COMMISSION WORKSHOP - Mar 31, 2026

Regents by Jen, our city attorney. Okay, we have a presentation today, Arbor Day Proclamation. I'm going to turn that over to Commissioner Sandbergen.

Good morning to all three of you. Arbor Day 2026. Whereas in 1872, the Nebraska Board of Agriculture established a special day to be set aside for the planting of trees, and whereas this holiday called Arbor Day was first observed with the planting of more than a million trees in Nebraska, and whereas Arbor Day is now observed throughout the nation and the world, and whereas trees can be a solution to combating climate change by reducing the erosion of precious topsoil by wind and water, cutting heating and cooling costs, moderating the temperature, cleaning the air, producing life-giving oxygen, and providing habitat for wildlife, and whereas trees are a renewable resource, giving us paper, wood for our homes, fuel for our fires, and countless other wood products, and whereas trees in our city increase property values, enhance the economic vitality of business areas, and beautify our community, and whereas trees, wherever they are planted, are a source of joy and spiritual renew, and now, whereas Dunedin is proud to be recognized, Tree City, USA, Now I, therefore, Steve Sandbergen, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Mayor of the City of Dunedin, and on behalf of the entire City Commission, hereby proclaim the observance of Saturday, April 18, 2026, as Arbor Day in the City of Dunedin, and urge all citizens to support efforts to protect our trees and woodlands, and plant trees to gladden the heart and promote the well-being of this and future generations. This Arbor Day tree giveaway begins at 8 a.m. on April 18th at the Achieva Credit Union Corporate Headquarters at 1659 Virginia Street. Rick, all yours.

Sorry about that. We, pretty interesting time, I think, for the city. As we all know, you know, between the hurricanes and the drought that we've gone through, we've lost a lot of trees over the last couple years, and it's something we talk about and think about a lot, and as far as the giveaway goes itself, you know, we, this will be my third giveaway, tree giveaway. You know, the first one was about three weeks into the job, so it was kind of a whirlwind, just kind of trying to figure out what was going on. Went with the same trees, you know, basically we ordered the year before, and then last year, pretty similar, and what we found was we actually had a hard time giving away some of the trees. You know, after the hurricanes and stuff, people were sort of gun-shy, and I guess understandably so, they weren't in a big hurry to want to plant some big shade trees and stuff, so we were, you might recall, we were, you know, it's like you can't give these things away type of thing. So we still encourage it. We still got a lot of the same trees we got last year, but we added, we wanted to make a big push this year to get some different stuff out there, you know, try to figure out what the people want and what we really want to see more throughout the city. So, as always, a big emphasis on Florida natives. We added seven new species in addition to the ten that we had last year, so we're going to have a lot more diversity of the trees going out. All the ones we added are Florida native. All are a minimum of moderate salt and drought tolerant. In fact, most of them are high drought and salt tolerant, so we're going to really promote that. But typically more sort of ornamental trees that can grow into shade trees, you know, 20, you know, 15 to 30 feet overall height on some of those, so they're less, I don't know, daunting for folks who want to plant. So I think we just, and still we're going to encourage oaks and pines and all the things we have in the past as well, but we need to, we just want to get more canopy out there. We want folks to be excited about what they're planting, what they're picking up. And we're really excited about, you know, Joe and I and Tony and Pete Wells, you know, we got together and talked a lot about some of the trees that we've seen over the course of our, you know, time in this industry, what does well in this area, and we're really excited about it. So I guess that's it, you know, we're really excited to be Tree City USA again. Want to get this canopy reestablished throughout the city. We're losing a lot of, you know, obviously we lost a lot of pine trees through the bark beetles and other things that are going on. Lately I've seen a lot of sand live oaks. A lot of people, hard to distinguish between southern lives and sand lives to the untrained eye, but if you see trees that you think are live oaks and the ones that are looking really poor right now, those are most likely going to be sand live oaks. This drought really hit trees. So we're making a real conscious effort to encourage the Florida natives, do things that are going to do well in our tough conditions that we're faced with on a fairly regular basis, and we're excited.

Yeah, you guys did a great job last year. I really admired the folks that pulled up, and they told me the tree they wanted. Right. So the residents are knowledgeable, and they knew what they were there for. So I have this proclamation for you guys. All right. Thank you.

Are we doing a picture, too? I didn't see her. There you are, Sue. Hiding out back. Imagine that, yeah. Even in pink. Let's do our pick.

Let's see.

Oh, no, this isn't going to work. I know. It's going to block you, man.

Welcome, welcome.

I'm going to just step back here. Okay. I got you now.

Three. I need to. This way.

Yeah. The tree.

All right. Thank you.

All right. Sounds good. I will say I'm tired of the pollen falling from the trees. My gosh. Okay. 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? Seeing no one, I will close public input. And we're going to go to the first workshop item, which is 2026 citizen survey results. And, Nicole, here you go. You're on. You and Dr. Neely.

Good morning, Mayor, Commission. Nicole Delfino here, Strategy and Sustainability Manager with Dr. Neely, who is joining us today by Zoom. Can we confirm that? Voice of. Just want to make sure he jumps on.

Yeah. Not getting hearing anything.

He said he was all good. He texted me. We were testing earlier. He is there. I just want to. Jennifer. Jennifer has met him in person.

He's first on the agenda. He can't get pushed off today, right?

No. That's right. Okay. Can we hear him? Can we see him?

We do have to be able to hear him. Well, good start for the Blue Jays. Commissioner Sandberger. But last night, they fell off the track a little bit. They did. It was like. Yeah, but they had a bad pitching issue. The pitcher got hurt. So, yeah. So, well, they've had two bad pitching issues. What's that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's where they come.

Oh, yeah.

They're a good track. I know. You got to figure out the trigger to get some here. I haven't figured it out yet. I'm leaving that to you. I know. Well, we're glad you're back. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Vice mayor had some surgery, but he's looking pretty good.

Okay. Well, this isn't not going to work without him.

Okay, so we'll go to second item. I think Duke will be really disappointed that they don't have to sit through this. So, manager, what's your plan? So, Nicole, is Dr. Neely able to join us later?

I will text him.

So, let's move on to the next item. That is a brilliant, brief and brilliant solution. So, Duke, are you ready? I think we get Duke. Do you want to wait longer? Are you disappointed you're going to have to go and get out of here? Yeah. Mike's real sad about it. Okay. Here we go. So, we'll go to Duke Energy System Reliability and Clean Energy Connection Program Workshop Presentation. And, okay. Staff presentation. I have Natalie.

Amy. It's a two-part presentation. Yeah, I didn't have you, Jorge. But, you know, that's very acceptable if we get the top gun. I can go sit there. No, no, no. We don't want you to. No, we want you to be here. Good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Commission. The item you have before you and the one Katie's about to help present, it's a two-part presentation by Duke. It's their System Reliability and Clean Energy Connection Program Workshop presentation this morning. As you may recall, as a part of the adoption of the franchise agreement back in February of 2024, Duke also executed a memorandum of understanding associated with that ordinance. And as a part of that, they had agreed to do yearly updates as far as the efforts that they have been putting in regarding ongoing reliability efforts on their system throughout the jurisdictional boundaries of Dunedin. And so this morning is their usual annual update that they do every spring. And in addition to that, Natalie will be presenting a second or introducing the second part of the presentation where they'll be providing an update on the Clean Energy Connection Solar Program, which the city's been subscribed to since 2022. And with that, I'll turn it over to Katie.

Thank you. Thank you. Katie, you're on. Good morning, Mayor, Commissioners, City Manager, Assistant City Manager. Good to be here today. We are excited to share this information with you because we think we have a great story. I'm going to let you introduce your full name and title.

Yes.

Katie Christian, Duke Energy, Director of Government and Community Relations. I'm here with some other folks from Duke Energy who are going to introduce themselves and assist me in presenting today. We are very excited to present what we think is good news about the improvements that we've been making in the city and the impact that it's having on reliability in the city. So we'll just go ahead and get started. This is just an overview of how many customers we serve throughout Duke Energy Florida. Give you an idea of the number of miles and lines and customers. We have about 2 million customers throughout Florida. So for the past five years, Duke Energy has been working on what's called a storm protection plan. It was required by the Florida Public Service Commission, which is our regulator. And essentially, after some hurricanes that we had in Florida, the Public Service Commission required that all investor-owned utilities, including Duke, come up with a plan to make our system more reliable, more resistant to the weather that we're seeing. So our storm protection plan, we have worked a lot in Dunedin. You'll hear some about that. It basically includes undergrounding in certain areas, looking at feeders that need to be upgraded, stronger poles, vegetation management. We've got some folks here from vegetation management. So this is to discuss our storm protection plan in Dunedin. So I think now I'll turn it over to Stefano Carnio. And if you would introduce yourself and kind of run through what we've got going on. So can you hit that down button?

Good morning. My name is Stefano Carnio. I am the Director of Asset Management for the Distribution System for Duke Energy Florida. So what is the Storm Protection Plan? So as Katie mentioned, it's driven by the Florida statute. But it's a series of investments and improvements that the utility is making to the system. So it includes distribution, transmission, and vegetation management improvements and work. So a couple of the different categories within the Storm Protection Plan include feeder hardening and lateral hardening. So what is a feeder? What is lateral? Feeder is, if you think of the distribution grid as a tree, the feeder is the trunk of the tree, of the system. The lateral are like the branches. In fact, in the field, we call them branch lines. So if you think of feeder, branch lines are the smaller lines that come off of the feeder. So when we say hardening, Katie mentioned it, we are replacing or basically rebuilding the entire circuit. So we are replacing all the conductor, putting larger conductor in some cases where capacity is needed, replacing poles, putting stronger, beefier poles, stronger class poles. And so, and we're doing that to the feeders, and we're doing that to the laterals as well. And then there's also, we call lateral hardening underground. And Katie mentioned there's some undergrounding that goes on there. It's very targeted. We look at historical performance of circuits and specific devices on our system, you know, specifically through storms. We look at, you know, what's accessible to trucks, what might be easily restorable during a storm by a truck versus not. And we make sure those investments, you know, there's a cost benefit associated with that as well. So the, and then as far, in addition to that, we're also doing infrastructure replacement. So there are transformers, there's all the different kinds of devices on the system that we also, if they're age, we replace them, bring them up to the current standard. And in addition to the hardening work and the replacement of infrastructure, we're also doing the self-optimizing grid project. So SOG for short, if you've heard of the self-healing technology. So what that entails is, there's three parts to that. So it's connectivity, capacity, and automatic switching. So we're, segmentation. So we're installing devices that can work together and they automatically identify where there's an outage, isolate the outage to a smaller segment, and then restore customers on the rest of the circuit where possible by bringing in power from other directions. So just a little bit on what the storm protection plan is, the different components of the programs. So here's a little bit more on the lateral hardening underground. So as I mentioned, it's, we're looking specifically for areas that are prone to damage resulting in outages during extreme weather events. Truck accessibility is a huge factor in prioritizing the targeted underground or the lateral hardening underground targets. And so doing so will obviously reduce the damage costs and outage duration for the customers on our grid. And we're focused on the branch lines that, again, historically have seen issues from or have experienced more outage events due to age or damage from vegetation. And, again, inaccessibility is a huge factor. All right. And then some pros and cons of undergrounding. So, you know, most obvious, I think, is they're less susceptible to outages caused by wind and vegetation that are underground. You know, the next one's subjective, but most people don't want to see the utilities, surprisingly. So undergrounding is also aesthetically pleasing, and it reduces the need for the trimming of trees around lines. Some of the cons, it's obviously, it's going to be more expensive to install and also restore. Usually when there is an outage on an underground circuit, it takes longer to restore. It's, you know, it takes longer to find, to dig out, and repair whatever's wrong there. So, and obviously the underground cable is not impervious to damage. So we've seen issues from surge, flooding, saltwater contamination. We have dig-ins, of course, as well. So, but, you know, there are still benefits to doing so with targeted approach. So we can still improve the reliability. And that's Duke's main focus, is looking for areas where we can invest and make sure that the improvements are going to improve the reliability in the long term. So, all right. I think Katie, you want to talk on this one.

I can do this one. So we thought it would be helpful, because we know the city has paid to underground certain areas. So we thought it would be helpful for you all to see when the city, so what Stefano has been talking about is Duke paying for undergrounding. This is a provision from our tariff that's approved by the Public Service Commission for if the city wants to pay for undergrounding in areas that Duke is not already undergrounding. So the city has already chosen to do this in some areas, and this is just an overview of the calculation of how we calculate that cost, that we are restricted to considering these factors based on, you know, the regulation by the Public Service Commission. So we do, however, give a credit based on if we are going to do something overhead, we can give the city a credit for what we were going to spend to put it overhead against what the city would need to pay to underground it. So it's good for the city to continue. I know we have quarterly meetings with city staff, so it's good for us to continue to stay in touch with each other so we can coordinate those projects in case the city does want to pay to underground things so you can get that credit for work that we're doing. So that's it.

Thank you, Katie. So this is just a representation visually of what the circuits we studied. So next we're going to get into the reliability study and the trends. And so we label our different circuits, the different feeders, by these numbers. So that's kind of just showing you where each of these circuits lie within the city of Dunedin. And, of course, the study was over the last five years, the reliability performance. So before we jump into the actual performance, we want to make sure we understand the metrics that we use to measure the performance. And these are industry standard, so I'll kind of explain them. So SADI, SAFI are the first two. So SADI is the duration of the outages, so the average customer experiences, you know, how long of an outage they are, how long in a year they're without power on average. SAFI is how long a customer, or how many outages, I'm sorry, the frequency of outages a customer experiences in a given year on average. So those two are system averages of the entire population. KD is the customer average interruption duration index. This is how the duration of a specific outage is for the customers that experience outages. So the customer is out, on average, how long are they out? So for all these metrics, lower is better. We want to see fewer outages, lower durations in all sense. So here is the first one. So SADI is the system average duration. We have Dunedin in orange on this chart over the last five years, with green representing the Duke Energy Florida five-year average, and blue, the Duke Energy Florida, the actual duration index for each, you know, each year. So overall, Dunedin is performing better than Duke Energy system average and the state of Florida. And so we did, you know, one thing kind of stands out. In 2022, you see a spike in the Dunedin numbers. And one thing about both the SADI and SAFI, they're better used for, more ideal to use them with larger populations. So when you have a zoomed in look at the city of Dunedin versus the entire state of Florida, there's going to be more swings. And so it's not exactly perfect, but we can, what we like to do is follow the trends and look at how the thing, how the trends are going. So overall, what this means, if you look on the, you know, we're talking about an average customer experiences about 77 minutes a year without power. That's what this is saying as of last year. All right. Katie, this one is when the customers that do experience outages, on average, how long are those outages? So, again, you'll notice the same, Dunedin is an orange, so there's a downward trend overall. 23, there's a bit of a spike. But overall going down and still below the Duke Energy Florida system average. So, and this is saying when a customer is out, it's on average, the outage lasts just under an hour and a half, so 90 minutes, so 85 minutes over the last year. And then we have SAFI, which is the system average frequency of outages. And in 2025, it was less than one outage a year for the average customer on the system, so the entire city of Dunedin customer base. And, again, with SAFI, just like SADI, there could be swings. So, in 2022, there were a handful of outages that were, you know, many customers, so it impacts it. There's more weight to it when there's so many customers impacted. We had a couple substation outages that were due to vandalism, actually, that made that swing happen in 2022. But overall, again, and then we'll get into some of the reasons or some of the different types of outages in a couple slides and kind of explain the difference between the types of work that's going on and what, you know, we're seeing some improvements as well. So, let me jump into that. This kind of breaks down the different types of outage and the durations we're seeing for each type of outage. So, in black, you can see the equipment failures representing there, and we're seeing a sharp decrease in the amount of outages, the duration of outages related to equipment failure since 2022. So, I think we can thank a lot of the improvements we're making, replacing the old facilities, installing newer, stronger poles. I think a lot of that contributes to this improvement. But you can also see, like, in the blue, a slight increase in the planned work, the duration of outages related to planned work. And that's, again, due to all the projects we're doing, the system improvements, some of them do require outages. It's still a small portion of the total. You see that. On average, we're seeing five minutes for those. So, we try to do as much of the work while, without taking the outage. So, before we make the transfer to the new, you know, pole or wire, we make sure the new wire's up, and we do everything we can possible to minimize the impact to the customers. And I think I want to say that's it for me, Katie. Do you want to take this one? Okay. Thank you. And I'll stick around for questions. Yeah.

Good morning. Nick Esposito, Lead Vegetation Management Program Manager for Florida. Congratulations on 36 years of Tree City, USA. That's amazing. Duke Energy Florida is currently celebrating 20 years of Tree Line, USA. So, we know everything that goes into those Arbor Day Awards. It takes a lot of work. I'll just be going over overview of some of the vegetation management work that we do here in Florida. You heard earlier the definitions of our feeders and laterals, the feeders being those main lines that come out of the substations. We trim those on a three-year cycle for distribution, and the laterals, the smaller lines that break off of the feeder, those are on a five-year cycle. That's our planned maintenance work. We also do a lot of other work throughout the year of hazard tree patrols, customer work, and supporting all the capital projects that you see of the pole replacements and everything like that. That often requires a lot of tree trimming to allow that to occur. Transmission tree removals. They use a lot of different methods for determining which trees need to come out. They'll fly their lines using LIDAR that detects how close trees are to the actual transmission facilities.

They'll also do ground patrols. Based on that, they prioritize and schedule the removal of those trees based on condition-based, and they typically fly those every six years to look for any issues. Federal regulations require that they perform these patrols. Vegetation-related outage on transmission lines could result in the utility being fined up to $1 million per day. Trimming methods are based on widely accepted standards. We follow the ANSI, American National Standard Institute, tree care standards. Duke Energy has International Society of Aboraculture Certified Arborists on staff to ensure that proper trimming practices are being adhered to. Each tree is different. It must be considered individually. However, trees located within the rights of ways of high-voltage transmission lines are generally removed instead of pruned. There's just a lot of risk that goes into the transmission lines. Obviously, it doesn't have to be in actual contact with the lines. There's enough voltage there that you can actually have arcs without any contact actually being made on the lines. So, sometimes it is hard for citizens to visualize what might be a threat. But the lines also, based on the load and weather conditions and everything, they have sag and they can sway as well. So, a tree on a blue sky day might show that it has 25 feet of clearance. But if the load on those lines increases and there's wind, all of a sudden those lines could swing out and be an issue with the trees. Plants, shrubs, and trees that exceed 15 feet in height at maturity will typically not be removed. Each removal can be unique depending on easements or agreements. We try and offer a variety of notification methods to the citizens before work begins. Always a door hanger if they're going to be impacted. And then we also have been utilizing a digital notification tool where we can highlight customers on our applications. And then based on their communication preference, whether that's text, call, email, they will also get a notification. We've also been using magnets on the sides of the actual tree trimming trucks that have a QR code that will take citizens to our website where they can get more information on the work that is being performed. We'll also knock on doors before work is performed. Any removal work that is occurring on private property, we'll have contact with the citizen. And they will agree to the removal if that's the agreement that we come to with them. So we try a variety of ways to make sure that the citizens that are directly being impacted know. And then also the wider community as well has an idea of what work is occurring. And this is, again, some of that information, transmission. Because it often includes removals of trees, we will have community members that maybe aren't the actual ones that are having the tree removed question what's going on. So we've been putting out sandwich boards in the area where the work is occurring. And again, there will be a similar sign on the side of the truck with the QR code leading the citizen to our website where they can get additional information on the work that is being performed. We notify the city using Before Work Begins on distribution. This is, we can't provide maps that show the exact location of our line for security issues on our end. So the best situation that we've been able to come up with is we are highlighting the general area. Usually we are highlighting the parcels that are within 50 feet of the line that is going to be trimmed. So we are giving a general idea of the area of where work is going to be occurring. And I send these out to different individuals within the city that request them. And hopefully it disseminates out. This is the planned tree trimming map that is on our website that the public can access. And see areas where we have recently performed work, where we are going to perform work. And again, it just kind of gives a general idea. The polygons are stretched around the entire circuit. So it's a general representation of where they may see work occurring. Again, we can't give exact detail maps showing the line locations of an entire circuit. We strongly support Right Tree, Right Place. We have a lot of that communication out on our website and even on our door hangers. We love that the city is giving away trees. We hope that citizens take into account where they are planting those trees when they do for both avoiding conflicts with our lines, but also to increase the potential energy-saving capabilities of those trees shading their homes. But some of the bigger issues that we see are definitely the palm trees. Unlike regular trees, we really can't trim those in a way to kind of guide them away from the lines. If you plant those directly underneath our lines, there's only one way for them to go, and that's directly into them. So we see a lot of conflicts with that. So we really encourage people to take into account how wide those palm fronds get and make sure that they're offsetting those enough to avoid any conflicts in the future.

We'll wrap up our grid part of the presentation. The summary of all of it, in 2024 when we had the hurricanes, we saved about 37 million minutes from the storm protection plan investments that we made. So it's the reliability enhancements that you're seeing, and then also just the ability to restore power faster. This is where we're currently working and planning to work within the city. I know we coordinate with staff about this work, so if you have any questions, we can definitely get you more information about this current and planned work that we're doing. And with that, I think I'll turn it over to Travis to talk about our, oh, well, I should, yes, questions on that piece, because we're shifting gears.

Okay, we're doing, okay, so we're going to move to the solar stuff after this. Okay, so yeah, let's do questions. So I'll start with, I guess, start over here. Commissioner Gao, questions.

Thank you, Mayor. Just, actually, just one question on this, and it's the right tree in the right place. And can there be any coordination between Duke Energy and the city of Dunedin, as we're about to give a tree giveaway, to help educate, one, to confirm with our city staff that your recommendations match our recommendations as far as types of trees and yards. And then if that's the case, whether or not we could coordinate and help educate our residents right tree in the right place when it comes to power lines.

Yeah, we'd love to work with you on that. There's definitely literature we can provide. We have pamphlets that provide the right tree, right place information. I work with Rick a lot, too, so we have good communication. And that should be a standard talking point, as well, for people planting trees. But happy to help any way we can.

Mayor, may I? Sure. My understanding is we do hand out literature when we hand out the trees regarding right tree, right place. But I'll double check. It's pretty easy to do it.

Yeah.

But, yeah, I think we already hand it out.

If you want any that we have that are more kind of directed towards the power lines, then we do have that and would be happy to provide those.

Thank you, City Manager. Yeah, I guess my question would be is, is there a difference, right tree, right place, depending on who's creating that literature? And certainly I don't want this to supersede what we're handing out in our focus for trees. But also if we can educate our residents so that they don't put a tree in what may be considered a wrong place so that 15 years from now they're screaming because Duke came out and did a hatchet job on their trees. Not that you do hatchet jobs anymore, but that's what we're going to hear from them. Right. So, okay. Thank you. That's it, Mayor.

Cool. Yeah, I put one right next to my driveway that probably was ill-conceived and I'm paying the price now. But that doesn't involve you guys. Okay, Commissioner DeGuard, questions.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm looking at the slide presentation, outage durations. Now, what is the territory for that particular slide? Because I noticed in 24, the outage durations on equipment failure fell substantially from 23. And I want to be sure I know the territory that that's covering.

So that is covering, I'll go back, it's this. It's every single feeder that's feeding the city of Dunedin.

So that's a Dunedin territory.

That's just Dunedin. Okay. Right. So that's just Dunedin. That's confusing to me because I thought 24 was a very strong hurricane month.

And unless you guys did a magnificent job I'm unaware of, I would have expected that to at least stay flat, if not go up.

So that storm is going to be captured in environmental. But I do think, and I'm going to rely on Stefano, like don't we exclude those storms from these numbers? Yeah. Those major events are excluded from these outage numbers. So this is just what we would call sunny day kind of outages. Blue sky day or just normal storms, like normal. So if you were to include those numbers, do you have anything that would share what that would look like? We can work on that. Yeah. We can absolutely get that for you.

Because I'm not looking at just the sunny day situations. I'm looking at the overall outage that a resident would experience over the course of a year.

Yep. Absolutely. We can get that.

All right. As I look at the challenges you face, I also recognize the challenges of providing a service that the only time people recognize it is when it's gone. So what do we do as a commission to help bring a value proposition understanding to our residents?

It's a great question. When we think about value, we think about we live in a situation right now where power is vital to our communities. We need it to live. So it's very threatening to our security, I think, overall, and sometimes our safety to have power out. So when I think about the value of what we're doing, reducing these outage durations and lengths of time are really, really important. And we are seeing it make a big difference. But it costs money. So we're seeing a lot of, you know, my bills are going up. This is expensive. Two of the biggest drivers of customer bills are fuel. So that's going to be natural gas prices. That's the biggest, aside from just our base rates. And then our storm protection plan investments. So I think being able to say, yes, you know, bills may be a little bit more expensive, but we're using that money to invest in our system. We're using that money to bring those outages down because we understand the impact that it has on customers and businesses. And it's working. To me, that's the best value proposition is we're not just spending money to spend money. The numbers that we're seeing are working to reduce outages. So that's kind of how if I think if you're out and about and talking to people and people say, oh, Duke's bills are so high, it's like, well, you know, they're doing a lot of work. And that is something we are seeing the impact of that work.

Thank you. That's a good answer. One of the five decadent issues is energy storage distribution and generation. I don't think the general population understands that, but they're going to be facing increasing utility bills all across the country. And with our need for AI consuming so much energy, what is to protect our residential customers from that kind of increase in rates?

That is a great question. So right now there are no data centers in Florida in Duke Energy's territory. So right now that's, it's not an issue because we don't have any. But going forward, you may have seen that the state legislature passed and the governor signed a bill, basically data center bill of rights for customers. That includes protections for customers from increased electricity rates because of data centers. Before the governor even signed that bill, we, Duke Energy, had already proposed to the Public Service Commission a tariff, a rule that forces data centers to pay their own way. So data centers need to pay for the upgrades that are required. So a lot of times what you'll see with a data center, they're looking for a transmission line. They need to hook up to those big power lines, the 669 kV, 230 kV, 500 kV. Those are typically outside of urban areas. So they want to hook up directly to those transmission lines that cost money, running the power from the transmission line to the data center, and the data centers need to pay for that. The data centers need to pay for any upgrades that are required. Right now, we feel like we have the capacity in our system, so we're not thinking, oh, we need to build a bunch more power plants to do this. But, you know, data centers are being required under this tariff to pay for those types of infrastructure improvements. So, I mean, I still think it's an ongoing conversation, and you're right, it's very cutting edge. But what Duke is doing is we are trying to work with our regulator to come up with a framework that meets what the state of Florida is requiring, what the public service commission is requiring, and making sure we're keeping costs as low as possible for our customers.

Thank you. Good answer. How do we better partner with you guys to keep our energy costs down for both the city and our residents?

It's a great question. We have a lot of really good energy efficiency programs. I think one of the biggest things that people don't realize, it's like if you lower your, if you raise your temperature of your air conditioner one degree, it can save, I think, $10 per kilowatt hour on your bill or something like that. So a big part of what needs to happen, too, is education on, you know, weatherization. Do you have weather strips? Do you have updated windows? Do you have an HVAC unit that's 16-seer? There's a lot of education that can go around energy efficiency that can really make substantial impacts in people's bills. So we can partner on programs like getting the word out. Duke has the programs. It's like getting people to participate in the programs, I think, is great. And we can work with staff on that, too, like some ideas for community outreach events and things that we could do. So I think those, to me, are the biggest bang for the buck. The quickest way to make an impact on somebody's bill is to make sure they're optimizing their energy efficiency.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor.

Vice Mayor? Questions? Thank you, Mayor.

It's kind of more of a general question. In terms of supply of energy to the state of Florida and even kind of dialing into the local area of Dunedin, do you have the percentages, roughly? What are the energy sources for those? Because you used to have some nuclear power plants. I think they're all decommissioned now. But is that still part of the grid infrastructure?

No. We don't have any more nuclear in Florida. Right now we have natural gas and coal. We have two coal units that are up in Crystal River that are still providing power. Those are scheduled to be decommissioned in the 2030 timeframe. And then we have solar, which is what, you know, Travis can talk about. But I think our fuel mix right now, Tom may know, is about 3% solar and about 97% everything else. Natural gas and coal.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah, perfect. Yeah, I was actually going to ask about Crystal River in that area because there are obviously two cooling stacks anyway.

Those are actually, that's for the coal plant. Okay. Those big things that look like, and that have steam coming out, that's water, and those are for the coal plant.

Yeah, okay, super. Yeah. So on the metrics, the Sadie, Safie, Katie, you know, I think just that I'm just going to tell you what my perspective is, and you can just correct me if I'm wrong. But first of all, I think those metrics are remarkable in the fact that because of the Dunedin sample area being such a significantly lower number than Florida overall, any fluctuation in the Dunedin curve could have a very much more volatile impact to it. Sure, yeah. So, yeah, I just, so that's, I'm reading that correctly then, I think, right?

That's correct because the green line and the blue line represent two million customers, and then the Dunedin line represents the number of customers in Dunedin, which is much smaller. So, yes.

Well, you know, see, if the number were higher, then I would kind of be scratching my head a little bit, but it's slow. So I think that's a good news story.

It's a good news story. Any of these that are lower, lower is better for all of these because it means a shorter outage or it means a less frequent outage. So all the lower is better. So the fact that the orange line is below the blue line and the green line, that's a good thing.

Yeah, okay. No, that's great. The next one is really more kind of coordination with your subcontractors. I appreciate the explanation of what you do for the residents with regards to, you know, basically pre-warning them or pre-briefing them on the work. And I'll just give you an example, and then you can kind of tell me what kind of interaction, what kind of flow down do you do to your subcontractors. And again, these are isolated comments, but I've had enough to really kind of get an idea of, you know, who the players are in the community here. But for instance, when there is planned work going on in a residential area, the comment that's come back is that whoever's doing the work, you know, and it's always typically a subcontractor to Duke, isn't communicating with the residents. They're going and painting utility marks on lawns, you know, and people are wondering, well, am I going to come home from work today, and is there going to be, you know, a patch of my grass missing? Can you just kind of talk about how do you control your subcontractors on that? Because this, we could really mitigate a lot of issues here if there was more communication with the residents. Any thoughts on that?

I'm looking over. Yes, I think that is something we can get better at. I think that's really something we can get better at. Especially, you know, when you look at, I mean, when we look at the amount of work that we're doing in Dunedin, the size of the Dunedin community, and the amount of work we're doing here is just, this is a lot of work, and it's having a lot of impact, and we're doing it all at once. So I think we are getting, you know, we do have a stakeholder engagement outreach group that, you know, we do the door hangers for work like this and things like that. But I think where the gap is, is understanding what does that impact look like? Yes, we can tell the residents, we're going to be in your area, undergrounding a line. What does that mean? That means you're going to dig up my lawn. That means I'm going to see locate marks. That means that my sidewalk might get destroyed, and I'm going to have to wait until the contractor comes and fixes it. That means my road is going to be closed, you know, for MOT. So I think, like, giving people a better idea of what is actually, what these things mean to them, we can do a better job of.

Yeah.

For sure.

And I greatly appreciate that. And I, and again, I just want to make sure that I think in each and every case where I was contacted, it was always a subcontractor for you all. So.

Yeah, and we will provide that feedback. We do have, you know, a specific person who sits in Clearwater Ops, and his whole job is to do contractor oversight and make sure they're doing what they need to be doing. So we definitely provide the feedback. But I understand what you're saying. It's a, it's a trend.

Yeah. It's a trend. To add to that list, just if you would, I may, just easement access. You know, typically the contractor will go out there and they'll go out to the easement, which, of course, they can. But what, in several cases, and when I say several, maybe three or four comments that I've gotten back from the residences is that, you know, they have to access the easement through a gate in the back to get to the backyard. And the gate's not properly latched on the way out, then pets that spend their time back there end up taking a tour of the neighborhood. So anyway, I just want to put that also on that list. Got it. So anyway.

That's an important one, too. So anyway, those are my comments.

Commissioner Sandberg, any questions?

Yeah, just a couple. It is funny because to kind of go along with what Vice Mayor said, literally within the last couple weeks, someone showed me a picture of the Duke pole in their backyard. And it had severe, I don't know, termite damage. And then obviously something was going after those termites. And the pole is very insecure, very unstable. Is there a proper spot or a proper place for me to send that Dunedin resident to have that looked at? Because it does wobble when it's windy, he said.

Yes, absolutely. And I think if you give things like that to Jorge, he knows how to get them to us. Usually it's Mike Malley who is going to handle an issue like that. Mike is your large account manager for Dunedin. So he handles all those day-to-day type issues for you all.

And the other thing is that we talked about improper planting in the location. There is a relatively new community here in Dunedin that someone thought would look nice next to the giant, the green transformer box. Is that what you'd call it? And now the entire side of that street is having problems. I mean, it's too late. But what would you suggest I tell that the residents hang around with the president of the HOA and they're having trouble with it?

So there's a tree next to the pad mounted transformer. Put in after the developer left. And the roots are kind of going under. Yeah. Nick, that's probably something that, I don't know, Nick. That's probably something you all could take a look at, right? But anyway, same process. Send it to Jorge. If you get all these things, it's like, my street light is out. Duke ran over my flowers. Duke ran, you know, Duke tore up my sidewalk. Jorge can usually field those. Yeah, Mike will speed up. And then Mike will handle it. And I think, you know, we do have a good track record. Once we get that, we will go out.

I mean, those were specific ones in the last couple months. We will fix it. And, you know, one thing I do want to compliment you on, though, is the notification of outages. Man, the text message comes. It's got to, you know, it'll be ready in four hours. And then in 20 minutes, it's back on. So, I mean, I think I speak on behalf of a lot of the citizens of Dunedin. I appreciate your aggressive notifications. And you make it very easy to report an outage. And so that's all I have. Thank you, Mayor. Okay.

Cool. I have a couple questions. Let's see. First of all, I just wanted to clarify. So when you look at the stats, you're just leaving out, like, name storms out of the statisticals. So now you'll add them in just so we can see. Yeah, we will add those in. That's awesome. Let's see. So I kind of took note to the leading factor that you don't underground is truck accessibility.

Mm-hmm.

You know, which I get that. But that seems kind of like a basic answer because if you look at Scotland, there's a lot of areas that you're not going to underground at your expense that have nothing to do with truck accessibility. Scotland's one. So, yeah. I mean, I just think that people would be like, well, what are you talking about? There's all these things you said no to, and they're accessible to trucks. So, yeah. And I guess you gave other answers. Yeah.

So I don't know if you want to address that, Stefano. So the question is, there's a lot of areas that we've decided to harden overhead in Dunedin that do not necessarily meet the criteria of what we're saying we harden overhead versus underground. So when we say we're looking at underground, we're going to look at truck accessibility, we're going to look at vegetation, things like that. But yet we're hardening areas overhead that are on, like, Main Street or, you know, Broadway or things like that. So I think that's the question, right? I just wouldn't communicate it like that because isn't it a much deeper answer? Because obviously if I'm not knowing as much as I do now about undergrounding, I'd be like, what are you talking about?

Like, you've said no 10 million times to places that are completely truck accessible.

Yeah. It's not just – that's a good point. It's not just about truck accessibility. There's a bunch of different – I mean, like, on Scotland, I think a lot had to do with the big equipment that goes with it.

Yeah. And you were not going to get permission from some of those homeowners to have some of that big equipment. Or padron and transformers. Right.

And that would fall under easements where, you know, can we get easements for these things or not?

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. It's oversimplification to say it's just about trucks.

Because then I'd say to you, can you please get Scotland undergrounded? Like, yeah. Is Scotland done?

How much – what's the – what's the update on Scotland and Scotland, the corner at Scotland and Broadway, actually? It is complete? Mike? Okay.

And so the ones that are supposed to be taken out are taken out?

So even the, you know, the other lines that have been on some of the old ones, so it's done done. You might have to come up just because people won't hear you on – if they're watching streaming. So, sorry. I can hear you, but trust me, they hear nothing. And if you're watching –

I'm Mr. Mayor and Commissioner Mike Malley, Duke Energy. I'm your accountant manager. So I usually work with your teams out in the field. But it's always good for you to hear from the experts of our team. And I'm usually working some of the projects I hear about the Scotland. And I did hear that that one was complete. But some of the – once we get done with the construction of putting in the poles, then we have – the older poles. Once we have to wait to remove those poles until the telecommunication companies come off the pole. And a lot of times we'll chop the top of the pole off to make it – add some – a better look to it without having such a big pole. But until the telecoms come off, then we remove those. So I can double-check that. But I believe that's the only thing remaining out there. And the other concrete poles were – or the wood poles were put in to upgrade that.

Yeah, I'd like to know how many poles are still out there that – because of telecommunication companies. Because, you know, obviously, you know, the residents – the more – the more they're still there, the more clutter that's out there. Okay. And I did have feedback, I think, on your transformer question that usually with the transformers, we ask customers not to put any vegetation in the front where the doors are.

There's about a 10-foot clearance in the front of the doors because what the linemen to disconnect and move service, they have a stick that they kind of park and unpark. So there's 10-foot clearance by the doors and 3-foot clearance on the side.

So that's the area that's best to plant plants, especially with large roots. Thank you.

And I know that you guys are going to be working with the Ocean Optics site across from Cassatina's on the new development. But we'll let that happen. And then – so, yeah, sorry to do this to you, but we used the word hatchet job with trees. But the one I got yesterday was butchering our trees. Duke Tree Cutters are butchering, all caps, our trees. There is a situation on Orangewood where Queen Palm, I guess, got hatcheted and then it got hatcheted – well, it got cut. That's not fair to judge you, okay, because I don't know the situation totally. We're looking into it. But it got cut to the level then it had to be taken out. So we have a very upset citizen who says we have no right to be a Tree City USA doing stuff like that. I do think it's in the right-of-way, which is probably a factor. But I know that my assistant's working with you guys, so we understand everything that happened. Actually, Rick Warner was on site with that resident for quite a period of time and explained why some certain trees were removed. That was a Queen Palm that was removed. So he – and conveyed the right tree, right place, that type of thing. So staff has been on site with that president. Well, I just want to make sure we have all the details. Because even – I mean, you know, you still have a lot of palms in the right-of-way. We don't want to hatchet them all down. I mean, so I get it. And again, I'm not assuming you hatcheted it down, but, you know, that's what we get. And sometimes, with all due respect, you do. The contractors do. So we just need to be on top of it. Okay. I don't have any other questions, so I guess we'll go to the other program that I'll take public input all at once, I think, at that point. And I don't want to go any longer than 10.30 on this one, Natalie, because we've got two other big items.

Good morning. I'm Travis Knauss, Program Manager for Clean Energy Connection. The Clean Energy Connection is a voluntary regulated program by the Public Service Commission. Essentially what it does is it has the capacity of 749 megawatts across 10 different locations in Florida. I'll show you some more of those a little bit later. You can see how they're geographically dispersed there on this slide. The program works off of a subscription or fee, kind of, sorry, I'm just kind of coming back to something I was just bringing off in my head there. So we work off a subscription fee where it's based off of kilowatts, right? A kilowatt in capacity is just going to be a very small percentage of the overall portfolio. They're $8.35 per kilowatt. That subscription fee does not change over time. It's the way it's written into our tariff. The program also allows for generation credits. So depending on the number of kilowatts that you subscribe to and pay that $8.35 fee for, as the generation for your percentage of the portfolio based off of those kilowatts is going to take that generation and multiply it by a credit rate. For the first three years that you run the program, that credit rate remained the same. And then every year after on the anniversary, it increases by roughly 1.5%. So last January, you started receiving credits that are now at $4.098 per kilowatt, where the previous three years you guys were at $4.037. And then in July of this year, it will increase by about 1.5%, which will put you at $4.198. So the program's designed in order for you to pay to a subscription for these fees on a monthly basis. There's no long-term contracts. You guys are able to reduce your subscription at any time or pull out the program at any time without any penalty. And then the generation credits allow us to be able to give you guys basically the avoided cost of any fuel that would be associated with solar as we put it onto the grid. And feel free to stop me at any time. You don't have to wait until the end. We'll probably wait until the end just because I think it's more efficient for us. But thank you for that.

Thank you for that. Thank you.

So originally when the program came out, Dunedin had requested that they had 7.3 megawatts of capacity. Currently, you guys are at a full subscription, adjusted subscription, of roughly 3 megawatts. You'll see the 2,960 kilowatts there. That's because when the program first came out, there was an overwhelming number of customers of various backgrounds and types that wanted to come into the program. So to make it fair for all customers that wanted to participate, we lowered the request of everybody by the same percentage. So currently, that's where you are. At the end of 2024, this program allowed you guys to attain some of your sustainability targets by making up 31% of the city's usage for that year. And then the 2025 numbers are actually just about to come out because we're here at the end of March for last calendar year. The reason for that delay is because as we take the generation each and every month, it normally is one or two bill cycles behind. So, you know, December generation might not show up until your February or March bill. It's always a little delayed there. So in addition to the credits that you guys receive, you get these REC certificates. They're called Renewable Energy Certificates. And what Renewable Energy Certificates allow us to do is to be able to legally transfer and allow you guys to be able to take the stand that you used renewable energy. So all of these solar facilities that are on this program that are throughout the state of Florida, they all come and place their generation onto the grid for all customers to use. So all customers are using this green energy. But what we do is, and it's on the same grid as well as with the coal and natural gas that, you know, you were talking to Katie about the fuel mix earlier about. It's all going onto the same grid. So what these certificates do is we're allowed, it allows us to give you a certificate where you can make these claims that you're using renewable electricity, even though it's not necessarily on your roof. We track that through the actual percentage of your capacity of the program that you're joining. So as an example, when we talked about your 2,900 before, we take 2,900 kilowatts divided by the 749 megawatts, that's your percentage of the program. So every month, that percentage of the generation is provided to you as your generation. You get the credits, and at the end of the year, you get the RECs. So this allows you guys to meet your sustainability goals, and it also just helps to have, you know, a more secure source of the type of energy that we have out there. You know, so it's another alternative to the coal and the natural gas, and it just has a different resiliency factor that's placed onto the grid. So the program has taken place. You guys joined us. I think you signed off originally, maybe closer to 2020, but I don't think we actually started, you know, getting bills and credits to you until July of 2022, which was when the very first site came online. So what you'll see here is each of the names of the sites, what county they're in, and then about what time the generation actually started. And I say that because there's a couple sites that came in in portions. You'll see that Bay Trail and Winky Pin, you know, came in in two different cycle sets. And this is important because as we look at some other numbers, you're going to understand why you'll see increases over time. So as an example, the first two sites that are up there, one, and we'll call it one and a half, came on in 2022. But then you'll see there's a number of them that came on in 23, and then some in 24, and just one at the tail end of 2025. So what this graph helps us to understand is from the very entire life cycle of the program going back to July of 2022, for every kilowatt that anybody in the program is subscribed to, this is mapping out the generation. So there's two gray lines there. Those gray lines represent the range of the generation that we expect for that time of year. As you can see, there's definitely a pattern to the graph, and that's because the solar radiance and the amount of sun that we get during certain times of year is greater than others. So we expect, for instance, between March and August of every year for us to have a lot more sun than we obviously would have in November through January. And that's why you'll see this pattern of what I call the solar coaster, you know, as we go by. So when the program first was designed, we only had, as we mentioned earlier, one site up and running. Unfortunately, our hurricane did significant damage to that site within months of it going online. And so the point of this graph is to show you that as the sites, which are kind of labeled there at the bottom, have continued to come online, we've been able to get our range and our performance, which is the black line, closer to the range of what was expected. In fact, at this point, we're getting to the top of those ranges. So in the beginning two years of the program, the rebates or the credits were just not coming in at the way we had expected them to, based off of several items that we'll kind of get into further here in a moment. But especially since the last site came online, as you guys can see there where we kind of marked out the full portfolio, we've definitely been within the range that's expected, and we continue to increase that generation year over year so that your rates or generation credits continue to increase. So aside from the damage that was done to the hurricane, we had some industry-wide failures. A good example of that is what's called an MC4 connector, some tracking devices and cables and fans. So we had a lot of difficulty with product, especially after COVID. Everybody in the industry did, that there was a lot of materials that just were inferior. So we had to spend a lot of time out there getting to work with the manufacturers to be able to have superior products instead of the inferior ones that were still remaining on the shelves. So we resolved a lot of that over those first two years of the program. COVID also had a backlog with a lot of parts that we needed. That has all been resolved. And any parts that we know have a longer lead time, we are well stocked with those. And then the other item that we creatively came up with is instead of waiting for the warranty service providers to come out to do repairs, we were able to put our employees themselves through that training. So now we are actually authorized to do those repairs ourself for our warranty products. So that's helped us to get us back on track in addition to having those additional sites. So in the beginning when we were talking about this graph, and we kind of panned out for you on the bottom what each of those sites are, how many were coming online, if we only had one or two sites and there was damage or something was going wrong at that site, it would take out, you know, maybe we'll call it a half of a site. That would be, you know, 25% of the generation. At this point, if we have a problem at a site or if, let's say, another hurricane was to come out and take out a complete site, 90% of the sites would still be up and running. Where earlier in the program, we just didn't have that number, right? The same type of repair took out a larger portion of the generation that would be created. So the other systemic improvements that we've made is we kind of reorganized our program, or actually it was our entire Duke organization regarding our different sources. So now we have one solar focus, what I call them the solars are, one solar leader instead of having different leaders that are over different types of facilities. So we now have one solar leader that's focused on solar only. We've created granular level dashboards, so we have different real-time reporting at this point that helps us to be able to pinpoint where things are going wrong quicker and sooner. And then we've continued to expand our crews out there in the field and the use of technology, specifically drones, have helped us to definitely increase our efficiency and response time. Another thing that we've done over the last, at the end of the tail end of the two, is to start analyzing repairs. We now are looking at certain repairs and how much downtime that will take versus what time of year it is where there could be impact, right? So if we have some repairs that need to be done, we might put some of those repairs off if we're in July and wait until September when the amount of generation won't be so impactful. But they analyze each of those situations to understand what needs to be repaired, the amount of downtime, and whether or not we should be changing the time of year or maybe the time of day that we're going to do that repair work. So coming in to look at how this has actually impacted Dunedin as a financial point of view, we kind of have it up there that you'll see some partial years, which is the very first year we started in July through December. In subscription fees that year, as an example, you paid $37,000 to be in the program, but you got $28,000 worth of credits. So the program costs you $9,000 for that year. As we increased the number of sites, which is why I went through that background for context for you, the subscription fees have increased each year. Now, there will be no more increases in subscription fees because all of the sites are up and running now. But what will continue to change is that the subscription or the credit rate, the generation rate, goes up every year now, which was not happening for the first three years, and we actually have improved our capacity factor. And the capacity factor has gone up by about 10% each year. Capacity factor is basically just a way for us to look at the efficiency of how the program's working. This can be a little confusing because some people want to compare this to 100%, and it looks like we're only doing, you know, in the 20s. But when it comes to solar energy as a generation facility, it's never going to be 100% because solar only radiates through so many hours of a day. So to be at 28% solar capacity would be incredible for anybody that has solar power in the state of Florida. So what we're seeing happen here is that your net is actually going down each year, and that's a combination of the increase in the credit rate that you're getting, the 1.5% each year, plus the increase in the amount of efficiency that we're generating. So this is a 33-year program. Again, there's no contract here. You're not locked into anything. You also have no upfront costs. But this is a way that we look at it on a long-term basis for people to see it as a savings program. Some of our customers use it only as a savings program over time. Others use it for sustainability reasons and doesn't even does it for both. All of our customers have a variety of reasons for participating in the program. So as we saw back here, just to kind of connect the dots a little bit, so far you've spent $81,000 into the program while also starting meeting your sustainability goals. And here we're letting you know that through 10 years, given all the actuals up until the end of December, plus what we believe will happen over the next 30 years, that at the end of 10 years you guys will have paid in $107,000 to $178,000. But keep in mind, early on we've already paid in $81,000. So those subscription credits are going to keep increasing while your subscription fee, or generation credits are going to keep increasing while your subscription fee remains the same. So it's our estimate that between the 26% and 27% capacity factor, depending on how the generation operates, that you guys will have a break-even point between years 9 and 13 and a payback period of 17 to 24 years, based on what the generation actually ends up being during that time period. So we're hoping that at the end of the 33 years, if everything goes right, that you guys will have actually saved, you know, between $380 or, you know, three-quarters of a million dollars in this program while also meeting your sustainability objectives. Did you want to take questions on this first, or did you want to do your part?

I just have a few slides, so I'll share those, and then we'll take questions. I'll just do it right here. Thanks, Travis. All right, thank you. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, Natalie Gass, Sustainability Program Manager for the city. And I just wanted to take a minute to zoom back and really look at how this program fits into our larger clean energy goals and get an understanding of what those are and then how this fits in. So our Ready for 100% clean energy goal was established in December of 2018, and that is to transition to 100% clean renewable energy sources for our municipal operations by 2035, and then to expand that community-wide by 2050. So there's two separate goals with two separate years. You have the municipal goal and the community goal, and you're looking at target years of 2035 and 2050. When we talk about our municipal goal, we are working on a few different strategies to allow us to get there. So that first being energy efficiency, and what was mentioned earlier is really looking at how can you decrease the amount of energy that you need to provide for, and we do this through energy efficiency projects. We've completed energy audits through the Duke Energy Program for 16 of our facilities, and then looking to make those upgrades and improvements on HVAC, lighting, and other needs for the buildings. We are installing solar and have installed solar on three of our buildings so far and are continuing to look to do that as we move forward. We have solar on our city hall, our emergency operations center, and our water treatment plant. And then in addition, we are subscribed into the Clean Energy Connection Program, which Travis just reviewed. And this is because we cannot achieve our 100% goal solely using on-site solar as our strategy to get there. We have street lighting. We have other energy needs that our buildings, we don't have enough space to get us to 100% by just installing solar on our own buildings. When we look at the status of our clean energy goal, and this is for data including calendar year 2024, as mentioned, we'll be getting new data this spring, hopefully in April, and we'll be able to update this with 2025 data. But looking at that, we have 34.75% of our goal is coming from clean energy sources, such as solar. And then the other piece is our other energy sources, mainly natural gas and coal. We've been able to progress towards this goal year after year. This is starting in 2022 and then looking at 23 and 2024. But there is still a large way to go, as you can see, towards that 2035 goal. So the really important thing to take away from this presentation and understanding the Duke Clean Energy Connection Program is how does it fit into our larger goals? How do we look at this in terms of our energy mix and how we're reaching our municipal goal? So I know this is small, so I break this down for you. This is a look at our energy sources year after year. We're looking at years 2022, 2023, and 2024. Those are the three different bars that you see here. So the gray is looking at our other energy sources through Duke Energy, natural gas, coal mainly. At the top, you see a very small yellow line. That is our on-site solar generation from our Dunedin facilities. The 2024 data shows that 2% of our goal or 2% of our energy for our clean energy goal is coming from on-site solar. Then we have a little over 3% coming from the solar that's in the grid mix for Duke Energy Florida. And then in green is shown our Clean Energy Connection subscription, which is making up almost 30% of our goal for year 2024. So it shows the importance of this program and that it is really contributing towards our goal that we will continue to put solar on our facilities. But in addition, this program helps get us closer to that clean energy goal for 2035. As I mentioned, we have completed a solar feasibility study where we assessed 16 different facilities, mainly our larger facilities for community centers, recreation, library, and our public works buildings. And before we did the solar side of this, we partnered with Duke Energy where they completed on-site energy audits for all of these facilities at no extra cost. And then we were able to work with a consultant to develop and plan right-sized solar PV systems for each facility so that moving forward as we can incorporate these projects into the budget, we have a plan to do so. And then the last slide I wanted to share is outside of our municipal goal, we have our 2050 community-wide goal. Some of the ways that we are encouraging our residents to solarize their home or create energy efficiency is through these programs. So I will mention that Duke Energy has a separate home energy check program that residents and businesses can sign up for and get more information specific to their site. We also have a resiliency and sustainability rebate program, which can rebate anything from insulation, new windows, new HVAC, and they can get a rebate for up to $2,500 for those projects on-site in addition to the Duke Energy rebates they may be getting for some of the work they're doing. We also have a solar rebate up to $2,500 that you can do in addition if you're installing solar on your home or business or nonprofit. And then finally, we partner with organizations and nonprofits such as Solar United Neighbors, and we are partnering with them on this year's Switch Together program, which really looks at residents or businesses who are interested in going solar can participate in this group effort to go solar where they receive more consumer protection. And the solar companies are really vetted that they are a good source to go through for that project, and then they can receive reduced pricing because it's more done in a group aspect. And residents will be receiving a letter in the mail for that program soon, and that's all paid for through the Switch Together program. I'm happy to answer questions on our larger goals. Travis is here to answer some about the Clean Energy Connection program. So thank you.

Okay, so obviously this is an important program. Just asking the commission to be mindful of the time. I'm going to start questions. Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. This is really just kind of more of a confirmation just so I understand this. Basically, we pay a subscription fee to get – it's going to be based on our projected usage, right?

Yes, so we're paying for a subscription, an amount of the solar that's being generated at these solar sites, and we're paying a subscription fee and then receiving a credit.

Okay. And we – how do we make that determination? Because then the next one is slide 27. So there's a request that's made, 7,343. Where does that number come from?

So that was initially looking at our energy need going into the program. And you can correct me, Travis, the street lighting is not eligible for this program. That's correct. So that was really to cover more of our facilities, the facility energy use. But due to the popularity of the program, we were not able to subscribe to the highest amount, and everyone was brought down at the same level. And that was our final subscription.

Okay, and I'm going to then – the third part of this question is I'm assuming that's the adjusted full subscription of 2,960. That's what everybody was dropped down to.

So everyone was dropped down to – I think you dropped everyone a percentage of what they asked.

So everybody asked for different levels. Okay. So everybody was dropped down by the same percentage in order to make everybody have some participation instead of leaving people out.

Okay. So what's that 2,960 number represent?

So that's how many kilowatts of the overall portfolio of the 10 sites.

Got it. Okay. Perfect. Okay. I have no further questions.

So that percentage is going to be how much of the generation you receive every month. Got it. Okay. Of the overall sites.

Thank you for that. Okay.

Commissioner Sammerman. On that rebate page, are we doing everything we can to get that in front of the public?

So we have that program. There's information on our website. It goes in our newsletters and on social media. Right now that program has $50,000 in it for the project costs and $50,000 for permit fee rebates. Those are lower fund amounts. So we can rebate about 20 to 30 rebates per year. And each year we run through the money for the project cost side of it.

So that's all I have, Mayor. Okay.

Okay. Commissioner Gow. Questions?

Thank you, Mayor. More on a general basis. With our agreement with you on solar, tell me a little bit about the solar farms that you all have and how much land that is taking up and who owns that land and et cetera, et cetera about that.

Yes. So for this specific program, there's 10 sites that are identified. Duke has other solar sites outside of this program. But for this specific program, every site is the same size. It's 749 megawatts. Now that can change in acres. So as an example, we would expect, so if the city wanted to take basically your three megawatts that you guys are looking at, that would probably take you 15 acres of land. So most of our facilities that have that 749 megawatts are going to vary probably between 450 to 750 acres. It just depends on the topography and what else might be there at those locations. Maybe there might be a lake that they're avoiding. So most of that land, and I shouldn't say most because I don't have all of the information right in front of me. Some of this is owned by Duke. Others of it is rented by Duke for the period of time that we have for the length of the program.

Okay. And has there been any consideration for better sites or better use of land? An example, maybe partnering with the state and using medians and interstates or what we could do with some of our bike trails or getting with malls and using rooftops on malls that have a lot of square footage.

I could only speak to the actual CEC program. I wouldn't be able to kind of offer any other. Do you have any information on that? If you do or not. Sorry. We all have our own specialty here.

Hello, I'm Tom Laurie with Duke Energy, and I work with the overall renewables plan. So to answer your question on who owns the land, usually it's agricultural. A lot of times there will be a farmer that has 1,000 acres, and 500 of it will be used for solar. And we will, in general, lease that land from them over a 30-year lease. So they get a constant income from half of this, and then the other half they can use for agricultural. For the pattern of what makes it most use is a square. So think about a square mile is about the size you need for the 300,000 or so panels. The panels are getting more efficient, so now it might be 400 acres for the newer sites. Often this is in, you'll see, as you saw on the map, rural areas, that is cattle land, not necessarily, you know, just, you know, grasslands as opposed to actually was producing something of a vegetable. As far as along the sides of roads, we have looked at some of those. But the geography of putting a mile or 300,000 panels along, you know, a ditch just doesn't make a lot of economic sense. The square is kind of the best pattern to try to manage these, because it might be stretched out over, you know, five miles or seven miles if you just had a narrow area. And putting the panels on the ground is the most inexpensive way to do solar. So whenever you go to rooftop, you have to make the wind loads work. You've got to make it work on the roof. It tends to be a little more expensive to do that, especially on the scale that we're talking about here. So the most efficient thing is to put them in a square or as close to a square as you can and then put them on the ground. Does that answer your question? It does. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. That's all I have.

Commissioner DeGuard, questions?

What was the percentage of generation of electric power for the state of Florida last year? For just Duke.

I'm sorry. Say that again.

What was your percentage of solar-generated electricity last year for your system?

Outside of the CEC program, it was 3.3%.

Total? Do you have the total number between CEC and outside of CEC? I would have to look that up for you. What is your electric storage system capacity at this time?

For Duke in general? Yeah.

Again, this is Tom Laurie. We have an ongoing large-scale battery program that's rapidly ramping up. Right now, we might have about 25 megawatts of battery storage. But within, I think we put our 10-year site plan in in April, and you'll see more and more battery storage coming on online to supplement, if I think that's where you're heading with the question, to supplement the solar. So our first sites in central Florida... It's not just a supplement.

You and I both know the problem is your peaks. That's when you're generating a lot of solar, and you don't necessarily have use for it. And the only way you're going to start solving it and blending it is by being able to store your energy, your solar energy. We're not doing that right now. By the way, I was in Charlotte 20 years ago, and I listened to your CEO in Charlotte talk about what the future of storage and solar was. By the way, 18 months later, he was removed. The board was not ready for that, and it hasn't been ready for it yet. Now, I happen to have a strong affinity toward Duke Energy. I've worked with them for when I was in North Carolina. I worked with them down here, and I think you've got a great company. But somehow you've forgotten where your customer is and where they need to be, and we've got to get there. Three percent? Three percent, really. We've got to be at 25. That's where we have to be, and we're not getting there the right way. Now, I'm very pleased to hear you're getting into storage, because solar really doesn't work for you economically until you start storing it and are able to blend and kill your peaks, because you know you don't want to build any more gas-powered electric generation plants for just peak, and that's what gets very expensive for utilities. So I'm going to be following this very closely, as you can plainly see. Right now, I don't buy energy from you. I sell you energy. I've got it on my roof, and I've got batteries. I've been doing that now for seven years, and it works very well. I haven't had one outage in that period of time. Not one.

I think I agree with everything you've said.

Okay.

The two points I wanted to make, one is how long it takes to turn the boat around when you have tens of thousands of megawatts of generation. So what Duke has done in Florida specifically is we've worked our way out of coal to natural gas, well ahead of the curve, and now we're working our way to a blend of natural gas and solar. And we're building 300 megawatts a year, every year, all the way until 2032. And the only reason it doesn't go beyond that is we're trying to figure out, do we need to double down on that? So you'll see in our 10-year site plan, solar is in there constantly building. We're building that like crazy. The problem is we're trying to overcome such a large number of what we have for generation. The state continues to grow. We're a very power-hungry state. So that's kind of the solar solution. We have not slowed down. We're doubling down on solar. It just takes a while to overcome the numbers that we need to handle 2 million customers. On the battery side, we're finally at the point where that can now compete. We have to look at the over-economic cost of that compared to traditional generation. And up until recently, it was difficult to show how that works. Now I think we can. Now it competes with traditional generation. On top of adding it to solar, you can also put it somewhere in the system just as its own energy storage. It's not generation, but storage for just, as you say, peaks. So that time has come. Is it too late or too early? Well, that's up for debate, but it is here. So you'll see us starting to build much larger, tens of megawatts. Now we're going to hundreds of megawatts in energy storage in the near future. Very pleased to hear that. We're only 10 years too late. I know. And that's where the economics came in. We have been working with small sites all across our system, including in Charlotte, to try to make this work economically, and it's finally here. Because we have to use similar technology that's in your phone when we build these. So when you're looking at a scale of hundreds of megawatts, how does that match with something else?

Well, my system did not make economic sense when I put it in. Today, it makes great economic sense. And that's why we're starting to build them today. Well, I appreciate what you do. I admire your company. I admire you guys. I know what you're dealing with. But I will be pushing you. Thank you.

Okay. Natalie, this is for you. So what other cities in Pinellas are still in the program, and who dropped out, and why? Why shouldn't we?

So, Travis, and maybe you can speak to, I believe, City of Clearwater and Pinellas County have pulled out of the program. Looking at their, when they pulled out of the program, it didn't seem like they had a large amount of data. So what we wanted to do is we waited. You were in those meetings with Duke Energy, the quarterly meetings, and we said, let's wait. Let's look at our generation. Let's understand how the program is functioning to make an educated decision. When you look at the amount of energy that is feeding into our clean energy goals, so that top yellow bar being what's on site, it's going to take us a very long time to achieve our goals. And being in this program, we're able to see savings over the long run and also a huge chunk of our goal to be able to get to the 2035 municipal goal. So it's commission direction, but really looking at the program and understanding that we've made an investment into the program, and we're already in it. So pulling out of the program would not benefit us in terms of that we wouldn't receive those savings in the long term. We would have paid in for just these first few years, which is the most amount of money. We wouldn't get the money off of our investment at this point.

Okay, great. I just wanted to kind of clarify because I know that's a thing. Okay, that's the only questions I have, so I am going to open it up to the public. Anyone in the public who wishes to come forward and speak on this issue, name and address for the record, Alan, in three minutes. Yes, it would not be about solar if Alan wasn't here.

Hi, Alan Brand, 1730 Hickory Gate Drive North. Thank you, Natalie. It's been so long since I've seen some of you guys. I didn't recognize who you were until I was here about a half an hour, and I looked over Mike and Tom. A little bit of history. I was on the first call when you guys announced the program. I think the first call you made probably was to Sierra Club, and I was on that call with about four or five other people. We were all very excited about it. And I asked a lot of questions. I more or less took the lead for Sierra Club on this. And I asked so many questions that they sent me a spreadsheet. And I took that spreadsheet, and I changed their constants into variables so I could model the program with different inputs. Now, one of the things, now, you know, this has all been really nice up to this point, but it's something you need to realize. When this program was originally taken up, and I have a correspondence right here, the payback period was going to be five to seven years. I've got that from a couple different people I corresponded with. And now the payback period is 17 to 24 years. So that's a big difference, you know, when you signed up for something and expecting to pay back five to seven years. And the thing that I discovered, I'm sorry, I should be addressing the commission. I shouldn't be turning around so long. Yeah, and I was giving you a little grace there. Sorry. These folks, I want to hear this. What I discovered doing analysis on this program was that it sits on a knife edge. It's usually sat on the edge of a knife, and the name of that knife is capacity factor. I found that modeling this with, they were assuming a 28% capacity factor. And now it's going to be, it looks like it's running under 27%. So that makes a big difference in how this program turns around. And I have graphs I could have shown you, but this is, it's disappointing from the point of view of Sierra Club and someone who I actually stood before the commission six years ago and said that we should move forward, that I recommended we move forward with this program. And it looked really good then. But what's really changed is the capacity factor. So the thing that really needs to be done, I think, is bring that capacity factor up to 28%. Is there any hope for that? And that's really a question for Duke Energy. Now, I know I'm talking off a technical point here, capacity factor, but this is very important. This is what it sits at, is a disappointing capacity factor, has brought the payback period from five to seven years to 17 to 24 years. You guys are going to keep working this issue. Your capacity factor is coming up. But the documentation I show is 26.6%. Can I keep going? No, I need you to wrap up. Okay. The line that's forming behind me is getting long. Yeah, it's okay. But we've got a lot of other stuff on the agenda, too. So this is what I need to make everyone aware of. I think this is a good program, emissions-wise, to getting the city's goal of picking up 34% or whatever it is of our production or our consumption. But financially, it's not what we were expecting. And I'd like to hear, the commission should like to hear, I would think, what Duke is going to do to bring up that capacity factor.

Thank you, Alan. Thank you, Alan. Can actually, well, first of all, thank you. I'm going to let you be seated. Anyone else in the audience who wish to come forward to speak on this issue in the public? Okay. Seeing no one, I'll close public input. And let me ask someone from Duke Energy to respond to Alan's question.

Yeah. Every month that we've continued, Travis Niles, Program Manager for Clean Energy Connection, for every month that we continue on the program, we're continuing to increase the capacity factor. And we're hitting, you know, and we always look at everything in 12 months, trailing 12 months, because of the seasonality or the solar coaster that we spoke to. So every month, we are increasing that capacity factor each and every month. So we're hitting new highs every month. So we're still trying to get back to that 28% capacity factor. We kind of addressed this with staff probably a year ago, where we said that we were going to move the range down for a short period to 26% to 27.1% was our expectations. But we continue to hit new highs each and every month. So we hope to be able to get back to that 28% capacity factor. But right now, I think we're at this point, we're at 26.7. And then we'll have to see what March brings. We don't have the graph up there anymore. But if you guys can look, you can see how we've continued to increase. And then February was certainly a very successful month in itself.

So do you have a timeline by which you'd like to hit 28%?

Well, I'd really love to be able to do it within this next six months or so. But it's just going to have to be a point of what we're able to manage with the weather and with all the other adjustments that we've already made that have increased that capacity factor that we already discussed.

Okay. Okay. Sure. A quick one, though.

Do you know what your residential generation into your system is for rooftop solar?

I personally don't. I'm sorry. I run the Clean Energy Connection Program. Okay. So I don't really know kind of the overall numbers. Anyone know that? I don't know if the team does, maybe.

Tom?

Okay. I think it would be helpful because you have a partnership with every resident that has a rooftop solar and even battery storage.

Maybe you can get us that information.

We would really appreciate that.

Anything else? Okay. Final comments. I'm going to start with Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, so, you know, this has been a good discussion. You know, and I do see the potential, the future benefit of this. However, my colleague, Commissioner Degard, brought up some really great points, numbers that concern me. The fact that the percentage of solar generation is 3.3% of what's going into the grid. That's, I don't know, that seems like a really low number to me. And bringing up the discussion on the capacity factor piece of this and just how an incremental decrease could result in a payback period that's significantly longer than what was originally advertised. I, you know, my opinion and just this program, you know, I see the benefit. I see that there is benefit to this program. But I also do think there's a lot of work that needs to go into this still. I don't think we're realizing the full potential here at this point. So those are my comments. Thank you. Okay.

Commissioner Sandbergen. No further comments, Mayor. Commissioner Gao.

Thank you for being here this morning.

Commissioner Degard.

Only been an hour. How long have we been at this level? What was, when we started our solar energy program, what were we looking at on a percentage of generation? I mean, it feels like it's been 3% forever. Hold on. I'm not doing comments. I'm doing questions. Yeah. Sorry. We're in the final comments. Apology for that, Mayor. Comment. We are now buying natural gas at a much higher rate. It'll be the temptation of your system to want to have a gas surcharge to customers because that's what's going to happen if we continue the gas prices where they are today. You are natural gas dependent. That means what goes on globally affects our customers here in Dunedin. The only way you're going to separate us from that dependency is to put it on our roofs and we grow it in our fields. We are trapped again. We're back in an energy line because you guys decided, oh, we've got sunk costs in energy generation plants that we have to recover. That's reprehensible. Get us out of here. Thank you, Mayor.

Okay, great. Well, you've added a lot to this conversation, Commissioner Dugard. I love it. So, first of all, I just want to say from the overall system, the first part of our presentation, thank you very much. I mean, when I think back several years ago to now, what a difference and improvement in our communication, in the thought process of how we're moving forward together, in the improvements to the system. So, Katie, certainly special thanks to you. Katie is also a business owner in the city. I like that. Small business owner. And, Mike, you're always amazing. You're great. So, I appreciate the work that you guys do. And I think we've come a long way on some of the system improvements. Some of the areas where we had repetitive, repetitive problems in neighborhoods, you know, is drastically improved. So, that's great. As far as the solar goes, I mean, you've heard it. And I think Commissioner Dugard added a lot of great comments to this. You know, I mean, when something's important enough, it has a sense of urgency. And clearly, it has no sense of urgency, solar, to Duke. And I think you get criticized for that in every area of the community. And I'm not sure what that's about. But I totally agree. I mean, it's time to have a sense of urgency about what's important for the long-term good of our communities. So, okay. I don't have any other comments. And I'm going to close. Mayor, so we have a number of follow-up items.

If it's all right with you, we can just have Duke submit to Jorge.

And we can load that up to all of you under separate cover, under e-mail. I have Duke. We want to include storm outages and outage durations. You want to know what that looks like. And also residential generation of rooftop solar. And then we're just going to incorporate Right Tree, Right Place and some of the Duke diagrams in the tree giveaway. So, we'll just get that information and send it to you via e-mail if that's okay. Okay.

Sounds good.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. Okay. That's that one. And we're going to take a quick break. A quick break. And then we're going to go to citizen survey results.

So, Mayor, what we'd like to do is during break test the system, see if we can get Dr. Neely. And Laura is here in person. So, if not, we can go straight to the legislative update. Okay.

That sounds great. Okay. Okay. We're reopening the meeting. And we're going to go to 2026 citizen survey results with Nicole and Dr. Neely, who is now apparently present online. Correct? Pure Hope. So, can you guys hear me? Yes, we can. That's good. All right. Perfect.

Awesome. Good morning again, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commission. Nicole Delfino here, Strategy and Sustainability Manager. We're just going to jump right into the presentation to review the 2026 citizen survey results. As far as the agenda for what we are going to be taking a look at, I can't see the thing on screen, but it's on my screen. Is it moving on your screens as well? Okay. Just wanted to make sure. All right. Obviously, we'll introduce Dr. Neely again, take a look at our timeline, review our communication plan, and then I will pass it to Dr. Neely as far as reviewing our survey results and the recommendations that are in the report as well. For some of you have met Dr. Neely in person. He is joining us today online. He runs the Forward Analytics as a research consultant. He has an MBA and PhD in public administration with expertise in public policy analysis and survey research. I know you've seen this introduction before. As far as the 2026 survey goes, again, we maintained some consistency across survey years with the type of questions that we asked so that we can have that comparison over time. We did review and modify questions. We do that each year. We kind of pick an item that might need to be addressed, and this year we really focused on both parks and recreation and some budget planning questions. The survey consisted of 27 survey questions and 7 demographic questions, and I realize it says on your screen that it ran for three weeks, but it actually ran for four weeks, so that just keep to get that up deep. This is the timeline of when we started and completed the survey. We presented the preview to commission February 3rd. We kicked off communication the week prior to the survey opening, so it was posted in our newsletter and our social media with the survey opening the February 9th and then running to March 6th. And then, of course, we're here with you today to review the results. As far as the communication plan, I forgot my prop. It's upstairs. Each year we're looking to enhance our communication plans and how we can reach residents to engage with them to participate in the survey. This year we followed a lot of what we have done in years past. That includes a project page on our website. We had graphics for flyers and rack cards. We did several posts, both through our Dunedin News and our social media channels. Not challenges. There's a full slip. A direct email campaign. We've crafted quite a list of emails that we emailed all of this out to. We did a lot of community emailing as well with different groups and organizations, including our schools and so on and so forth. A lot of social organizations. And then new this year was our lawn signs, or as Jennifer refers to them, as our snipe signs. And those, this was my prop that was upstairs, we placed at all of our community centers as well as our parks and then several neighborhood parks as well. So if you're in a park and you're visiting from your neighborhood, you could just click on the QR code, sit on a park bench, take our survey. That's what, in my head, was what happened.

So, but we did receive, you know, quite a bit of engagement. So we're very pleased with the results of that. As far as the direct email campaign goes, again, we emailed all of our boards and committees, all of our city staff, several organizations, the chamber, the council of organizations. We have an HOA email list, thanks to the storms, a business list, and then, again, some of our several social organizations. So we're going to just jump. I'm actually going to pass it to Dr. Neely to talk first through the responses and the demographics of the survey. If you want to take it over, Dr. Neely.

Thank you, Nicole. If I could just start with a couple of quick notes. I can't see you, so if you have any questions, please just interrupt me. I want to thank mayor and commission for allowing me to join you virtually today so I can be out of town to attend to some family matters. I appreciate it. My family appreciates it very much. And it's great to be back with you all. I do this with a lot of cities. There's no better team to work with on these than Nicole and Jennifer. They really are engaged and take the process seriously. When we had a lower response rate, you know, getting close to the close of the survey, they were able to do a really great push and get it to a really strong place. So really, really appreciate working with them and with all of you. We talked a lot last time about the survey methodology, and so I'm going to not dwell on that too much this time. But if there are any questions about how we did this, about what these numbers mean in terms of the kind of sample you have, I'd be happy to go over those with you later. If we could jump ahead one, Nicole. Just bear in mind, we blew these, we zoomed in on these charts to show you some of the differences, but do note that we've really limited the scale. So some of these differences will look a little bigger than they really are. This is an enviable response rate for any community of Dunedin size. You are running at a margin of error of about 2.5 percent, or I'm sorry, about 2.5 points. And so I talked last time that really the key, you know, one of the keys is having a large enough sample that you can draw inferences about your community. The other key is that that sample is actually representative of your community. If you have a really large sample, but it doesn't represent your community, then you're still going to get some errant inferences. So as we jump ahead, we can kind of see how the demographics shook out on this. We have a definitely decidedly older skew in the response pool, though we are creeping up slowly but surely over the last couple years in some of our younger groups. But the Census Bureau lists the median age at 58. And you'll notice that our highest response pool does come from a little bit above that, the 64 to 74 year age bracket. This isn't abnormal. Older residents have more, you know, deeper roots in the community. They tend to be a little more engaged, and so they are more likely to respond to citizen surveys. But we are skewing just a smidge above the median age. Not terribly, but enough that you do want to note that. As a result, we had some questions in there about children in the household. Only about 20% of responding households reported having children. So we are skewing a little bit older and maybe a little bit away from the percentage of families that would have children in the household. You do want to keep that in mind when interpreting some of the results. And then if we can jump ahead, I'm sorry to keep saying that. I don't have the controller. We're creeping up in the last few years in the percentage of male respondents, which is good. And then on the next one, I believe, is going to have our racial responses. So the Census Bureau reports 85% white-only population in Dunedin. And so we are a smidge above that, again, about 10%. Those numbers look very dramatic given the demographics of the community. They're not quite as dramatic as they look, but we are a little bit underrepresentative of other groups. So I just want to point that out so you can keep that in mind as we're interpreting everything going forward. We have a whole bunch of numbers for you in the slides ahead. And some of them I'm not going to dwell on because they haven't changed dramatically. My goal is to kind of try to help you tell the story or see the story that the data tell. I can't fill in all the details of that story because, at the end of the day, the motivations for responses aren't always evident. But I think a lot of the story we can tell here is pretty consistent across the survey findings. And this is your first survey since the 24 storm season. And I've done a couple of communities recently who this is their first year really getting data after the storm season. And it took a toll. It absolutely takes a toll in the responses. You'll see a couple of specific areas. Some you already know you're going to see that toll show up in. But there has definitely been an effect from 2024 on people's perceptions of living on the Gulf Coast. Not that they've suddenly turned bad. It's still a great place to live. You still have overwhelmingly positive numbers. But just bear in mind as we're talking through this that this is your first survey since a really dramatic impact for a lot of residents. So if we could jump ahead, we always start our conversation looking at quality of life in the community and just perceptions of the community as a place to live and work and so forth. Your overall numbers remain very, very positive. You have, you may continue to have, I believe, the highest percentage of people rating your community as excellent of any of the surveys that I do. And, you know, the plurality after that are still rating it as a good place to live. And so you are, you're well over 90% at that point and very, just very overall positive numbers. I'm going to show you a little bit of a trend in that, that, that's, you know, may raise a few concerns. And so I want to bear that in mind that these remain the most positive numbers. That 65% is as high as I see in any community. But it has trickled down over the years, very slowly. Remember, we're dealing with a margin of error of about 2.54. And that means that if we took 100 samples, 95% of the time, we would expect the response to fall within 5%, you know, 2.5 above or below what we're looking at here. So most of these fluctuations are close to that margin of error, but we can see that it has dipped outside that margin of error in the last few years, a dip that a lot of communities have seen after 2024. And when we start piecing together all the disparate data points from the survey, all the anecdotal things that we know about life in Florida in the 2020s, we see a pretty clear story that why communities are seeing these slight dips when they are tend to revolve around a small number of things. Storm impacts, kind of the skittishness that follows those storm impacts is definitely one of them. Development, the pace of development, some of your prior guests pointed out, you know, how just how rapidly Florida is growing and the challenges that come with that. And so we're definitely seeing that show up in some of the quality of life numbers. Traffic congestion, which comes with that development, is another factor. And then the affordability issue, housing and property insurance costs have really contributed to some of those dips as well. So all of that is not to say that these numbers aren't real. They are, but they remain comparatively very, very strong. And the changes we see are typically attributed to those same couple of things. When I look at your data, I see nothing outside of those couple of things from a governance perspective that would suggest that what we're seeing here is anything other than the inevitable effects of those kind of endemic issues across the state of Florida, especially on the Gulf Coast. Hope that's helpful context. Happy to discuss that further afterward if there are questions on that. Again, one of the ways we kind of adjudicate that, one of the ways I kind of arrive at that conclusion is by looking further now at all the detailed information here about how people perceive specific characteristics and aspects of the community. And what I see there when I look at that is that your overall quality of life indicators outside of housing and congestion remain very, very positive. Safety, aesthetics, all of those things remain very positive. Where do we see some pushback? We see a little bit of pushback on that, some neutral and negative responses in traffic flow. We see a lot of concern about the affordability of housing. We're seeing there approaching 40% dissatisfaction rates with affordability in housing. Those are areas of concern that are contributing to that kind of dip we're seeing in quality of life. I know you're looking at a very large negative number there on business opportunities. I want to put a little bit of an asterisk beside that and interpret that with some caution. We did a business survey last year, and the business community's perceptions were much, much different, very positive views of business opportunities. We want to bear in mind that when a citizen takes this survey, especially when we have a large pool of citizens or respondents who are at or above retirement age, a lot of the times what they're looking at here is not, do I have the ability to start a business? It's more a question of, can I find a job in Dunedin? Is this a place where I'm going to find my career position? And they're responding in a lot of cases based on that, not necessarily on the interaction or not between the business community and the city or the opportunity to own and operate a business in the city. So I just want to put a caveat, that's one of those places where I can't tell you the full story off of a single data point in a survey, but I think we want to keep in mind some of those nuances. But again, this is pointing to that same story, overall satisfaction with quality of life with the community itself, but those same concerns to the kind of endemic growth issues that are affecting the region. I was just really, really tickled to see a positive increase this year of almost 5% in satisfaction with traffic and congestion, because that just doesn't really happen. Or I'm sorry, not 5%, about 12% increase in satisfaction with traffic and congestion. That doesn't happen in Florida these days, but Nicole and I had an interesting conversation about that and wonder if, to some degree, that's simply a matter of we as Floridians accepting the new reality and not being as bothered by it anymore. But hopefully you can connect this as well to some of the efforts and improvements that the city has made to try to improve traffic flow. So, housing, the minor uptick we see there is not too far out of the margin of error. I wouldn't read a lot into that as an improvement in perception. The overall tenor across all of the surveys we've done in the last two years together is that housing availability, housing affordability remains a major concern for residents, businesses, even employees. So, I think the traffic number is way outside the margin of error. That doesn't happen. Our sample has not changed dramatically from last time. That doesn't happen without there being a real sense of improvement among a notable portion of residents or at least an acquiescence to kind of the realities of traffic in Florida today. But the housing number is probably likely to be just some statistical noise from sample to sample. And, Nicole, you pulled this together for me. I didn't actually include this in the report because it bridges the business survey and the citizen surveys. But it lets you kind of see that the citizen surveys have tended to have a more negative outlook on business opportunities. Whereas the business survey itself, when we compare against that, very different picture that you're getting from the business community. Business community is expressing overwhelming satisfaction with opportunities, with their general experience of doing business in Dunedin. What we're most likely seeing in those blue and green numbers, particularly the ones near the right from the citizen survey, we're most likely seeing a perception that I have to leave Dunedin for my job. I have to leave Dunedin to actually go have a career position. Not leave in the sense of move, but leave each day to go work in the surrounding area. That's the most likely interpretation of that. A little further digging on that in the future would be a great idea. Asking individuals who answer dissatisfied to that question to explain a little bit more would be helpful. I'm sorry. Yes, I hear something about you. Well, I just want to insert because this has come up so much. So, what was the timing of that whole Facebook issue?

It was one week prior to the launch of the survey. Right. Right when your survey was out.

You know, to me, I'm looking at this and that has to have... Yeah, okay. No, that's... Thank you. I didn't mean to insert, but thank you. So, yeah, I think there's a good understanding there. I hope... And we can talk further if there are questions on that. But for the time being, I don't want to belabor that too much. Moving forward, we have done this several years in a row. We've asked residents their satisfaction levels with some of the key city amenities. The story hasn't dramatically changed. Residents who use these facilities remain very pleased with them. But most residents don't use them, at least some of them. The MLK Recreation Center, the Hale Senior Center, the Dunedin Golf Club. Our modal response or our most common response remains, I don't know because I don't use it. This is natural. It's easy to look at those numbers and say, you know, we got to find a way to raise... To improve that. We got to find a way to get more engagement with those facilities. I'm going to say something that may be unpopular, which is, you know, maybe you do, maybe you don't. As a general rule, the majority of residents are not going to use all of your public facilities. They're not going to have a need for them. They're not going to have the ability to build them into their busy schedules. And so I think what you want to ask yourself from a governance perspective is, have we done everything we can to make residents aware of the opportunities that are out there? If we have, great. Half or a third of our residents getting benefits out of these and the ones who are using them overwhelmingly saying they're satisfied, that's a win in public service delivery. If you feel that you have not or that there's still room, that it's not an oversaturated information market, that there's still room to push some of those stories out to let people be more aware of what's offered there, then certainly an information campaign can help to do that. But I would say, you know, having done, you know, having taught public administration for 15 years now, done these surveys for a long time, there's nothing abnormal in seeing that half of your residents aren't aware of the senior center or, you know, don't play golf or whatever it might be. So I wouldn't read any alarm in those large unsure numbers. The real story is that the folks who are using it, in every case among the folks who are using it, they're overwhelmingly saying, we're satisfied, we're happy with what we have here. Same goes for the other amenities we ask about. These seem like the more fun amenities to me, but same situation. The only place where we're seeing dissatisfaction is the marina, which is an anomaly given the circumstances. And we will look at another chart on the marina going forward. I put it in there because it's your data. I have to tell you the whole story, but I know that you already know the issue there with the marina. So we can jump ahead to that if that's okay. Actually, we're not there yet. This is just showing you the consistency, consistency of satisfaction with the unsure responses, removed satisfaction across the board. This scale starts at 91% because you didn't have anything below 94%. So this is, again, with those unsure responses removed and just the people who have used them, overwhelming satisfaction with the amenities and services you're providing there. I believe the marina one is coming up here, though. Nicole, if we could jump to that.

It's up. Oh, I'm not seeing it. It's the graph that's on the...

Oh, I'm sorry.

There it is.

It's on the right. I apologize. Yeah. It's on the right. So you all know the story here. I just wanted to show you the magnitude of that. So you went from 90% satisfaction with the marina among people who didn't choose unsure, and that fell to 54%. You know why. We all know why. Active nature and the process of getting that back on track. But I do want to be upfront with you about kind of where residents are at right now. You don't have a majority screaming dissatisfaction, but you have a pretty notable drop in sentiment on that. I just want to make you aware of that. In terms of the parks and recreation topic, Nicole mentioned that one of the two major additions this year was looking at parks and recreation, and my understanding being that it's being looked for planning and governance purposes to make sure that resource allocations within that program are being directed in a way that really meets the needs of residents and the interests. And a couple things stand out as major, major factors. The major recreational amenities that people report using, parks and green spaces, city playgrounds, the Causeway Beach. I want to make an asterisk beside parks and green spaces because not only does it stand out as very important here, but it's going to show up as somewhere important later. We asked some budget questions, and one of those questions was, you know, and kudos, by the way, to your management team for asking this question because a lot of cities run from this question, but, you know, if spending cuts were needed at some point, what would be the areas that you would most favor those in? And only about, I think 3% we'll see later, but I think only 3% said that they would support cuts to park maintenance. And so the parks, that is not what you would see in all communities, by the way. That would be a place in a lot of communities that they would be more willing to sacrifice, but your residents were not interested in that. So your parks and green spaces really play a key role in community life and in the life of individual residents in Dunedin. I can't emphasize that enough. It's something they highlight as very important. Some of the ones that are lower on this list are not surprising. Facility rentals, dog parks, not everyone has a dog. Not everyone wants a workout outdoors, if at all. Not everyone's, you know, not too many people use a skate park relative to, that doesn't diminish its value to the community, but relative to your total numbers. So nothing surprising here in where things are shaking out. I would remind you again that we're dealing with about 20% of your population, or of your respondents having children in their household, and less than that having young children. So do factor that in. The fact that city playgrounds was so high is quite remarkable, given that demographic pool. And if we jump ahead, we looked at the kind of activities people like to participate in. So there we looked at the specific facilities and amenities they like to use. Here we're looking at just a general question, as we think about where resources go, what kind of things do you like to do? Cultural experiences stood out very clearly at the top of that list. And then, of course, given geography and given the community, outdoor water activities were very high on that list. When we ask residents in this survey about adult programs versus youth programs, adult programs always received significantly higher interest, usage, and so forth. But again, I want to bear in mind that you're dealing with a slightly older population, or I'm sorry, a slightly older sample than the population itself. And so you do want to keep that in mind. And you have probably a slightly smaller percentage of respondents with children in the household than is true of the population. And so I do want to keep that in mind. As you see all of those youth services at the bottom, I think that there might be some better ways than this survey to get at the actual usage and the actual usage and importance of those to your residents. I wouldn't want this survey alone to be interpreted as a reason to target those in any way for cuts just because I feel like I would be giving you incomplete data given the sample itself. Does that make sense, I hope?

Yes, I think it does. Okay.

I haven't put everyone to sleep yet. I can't see. So if you're all still awake, just occasionally, yeah, that's okay. So hopefully that makes sense. We asked residents as well, and I really hope that this information is helpful to Tony and his team and others there. We asked them what kind of activities, like not just what kind of activities, but when they engage in these activities, what kind of format they prefer. And I think the data here, I was a little nervous that I was going to come back with an even split for you. That's kind of something that often happens in these. We actually got some pretty clear and decisive data out of this. Overwhelming majority, two-thirds or more, prefer self-directed activities. So they're not so much looking for fitness classes. There is a segment of the population that definitely is. But the majority is looking for more self-directed activities, and they like those activities outdoors. And God bless them for that, because jogging in Florida in the summer, I don't know how people do it. But apparently it's a strong preference for outdoor activities and self-directed outdoor activities. So I hope that's helpful information in interpreting some of these for future planning. I do believe there was another piece to this table, though, right? Is that on the next?

Hi, Dr. Neely. I did not include every single table in the presentation. Oh, that's okay. Because there is more data, obviously, in the document itself. Yes, okay.

We can jump ahead, though. Hopefully that's helpful information. We're going to kind of shift gears now. And I know that this is a lot of data, and it's droning on, and I appreciate your attentiveness to it. But now we get to some things that are really important. And these are the first section on city services. Not that the others weren't important. They were very important to your community. But some things I really want to highlight for you, I should say. We ask, the last couple of years, we've broken out the assessments of some public services based on whether or not individuals used them. And so what you're looking at right here is a satisfaction of all respondents with public safety services. So your fire, your EMS, your law enforcement presence, code compliance. You're looking at satisfaction rates from everyone who took the survey. And I'd like you to, if you could, just take a moment and carefully look at the left-hand column where it says, very satisfied. If you could look at that, you know, 55%, 37%, 43%, 40%, and 15%. So with that in mind, the next slide is going to show you the percentage of people who, or the responses only from people who interacted with those services. And I'd like you to see what happens to the left-hand column. And again, Nicole, if we could just, for dramatic purposes, if we could toggle back, take a quick glance at that left-hand column, and then toggle forward and take a look again. And hopefully you immediately see the story that that tells, which is that people who have interacted with your, with these services, have an overwhelmingly positive opinion of them. I would be very concerned if the story was that we have X percent satisfaction, but people who use it are more dissatisfied, then I would be very concerned about the services being delivered. But what I'm seeing here is that people have a generally positive view of your fire department, especially if they've interacted with them. People have a positive view of your EMS, especially if they've interacted with them. Same with law enforcement, and same with code compliance. And I love seeing these numbers because our friends in code compliance always take a beating in surveys, given the nature of the work. And this tells a really nice story that they are interacting with people in a way that is leaving a two-thirds positive experience. That's not particularly common. Code enforcement is often neutral at best or getting negative numbers at worst, but the folks interacting on your end are getting much more positive numbers. And so, just across the board, this is a really good story about your public service delivery. There was a question asked, I know, about, like, why is there some unsure responses here? You've got to remember, we asked, you know, have you interacted with these city services in the past year?

So, if I, let's hypothetically say, this would never happen to me, but if I got pulled over in Dunedin by a police officer, have I interacted with them? Yes. But I'm still unsure of their response time, if that makes sense.

It does.

So, that's why you're seeing still a few straggling unshures in the people who have interacted with them. They might maybe didn't feel enough from that to offer an opinion or they didn't use that particular part of the service. But, again, the overwhelming story here is really positive and just really, you know, huge kudos to everyone in these departments. If you're interacting with residents and improving their perception of the service, that is, that is doing the job to the best of your ability. So, we can jump ahead from there. We have a few others. Oh, yeah. These were, I forgot. Yes. These were all improvements. Some of them are improvements within the margin of error, but they are all improvements over the last round of the survey. Okay. So, I have some other data that I also want to put a big explanation over. We did something that, again, just, I keep saying this, but, again, kudos to your management team for doing this, for digging into this, for not running from resident concerns, but trying to learn from them. You're going to look at this chart of open-ended comments about public safety, and you're going to see that the overwhelming sentiment of these comments is negative. That's because this question was only asked of the residents who said that they were dissatisfied with one of those services. We wanted to understand why they were dissatisfied. So, they were given a chance to use some open-ended, or to provide some open-ended comments. And in the past, I conducted a content analysis and sentiment analysis on those comments. And I do want to note that we used the aid of some generative AI tools in doing that to identify the common themes and concerns, to run a sentiment analysis algorithm, to figure out, you know, what portion of those comments are decidedly negative versus positive versus neutral. So, these numbers that you see, please bear in mind that these are only coming from the smaller percentage of people who said they were dissatisfied with one of those services. These are opportunities not to, given the numbers we saw a few tables ago, not to dramatically overhaul these services, but to continue fine-tuning, performance managing them, so that they grow even stronger than they are now. Code compliance stood out as the most common concern people did raise, which is consistent with what we saw in the prior table. Two-thirds positive. We had about a 20% negative response on that. So, this is coming from the 20%, some concerns over consistency and application of code enforcement. But the overwhelming things in here were safety-related. The negative comments that you got were primarily safety-related. Speeding and unsafe driving behaviors was one. And this issue of e-bikes came up. And I found this really fascinating because within the past five days, I've seen two national news stories on e-bikes and safety and pedestrian safety with e-bikes in particular. I believe one of them might have been on NBC News and the other may have been CNN or it may have been something that popped up in my feed. But I found that very interesting in preparing for this presentation that that's starting to pop up as that kind of conversation at the national level. But at the end of the day, it falls to local governments to actually address the issue. But it is a concern. It's a concern that I saw show up recently in another Gulf Coast community survey. And so, while it's only – it's 26% of your negative responses kind of fell into that category of trail safety and e-bikes. And then, of course, up here in – or up in Wesley Chapel where I'm at, we've had some pretty – had a couple pretty horrific golf cart incidents. So, a lot of communities, while they're embracing multimodal transportation and for great reasons, a lot of communities are starting to grapple with the safety concerns that come along with some of these new convenient technologies and transportation modes. So, it's something I want to put on your radar and say that it may be a conversation that the commission wants to have at some point about your policies and your regulations and protocols on that. But that's what we have on public safety. We have a little bit of a story on trash and recycling as well, which is that, again, the overwhelming numbers are positive. I want you to look at those somewhat dissatisfied and very dissatisfied columns, especially skipping over where I made a typo and didn't add the extra zero decimal place. That's just a failed presentation because of that. But we've got very small numbers of dissatisfied responses. We have two-thirds or more saying very satisfied with all of your solid waste and recycling services. So, the overall story is positive, and I want to keep that in mind as we look at the next two slides because they are going to show that there is a slight decrease here. There is a slight decrease in satisfaction with solid waste. That is close to the margin of error, and that is something that almost every community has exhibited following 2024. But it's something I want you to keep in mind and keep a close eye on. If it continues as a trend in the next survey, then it would certainly warrant some consideration from there. Recycling is the bigger issue. Every once in a while, I see a number, and I just kind of call Nicole and say, help me understand what I'm looking at. And so, it sounds like there have been some changes approved to recycling that have maybe not taken effect yet until next month, but are already showing up in the responses. And so, we do see about a 13, almost a 13 percentage point drop in satisfaction scores for recycling. While they remain overwhelmingly positive at 80% satisfied, it's a notable drop. And if we jump ahead, we did the same thing as with public services. We asked residents, you know, who said negative, who were said dissatisfied, we asked them why. And the number one thing that comes back is cost concerns, frustration with rising costs, noting rate increases, and affordability issues. That's a third of your negative responses seem to be revolving around those potential recycling costs. And then there's also some issues related to recycling limitations. And this is primarily coming from our condo and HOA properties, who are essentially, you know, upset that they don't have access to recycling as a service. I'm not sure the extent to which that's really even in the city or commission's purview of authority. But I just want to point that out as a consideration. Those are the things that seem to be driving that drop in recycling satisfaction. Once new rates are in place, once, you know, the service period adjusts, that may start to shift back to normal. But I would definitely keep an eye on it for the next iteration and make sure that that doesn't continue to deteriorate. And then the last major area under services that we looked at was infrastructure. And, again, if we look at the two left-hand columns, the very and somewhat satisfied, your overwhelming numbers are enviable. And I mean that sincerely. Any community I work with on the Gulf Coast would be envious of these numbers. The trend, I believe we have the trend on the future slide or the other slide. The trend is pretty consistent. Tiny dip in drainage, again, everyone's reporting that coming out of 2024. Everyone's priorities, residents' priorities have really honed in and shifted in a lot of ways coming out of that storm season. But for the most part, these are largely consistent numbers. And so not a lot of major concern voiced by residents. We did do a follow-up question. And this question is a little different. I'm not going to dwell too deeply on these. I'm going to encourage you to read these. And I believe that hopefully you all have a copy of the survey instrument with the – or survey data with the open-ended comments available. If not for any reason, if that's been overlooked, please let me know. But the reason I don't want to get too specific on these is because we asked residents to identify specific areas of concern with infrastructure. And this was not just asked of residents who chose dissatisfied. And so they will be talking about very specific places in some of these comments. So I would encourage you to take a look at those because there might be some opportunities to learn more from that by looking specifically at the areas that are pointed out. But, again, what you're seeing at number one, nearly half of those comments addressing stormwater drainage and flooding, we are seeing that across the board following 2024. And that's – that in no way – that in no way diminishes its importance. It's hugely important, and it's real, and folks are realizing it. And so I'm just pointing out that communities across the Gulf Coast are reporting similar concerns from residents. I think – I'd like to say that 2024, for as horrific as it was, has been a bit of a wake-up call in terms of where we're at moving forward with climate impacts. And so there's going to be a lot more – there seems to be a lot more focus on the part of residents that's going to show up in a few places later in a couple of slides as well. So road conditions are at the bottom of that list. If we had taken this survey five years ago, they would have been at the top, at least in the pattern I saw in most communities five years ago. That has really shifted now to storm impacts. So, again, I would encourage everyone to take a look at those comments if they have the opportunity to do so. We introduced some new questions last time. I'm totally turning a corner now. We introduced some new questions last time about multimodal transportation, asking if the city had adequate infrastructure for walking, biking, and golf carting. You have gotten improvements in all of those numbers. Walking is close to the margin of error for improvement. Biking and golf carting have – are above – these improvements are above the margin of error, which would tell me that we're pretty confident. There seems to be some improved perceptions in those areas. But, again, I would highlight the safety issues that have come with that in some of the comments. While those who use these may be much more pleased with them, others have raised concerns about safety. Familiarity with local transit services. These have not dramatically changed, from my recollection, from prior years. You're still having, you know, majority familiarity. Across the board, your plurality category is pretty much somewhat familiar. Low familiarity with PSTA buses. Not particularly surprising, given kind of where you're at in the community. You're not, you know, in the heart of a lot of those routes. But nothing major has changed here. We asked about how folks, like, learn about city issues and events and how they, you know, prefer to be communicated with. Again, not a whole lot has changed in recent years. Your website numbers are fantastic, by the way. I did a survey a couple weeks ago or report a couple weeks ago, and these numbers were closer to 40% of people saying they'd use the city website. You have almost that many saying they use it frequently, and another 56% saying at least occasionally. So you're getting great, you're getting great mileage out of the work you've put into the website. Your Parks and RecMag also, you know, just, that's, those are really good numbers for a local government magazine of people saying they're familiar with that. And they sometimes, at least sometimes, use it. But, so overall, nothing, no major changes in trends here. Not a lot of things bumped up or down on this list compared to prior years. You're getting really good use out of some of your key, out of some of your key communication channels. You're getting better, well, I would say you're getting better use out of social media than a lot of communities. But I also would caution you against putting too much stock in a number like that. Everyone says they use social media to stay informed, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're following your social media, even though we try to put it in the question. The best way to track that is looking at your actual metrics on the platforms. We'll tell you how much engagement and usage you're getting out of those. And if we could, oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. I do want to point out, after we reviewed this with department heads and Sue Burness, would like to joyously say that the Dunedin News subscription, who has been growing, is receiving the most frequently used as far as our communication, which is exactly what we want our folks to get is information directly from us. Thank you. If we could jump ahead, Nicole. So overall performance of the city, I don't think anybody is going to be surprised. That doesn't make the responses less important again. But I don't think anyone's going to be surprised to see that your biggest area of concern among residents is growth and development. Managing growth and development. And second row down, if you look to the third and fourth columns over, that's your dissatisfaction rate with those, and you're coming in at about 37 percent, over a third. Given the high quality performance that the city has shown across pretty much every other area, and given what we talked about again with that slight kind of trend in quality of life, those excellent ratings on quality of life, What you're seeing here, I think, is a lot of the reason for that trend. And growth and development, that is the state of Florida right now. That is the state of the Gulf Coast in particular. And we are dealing with all of the good and bad implications of that. And the bad implications being primarily cost, affordability, infrastructure upkeep, and traffic congestion. And that is just what's showing up and driving some of these trends that we're seeing in numbers. And you can see that really clearly here. It stands out as one of the only places in the data that could begin to help explaining that. And so I know you guys already recognize this as kind of, as we say in public administration, as a wicked problem facing the community. And I know that you're taking the steps to address that as best you can. I just want to point out that that's where the numbers are at right now. Arts and culture, historic preservation, you remain very, very strong there. And most areas remain very positive. Just that one stands out as the primary area of concern. We asked, oh, before I move on to that, these are just some trend data. We can go back. Yeah. These are some trend data. And that top line is your caring for the environment number. This is one of those points where I can't tell you from this data point alone what the story is here. But you have about an eight percentage point drop in caring for the environment. Even if the first survey was off by the maximum margin of error and this one was off by the maximum margin of error, that would only explain about five points of that. And so chances are there has been a real drop in that area. And I don't have anything in the data that's beyond that that's explaining why. So it could be an area that warrants a little bit of further consideration. You can look at that and say the overall number is very positive. And it is. This could be, again, a storm-related, you know, a storm-adjacent issue. But it is something that I think warrants a little further looking into, especially given the value and importance that Dunedin places on caring for the environment, as demonstrated in some of the prior discussions today. This other line has been very all over the place. This is our planning for the future number. It has really jumped around a lot. It doesn't seem to be a stable metric. It seems to be something that changes a little bit more with current events and current discussions in the community. So I can't really interpret that too strongly in one direction or the other for you. Overall satisfaction. At the end of the day, just how satisfied are you overall with the services you receive from the city? Your numbers are fantastic. They're just phenomenal. You're well over 90%. There's a big star here. It's 93%. Your very dissatisfied numbers are below 2%. Just really positive numbers across the board. Hopefully, some of the open-ended analysis that we went over earlier helps to explain those small but important numbers on the right side. Now we got into some really important questions that are new to the survey this year. And the city manager wanted to understand where residents are at on budget priorities given the realities facing the state right now. So we asked residents what they consider the most important priorities for future investment. And then we asked them what areas they would be most willing to see cuts in if that were necessary. And I said that the storm-related effects, it's really changed people's priorities in a lot of ways. And if you look at your top two items, I think you can see that immediately. Water, wastewater, public infrastructure concerns. Half of your residents saying that's an area for future investment. Coastal resiliency, you get a third. And then you get some very common ones with public safety. But you also get another reminder. Green spaces and park access is fourth on your list. And I don't mean to belabor that, but that's not fourth on the list for most communities. I do enough citizen surveys to know that that's going to fall more toward the middle of the list in most communities. But in Dunedin, it falls very high. And so I want to offer that as just something to keep in mind as you're looking at all the parks and rec data from earlier. We have a preference for outdoor activities. The actual activities that people identify as their favorites tend to be outdoors. Their access to parks and the maintenance of parks tends to be a really important thing for them. So that's just a couple of data points that stand out on the priorities. But if we look at the next, you're going to notice, I think, immediately that a lot of people, by the difference in the number, a lot of people skipped this question. A lot of people didn't want to answer this question. And that's okay. That's common. But the question asked people if spending cuts were necessary, what areas they would be most willing to see those in. And if you look down at the second from last item, it's park maintenance. Park maintenance is like one of the lowest areas that people would like to see cuts in. So, again, it just emphasizes the importance of those green spaces to your community. And then if you look up a few coastal resiliency efforts, you do not have a lot of people who want to see any cuts in coastal resiliency efforts. And, again, coming out of the storm season, very, very understandable. At the top of this list, where people are most likely to see cuts or to accept cuts, creating sustainable public-owned facilities, arts and cultural initiatives, festivals and events. And I want to emphasize a couple of things that I think you already know. But these are tough. These are tough. This is a tough question to answer. It's a tough question to ask. I respect that the city asked it in a direct and honest way. And it's a tough question to answer. Because if you look throughout your survey this year, prior years, the other iterations of surveys we've done, your residents love the art, the commitment to the arts and community that Dunedin has. They don't want to see those things go. But they're giving you an honest answer to a hard question. If something had to be cut, where would we want it to be? And those are the items that stand out. You've got about a quarter saying support for local businesses. Everything else is below 25%. And then we see some at the bottom. And we can learn a lot from what's at the bottom of that list about the values and the priorities right now of the community. And so I would emphasize those just as much as the things at the top of the list. And hopefully that's helpful information. I'm not going to dwell too much. I kind of talked about recommendations as I've gone. So I don't think we need to talk too much about that. Nicole, we can just kind of jump ahead and get to questions for anyone who has.

Okay. We'll go to questions. Thank you, Doctor. So I'm going to start with Commissioner Gao. Questions.

Dr. Neely, you talked about traffic. And part of the logic might be trying to read into it. But they're starting to accept traffic in Florida or in Pinellas County or in Dunedin. And I'm wondering whether or not are they accepting it or they just feel that their complaints have fallen on deaf ears and they're just not complaining anymore. They're tired, worn out.

We don't see that showing up in the comments. One of the most common negative comments you'll see on a community survey is, I've been telling them and they're not listening. And I don't see that showing up in your open-ended comments. And what we actually saw was not just a decrease in dissatisfaction. It was actually an increase in satisfaction. And that's why we kind of had that conversation of, hey, I know traffic hasn't gotten better, so why are people more satisfied? And that's where we're kind of leaning into that, hey, maybe they're just becoming more accepting of this is a reality and we can't beat up on local leaders because of this reality. So I can't say that with 100% certainty, but I'm not seeing evidence in your data to suggest that it's a frustration, if that makes sense.

Yes, it does make sense. And, Mayor, I had another question, but I can't find it right now.

Okay, I can come back.

Sure.

Commissioner DeGuard, questions? Thank you, Mayor. First of all, excellent survey, good response. I'm enjoying looking at it. Conducted a few surveys of my own in the last couple of years. And I'd like to make an observation and see if you agree or disagree with that observation. It appears as though our rotation of our community is not at the maternity ward but at the retirement center. What I mean by that is entry into our community tends to occur when people are retiring because we're a retirement community in the ages of 55 to 65, and that's where our population is, as you can see, the most robust. Therefore, we know that our community appeal not to necessarily our current citizens but our future citizens that are considering us as a retirement destination might be the most important consideration. Unfortunately, our citizens that are here now will want to preserve the community they bought into, and therefore they will be less interested in community change. But the future citizens of Dunedin that we need to continue to appeal to may be more interested in community change and more items here. What are your thoughts on that statement?

I'd like to tread very lightly on that because I feel like that's a value proposition that, quite frankly, you and not I were elected to consider. And so I don't want to steer you in a direction. I want to tell you what the data show. I think there's certainly – that is an interpretation that could be made from the data in terms of how that would shape programs and offerings and services. I think at the end of the day is really a decision that the community's leaders would make at the direction of the electorate. I know I'm really hedging on this, Commissioner, and I'm not trying to, but I hope you understand my reticence to speak beyond what the data can tell me.

Yes, and therein lies the problem. We're kind of like a riverboat measuring the depth of our water underneath us at a point in time, but the water will change with every move forward, and therefore the depth also changes. And so I'm not quite as interested as where we are today as where we're going to be, and so inference on that place is important to me. That's all I have. Thank you, Mayor.

Okay. Vice Mayor, questions? Thank you, Mayor.

On that next to the last slide, policy priority spending cuts. What do we mean when we say creating sustainable public-owned facilities?

I'm going to quickly defer, if I may, to Nicole and Jennifer on that because that was the language that they chose.

Yeah, we actually – I mean, this was kind of duplicated in our strategic plan language also, and so that's why we used similar language. I think the intention was about, you know, not just like hardening our buildings, putting solar on our buildings, making our buildings more sustainable. I think one of the concerns that I have with this question and reviewing the results of it is that perhaps, and Dr. Neely, you know, feel free to chime in, I'm concerned of how it was interpreted and whether it was interpreted as we want to build more buildings versus taking the buildings that we have, like we've discussed with, you know, you just heard the clean energy connection, you know, the solar feasibility study that we've done, and making those buildings more sustainable.

Mayor? Mayor? Sure. Go ahead. I'll add on to that. I think that, in my mind, this particular question, you know, because we've talked a lot about our sustainability programs, and we – Ready for 100, I think that the residents genuinely don't understand what that means, you know, it's a program that we're striving to attain in terms of public facilities. I think that they saw this as an investment in public facilities that they'd like to see, you know, those funds elsewhere in the community. In public buildings, they'd like to see those funds elsewhere in the community. And so – and this is why, in particular, the upcoming budget season and effort is going to be so difficult because we heard that Ready for 100 has been adopted by the City Commission and is something that we need to attain by 2035. So in terms of what's going to happen with Admiral Armed Taxes versus what it is that our residents want versus what we've committed to do in the future. And that's why I think that these types of surveys are so important to balance out exactly what it is your constituents want moving forward. Okay. More questions? Yeah, I appreciate that.

And then I think the – I think almost the same answer applies to slide 42, overall performance comparison, city's figure 10, because I – you know, I – I would have looked at this as kind of being the holistic takeaway slide, but somehow we've – we've managed to kind of skew it. It looks to be more aligned with some of our sustainability initiatives. So the question in this is, is that – and this is probably rhetorical, but I don't think that's exactly what we want to achieve with an overall performance comparison. So I – but that ties right back, Jennifer, what you just said. So anyway, I just want to point that out.

Sorry, if to interrupt, may I – may I pull on that for future survey planning? Commissioner, are you suggesting – are you saying that that's not how you would want to operationalize and define overall performance?

Well, I wouldn't go that far. I would go to the point where I'm kind of confused at what this slide is telling us. That's – that's my point, because if you see the legend caring for the environment and we're relating that to citizen perception of city performance, you know, that's a – that's a fairly segmented aspect of this. It's not – it's not the holistic view that I would hope to see. Does that make sense? Can I – can I also chime in?

Perhaps the overall performance is the wrong kind of title. The way – the way the question was asked was, you know, how satisfied are you with the job that the city is doing in each of these categories?

And so these were questions that had been sporadic in past surveys, and we kind of basically consolidated them at the end as to one – you know, into one or two questions so that we can continue tracking the information. But, you know, obviously what we've looked at and delved into with all of our other – our infrastructure, our solid waste, our services, our facilities, this kind of is just looking at a little bit of a holistic view as far as more of a policy standpoint on some items. And that's – I think – and again, perhaps it's just the overall performance language that's throwing us off here.

Yeah, that's fair. I don't – I'm not trying to nitpick it. I'm just really trying to understand it. But, okay, that's fair. That's all I've got. Thanks.

Mayor, on that subject, may I point something out? Sure. Okay. Just very quickly. On historic preservation efforts, and this is how satisfied are you with the job the city is doing. So we're at 70 – almost 72 percent are satisfied or very satisfied. And as we move forward – and this is why this type of survey is so important – because we've had several issues with historic preservation in the near past, if you will. And I think that we have to continue to use these surveys to put those types of things in context, that overwhelmingly people are happy with the job that we're doing on historic preservation. And we've had some issues that we are addressing moving forward. But same with code compliance, that overall people are either satisfied or very satisfied with code compliance, despite the fact that you may have one issue or two issues that come to the surface throughout the year. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for that. You're welcome. Just had to say it. Commissioner Sandberg, any questions?

I think it was on slide 18, key characteristics. I guess I'm very proud of our small business community. And any explanation about 45 percent very dissatisfied?

What would push that number so high? So I know Dr. Neely spoke to this a little bit as we were going through it, which is, again, one of the reasons why we actually pulled this chart that you're seeing, which was the citizen survey from 2024, the business survey from 2025, and then, again, the survey that we just have conducted to really try to understand. And Dr. Neely, you know, I'll let you speak as to, you know, potentially some theories as to how business opportunities is interpreted in a survey from a resident perspective, whether that means, like he had mentioned, can I get a job here? Can I work here? Or do I have to leave the city to have an opportunity to work? Do I, is my career outside of the city? And that, I think that leaves some opportunity for delving into what does business opportunity mean for a resident versus what does a business opportunity mean for a business? Because when we're asking our businesses how satisfied they are with their business opportunities, obviously we see a huge, you know, very satisfied, you know, 78 percent very satisfied. We have no dissatisfied from the business survey. So that's why we, you know, after we saw that result, we pulled this information just so you can have a better picture. I think the other thing to note is that the numbers, although they, you know, do jump within the categories from the citizen survey in 24 to 25, they are fairly close to each other. So we're not seeing huge, drastic jumps in one category versus the other either way.

So the definition of business opportunity doesn't necessarily mean the opportunity to own and operate and build your own business in Dunedin. It sounds like it's got a very broad definition. We don't think so. Right.

Right. And, you know, again, I think there's this asterisk on this item that, you know, we did have some, you know, issues in social media just following this survey going live. And that could be reflected in some of these responses as well. That's all, Mayor.

If I could just add to that, Nicole, for what it's worth. I think that we sometimes, even as a professional survey designer, I sometimes forget that the language I speak isn't the language everyone else speaks. And I think we all mean exactly what you said, Commissioner, the ability to operate your own business. I would recommend changing the language of this in the future. So it was broken out into that specific language and then an employment opportunities language. And I think that might help to resolve some of the issues you're having. And I would, for what it's worth, I know you all already know this, but I can't resist because I am a political scientist by trade and just wrote a book recently on, largely on social media and politics and stress. And I would just offer the gentle reminder that, as Jennifer said, these surveys are really important because in the modern information environment, we have a tendency to mistake social media for reality, and it's not. And so these surveys give you a much better picture of where your citizenry as a whole is at. That doesn't mean that concerns raised on social media don't warrant attention and consideration, but it's a really bad barometer for measuring the attitudes and the opinions of your citizenry.

Thank you. I don't really have a lot of questions. I guess staff would, the comment about condos and homeowner groups that can't have recycling, I do get that a lot. Like, I've gotten pounded from me's life about that, and other groups that they really want to recycle, but we don't give up any avenue for that. So that's interesting that that popped up. And the other, the only other question, Dr. Neely, so a lot of stuff that's low on youth, right, and as you've said, low in terms of representation, too, to what we actually have. How would you factor in the fact that, you know, like, a lot of retirees, I mean, they don't want to live in a community without a lot of kids stuff going on, Little League and support for the schools and youth events. And so, again, probably a little bit of what the commissioner guards going, you know, you don't want to stop, you know, supporting those things and spending in ways that make sure you're breeding that, because, again, you know, community without kids is not a place I'd live. How would you comment on that?

Again, I would be real, I would want to exercise a lot of caution in interpreting anything around youth and children's services, given the lower response rate from that demographic. I don't want to get into any kind of value statements beyond the data about what your community should or shouldn't prioritize. I feel like that would be a little speaking out of place for me, but I would just exercise some caution. I would not say that this survey alone tells you the degree to which residents find those programs important, because I think they are underrepresented in the survey.

Okay. Thank you. I don't have any other questions. I'm going to open it up to public input. Anyone in the audience wish to come forward and speak on this issue? Actually, no one else in the room. I think that's pretty, other than deputy and, well, you guys, I mean, they're Laura, you know, okay. I will close public input, and I will go to final commission comments and direction in the interest of time. Just let's be crisp if you can. So I will start with the vice mayor.

Thank you, mayor. You know, I think overall, good survey, and I certainly appreciate the analysis that went into this. I think when you tie these surveys together, you know, over the last several, you know, I think it does provide data points where we can do things that are actionable. So anyway, I'm satisfied. I do just, the only other thing I would say to this is, is that probably do, I think we've uncovered a couple of things that we just need to capture from a syntax and semantics perspective so that, you know, we're, we're characterizing it correctly to fit the bill. So anyway, those are my comments.

So are you satisfied or very satisfied?

You know, I'm always, I am always more satisfied than you, but I mean, more satisfied than I should be.

So, yeah, Commissioner Sandberg, final comments or direct, congratulations, the library, fine

arts, and the community center all scored very high. I'm a little disappointed in the 8.2% that are using a channel 639 considering how much I lobbied for it. So that's all, mayor.

Okay, and Commissioner, Commissioner Gao, sorry.

Great survey. I love the consistency and that we do it every two years. So it does give you that trend on what our residents are thinking. Yeah, I, the question that I wasn't going to ask was actually tagged by Commissioner Degard and the mayor about just how we deal with the youths that are underrepresented and how represented they've been in the past. But overall, thank you. I think this is certainly things for us to chew on when it comes to budget time, focus on. So thank you.

Okay, and Commissioner Degard.

You know, surveys sometimes create more questions than they do answers. And I find myself in that place because there does seem to be a disparity. And it actually started with a comment the manager made one day about our schools and the number of children that are in supported lunch programs. And it's a very high percentage. And that's screaming something at me because the surveys I've conducted in this survey don't holler anything about that particular issue. But I think there's something that's being pointed out here that we've got to connect the dots on. What it is, is the population that is, let me use a term that's probably inappropriate, so forgive me for it, indigenous. Those people that have been here a long time, had their children, are growing up here, going to high school, and then possibly on to college. That population is a very small percentage. They're also suffering, in my opinion, a lot of stress as indicated by that particular program. I don't think we're doing anything to recognize that. And this survey hasn't pulled that out. As you know, Mayor, I have been focusing also on a senior survey. And that senior survey indicates that there's no concerns regarding economics, or at least it's not as high as you'd expect it to be. But we know that that population that has been here a long time, is struggling to get through, is having some challenges. And I think we have to ask some questions about that. I don't have the answer on that one. I think it's just a question we need to explore. This survey and the surveys I've seen recently are very multicollinear. They agree with each other greatly. So I think the validity of this survey is quite high. And I think what it's telling us is extremely valid. What I think it's not telling us is that's history. And we've got to focus on where we're going, not where we've been. Thank you, Mayor.

Okay. So my final comments, I'll start with the spectrum, Channel 639. I actually thought that was pretty good because it matches the yes frequently of live-streamed commission meetings on the web. So I thought that was it. And, of course, you'd repetitively go back if you missed it. So that's the higher number in the other area. So what I would like to know, you know, when you can, is when you look at those, what does that translate in terms of the larger population of people? Like what assumption can you make that if those are the percentage of people that use it yes frequently or yes occasionally, does that translate into how many of the 2,000 that took the survey? Therefore, it translates into how many people out in the community are actually using those methods. And, of course, obviously, I look at that and say, I mean, who wants to watch our commission meetings anyway? So we won't go there. Anyway, I hope you do. But, anyway, it's not the most exciting stuff. I think the survey is great. I actually, Dr. Neely, I think that you did a great job of walking us through it and explaining kind of the nuances of some of the factors. I think there's some really interesting stuff that, you know, we will have to dig into as we look at our budgets and figure out what we've got to do. So I am very appreciative of it. And I'm very satisfied with the survey. Okay. We are going to move on first. Thank you, Dr. Neely. Thank you, Nicole. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you, Dr. Neely. I just want to compliment Nicole Delfino and Dr. Stephen Neely on the quality of the survey

and the work that was done.

Exceptionally professional. I think it really is reflective of the community and not everything within the community, to be sure. But it's going to be a very useful tool for us to budget based upon what we know and not what we think. And so I'm just very pleased, and I'm grateful for their work. Thank you, Stephen and Nicole.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Neely.

Yes, thank you. And we're going to move to our next item. But first let me ask everybody if they can stay over a little bit. Can everybody stay to maybe 1, 1 o'clock? Everybody's good? Okay. So we'll go to 1, which means, yeah. So we will go ahead and anybody need a break? Or we just keep going, right? Okay, yeah, let's take 5 and then we'll restart. Okay, thank you. We're going to go to legislative update. And we've got Nicole, Laura, and of course our city attorney. So I will, you're on.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commission, Nicole Delfino, Strategy and Sustainability Manager here with Laura Beamer from the Southern Group, the city's lobbyist, as well as Jennifer Cowan, our city attorney. We're going to walk you through a few of the bills. I know that there was some discussion in a previous commission meeting about trying to really understand what we're looking forward. But before we get to the bill language, I just want to have Laura give us just a general update as to where we are, where the legislature is, and, you know, what we're looking for in the next few weeks and months.

Well, good afternoon.

Hi, Laura.

It is wonderful to be back in beautiful Dunedin, my hometown.

Yay! The move is official. Good. I see the smile on my face.

So I wish I could tell you what the current status in Tallahassee is because we don't really have a current status in Tallahassee.

The rumor is that we will be going back to Tallahassee for a special session on the budget the week of April 13th. We don't know if the governor is going to be calling the special session, if the House and Senate are going to be calling the special session, but that is what I have been told by members of leadership, that that's what they anticipate is going back that week. And then that special session on the budget will lead into the special session on redistricting. And once they complete that special session, they will adjourn and then come back later for another special session on property tax reform. Obviously, that's all subject to change. It's subject to an agreement between the House and the Senate and the governor, but that is what I was told last week. So that's the latest and greatest. But like I said, you know, TBD, as soon as we hear anything official, we'll obviously let Nicole know and let you all know. Just big picture, you know, we ended the session without a state budget, we ended the session without any tax package. We ended the session without any bills on property tax reform. So we know that's going to come back. There could be other policy issues that the governor wants to include in the call, which remains to be seen. You know, there were some big bills that we were following this point that we're going to talk about. You know, sovereign immunity finally passed after years and years of being proposed. And it wasn't as, you know, detrimental as we, as it could have been. It was 300, 500, right? 350. 350. 350. So that bill finally passed has not been signed. Actually, the governor has only signed 16 bills into law so far. And just to kind of give you an overall, you and you all came up and it was great that you were there. But the second to last week of session, the legislature only passed 17 bills off the chamber floors. So they really got moving at the end of session. I think they passed 192 general bills at the end, but he's only signed 16 so far. So what we'll do is we'll come back after the special session on the budget and do an overview of everything that's passed, everything the governor signed, and kind of do, like, the big, you know, session update after the special session on the budget. Because who knows when the property tax special session will start.

Right. Okay. So, but with that, we know that you wanted to go ahead and take a look at some of these bills. There have been a few that have been signed, but like Laura said, very few. This is, I didn't actually go through and count every bill that had been, that has passed. But the number is, I think, it's the lowest that I certainly have ever seen that have passed. Usually we're in the 800 to, you know, over 1,000 bills. And I feel like, you know, we're under like a.

It was 100. I just looked it up. 100? 192.

Yeah. So, very, very low in comparison to what we've seen in the past. But the documents that are attached to the item are a list of bills that have passed. Again, there is indication on the list if it's been signed. We have a very brief bill summary. And then impacts to our city is included in the summary. I'm not sure. I know we just talked about, you know, discussing the most impactful. And I did kind of put them in, not in order, but I did list the most impactful towards the top. Senate Bill 290, it was referred to as the Farm Bill. It was a bill that we followed and lobbied and advocated for all session long as far as the impacts to the city in relation to biosolids. I know we all talked about this while we were up there, and I said I know more about biosolids than I would ever want to know about biosolids. But there is a real impact as far as how we handle them in the city and what we're going to need to do in order to be compliant with this bill, now law, that was signed. And as far as, you know, our increases, we will have an increase in our hauling costs, which is an immediate issue. We do haul out of county. So that does, you know, reduce the timeline for us, so to speak. And now whether the long-term impact is something that we want to look at, I'm sure you'll discuss, you know, through the budget process as far as looking at actually a capital improvement project where we would be able to handle this internally at our wastewater treatment plant. It was initially quoted as a $5.5 million capital project that would be impacting us. While I know that is a lot and that is a pretty significant impact, I guess I'm always looking for a silver lining. I think that it's a great project to ask for an appropriation on because it was an unfunded mandate. So we certainly can see how that works as far as our appropriation process. The next bill is 1134, House Bill 1001. I am actually going to defer to our city attorney. She's provided an interpretation. I know the language there was interesting. But this is referred to as our DEI bill. And Jennifer Cowan, if you can help explain this.

And this one hasn't been signed by the governor yet?

No. No, it has not been signed yet. It affects both municipalities and counties. And basically, it prohibits municipalities from funding, promoting, or taking any official action as it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

This includes, like I said, expending funds or promoting it or authorizing or providing funds to employees, contractors, volunteers, or vendors to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is very broadly defined.

And it includes promoting or programming or activities that are designed or implemented with reference to race, color, sex, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

This bill also creates a cause of action for residents to be able to sue for violation of this law. And it states that if any member of a governing body or other municipal officer violates this section, they commit misfeasance or malfeasance in office.

So it's a bill that has significant penalties. It's also a bill that has a lot of exceptions. And the exceptions all point to federal law and different state laws. So it doesn't prohibit you from recognizing any of the holidays that are identified in federal law. It doesn't prohibit you from recognizing or promoting state holidays or state special observances that are defined in state law. And it also doesn't prohibit from patriotic or national observances that are recognized in federal law. And part of why my summary is so many pages is because the laundry list of what's in federal law on these different issues is long. One other thing is that it also doesn't prohibit a municipality from issuing event permits in a content-neutral way and providing public safety. And it doesn't apply to actions of bodies composed of non-elected volunteers or basic administrative support provided by non-elected volunteers. So there are a lot of exceptions to this bill. One of the things that we're going to need to do to really understand how it's going to impact in Eden is to take the list of events because this is, you know, the city is very proud of its events and very active in the community and celebrates a lot of things. And to look at those, you know, any city-funded events and see whether or not this law is going to impact them or whether or not they fit within an exemption or there's another way of handling it.

Okay. So we're going to do questions all at once or do you guys want to do questions as we go? I mean, I have one obvious question I have to ask. So, like, we're going to be doing a proclamation on Scottish, our Scottish community coming up. Is that okay or are we not allowed to do that anymore?

So, Governor hasn't signed it yet. Okay. Yeah, so that's, yeah, that's good. And if it does become law, it won't take effect until January of next year. So we have time to go through all these. But I'll say on a cursory glance of going through all of the exceptions that are in state and federal law, there's nothing specific with regard to Scottish, recognizing Scottish heritage. There's nothing particular with regard to St. Patrick's Day. I mean, there's a lot of even, I would say, holidays that affect cities throughout the state that haven't necessarily been codified in federal or state code that will need to be addressed. It depends. There are some that are and some that aren't.

Oh.

So as long, it doesn't prohibit a municipality from issuing an event permit in a content-neutral manner. So generally when we see the language content-neutral, we're dealing with signs is often where we see it. So, you know, like the city only regulates signs based on size, location, things of that nature. But you don't regulate what the sign says. So it would be the same thing with regard to an event. It wouldn't necessarily be what the event is as much as where it is performed, you know, where it is held, how many people, public safety measures, those kind of issues.

So we're having an event, but we don't know what it is or where it's going to be necessarily. We can only use the word if. That's right. So, yeah. Any other questions on that one? Okay.

So fun. You want to move on to the next one?

Yeah.

We better move. Please move on before I say something. And we're certainly not going to, you know, go over each one of these.

The document is attached. You can certainly read through them. The next one is House Bill 1217.

This is in relation to greenhouse gases and restricting cities and counties from engaging in or adopting or funding any net zero greenhouse gas policy and also engaging with any company that has a net zero greenhouse gas policy, which is, yep. We'll put it in by the stick. Wait a minute. That was good. So, Natalie and I both had, you know, a pretty long discussion with Jennifer Cowan as far as the implications go. We did. There are, again, a lot of exemptions to this. Any kind of clean energy, alternative energy sources are exempt. So as far as our, you know, a lot of the things that we're looking at, we are kind of kind of good to go. There are a few things that we'll have to work through as far as our greenhouse gas assessment. That has been something that we have had in the budget and on the table for quite some time. So that's something that we'll kind of have to have a deeper dive look on should this be signed. Again, this has not been signed at this point. And there is a lot of interpretation for this one because we, and again, the list of exemptions is very long. So I'm not going to read through all of the content here, but you do have access. And if you have questions, we can go through those as well.

So, you know, one thing, and you can do it another time, but like for me, I guess it's helpful to know the driving problem that was trying to be solved by the particular bill that was passed. And, you know, because sometimes, sometimes I don't, you know, let's take a sledgehammer to something that makes no sense to begin with. But anyway, I would like, but still, sometimes I hear it and I'm like, oh, okay, you know, I get it.

Yeah, just to pile it, because that's what I'm missing is the context.

Right, yeah, because you can make a judgment and be wrong because you don't understand where they started and what they were trying to solve. Yeah, so that would be helpful. Okay. Somebody's upset, they're calling. I'll make sure I include that in when I come back to do my full session. That'd be great.

Kind of falls in the category of what the heck are they thinking.

Right, because sometimes I'm like, oh, okay, but most of the time it's like, most of the time, honestly, it's like an attack on local government. Let's just say it the way it is.

Yes, so they're on this list and they're not, they're in no particular order. There are a lot of development-related bills. The next one, $399, is in relation to application fees and, you know, response times of building permits and so on and so forth, the types of permits, zoning requirements. That as well as House Bill 803, again, updating Florida building permit inspection laws. And again, the list for this is very long. We have, you know, Jennifer Cowan is under, you know, going through the process of really reviewing each of these. Obviously, the ones we asked her to look at right away were kind of those that were most impactful. We have shared this with community development, had them take a look at, you know, how this is going to impact their work. I think, thankfully, you know, our team in community development is already have a really quick turnaround as far as our building permits and our process goes. So, I don't think there's as much of a concern as far as far as the time limits in some of these bills and reducing those time limits for turnaround are going to be as difficult for us to adhere to as maybe some other communities. So, that part is good. Again, there's quite a few development bills that are listed. The next one.

One thing I'd like to say about House Bill 399 is I want to give Senator Disigli some major kudos. You know, he filed his bill to fix Senate Bill 180. He passed, that bill passed the Senate. The House never took it up, would not even, you know, consider the language that he was proposing. So, the very last day of session, he did try to amend his language onto House Bill 399, and he was told if they amend that language onto the bill, then the House will kill the bill. So, he ended up pulling the amendment, but he did try up to the very last day of session to pass the bill.

Well, thank you for that. Appreciate your sharing that.

The next one, again, I know I've talked briefly with Commissioner Dugard, Senate Bill 382. This does provide some updates to the law governing electric bikes. I think the difference in the language here is it actually puts a, well, not a task force, but it also puts a specified, you know, speed and, I don't want to say punishment. This is the only word that's coming to mind right now.

I'm like all over the place.

But, you know, has enforcement, that was the word I was looking for, enforcement considerations that are tied to this bill, which we have not seen in the past and I think has always been a sticking point when we've talked about this topic, is the point of enforcement.

And so, now whether this, you know, we're kind of in that period of whether this bill passes or does not pass, I think the next phase is, you know, what does enforcement look like? And I think that's a conversation that Jennifer and Jennifer would have with, you know, our sheriff and, you know, how they're going to, you know, adhere to that. Because there are some tricky things, of course, in it that, you know, how we determine, you know, if somebody's going over 10 miles an hour within 50 feet of somebody is very specific. So, but again, this is the first time we've actually seen an enforcement component where we have not in the past.

Now, let me, I just want to ask one question. As I understand it, this has passed the House and the Senate is waiting for signature. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Just wanted to be sure. Thank you.

Yeah. So, all of these that are on this list have passed both the House and the Senate and are potentially, you know, going to be signed or not signed. We'll see. Again, you know, the list does go on. I think the next several are development bills. We do have, as Laura had mentioned, this is very slow going here because there's obviously a lot of detail. But as Laura had mentioned, further down on the list is House Bill 145 that does address the sovereign immunity. We were, the Florida League, the Suncoast League, were, you know, advocating. We discussed this when we were in Tallahassee as well. We all understood that an increase was going to be necessary. We were hoping to, you know, I think we were suggesting 300,000, but it ended up being 350, you know, or sorry, 250. It was 200 per person, went to 300 and 350, and went to 500,000. So, we did see those increases. Again, not signed.

No, it was 200, 300.

Now it's 355. 350. Sorry. All the numbers. No worries. For one component of good news, I would like to share Senate Bill 302, which actually establishes a statewide framework for the use of nature-based coastal infrastructure, such as living shorelines and mangrove restoration. This was already signed into law, so we are hoping that there will be some additional funding put towards the DEP or whatever organization the state chooses to fund these sorts of projects. Of course, we have a living shoreline project that's on our agenda. So, for us, we're, you know, really hoping that we can see some additional funding come through the state for this. And then, unless there's anything specific on this list that you would like to talk about, those are kind of the most impactful, so to speak. But we certainly can answer any questions, or if you have anything flagged, you know, we can walk through those as well.

Okay. Just other questions, starting with Commissioner Gao.

No questions, Mayor.

Thank you.

Commissioner Degard.

Thank you, Mayor. As I understand it, you've inferred the potential of two additional special sessions. Is that the case? It sounds like the one most consequential to us might be the second of those two relative to property tax issues. Is that correct? Okay. What would be the most likely timing for such a session? Do we have any clues at all?

Sometime before June 30th.

Okay.

Well, they would need, I think they would need to get the, so the language has to be on the ballot, and I think they have until August to get the language on the ballot. So they could meet up until, you know, beginning of August.

That would be the back door, though, as you, so they've got to do it sometime, let's say, May 1st to August 1st. They've got to be inside that window. All right. That has some implications to us relative to calendars and lobbying. Thank you so much.

Okay. Vice Mayor, other questions?

Yeah, related to property tax. So what do you think are the next steps here? I mean, how many bills did the House pass? There was no Senate companion bill. Where did they pick this up at?

So I've been told the Senate is not interested in any of the proposals that the House passed during the regular session. The Senate has indicated the only thing that they are considered, or are considering, is an additional, between 50 to 150 additional homestead across the board. So obviously that can change. I would say the Senate and the governor are more closely aligned, obviously, than the House. So I would anticipate the governor having some influence over what the Senate does eventually. But that's what I've been told the entire session, and they have not budged off that. And that's what I've been told moving forward is all the Senate will be considering.

Okay. And I think the question, I just want to make sure that the language that we're talking about that would have to be submitted is in August. That's the language for the referendum itself, right? Correct. Okay. Got it. Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Sandberg? So going forward, can we take whatever is passed, break it down, and then you give us an example specifically how it would affect the city of Dunedin?

Yeah. And we did that. We reviewed some of that during your commission retreat. We did take all the bills that were on the floor, and we have calculations exactly how it would impact us. So we know what the various levels are going to look like for what that means for us. And I think that's one of the things that, you know, of course, everything, we have so many unknowns at this point. But I think that one of the things that we can do, which is why I popped up the property tax information forums that are coming up in April, is we can talk about just in general, like, what that looks like as far as whether it's a full reduction. We can look at different scenarios and how that would impact us.

So I think, Laura, you might have mentioned a special session could start 13 April. Is that? For the budget. That's for the budget. Okay, good. That's all I had. Thank you.

So did you say $50,000, $150,000?

Anywhere between there.

When we were up there, it was $25,000, $50,000. So I guess they're shifting because, Nicole, my memory serves me, if it was $50,000, which would already be an issue for us, I mean, any level would be because we're already going to have to make cuts based on trying to hold the budget line anyway, was like somewhere in the $2,000 to $2,500,000 per $50,000?

That's about right, yeah.

So if we went as high as $150,000, that's $6,000 to $7,000,000, $7.5 million of our budget. It's still significant, especially knowing where our average homesteaded cost in Dunnean is $250,000.

So with the current exemption on top of that, it's going to wipe out a significant amount.

So I think if they're going to pursue this, obviously lobbying for the lesser amount is going to be the conversations we're going to want to have.

Well, even the baseline kills us. I mean, we're going to have, you know, there'll be a lot of cuts with that and creates more inequity. Jennifer, on the April 14th and April 22nd, I don't know how we're drilling down into what cuts would look like, or are we just getting input, because I get over and over again that we've got to break that number, Wreck-and-Parks number down. We need to drill that down. I mean, even in that number, I think it's some Toronto Blue Jays things, things that are more economic development centered than they are, you know, Wreck-and-Parks director, or Wreck-and-Parks department centric. So just wanted to kind of know, because I get that over and over. It's a big number, but when people start to hear what's in it, then like, oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. Okay, so we get that. We don't want to lose that. So, Mayor, a lot of work has been done to drill down so far, but we're going to continue to work. Okay, no, I don't think I have any other questions, so I'm just going to go to final comments on this one, and I'll start with Vice Mayor.

I just appreciate the breakdown on this, and really no comments. It'll be interesting to see what comes next. And I think, to Commissioner Degard's point, I think we all would like to try to make it up there in April or whatever the date is for those. So, thanks.

Commissioner Sandberg?

I appreciate you keeping your eye on it. And I said since day one, you know, until these are passed, I mean, it's not much we can do. So just keep your eye on it for us. Thank you.

And Commissioner Gow?

Thank you all for all your hard work. Appreciate it.

Commissioner Degard?

Thank you. It's a little difficult to figure out how we're going to line this up with what we know, particularly when we're dealing with a budget that has to go into effect in October. That's supposed to be a 12-month budget. I get the sense that this is not an accident, that this is on purpose for disruption. I hate to say it because that means that one part of our government is actually actively interfering with another, and I think our citizens need to think about that a little bit. Thank you, Mayor.

So, yep, I couldn't agree more. Local voices, local choices. I'm disappointed that some of the bills that continue to come down are, for lack of a better word, an attack on local government. We are a duly elected body of representatives of this city, and every time that this gets inserted over and over with Home Rule, I think it just starts to denigrate local voices, local choices. And I think it's our job to continue in a professional way to tell our representatives, I mean, there are representatives up there, you know, that, hey, we're duly elected too, and, you know, you have a responsibility to make responsible choices about what's going to affect local government. So, it's frustrating. I have mayor's council on Wednesday, and I know we'll be talking about some of this, and I just think we have to keep pounding the drum because, quite honestly, some of this stuff, it's just a way to silence our voices at the local level. That's un-American. Okay. All right. Okay. That being said.

I know there's no one in the audience, but if you'd like to ask.

Oh, yeah. Is there anyone in the audience who wishes to come forward and speak on this issue? I know the deputy does because there was a commotion back there. Okay. So, seeing none, I'll close public input, and that's all on this one. And then any informational items from the manager or anybody else? Okay. This meeting is adjourned. One o'clock. Thank you.