COMMISSION WORKSHOP - Nov 04, 2025

Morning, everyone, and welcome to the November 4th, 2025 City Commission Workshop, calling the meeting to order, and we'll start by having the Pledge of Allegiance, led by Jen, our city attorney. Republic, one nation, under God, indivisible, liberty, and justice. And now we're going to sing the two anthems, United States and Canada. Wow. We haven't met for two weeks, and in two weeks all we've done is Toronto Blue Jays. So, anybody here at the watch party? The other night? Yeah. Anybody cry? I did. Oh, that was tough. That was tough. But we love our Blue Jays. Okay. We're going to go ahead and we have no presentations. So, we're going to do citizen input. So, does anyone in the audience have anything that is not in the agenda they wish to come forward and talk about? Okay. Seeing no one, I'll close citizen input. We'll go to workshop items. And let me see, can it get more fascinating than going from baseball to 61-page audit reports on risk management programs? I mean, you know. But that's the job, right, guys? That's the job. All right. So, we're going to turn it over to Teresa, I guess, to start this off. Good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commission. Teresa Smalling, Director of HR and Risk Management and the city's risk manager. You may remember at a budget workshop, there were questions about the city's insurance and risk management program. So, with city direction, I have invited our consultants from the Gehring Group, which is a risk strategies company and now also part of the Brown and Brown team. They are the city's current broker of record and also serves as our risk management consultant. Before I turn it over to them, I just wanted to make a few comments. With having a consulting firm on the risk management side is very valuable to our department and to the city because we are HR and risk management is a small department. We have two members of staff that actually work on the risk management side of the house. And as we have seen last year, especially with our storms, there are, besides the day-to-day workers' comp, insurance claims, there are a number of complicated insurance and risk management issues that I, as even with all my years of experience, do not have the comfort level of risk management experience. So, that is why the city does have a consulting firm and the Gehring Group, which has been with us, I think, since 2007-ish. They have proven themselves over and over. With us today is Ray Carter. He is our senior consultant. He is our day-to-day risk management consultant. And he is a former risk management for Manatee County. So, he helps with the more serious issues, claims. He works with the third-party administrator that helps with workers' comp and liability claims, as well as the city attorney's office and also city manager. So, I also want to introduce Rami, who is our senior consultant and risk services team lead. She helps with the annual renewals. She helps with helping me to navigate contract, the insurance language in some of the contracts that the city has. And they are a wealth of information. So, without further ado, I am going to go ahead and turn it over to them. They have a brief presentation, and then they'll take any questions. Sorry, just trying to get the slides here right. So, I'll go ahead and start out, because I think we want to leave maybe more of it to Ray to talk some around the risk management strategy and the consulting piece. So, I'm going to tackle a few of these team members who are dedicated to the city. Gehring Group basically establishes a team for each one of our clients. And these individuals are at Teresa and her team's disposal for any, you know, service matter. As the risk services consultant to the city, essentially my job is to help make sure that we are properly and adequately either procuring insurance or assisting Ray in their process with risk transfer. So, what that means is, you know, myself, as Rami, the consultant, I look at all of the coverages that the city has today. We determine based on, you know, forward thinking, potential new additions to the city in terms of operations or offerings to the public, and determine, you know, what potential coverage may be appropriate to help hedge some of the risk that may be associated with those activities. My job is to oversee the account executive that's assigned to the city as well. And that account executive is essentially the individual that Teresa and Sherry work with in aggregating whatever data is needed to procure, renew, or market programs. So, Angela also assists with things like generating certificates of insurance for the city as needed. Sometimes the county asks for them if you have any interlocals, if you're sharing things, as well as other vendors potentially. She also works with the city to process endorsements. So, any changes to the policy, whether you need to add assets, remove assets, change, you know, maybe a potential valuation of an asset. And then she does also assist with billing and invoicing. Our office does bill and invoice the majority of the ancillary policies that are placed outside of the Florida Municipal Insurance Trust. And just to touch on that, Garen Group has had a longstanding relationship as well with the Florida Municipal Insurance Trust. It's one of the large government trusts that does provide property, casualty, and workers' compensation insurance to government entities in the state. Garen Group does have a pretty, we enjoy a pretty good relationship with the league who administers the trust. And we have access to their underwriters and also with some of their senior leadership in terms of developing and thinking about what programs may be beneficial to our mutual client base. Garen Group mostly serves the public sector. And on the risk side, I think we're almost 100% public sector. So, this is our wheelhouse. In addition to myself and Angela, we do also have Valerie Ensinger. She is available to assist with individual claims. So, claims that may need to be reported to the excess carrier or one of the other carriers based upon, you know, something that may surface, third-party liability, et cetera. So, those are kind of the, I like to call it, we're more like the service team around the insurance policies. Some of what I do also extends to risk management. But I'm going to hand it over to Ray to talk a little bit about what he does, as Teresa mentioned, as kind of that day-to-day point of contact for her team at the city. Thank you, Ronnie, for that. Now, just a further introduction for me. I'm a statistics and mathematics major from the University of Florida. And prior to coming here, I was at Manatee County, worked under the county attorney there for three years as Manatee County's dedicated risk manager. Prior to that, I was 10 years in Collier County as manager of risk finance under my mentor there. And in 2015, I came to the Goering Group, and my first client was right here in Dunedin. So, I've been on this account now in my 11th year. And I think when I talk about risk management, we'll talk a little bit about, you know, self-insurance, what does it mean, our self-insured program that we have. It all starts and ends with the dollars. So, it being, I won't say I'm a statistician, but that's kind of what I like to do. And the first priority with any program is to ensure that it is predictable as far as the cost. It is stable over time. We like it to be stable, not up and down swings. It makes it easy to budget, makes it easy to project. And it also is an indication that the program is running smoothly when you look at the actual report. You might have wondered, why in the world do we put that in a report to talk about? It's not really to talk about it, but it's to show that this program is stable, it is predictable, and it has been that way for a substantial amount of time. So, then we talk a little bit about, well, how do we do that? How do we control that? Well, we methodically place insurance based upon the past losses that we see, but we also work with controlling outside forces, contractual risk transfer. How do we get the transfer, the risk away from the city because of all the vendor partners that we depend on to provide the services within the community here? But we also want to make sure that we keep all of our employees safe, which is the safety piece of it, the training piece, the safety training, the inspections. Annually, we come out and we go out and we talk with the people. You may have seen me, some of you have been here a while, seeing us when we come around. We're not looking directly for, you know, obvious things as far as what needs to be prepared. But we're here to meet with the people, to talk with the people, to build the culture of safety, and that's really kind of what we do when we come out and speak to them. Other things that we do, we talked about the insurance requirements, contractual risk transfer, the property and casualty. We talk about that as a program. Really, you've got two costs when it comes to a risk management program. The premiums that we pay, right, and we look to get a return on investment, an ROI on those premiums, sometimes they come back. But the insurance is meant to protect against catastrophic loss. It's not going to be something that's going to pay back in time, but think about what we've done here. We had a water plant. We had a fire. Immediately, almost about the time we took CO on the building, $9 million claim. Insurance pays out. When you look at the premium we paid, that probably paid for three or four years of premium, so it meant what it was to do. It got the water back because we have probably the best water in the area here. Ask Coca-Cola. They'll tell you that. But the other piece is we've had a few storms that come by here. We've got some repairs that are occurring right now down at the marina, down at the boathouse, at the historic chapel there. That was put back. That was a turnkey program, if I remember right. And that's what insurance does. It really brings in resources that you may not have otherwise had at your disposal. So it's really important not only to look at the ROI, premium versus payout, but the resources that they can bring to bear quickly in the event of a catastrophic loss. And I think the quickly part is important. Immediately following the storm, there are two things that we do. The first one is primary. We close the envelope of the building. We protect it from further loss. That meets our duty to the policy, but it also meets your duty to make sure that we get that building back as quick as possible to the condition it was before the event. So I talked a little bit about safety, talked a little bit about property and casualty workers' comp program. We talked about that, only that our greatest resource is our people. And we ensure that we take them home the same way that they came to work. It's so critical, the safety program. And that begins and ends with the culture from the very top of the organization, from the city manager's office, all the way down to the part-time or volunteer person that's helping at your special events like the watch party out at the field, right? They're all covered under work comp, but they all have to have that safety culture that says, you know what? I am my own risk manager, and when you have, you know, 300 of them out there, that's what they are. They're their own risk managers to protect not only themselves, but you and their families to make sure they get home. Statutory compliance. There's a host of statutes that are applicable to any insurance program or self-insured program that you would have, the city of Dundeen. You have 768.28, which is your liability piece. We can talk about that a little bit. It limits the exposure financially that the city may have, short of a claims bill that has to be sponsored by a local legislator representative. We can talk about Chapter 440, and if you ever want to go to sleep at night, read Chapter 440. It is the most laborious reading you've ever seen, and the mayor is smiling a little bit. She has a little bit of knowledge about that. But anyway, so you have 440. You have 768.28, which is your liability piece. You've got federal and state laws, employment practice, all of these others, and I might say that those programs do not have a cap, right? That's a federal case. That does not have statutory caps that we enjoy under, you know, 200 or 300,000 with the 768.28. We have firefighter cancer. We have PTSD for first responders. There's just a host of statutory compliance issues that we have to make sure that we maintain and that we're aware of and that we manage those claims. And that's where, as Teresa indicated, we lean on our third-party adjuster. By the contract, we transfer the risk away from the city to Davies, which is our current TPA of record, that they are responsible for reporting to the state, for reporting the claims to the state, for getting these payments back. They get them on time. We manage them. We manage them. But it's their responsibility to follow the statutes. And, of course, us over-the-top insurers, through our quarterly claim review meetings, that we're doing what we need to do and have an action plan for those particular claims. And that gets to claims advocacy, if you will. Rami, you want to talk a little bit about the placement that we have? Yeah, I'll take it back over being the, quote, insurance person over here. And I know we talked about that a little bit, too. Here we are talking about something that, you know, could have been a milestone celebratory event, and now we're talking about insurance. But this is kind of what I oversee, as I said, in my role as assigned to the city. So I kind of bucketed the coverages out to make it a little bit easier to kind of discuss why and when and where and why these are placed. So the city does have some core coverages that make up probably the majority of the premium that you see in the budget, the first one being property insurance. We also purchased some primary flood insurance just to offset some of those areas that are in a special flood hazard area. And I'm going to talk a little bit more in detail about these policies, but I just kind of wanted to highlight a couple of things on this sheet before we get into the nitty-gritty. We also assist the city in placing autophysical damage insurance. So that would be for all of the city-owned vehicles. Of course, you have a lot of operations going on all throughout the city, and those assets, you know, come on and off. So that's part of the process in managing that fleet and managing the insurance that is there to protect those assets should there be any damage. We also place a primary professional employment practices liability policy. That is not subject to statutory 768-28 limitations, so that's kind of one of the reasons why it's there listed as a core coverage. And I'll, again, go into that a little bit more in detail. We also place excess workers' compensation insurance. Most important with that, obviously, with having public safety personnel, there are some statutes that are also related to what is provided to them in a provision under workers' compensation. And sometimes those claims can be lengthy and costly. Obviously, that's one of the reasons that you purchase excess insurance is to help offset, again, some of those catastrophic losses. And the city does have a retention, but we'll talk about that a little bit more in detail. And then the last core coverage that I like to highlight is the cyber liability insurance. That's a big piece, particularly with what we've seen probably over the last five to ten years. And then we place a slew of ancillary coverages. So some of the core coverages that I mentioned are placed within that Florida Municipal Insurance Trust. Some of them are placed outside. All of the coverages that are listed on the ancillary line are also placed outside of that trust. So, again, professional liability is not necessarily one of those things. That is subject to tort caps. So we do place an EMT liability policy. We place a marina operator's liability policy because that's a standard exclusion under any general liability policy. And you can see there's a slew of other things. We insure some of the boats here. We do purchase crime insurance because you are, you know, collecting receipts for utility customers, etc. And then we place some of those other statutory coverages as listed there. But like I said, I'll get into those a little bit more in detail once we get there. I think one of the things that I wanted to highlight here was just the differences between, you know, why some of these coverages are necessary. Ray mentioned the city is self-insured on the liability side. So it does self-insure its general liability, which would be, you know, premise, third-party premise suits. So if someone trips and follows outside of City Hall or potentially at one of the parks, that's what the general liability and what the city self-insures. And, again, those are subject to your tort caps. And then the auto liability, which is, again, subject to those tort caps. So anytime anyone is operating a vehicle, whether it's an owned vehicle by the city or on behalf of the city, that liability, you know, for physical damage or bodily injury that may occur in an accident would fall under that self-insurance program. Perfect. I'm going to pivot over on page five. I'm going to talk about program history because it's numbers. And, of course, I love to talk about numbers. This past year, your renewal, your current policy, your premium was $2.8 million. Your property TIV, that's your total insured value across all of your assets, is $281 million. Your payroll is approximately $23 million. Your renewal came in this year at a 9.2 percent decrease. And that was a decrease on top of what we had projected in the beginning of the year. And I know there may be some questions on that. Yeah. But a couple of things I do want to point out. Your experience modification factor is down this year eight points to .66. Let me explain that just a little bit. What goes into that is your payroll. And your payroll increases generally over time as we increase our FTEs. But it's also based upon your claims history. In an experience mod of 0.66, comparing apples to apples across like entities of yours. When I say like, that would be one that may have fire but not law enforcement. It may not have a transit system like you don't. But you are 34 percent better than the average or expected experience mod for an entity of your size and makeup and merit, if you will. There's a savings there because the rate that we pay to the state, there's a quarterly assessment. To be a qualified self-insured entity, you pay a quarterly assessment. When they figure that manual rate, they multiply it by .66 and you pay the difference. If you were average, you'd be paying it full. Some entities, they pay more because they're worse than one. So that's a tremendous number. And you'll also notice over on the right side of page five, the work comp EMOD is down 22 points overall. That's overall over time. That's incredible. That's absolutely incredible. Program design a little bit. We'll talk about that. You're self-insured for the liability piece. Your property, you had a 174 percent loss ratio over the period of time. What in the world does that mean? Right? That means over the period of 20 to 25, you got a return on your investment for your premium. I call that an ROI. Right? I mean, the fire was the big one. Right. But there are other claims that have been mixed in throughout those five years as well. I can talk a little bit if you want. Yeah. About some of the program design changes. And this kind of ties into the market conditions. I think most of you, even as individual homeowners, potentially faced some pretty steep property insurance renewals over the last couple of years. A lot of that, actually, I have to say, was probably a result of IAN. IAN was a huge event that really upset the market. And it really changed the way that the market approached underwriting insurance. So they changed a lot of their models. They changed a lot of what they used to evaluate potential losses in any given area or geographic region. And that really did lead to some of those high increases in the property insurance market. So in addition to that, you know, the city had an asset valuation that did take place that was back in 2023. And it did increase the, you know, what we would consider your insured values. Right. So we took something that maybe had been evaluated five years prior. We all know that after COVID as well, a lot of building costs increased. And that continued to, and we see it today still. The cost to rebuild is much higher than what potentially you would have faced five years ago. So within the property insurance program, and no matter where you place this, they're going to ask you to have true-to-value valuations listed on the properties in order to underwrite properly. So back in 2023, we went through the asset survey. That was about a 40% increase to your asset values. We spent days with Teresa on that because it is a survey of all of the city's assets, not just assets that were insured at the time. So we looked at things from park benches, shade covers, all the way through your large building and large operations to determine what was appropriate for coverage. And that was an exercise, like I said, we spent probably months on it. But from, you know, kind of getting down to the nitty gritty, we were here for a couple of days, just every single line item going through and saying, what's the risk exposure to the city? Is this a critical need? Is this something that we need to have restored relatively soon? And also keeping in mind, you know, the sentiment from the general public, right? Because they also want some of those things back sooner rather than later. So that was a big process that did impact some of the premium ratings. And so during that period, a couple of things happened. The market then started to change. So we really started to see some relief at the beginning of this year. What ended up happening is a lot of capital flowed into what's called an excess insurance market. So you have a carrier like the FMIT who will write and they dedicate $100 million to the city for any other peril outside of a name storm. And then we implemented what's called a sublimit for just named storm coverage. And we went from that $100 million to $50 million. In doing that, we did use what is called a potential maximum loss study. It uses some of the models that are available through like a Moody's rating or other entity that evaluates based upon the assets that the city does own. What is the potential maximum loss in a catastrophic event? And so when we looked at those numbers, and I know you guys have probably heard these terms, right? Like a one in 100 year storm, a one in 250 year storm. We looked at those metrics. And what was determined was that even in a one in 500 year storm. So we're talking about something that we haven't seen probably ever. The maximum potential loss based upon all of the city's assets, their exposures, where they were located was just over $40 million. So in looking at that and knowing, okay, this is probably something that we may not see, a one in 500 year storm. But even in that situation, in using those updated asset values, like I said, that had increased pretty significantly, you know, the potential maximum loss was really fairly low. And we didn't need that full $100 million. Obviously, that impacts premium quite a bit. So the more you insure for a catastrophic windstorm, the higher your premium is going to be because they're looking at what is the potential loss. So we ended up lowering that sublimit to $50 million to be more in line with what the prediction and what the models were saying. And again, we're using those updated models, everything updated values after 2023. As far as the market conditions are concerned, I did highlight a couple of other things just to give you an idea of why and what we look at when we go into budgeting. I know Ray mentioned it. That is a big piece of what we do help, you know, try to assess prior to and working through budget approval because we do start fairly early. So the peaks in the market really do help us and the trends in the market really do help us to gauge where those things may be. So like I said, we had a couple of property and cyber peaks. Those are kind of in what they call a soft market now. So we're starting to see generous or reductions in renewals. Professional liability and auto. Again, if you've had car insurance, your renewal within the last couple of years, you probably also have felt that hit. Those have been within the double digits for quite some time now. And a lot of that is due to litigation. Florida is a pretty litigious state. So that does impact in particular here our auto. We also have a lot of uninsured or underinsured motorists here in Florida because PIP laws do allow them to just purchase the bare minimum. And so those trends really do and are going to continue to impact some of the insurance premiums that you see as we get through and we go through budget and approval and that process. So I did want to highlight that for you. So I'm going to jump in. I'm going to go to page eight just a little bit. We've touched upon most of these items. But I do want to kind of go off script for a minute and talk a little bit about the market. This past year, there's been a tremendous amount of pressure from the governor's office to the insurers to, you know, to really look at their book of business and give some relief where they can possibly initiate that discussion. And it's been, by all means, successful. As I know I've seen in my personal insurance, it did go down a little bit, which was remarkable. But a couple of things just for foresight. This year, it looks like we're going to get through this, and maybe I won't say that, but we've had a quiet year. And I think the other piece where the insurers do make their money is the investment on the premium that they've maintained, right? With little payouts, they've probably had a pretty good return on their investment. So I feel that there may be an opportunity for the market to even soften as long as we can get through the balance of this year. Which would be important come March when we have to set budgetary projections for next year. So kind of hold that thought just for a minute, and let's see if that doesn't play out, if you will. Other than that, is there any questions? Do you have any questions at this point? We've talked quite a bit. Are you guys done with the whole presentation? I just want to make sure before I go to questions. Yes, ma'am. Okay, cool. Okay, well, I'm going to maybe shift over to go to Commissioner Sandberg, and I think you requested this more in detail. I would rather go last. You'd rather go last. Okay. All right. Then I will start on this side, and I will start with Commissioner Walker, who I know is feeling very brilliant this morning since he read in detail the 61 pages, right? Yeah, there was only one thing more excited than the 440, and that was the actuarial. I just want to say that. So thank you. Another thing to put you to sleep, yeah. Oh, I have it up on my computer. We can talk a little bit. All right. So the experience modification and how that essentially is formulated or calculated, what are the criteria that go into that in terms of how you evaluate that on a scale of 1 plus or less than 1? Yeah, that's a great question. The actual mod is calculated by the state of Florida. They use a few things that are true and measurable, if you will. Number one, the SI-17 report, that's a report that gives to them all of our claims that we've paid, you know, and it also gives them claims that are open. It's called a loss run. We provide that to the state in SI-17 claims report. The other report that is given to them is your payroll report. That's called your SI-5 payroll report, and it is every position code within the city has a four-digit number, and that number is related to the risk with it. For instance, most of the folks in this room are in 8810. That's an office worker. They pay like 10 cents per $100 of payroll. One of the highest ones we have, from a risk standpoint, are waste operators, if you will. The folks that pick up the, you know, the rubbish, they're roughly a 9.5, give or take, don't hold me to that number, rate per $100 of value. So that's your manual rate, right? And the state takes that calculator, and they put it into a three-year period. They say, okay, this is, we're in now in FY26. The last complete fiscal year we have is 25, ended on September 30th, right? So they take those two reports over the previous three years, and that kind of smooths that number a little bit, right, when you increase the number of data points. And then they multiply that by the experience mod, which is related to your payroll versus your claims in that time frame. And then there's, when they calculate that, it's called your state assessment fee. And it's an annual fee, but they break it up in four quarters for you to pay. But it's reduced, when it says 0.66, it's reduced by 34% because of what we call your experience. The number of claims versus, you know, the payroll that you had when you achieved those claims. Did that make sense? It does, actually. And that actually leads into the next question, and I just want to make sure, and this is really more for my clarification. When we talk about being self-insured, and it's probably more for you, Dr. Smalling, this becomes a budget line item for us, right? That's what we put into the budget to ensure we're covered on that. Yes. And then going back to the experience modification, in terms of, okay, 34% favorable, that ultimately results in a reduction in our premium for our self-insurance. It does, absolutely, because the underwriters that write your work comp, they're going to see that experience mod. They have it. And in fact, when they provide the quote, they show the experience mod as a reducing factor on the manual premium they would otherwise have charged, right? So your savings there, but there's also the savings in what we pay back to the state. So it's really kind of twofold as a savings piece, if you will. Yeah. Okay. Now, in terms of, you had mentioned that basically we had looked at, well, this is $100 million in maximum insured value. But that was ultimately reduced to $50 million, and I'm just curious, and I'm sure the answer is probably in what you've already provided, but how did we make that assessment in the reduction of the maximum insured value? Yeah. So again, so we have to separate, when we think about the property insurance policy, it's written on a special risk form. So it covers pretty much anything that's not excluded, and there are some standard exclusions. But what we do is we separate things like fire, lightning, falling objects, vehicles that might crash into an asset that you owned, and then we separate that from your name storm, your wind coverage, okay? So for all other perils for things like fire, because those are, if you have a fire, you're pretty much losing that structure, right? That limit is still that dedicated $100 million that FMIT had been providing. With regards to the wind storm, that takes it back to those prediction models that show you in a one-in-100-year storm, and I don't have the page in front of me now, predicted $13.7 million in losses, right? Because in a name storm, you might lose a roof. You might have a structure that's not as hardened as some of your other facilities that you may lose. You might have water damage that results from that storm, including surge, but you typically don't have a total loss on that building, right? So the predictive models look at, and we use what's called COPE data, right? So occupancy, other criteria that helps to determine the exposure of any given asset. So brand new city hall, you know, this is hardened, right? You've probably got impact windows. There's a lot of things that they look at when they evaluate that criteria, and they push it through those statistical analytical models. And so in thinking about the intensity of a storm, a one-in-100-year storm, we have all always thought was like a pretty major storm. The insurance market, when you write coverage, you standardly look at your one-in-250-year number because you never want to be underinsured. And that one-in-250-year number is $28.6 million, right? So then we said, all right, well, we can't go that low. You just don't ever want to go that low. So we went with a one-in-500-year number. But I will tell you, we do insure a large county south of here. They have over $600 million in total insured value. Their one-in-250 is like $42, all right? And Ian happened. And guess where that number landed? $41.6, I think we're at right now. So those models are really good at capturing what those losses are based upon the assets that you have in your control or possession. And I'll go further, just a little bit further, because it's a great question, a point you bring up. Back in Charlie, you know, Charlie was the beginning of seeing the effects of damage pursuant to what Andrew did in 91, where we changed a lot of the building code, right? Now that Charlie's passed, we have records from Ian, September 28th of 22, which was a major wind event. And one thing that I noticed across our book of business is just how much lower the total loss was based on how much was insured. And the only reason for that that makes sense is the hardened structures, how they're building, you know, stronger over time, right? But I want to talk just a moment to look forward, right? FEMA is based upon, you know, it's created in part due to the Stafford Act. Which basically says to us that we have a duty to purchase insurance that is deemed to be reasonable, right? If FEMA's changes are made, as are being discussed, we're looking at the opportunity that Category G may go away. That there would be no Category G. Now that could be a real elephant in the room for public entities that are on the coast. And because Category G is generally your parks assets, a lot of your parks assets are in the open. A lot of them may either be scheduled on your policy, which means you pay a premium for this freestanding pen out at the park. But you're going to pay through the nose for that, right? It's very expensive. So a lot of entities have not insured all of those things and relied potentially on Category G. Category B is ones that can get your deductible back for you when you do things right. And you get your DR submitted and they're approved and they're obligated. Some of that's reimbursable. But the biggest one coming this next year is if Category G is eliminated under FEMA. And there are some tools in our tool shed that we have now. One is called Prometric Insurance. Some say, well, it's like playing roulette with insurance. Well, maybe not because it can be measurable. There's different types of way that it's written. And I see that potentially as something that we may bring forward more in the future, particularly next year. But we have to watch to see what Washington's going to do with that. But there are some avenues that we may explore. I just wanted to add that just for forward looking. No, I appreciate that. Yes, sir. And then the Stafford Act and the establishment of the Category G and B, are those federal statutes? Well, it's pursuant to the Stafford Act, but those statutes could be changed if it was decided and voted upon and adopted to not fund Category G anymore. And that's what we want to keep eyes on. I don't know what they're going to do. I just know there is discussion and it may get some traction. And if it does, we will have to respond to that in some way or another. Maybe we self-insure it or maybe we don't, but there will be options that may be on the table. Yeah, I want to just kind of ask a little bit about the modeling that goes into this. Obviously, you have a very lengthy historical database, if you will, to essentially improve the models going forward. But is there any requirement for those models to be validated or some such? Or are you just basing this on the historical? Well, the models themselves have typically changed in the parameters that they used to run those. I think we're in RMS 23. 23, you know, back in the day and when I came on the account in 2015, it was, I don't know, RMS 15 or 14. But it does change. It does. And I don't know how they change. You know, they may look at some losses or it's a very complex method and insurers use, the underwriters use them. So we use them as well. Okay. Yeah, and so to Ray's point, when version 23 came out, again, that was post-Ian, they really looked at the surge impact, right? Because that was huge in Ian. And I think that that was not necessarily an unforeseeable, but that was an unexpected additional kind of exposure that may not have been previously factored in as heavily. And so, again, when you're looking at using the model, the model is, it's analytical based. It does pull from years of data and them tracking storms and losses. And we're not just talking about in Florida. We're talking about worldwide, not even just nationwide, right? Because the underwriters and the excess carriers over in, like, the London markets, they're writing excess or backup coverage for every single primary insurance carrier all throughout the world. So they're not just looking at Namestorm, they're not just looking at surge, they're looking at fire exposures. And so they're aggregating all of that data, and then to Ray's point, those models are updated. And I think Ian really did allow them to readjust potentially inserting or factoring in surge losses for particular areas more accurately, because that previously hadn't been necessarily captured in the model as well as they might have wanted it to be. Yeah, and just further that, you may have heard the terminology, the reinsurers, right? Well, what they do, they're reinsuring the insurers to give them more capacity in the market is what they're doing. They're backstopping your trust, your FMITs, your Pidgets. As well as any other, as well as the carrier that writes, you know, your homeowner's policy, right? And to go back to that question about the $50 million, so you look at a lot of large entities, particularly like the city of, or I'm sorry, Miami-Dade County. They don't even purchase property insurance through one carrier, right? They build it in a tower. And a lot of them, I mean, I think we looked at the city of Miami Beach, and we questioned this. It was a prospect meeting. They had over a billion dollars in assets, but only had a $20 million policy. And we even questioned that to say, well, they said, well, you know, our models show this. Or their broker said the model showed that, right? So the standard market doesn't even necessarily insure up to even that $100 million. I think the trusts are the most competitive for municipal entities because you do own so many assets, so many more than any other commercial insurance policyholder probably would, right? Even a Coke. Even a Coke who probably has 50 locations nationwide, number one, it's not concentrated, right? But number two, it's not to the level and to the extent that the city has to provide a lot of these resources to the public. So the standard market does not necessarily write your full total insured value. That's why FMIT even previously had that $100 million dedicated limit as that cap. But, you know, to the point of looking at the models and understanding what the exposures are to the city, especially since, you know, there's been a lot of new construction, that $50 million is pretty generous when you look at programs throughout not even just the state of Florida but elsewhere that may also have some of that exposure that we do. And the models themselves, are these standardized? Is there an organization that is responsible for the integrity? Yes. And there's nothing proprietary about this then? I mean, is there? So the RMS is its own model, and then there's another model called an AIR model. Those are the two most common models that are used in predicting potential losses. Moody's Analytics does, I think, write the RMS. I can't remember if it's AIR or RMS, but they do look to some of those larger analytic-backed entities that just crunch data day in and day out. And Moody's would be the same one that provides your financial rating. So it's kind of that idea, right? Your financial ratings, they have tons of data. They look at, you know, what that company looks like in terms of their books, and they provide you a rating. It's the same idea with these name storm and surge models. Yeah. Well, yeah, I greatly appreciate that background. I don't have any further questions. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Degard. Thank you, Mayor. I think my dad had an old saying, I don't understand everything I know about this, and I think I'm going to have to use that lack of understanding as I place my questions. So if I appear a little ignorant, I apologize for that in advance. Inside this report, the word losses is used 14 different times. That doesn't even include the word loss. And so you kind of read this thing with a sense of trepidation and wishing you understood it. But what I'm more interested in is understanding our particular experience for the last two years and what we've had to underwrite of being self-insured. And, well, actually, we're only partially self-insured, if you want to look at it that way. But our experience for losses in these two years has been, respectively, just a second, I've got these numbers right here. According to the Table 1 and 2, in 24, we had 1.345 million, and in 25, we had 1.33. Yet we're only recommending a number of, as I understand it, and, boy, that's 724,000. Help me understand that. So that's the IBNR, right, I think, that we're looking at. I'm looking for Table 1. I want to reference it as we go. Are you referring to page 18 of 61, the summary of estimated? Oh, no, you're way beyond me. I'm looking at the report I've got here, Glickman. Yeah. Yeah. Page, I'm looking at page 2. Oh, okay. My bad. And I'm looking at also page 5 of that report. Perfect. Thank you. That helps. Yeah, so Table I won, if you will, estimated outstanding losses. As of September 30, 2025, what that is, sir, that is a snapshot in time. When we close the books on FY25, all of the claims that we have open, currently open, not closed, that is our estimated outstanding losses that we have on the books as a liability that at some point we're going to have to pay or close or deny, if you will. And when you look at WC, that's your workers' compensation claims that are open. Liability and property is 539. And I'll put an asterisk next to that that doesn't exist on the report. On the property side, we can't project property because it's infrequent, but it can be severe. So even though it says liability P, it's really your liability claims. That's your, in the city's case, that's your uninsured liability. The liability claims are capped at $200,000 per individual, $300,000 per person, right? So we're not expecting that experience to occur is what you're telling me. It's already occurred, and it's posted as a liability. That is used when it goes over, and in the CAFR, it would show us a liability that we would expect to pay at some point in the future. Right. So for the claims that remain open, you've already paid some amount toward them. This is the amount that has not been paid yet. This is what they're estimating for those claims. So for workers' compensation, you know, that can be indemnity payments that need to go beyond because they haven't achieved MMI. That can be medical claims that are still expected, and those can go on for a number of years depending on the type of injury or illness that we're dealing with. From a liability perspective, a lot of that is litigated, right? So those are claims that may have not gone before a judge, that haven't been settled, there hasn't been an offer, but are estimated to reach that level. Doesn't mean that they're going to get to that level, right? Because it may be there as an inferral point. You may not end up paying that, but that's what you're looking for. So we're not looking at a definitive number. We're looking at a projection. Correct. Okay. Then on the page six of that same report, it said the projected ultimate limited losses of 724 for 25-20 slash 26 compared to 612, 7147 for 24-25. Explain that to me, please. Yeah, on page six, you're referring to the projected ultimate limited losses, and it's based on the page five right in front of it, table I-2. Yep. Projected ultimate limited losses for 25-26 is the current fiscal year that we are in. Got it. And what that does is, based on the past history, our IBNR, our incurred but not yet reported claims, we expect to be, for work comp, that's 1A, $317,610. What's important to look at here is the words ultimate limited losses. Okay. That's the maximum number without any discount for interest that we may earn on the monies that we set aside today for a claim that we may pay five years from now. You will see this in every single actual report by year. It's two pieces. The first table you asked about. Yeah. We end the year today right here on September 30th. This fiscal year, FY25 is now done. These are the losses that we've incurred up to this point. This piece here, ultimate limited losses projected, that is projecting, based on our past history, how much we need to put aside today to pay those claims that we know will incur in this fiscal year. Does that make sense? I'm not sure yet. So it's for, yeah, so it's for this year, right? Yeah. Okay. So I'm looking at a projection here on page two of 1.3 million, correct? For claims that have already occurred. Yep. For claims that have already occurred. Yep. You've already had those claims. Those claims are done. They're still open. Right. But they've already happened. This, really what an actual report does, I call it an accrued-based budgeting platform, meaning I have to look at a snapshot in time to say, what do I owe today? And I have to post that so I can give that to the CAFR for that. But it also, it means I need to look at my reserves. The money, that's why it's called a risk management program or a self-insurance fund. I look at the reserves that we maintain in that fund, and the first question is, does it meet what the statutory or what the actual report is telling me? Now, there's a couple different ways you can do this. This is used at the central estimate, meaning I run them all and I get this one number. I guess when I get into this problem, I'm trying to make sure we're adequately covered in the future. That's my real goal here. I'm not worried about actual or estimated in the past. But what I am worried about is experience, and does experience match up to the liabilities I'm possibly going to face in the future? So when I look at this, I see something that says something different to me than where we're headed in the future, and I don't understand why. So help me understand that. The best way that I can tell you with that is, is we look at our reserves. We set a reserve in policy within the city, and we want to be at X, right? That X number is in the reserve. It's the very last bottom in your budgetary process. We first look at table one. Do we have $793,000 in the work comp reserve fund? I would answer yes or no. Then the next piece is, okay, now we're funding for this year. We've adopted our budget for FY26. And if I look at what I need to set aside this year, that would be table I-2 to make sure that when those claims happen, and we know they will, and when they come due, that I've already put those monies aside. From a commission standpoint and a strategic standpoint operationally, you know, for the city manager's office, what I want to know is the fund is funded adequately. Is it funded adequately so we don't have to have a catastrophic loss, come back to the board and say, you know what? The risk management fund doesn't have the money to pay it. We're going to have to go to our ad valorem and do a budget amendment and that whole process that we'd have to take, you know, to the board for approval. That violates the, in my statement when I started, the one thing we want to do is have a program that is stable. That means I have the funds in there to pay it when it becomes due and predictable. And the actuarial report gives us some level of comfort that it is predictable over time and it's stable over time, which is critical. Well, that's two different things as I see it. One is our ability to cover losses and then one is our experience of losses. Now, you've just explained it in two ways. And I need to go into experience and stay inside experience because that's the only way I can deal with it. Whether we have reserves to cover it or not is another issue. Let's stay inside our experience. This tells me our experience for WC in the year completed on September 30th is $7.93. This over here on the I-2 tells me that we're budgeting for $3.17. That's what I'm seeing. Help me understand why those are so very different. I think, okay, so for the number in table I-1, that's $7.93, right? Yeah. That's looking at every open workers' compensation claim going back to the point in time in which you were self-funded. So you could have one going back to, you know, 2002. That's still open. It could be a heart and lung bill, right? Mm-hmm. So it's looking at your open claims. And it's taking every year that you've been self-insured and saying, okay, for the claims that still remain open, this is what we would expect to pay to close those out eventually. Mm-hmm. Table I-2 is telling you for 25-26, you can expect this much in your self-insured retention for workers' compensation claims for that year. Did we have the same experience in 24? Did we have another set of open claims that was equivalent to this amount? Because I saw that to be the case. Well, it was very close, right? Mm-hmm. It was at that .9% deviation. You would, theoretically, because you're not going to close all of your claims. No, I understand that. Yeah. But what we have, that's not actually experience, then. That's what, and that's the problem I have with going with where we're headed on I-2, is that's, as it says, estimated outstanding losses. Now, as those are carried forward over multiple years, that doesn't tell me the experience of September 2025. It may be difficult, but what would be nice is if you had another column over there saying this is actually what we expect to pay. To pay. Yes. Like a cash flow. Yes. What would our expected cash flow? Because I can't see that. For that. I can't measure this 317 against a relative experience for a given year, because we've got a multiple-year carry forward. Right. Yeah, we can request the actuary to give us expected cash flow in that coming year. We could do that. We've never asked for that. It's just, when I budget and I see this much variation from one year to the next, I've got to ask, are we adequately budgeted? Well. And that's my, that's what I'm trying to solve. And I can't use that number. So I think if you go to page three, where it says comparison to previous study, I think that might address some of what you're talking about. I did see that. So that was the number as of September 30th, 24, was that 1.345. That was those outstanding losses for open claims that had still been on the books. And then as of the end of September 30th, 2025, you'll see that that number is 1.33 million. So the more reasonable number next on this chart should be the 6-12-7-17 that's on page five, six rather? The six. Is that what I'm looking at? On page six. It says the projected ultimate limited losses of 7-24 for 2026 compared to 6-12-7-17 for 24-25. Yeah. And again. Yes. Okay. That is exactly right. Yes. All right. It just, like I said, the only people that really understand this stuff is, of course, you guys and the underwriters, we are low-knowledge consumers, if you will, because we don't do this every day. Right. You do this every day. We rely heavily upon you guys to tell us we're adequately covered. That's where we are. And I appreciate you're giving us the depth of this and the understandings that is associated with it, but that is what I'm most concerned about, that we are adequately covered within the existing environment. So, I'm looking hard at your recommendation. Thank you so much. That's all I have, Mayor. Thank you. Okay. Pleasure, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. And it's so nice going later as opposed to earlier, because a lot of your questions get asked and answered. But going back to page five of the presentation, just wanted to ask real quickly about the experience and writing in each employee, has that risk number associated with it? Sorry, say that again. That each employee has that risk number that's associated with that position? That classification. I guess the employee doesn't, but the position does. The classification does. That's correct. Right. And you might have answered this, but that number that's associated with that, is that a national or is that personal to the City of Dunedin? It's a state number. It's a state number. And is there anything that the City can do to impact that number as far as safety requirements, high-vis, safety goggles, all of that? Yeah, absolutely. Number one, providing the right PPE, personal protective equipment, for the right job, giving them the training to do the job in a safe manner, and making sure that they're actually wearing the PPE. I mean, those three things, and then the top one, and I mentioned it briefly, and that is building the culture of safety in the organization. It is absolutely critical. The other three pieces don't mean a whole lot if there isn't an underlying culture of safety within the organization. That's why when I speak to employees and I'm out in the field, we talk about what they're doing, how they're doing it, what can we do to help? To instill that in the employees that it is up to you to be your own risk manager. And when you have that across the organization, you get the experience. And I am very, very proud to say that you're at 0.66 in the experience, Maude. That's a tremendous number. Yeah. And Vice Mayor, if I could jump in. I think an example of creating the culture is we recently launched a safety shoe program. And one of the things that we did was we had the employees go and get fitted for shoes because you don't realize sometimes that you're not wearing the right size shoe. And so that creates a domino effect where you have back problems, you have feet problems, you have, you know, going all the way up your leg. So it was interesting because some employees, they went, they got fitted and they're like, wow, I didn't realize that I now need a 10 wide where all this time I've been wearing a 9 medium. So that does help overall with later on that employee does not impact workers comp as well as the city's health insurance program. So I think those, that's an example of creating that culture of being safe and looking out for the whole person. Right. And thank you, Teresa, because that was going to be my next question. That when you're in the field and you're talking to the employees, that is being communicated back to management. Because I don't know that we need to discuss it here. That's too, too in the weeds for us. But at least that information is getting passed on to staff so they can make those decisions on safety programs, et cetera. Yeah. And I think it's empowering not only the individual employees that hold those roles, but supervisors and managers. Because oftentimes individuals who end up assuming one of those positions, they know the job. They know how to manage how the job works, but we have to educate them about managing the whole person. Like Teresa said, how do we make sure that now we're protecting these individuals that I'm overseeing? How do I, as a supervisor or a manager, look at maybe even some of our near misses? So something that could have been a catastrophic injury, but it was an accident and a chainsaw fell to the right side of me instead of down onto my leg. And so for them to be empowered, and I know we work with that a lot, is also providing that training to those managers and supervisors to help assess and to be able to address those things timely. Not in, you know, a quarterly meeting, but more as a monthly meeting, a weekly check-in with staff, those types of things. Yeah, and also the one thing also to just have front of mind is safety starts on day one. When they're hired, they go through orientation, they get that piece then. Because two or three years from now, that new hire may be a supervisor. That new hire may be, you know, a shift leader. They may be a manager somewhere. And if that culture is instilled from day one all the way through and supported in the organization from the top all the way down, it's going to work and be impactful. And it has, yeah. And it has. As you look at that experience, Mark. Great question, though. Thank you for the chainsaw example. That's a visual. And will be in my head for quite some time. And they happen, unfortunately. Yeah, so that's, you know. You know, we allow them to wear shorts, right? We expect to wear chaps when you're out there with a chainsaw, particularly immediately after a storm. And that's something where focus really is after an immediate loss, when we're out clearing debris and getting the roads and parks open, which is our main priority, right? So thank you for that. And so in that understanding of safety, is that also a managed risk? How safe do we wrap all our employees in bubble wrap? Do we all? And does it get to a point where the safety that we're focused on exceeds the risk associated with those positions? Yeah, and I would just say, you don't want to hinder them by all of these safety pieces, because we have to have operational readiness. And when you look at your first responders, I think that's probably where you get that measure. You know, they're wearing their gear, their bunker gear. They're wearing the SCBAs. You know, those are things that they must do, right? But when you're out in the field, what I tell the folks, wear your PPE, but we're not going to be, you know, over the top of you on that. But take time. If you need help lifting, get someone to lift. A lot of times you see new people, they get, they're ambitious, they want to make an impression, they're doing more than they think they can do. But if they're aware that they can take the time to do it and management supports them, then it leads to better outcomes. And so that, right, we're down to 0.66, yay, yay for us. That's huge. No, that's a tremendous number. Is the goal zero? Or back to the over safety? Or is there a sweet number? Well, the goal is under one. The goal is definitely under one. I think Ray would agree with me that if you are anywhere below 0.75, your program is working very effectively. All right, very good. And that's all I have. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. So am I going to go before you, since you want to be last? Or do you want me to go last? As usual. Okay, that's great. So go ahead, Commissioner Sandberg. Just a couple of things. I think to satisfy some of Commissioner Dugard's questions, hard copy loss runs, amount paid, and amount reserved, even if they're redacted with the claimant's name, especially because I think he was leaning towards workers' comp claims. Second thing, I spent 25 years doing this. I've never seen a mod less than 0.66. So Dunedin can celebrate that. That's an incredible mod. A couple of things that came up during the statistics. Sorry. Probably 20 years ago, I was at a meeting in Lake Mary, and it was some executives from Hartford, and they threw out an interesting stat. A Cat 5 hurricane, wait, a 20% drop in the stock market was equivalent to a Cat 5 direct hit on the state of Florida because of investment income. That's when the market was straight up. Now, back then, it's been so long. We talked about the modeling. Back then, it was called Hurricane Thor. It came in at Naples. It's way before y'all's time. Came in at Naples, went straight up 75, so it also touched Disney, and ended in Atlanta. And that was like the ultimate storm that the insurance industry had to bank for. It was very interesting to see how they were scrambling to put that together. But that's just, like I said, something, the drop in the market equivalent to a Cat 5 hurricane. First of all, I want to talk about your group. Yeah. I heard Brown and Brown mentioned from the other side. Are you guys known by Brown and Brown? We are. We have been acquired by Brown. Risk Strategies was acquired by Brown and Brown. Just recently then? August, I believe, was the close date. Okay. Are you to Teresa's direct contact so she can pick up the phone? She's got you. Yes. Okay. She texts us if she needs to. She has my cell phone. Yeah. Because that's real important to me to get questions answered. And to address any concerns that may be related to a Brown and Brown acquisition or not. And this happened with us previously. We were acquired three years ago. Gearing Group has still maintained the same staff. And in fact, we've grown. But we've also never really changed our approach to service. And I will say Brown and Brown is very familiar with Gearing Group being a Florida-based company. Right. What we have seen, and I don't want to, like, you know, to any horns, I'm not foreshadowing. But what we have seen is that Gearing Group's model in terms of the service that we provide to our clients is so unique and special. And that's because you all are so unique and special. And what we were able to maintain with risk strategies actually permeated throughout that culture to help try to make some changes with some of their representation. Our office, Kurt Gearing, is our, I guess, office lead. I guess you would call it. I'm not sure what his title will be. But he actually has a direct point of contact to the Brown and Brown executive team because they know of our model. And they have lost so many times to us in competing for business. And so those conversations continue to be open. I can't tell you where we're going to go in two years. But I do know that our presence is pretty largely felt particularly in the Florida market. And I do think that they value that and are looking to improve sometimes upon, you know, how they do business as well. No, hey, don't apologize. It's a great group. It's publicly traded. It's a monster corporation. Yeah. And actually, their leadership, I found, in going through now a second acquisition, because we were always used to, you know, Kurt Gearing, their CEO, actually, he seems to be really in touch with what's happening on the Brown. And that gives me positive, you know, kind of outlook hopeful for the future. So, FMIT, Florida Municipal Insurance Trust. Is that an insurance company? So, it's actually allowed to be established under statute. So, statute does provide for some self-insured entities within interlocal arrangements. And so, FMIT was built upon that premise in understanding that we have many entities that have, to kind of my point, the market won't write this amount of coverage for these entities that own this many assets or have this much exposure on a daily basis. And so, FMIT was built on that premise. So, they did take what was allowed under statute in kind of providing for an interlocal type of agreement. And they made it kind of a master agreement and plan to which government entities that enjoy sovereign immunity under 76828 can participate. Okay. And that is the qualifier. That was a very comprehensive answer. I didn't expect that deep. There's no, I mean, I don't foresee FMIT handling $280 million of exposed Dunedin. So, there's got to be layers of reinsurance behind the scene. Can you just briefly tell me how it's layered and stacked behind the paper of FMIT? So, to be honest with you, I can't answer that question. FMIT, we do have a very close relationship with the individual who oversees the fund. That's Chris Krepko at the Florida League of Cities. I do know that they do have reinsurance. They do purchase it. I do know that two years ago, they had to increase their own retention because of the state of the market. Right. But I can't tell you how those layers work. That's kind of proprietary to the trust. So, are you an exclusive, nobody else can access, you represent the Florida League of Cities. Nobody else can access FMIT except your group? No. So, FMIT does allow, it's either one or two other brokers to be an agent of record on policies that are written through them. Gearing Group, however, we enjoy kind of the unique relationship whereby we have direct access to Jeannie, who is over all of the Florida League of Cities. We have direct access to Chris Krepko, who is the one who manages not only the FMIT, but also the FMPTF, right? So, the public fund that's available for, you know, you to borrow money, right? So, and then we also have access to their underwriters directly. The other agents that can be an agent of record on that policy and receive commissions for brokering that policy do not have that type of access. So, we meet with them at least annually and it's a large meeting between, you know, our risk management team, their underwriters, the underwriting manager, and then those executives to really determine from a book of business perspective what we're doing moving forward. And that's in partnership. So, we have a $280 million blanket, but there's got to be some type of a schedule of values. Absolutely. Yep. Is that available? Because I would love to see that myself. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. Oh, yeah. We could definitely get that to you. Yes. I don't even know how many line items in it. It's probably 300 or 400 line items. Can you put that on page six, the overhead? Page six, yes. Yes. Yeah. Stop right there. Now, so there's our $280 million. Yes. In TIV. Yep. Today, no name storms. If there was a fire, we have a $100,000 AOP deductible. Correct. Okay. Okay. And I understand the coverage limit. So, our coverage limit reduced during those name storms. Is that correct? Is that what I'm reading on coverage limits line? So, well, it is reduced to $50 million for the name storm in particular, and that's a per occurrence limit. So, we're from $280 million to $50 million. It was capped at $100 before, just like the AOP. What is unscheduled PITO? What does that stand for? So, do you know when Ray was talking about that property in the open, the benches, the flagpoles, the lights, there are some of those that would be scheduled. FMIT's policy does provide a blanket limit for anything that is unscheduled that's in that category. Okay. I actually had my notes about streetlights. And I like to highlight that. Streetlights, poles, things like that. Streetlights, flagpoles, benches. I mean, some of your playground equipment can be considered property in the open. Those are not structures. Shade structures. Shade structures. Okay. How about, is debris removal covered? Debris removal is part of the policy, but I'll let Ray talk further because. Debris removal is covered if it's, or will be removed if it's touching a scheduled asset. But debris removal for an overall park would not necessarily be. And that's kind of where we look at FEMA, where they're going to gather everything that's at a particular location, we get it out and then it gets as part of the pickup and the tag, the tickets are, you know, calculated upon delivery, et cetera. In that total, that ITV, does that include our underground infrastructure that we have here in town? No. Nothing underground. Yeah. That's standard policy exclusion. I wouldn't be looking for collapse coverage. Yeah. I'm not sure what could happen under there. So it's excluded. I'm afraid of that. Underground pipes and flues and all that stuff, yeah. And if we talk about, in the Marine, $2,500 slash $5,000, that's per occurrence aggregate deductible, right? That is a per occurrence deductible. It depends on the classification. So there may be assets that are valued, and I forget what the benchmark is, but they may be valued over a certain dollar amount. That's where the $5,000 would come in. And I'm not sure you can answer this, but maybe somebody in the room could. Do we have any exposure to hired or rented equipment? Do we ever need something that we have to go out and rent? Okay. Yeah. I see that's the answer. Is that picked up? Is coverage broad enough to pick up the physical damage to that item? So oftentimes, in a lease agreement for a large piece of equipment, the city would endorse that asset onto the policy for the period in which it's being used. So you mean we would actually insure it, like we owned it during the course it was here? If it's required by contract, yeah. Yes. We usually have to give a certificate of insurance, so we get that from FMIT. Yeah. On the business income section, I saw 72 hours. It's similar to a deductible, isn't it? Correct. Yeah, that is the deductible. So you have to have basically 72 hours of a loss in order to report and claim a loss. All right. $500-1 million. Yes. I understand during, it was before I was elected, so I know I'm just picking this up from conversations up here. Okay. Two business income claims filed, one for loss of use at the golf club. Yep. And one at the marina. Yep. But it's a total of $500,000. Right. So $500,000 is available. So you handled that as an occurrence because it was one storm. You didn't handle it as two occurrences, one downtown and one up on the other end of town? So actually, I think with that, they were two different, they were two different storms. Yeah. So Helene fell under FY24, or yes, FY24, whereas Milton fell under FY25. So by the grace of, you know, the powers that be Mother Nature, it was separated between policy periods, which allowed you to receive the full benefit. Because both of those storms do have business income losses. Not to that extent. The fire, the water treatment plant, we did that $500,000 is definitely booked. So September 24th, we had a storm? October 10th. October, yeah. And our renewal fell in between those dates. 10-1. Wow, that's just, having bad luck is bad, at least having some, okay. All right, I didn't understand. Yeah. Now let's talk about that excess flood. Yeah. I would assume to have excess flood, we have to have underlying flood. Is underlying flood- You don't, it's a great question. You don't have to have underlying, but you would be subject to the $500,000 deductible that you could have or should have purchased to protect the primary layer. So the way that the FMIT policy works is for, you know, your non-special flood hazard areas, it's subject to a low $5,000 deductible to receive that $25 million potentially available to you. For any asset that is in a special flood hazard area, like Ray said, they will either assume that you have purchased NFIP coverage, and even if you haven't, you'd be subject to what, you know, you'd be able to purchase for that asset. So if it's an asset only valued at $300,000 and you don't have the policy, $300,000 would be your retention on it. So basically, you're self-insuring it for those assets. You purchase one policy for the Andrews Memorial Chapel, because it is a historic asset, and I can't tell you what other- I mean, we might have parks in AV zones, but I don't think your large assets are in those areas. So that brings me to the next line. I know who Wright Flood is. Yes. That's very specific limits on a building and the contents- It's the one building. What building is that? It's the St. Andrews Memorial Chapel. Okay. And that's in zone what up there? I'm sorry, say what? What flood zone is that in? I couldn't tell you right off the top of my head, but it's definitely- I think we'll get the answer soon. So okay, yeah. Okay. AE, yeah. It is AE. That's okay. All right. And that's obviously pre-firm construction, so NFIP rates? And that's an old building, yeah. Yes, okay. And we have a $2,000 deductible. We're not going to spend all day here on this. So, yeah. EPLI. Yes. I was looking at that. I know what that is. I know what it covers. And $100,000 seems awfully high. What's the rating basis for EPLI? Oh, that's going to be payrolls. No. Payrolls, headcounts, yep. Number of employees, but not payroll. No, they'll look at payroll. Turnover of employees factored in? Probably. Okay, I thought so. And honestly, $100,000, I'll tell you, again, because when we talk about professional liability, we also have to consider fire services. And so that may be a differentiating factor when you're looking at the premium value, but for most public entities, and again, depending on your experience, I mean, I've never seen a POL policy written for under 65, 70. Have you ever seen a claim under one? Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I mean, discrimination, hiring, firing. Very complex claims. And that includes, you know, all kinds of stuff. I mean, planning and zoning, code enforcement, those all fall under that window. And that's kind of why there is a separate policy for that, right? Because tort may or may not play into. The community garden policy is separate. Why would we have a separate policy on that? Well, you have a separate policy, but that association pays you for the policy. It is because the city bears some liability in, you know, having that available. So premise liability, mostly. I mean, I see that USLI. That's just a minimum premium policy. Correct. And then the camp participant accident, I would assume that some kind of a student accident policy that dips down, picks up $1 with maybe $5,000 to $10,000 limit. So it's about, right. So each claimant has $25,000 available. It's mostly for an injury if something were to happen during a summer camp or another off-schedule camp, because you have, you know, holiday camps and things like that. Right. On the, I think I know the answer, and it's, I just got to make sure I understand it. Yeah. Why is there no comprehensive general liability or commercial general liability policy listed here? Right. Because the city self-insures up to that self-insured retention, $200,000, $300,000. And they don't purchase excess. And to be honest with you, the entities that do purchase excess will essentially establish their SIR at that $200,000, some of them higher. You're good. But again- You're good. I like that. How about, and there's no commercial auto, and I'm going to guess that that's the same answer. The liability, correct. Yeah, because it all falls under those torque caps. But how do we know the schedule of the vehicles? I mean, I just, there's brand new vehicles sitting on the parking lot. So we have that as a part of the auto physical damage, right? So we do have an asset list because we ensure the physical damage on those. So someone in this building is reporting the new vehicles and the deletion of the traded in vehicles? Yep. Does that auto physical damage premium also include those fire trucks? Absolutely. That's why. Man, is that deal of the century. Okay. Absolutely. I just, this is what I wanted to make sure I had clear. Yep. And those, yeah, those are- Do you have a lot more? Just asking. We could talk for two days. We could talk for two days, but I think, oh, I- And I know, and I did realize that, you know, because I was going through and making notes for today, I did realize that I didn't actually put in there for you what the policy was or what the TIV was. But just so you know, there is about $12.84 million of auto assets that are scheduled, and it's a $25,000 deductible. So essentially, the assets that are, you know, not valued under $25 are not even on the schedule. So it's not even the entire fleet. I could go on for two days. If I can get you to send us hard copy loss runs, including the reserves, you can redact the names, but I think that would clarify a lot of it. I'm sorry, Mayor, I could go on for days. And you want that just on the work comp side, or do you want to see- I'd like to see it on all lines, including the property damage from the hurricanes. So, Mayor, if I may, I would assume that whatever Commissioner Sandbergen is asking for, we're going to provide the entire commission. Yeah, that's great. Of course, yeah. And again, you know, if Commissioner Sandbergen's got some offline questions, I think that's great. He obviously has a great expertise here. Take advantage of it. So, yeah. And meanwhile, I'm over here like, yeah, let's keep talking about it. I love it. I'm going to invite you guys back just to hang out with you guys. Yeah, thank you. To be honest, I don't want it either. But if you find something, bring it back to our attention, okay? Oh, my goodness. No, I'm sorry. I am enjoying this all. So, this is like, this is obviously what I do. Yeah, I was feeling we were here for it all night. You know, I don't know, Jerry Lewis telethon or something. I have to date myself. Oh, my gosh. So, we're good. Okay, you're sitting back. I'm not going to push it. I'm just going to ask like four questions. What's the biggest driver for general liability claims that we currently have? Probably trips and falls. Sidewalk. Yep. Sidewalk, bicyclists, you know. Gotcha. Yeah. What is the biggest driver of work comp injuries? You would know that. You know, you could probably say back. Fire. Fire. I would say presumption claims. Yeah. Fire, probably. Followed closely by, you know, what you would expect to see. Backs, knees, ankles. That would be your driver's, I would say. Okay. Teresa, do we still have a safety committee that looks at all the accidents that happen, preventable, non-preventable, that kind of thing? Yes, we do. We sort of suspended operations, if you will, during COVID, but we have restarted. We had our first meeting last month. Yes, so we have representation from our operational departments as well. We've also brought in some of our administrative departments so we can discuss. So you have a good, you know, multiple of the ones, the departments that are directly involved in the accidents that occur? Yes. Yes, we do. Do you still do them, preventable, non-preventable? Yes. Safety awards? We actually expanded it because we recognized that with some accidents, we wanted to determine was it preventable by the employee or non-preventable, and was it also preventable by the city? So in other words, was the city, does the city need to provide something else because of this accident? So we do have it broken out on those, you know, two criteria. So in digging back, the city used to have a risk-loss committee, which also looked at all the liability claims that occurred and discussed them. And so the department directors directly involved in those would be involved in discussion. They'd know it even occurred, because I know in some cities, department heads don't even know it occurred. So how can you do something about it? So how do we, what are we doing, what's our process to make sure department directors and their staff are involved in the liability side of accidents that occur, and how do we prevent them in the future? That, that is one of the things that we're, we have restarted also our supervisor roundtable workshops. And so that's one of the things that we have brought and will continue to bring to supervisors to make them aware of what the cost of, you know, one of the things Solid Waste talks about is knocking off mailboxes, and it's just the cost of doing business. But over time, that adds up. So what are the things, we talk with the supervisor, what are the things that we can do so that we avoid that? We look at root cause analysis in our safety committee meetings, and that's something we're also going to bring to our supervisor roundtables. Because I think there's a line out there that says every manager is a risk manager, every manager is a human resources manager. So that's the, what we want to perpetuate. Well, I would encourage, you know, to whatever extent you guys do it now, I found the risk loss community to be one of the most successful things the city used to do. You always had the city attorney, you had the city manager, you had the departments directly involved. Settlements weren't even done unless you brought them into the fold, because then they really understood all angles of it. So I just think it's tremendously helpful, and it makes sure, like, you know, and I think it's very true of a lot of organizations, public and private. That stuff happens in the dark, between the attorneys and the insurance companies, easier to settle, but, you know, you set a tone, and you do that. So, yeah, just a thought. I don't know what we're doing. Well, it's not just a thought. I strongly encourage we need to make sure we're doing that kind of a thing. And we especially, we have our city attorney now in the building some of the times, so it could be scheduled right around that and make sure everybody's thinking about these things in ways that we're all aware. My last thing would be, are you able to do one sheet, one sheet of paper highlighting, okay, maybe two, two sheets. Might not get on one sheet. All our coverages, all our exposures, and how we get to the fact that we have a $3.5 million self-insurance fund mandatory minimum. How did we get to that number? How does that play off our exposure compared to our coverage? And, like, you know, obviously there's some calculation there. I don't know if you want to comment about that now, or? I mean, a lot of it is based upon what you get in the actuarial study, right, for your self-insured liability, and then the rest of it is kind of this program insurance expenses. So, Rami, if I could. Yeah. I mean, all I'm picturing is between, you know, incurved and now reported claims, and, you know, claims already, you know, know about, and what's, you know, what's the reserve that's hanging out there. Obviously, there's some master calculation with that. I mean, and at some point we've determined, yep, 3.5 is the right number. Shouldn't be five. Shouldn't be two. It should be 3.5. Maybe it should be three. Three, we need more money in general fund. If it should be five, then, you know, then we're sitting out there. But there, you know, one or two pages that really break that down so we can understand it up here, so. Okay. If I could give a little background. Sure. When I first got here in 2013, Rodney Lewis, who was Ray at the time, and I forgot her name, but they came to a Board of Finance meeting because the Board of Finance had requested something similar to discuss the risk management program. At the time, I believe that the kind of established limit was somewhere between 4.5, 5 million. And the question was, does it have to be that high? Why is it set where it is? And I think the benchmark at the time was, I believe it was Hurricane Charlie in Charlotte, but Charlotte County, that when Hurricane Charlie went through, the storm, the total loss from the storm came out to be about somewhere between 3.5 and 4 million. So that was sort of the barometer, if you will, for setting it at about 4 million. That's fast forward 12 years later, I believe it was three years ago, then Mayor Bojalski asked the same question as to, should it be 3.5, should it be 3? And I think at that time, we did establish the policy. We now have a risk safety policy where we've set it at no more than 3.5, because it has been averaging, if you will, somewhere between 3 and 3.5 million dollars. Rami will get the background as to exactly, you know, based on actuarial, because as Ray said, when we do the budget, we look at 75 percent of the ultimate losses to budget for reliability and workers' comp. But as we saw with the storms, when a storm hits, you need to have that cash on hand to be able to turn around things quickly. And so we didn't want to just budget for what the actuarial report said. We also wanted to have a buffer to have that turnaround before insurance kicks in. Now, FMIT is very responsive, but still, it does take a while for the checks to come in, for the cash to flow. So I just wanted to give you a little bit of background. I mean, that's great. I mean, back in my time, because I was risk manager here, you know, we were doing everything we could to hang on to $2 million, because the commission was trying to get it for other things, right? I won't be that person that tries to get it if there's a good reason for where we have it, which is, and I think we've worked through that. I think, you know, we probably have it in a good place, but I'd like to see the two-page analysis of why you all, as the experts, think that's the right place. That's it. Cool. I don't have any other questions, so I think we can try to wrap this one up, you think? Yeah. No. Is there anything else that you wanted to add to the conversation? No. I just want to say thank you for your interest, and the questions were fantastic. Very engaging, and I really appreciate your time. Yeah, I would do that. Thank you for your interest. And thank you all. I mean, I think you're obviously both well-schooled in this, and we're very appreciative. Thank you, Teresa. And okay, that's that item. Thank you. Thank you. Before we go to our next item, we're going to take a break, but before we do, because I don't know how long Jory Peterson is going to be out there, and I'm going to say this now, I just want to give Jory a big shout-out. At some point, we want to recognize all the people that worked their butts off, literally, for all the stuff during the World Series, and the Yankees Series, and the Seattle Series, and all the watch parties. And but Jory was definitely like, you know, kind of the lead laser there, staying up all night at the parks and doing her thing. So I just want to give her a shout-out, and I'm going to give her standing ovation here. Well, let's take a break. Okay. Sorry. Was there any public comment on the insurance item? Thank you. Anybody in the audience? I know, Jeanette, you added to the discussion, so there you go. But any public comment? Seeing none, it is closed, and thank you for that. Okay. We'll take a five-minute break. We'll be right back. Go to the second item to be North Douglas and Baywood Shores update, and I will turn it over to Sue and Clay. And it will also be an hour and a half long, so. We're hoping to give a briefer introduction. God bless Jeanette and Rich for, you know, hanging into that one there. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. Good morning. Clayton Watkins, Utilities and Engineering. Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commission members. Sue Bartlett is here with myself, Utility, our Public Works Director. We're going to give you just sort of a quick brief overview of some of the work that's been done on North Douglas and in the Baywood Shores neighborhood. As noted here, we'll give you a Friday's update on the work that's completed, where we stand on the construction and design for the work at the end of North Douglas, and then some stormwater maintenance efforts in North Douglas and Baywood Shores. So starting off, we'll go back to, well, this time last year in December, we held a public meeting that our consultant, Jones Edmonds, provided different solutions for, to help really alleviate the, what we refer to as clear sky flooding or tidal fluid on the streets of North Douglas and San Mateo. This is a quick little preview of what the proposal was, just sort of the idea of how they will come through and make the effects with basically blocking some of the flow in the tidal ditches that run along the pond that's at the north side of Douglas Avenue, along with putting in some backflow or tidal valves, as they are somewhat called, in the 18-inch pipes that are, sort of, collect the water along Douglas Avenue. This is a quick plan view of the construction set that we are, that the consultant has provided. Mostly what you have here is a continuation of a lot of the drainage patterns that are out there, but what we've done is they're provided a curb and sort of a berm area along the western entrance into Hammock Park that will elevate, provide an elevation of, a solid concrete elevation at elevation 2.5. As per the study, 2.5 is sort of the, the good look elevation to help prevent some of the tidal flooding, but at the same time, make sure we're not having any problems with any rain flow. And so when you have a rainstorm event, we're still allowing the water to get out in those scenarios. So this is just sort of a quick little blow up to sort of show with that, to give an update on that. This project, it will go out to bid Friday with a closing in June 9th, with, so hopefully we'll bring that to you either the last of December for approval, the first meeting in January, and we're giving them 60 days to complete the work. Sorry, January, December 9th, that is December 9th. I shot ahead a few months. And with this, along with putting up the berm, they will do some replacements of the existing curb inlets that are there that are sort of have some rust and some damage from being tidally influenced. And also, there are two or three manhole covers that they'll replace. They'll put in some seal-type manholes because we were finding, yes, we were able to block the water in the pipes, but some of them flow in the 60-inch pipe that runs down the middle. It was staging up and coming out the manhole covers. So, we found some manhole covers that have some seal-type devices, and that we're also installing those. I think Public Works has done one of those already. And then I'm going to turn it over to Sue. Thank you, Clay. As Clay was mentioning, I'll go back to this picture here. There are four tidal valves in the 18-inch that go the cross drains along Douglas, and Public Services purchased and installed those, as well as repaired two inlets that were on Mera Vista that were completely damaged to allow stormwater to flow the way it should. And then those four tidal valves allow stormwater to still discharge, but it stops the tidal influence coming back to those side inlets. As he mentioned, unfortunately, the manhole, then the 60-inch that goes down the center, backed up further. And so, Public Services purchased three of these sealing manhole lids. It's not just the lid. It's actually, they have to replace the whole top and adjust it so that, you know, it can be smooth. So, they did the work for this one and then included the other two in the construction so that they would only close the road once for those other pieces. So, those two will be also installed, but this one appears to be working well. It basically seals the water from coming back out of that 60-inch, and it just keeps it there so we have less water on the roadway from the tidal influence. Additionally, we, that was in September, and the tidal valves were installed prior to that. And then we had a contractor who repaired those other two inlets that were at the corners of Mera Vista and Douglas. We also have been regularly inspecting and maintaining these valves, the system since it has been installed, and waiting on this set of plans to put the berm in down at the end of the street. We've met with Tony with Parks and Rec down there at the park where the water right now puddles, and of course, this berm will alleviate a lot of that at lower tides. But when it gets to a certain tide, everybody knows it's just going to pop over, and then we will still have water. I think it's 3.5, is that right? The top berm elevation is 2.5. 2.5, thank you. And so, when we get these extreme high tides, we'll still have that, but we will have these pieces in place. This was one of the recommendations. Remember, there were quite a few options, and looking at those different options, this is one of the options that we proceeded forward with that was feasible and that we could afford to do. We still have those other options to look at, all of what, like raising the road and those kinds of things. Some of that is going to be addressed during the adaptability plan, and we'll be looking at, again, coming back, you know, the amount of money it's going to cost to do those, and then what's the actual impact, what will it change, and, you know, how will it help, if it will help in that particular area. And by maintenance, we use the Vector truck, as well as by hand going down into the inlets, looking and making sure that those valves are clear, and the quarterly maintenance for that. For Baywood Shores, we have been, also, we do have permanent signs installed over there at North Douglas about water on the roadway flooding, that they just, you know, can plop down when there's water on the roadway, because we do know that that condition still exists. We want to provide as much notice, and also monitor the tides. Our maintenance staff always monitor tides for both this Baywood Shores and North Douglas, and other areas in the city where the tidal influence would cause backup of salt water into our streets, and we're checking our system. So this is also checked on a quarterly basis. Actually, it's more frequent, because we've had more issues here in this Baywood Shores area with those tidal valves, with debris, not the valves themselves, but they leak if there's a palm frond or anything like that in there. The residents in both areas are very quick to let us know when it's not functioning correctly. If we haven't already, we try to check ahead. Like I said, we monitor the tides. If a storm's coming, we monitor and go out and check those ahead, but things can happen during a storm. And so it's great to have the information that, you know, it's not working, so we can go check it. In the Baywood Shores area, what we found is with that system and those pipes being so old and different sizes, that we've continued to struggle with the sealing of those valves. And so we have developed a more frequent regimen, more than quarterly, to go check those and make sure that they're not leaking around the tidal valves. And we've worked with different materials. And, you know, I'll knock on wood right now, it seems like we have been successful for several months in having those sealed up and working properly. But again, we're going to have to continually to maintain and see those. This is just a graphic of where the tidal valves have been installed in all the locations that we said that we would install them and that have the potential for flooding. So, again, this is really what I, you know, already explained. We encourage the citizens to call us if they have any concerns or if they have questions. And then we do have standby staff all the time if something comes up on a weekend or a holiday or something like that. And, you know, things happen. So we go, and these are pictures right here of the tidal valves inside the inlets. You can see it's pretty limited access, but we, you know, are able to get in there. And you can see the cone there. So sometimes it's the other end where palm frond gets stuck in. Sometimes it's this end. And also in Baywood Shore specifically, they're really good. There's still construction, a lot of, you know, repair and restoration going on in the neighborhood as well as North Douglas. But in this particular neighborhood, they have been patrolling their neighbors and making sure that they're cleaning up construction debris, letting us know, letting our building department know if somebody seems like they haven't got their silt screens up or there's barriers up for that debris and all to get into our catch basin. So they've been very helpful partners. And with that, do we have any questions? Okay. Vice Mayor? Thank you, Mayor. Just going back to North Douglas, and you acknowledge you've put in some of the backflow preventers, but not all of them, right? Yes, we put the ones in for public services. We put the ones in that we were able to do. The other ones are, can you zoom in for me? Those are the installed for the ellipticals. That's all charged and not within the capability of public services. So those pipes will go in. It's pipe, 214 by 23-inch elliptical reinforced concrete pipe with those backflow preventers right there at the park entrance. So that is not completed. That will be part of the construction plan. And what's the timeline on the construction plan again? So we will call out the bid Friday, close on December the 9th. At that point in time, we'll try to turn it around as fast as we can for your approval, and we're giving them 60 days to complete the construction. So early 26. And that includes, does that include the berm? Yes, that's what we're, the berm will stop the, the idea is the berm will restrict, not stop, but restrict the tidal flow, sort of the, call the north to south tidal flow. And then the structures and the piping that you see here will collect the rain flow. That's basically what we'll call the south to north flow into the creek. And on Baywood shore, are we done there with all we can do other than now it's just maintaining, or is there? Well, at this time, yes. We haven't identified anything else that we can do. Again, during the adaption study portion of the vulnerability study, there may be more suggestions or options for us to consider, and we will consider them at that time. But right now, we've, that's all we've identified that is within our capability to make a difference. Thank you. That's all, ma'am. Okay. Commissioner Sandbergen. So the berm is not in, the berm isn't completed yet? No, that's, that's the construction phase. Okay. And when, unless I just missed it, when, approximately when would it start? Early, early 26. Okay. And in that same picture, does it indicate where the, that, if you blow that back up? Let me go to another, I could, this is the construction plan itself. It's so much easier to work. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say. That means I was going to zoom in a little bit for you. I am sitting next to engineer, sorry. Yes. So where, where. So if you look, if you look at the, what you'll see here, it's, it's a little, I wish I could point better in here, but it doesn't allow me to use my, yes, I think it does. Nope. No, it's not working. So if you see the, the, the gray shaded area, so that is like additional, that'll be additional pavement that'll add it to the western entrance to the hammock park or the dog park area that's along the north side. The square inside of that, that will be the catch basin that'll collect the rainwater. The two lines heading north to the other box, those are the proposed, that's the proposed 18 inch RCPs or the drainage pipes. Those will have backflows inside installed in them, and then they'll discharge to the next square box that you see. Then you're basically just sort of have a curb line as part of the extra pavement that is raised so that all the elevation is at 2.5. That's, that's all. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. Um, so I, I'll be the third one to ask the same question. Um, just so I'm clear, the, the scope of the construction that, uh, you're going to be awarding a contract, uh, around December 9th. Is this slide intended to be the scope of what's covered under that contract? Generally speaking, there are some other details and a few other items, but this is sort of the layout of what you'll see, um, inside of that. So it's mostly, you know, doing some additional pavement, adding some curbing, adding a couple drainage structures, some drainage pipes. And then in addition, we're replacing the curb inlets, um, along North Douglas on the north side. And they'll be replacing the manhole lids on the 60 inch pipe with the pipes that, uh, with the Dura-Lock, um, manhole covers. Oh, okay. And, um, just for me, what the CMP device, RCP, what? Corrugated metal pipe, which we usually are, we're getting rid of that. We'll change to RCP, which is reinforced concrete pipe. Okay. All right. And, um, I, yeah, I, I mean, it's interesting to see that, um, that we're incorporating tidal valves in there as well, so I, I don't know, I don't recall that being part of the previous discussions, but, uh, that's, I think that's a good thing. Yes, we want to, we want to block the flow from the two ditches around the pond. So that's, that's our, that's our measurement of trying to do that. Okay. And, uh, another part of the problem, though, is the debris. Have we established a more periodic debris removal in that area, or? Were there quarterly, or more often, if there's an inspection, or if someone calls in. Okay. And, uh, you mentioned other options, like raising the road, and you referenced a plan, too. It was, what was that plan called? So, back in December, we had the consultant provide, oh, it was four or five different options. Um, they explored the idea of raising the road, which is great for trying to keep the tidal flood, but then, excuse me, that raises the elevation of the road at or above some of the adjacent homes. So now, floodwaters are heading straight down driveways into houses, so we didn't deem that to be optional. Uh, and then there was a couple other options that were sort of similar to this. One of them was to actually put the backflow prevention inside the 60-inch pipe, but that's cost prohibitive. It's easier to put pipe, it's much cheaper to buy four 18-inch pipes than it is by 160-inch backflow preventer. And we can access it and maintain it from our internal resources versus 60. Yeah. Okay. All right. What's all the questions I have? Commissioner DeGuard. Thank you, Mayor. Um, I don't know if this is going to require speculation, or you actually have data, but given the amount of, uh, rainy, uh, sunny-day flooding we've had historically, what can we expect in the future in this mitigation? Are we expecting a 60, 80 percent reduction? What are we thinking? Uh, that, that kind of depends. I mean, it's, it's only going to stop flows that are, we're strickening at below 2.5. I think if we start seeing tidal events that are higher, then obviously that percentage is going to go lower. And, um, I'll just add to that. So, the, but the, um, barriers, if you will, that we've put in place already have, they've already seen an impact and actually, you know, told us about those, um, that they see less water further up on the road. Uh, how long that will last is going to depend on the height of those tides, or the height of the tide themselves. Um, because, uh, I think it's Tony who says you can't stop the top of the water. Uh, it just keeps coming. Um, but it will, um, it's already enhanced, um, and prevented some of that flooding. Um, it just, when it's a higher tide, it just can't hold it back. And so it just fills up until it's, it's done. Um, but just, it, it, I don't know about a percentage. I wouldn't want to speculate on that. But we have seen improvement. And then, of course, we noticed right away, once it's backed up enough to come up to 60 inch, we have the same issue. It just starts flowing out of that. Once this project's done, I mean, I'm, I'm sure there will be a change in just the puddling and the pooling of the water on the road, which is also going to be helpful to our asphalt. And, um, but once it gets over 2.5, I would expect that area right there by the park to be the first area to puddle. But then it's got to push all the way up the street. Instead of up the pipes, like it was, it'll have to push up the street. So it's, it's going to be an improvement. I do understand the hesitation to go with a calculation or a prediction, but, uh, the frequency of 2.5 or excess, uh, is not one that's beyond us, at least historically. So I think we probably need to provide that to the community so that they understand that this is not going to be a solution that is absolute, that it is a solution that's going to probably work, uh, better, much better than what they've had. But, um, I just don't want to leave the illusion that this solves the problem 100%. Absolutely. Okay. Now, the question I next have is, where's the water going? Because water goes. Water goes where it wants to. So right now, let's say we have a tidal occurrence and it's at 2. So it doesn't exceed our expectation. It doesn't go in the street. Where does it go? It's, it's staged up in that 60-inch pipe and in the ditches and in the 18-inch pipe. And then on the first, um, oh, it's zoomed in. Sorry. On the first slide, that one, oops, sorry. Picture there. On this slide, you'll see, can you zoom in on that now? Thanks. Technical assistance. Um, you'll see the, um, blue dashed line with the red and blue, um, on that, that is next to the, adjacent to the Pinellas Trail. That is a Pinellas County ditch. And, um, so water also backs up along there and into that ditch. Um, and it just seeks the same elevation. So it's backing up inside the pond there. And then in this, there's rim ditches that it backs up into. Um, and, and then the pipe, the pipe stores a lot of water. This doesn't travel up Cedar Creek? Well, it does. But, I mean, when it's coming through here, it's going to be all the same elevation. So, yes, it does go up. The creek is the main tributary. Sure. That way, main water body. So, yes. So, so, somewhat to answer your question, when it comes to tidally influenced, like flooding and whatnot, that all sort of rises together. And whether you stop this little bit of flow somewhere else, it won't affect anything downstream because it's always just going to get to that level, no matter where that level. But if it, if it's a two elevation or a 2.6 elevation tide, everything below that will get wet. Anything above won't get to it. Um, well, this, this obviously diminishes the amount, even when it does exceed the 2.5. So, it does diminish the amount. It just doesn't completely keep the street dry. Is that what I'm hearing? That is correct. Okay. That's all I have, Mayor. Thank you. Okay. Um, well, my biggest question is, when did we expect the berm to be done? I mean, did we have an original timeline? Yeah, we're, we are, at least when it comes to putting this bid back together, we're about five weeks late on that. Okay. But most of that is we're still waiting on our swift mud permit approval, but we think we're at a spot now where we're not going to have any questions or comments, so we went ahead and put the item out to bid. Okay. Um, yeah, okay. That, I mean, obviously, it'll be done by storm season next time. Um, you know, the only weird question I had was, like, I'm looking at this picture that we have up, and I'm picturing the old BMX track that used to be there, which was all elevated, and I'm just, like, wondering, I don't know, maybe the, maybe there was a lot of flooding back then, and I just didn't know it, but what, what, like, what impact did that have? I mean, I don't know about the BMX. I mean, what, what would that, yeah, I mean, I, I'm just But this whole area had extensive drainage redone because of flooding, and it was rain water driven, um, at that time, how many acres drain into here? Nan knows. Over a hundred, thanks. I knew she'd have it in her head. So, um, actually drain, so all these acres drain down here and out into the Cedar Creek, and so that was the main thing that they were addressing at that time, and where the 60-inch went in and all these drainage improvements. Um, that was just from looking at history and, you know, Nan digging up all that research. So, I think they had drainage issues here. They just weren't tidal at that time, and they may have been tidal, too, but there was so much focus on the freshwater drainage and flooding people upstream that that was the main, um, focus of putting in all these structures. And, and, and to that, and I, we maybe should have added this exhibit to this, but in the, in the information that the JEA did for us for the, um, overall report, there's been a significant increase in tidal elevations itself. Like, we had an exhibit that had a frequency of two, and as you looked through the, through the 80s, and then the 90s, and then 2000, it parabolically went shooting up. So, I think that, that also plays a, plays a probably the, the most significant factor into it. Yeah, I was just curious, I'm getting geeky, you know, because I, you know, we're big getting geeky up here, but I just, you know, I, I think that BMX track got taken out, it probably was like early 90s, you know, something, and it was taken out strictly for safety. They didn't want to do it anymore, like, it was just not a safe thing to do anymore. And, um, uh, so, you know, it's interesting, but yeah, that's a good point, though. Mayor, if I may? Sure. I, I grew up on San Mateo on the 1700 block, and I do recall as a child being able to canoe San Mateo. Mm. Yeah, so, clearly not near. Okay, well, okay, that closes that. No more reason for geekiness. But, but at that point, it was fun, you know, when we were kids. Right, absolutely. Just want to, yeah. And I, this is not, the chart that you referenced with regards to the water, I don't know, can you send that to us? Yes, we can send that to you. I appreciate that. I have that, uh, mayor's follow-up to the city commission meeting, and we'll send it under, to the whole commission under separate cover. What, what, what did you say? All the follow-up from this meeting. Good. Yeah, I was actually, I had quite a bit listed. Okay, good, maybe we'll go over just at the end of the meeting. Mayor, can I ask for more follow-up? Sure. You talked about maybe the next phase or whatever other options would be, maybe raising the road and things of that nature. Have you, what would be the impact of making the road as it is now more porous? Would that have an impact? Would that not? Well, you, if you make it more porous, I mean, we're trying to seal everything up, so just kind of logically, you would allow then the water to come up out of the roadway. Uh, you know, like, we're sealing all the openings right now to try to keep the saltwater out, so I, I don't know if porous, I'm not an engineer. Well, I would, I would basically say that you're adding a minute volume of a volume with porous pavement when you have the Gulf of Mexico rising, rising and falling at, we, it's never going to be the same amount. No, just try to think. Yeah, options, exactly. It's being geeky today, right? Commissioner Sandberg and lettuce there, so. Um, any other questions about it before we go to, uh, public comment? Okay, so anyone in the audience wish to come forward and speak on this issue? Come on up here, Jeanette. Okay, name and address for the record in three minutes. Uh, Jeanette Cornell, 1858 Douglas Avenue. I don't think I'm going to go over, but Rich said I could take a couple of seconds of his time if he doesn't, is that okay? Mm, yeah, well, it's technically by rule, but you're the only one here, so. But just, you know, try to, try to keep with it. No, I appreciate that. Um, I think you answered a lot of the questions that I already had notes on, so that's, that's great. I want to thank you. Um, I just want to go to the first thing, uh, on your, um, on this map here, on the picture. Um, a lot of residents brought it up at the meeting, um, the replacing of the 36-inch CMP with the 36-RCP on the trail side where that ditch is, that's part of Pinellas County. Um, I believe, uh, a lot of residents were voicing concerns about how much water is just staying behind their yards along that ditch because that drain pipe is, like, done. It's completely clogged. The water just ends up going into the soil after days and days. It never drains. You have, like, a little pond going on, and it's getting worse. And I know Jen had nicely asked Sue back then to contact Pinellas about it. I don't know what the update is, but it's completely clogged, overgrown, and we are getting daily water back there along the whole street. Now, so now you don't, along the whole ditch, it's on the side of the trail. So I know you partnered with Pinellas to kind of get the vegetation out of Douglas Preserve. Maybe we can partner with them or just get on them to at least do that before, um, you know, as this, rest of this project, but it is part of Solution C, so we are expecting that to be workable as well in our neighborhood. Um, we have Dave Kelly here who lives right across the street. Because of, uh, the recent hurricanes, he was affected and his home had never had water over 100 years. So, um, we are just looking, like you, just to keep it back as much as possible. And that is a big stickler for us right now. Um, and you are correct with the valves that are put in place on our street, um, since 2022, when we did see an uptick in the water on the street, it hasn't really fully flooded past our house. So the two drains that were fixed are past or north of our house. So, yes, it has improved the amount of water coming up the street. Um, 2.5, if you, we all have, um, let me see, I'm going past. We all have, uh, our charts ready for the tides. So we know there's a three, there's a 2.9, there's a 2.8. And when that happens, the water is on the street. So I use a 2.7 as a guide. When it hits 2.8, I know there's going to be water on the street. And the manhole covers, even the ones near my house, it leaks water. So I know you're replacing all of them. Yes. And the, just because I haven't read the adaptability plan, I will. I know you mentioned it a couple of times. Um, but we really would like answers about the ditch behind the homes on the, on the trail. Because that western ditch does also, you know, go into a hammock park. It's all part of it. And one last thing, you mentioned the BMX trail. As you know, I've done a hundred year research of this area. I had men who are now grown men in their forties. I'm not joking. Who used that BMX trail. They had tears in their eyes when they went and saw that it was, they, they just grew up and went to work and had no idea it was gone. And when they saw it, I'm telling you, that area where that pond is was excavated immensely. And that did cause the tidal, tidal search, tidal tides to be worse. It did. So I'm just putting it out there and hopefully Cedar Creek will be on your radar because it all feeds the same system and we're here to be helpful. Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks for your engagement. Sue, are you able to comment about the, with the Pinellas County piece of area? Sure. We have, have actually worked with Pinellas County quite a bit on cleaning that out. And I, I, we will get, I'll get in touch with them again to make sure that they're aware that this is happening and that, you know, the expectation is that they're, it's maintained promptly. Um, they have not committed any kind of resources, um, to this construction. Um, it's still, I've, we've asked them, we've provided it to them, but I haven't received anything that it's in their plans to do this, uh, recommendation, but I definitely can contact them on the maintenance again and see where they're at. We also did maintain on the other side of the street, there's a ditch that flows, um, back on the other side of the neighborhood, on mirror of, uh, Point of Vista. Um, and that was also cleaned out too. And we have been watching that too and making sure that we're maintaining the vegetation. So, um, we'll, we'll try that partnering definitely. And, um, maybe. You have some poll there, don't you? You have some poll there. Yeah. Maybe a little bit. Okay. Cool. So, uh, I think that's how we finally got it done the last time, but I'll call the same person and see what we can do. Um, also was mentioned, and I think, um, Commissioner Walker actually asked this in his comments or questions was about the adaptability plan. Um, I mentioned the vulnerability plan and the adaptability portion of that. It is not completed. Um, that is part of the recommendations, but keeping in mind, it, it encompasses all of the city and the city assets and protection of those. So, I expect that those, um, areas will be, uh, recommendations will be a little more general, but we have asked them specifically about Baywood Shores and North Douglas and, um, paying attention to our, our, um, its public assets that, um, is that focus. But for sea level rise and things like that, the adaptability plan will have some strategies for us. Um, and then we'll, we also already have JEA's, um, whole list. I think there's 11, um, possible recommendations and some are not feasible at all, but to look into, uh, as well on how do they fit into those adaptability recommendations. So, that will not be completed until after January of the first of the year. Okay. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience wishing to come to speak on this issue? Come on down. Hi there. Name and address for the record. Even though we all know you. Hey, Kelly. I'm 21 Pasadena Drive. I thought I'd put my two cents in. You guys do a great job on everything else in this city. I really feel bad about coming here to complain about something. But just, uh, this, I'm not an engineer and they've got some fantastic engineering going on here. But common sense tells me that pond that's supposed to collect fresh water from rain is salt water. So, that means that it must be coming in from that little creek there called Cedar Creek. And if you look on the east side, or excuse me, the west side of Cedar Creek on the other side of the bridge, there's seawalls there. Okay. So, their water can go quite high there. So, when it comes through under the bridge, over the years, I've been there for 38 years now in my house. And that creek is, every year it seems to get wider and wider and wider. Now, I'm using a little common sense here. If I fill up my bathtub all the way to the top, you know, nothing's coming out. But when I jump in there, water comes all over the sides, all over the floor and everything. Well, what's happening in that creek is you've got a big mound in the middle of that creek. And over the years, that water's got to go someplace. So, it's going to spread out. It's going to get wider. And what it's doing, it's going into that pond. It's going into the ditches. You know, it's not taking the complete path that it's supposed to be taken. And that's, we've been getting flooding worse ever since that pond's been put in there. And I know the pond had a reason. And I believe the woman that lived in that little white house there in the bottom of your screen was responsible for that. She really made a big issue out of that. And then they did that. So, it's my thoughts that I think just cleaning up Cedar Creek might help out. So, that's all I have to say. Thank you, Dave. Thank you. Go Jays. That's right. That's right. They just set the stage. They're not done next year. I do want you to comment on that. But any other public comment would like to come forward? Come on, Rich. Name and address for the record in three minutes. Well, less than because she took a few years. 1858 Douglas Avenue and my wife took part of my time. I just want to say I'm happy with the stoppage of anything that's coming through on Douglas. And I got to say this, that I have the back on the Pinellas Trail, and so does Dave on his side on the west side. If there's going to be the 36-inch that's replaced, that's heading to the south from the north with water, is there any type of check valves that's going to stop any of that, including what's been stopped with your check valves elsewhere? And if not, then I have to say that what's past my house going south is an area that you guys did work on belt trees when I was bike riding months and months ago. You used a backhoe to pull soil out of that area. So what I have to say is it was dug out up to, like, my house or the house after at some point before I moved there. And everything past my house area to Mira Vista, there's nothing dug out. So water that comes up during any storm, it's the resistance. It's resistance to go to Mira Vista because it's all not dug out equally, and my feeling is it's coming in the backyards of those such as myself because the resistance is for it to go to Mira Vista up inside the Pinellas Trail. There's no resistance to come in my backyard or anyone else's that is not south of that area. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Did you get name and address? Two minutes? Did you get a – okay, good. I want to make sure I couldn't remember. Okay, good. You did good. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Anyone else wish to come forward to speak on this issue? Okay. Are you guys able to add any light to, first of all, Mr. Kelly's comment about the impact of the creek and the, you know? I think the vast majority of the concern of the water rising and everything is more to do with increased in tide elevations. We have the – yes, there probably is a little bit at a low tidal elevation where you can see that, but when we're always looking at the – you know, as the tide goes higher and the high storm events, the water – that hump in there does not affect anything. It's sort of the old adage that says you can't store water underwater. So if the tide elevation is going to reach X, you still have – that area under there is always going to be – it doesn't – it's going to be there. It's included in the volume underneath the water. If – I mean, I think a lot of this has to play in the difference in the amount of high tides and higher tides that we are seeing over the past – and looking at that chart, I want to say it's somewhere over the last, you know, 10 to 15 years. That's playing more effective than anything else. And then I do want to have some clarification to this. The replacement of the 36-inch pipe is not part of this project for two reasons. One, the invert elevation of the pipe is above 2.5, so it would not restrict anything different than what we would have from this. And it was – the permitting would take a little longer getting through Pinellas County. So we wanted to make sure we got the bulk of the problem taken care of before we started working on that area. What's your expected timeline on doing that part? I think we could – That's Pinellas County. Yeah, that is also a Pinellas County asset. Okay. All right. So it's something we have to work on with them? Yes, we have to work through them. Okay. And how about the question from Rich about other valves and other locations, water coming up to the backyards? It sounded like – and I might be wrong on what he was stating – it seems like there has been some ditch work. Is it north or south of your house? South. Okay. I think that – so I think that goes back to our – Can you kind of repeat his statement? Yeah. So what he's basically stating is there has been – and the other – as has been mentioned from Sue before, the Pinellas Trail is Pinellas County's and it's not ours. So they have done work in portions of that ditch behind their house and not fully the whole ditch that runs basically from Mira Vista to the opening near this. So there are some areas that did not do ditch work that because of that he feels – and he's probably right – that as the water comes off of the trail and down Mira Vista, it's finding areas into the neighbor's yard instead of traveling down the ditch. So we need to follow up with Pinellas County on that. Yeah. Okay. All right. I think that's it. So let me bring it back to the commission for any kind of final comments, and I'll start with Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah. Well, I see that there's been a lot of progress, and I think it's going to be – we're still going to need to do more. But I appreciate the – I really do appreciate the update on this. I do have a question for Dave. The water, when you flooded, from which direction were you most impacted? You probably have to come – Dave, you probably have to – It came from the east. Come forward. It came from the east. Yeah. Just because the TV won't pick it up and – I'm sorry. Well, they can't hear you on TV, so that's – Oh, I'm sorry. Well, it came from behind, and it came over the trail, and then under my house. I have a crawl space under my house. My elevation is 10 1⁄2 feet to the floor. Okay. So it came up that far and did that. Now, in the past, we had the no-name storm back in 93. It came across the road, but it didn't come into my house. It just came into the yard, so I didn't get flooded on that. Okay. All right. Appreciate that. Those are all my comments. Thanks. Commissioner Dugard. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, compliments to city staff for getting to where we are today. We'll all be much happier when we're complete on the project, so that'll be wonderful. I think the thing that we're all going to be most concerned about – and by the way, I just did a quick search. The high tide ranges from 2.5 to 3 feet on a periodic basis, so we are going to see water in the street, but hopefully no further than that because this will mitigate some of that and hopefully keep the grass from being killed by saltwater and the houses inundated, and that's our hope. However, we are a coastal city, and we're going to suffer coastal city damage from time to time. The more we prepare for that, the better off we're going to be, and I want to compliment everybody on how they've approached today. Thank you so much. That's all I have. Vice Mayor? Thank you. Mayor, thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the update. We'll look forward to continued updates on this project and just the continued conversation on sea level rise and what we need to do, the vulnerability study and everything, so thank you very much. Mr. Sandberg? I mean, it's got to be stressful to get up in the morning and read title charts, and I can't imagine, but all we can do is, you know, no, I mean, obviously the city staff is doing, and I fully support, you know, anyone in Dunedin, it's not fair. They deserve tranquility like the rest of us, and to get up in the morning and instead of reading the sports page, you read the title pages, and I appreciate and fully understand what you're going through. Thank you. Just so you know, I'm not reading the sports pages right now. I'm still in depression. I don't want to hear any analysis. You know, I guess my comments are, you know, we're just in unique times, right? I, you and Baywood Shores have some unique issues right now in terms of recovery. You know, I got a house 11 feet that just got lifted and just got a long way to go before it gets lived in, and the house just got torn down, and we put ours back together hoping it was a 100-year storm. But again, we've got a couple areas specifically vulnerable, and you guys are in one of them, and I think staff is doing any, you know, everything and everything, anything that they can do to mitigate. But, you know, we all know as we move forward, we're working against water, and water's rising. So I think the city in general, to protect who we are and our charm and our neighborhoods, you know, we just, it's just going to be one of those areas that's going to be so important for us to be on top of, and appreciate all that staff has done. I know it's hard, a lot of imperfect science here, in terms of trying to figure it all out, and also, as the people in the neighborhoods are like, help us. So, so it's, it's hard. So, but I appreciate the way that this has all been going, and let's just keep working on it. So, I think that's it. Anything else from city manager? Do you tie it up? Nothing further, except at the end of the meeting to go over some of the pillars. Yeah, go over, okay. Sounds good. Okay, well, this issue is closed, and we'll look forward to more updates. So, thank you, everybody. And we're going to go now to the next item, which is the Pinellas County Regional Resource Recovery Facility, RRRF overview. And this is a staff presentation by Clay, Nan, Brian, and Alex. And thank you, guys. Take care. Okay. Clay, are you leading the charge? Yes, I'll start this off. We put you to sleep, and now we woke you up. There you go. Well, you know, I find insurance exciting, too. Now we'll find some more exciting stuff. So, again, good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commission, Clayton Watkins, Utilities and Engineering. With me today, I have Nan Bennett, our Utilities Operations Manager, Brian Antonian, our Wastewater Treatment Manager, and Alex Gonzalez with Engineering, who does almost all of our engineering work for our utilities. Back in the end of the October 8th commission, I might have the wrong date, you approved an action item to allow the city manager to enter and staff to enter an agreement or to go through the negotiations with Pinellas County, as it refers to as the Regional Resource Recovery Facility or the RRF. And so, we want to give you sort of a brief overview of what that is, how that sort of may or may affect the city, and just sort of let you understand what you approved her to go and negotiate with. So, like I said, again, we'll go over what sort of the facility is, how the city currently gets rid of its biosolids, and then sort of the next steps and the guidelines, or, yeah, the project timeline. The county's Regional Resource Recovery Facility, it's a lot of words to get out, is a facility that will provide a long-term regional solution for the wastewater biosolids management. The facility will accept biosolids from the municipalities within Pinellas County. The intent of the facility is to address pending FDEP and EPA regulations, regulatory changes, and water quality concerns, such as land application and PFAS. I am not going to try to say that, but more reference to its forever chemicals. The facility will have some benefits. It will provide some reusable and marketable products from the biosolids. These will include renewable energy, fertilizers, and compost. So, the city of the dean today, we produce our biosolids as a liquid form, and it is picked up daily? Question? Yes. Yeah, it's picked up daily, and then is taken to a cattle farm in the Hernando County area and is spread over the field, so provide for fertilizer for the grass in that area, for the cattle to feed on. Over the last few decades, DEP has threatened to eliminate land application as a disposal method for these biosolids, and then more recently, DEP and the EPA are discussing regulations when it comes to removal of PFAS in biosolids. Just for a quick brief update, if you can see here, PFAS are in, and the forever chemicals are pretty much in most every day-to-day products. This is just sort of a preview of what items you can and may or may see those in. For the note, I do believe, for the most part, the U.S. has eliminated the use of these products and stuff, but that doesn't include products that we buy from other countries. So, the project is currently in phase two of the planning stage, or the whole project. Phase two is expected to continue through quarter four of 2026, and this consists of the design criteria package, legislation and funding assistance, interlocal agreements, and permitting. Phase three is expected to start in quarter four of 2026, and will last through quarter one of 2029. Phase three is the design and construction. At this time, it appears that the county will be going through as a design, this will be going to be built as a design build phase, and then phase four is the operation of the facility. In the preliminary engineering report that the county has provided, this is just their tentative schedule I'm going through. You can see here, they're just now in phase two for the design criteria package. This has three different possible means and methods for the disposal. And with that, as you can see here, this table breaks down what is their projected monthly cost that would be added to our wastewater bills. The three methods that they are currently looking at are A1, excuse me, 1A, 1B, and 8. And then that's sort of really all we had. We kind of wanted to just let you know where there will be, this could provide an economic effect to the city, but there is a long process that we'll be going through. And then, you know, our idea would be as if, you know, this is not beneficial to the city, we would not go along with entertaining joining the facility. So we're here to answer any of these questions. Okay. Questions, Vice Mayor? Can you repeat what you just said? All of it? Is that the whole thing, just the last? So we will go along with no gation, we will continue in the negotiations, but if we find out it's not economical or something that the city can't afford, if there's other ways for the city to take care of it or that's more beneficial economically, we would back out. And, okay, do we know what some of the, do we have options? That's going to also depend on regulations and what we have. I think Nan probably knows a little bit more on that. We do not have as many options as some others. We have a limited site. We have limited accessibility and with our size. Right now we create what's called a Class B sludge, which is partially treated. It removes a significant amount of the pathogens. It does not remove all of those. And the land disposal of Class B sludge has been up for question my entire career. And over time, about every five years, DEP just keeps tightening up the rigs to try to get this product more and more regulated and less and less of that going into the environment, partially because initially I think metals were the big bugaboo. So the nutrients are considered a problem. And so the restrictions, the most recent increase in regulations was 2021 on the land disposal sites where they have nutrient, what do they call those reports, nutrient loading reports that are required on every single site that our haulers and the people that own that have to present to the Department of Protection, Environmental Protection. And they keep regulating that higher and higher. So we've known for a long, long time that Class B sludge, they want us to have what's called a Class AA sludge, which all of the pathogens are inactivated or destroyed. And it can be sold as like a commercial fertilizer, if you will. And that's what the county is proposing. They already have that at their facility at the South Cross Bayou plant, but it's been in operation now, I think of, I don't remember the exact dates, but I think they're coming up on their second, either their 30th or their 40th year of operation. And so they're looking at major overhauls. When they started saying, what are we going to do, can we rehab this facility one more time, they said, why don't we look at a regional solution that not only meets the county's needs, they are going to do what they have to do to meet the county's needs. But right now they're hauling all of their sludge from North County to their South County facility down at South Cross Bayou on 54th Avenue North. They reconsidered that, also thought about some of their needs at the solid waste complex, some of the future needs, because obviously the landfill is a limited capacity as well. So trying to find ways to look for alternate disposal or reducing the capacity needed for things like yard waste and food waste, other organic types of waste, fats, oils, and grease. So they relocated this project onto the solid waste complex and opened it up potentially to regional partners. What they've done to date has considered what would it take to solve this problem for the entire county. And that's what they're asking. We're at a point now where they're ready to start moving forward. They're going to have to make some hard decisions. They're going to have to make some funding decisions. They are looking for any kind of state or federal money to offset it. This is an expensive project. And obviously they're more eligible for state and federal money with regional partners. It helps everybody, you know, if it's spread out. But they're asking the city, what are we going to do? Are we going to participate? Do we want to partner with them? Are we going to go it alone? In my opinion, we're not in a great place to go it alone. We're not that big. And we have a long ways to go from where we are. We have a class B. We have a liquid sludge. We have the capacity to probably dewater and reduce our transportation costs. I don't know that we have the land or the ability to go to something like an anaerobic digestion or something. That's a very complicated process that we haven't taken on to date. And if it isn't done well, it's a disaster. Well, I'm glad I asked that. And actually, I did know that we had liquid waste. I thought it was dry. So, but nice enough. It's 3% solids. It's quite liquid. City Manager? If I may. So, you've authorized city manager staff to negotiate. And I did send an email to Barry Burton. And the email, you know, said essentially that we've been authorized to negotiate. But ultimately, it's up to the city commission via the interlocal agreement. So, as we're going along, if we get to a point where we say we're out, we, of course, come to the city commission first and get your approval of being out. And that would be the whole framework of why we're out, why we find an alternative that's more cost effective for us, and so on and so forth. And we'll also provide you with updates as we go along with this negotiation, you know, with the county, because it is a long-term negotiation. And as they reach their benchmarks, so we'll understand more about where we are. But ultimately, it's going to be an interlocal agreement before the city commission. Thank you. And right now, I know the numbers are changing, but the 540 that's here, just under 1A, that is per resident per month? Yes. Right. Okay. So, okay. And what's the purpose of the interlocal agreement, as opposed to the county just saying, hey, verbally, you guys might be interested in this? And we go, yeah, sure, maybe. And they go ahead and do what we do. And they say, here's your project. I mean, the interlocal agreement is a contract. So what's the purpose of the contract? I would, for the attorney, actually. They are going to have to go and get funding for this project. It's going to be a very expensive project. They have to know what capacity they're building it to. So at some point, they need to know firmly what the input is going to be so that they can design properly and fund properly. Not only that, but once it's under operation, then those are the rules of engagement for everybody, all the partners in the interlocal agreement. Okay. Okay. And, well, yeah, I know that would be how we'd pay them, but I thought that would come when we confirmed, yes, we want in. So right now, it's just a matter of we are interested enough to put our name down so when they go for funding, if it goes so that the funding source has an idea of how many municipalities might be involved in this as well. Correct. It's kind of, we're trying to build a package. Well, and also it puts us at the table, right? You know, we've been authorized to negotiate, so any negotiation, any time, we're going to be at that table. What happens at that table? Well, I mean, they're essentially looking as they go through the design prospect, and they're looking at design the facility. It's a county initiative. I'm sure they're going to be talking to us as partners, but really it's financially, exactly. You know, what capacity we're going to take up and how much it's going to cost us and so on and so forth. Okay. Actually, don't get me wrong. Any time Dunedin has a chance to be at a table, it's always preferable. You can look at the range of cost. They have not narrowed it down to a single process train yet. Obviously, different process trains have different costs associated with those and benefits that they provide. And so there will still be decisions based on the process train, decisions based on the type of financing, decisions based on the type of operations and, you know, whether this is tipping fee based or, you know, there's a lot of decisions still that have not been addressed because it's such a huge and complex project. Right. Okay. And we have, and there is a site picked out, it sounds like. Correct. There's, I think, it's one place I saw it referred to as 17 acres, another place 15 acres across the street. I think it's 49th Street right there from where you turn into the landfill. It used to be, it was previously used as a fat, soils, and grease processing station that is no longer in use. And so it's partially developed. They're going to try to use as much of the infrastructure, the pavement and drainage and things that have already been put in there to try to control the cost of a new facility. So they're repurposing an existing facility. And I know when we talk about recycling, and I know that's not what this topic is about, but recent conversations, you know, has been, is that something that we can look at regionally? And maybe bring a facility, maybe closer to North County, maybe partner with Pasco County, Hillsborough County. Is there any type of, or are we trying locking this in just Pinellas County? And, or is there a regional aspect? No, there have been discussions with Hillsborough County. At one point, they were considering it. Pasco County, they've talked to them. But independently, I think both Hillsborough and Pasco have other things going on that they've said that they're going to move forward independently. But there were discussions. This project has been underway since 2022. And the city has been participating in meetings, providing data, helping with the decision-making and review of the consultant products and stuff like that. So to this point, we have been at the table, as was, you know, there's some entertainment of the surrounding communities as well, counties as well. Okay, fine. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Commissioner Sandberg. I have no additional questions, Mayor. Yep. Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. Oh my God, there is so much just to geek out during this meeting today. I do have, I guess my first question is, is it possible to get just something that details the different treatment trains? Just I'm kind of interested in the processing part of it. There is an executive summary. Yeah, there's executive summary included in the packet. The attachment, it's like the PER. That has all of the treatment trains, all nine of them in there, and it gives the breakdown of all of them. Specifically, roughly page 35 is where you'll start seeing that. Okay. Yeah, I must have missed that. That honed it down from five. I'm sure you didn't want to read that 500-page document. It's 511 pages, so there you go. And this is just, actually, you know, the question on the scope of the interlocal, so I think that was covered. Yeah, I have no other additional questions. Okay. Commissioner Ducard. Thank you, Mayor. Wow, so many questions. Did I hear someone say a minute ago that these PFAS have now been outlawed for domestic production but can get in through imports? Did I hear that? Yes. Yes. Okay. That's a federal issue, as I see it. Okay. I just want to understand who's letting the mouse under the gate. I'm thinking about who benefited from PFAS and who sold them to us and who's getting off scot-free in this thing. Any thoughts on class action on this one? The attorney can answer that. There is, there already are, there's already been litigation involving several of the companies that are most prominently recognized as creating the PFAS chemicals. Mm-hmm. And so that's ongoing litigation. There has been some settlements, but beyond that, that's pretty much kind of how they did it. They brought in a class and you could either opt out or be in. Have we made a choice on that? Yeah, well, you were automatically, I mean, this happened, I think, before we were even representing you all. You were automatically, if you didn't opt out, you were included in. Okay. So you'll, and it's also, the attorney general has brought their own action as well on behalf of the state of Florida and some of the entities there. And you'll be a part of that as well. Okay. And so there can be possibly some settlement in our direction on this? Yes. All right. Very good. Because this is going to cost somewhere between $840,000 and $1.5 million annually to our citizens. That's the number in the range you've got here. And that's on top of what we've already done on water and wastewater. So this is an exciting addition. And I say that completely tongue-in-cheek. You know, this is one of those situations where I'm ashamed of my generation. We all had this wonderful, you know, comfort through chemistry kind of mindset. And this is the result of that. First of all, let me speak to the proposition before us. I'm completely in favor of the ORF, if you will. It makes perfect sense. So given that, we've got to do this. But it doesn't take away the sting. That's all I have there. Glad you brought that up, that aspect, though. Elena, who's our representative liaison with Tampa Bay Regional Planning, just sent me a text. PFAS have not been banned in the U.S., FYI. So we have lawsuits, potential settlements, yet we're still allowing it all to come in. So how, I mean, so whose job is that? To say, like, why would, yeah, as best you can answer that. Yeah, so that's more of a political question. I will say, I mean, whether or not... But there's a body who is responsible for legislation, so I guess I'm just asking who that is, or, you know, a department that's proposed it, and a legislative body that hasn't... Right. So I would say that if it was outlawed, it would either come through Congress and that they would pass a law or they would give direction to the agency, which would likely be the EPA, as far as doing a rulemaking and determining that those chemicals are no longer allowed, or in what measurement they are allowed. Yeah, I mean, well, I just did, and I was making sure Linda didn't text me back. So what's the benefit to not doing it? I mean, like, what is the... And again, I don't want to put you on the spot, but if you had to answer, like, what's the reason they're not doing it when it's having this kind of effect locally, which it all comes back to local, doesn't it? So anyway, sorry. But... Any... Why haven't they done it? Yeah. I can't answer that question. I don't know why they haven't done it. This has been litigation for a long time. I can tell you that there are corporate entities that have used the product for a long period of time, have done research on that product, and I believe are continuing to use the products. So why Congress... Yeah, no, I think you've kind of answered it. I mean, and also at this time, I would say, and the government's not even operating right now, the federal government, you know? So I think... And aside from that, even if we were to stop today and there was never another nanogram, because we really are talking about very, very small quantities of this that they're regulating down to, of this that got back into the country, we have this in our environment. It's ubiquitous. It's everywhere. In our environment. Yeah. In products that, like, I don't know if you could read that, some of them were, like, I think mascara they were saying. I mean, it's the foam that they use to put out fires. It's the stuff they put on children's clothing to make them flame retard, and it's a lot of substances like that. But let's say that we stop today and we never get another ounce of that in the country. We still have this in our environment that's going to find its way into our wastewater sledges and our, you know, drinking water sources and things like that. So, it's, we still have this problem. It's like asbestos on steroids. Pretty scary. Yeah. Which that's why I'd say not just this generation, but, I mean, just, you know, we've had to clean up our lakes and rivers before, you know, generational, and yet now we have just new creative ways to kill ourselves. And now, and it's a great way you said it, Commissioner de Gard, to bring up that side of the equation because we're just trying to fix the result of not stopping bad stuff. And, and again, I mean, this is a classic case when I look in the face of our citizens and they're upset because costs go up. Well, here you go. It's all because this new stuff creates dangers and we have to offset it, and that cost is borne by the people. We're not making it up. So, anyway, well, we can go on and on about that, too. There we go. Oh, another geek squad, you know. Okay, so I think it was my turn. I think I, I don't know if I had any other. What was the cost differential issue with Oldsmar? They have a higher cost estimate. I asked them that question, and there wasn't a firm answer. The one thing I can tell you from working there is that they have a very large industrial base. Almost a third of their wastewater customers are industrial. A third of the volume of their wastewater comes from industrial. So, when you calculate the total cost going to just the residential, maybe that increased. There was a huge difference. It was twice as much for the average residential customer in Oldsmar. These are pretty high-level calculations. They were performed by Raftelis somewhat simultaneously to them doing our most recent water and sewer rate sufficiency study, and they were talking to me a little bit about it when they were doing both. So, that's a, you know, a legitimate firm that, and Raftelis does Oldsmar's rate study, too, but I don't, I'm not exactly sure other than possibly that disproportionate amount of industrial flow, which isn't how it would actually be billed. Volumetrically, industry would pay their portion, and so it would, you know, maybe even out better when they actually figured out their rate study. Okay, so I get this piece, and I guess I'll just ask Jennifer and Jen, Jen 1 and 2. While we're doing these negotiations, are we literally doing everything we can in terms of working with other cities and counties, et cetera, to make sure we're working the other side, what's causing it? And I understand what you say, even if we stopped it coming in today. But are we also involved in any kind of effort to identify who can control this and work with other cities and counties? I don't know what that would be. I don't know. I mean, I think sometimes that's the struggle your general public has. Like, it's hard to see what strings to what as we go from federal to state to local, and it's a good example of a way that we should try to find where the string goes back and work on it. We're not actively involved in those efforts right now. It's something that we can look into and report back to you as far as what it would take. Yeah, well, and I think, too, Jennifer Cohen, on the attorney's side, probably as you relate to a lot of attorneys, federal, state, and, you know, there would be some history of the avenues that have been tried to try to get attention. There can, but, again, a lot of it's going to turn on what the regulations are because if you're not prohibited from taking a particular action, you may be able to continue in that same vein even though that there might be a later cost associated with it. I just looked up real quick just while we were talking about it, and, you know, one of the questions you asked is why hasn't anything been done about this? And a good example on, like, the EPA's website right now is there are still, what they're saying is there's a lot of questions still remaining with it. They don't know. They have issues with regarding finding it and detecting it. They have issues with regard to determining the exposure levels, what the harmful is, how to remove it, and just managing and disposing of it once it has been segregated. So this is just from their website and what they're talking about. I got you. I got you. Okay. Well, yeah, and I thank you, you know, Commissioner Dugard, because I do think we sometimes go down the rabbit hole of fixing something, but we don't look on the other side, but go ahead. As I heard, this regulation regarding PFAS occurred in 2022. Is that what I heard? No, what I said was that the county started their preliminary planning phase for the regional resource recovery facility locally here in Pinellas County in 2022. Then who is requiring us to remove this from stuff we're putting out back into fields and lots for as we are currently? Who's doing this? Who's driving this? It is not currently regulated. EPA would be the ones that would promulgate those rules and those numeric limits, but it is not currently regulated. EPA has finalized the regulation on drinking water, and that has been finalized, but on biosolids, it has not been finalized or promulgated. So, in essence, we're doing something in anticipation of such regulations? Is that what I'm hearing? The way I understand from reading the preliminary engineering report, the county is dealing with biosolids as it's currently regulated to create a class AA biosolid product because that's the safest and the least restrictive to either market or get rid of, and they've been doing that at their current facility. They want to continue to do so at a new facility that they're opening up to the region. We in Dunedin have been land applying a class B sludge, which is absolutely legal, fully under regulations, fully monitored for what's going into the groundwaters to make sure the nutrients aren't too high and stuff, but we've had knowledge in this industry for my entire career that there was a desire to not allow class B land application. They've been trying and slowly, slowly, slowly ratcheting down, increasing the regulations and trying to drive people to a AA. So the county right now is looking at doing something somewhat like almost modular where they might even initially just build the facility that would take care of either theirs and whoever participates with them, a AA sludge product that they could market or get rid of like they have been, and then when, if and when, PFAS regulation comes in because you have to know what you're shooting for. You have to know what the numeric limit is to design the system to destroy or remove it. At that point, they would add something on the back end of it, which is essentially the, it's the highest one, I guess five, train five, train eight, oh, train eight, okay, has the destruction. But initially, I don't think that they are really thinking that they're going to do the PFAS, try to take care of PFAS right now because they don't know what their goal is. They don't know how low they have to get that destruction or removal too until the regulations are promulgated. Let me reiterate, I'm in support of this action and this cooperative thing, but that just builds a whole list of unknowns in my mind of what the regulations are going to be, what are going to be the requirements of producers, the fact that it exists ubiquitously in our atmosphere, our environment, because I want to know why we're cleaning this up and at the end what the product is going to be because right now, from what I've just heard, there is no regulatory body telling us we must do this. Is that correct? Not with bio solids, not yet. Okay. They're studying it at this point. EPA is studying it at this point. They have not made any recommendations, but we try to look as far ahead as we can and prepare ourselves. It's an awful expensive speculation. Thank you. I just was going to just add and then I'll, if anybody else wants to weigh in, Alana did just send, just for you guys' thought, the two Jennifers, states are banning PFAS. Fifteen states have enacted laws limiting or regulating PFAS in consumer products. Similar bills have been proposed in six other states. Florida is not one of them. So, just, again, trying to get a handle on that I think is kind of an important thing. Okay. Anyone else want to, I've got to take public comment. I have a follow-up. Go ahead. I have a follow-up. Commissioner Warren. Yeah. So, you know, I totally get the discussion with regards to the regulatory limits and criteria, but, you know, looking at this pragmatically right now, the genie is out of the bottle. And at the end of the day, we only have so much land that we can do this with, and already we are incurring transportation costs to move our sludge much farther away. And to me, I, you know, I see the cost. Yes, the cost is a concern, but I don't know how we afford not to do this. So, you know, in that vein, I'm supportive of this. And I asked the city manager during my one-on-one yesterday with regards to the scope of the interlocal. And the key part of this is, and what we're being asked to do here is provide consensus direction on the negotiation aspect of this. And, you know, I think that's where the rubber hits the road. And so, anyway, that's just my two cents. And there is a parallel path here. And this goes back to lobbying our federal, state elected officials. Because it, you know, at the end of the day, this isn't going to go away. And there has to be some measure of regulation. But I just don't see how we don't do this. Because, to me, it makes sense. Anyway, only two cents. I'm going to ask for, open it up for public input. Anyone in the audience wish to come forward to speak on this issue? If you'd survive the meeting, which no one has survived the meeting, so no one's here to comment. Okay, I'm going to close public input. And I'll go to final comments of the commission on this. Commissioner, our vice mayor. Thank you, mayor. You know, it's always interesting how many organizations get out. And nothing we like to do better than a beach cleanup, causeway cleanup. We all adopt highways and pick up trash. But one of the main sources of the need for recycling comes from industry, right? Nobody wants to tackle types of regulation that we would put on industry for the types of packaging that they use and things of that nature. And to me, this is just an equivalent. And it's a matter of, okay, we go down this path and do this. Well, then we're just cleaning up after industry. Then what is the incentive for them to stop doing what they're doing? And that just really frosts me that nobody in industry really wants to do the right thing unless it's by law. And it's really disappointing. When it comes to who is responsible, we all know who is responsible. And that's why voting matters. And it's not a matter of party. It's a matter of each individual understanding what is important to them and really understanding the candidates they're voting for. And if they're already in office and they're running for re-election, don't listen to what they say, but listen to how they voted. Because there's a big difference. And if you really vote for what's important to you, then the right people will be in office for those issues that concern you. Because it's not a team game. It's a we game in the country. And I think we've lost focus of that, which is very, very disappointing. But anyway, those are my comments. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner Sandbergen? I think when I read the products that contain, my household's probably guilty of every one of them. And the other day, I read an article that, you know, the economy's in, it's a little rough right now. And the number one item that people are struggling to make ends meet is with food. And number two is utilities. I don't want to see the citizens of Dunedin get any more strapped on their back. You know, we put those rate increases in at a bad time. And I've heard about it. And I, you know, I just, I just, I really wouldn't want to do it to the citizens of our city. So thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Commissioner Walker, anything additional? No, I appreciate that. I think I've made my comments. Commissioner Degard? It's been a long morning already. And I hate to add to that a little bit. I think it was Andrew Carnegie that was asked one time when he was next to one of his smelters, what does that smell like to you? His answer was, it smells like money. That was his answer. In here, we have a very small segment of our population making a lot of money when they make products like this. This is how transfers of wealth happen. It goes from the people into their pockets. This is a prime example. This is why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Because of this taxation that's about ready to land on our citizens because of the greed of others. I'm sounding awfully liberal right now. I'm not that liberal. I don't believe in regulations, but darn it, this is a place where those regulations should have been placed long ago and we're not talking about anything more than the financial burden, but people are dying because of these chemicals. It causes cancer. It causes all kinds of bad results. Now, I'm very much interested in us finding a way to get in line with the cases that are in place and if there's not sufficient cases in place, I'd like to see us look at getting more cases in place that will sue these people that are making money off of these products that are killing us. As far as our need to do the right thing, yes, we have to do the right thing and we have to get this out of our waste materials. And so that's why I speak for this particular cooperation. I think it's a great idea, but we're managing someone else's stuff. It's despicable. There's just no other way to put a word around it. I just don't know how to really make it known to everybody that this is how we get ourselves hurt. That's all I have and I'm sorry about the protestations. No, it's okay. I couldn't agree more with everything you said and I think that, again, sometimes because we're the last piece of the thread and we've got to pull the trigger to do protective things that add rates to our citizens, we get blamed and it's not right, it's not fair and it is all about how do we communicate some of that and be effective in a way that makes the change happen where the change is supposed to happen and we're not cleaning up the mess because we have no choice. But we'll keep fighting that fight at the same time, I don't know that we have anything that we can do here. We have to protect our citizens. That's going to cost money but we should definitely be in a dual strategy here and this starts with we've got meetings coming up with our own state legislatures. I think we need to start talking about this issue and even on Tampa Bay Regional Planning, some of our regional places that we go where we have some of those impacts and discussions to get people working together on this because it's not right. It's not right and you're right. It smells like money because it's money. It's about money. Okay. Do you have what you need plus some? City manager. There's plenty in there. Yeah. We do. Thank you. Informational items. I'll just, does anybody have anything they want to say? I mean, I know we do this at the end of our Thursday meeting but we have 15 minutes. I realize we've been here a long time. While we were at the watch parties the other night, I was really, the Pioneer Park is really pretty when it's lit with those lights. I noted some that were maybe out. I don't know if there's normal maintenance on them but maybe, you know, consider extending that past that dentist office and tying all the way to Virginia and Maine where they split making that almost one continuous park. There's some big oak trees and I think that really would make that area look a lot more appealing in that night during the dark. So, that's it. Thank you, Mayor. Vice Mayor, do you have anything? Thank you. Yes, just wanted to acknowledge and I talked to you all about that Saturday night. Last Saturday, the Thinney High School marching band had their MPA which is their music performance assessment and they received a superior and all the wonderful comments been actually several years since they've received a superior and so it's wonderful with the new director, Luke Savage and his ability to bring us back to a standard that we all originally are expected to receive and get as well as the pipes are back and made a prominent display during the MPA which is where they belong and so it's nice that not only do you hear that from Dunnean residents and Dunnean students and things of the nature but from people that don't even live in your community anymore acknowledging how much they love the bagpipes so it was a wonderful Saturday night just want to acknowledge and I know there'll be time in the future to do it as well but we have the Celtic Festival coming up on November 22nd and so looking forward to that. So, is that Mayor? Commissioner Walker do you have anything? No, I don't think that's more to add. Okay, Commissioner Dugard? Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank staff, my colleagues and everyone for what is about ready to happen this Thursday. We will be circulating a social connection survey to the community. It's an exciting opportunity to learn where our citizenry is relative to some of the challenges they face in this community. As you know, we have a very mature population and that means that there are challenges to them that aren't in general populations that are of a younger age. They tend to face medical issues, loss of a spouse, all kinds of issues that general populations that are younger don't and we're going to find out exactly how broad and deep that particular problem is in the community and I'm excited about the prospects that brings us. But again, I want to thank the manager, the staff, my colleagues for all helping us get to this point. Can't wait to share the numbers. I know we have to go over your list but I'll just say this and I'm sorry but I'm just I'm sorry I'm still deep in the hole with Toronto Blue Jays and I don't know when I'll be able to get out of it but I was looking at the calendar and of course it really literally was the whole month of October where the ride really started. The end of September when the Toronto Blue Jays won the division by having the tiebreaker with the Yankees and then ended up having to play the Yankees and then the ups and downs of that and then Seattle seven games until the seventh game of the World Series but I couldn't be more proud of my colleagues our city manager and our staff our citizens our visitors we had so many Canadian visitors that came up during those watch parties to just oh they were so happy we were doing it they were so glad they happened to be in town they felt so welcomed yeah it was it was it was a heartbreaker at the end but you know when you look at everything that was that happened because of it how it brought us together as we literally are approaching that 50th year of spring training training you couldn't kick it off better and you know we want it all we just have to wait a year right we got to get it next year but it couldn't be more proud of the partnership either and I know that our partners a lot of the leadership team some that can't talk about it right now they can't talk they just can't talk it's too painful others who you know again it's painful but they're they're trying to move forward but boy what a season what a great season we're so blessed to have the Toronto Blue Jays and our Canadian visitors with us and yeah and our staff I just want to kind of shout out Jennifer you were on top of it from the banners to you know just getting it you always get our city and you're always on top of it and in front of it to Tony who's our new Parks and Rec director who we got to see a lot of him he was he was on it he was great and of course Jory who we gave a standing ovation to Jory's amazing and she took me home from the the three in the morning one the 18 inning one but she was there all the time and Danielle as well and and a lot of other people and I did say to the city manager I want to make sure we're going to recognize some of them you know with Halloween it was double double triple duty I mean it's a lot and not just not just Rec and Parks but some of the other departments had to step into our communications department continues to be completely awesome Sue Kate Brooke all of them but you know I mean we had all the boring stuff today you know it's like all the stuff we get but we had a ride of the you know of the century and I hope the better rides coming next year but what a ride it was and what a partnership it is and it really does highlight you know 50 almost 50 great years and yeah so I just couldn't not say that on that note there was something else we talked about recognizing coming up well I'll think of it but by Thursday yeah we do have Wines of Blues coming I don't know if I'll be there though I had to postpone a tooth getting pulled so it'll be the day after we'll see if I am I might be loopy but yeah that's what's the exact date of it Saturday the Saturday Wines of Blues and obviously Chambers put a lot into that and so we want to make sure we fully support that and Celtic Festival now that the World Series parties are over I can try to focus on eating less maybe not having any beer and that might help get the kilt on for the event anyway so Jennifer you needed to did you have any do you want to add anything about the series because you guys you and your staff were all over it exhausted and yeah yeah what fun though it was a lot of fun yeah I think just everything that you've said already Mayor you know in regards to staff just the you know there was no inkling of we can't do it from staff there was just a matter of how we get it done and I couldn't be more proud of the Parks and Recreation Department and the assist from other departments as well and the way that everybody worked together because it really is we are in uncharted territory and you know to get to the World Series and to be the spotlight especially in Canada and all those interviews that the Mayor did and Commissioner Sandbergen did in Canada and to see the entire community come together that way you know kids playing in the outfield and you know there's no stranger the watch parties everybody just kind of melded together and that aspect was a lot of fun but that's really once in a career you know for staff hopefully it's twice so they'll be back next year better ending keep the same team right be back next year and and and win it all next year so I'm just I couldn't be more proud of the organization as a whole and the community you know Stuart with his his his web page and his Facebook page and J Ball and you know all those fun things we'll never forget it and Sharon Herman with her Blue Jay outfit you know yeah the Blue Jay onesie and you know all those sorts of fun things which you will memorialize and and I'm going to talk to the department heads this afternoon about how we how we celebrate staff and their efforts and reward them for the entire event but and and many thanks to all of you and your spouses and our spouses who sat in the freezing it felt freezing a lot but but we're just that's Florida freezing though yeah it was Florida freezing yeah but it was just it was just wonderful and and and like I said I think that there needs to be more said about it there does and I yeah I had forgotten obviously Commissioner Sandberg and I and our spouses attended you know the first two games on our own dime of the World Series but what a lifetime experience and I I wasn't even out of bed yet and and Commissioner Sandberg had already been interviewed twice on Canadian television and the first day but they they treated us so good I mean they wanted they wanted that love from Dunedin and from the states they just it was great yeah I got stopped at customs coming in these two giant security guys like why are you coming to Canada I said World Series got tickets and I I said I'm from Dunedin and they just lit up and they put they put down that tough guy attitude and really I really welcomed us in and I I did the mayor and I you know when I was up there I noticed that the partnership is it's it's really it's you can't even describe how the amount of respect they have for Dunedin and you know from the from the top down it's it's a great organization and it's a it's a great great partnership and I know that during the playoffs Stewart put all that work together and I know he's been in touch with most of us since then and we're not going to let it end we're going to keep this thing going roll right roll right into spring trading maybe 90 days away I mean they'll be back again so fun time fun time in Dunedin and and that was the other thing I was going to bring up welcome back Blue Jays is right on our heels and it needs to be bigger and better than ever I think it is a rare it's an opportunity that we have not just because of baseball but because of the Canada America connection and and so I've already reached out to the head of Tourist Development Council and to the head of the County Commission because we'll need some help if we're going to make it bigger and better and you know they're you know they're very they're very excited about it as well so so I mean we've got a and I know the manager will bring some things to us but we're we're going to have to think about that pretty fast if we're going to make it special if I may Mayor per our discussion yesterday we are already putting together a meeting and it will be with the Mayor myself the Chamber of Commerce and and our Communications Department to put together what the plan is for the Welcome Back 50th anniversary and then we're going to reach out to Brian Lomack which changed kind of what we were talking about yesterday because I think we need to be more organized before we reach out to them because we really only have less than four months I mean it's stunning it really is to put together you know what that's going to look like and to work with the Blue Jays once they're able to speak again so work with the Blue Jays to put together something that's going to be really really special when we welcome them back and I genuinely think though that and the Mayor and I discussed this yesterday that this is going to make an impact economically obviously just the watch parties but again in spring because I think that our Canadian friends are going to come back more than we thought that they would and more that we're hearing from our short-term rental owners and that type of a thing so and I think that's how important this is and how important the welcome back is going to be and that we advertise it and really get out ahead of it so to help our business owners and our well yeah what I was one of our most I'm not going to say his name here you know at our meeting but one of our most prominent business people here in town you know was telling me how in some of his areas down in Clearwater Beach had decimated they'd been because of the lack of Canadian visitors and so again that's why I say I think we have this opportunity and this connection that's very very special and we need to we need to be on top of that so I did just want to out myself just in case you know because I have talked to a lot of Blue Jay people that did admit they shed tears at the end of that game but so yesterday morning one of our staff who has an eight-year-old son who I just met the other night at the game seven and so and he'd never been on a field like that and anyway at the end of the game he started to cry and she's telling me you know and she's saying to him it's okay it's okay and and I said well you need to tell him if he thinks it's you know that he's embarrassed to cry like the mayor cried okay and the mayor had all she could do to get off the field to not lose it because that was one heck of a heartbreaker you know and I again I can't say enough I I love this commission I love my fellow commissioners we were all there all the time and and cheering them on as a team yeah doesn't get any better than that doesn't get any better so all right let's do our list turn this off okay so the list follow-up items for the November 4th City Commission Workshop that's from the from the November 4th I started off very well didn't I anyway schedule of values to the City Commission in regards to insurance a two-page report and no more than two pages regarding the 3.5 reserve level in the risk fund in terms of how we we arrived at that number and whether or not it's a good number the safety committee communicating with department directors and the city attorney in regards to some of our claims the and then we moved on to North Douglas so the frequency of the 2.5 plus foot tide at North Douglas and Baywood Shores and just along the coast and we will probably just give you the title chart you know then contact county regarding the 36 inch CMP clogs right now it's a yeah CMP and Sue Bartlett is going to do that I don't really have to put that on the follow-up officially or anything in the in the backup report to all of you or the follow-up report so the ditch behind the houses on the west side of Douglas that does not extend south to Mira Vista so we're going to follow that up with the county also as far as why it hasn't been treated or dug a little bit deeper in order to allow some storage and then strategies regarding PFAS moving forward and elimination of PFAS and how we can be active in that strategy and then operation twinkle there's the last one operation twinkle which is the the trees that's the official name extend that to the pocket park and if we may commissioner let's if we can have that discussion on Thursday because it is an agenda item on Thursday as well so maybe we can give you that information and talk a little bit about it and you know if it's an additional cost then we can talk about that yeah and that was it cool okay anything else good for the order okay meeting adjourned