couple weeks ago. Yeah. Just to be clear, so, because they are identified and hashed marks in this zone map, but when you get outside there, there are none. And I said, well, the city limits don't go out there. And so it would show as a little red, you know, city limit line outside of it. And it is currently posted on our web and updated at that time. But right now, there's none in their zones. Does that help? Oh, absolutely. I know. I appreciate that. Yeah. So I guess, you know, my concern in this is really is addressing the residents that I think you made the point, Sue, residents who live in an unincorporated area but think that they live in the confines of the great city of Dunedin. And I, you know, so this just goes back to the communication strategy. And, but, really, and I, here's a clarification question. You know, there are benefits to annex into the city of Dunedin. And one of the biggest, in my opinion, is the, well, not my opinion, but it's the reality, is our millage rate is lower than, than the counties. Yes. And so I want to make, I guess I just want to make sure that's part of the communication strategy, that there is a benefit. And, because what I don't want to do is, you know, you know, the people that live in some of these unincorporated areas, they are, they're, they are, in my opinion, great citizens of the great city of Dunedin. And I just want to make sure that, you know, we communicate that to them. So, we did have that discussion. We, in putting the other communications plan, we'll have everybody who's answering the phones, Laura, and, and most certainly, Lindsey and Angelica, upstairs, and the main line, as well, in community development, the front desk, have the, have all of those bullet points put together. And we'll send those also to the county. Yeah. So that, you know, because they're going to be answering a lot of these questions as well. So, and we'll be able to offer the annexation route, and probably have another number in community development for them to call. You know, we can send applications to them, most certainly. But yes, I mean, we're going to, I think, you know, in talking yesterday, that's what we see is, is probably the number one issue is those that don't understand that they are not in, unincorporated Pinellas County. Yeah. So. That's, those are all the questions I have. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner DeGuard. Thank you, Mayor. And I owe you a second thank you for giving me context on the history of this particular issue. I don't think anybody else sitting in that chair could have done it. Thank you for that. Thank you. And that brings us to the issue. I feel like we are getting on a train after it's left the station a little bit here. It feels as though we've got a destination. And I just want to be sure which issue I'm dealing with. It could be pricing. It could be elasticity of demand. It could be private haulers versus a city hauler. It could be creaming the market if you wanted to get into a marketing concept. There are several issues including annexation if you want to really throw in them all. All of those issues are wrapped up into this one. And I feel like we're being asked to give consensus direction on a context that's strategic. We're really in a tactical place. Tactically being we are about ready to notify a bunch of people that aren't citizens that their service is going to be severed. That's about where we are. Is that a correct assessment? Well, with consensus direction, really, that's why we're here. Well, that is a yes, no question. Well, yes. If your answer is yes, the answer is yes. Yes. So you want consistent direction on yes, no? Yes. Yes. Okay. Because, yes. No, no, yes. We had consensus direction to implement the recommendations. This is recommendation number 59. So that's why we brought the information back to you. And now we were just checking. I want you to know what's involved and what the impacts are, which that's what you wanted to. So that's why I represent you. And to elaborate on Sue's comments, so when we came before you with efficiency recommendations for public works, why? Okay. This was one of them. Efficiency into the list, too, then. Yes. Oh, that's the number one. And you said go forth and implement, so this is our attempt to do so. The challenge of a commissioner is not to solve the problem, but to define the issue and show strategic direction. I don't think that's what we're being asked to do here. I really don't. And that makes me uncomfortable, to be honest. I think we've got a yes, no question, and I think it's really a strategic question. And the strategic question is do we want to incorporate these other enclaves that are not incorporated while we're providing service? I think that's the real question here. And I think that sometimes pricing gets you there, and sometimes decline of service is another way to get you there. It looks like we're going down a path here. And I'm perfectly comfortable with that path. I just wanted to clarify that's where we are. And that's where we are. Thank you very much. That's all I got. Okay. So, let me get to my questions. Okay. So, and I gave a heads up to the manager about this. And actually, Commissioner Sandbergen was going down the same path. What I would be used to is there's, what, 1,200 unincorporated customers? Mm-hmm. About. Mm-hmm. About? 1175. And I would see the revenue that we would lose. Mm-hmm. And I would see on the spreadsheet the expenses that we would have reduced. And then I would see the balance. And so it would be absolute clarity like this is a loser versus later we're going to, you know, because basically I'm just hearing it's more than what we'll save. But, again, that's, I don't see a business usually cutting off part of its market without having a spreadsheet that at least projects. We do have a spreadsheet. We can provide that. Okay. So do we know for those 1,200 what the loss of revenue will be? There won't be a loss. I mean, there's no net loss. I mean, we're losing money out of our fund to support this service. I mean, we are using the money from the fund to support this service. So, yes, we could. But we are losing whatever rates get paid by those customers. I mean. So that's the loss of revenue. Yes. It would be, I mean, specifically, yes, we can say the loss of revenue. But then you have to offset that with the expenses, right? Correct. So. The spreadsheet. Right. Exactly. We can provide that to the commission. Right. I mean, have you, have you seen that? To show like what. Right. So I guess, I mean, you know, the rule always is no surprises, right? Right. But now we're going to do the spreadsheet after. Well, we'll provide it to you. I mean. Before. That's my, I'm me for not bringing a spreadsheet with the estimated. There are some estimated benefits that are future recurring, like the maintenance and things like that. But hard numbers, we have what the reduction from the vehicles, what the reduction of the expenses for solid, even though they vary, you know, for recycling. How many customers will provide that to you? It's clearly. I honestly just don't even have it in my head like what 1,200 reduction in rates would actually end up to be. Yeah. That's all. That's my point, you know. Like, and then, and then, so then if I had that, I'd say, oh yeah, okay, we're saving two possessions. Bill probably has it in his head. We're saving vehicles. In today's, with today's rate, less than 1,175 customers, you're looking at $30,855 a month. Yearly, you're at $370,000. That's for the 1,100. On the revenue side. On the revenue side. Revenuers that we'd lose. That's the customers. So what is the annual number again? 370,266. Right. Okay. Okay. And then you stack that up against? The expenses. The expenses. The waste. The fuel. Obviously two positions. Two positions and two vehicles. So. Yeah, it's a combination, Mayor. It's the revenue not being sufficient to support the expenses, hence the subsidy. And then on top of that, the ability to make this shift to then focus on city residents then allows us to, aside from not having to replace additional equipment going forward and being able to deal with position reductions through attrition, it also allows us to optimize our routes for our city residents. And there's that continued yearly savings because now you've optimized your routes for those city residents as opposed to unincorporated residents. But the positions and the vehicles are a part of the expense, yes. And, you know, maybe I'm going down a little bit of a rabbit hole, but it goes back to the philosophical decision of, should we even be doing this? Like, you know, does it make sense for us to do? Versus, if I'm looking at 300 and some thousand dollars, versus two positions and a couple trucks, and all of a sudden I say, you know what? We got one-third of the market. If we had pushed to have more of the market and we had two-thirds, maybe we actually did make a profit in unincorporated and that actually reduces our citizens' rates. I'm just, I'm down a rabbit hole. I just, I'm debating with you here. I just want some feedback on that. Well, we don't make, I mean, we won't make a profit, right? We're, as city services, we only recoup our costs. We don't make a profit. I'm okay to make a profit from an unincorporated group to help our citizens up. We, I mean, it's been 25 years. We have no real indication that we're going to add customers. The only customers that we talked about reducing were the ones that we actually said no to, because they used to have service and now they changed hands. And so we don't offer that service there anymore, because even without the data, Bill knew that it was inefficient and that he couldn't keep up with those market fluctuations. Yeah, no, you guys got nine competitors. Yeah. There's a little bit of a, I just want to kind of spar this out a little bit. And I think that's the difference, Mayor, is when we first started to provide the service, as you know, there really wasn't that level of other service providers. So those unincorporated residents didn't really have too many options other than take your garbage physically somewhere else to have it collected, whereas now you've got the city providing that service and nine other vendors. And when Clearwater is asked, would you be willing to come into this area and provide the service? Their answer is no, not unless they annex. So, you know, it's been a shift, right? Why do we want to focus our energies on a principle that may never actually work? Correct. I get that. I do get it. The math was just, for me, you know, that's what I started out with is looking at the math and saying, why in the world are we doing this? And then, of course, I had a lot of feedback about why we did it and whether or not you would want to continue to do it. And that's why we're here. But it was, like I said, I'll definitely get the spreadsheet. Those will be hard dollars. And I love my city manager, but I did give her a little heads up that this was going to be one of my sheet questions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I don't like to surprise staff either. You know, you guys do a good job. So, but yeah, I definitely want the spreadsheet. I think it's reasonable. It just creates, you know, it's the business. It's a transparent seat. You know, it's a business decision. And I get the philosophical piece of, should we even be focusing on this? But I think that that will, you know, if the numbers are that different, then it'll be like, oh yeah, why do we do this so long? So. Right. That's great. That would be great. Absolutely. And I think if I could, Mayor, you know, Bill's response to Commissioner Sandberg's inquiry is those private haulers are much more nimble, right? As those costs fluctuate in providing that service, they're able to adjust their pricing more readily than we, we only come to you every five years. So, you know. Yeah, I get that. I get that. And we do, we really want to be in that business. Well, I think if I may, Mayor. Sure. Also, and one of the things that I spoke to some of you about yesterday when the subject came up is the difficulty that a municipality has in annexing large areas, neighborhoods, streets, streets, you know, street upon street. You know, I share with the mayor when I was working in South Florida, Broward County had a requirement, the comprehensive plan that there are no unincorporated enclaves by the year 2010. And even if you're sitting in rooms of people saying you must annex, it's in the comprehensive plan, and the county will bring all of your infrastructure up to code, and then you will annex, they still resisted. And so, you know, people, a lot of, you know, we're assuming some people don't know that they're in unincorporated. There are a lot of people who are purposely in unincorporated and want to stay there. And so, you know, that's why that annexation effort to me would be a large-scale staff initiative for little gain moving forward. Yeah, I mean, trust me. I mean, I was on the Pinellas Assembly Task Force back in 2002, and everybody around the county looked at a map and said that's the most inefficient, crazy group of enclaves, and why doesn't somebody straighten it out? There's no way you can do efficient service levels, and guess what? It isn't going to happen. It isn't going to happen. It's going to be piece by piece by piece, but it's not going to happen. But anyway, okay. And that, I guess, Jorge, is it, are the people in unincorporated now required to have trash service? Bill can probably speak to that, but I believe the answer is yes. You're not. Bill? Bill? Bill? Are people in unincorporated, because I think at one time they weren't even required to have trash service, right? People in unincorporated? Correct. They're not. They're not required to have trash service? It's not. The licensing process that's going on is ensuring that each hauler has certain things, certain programs available. Each hauler offers recycling. They offer weekly collections. I'm not quite, yeah, I don't know their ordinance well enough, but that was it. We would go into New Athens City, and we would serve one home that has our service, we'd find out that they're sharing their can with the neighbor. Right. Right. I'd like to know if they changed that ordinance, because I was thinking they might have and said, you have to have it, which I don't even know how they'd police that, which would be the benefit to them franchising, you know, and making sure, because we all know what happens if you don't have trash service. It speaks to liability. Your trash has gone somewhere. That's the liability I have when we're on the county road. Yeah. They bring it across the street. Yeah. It is. People dump it. Yeah, I know. I mean, and again, that's why we should philosophically be focused on our own customers. Mr. Mayor, I believe that's the reason that Hillsborough County pursued that franchising, because there were issues with illegal dumping. Right. It's the only way you can really control it. And, you know, so. So I will provide the spreadsheet. I will get it from the consultant that did the initial estimate. Bill has a little cheat sheet he was using here when we were looking and quoted the revenue to you. It's actually $378,000, because we get extra carts there. But just this, I said it's a cheat sheet because it's just the resources, the human resources, then he has one vehicle reduction. And the first year, it's $418,000 and change. So there's the difference right there with just this. That's not including some of the other things we talked about that would be recurring. It's a concern. Yeah, not fuel, right? These are trips for disposal. That's included in his cheat sheet. The hard figures that he could pull. That's one truck. And with one truck, not two trucks. Right. And that's just the payment for that year, not the whole cost of the truck. Which, you know, I said we're conservative. We're trying to look at different scenarios and be realistic about it and not cut too close. We don't want to affect our customer service for our residents. They've grown custom to it. It rates high on our surveys. You know, we'll walk up and take the carts out to the road for some, you know, people who aren't able, if they provide us, you know, some medical documentation, things like that. So we didn't want to take it too far. And, but this was just a very conservative, and again, without the fleet factor, without fuel, without our annual maintenance on those vehicles. Just, there's just, and does it have recycling in it? This one? No recycling? Yes. Okay. It does include the contractor reduction, too, of recycling. So that's just a quick- And we know that figure, what they'd reduce it, or is that still just an estimate of what the recycling credit would be? What it is, it's, I took the known, what we pay the contractor to collect the each household. Gotcha, right. Okay, got it. No, thank you for doing that. Appreciate that. Yeah, the other part's market-driven. So it does fluctuate, but. Okay. Well, I do feel sorry for the unincorporated people, because our trash service is fantastic, but we do have to focus on our own citizens. So, okay, any other, everybody good? We have, just so you know, we've put the business survey off until the September meeting. We couldn't have gone this long otherwise. So I'm going to go open up for public input. Does anyone in the audience wish to come forward and provide input, or ask a question, or name and address for the record in three minutes? My name is Ed Farmer, and I do represent WastePro of Florida, Inc., but I'm also a citizen of Dunning. Dunning. Right. Then, 508, Ashley Drive. So again, I'm here two-fold, I guess. One, we have skin in this game as well, obviously, because we're the recycling contractor, and we've had a great relationship with Dunning over the years. And we'd like to continue it, so we'll support whichever decision or direction you guys want to take. No issues at all. Again, appreciate the job they do. Like I said, I've been here for a little over two years. Fantastic job with the service. And right now, I live right there at Skinner and Highland, where there's a roundabout being put in there. And these guys have to move a gate just to get into my community, pull my cart across the street. But again, they do a great job. And since we've been listening, you know, since I've been listening to the conversation, I know everybody has worries about service, keeping costs down, things of that nature. So I've made a few text messages while I'm going on here. We'd be willing to step up any capacity we can do to help. Because again, we also service those 1,200 residents. So in that vein, we are willing to be able to take over those residents, if it's feasible, however it would work out. And keep the rates the same that whatever you're charging them now, we'd be willing to do that. Plus, we'd also be willing to, when we collect, you know, deliver new carts, if that were the route, we could bring in all the old carts. So you wouldn't have to incur that expense as well. Joe, thank you, Ed. That's awesome. Would you say that again? Yeah. I'm just kidding. I think it's resorting. We're good. I think it's my savings column. The city's going to have to remove those 2,400 carts that are out there anyway. So if we were to deliver new carts, we'd collect the old ones and bring them back to you guys anyway. That's great. And again, we've had a great partnership. Appreciate that. We want to continue it. We are going to continue it in some form. It's just a question of . And I love that you're a resident, too. That's awesome. Great. And again, I want to take care of Dunedin as well. Thank you very much. If there's anything we can do, just let us know. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Thanks. Appreciate that. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else in the public wish to come forward and speak to this issue? Okay. Seeing no one, I'll close public input. And I will go to commission comments. And obviously, the manager's looking for consensus direction on this. So if you can include that in your comments. So I will start with Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I support this. It's a matter of efficiencies and cost savings for the city of Dunedin. I do believe, though, and I appreciate the mayor bringing up the point of seeing the balance sheet on this. Because we need to know that. You know, we've got to quantify those efficiencies and the cost savings. And that was a very good point. I just, and one other thing I just want to reiterate here. You know, obviously, a large number of people that are living in the unincorporated part of Dunedin are friends, active community members. And, again, as everything we do when we roll something like this out, the communication is so critical to this. And so the quantification, back to the quantification, we need to know that. They need to know this. They need to clearly understand what their options are. And there needs to be associated benefit with those options. And, you know, we need to be able to answer those questions. Because at the end of the day, what I don't want to do is alienate, you know, a substantial, you know, part. And regardless of whether you're living in incorporated or unincorporated, still a member of the community. And I think that's an important part of this. And I have to say that the whole, I found this whole process completely fascinating only because of the fact that it's, you know, well, you know, it's Dunedin and it's unique. So, anyway, thank you for all you guys are doing. Okay. Commissioner DeGard, final comments? Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate my colleagues' comments to my right. These people are in and out. They're kind of doing both ways. They, if you were to ask them where they're from, I have a feeling they'd answer Dunedin. Yet, they're not part of Dunedin in the sense of truly supporting it. I, therefore, don't see them as anything but a customer in an exchange. And that's maybe a little harsh. Maybe they're in various organizations I participate in and sit right next to me. But, yet, I don't think that they're carrying their share of the load. And so, that's the way I see it. And, therefore, I also support this particular initiative. It's a tactic, though, toward a destination that we'd like them to come in. And I think we need to make it as comfortable and easy for them to do so. And I think that's where we're headed. And I think that's where I'll close. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Commissioner. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. I do support this. But what would have made me feel more comfortable, back to the spreadsheet idea, is I, we talked about efficiencies, but we really didn't say a number. And we didn't really say this is what we would have to charge them to make the enterprise fund complete. Thereby, with that price, we're outside the market. Competition can, so, you know, we don't know what we would have charged them. We don't know what the market is for that. And so, it's kind of vague. And I'm kind of lost in that. But I do agree with, actually, to my colleague, to both of them, that they are customers. And if we treated them like customers, instead of changing the rate every five years because they're outside the city limits, why couldn't we be more competitive? And we change them every year. We analyze them and look at what the market is and adjust up and down. That way it, so we don't, we don't look like we're just public service. That we really are an active, live government organization. And we're a little more flexible to what the market is doing, especially as it relates to non-residents. But to Commissioner Walker's comments, regardless of what we may want to call them, customers, what have you, it's how they feel is important. And I would like to think that we at least take this opportunity to market to them as an opportunity to become a resident. And I certainly recognize the city manager's comments on, you know, you can throw a lot, a whole lot of bait in that pond and you may not get a lot of bites. But that's what we do. And we're residents. You know, we're, we're city government. Throw that bait. You don't want to spend, you don't want to throw bad money after, after bad money. But if it's worth the effort to go, at least we tried and they know that we're here. We know, they know that we want them to be residents would be, is the whole idea. But the idea of where we are going with our solid weights and the idea that we need to trim and look at our residents first, I do agree with that. So I do support this. So thank you. Commissioner, I'm sorry, Commissioner Sandbergen. Sorry about that. It took a moment. I did it to him last time. So I think I was just paying it back. You know, I called him you. So there you go. I'm obviously in favor of it, but I am anxious to see that spreadsheet. I mean, just doing a quick math on those numbers I heard, like I'm anxious to see it. But for right now, I definitely support it. Thank you. Cool. I support it as well. I appreciate the work that's gone into this. I think that when you look at something that's, you know, started 20 years ago or whatever it was, and we're basically not making money now. I mean, it's time to abandon the principle and focus on our own residents. I think communication is the key. I am, you know, not to use a bad example, but sometimes when people are saying, oh, well, I can't vote for you in the election because I live outside the city. And I'll be like, yeah, but you know people. And, you know, all of these people are our neighbors. So, again, they're a customer. And even in exiting that relationship as customers, we want to treat them right. And, obviously, I totally agree on the annexation. It's not, I didn't mean to be overly negative about that. We should always put forth all the great reasons of being part of Dunedin. People love having the actual label being a resident of Dunedin. And if anything could, you know, incentivize somebody, it would be our fantastic sanitation department. So, yeah, we should always do that. So, I'm very supportive of this. I appreciate all the work staff's done on this. And, you know, very appreciated. So, efficiencies. We need them. So, just to clarify, it seems to me that we have consensus direction to move forward. Under separate cover, then, we will email to all of you the spreadsheet. And, also, the Vice Mayor requested to include the number as far as what we would have to charge them. In order to recoup, we can probably do that calculation. We don't have that from Raf Tetlas yet. Right. Okay. That number. I don't need that. Okay. Because if I get it and we are competitive, that would frustrate me. Okay. So, I'd rather remain ignorant. We won't be confessing. Okay. We wouldn't do that. Okay. All right. Okay. We will send the spreadsheet, as I try to extricate myself from this situation that I got us all into. We will send the spreadsheet to you under separate cover. You should have it shortly, because we do have it. And then, if you have any comments or concerns, maybe we could talk a little bit on Thursday. If there's any. That's good. Yeah. That'd be great. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Bring more efficiencies. That's good. Good luck, Laura. Okay. I know you are. You're always ready. Okay. The City of Dunedin Business Survey results. We will be moved off, because Dr. Neely had some time constraints anyway. And we were definitely not going to make them. So, that will be in September work session. Then, we go to informational items, which is going to be Florida City's Legislative Policy Committee sign-up. So, we've talked about this before. I think we were all going to give it some thought. And, so, I, and I, again, the, do you want to do a lead-in to this, Michelle, or? You can go ahead, Mayor. Unless you want me to. I actually do want you to. You got it. You don't mind. So, so, so the. If you're okay with that. So, so the. If you're okay with that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm looking to see if we have the. Oh, yeah. There's the meeting schedule. So, meeting one, Friday, September 26th. Isn't that an interesting anniversary? Okay. The hurricane hit. Hurricane Elaine. And, let's see, Friday, October 17th. Is the second meeting. And, Thursday, December 4th. Is the third meeting. So, and I think they do something during the conference in August, maybe, too. So, but, anyway. So, so I get, I open it up to my colleagues. Does anyone, and again, there's lots of history with the commission that we don't always try to cover every committee. We all have busy schedules. So, there's, you know, staff will do their best to cover things. To cover things and keep us up on stuff if we don't. But if anyone is willing to be part of these committees. And, again, they're all elected officials on the committee. So, I'm going to open it up. I guess my question is one, two, three. So, there's five committees. Yep. Do we have a representative on all five of those? At certain times we have, and other times we have not. And I, it was probably rare to have all five covered by commissioners. Yeah, it's rare. So, what we would typically do, Commissioner Sandbergen, is that if you, if you, we don't have a commissioner on one of the committees, then staff would attend that committee. And I think I shared with you last time, we didn't have somebody on the finance and taxation committee. So, I attended that meeting and then I was appointed to the committee. Accidentally, apparently. I like that. Yeah, I like that. So, for example, as a finance and taxation committee, then are you required to attend the September, the October, and the December meetings? Do you have to, you would attend all three? I, you know, I attended that one meeting. I would defer actually to, to your colleagues who know, have attended more meetings. I mean, you can't, a lot of times you can't make all three meetings. That's what I mean. But I think that like, and I think probably the, the first two meetings, you can jump in if you've done this. I think the first two meetings are the media meetings, because you're like deciding on what's the top priority that the Florida League of Cities will focus on in that given area. And so, each area, they usually pick one big priority, and sometimes it comes down to a vote in the committees. And that's usually clearly like, you know, I think if I recall, Commissioner Walker, you helped me too, is, you know, the first meeting, it's like putting it, getting it all out on the table, getting everybody updated. And then I think at the second meeting, you vote on what everybody thinks the priority should be. And, and so, and then the third meeting is almost kind of, in my view, kind of fait accompli. So, if you're going to miss one, the third one's the better one to miss, in my, in my opinion, as I recall it. But, and you actually, you know, committee kind of connotates, you know, five or six people. There are like 50 people. Yeah, there's like 50 people. Yeah. So, it's not, again, it's not, yeah. I mean, and a lot of times the priority isn't that, once in a while it's controversial, like it's close, what people want to. I want to, like I think in, in, in one of the ones that I was in, in redevelopment area, it was like between CRA and annexation. And it was like a close vote, but CRA won out. But, but usually like there's kind of one driven thought on it. So, I mean, in my view, I would just say, I mean, I think it's a, it's actually a good way to meet colleagues across the state in that way. I think as far as our own lobbying efforts, meeting with our representatives here and going as a group to Tallahassee is way more impactful. So, I just think it's what everybody feels. And, and quite honestly, if like, if you take one and just, and find out, oh, wow, I can only do one meeting, at least you tried. There's no judgment here. It's, it's just every, you know, it's whatever. So, I think the way you said that, you know, you're right about what we accomplished in Tallahassee. Because I, I don't, I do not mind taking development, code compliance and redevelopment. It's, you know, so, so I would be forced to, or required to attend all three. Which is, I mean, it's fine. Yeah. Again, if you can't. Right. If there's nothing you're going to miss, then we try to get staff to cover it. And, you know, but then you might know an elected officials is in it. Hey, get, get me updated for the next meeting. So. So do we have members of the staff that are willing, you know, that, that want to participate? Or was it, it's your turn. You, you have to go. I mean. Yeah. I mean, we do. Really? Yeah. Nicole attends a lot of these. I've attended them before. You can't, but again, you can't obligate to be at every, all five staffers. But, but again, she'd be there at, you know, to sit in on some of it and also get updates on what happened in the other ones. Is that a fair comment? Correct. And it's really great experience for other professionals in the organization to go see how this clock ticks as well. So, and I'm sure they'd welcome an opportunity to go see. Thanks. Okay. I mean, I would, I'd, I will take the development code compliance and redevelopment committee. I think who sat in this chair before might have been the representative. And I think that's what led me to. Yeah. Strongly consider that. He could have been. Okay. I, I just don't recall. I mean. Um. Should I tell you that? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Who else? Anybody else want to chime in or. I'll be glad to handle municipal oper. Municipal. I can't say it. So I can't join. Oh. Municipal operations committee. Or if the manager would like to be kicked off, I could go to finance and taxation. But that's up to her. I was actually kicked off. Okay. I've already been kicked off. So my first choice is municipal operations. I couldn't attend the meeting. Okay. So, okay. And anybody else? Yeah. I'll, yeah, either intergovernmental relations or utilities, natural resources. Yeah. Which is one I've, I've done in the past. Actually, I'll commit to intergovernmental relations, mobility and emergency management. And Vice Mayor, you're probably not able to do it, are you? Unfortunately. Right. Hey, you got a job and that's a great thing. So we can't. Wait a second. We can't obligate that. I will, I will do my best and try to cover finance and taxation. That's pretty good. We covered four of those then. Yeah. And then, you know, again, Nicole and city manager will be around for that last one. So that means on Friday, September 26th, we will all be in the Orlando Hilton just attending separate meetings. Is that correct? Did I get that right? That's right. Can we? Yes. And so we'll arrange carpooling. Oh, I was going to drive. Okay. Commissioner Dugard has offered to drive. I think we should stay over there. When you go to Orlando, do you have to go? You know, usually I carry several extra batteries. I think you should really ask Commissioner Gao about that one. I got a story. Yeah. All right. That's. Oh, it's actually already held. So on the calendar, which is great. And, and yeah, who's ever there? I mean, we'll have to have a toast to the one year anniversary of Helene and no more, no more storms, you know? We'll have to get together that night to discuss what we learned. Yeah. Okay. So you've got to have a question. Commissioner, I will tell you this is all signed. You, you all, I'll get with Lindsey for your official sign up as it's through your FLC account. Okay. And you, and you, did you take down, down everything? I did indeed. Okay, good. Yeah, good. Yeah. Would you like me to repeat? No, no, no. Well, yeah, why don't you go ahead? Okay. I've got Mayor Sanbergen on Development Code Compliance and Redevelopment Committee. Yes. I've got Mayor Franey on Finance and Taxation Committee. Commissioner Walker on Intergovernmental Relations Mobility and Emergency Management Committee. And Commissioner Dugard on Municipal Operations Committee. Okay. Nope, that sounds good. That's what I have. And yeah, I mean, a lot of times what we did is we went up because you only had to be there like 10 to 3 or something. We'd go up and we'd come back and, but you know, we can decide what works best for all of us. So that'll be good. Yes. Okay. Good. That went smooth. Really, our commission comments now are always on Thursdays. So unless somebody's got something important to share, we'll say this multiple times, probably say it again tomorrow, but Thursday, Purple Heart Day recognition ceremony, August 7th, 10 a.m. So I think most of us are going to be able to be at that. So better than that. And Mayor, if you could just pass on my remarks. Yeah. And I already have told them because it came up yesterday when we were doing the walkthrough and I said, you know, you just, you couldn't be there, but you would absolutely be there. That's a wonderful event. Yeah. Okay. Okay. City manager, we're good. You're good. Okay. City attorney, we're good. Clerk, we're good. Okay. All right. Meeting adjourned.