COMMISSION WORKSHOP - Oct 06, 2026

Good morning. Welcome to the October 6th, 2026 City Commission Workshop. I'm going to call the meeting to order. And can we do the pledge? Yes, Pledge of Allegiance. Jen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States, one nation, indivisible, with liberty. Okay. Before we start, I just wanted to say Sunday was a really nice celebration of life for former Mayor Bob Hackworth and talked about some of his legacy with green space especially. So just want to again acknowledge the family. I said his community will always be here for them. They've been long-time residents. The Vice Mayor, unfortunately, due to work, is out of town, unable to join us. And so I need a motion to excuse Vice Mayor Bob Hackworth. So moved. Second. There's no motions at the workshop. Oh. Resend it. Never mind. Okay. Well, I don't think we're going to be burned at the stake or anything. So all in favor, aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Informal motion. Okay. All right. Will there be a lawsuit on that or anything? I'm just kidding. I don't, yeah. It's a mortal sin or anything. Okay, Linda. Okay. So citizen input. Anyone in the audience wish to come forward and speak on a topic that is not on the agenda. Okay. Seeing no one, I will move to this very exciting topic of, you know, bright, exciting. Let's try to make it as exciting as we can. Public works efficiency recommendation implementation update, but important. So not to make light of it. So I'll start with Sue. Thank you very much. Good morning, Mayor. No, Vice Mayor. Commissioners, City Manager, City Attorney, and City Clerk. Today, we are excited. We're glad to be here to talk about this. And we have also Jorge Quintas, the Deputy City Manager, and Michelle Monteclero, the Public Works Assistant Director, as well as Harry Lorick of LA Consulting with us, too. Sue, excuse me for one minute, but I just saw Bruce Worth walk in the door. You're back. They just keep coming back, right? Good to see you. Okay. Good to see you. Sorry for that, but done a lot of good work for Swift Bud and the City, so it's fine. Now, Jack, go ahead. No worries. I ran into him yesterday in the home. Okay. Had the same reaction. So we're here to present this summary of the final draft. Sorry about that. Apparently, I don't need the mic that close. I have to take some hints from Les. Move back. So we're here, though, to get your feedback and input on any part of this. This is really a summary, like the executive summary, really, of the report. But the report is draft, and it will be finalized after your input. So we're, as I said, we're really happy to be here. This is an exciting step going forward, and we are glad to have this opportunity to share the work that the staff has been accomplishing over the past couple of years, actually. So at the last update in March, the mayor, she might have mentioned a couple times that I was giddy. And so I'll try not to be giddy, but I can't really contain the excitement that I have for all the work that's been accomplished and what's going to be accomplished as you, as everyone goes forward, as the city goes forward. And I know we have a lot of challenges ahead, but this, we have tools in place that this is really going to help us to meet those challenges and to understand what it is that choices that we're making. So I'm hopeful that we can convey not just the excitement, but the actual facts of what's occurred and that what needs to occur in the future and how we're going to be using all this data. So a great deal of improvement has been accomplished, you'll see, with the details in the presentation. But every single challenge, every single accomplishment came with challenges. We met those challenges. We're still meeting those challenges, just like you're meeting challenges every day. And we have new things that come up. But what is really key is, do we have the tools? And are we trained? And are we able to meet those challenges? And what is the gap? And what, how can we meet that gap? This implementation has met many of those gaps where we couldn't get the data back to be able to use it, putting things in and not being able to get them out. But now we're able to use that. And our staff has come to a different level. They understand how to use this data. They're still learning, of course. But that's like, we're all lifelong learners, aren't we? So each staff member in public works has been engaged. Many staff members in the city have been engaged. And this is the, one of the keys to the success of this implementation. I'm not saying that everybody agreed with it, but everybody has been engaged and has been input, has, has been given their input and helped us to make sure we have facts and that we're not living in a dream world. So we're prepared for more success and we have the tools to rise to the challenges ahead. When I was first exposed to the business process changes that we are putting in place that allow us to use the data to make better decisions, I just said, it can't be that simple. And this is many years ago, but APWA has adopted these as best practices and implementation practices, business practices in the real world of public works. And what I found out is it's not that simple, but the simplicity is in the concept and in the, you know, come from staff being focused on one step at a time and building on that step and then going on. And then pretty soon they're at the top of the mountain. So we started talking with staff and commissioners way back on July 18th and 2023, when we came before you about the solid waste rate study. And I know a couple of you weren't here then, but you've been involved since then. But when we came about the rate study and said, we want to do this rate study for solid waste, several people, several commissioners said, why don't you do the efficiency study first? Why are you doing a rate study before you do the efficiency study? So we listened and we went to work and with purchasing's help, we put that out to bid, we advertised and we, you, you awarded in August, 2024, the contract to LA consulting competitively bid. And then we went to more work and we, in the process of doing that evaluation, wasn't just a study, it was an evaluation with recommendations. Then we added one more task that we thought was necessary to get employee feedback. It was a confidential survey and it was the only task added, but it was a result was really amazing to hear, which was our staff said, they thought we could do more work with the same amount of people or less if we were better organized, if our work was better organized and we changed our processes to become more efficient. So to me, that was very revealing and it was significant. So in your time, in your packet, you have a timeline. I just don't take this long on an intro, but I feel like this is really important and I wanted to ensure that I connect the dots between, you know, when we started back in 23 and that was just an idea, to today and how many steps it's taken to get here and what has happened along that way. And so in your packet, you have a timeline, but I'd just like to remind everyone that we have been commissioned formally, August 6th and 2024, February of 2025, May 22nd of 2025, August 7th of 2025, and March 3rd, 2026. And we're here again today. Each of those steps was to either award a portion of the contract or to do what we're doing today, which is review the information to date, provide feedback and input so that we could better go on. And we've also been to the Board of Finance February 15th, June 17th, and most recently they asked us to come back and talk about fleet August 19th. This is all using data and presenting the information and the statuses. We have also informally been before you, I've been before you many times mentioning this in different agenda items, and most significantly, we used these tools and presented information in the contingency budget directly from that, from the tools that we're using on service level and how those impacted our costs and what those cuts would express or become as cuts in service levels. And we will continue to do that. So, we just want you to, you know, it is, it's not a long presentation, but it has some link to it, but there's really important pieces to it. Encourage you to stop us if you have a question, but it's, we've honed it down to things that we thought were very important, and we feel very strongly that when you get to the part about the, like the plan, the work plan, and those, what we've brought and all the steps it took us to get to that work plan, that's really key because our staff is using them now every single month to compare what we plan to do and what we actually got done. So, we can adjust as we go and make sure that we're hitting the marks that you all expect from us and that we've presented during our budget meetings for service levels. So, I have added a little bit of information I've provided you each a hard copy of the articles that were published in APWA, two local in Florida, and one nationally, and those were all published. And so, we, it's really an honor to be able to have the information published in, they're all about the project, little pieces of the project, and they've asked us, APWA, American Public Works Association, has asked us to come back again and report our progress. So, we'll do that. Without any further ado, I will introduce here Harry, and he will do the presentation. We'll be chiming in. Jorge has a few comments, and we'll, I'll be chiming in along the way. Thank you. Of course, Harry Loric, Principal of LA Consulting, Madam Mayor, members of the Commission, Madam City Manager, and other professionals here. Just a real honor to be here, to be honest with you. This is the third time we've been able to get in front of you. And I'm really excited because this is probably the one session that I'm most excited about presenting to you. The first time we did a study, said this is what could occur. And then in March, we said this is what's happening so far. Now we're going to say this is what's happened for the first year. But we're really at the starting line. Several of you are management consultants. You understand what I'm talking about. This is a continuous improvement process. So, I'm going to share with you what's happening in the first year. But the best improvement occurs after we leave. I know when we were working from Pinellas County, we made some improvement. And after we left, the staff made a lot more improvement. So, the tools are in place. So, I'm going to share with you those. So, talk a little bit about status. Talk a little bit about the system achievement and what's happening. But I thought it was very important what Sue just said that I didn't even have in my notes, is doing the survey, the employees said, we can do more work. Employees were right. Okay. They can do more work, and they've actually been able to show that. Let's see. I'm not, you might have to remove it on Sue, because it's not moving here. There we go. Anyway, we've done this before. So, as I think we were blessed to be selected. But we work for a lot of organizations throughout the state and throughout the United States and Florida and California and Washington. And so, we've done it before. But I, as I was talking to Mr. Dugart earlier, the what happened in those counties has nothing to do with exactly what happens here. Each one is a separate issue. Because your city's different than maybe in Volusia County was, or the port is. So, it did require, we couldn't just copy what we did there and apply it here. So, it was a different approach. So, there we go. So, Harry, excuse me, if I could interrupt for just a second. In your packet, your agenda item packet, you have a presentation or a PDF that Harry prepared special that takes the movement out so you could see behind the slides. So, I do have a copy of that with me, too, to follow along with you. So, if you go back to a slide, we'll be able to know which slide it is. But the presentation has the movement in it. So, it doesn't quite match up with what you have. But we wanted, we thought it was important that you could see behind, Jennifer actually, to see behind it. So, we, we did. Yeah, thank you, Harry, for doing that. Yeah, we took the motion out. So, the copy you have, that would be like the one we're looking at right now would be two slides. So, see. So, the, the product itself had basically three different things. It was, there was some system adjustments. And we'll talk about what that is. There were some business processes. And then the system was actually setting up the automated system. So, this is not about setting up computer system. The computer system is part of it. But this is not what this is about. This is about using better business processes and applying that so you have continuous improvement. So, this was, again, was not an audit. We're not auditors. You know, a lot of people will do a report. And then the report is printed out. And then you use it for the corner of the desk because it's not even. So, or it's collecting dust someplace. And in fact, as part of this study, one of the recommendations we made was have the staff to go through previous studies to see if those things had been implemented. And the answer was no. They weren't implemented. So, what we try to do is incorporate everything. So, again, it's, again, this is an implementation, but to set up a process so that people in the future could continually improve. So, we outlined steps that you need to go through. And so, this is kind of some of the steps. So, one of the things that they've done is they've set up a plan for the whole year. So, this is not, you know, you have a budget for the whole year, but who sets up a plan of what they're going to do for the whole year? So, the whole year's plan. So, people have been trained to actually use this. We've institutionalized certain things. Now, they schedule. I'm going to show you an example of a schedule. They track their work weekly. They schedule on a bi-weekly basis, a weekly basis. They look and see what they did. So, they track what they do, and then they look and see how they did. So, it's one thing to have all this information, but if you don't use it, it doesn't mean anything. So, we've set up PM programs. We've educated people how to use the data. We're optimizing the staff. So, we're going to talk about what that happened. And then, we're actually producing information that you'll be able to see in both reports and also in dashboards. So, if you go back in time, the first part of this was to do a study. We did a study, and that's, you know, 162-page report. It outlined 75 recommendations. And those recommendations were the basis that we used for implementing. So, as of, and when I met in front of you in March, the pie chart on the left basically said that, you know, we've completed about 37%. And we means basically not us, not me, the city. The city did these things. What we did, we set it up, we facilitated, but the city had to do stuff. Change behavior is not easy. And so, all the groups, you know, they had to change what they were doing. So, there was about half of it was ongoing. And then, there's some things that haven't happened. As of September, we're now about 70%, 68%, and 20 of them are ongoing, and many of those are about to complete. And there's some, and there's no action yet. And we can talk about what some of those things are. So, we also, in that report, identified, okay, if you do this, you can get improvement. And then, you know, people always say, yeah, I bet. Yeah, really? Well, we broke it into four categories. One was the business process improvement, where we said people could do more of what they had. Employees said they could, too. So, anyway, we made a projection of about 900,000, and we thought they'd get improvement. We said, well, there's going to be some cost to do that. You have to buy, you know, you're going to be buying software. You're going to pay for LA Consulting. Then, the optimizing equipment, we say, you could probably save them some of your equipment. Do you need the equipment you have? Could we use smaller equipment? Do we need all the backups we have? We had 100% backups in solid waste. For every piece of equipment we had, we had 100% backups. Now, if you ask your hauler over here, what is their backups? It's about 15%. So, we had too many backups, but, you know, we just, we got the equipment. We didn't want to get rid of it. You know, it's nice to have it, but, so there's a lot of equipment we really didn't need that, so we identified that. And then, you know, you were doing work for the county, or in the county unincorporated areas where you were actually providing solid waste services. And it was costing you more than they were paying you. So, you had a couple of choices. You could charge more, or you just quit, quit using their services. So, you did, and you had a savings as a result of that. Staffed optimization, and we looked at staffing. So, we had made a projection of about 2.1 million, was a cost, some cost to do it, 1.7. So, that's what we came up with. We came back in March, and reported to you that, what happened? Well, at that time, we, there was some equipment surplus that was sold. You might say, well, we would have sold it anyway. Five years before we did the study, you sold one piece of equipment in five years. So, you get a new piece of equipment, you keep the old. So, you had, and who, and the old still costs you money. So, but it's a simple way of doing work, right? Because then, maybe you don't have to manage the fleet quite as well, because you always got a backup. Then, we also looked at some positions, some positions that absolutely weren't needed. No one got laid off, but maybe some of the positions weren't needed, and we didn't fill them, or there were some cases when someone left, we just didn't fill the position. The solid waste, that was the net savings that we, that actually came out of it, which was a little bit less than we had projected, even though there's some other savings that don't show up. There was some travel reduction. By optimizing some of the routes in the solid waste and some of the others, we used less fuel. And so, it saved about $500,000. So, as of to date now, that number is 1.3 million. And this is, this is actual money. So, we had talked about equipment, we talked about staff, we talked about the solid waste, travel reduction. The route optimization was something else that came through. What is route optimization? Well, what we found was, in the computer system that we've set up, we know the size of containers. We know when you pick those containers up. This is in solid waste for your commercial. Well, and the, the billing has the same information in it. Those two don't match. So, there's some, there's some opportunities there. Those two don't match. So, we've identified that. This is a very conservative number, by the way, but, and there's an audit that finance is doing right now to confirm these numbers. And I think you'll find that our number is very, very conservative. But, and then we also, there was work done in, well, you're doing work for the county. The county's doing work and maintaining some of your, your lighting and your signals and things like that. And they get paid, you get paid from the state to do state roads. And they actually pay you so much money, and you just let the money go straight to the county. Well, it turns out that you were being billed for some of the services that the county really was responsible for. So, we found out, and your assistant city manager has already communicated with them to say, hey, wait a minute, that can't happen anymore. That's real money. That's, that's money in your pocket that you're not being paid. Okay. There's, there's a whole other group of savings. You remember that first box that I showed you so many with efficiency? What is efficiency savings? Doing more work with the same amount of people. So, the productivity is higher. And what we looked at is that when we first started, the, the, the, we facilitated approach with the city where they set up a plan. And before they had no plan, so we said, let's set up certain bars that you're going to achieve. And we measured when they started to where we end, what happened? We found out there was about 13% improvement in productivity. And the employees said they could do more, and they're doing more. But when we look at the last four months, it's been 17%. What does that tell you? There's, it's accelerating. People are starting to use the system. And solid waste alone, in the last four months, there's been about a 50% improvement. 50, it's a big number. So, things are being done more efficiently because they're planning the route. They're using the data. They're making better decisions. It's not because things were broken. It's because we're just using things better. We're thinking about it. We're using the tools that are there because they didn't have any data before. So, we're doing more or less. So, if you add that efficiency savings with the other savings, it's 2.5. And we'd estimated 2.1. So, we're right in the same ballpark. But the key point you got to remember is this doesn't end. We're just starting now. Now the tools are in place, and now your own staff can do things. Just as a check, I thought, let's look at the budgets and see what's happening. In your budgets, it shows that the public works budget dropped by 7%. Well, why did it, it's reflecting the same thing we're talking about. And this is not even including the fact that you, you have more capital expenditures in your, in stormwater. So, the, the savings we have, I think, are actually conservative. I think you're actually getting more savings. So, anyway, but anyway, you guys are taking action. So, the key point is, we didn't do anything. We just set up the plan. We did the training. But action are being taken. And it's easy to talk about it. And it's a lot easier to write a report. And it's a lot easier to tell people they need to do it. But doing it is hard. And that's some of the things that Sue and her staff have had to do. And whether it's in solid waste, you got a new leader over there, Brian, is doing a really good job. He's, he's using the tools. So, why did it happen? Well, first of all, you wanted it to happen. You let us do the study, right? You selected a consultant to do it. We were lucky enough to be selected. You followed up with it. The city manager is encouraged it. The director. So, if the leadership wants it, normally it can happen. And then you selected a system that matched what you wanted. And we'll talk about that in a minute. And then the other thing is, we didn't have to go collect a bunch of data. You had the data. We just had to put it in a format. And then we imported it. So, rather than go out and start collecting data, a lot of times people get software, then start collecting data and trying to figure out what they got to do. We didn't have to do that because the data was there. We just had to compile it. And then the first thing we did before we used software, we developed things. How do your plan work? How do you schedule work? How do you assign it? And then what do you do when you get the data back? The people had to know about that before we set up any kind of computer system because, you know, and then, you know, you brought us in and we've done this before. But the employees accepted it. But there was some pushback. There's no question. You're changing behavior. It's not easy. As Sue said, it's been documented. There's been two reports at the national APWA. And they said, well, big deal. I bet you there's no other city in the whole United States that had two of these reports last year. If you go in there and look at it, I mean, I could research it and see it, but it's very, very unusual to have the city get two reports. They might get one, but getting two in one year, and then, of course, you had it. But why did they get it? It's because it's unusual to show this improvement. You know, I'm on the national APWA asset management committee. And one of the things we're trying to do is identify when you do these things, do you really get improvement? And I said, well, look at Dunedin. They got improvement. So it's a goal nationally we have to try to get improvement by using these. Rather than just set up computer systems and spend money and time, we can improve. You guys documented that you did that. Our schedule was 13 months. We're at the very end. We're actually in the 14th month. And if you look back in time, you know, we had, again, the system adjustments, the three things, independent processes. And I'm going to talk about that in a moment. And, but we really got the software. We thought we would have it when we, our, when we estimated the work, we thought we'd have it when we started, but there was a delay. So we started the project and we didn't have the software for several months until after we started. So, but we got all the business processes in place and things like that. So we're able to do that. So now the data is being used. Initially, we made some estimates and some things based on the evaluation, the survey, the interviews. Now we're using data to make decisions. It's even better. So why is it being successful? First of all, you guys allowed it to happen. You wanted to happen or it wouldn't have happened. You made the decision early on that you wanted to see about solid waste. Is it, rather than just have a, you know, increase the rates, are we efficient first? And you did. And they took that into account in that efficiency study. So you did save money. It didn't show up directly because they didn't calculate it, but they did take those efficiency savings that we initially got into that. And then decision are being made with data. You're using, you know, so what are the improvements? Well, better accountability. The database is set up. We talked about labor and equipment is being optimized, solid waste collections in the, in the unincorporated areas eliminated. The employees are using the data. So what does that mean? That sounds nice in theory. Somebody said, well, is this real? You got 17 less pieces of equipment. Some of those pieces of equipment cost 300, 250 to $300,000 and you don't have them. So you sold them, you got the money from selling it. Then also you're not putting money aside to replace it. Plus you're not having to maintain it. Even if you don't use it that much, those mechanics still spend time with that. So in the prior five years, as I mentioned, you have one. So in one year we had 17. In the prior five years you had one. You froze positions and some positions went away because they just, they just weren't needed. Nobody lost their job. But when things moved around, attrition, that Sue and her staff realized they didn't need it, there's a reduction in travel costs. Why is that? Well, mainly it's the solid waste vehicles now are traveling less. Not, this is taken into account, even with the county aspects going away, is they're built more, they're more optimal. The routes have been optimized. The reduction that we mentioned in the street lighting and signal costs that, that you're not paying for anymore. You're doing more work with less people and less overtime. So in some ways you could say, well, yeah, we're doing, we're less people, but we're working more overtime. The overtime went down and then you've had improvement of 13%. So as we mentioned, it's 1.3 million there. Future improvements are still going to be occurring. Accountability on productivity is now. So Sue and her people, you know, whether it's in, in public services or facilities, they can use that to make a better decision. Like in facilities, they're starting to think, you know, we're coming here and we're putting up the flag here at city hall. Do we, how many vehicles do we need to take over here? Well, I mean, you think about it. They started looking at the data and said, wait a minute, we're sending two vehicles over here. Why are we doing that? I mean, it's minor items, but these minor items add up. And the SLA, the service level agreement, that's like for facilities, like the Hale Center. You have an agreement with the Hale Center and it says, these are the services we provide the Hale Center. These are the exact thing. These are the maintenance and the repairer. But there are things that we don't provide. And, you know, that's, if it's not maintenance. So if, if those other things occur, that's going to be a cost to it. You're going to have to pay for it. And it's been my experience, our experience for a company, that when you set these things up, if people have to pay for things, all of a sudden they start thinking about it a little bit. Maybe we don't need to move those pictures around quite so much right now. Maybe we can do it ourselves. And then we've been further optimization of equipment and labor. Sue was telling me just the other day, they've found a couple other pieces of equipment that aren't needed. And it's not that they're taking equipment away from people, but we've got, it still has some excess backup. So we're optimizing the equipment. And then we're also looking at how, right now, in both fleet and in facilities, the way it's charged is by an allocation. So how much an organization, a group pays for facilities depends on how it was allocated. The allocation is almost 10 years old. So that's being updated. So we're going to base that on real information. And then again, the people are using it for continuous improvement. The other thing is, how is resource actually being allocated? Now, this is not a savings. But the parks and rec, where you have your events, of course, the events are one of the main things. I mean, I read about Dunedin and national publications about all the different events you have. And every time I come over here, my wife comes over here, she says, this is the coolest city in the state. And I said, it's pretty cool. But you do a lot of events, but public works supports that. And unfortunately, they're not reimbursed for it. You say, well, it needs to be done. And if you only use public works people for it, that's fine. And the same thing for utilities. They have cuts and public works repairs it. Somebody's got to do it. So it needs to be done. But the point is that you're using about a FTE or 1.5 FTEs of public works and supporting it. I'm not saying you shouldn't or should do that, but you should allocate it. You should figure out that that's what's happening. And so you're using resources to do things that are necessary to be done. So how did all this happen? Well, you've got a structure in place now. You've got the business process. We've talked about involvement employees. We've talked about the best practices. And you've got information to do that. So we're going to go into some detail now. So there were four phases in implementation. There was a system part we talked about. There was the independent processes, where I'm going with you in a minute. Independent meant independent of any systems. These were little things that were identified that the staff could do themselves. And they've done a lot of those things. And then there was setting up the business systems with the software. That was the third part. And the fourth part with Optimum was some things that came up that you guys asked us to do. We helped in some routing for your solid waste. We helped in some other things that we actually had to set up an independent database for you because you didn't have a database for the first four months. So those were the things we did on those optional. So the first group was we had to come up with a game plan. And that was done. And then this graphic is very critical. On the left-hand side is what most people do when they talk about setting up a system. Because they talk about a computer system. It's not a computer system. It's a business system. What people do, they'll buy software. Then they'll start changing their processes to match the software. And then they implement it. And it doesn't work quite so well because people don't like it. And they have to change it again. There's no focus on improvement. So what did you guys do? The decision you made, and the decision was made by the people that I'm looking at right now, is you decided that you wanted to do an evaluation first. So you did an evaluation. We figured out the processes. And then we selected a software that would match what you wanted to do. And that's really critical because if you picked the wrong one, it wouldn't do it, even if it was a good software. We implemented it, and we got improvement. And the goal was to get improvement. The goal was not to set up a software system, even though a software system was set up. So that's something you did. And that's pretty unique. And so we use technology to assist, but not actually do everything. And it does help. But it's not that. So what do we do with the software? Well, these are some boxes we have there. First of all, you selected a competitive software contract. And we don't take any credit for this. But the software you selected, Mainstar, the amount of money you paid for it, I don't know how you did this. It's about a third of what we see people buy it for. Now, I don't know how that worked. But we weren't involved in that process. But somehow you got a software that you paid $150,000. It's probably worth a half a million dollars. And I don't know how you got it, but you did. I wanted to call the owner of the company and ask him how that happened, but I didn't want to do that. I thought it might impact this product somewhat. But we're working on another product with it, and we know how much it costs. I know how much people are buying it for. Some people pay a million dollars for this software. Some people pay a half a million dollars, depending on the size of the organization. So you guys are a really good deal. We compiled data, and we imported the data. You might say, well, it's a big deal. Well, it is a big deal, because most systems you get, and then you have to say, okay, now we've got to load the database. We've got to figure out what we need. We figured out what we needed before we started, and then we compiled the data. We loaded the system up. In three and a half months, you were operational. You might say, well, how big a deal is that? That's a huge deal. Most of the time, it takes years. You know, I mean, when we did, I was in Pinellas, it took two years. Two years in Pinellas. I know some agencies that take a decade. We're not working on it, but, you know, if you get the wrong system, you keep cycling, trying to make that thing work. So in three and a half months, we replaced all of the existing systems. Doesn't mean we use the software fully, because we didn't, but we replaced the systems you had in place. Now you track 100% of your work. If you don't track your work, and you don't know what you're doing, then how can you figure out how to improve, right? If you don't know who you are, how are you going to get better? So you were only tracking about 30%, and that was generous. That was generous medicine, 30%. And then equipment wasn't even tracked. You didn't even know what equipment you were using. There was no record of the equipment that you were using. There was a spreadsheet. You had about 20, 25 spreadsheets that you were trying to track stuff. The staff knew they needed to do it, but they just didn't know how to do it. Those spreadsheets are gone. You don't have the, I mean, time takes, so the time to put the data in is actually less than it was before. You integrate it with GIS. You say, well, you had GIS, so what you had before, you had a GIS system that you had to maintain over here. Then you had this other work system over here. They weren't tied together. Now they're the one system. Now you can track events. And you say, well, gosh, well, now we've got to have another thing for tracking. What you have is a work order comes up, and you want to track it to a certain, you know, a Christmas parade. You just check a box, and it automatically goes. If it's a FEMA event, even after the fact, you can go back and say, well, that work order was actually FEMA. Check the box, and then the data can be pulled out. So you don't have to, so it's going to save you time. Plus, the other thing is, let's say we lose power, and you say, well, how, in a FEMA event, how are we going to track what we're doing? They're disconnected service. In other words, they have a handheld unit. They can put all the data in. When the service comes back up, it reconnects. So that's set up. That's a big deal. It's not a big deal until you need it, but when you need it, you need it, you know. So that was set up. So this was done in months and not years. This is, again, a big deal. And again, Florida APWA asked you guys to present, and I think Michelle and Sue presented, I think. And I think it was almost 200 people in that room. It was one of the biggest presentations, because I want to know, how did they do this? How is this possible? Because people are taking years. They're trying to figure out how you do it so quickly. This is the independent processes that I was talking about. These are things that the city could do, and the red means they've done it. Some of the things aren't done, but like, you know, they had a mission statement that didn't match what you're trying to achieve. They need a systems group. In other words, if you're going to get a system, you've got to have somebody to maintain it, right? You don't want a consultant to maintain your system, and you want to maintain it yourself. So Sue set that up. She's got two people that are assigned to that job, Michelle and Tanya. And now they maintain the system. So you have your own. So they went through a whole series of things that they did, that they, the optimization of routes, you know, that we did have to come in and help them in that one, because it did require some technical look and discussion with staff. But anyway, that's not totally complete. Those are some of those that I said that aren't complete yet. Phase C. Phase C is tying the computer system with the business processes. And this is, this is something that's a continuous. It is in place. And you look at this graphic, it's a little busy, and it's got all these check marks and boxes. And you say, what is all this stuff about? Well, those boxes are what APWA says you should have in a maintenance system. And pretty much you have everything. On the far right, they aren't checked. Well, I left it, purposely left it because you're now collecting data. You couldn't check it off until you collected data. You now check off all the boxes, and you're using it to make decisions. One of the first things that had to occur was we had to identify what we were doing. You might say, well, everybody knows what they're doing, but we weren't recording what we're doing. So we had to identify the activities. There's 135 different things that Public Works does. And we said, okay, let's identify them, and let's identify a measurement unit. So it's great to know that you're working on that thing, but how many sidewalks did we grind? How many linear feet of sidewalk did we put in? How many HVAC units did we do? In the past, what they do, they kept a separate spreadsheet. If somebody asked them a question, they might be able to come up with it. And some of it was a little innovative accounting for them to give you the numbers because they didn't have it. They had to guess it. So now we have activities, and these are the activities. That's all done. That was done. We didn't do this. We facilitated. Employees developed this, but we did help them to make sure that they were coming up with things that seemed reasonable. And overhead and equipment rates. Those were developed that actually matched the actual cost. Before that, you used FEMA rates for your equipment. FEMA rates is a national average. It's based on the equipment all over the United States. In LA County, it's based on the state. You're in a basically a small footprint of a city. Your costs are totally different. So the costs that you did have, even though you didn't really use it very often, the ones you have were incorrect. So now we actually use actual costs. So that's done. I put a little star by this one because this is a big deal. You've gone through those 135 activities, and you've actually identified, okay, what is it? What does it mean? And when is it done? Who's doing it? What equipment? What's the method? What's the productivity expected? Probably the only group in the city that estimates what they should be doing and what's the productivity. And this is the internal benchmark that they're using now. These were developed with the employees. We did some benchmarking ourselves to help them come up with numbers that seem visible. And they actually raised the bar. They actually did, they put numbers in there higher than what they really, I think they were doing. But they've met it. Again, they said they could do more, and they did. So this is a big deal. This is in the computer system. So they don't have, there's not a separate file someplace else. It's actually in the computer system. You go into Mainstar and say, let's see the guideline. It can print it out. But now this is a good thing for training new people. New person comes in and said, what do we do? Oh, here's the activities we do. These are the tech things that we do. And Sue is now working on not only having this, she's been working on getting a program in place. In addition to this, she's got something that has video training. If somebody wants to know how to do a patch of pothole, she'll have a video. They can go on just like YouTube almost that will show them how to do that. Even if they don't know how to. If they want to turn a valve, they can do that too. So it's all kind of things that are being used to help people. But this is a key point in that. The other thing they did is they planned the work a year in advance. Now you already budget a year in advance, but when do you actually say the budget matches the work that we're going to do? So what each group has done is they've gone through, and I kind of highlighted the number of days and stuff that they do. This is a big deal because they're planning the work a year in advance. And they've already updated for next year. Well, who updated it? Tanya and Michelle. Yeah. So you guys are doing this. So you have a plan in your advance. Probably the only group in the city that actually has all the work they think they're going to do in the year in advance. Are they going to do all that work? Nah, they won't. They'll get a lot of it done. But if you don't say what you're going to do, if you don't know, if you don't put it down, you don't do it, right? So, Harry, could you... Several of you are managing consultants. You know better than me. Could you pause for one second? Because I want to kind of pull a string here for the city commission in terms of the vulnerability assessment and the efficiency study that we've done and the work plan that we have for the year. Because Commissioner Sam Bergen had asked during the vulnerability assessment, how is it, you know, in the day-to-day when there's a storm, when there's water rising, how is it that we maintain the system and help our residents and, you know, instill the confidence that we're maintaining the stormwater system and so on and so forth. So, you know, this is the shorter-term plan for maintenance of those systems and the stormwater system and that type of a thing. You know, the vulnerability assessment was the plan moving forward, the higher level, how do we maintain our infrastructure? So, you know, in, you know, 5, 10, 15 years out, what is it we need to do? How do we fund it? But this is more in terms of our residents, how, you know, if they have a question regarding the stormwater system in their neighborhood, when was the last time it was clean? How much of it was cleaned? How did we do it? And this is the study that answers that in particular. So, and I don't think that we were clear that night that this is the shorter-term maintenance and work plan for those types of questions from our residents. So, thank you. You're not allowed to say that, Harry. In any way, you cannot say that. No, no, I was kidding you. We don't want to even suggest that that could ever happen again. Thank you very much. Thank you. I know, I see. That's it. Thank you. So, if, let's say we have the event, just theoretical. You're not going to do the work plan, but you're going to know what you didn't do, right? That's a big deal. You're going to say, you know, later you're going to say, okay, what, you know, what Sue did not get done, and Sue would immediately be able to tell you. And you can say the impact, because the impact of these events are more than just the event itself. It's not doing the things that you were planning on doing, right? Harry, if we could also, and I'm glad you have this insert flying in. This, there's a lot of information on this one report, but the slides previous are all building to this report. If we didn't have the activities with the unit of measure, we didn't have our costs, we didn't have the activity defined, which keeps us on track for what we're accomplishing, and, and you, and there's blue letters on there, and those are programs. So, this rolls up to programs. Those roll up to things like the vulnerability study or those categories about what are we going to do and what are we aiming for, and when we look at our budget, our work plan is integral to that. This one, this has costs associated with it. Those are directly activity based, program based costs. They're just grouped differently than our line item budget, but these are married, right? They're married. So, the, the intricacies of this report, I mean, you can't just see by the report, but our staff understands. That's what's even cooler. And so, the changes that we make to our activities or to our service levels, our quality outcomes, how much of it do we want to do? That's comes from you all, and it translates into this, and then we do the work. So, when Mo's asking for sidewalk, what's your plan for sidewalk and for pavers, and we need to come up with a plan. I told Trevor, let's look at this, and he carved out how much sidewalk out of the sidewalk program will be pavers and for downtown, and that's how it has to be done. That means less of the other sidewalk, sidewalk, and, and they found out pretty quick, it was the, maybe the second month of doing the plan versus actual, that they were doing more sidewalk than what we said we were going to do, which wouldn't allow them to get some other work done. And, you know, overall, that's what the whole picture is about, being able to use this tool and these tools, but it's step after step after, they build on, and each change has an effect. Mayor, if I may. So, you know, Sue's been giddy. I've been giddy for the last couple of years because I had the benefit of working with LAC and Sue in a previous life at the county. So, I'm aware of the improvement that's possible and what was achieved previously, and I'm excited at the benefits that we're seeing already and, and where we're going to go moving forward. So, um, Harry and, and Sue kind of touched on it. So, what's really essential in this previous slide, and I'm sorry, I'm kind of losing my voice here, is the fact that this all rolls up, and, you know, we talked about early on that this is not an audit, and it's not. It's an efficiency study. So, it's not something like we do the review of the CAFR or we look at our, uh, carry forwards. We're always looking in a rear view mirror. Um, this allows us to look at the work plan monthly, make the adjustments that Harry mentioned that, that Michelle and Tanya make, but it rolls into that annual plan. So, this is essential. This was critically used in developing the contingency budget for public works because you can take a look at whatever reductions need to be made, and this is critical going forward, given whatever might happen in November or, or in the future, um, based on whatever the state ends up doing in, in future years. But it's essential because it allows us to make adjustments and identify what is the impact to level of service based on whatever cuts we have to make. We're not guessing at what, what's going to get reduced. We can show you with this reduction in force and with this reduction in resources, this is what's going to happen to that level of service. So, there's no guesswork associated with that. This is not a financial audit. This is not something, you know, a company that comes in and looks at the CAFR or, you know, even the Board of Finance can do. This is something that a company that, that does efficiency studies and can implement those studies, um, allows us to do. And, and the exciting part is then this ultimately rolls into, as Sue mentioned, the annual plan. And so that allows you to then start doing program-based budgeting, right? Because historically agencies, they do line item budgeting. But what you want to be able to do is do program-based budgeting because the silos drop. That's what happens during an event that we don't want to talk about, right? The silos drop, everybody jumps in and does what they need to do. Well, this allows you to look at things programmatically. And so if you need to do a certain task or a certain program and it involves more than one department, it doesn't matter because you put the resources in to get the work done and then they go back and do what they need to do. But it's essential in being able to project levels of service. It's essential in being able to do annual plans, which ultimately allows us to do program-based budgeting, which is something that's going to be critical moving forward as our resources begin to constrict. And, you know, Harry kind of mentioned early on that the schedule got shifted a little bit because we weren't able to get the software initially. I don't see that as a detriment because what happens in almost any agency is you try to take a financial software and shoehorn in what you need to get done. And this is not a work management or an asset management software. It's not a financial software. It is a work management software. And that, I think, is why we were able to get the deal that we did and why we were delayed some is because we knew what we needed. The software, what it needed to be able to do to implement so that we could take the activity guidelines, we could take the work that we knew needed to get done and actually put it into a software that didn't require us to shoehorn in what we needed to get done because that's what ends up happening is you try to take an existing financial software and make it do what you need to do as opposed to the other way around. And this is a perfect instance of where we were able to utilize a piggyback software from another agency that had already procured this work and we were able to leverage that. And that's why we were able to get the cost savings and the software that we needed to get done. So I'm going to get off my soapbox now. Okay. Thank you. One other thing that I want to mention on this particular slide. You know, you have this election coming up in November and there's some decision going to be made that could affect you financially. This has an ability to do a what-up analysis. You could actually set up another budget and you could actually evaluate it that way. Sue has the ability to do that. You could go and say, okay, we don't have this amount of money. What can we do with this amount of money? You can actually do that. It does have that ability to do that. And we didn't, haven't set it up to do that yet, but Michelle could. It could be done. So anyway, this is in place. The other thing is you have work requests. If somebody makes a work request, this is inward facing. This is somebody in the building can make a request. It could be outward facing if you wanted it to be, but it's not right now. So they make requests. This is actually a screenshot of it. It actually is linked to the GIS. So when somebody makes a request, it actually locates where they are. So people can make this and it keeps track of it. And if you look at the, so this is done, if you look at the next slide, this is simple. It's very simplistic. When somebody goes in, they pick what they want done. They pick the activity, they put who they are, and it keeps track of it for them. It keeps track of the request. So there's also a request system that's in place that you can be done, and that's in place. Preventative maintenance. I think one of our last meetings, you asked me about preventative maintenance. There's 119 preventative maintenance programs set up. So they're automatically generated. So the work orders get automatically generated. Rather than somebody have to create something, you know there's certain things you need to do. Whether it's, you know, you know, cleaning out an inlet or something like that. You know, HVAC actually creates it. So it allows you to proactively create things. And there's a lot of them. I don't need to show it to you, but there is a lot. I've listed them right there. The other thing is, I mentioned the accounting of the work. The bottom two graphs are what occurred before we set the system in place. You attract, you kept a count of about a third of your labor, and that was generous. You didn't really track accomplishment at all. So you didn't know what you were doing. And then in a couple of months, we were, we increased it. Now it's a hundred percent, but you know, you can see that is the improvement of tracking. If you don't track what you're doing, if you don't know where you are, how can you figure out where you're going to go, right? So that's, that was a big deal. That's totally accounted for. There's a scheduling process in place. I'm not going to go through that detail, but it's the, the, each of the supervisors, they plan their work one to two weeks in advance, every week. So that you have the annual plan for the whole year, then you have the short-term plans. And this is how things get done. Cause you're actually looking at details and then the computer generates what didn't get done that you said you were going to do so you can keep track of it. That's in place. This, this scheduling is probably one of the hardest things our staff has to do because it's so set up and it's so easy to just let the work come in the door and just take it as it comes or decide I'm going to send this crew here today, or there's only four people and I'm going to do this work instead of what we planned. So planning ahead, I'm just going to say kudos to the staff because it's really hard and it's hard. And the only way to do it is to have a system where you have backlogged, you have these PMs and cycles set up. And so that, you know, this is what I need to do and you've planned it ahead. So going to that scheduling meeting every week and the public services is every two weeks. I mean, they cringe when they come in and, but they are explaining to us what they're planning to do, what they didn't get done and how they're going to reschedule it. And what they've done to contact the customer to let them know that they're no longer on schedule for that. So it's that big, busy slide has a lot in it, but I just wanted to give kudos to the staff because it's ongoing. It is not an easy task, but it's well worthwhile. Yeah. Planning maintenance work is very difficult because there's a lot of things that impact it. So they do the best they can, but you got to remember there's not one of the biggest problems they had. They thought if they put it all on schedule, they had to do it all. They didn't realize stuff happens, right? But if you don't write it down, it's just like writing down what you're going to do tomorrow. If you don't write it down, you know, you, so writing it down and having an assistant, plus being accountable. They have a meeting, so they're actually being accountable to Sue and others. And that's a very effective thing. They're still working on it. To be safe, it's done, but they're still working on it because they're still learning how to do that. They track work and it's all done on mobile units instead of, you know, keying it when they get back in. They used to figure out paper and it would bring it back in and somebody, the manager would key it in. Now it's all done and they actually keep track. This is actually, you can actually create a timesheet. This is actually real numbers right here of one individual. You can track exactly what that person did. So you can look at that. So that's, that's the, the other thing is the accountability. It's really the thing I wanted to focus on and much because now that we have the data in place, we say this is what we're supposed to do. What did we do? And we can compare. So this, it's hard to see that, but across the top are months. So you're actually tracking productivity for sidewalk repairs. And the color means stuff. Red means it's outside of, it's too high. You can see it's red, red, red, red, and all of a sudden it's not red anymore. What's happening is they're improving. They're doing things faster, cheaper. So the system's in place. They have to look at it and, and Sue and them, they review this once a month. And then there's another report that they can look at what is the unit cost for all the whole year. So this report is used. It's a big deal. That's why I have the, the, the, uh, up there. So you track labor costs against a plan. Where did that plan come from? Came from those guidelines that we talked about earlier in that plan. So the plan is not just theoretical. You don't set a plan in place and then you walk away and then see what happens. They look at it every month to see where they are. So that's done. This is something I thought you'd find interesting. I picked two activities activities and there's three things we look in productivity. The blue one is average daily production. This is for HVAC. We thought they could do four in a day. They're doing 4.73. That means they're doing more than they thought. We thought, how long does it take? Well, we said it was 2.2 hours. It's taken 1.7 time. What's the cost? You know, we looked at the cost of what they're doing it for. So we actually do comparison. If you look at the one below it, which is solid waste, they're doing ADP, they're doing more. The time unit, they're actually doing it faster, but it rounds it off. But you look at the cost, they're doing it cheaper than they said they were going to do it. We're saving money here. You know, this is that efficiency I was telling you about. They're getting more work done. The other thing is we have dashboards. And there's some that are actually being enhanced right now. The one on the far left just lists what different people have work orders assigned to them. The one on the right is more of a higher level, something that Sue would look at. It shows the work order, work request, you know, what are created and which ones are closed. And she has a graphics below that. Then you have work orders. Work request is saying, go do something. Work order is confirming the work request and you're doing it. And then you have PMs. So we can look at it statistically. And then those circles at the bottom are the semicircles. This is actually tracking specific activities. It says for the first one, it says, you know, how long is it going to take to do, you know, a certain activity? And we said it was going to take about two hours. It's taken 2.1, you know, 2.2 hours and 2 and 2.1. So of the ones at the bottom, this is the way to look at productivity again, graphically, rather than have to look at reports. These are being set up for all the groups. So instead of having to look at a report, you know, these guys are maintenance guys and gals, you know, make it simple. And then the other thing, Sue can look at it and she said, well, wait a minute, what's going on here? Or Michelle or Tanya, they can look at it and look at these numbers. So this is another way they have to follow through. So that's in place. Now there's been some spinoffs from this too. I mean, all these things have some spinoffs. So first of all, Sue has used the data for grants already. It's there. FEMA support, we've already mentioned, you can actually track to FEMA. Overhead rates and equipment rates exist. You have fleet mechanic rates for the first time, instead of guessing it. You've eliminated certain database. You don't need an Avalon and Trashflow anymore. You've developed management skills for the staff. Before, basically like Sue said, it came in, they request, you request, you know, and then they go do the work. That's not supervision. That's not management. That's just shifting work to the employees. So now they have to think about it. They have to plan the work. They have to schedule the work. And then they have to track to see how they did. Inventory control's in place. Onboarding, if you bring somebody new, you've got tools in place to explain what you do. We've documented the workflow. Performance measures are in place. The technology's there for people to use. And then you've been acknowledged by a lot of different people. So there's been a lot of spinoffs here. The other thing is the tools are in place now. Let's say three years from now, there's sewer. Somebody's not here. You can tell if they got off point because you're tracking against it. So there's an accountability that's been set up. You're not going to be able to get away from it because it's there. There's other savings that could happen. You know, we talked about that audit of routes that there's some possibility there for even more savings. Optimizing truck size. We're talking about pickup trucks. You've got people that are driving around with 450s. Did they really need a 450 to come and change the flag? I mean, maybe we could buy a smaller vehicle. So Sue's already looking at that. The SLA, that's going to have some impact because all of a sudden we're not going to do things we're doing now because people don't want to pay for it. And then we've looked at scheduling. There's also opportunities on the pavement management system. We can optimize it. And then we're still looking at the five-day week. That's one of the things that's not done that Sue has on her list of things to look at. So divisions are planning work. They're scheduling weekly. They're monitoring and making decisions. The results will be reported to the city manager. Right now, they're all in place. So that's going to be happening. And the process is in place for continual improvement. Again, as I said, really, it's a starting point. We did have some success so far, but the big success is going to be the future of using this. So yes, you've had a reduction in that budget, but I think it's even more than that, that 7%. So our initial projection was 1.7. We're right now showing 2.1. But to be very honest with you, the real savings is the future because you're going to be using that same thing, the same tools in place. And a lot of things you got rid of were recurring costs that you're not going to see anymore. You know, if you don't have equipment that you've got to maintain, you don't have to pay for equipment that's not there, right? So you don't have to pay for replacement. You don't have to replace for the maintenance of it, the fuel. So the savings that we made, we exceeded by about 400,000 in our projection. But the real, it really continues with the city. The city's going to be, can do more things with it. You know, Sue and her staff are already looking at other things. They're already telling me about other processes that they think they can improve. You've documented it. You've got a process in place. So if you want to do it again, you've got it set up. In fact, Michelle is already setting up an environmental group within solid waste herself with no help from us. She and Tanya are doing it independently. They know what to do. So they're setting the system up. So the key thing is to be maintained is somebody's got to maintain it. So Sue has set up a system group and that's their responsibility. And plus we're cross-training the people to use it. But I'm sorry we went a little bit long. Thank you for your time. And I'll be glad to answer any questions. And I think that Sue said that you're going to be getting a document in the future. It's going to, but we wanted to get your feedback before we gave you the document. So. Okay. Thank you for any questions. I'm going to start with Commissioner Gao. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you for a very in-depth presentation. Appreciate it. The cost of savings that keep coming up is, that is a transitional cost savings, right? As we implement this, at some point we'll get the efficiencies down. But because of historical efficiencies, we'll just know what the costs are as opposed to, right? In my understanding, are we always going to see, hey, we saved 1.5 million this year. Are we going to see that in 10 years? Or, you know, if you're understanding, if you're understanding my question or my thought. We will be able to see the savings, yes. We will be able to look at those and identify where those savings occurred. Like what you see right now from the savings on the slide, we've taken out expenses. We've tracked them and shown you the, kind of like a program budget, actually. It's just a piece of that activity. But in our line item budget, those cuts have been made. So that's why in the line item budget, you see the reduction of, from 25 to 27, 7%. And actually it was, it's probably double that. Because we increased our capital by 28. So we, we'll, you'll see the savings in the budget, line item budget. And we'll be able to talk to the savings and tell you what those savings are. I can't tell you if it's going to be 1.5 million in the future. But I be, I believe as they become more efficient, I think the first few years will show the greatest savings. But then you'll have recurring savings that you're not incurring. So they won't show up in your budget. They'll show up as your, you'll come to just rely on them in your base budget as knowns. We're efficient. We're doing this. One thing that we didn't mention is that by setting up this whole system, it allows us to compare directly to contract services. So because we have all the pieces, we can say, okay, if we have the same information, what does this cost for, and we, even those units of measure were set up intended so we could compare ourselves. We have our overhead, our total cost. So if we don't do this work anymore and we contract it out, how much supervision goes away? How many staff go away? What's the material cost that goes away? And that's how we did the contingency budget this year. Those cuts that I showed in our proposed in the contingency budget is exactly the same way. So the capability is there to do that. You can always compare. That'd be a good way to say savings. We benchmark against ourself, but we have the ability to benchmark against nationwide standards, local contracts to tell you this is our savings. This is, this is true savings and you're not seeing it in your budget. It won't have a cut, but you can do that. You can compare. Thank you. One, certainly, this is just personal for me. I love the idea that we're able to find efficiencies. Why use an F-350 when an F-250 will do, or 250, 150? I told them you would love that one. I did. I said, Commissioner Gow's going to love this one. I listened. I heard that was just wonderful. We'll get to a little talk of trucks soon enough. It'd be wonderful. Also that it is absolutely fabulous that we're looking at this and we're looking at efficiencies. And right once this is implemented down the road, we're really going to be able to tell the residents we're as efficient as we can be. We're always looking for those. But there was part of this, the dashboard currently isn't outward facing. Is there somewhere we're going to implement it that will be outward facing? So the residents, not just hearing from us, that they can see, or they can see that it may not be their street, but their neighborhood. Hey, this is where we cleaned out the storm water systems, et cetera, et cetera. So they have some comfort, especially as we get closer to hurricane season, that their neighborhood is prepared. We certainly can make those outward. And we've had that discussion. The first thing, our first goal was really to feed the strategic plan and those dashboards so that that data directly affects that. And I'm not talking about software connections. I'm talking about real data going into the system so that you can see that on the dashboards so we can see, are we, you know, on the needle or are we better? And, but both the customer interface and dashboards are on our future list. That's all that I had, Mayor. Thank you. Uh, commissioner regard questions. Thank you, mayor. Uh, and thank you, Harry and staff. This is a very comprehensive 63 page study summary. And, uh, there's an expression called death by PowerPoint. We got real close. Sorry about that. Sorry about that. That's okay. I understand the necessity of trying to present your information. I have a number of questions. First of all, when I'm looking at an expense budget that combines both, uh, capital and operating, it's tough to discern trends. Uh, for instance, you go, you have a huge increase in, uh, 24 to 25 and then it looks like it levels out. I suspect that's because of capital increases. Is that the case? That is correct. And, um, we do look at the trends in the software, um, on that budget page that that, um, insert came from, there are three different graphs so that you can look at it by capital, by fund, by division. Um, so it does break it out a little more in the line item budget, but we have much more capability to do it by program and by activity in the system. Okay. Thanks. Um, I noted on slide number nine that you have, uh, 12 percent with no action. Any, should we be looking at that to see what that no action category is and what's inside there? Oh, we are. Yes. We're, we're just implementing up here. Oh, uh, that's up to you. Okay. Um, we, we are, some of them are just a matter of timing. Um, some of them are policy that it has to be put in place and it just takes a little longer. Um, but we are very aware because we're monitoring actually the systems group. We meet weekly to see what have we done. And our focus has been on helping staff make sure that they're implementing the software business processes in the software so that, um, they're on target. As Harry mentioned, they're still, uh, working on the schedule. They're still struggling with some things. We have also still been learning from our software vendor as well as, uh, LAC on how to modify our queries, how to modify our dashboards, you know, the kind of the finished topping. But we haven't lost sight of our list to do of those, um, left, those items that are still left. Those 12% were all independent tasks. Yeah. They're all that the city is starting to work on. One of them was, uh, that I mentioned was the, uh, the video training, but we didn't check it off. Video training. Yeah. Where they actually got that set up. That's been approved. Right. And there was a couple of tasks like that that have not going to be, there was an evaluation of, uh, of, uh, five four tens versus five eights and Sue wanted to get some data before she did that. But there's nothing, none of those tasks are tasks that we've been tasked. It's tasks that the city has and they wanted to get data on. I had no doubt about that, Harry. I mean, I, I think the tough question for me is the, so what to our citizens here, um, in either savings in reductions of, uh, enterprise fund fees or in tax savings, that kind of thing. So we talk about savings. How does that translate into citizen savings? How it translate into what? Citizen savings. Well, or better or better services or those kinds of things, because that's the real, so what here? So what do we get to our citizens that's either better, faster or cheaper? Correct. Well, it definitely translates directly to service level and what the citizens expect already. Just with our feedback loop of customer service, um, they actually get an answer. Um, and we are communicating with them about our schedule for that particular thing. We may have to tell them it's on the backlog and this curb piece that you want that holds, you know, six inches of water, uh, you know, length, um, and it's just a couple deep is, you know, on our lower priority list and we are, we're gonna, we don't have a schedule for you. We'll look at it six months, but we'll fix that sidewalk in front of your house, you know, in two weeks and, you know, two weeks out and it's scheduled for this date because we're clustering sidewalk to become more efficient. Um, so service level is clear as far as, um, savings to the customer. We didn't just save in general fund. I mean, we've been focused on that lately because of the potential legislation, but the reality is we've, we've cut in solid ways significant. We, if you look at individually on those line item budgets, that's what it results in. When we go to look at the rate studies for our, um, enterprise, um, funds, we're, we're gonna realize that we're gonna put that in our model. So that is a, when we do work more efficiently, I mean, the models are set up on what we're current, what we were doing when we, they did the study. Well, in each of our studies, we've taken the model. We've asked for a model in that study so that we can do the calculations and finance. We work with them. And so now we're gonna come back to you guys and talk about stormwater and some of those impacts, even though stormwater primarily is capital. The most of those are from, from capital projects. But still, this still has an impact and we will be able to show you that. So it does have an impact to the citizen, either absorbing increases that are material costs and inflation. Um, and we saw that in pub in solid waste. I mean, we had increased disposal rates, but a decrease in disposal costs and expenses because we're not dumping as much material there that because we're not taking the unincorporated down. Those are real things that impact. We'll be running that up against the rate and the rates that were recommended to say, do we need to have the same increase? And coming back to you with that. Well, um, I'll get into comments later. Thank you, Mayor. Okay. Thank you. Uh, questions, Commissioner? I like that question. Oh, sorry. Uh, Commissioner Zandbergen, questions? When we did, um, reduce that amount of equipment. I guess my questions would be specifically for you. Has that increased, uh, in cost in our need to rent pieces of equipment to replace? We actually, um, planned for some rentals, um, and we took those, those reductions. We, our budget increased in rental area. In reality, it has not increased, but, um, anticipate that it would say it's solid waste. Those trucks are pretty expensive. And so we have rented them before. So we have a rental line item. So it hasn't actually increased. What kind of vehicle? Solid waste. Oh, rental. So we can actually rent a solid waste vehicle? Yeah. Yes, we have. And we have, um, I think the year that we had the, what do you call it? Hilton? Um, we'll call it, we'll use that and try to be safe. Um, so, uh, we, we actually rented one for four months. And that was before we got the influx, influx and, um, your support to get those replacements from solid waste. And I remember Mo asking me, well, if we don't do this, I mean, are you saying we should have been doing this before? And I'm like, yes, we should have been doing this all along because it actually cost us not just those four months of rental, but it cost overtime because when you don't have that many vehicles, you have to work more days and then you have to work your staff more days. So, um, yeah. So that being said, is there any way that this has increased the amount of labor that we contract? Any subcontracted labor? Or is our staff able to continue to handle its day-to-day tasks? In, in equipment area or just every day? Anything. We have consciously chosen to do some contract work. We've been able to do a little more sidewalk work, but not at the expense of our staff. And we haven't, uh, the only proposals on staff have been increases from, reductions have been increases from efficiency and that that resource is not needed in our work plan or in the contingency budget and the service levels have been outlined for you. You know, you recently saw probably last week, a very nice handwritten letter that I received because of your staff taking care of it. You know, it was such a minor thing to most people, but when a 90 year old woman has to walk in the street to go to the store over someone that was, that was important to that, that lady. And she's a citizen and that's who we work for. How do you prioritize? I mean, how did she get, you know, it was maybe took a week, week and a half to get that limb trimmed. How, how was your office partition, uh, prioritized in the morning? So I'm so glad you asked that question because, I mean, it's one of the reasons I work here is the heart here, the heart of staff and the heart of the citizens and the relationship between them. And when we prioritize work, um, if a citizen's called it in and they've reported it, it gets scheduled. And then what we do is look for work around that and say, okay, what other work do we have that we can do that's around that? So that we can meet the citizen's needs and, you know, what they've recognized or we go and identify work that's in that particular area. So we, we're still efficient, but that we're meeting their needs and getting them trimmed. If a citizen calls and we talk about whether it's valid, we talk with a citizen about if it's not valid, we'll do our best to explain it. And then usually you guys get the call. Um, if it's, you know, not something within the service level, there can be exceptions to service level occasionally, but it has to, you know, really be warranted and it has to be, um, something we have to ask ourselves, would we do this again for someone else? And if the answer is yes, then we'll do it. Well, if I may, I mean, things like life safety issues, a branch over a stop sign that completely obscures it or something, they do that the same day. Absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up. Yeah, right. I mean, she simply had to walk in the street because, you know, this guy's limb was hanging over so good. I mean, that was, that was, it meant a lot to me that you got it done. And the last thing, so the staff arrives in the morning, you know, they, their, their, their work is assigned. They have the tools, they have the equipment that is in that specific vehicle. It, I mean, is that how this would work? So when I come in in the morning and I have to be assigned to a job, the truck's ready, the equipment's ready. What, what makes it efficient? And are we doing the best that we can? Well, and we're still working on that, but yes, um, the, the trucks and all are prepared the night before, um, because we have a schedule, they know what's on the schedule. What the first thing in the morning when they meet, the first thing is who's missing, what do we have to adjust? And so those are minor adjustments. And I mean, from the time I got here, some, I mean, I, some people were in the yard two hours before they got out looking, they're looking for stuff. They're trying to find which, um, assignment they're going to get, what work order, uh, just, just different things. Uh, they didn't have their vehicles ready, but staff has really risen to the occasion. And so, no, they're, they're ready to go in the morning. They usually know, well, they all know in the recover, they cover the schedule, what's planned for the week, uh, in public services case, what's planned for two weeks. And then they just make adjustments. So, you know, are they as efficient as they possibly could be? I think that that's a question for them, but I think they're working on it. I think they're working on it all the time. That was perfect. You brought it all together in that last sentence. That's all I had. Do we have a solid waste director yet? Do we have a new solid waste director? No. Okay. Are we close to that or? Um, we're, we're, we're reorganizing solid waste. And so we'll have a solid waste manager, just like we have public service manager, facility manager. So we have rewritten that job description and it's, it's close to going out. I mean, I'll ask HR, they don't have it yet. So I don't want to blame HR. Um, but we also reorganize so that the foreman is changed in those pay grades. So we won't have a superintendent, our assistant director that is out will be part of, um, overseeing fleet and solid waste and take on some of those duties. So we've restructured it and there won't be a solid waste director. It'll be the same as the other divisions in public works. Yeah. I've just, I know we lost two huge positions there. We did. It's hard to understand how we're going to be efficient if we aren't filling those key positions. And I appreciate restructuring. You know, I have the chance. I think that's a great question because I, I can, it's unbelievable the improvement that has occurred in four months. And, um, we have had to pick up some of those duties. There's no doubt. Um, you know, most more has been placed on everybody's, um, plate. In fact, I mean, we have two vacancies there, driver vacancies. And so our foreman and our current, well, Brian's acting manager. And, um, and then the two, the foreman and the lead have all been doing overtime and it shows, but it's because we have two vacancies as drivers is why they're needing that. But we, we are planning on filling in and it's close to go into advertisement. Um, so a couple of questions. Um, first of all, I did from a citizen, I got a text that said, boring topic. And I think, you know, you know, it's kind of boring, but it's important, right? Yes. Um, okay. I just got a kick out of that. Um, so a few things, um, when will we get the final document? I'm sorry. When will we get the final document, the final report? Probably, you know, we got a draft probably this week because we wanted to get input from you and then you can still make a comment on it if you'd like. Okay. And then we'll clean it. But we wanted to make sure that you didn't say something or, you know, ask us something and we wanted to add it. Like you made some really good comments, uh, you know, about, uh, you know, potential outward facing, uh, you know, how does it affect the citizens? I think we ought to probably document a little bit better in the report. Okay. And, um, I'm glad you made those comments. No, thank you. Um, so, uh, 12 of 63, which is the savings to date, the $1,300,000. I know you guys did a little cheat sheet about the hard costs and the hard savings. And basically I think, uh, it basically reiterates, uh, the 1.3 million here. Um, and, and actually what I'd really like to get, if you could, I'm, I'm sure there's a few pages that are behind that, that basically detail, you know, what, you know, what the position changes are, what the equipment surplus items specifically were, uh, you know, and obviously there's a factor of the revenue we lost because we got, we did away with the unincorporated. So that calculation sheet that gets you to those numbers is what I'd really like to see. So I can really understand the hard, the hard, uh, the hard savings and the hard costs, uh, understanding what you're trying to do for the future. I get that. And that's, I mean, it's good stuff. Okay. Is the, um, expense with, uh, the consultant fees for expenses adequate? Yeah, I think so. Those are the two hard costs, right? The software costs and, uh, and the Harry's costs. Yes. Exorbitant costs. So just kidding, actually, just so we know. Um, and, um, yeah, just mine, because actually we got the backup to that, you can already see in the hard costs what, what we're gaining. So, um, so yeah, if you could do that, that'd be awesome. Um, let's see. And making sure I'm clear, the specific areas that we've done this in fleet, public services, solid waste facilities, nowhere else. Those four areas. Correct. All of public works. Gotcha. Okay. Um, are we planning to do it in other areas? Yes. We'd like to definitely like to expand the effort. Just want to make sure it's working here and productive and implement it. Uh, we're going to have lots of lessons learned, but we definitely, I think most certainly in utilities, would be the next that we would look at. Um, so, you know, been around the track with some of this stuff. So the devil's in the detail, devil's in the staff's buy-in, devil's in. So talk to me about that. Like if I was to go talk to the rank and file, would they be like, oh my God, there's a joke. Give me a break. Da, da, da, da, da. What would they say to me? You might have some saying that. I mean, honestly, um, there's still some people that just can't make the connection. Um, they don't understand, why we're doing this. And there's also the overlap where we haven't eliminated some of the duplication. Um, and then we want to make sure that the software is covering all those questions. So I'd say there'd be some, you know, moaning about that duplication. But if you talk to public services, um, they're going to connect everything. I mean, Brian, um, told me he can't believe how much they're getting done. Um, and that he can see it. Um, so I think they, they will say they've been involved from the beginning. They can change their plans. They have been changing them. As far as a staff member going out and doing sidewalk or facilities, you know, they might just say, well, I know I can just take my iPad and put the stuff in, you know, like to them, what else has changed. I don't know. At least I get to do jobs next to each other, but I, I don't, it, I, we meet with them every single month. So we hear the negative. We hear if there's some, you know, concern, and then we try to nail it down. What's the problem? Is it entry? Is it, well, like sideways, they want a bigger square to mark their X. That's where their concern is. And that's a concern because that's the use. Um, but overall though, we have, we have acceptance. So talk to anybody you want. Yeah. Let me, well, the city manager doesn't want me going out there, right? But yeah. Okay. Sorry. Is that offer open? The city manager will let you know. No. And I mean, trust me, I get change is difficult and this kind of change is difficult. And I'm assuming we've probably had a few people self-select out because they don't want, uh, they don't want to deal with it. But that is part of the process. Mayor, if I may, I mean, um, you know, it happened when Sue and I were at the county. It's, it's happened here. You know, it's not easy. Scheduling the work, you know, being held accountable, but it's necessary. Right. And we've had what Sue terms self-ejection, right? Uh, the, uh, city manager is a Star Trek fan. So I'll, I'll use an analogy. We are the board. You will be assimilated. So, you know, you can either get on board and do the work and become efficient, or maybe you just need to go somewhere else. But I will say, I mean, I find it, it, if you want to be successful, right? I mean, you have to work with people and listen, they're the ones with the ideas. And so I think the ideas take over, you know, that they speak for themselves and put, if somebody is negative, they'll go figure it out. We have people helping each other. You know, some of our staff is technology challenged and, you know, it's a big jump to go take an iPad out, even if you're just checkmarking something. And I'm saying, even if you're just for them, that's a big step. So I think we're still working along those lines, but we are going out and listening to them. That's not counting the individual sessions that we're doing with them. Um, there's certainly more improvement that we can do to make their lives easier. And I mean, but they're getting a lot more work done. And that overall, we just get a very positive impression. And Jennifer's been out. Um, she was recently at Solid Waste for her listening sessions, her communication sessions. And yeah, she can speak to that. So, so my observation is, and you know, twice a year, I go out to all the departments and talk to them in their workplaces. And, uh, most specifically these divisions, the employee engagement is, is much, uh, higher, if you will. Um, and you know, one of the reasons, and I've said this before, why, um, I really a hundred percent supported this effort to begin with was when I first got to the the city of Dunedin nine years ago, specifically public works. Um, they, uh, there was a lot of dissension in public works. There was a lot of, uh, and I met with them without supervisors in the room, just me. And, um, they did feel as, as Sue had said that they could do better, that they could do more work, uh, that they could, uh, be more organized. They didn't like staying in the yard for two hours. They wanted to get out and get their job because it means they're coming two hours later, maybe or whatever. So, um, they really had wanted to be more efficient. And now I see that when I talk to those same people who, some of them who are still here and talk to them about this, they're, they're grateful and engaged. Um, and I think that's really, really important. And I'm sorry for those who didn't want to get on board with the efficiency study. I really am. Um, I was hoping that everybody would, you always want a hundred percent. Uh, it, it, but like, like Jorge is saying, and Sue is saying, it's not abnormal for people to leave, but I am seeing a greater level of engagement in these divisions. And, and I think it's important that we get through this successful implementation and continue and then, and then, uh, expand it throughout the organization. Because eventually, I mean, you know, once we realize the efficiencies, uh, it just makes everybody's life very much easier. And they do feel that they had a say in, in their work plan. Cool. Good. Thank you. Um, so you've kind of touched on this a little bit. I think I just want to make sure I understand it. So we, as you do these things, um, how, how do you know that the standards you're setting within your work schedule are basically optimum? Like how long it takes? Like, how do you know that you don't drift into, well, usually it could take an hour, but most of us are just doing it too. Cause you know, um, so how, how do we know if, how do you, how do you make sure that you're continually optimizing the time element versus it falling into a category of, it's not really an optimum time at all. There's a lot more that could be done, but now we've accepted this as this gets done in two hours, but actually optimum, it could be done in an hour. How do you make sure that gets built in somehow? Well, you know, the, the data will help them look against the plan, but this does not take away the responsibility of the supervisor. The supervisor has got to look at the data and then when they annually review these work methods, plus it gives you a direct way of comparison to others. You, you're going to be able to actually compare directly to a contractor if you want to, you can, you got all information for first time. So you can compare against others. There are enter, there are national standards on certain things that they can look at, but I haven't found those to be that effective. But what happens is that the managers and the supervisors, even sue or even the system occasionally have to spot check this stuff because you know, it's like everything else. If you know, out of sight, out of mind. So you do have to do follow through, but a combination, you can compare it against outsourcing. You could compare it, not say you're going to outsource, but one of the things that we haven't done that we've, we suggested you do is we suggest that every activity you have, you compare to see if you should be doing it. That hasn't happened yet. And that's one of the things that Sue's got to do. And that way each year you look at each activity and say, oh, wait a minute, our cost is out of line. Why is it? Can we learn from the, the, the contractor or, or can we, doesn't mean you could outsource it, but you should still look at it. And then you can also look at other agencies, but not a lot of agencies have the data you have, to be honest with you. So that's a little bit harder to do, but then a follow through on that. And then when they do the guidelines, they got to look and say, if, if we, if we reduced the crew from a four to a three, we would do less work, but is the cost proportionally less? So the, the tools in place for them to do that, to play the what if game, they haven't done that yet. So that's what, there's some things, there's going to be a limit to how much you can keep, you can keep improving and keep better and better and better. But basically it's going to help you maintain where you are. And then when you have to come on with new tasks, you'll be able to take those easier, but the follow-up and comparing to others is the way you do it. Yeah. No, I mean, I, I think that's a good. And if I may. Supervisors in comparison in there, Michelle. Michelle Monteclera, Public Works. You know, I, I'm in the weeds with this. So we're always benchmarking, you know, month to month, what we plan to do versus what we actually do. And we're tracking those metrics month to month. So that when the next year, when we do our plan, we can make the necessary adjustments. If we're actually doing more than what we plan to do, we can make that adjustment in the following year. So, you know, our, our monthly meetings, and you all are welcome to attend, you know, we really talk through the activities of what we do, because that is the core of our work. Right. So I thought that would be valuable. You probably see the exceptional worker too, sometimes. That's what I was going to say. This one can do it. Hey, how come you guys can't do it? And yeah, just quickly, because I, we're, we're just real quick to commissioner earlier, just, it also allows them to do, as we get into these service level agreements, instead of just allocating costs based historically on square footage. Now you can look at actual costs. This facility has expended these costs historically. So we should build according to that and not based on square footage. So it allows us to do that. Got it. Thank you. Um, and then, um, I don't know, Dary asked for a quick answer on current, current schedule versus five day work week. Are most of them working four tens? I can, yeah, I, well, no, I can answer that real quick. Um, we changed in solid waste when we did the unincorporated change to five days. Um, fleet is still 10, public services, still 10, facilities is still 10. So we are still need to look at that. A lot of that has to do with the incentive to hire. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Gotcha. Can I get Fridays off or something or Mondays on? No, just kidding. Okay. You have to work four 10 hour days though. Yeah, I get, well, yeah, that's true. Well, yeah, I think we're 24 seven, aren't we guys? Um, so, uh, and my last thing, and this is maybe something you just can get me. So I kind of want an example, like, and I, I saw that one of the areas are done is the custodial work management program. I just think it would be interesting to see kind of if that's completed, like, how does that populate? How does that populate in preventative and then ongoing work? I, I, it would just be nice to see some live in action. I mean, cause custodial preventative maintenance and a schedule has been something I've wanted for like ever, ever, ever. Um, so I'd kind of love to see how that give it, you know, just see an example of it. Yeah. The detail or, you know, schedule a time with me to go over it. Cause I'd kind of like to see how that actually functions. Um, I just, I think that would be kind of interesting. So, um, okay. Um, I don't think I have any other questions. Uh, just make sure. Does anybody else have a follow-up? Just a point of clarification, if I may, Mayor, on your request, the, um, you would just want to sit with staff to go over that? Yeah. I think that, yeah, I want to see how it works off the computer. Right. Are they like, oh, I come in, you know, next week I'm planning my schedule. Oh, here's the population. Oh, Hale Center needs this. And I know it's their time to change out their air conditioning filters or whatever it is. And then how that turns into the work schedule and then how you have time for additional work or how that works. Okay. Um, okay. No additional questions. I am going to go to final comments. I'll start with, uh, uh, Commissioner Sandberg. Well, as long as everything we do moves towards the betterment of the community for the citizens, then I'm all in favor of it. But we also have to realize that we could be, you know, heading into some reductions in our city income. So, as long as we're taking care of the citizens, then I'm fully in favor of that. Thank you. Before I continue with our final comments, uh, Commissioner Gow reminded me, I did not open it to public input. So anyone in the audience wish to come forward and speak on this item, come forward, name an address for the record and three minutes. Quickly becoming a regular at our meetings. I like, I love it. I love it. Good morning. Rita Foley, 700 Meese Plaza, apartment 432 Dunedin. Um, one thing that was brought up that really piqued my concern is the downsizing of the vehicles going from the F-350 dualies, all due respect, Commissioner Gow down to the toy trucks. Um, and for everyday purposes, I'm sure that's fine, but I don't want you to be penny wise and pound foolish and ask that before you make any of these changes, please talk to the harbormaster, the fire department, the safety, Pinellas County, to make sure that when we need those big trucks in a storm, that we still have them. That's it. Thank you. Thank you, Rita. Thank you. Um, anyone else out in the audience wish to come forward and speak on an item? This item. So, okay. Thank you. Seeing nobody else, I'll close public input and we'll continue. Commission final comments. Commissioner Gow. Thank you, Rita. Uh, certainly that goes without saying that you never just want to go small just for go small, right? They still need something to do the job. I don't know. Sometimes your message is good. No, I'm just kidding. No, no. Just a matter of smaller can do the job, then let's go smaller. Um, uh, no real final comment. Well done. I'm excited. I love improvement, uh, to the mayor's, mayor's point. It'd be nice to be able to see where the rubber meets the road and, uh, what the staff is seeing. Uh, but other than that, great job. Thank you very much. Thank you. Commissioner Degard, final comments? Yes, I have a 48-page PowerPoint I'd like to. What about 63? Come on. Mine's condensed. Uh, there's an expression. The map is not the terrain. Okay. It's, uh, it's, uh, term and how we view the world. But up until now, it doesn't appear we had the map. And now we have the map. So we can begin to operate better and more informed on an informed basis. And leadership can have better outcomes and know where we are. So I salute this. Harry, great job. Staff, great job. I'm very impressed. Um, but in what I view, I always like to say, what does this do to our citizens? How does this impact our citizens? It's great to look on the bottom of the page and say, we just saved $2.1 million. That's wonderful. And I, but I know what I'm going to hear out in the public, which is, okay, what does that mean to me? Does it mean my services are going to be faster? Is it going to be my rates are going to go down? Taxes are going to go down? That's the translation I need up here. So we're not getting that translation. We're not seeing where that's going to go. Yes, I know we're not done. I know this is only the beginning. So I know that you hesitate doing translational, uh, pieces until that's the case, but we still need that. So get us into that translational piece. My bottom line is great job. Thank you. Okay. Um, so, you know, I was reading something recently about, you know, the simple thing of doing a to-do list at night before you go to bed and how much more productive you are the next day. Um, so you, you blend that with, um, you know, well thought out preventive maintenance scheduling, um, and you build in your to-do list, um, for the day. Um, and you are able to manage that and draw comparisons and, uh, you know, there's just, there's nothing of a good stuff that can come out of that. So I think, um, it's a tough, it's, these are tough programs to implement and sustain and get buy-in and, uh, it's hard to lose the steam. So I think that you, I think so far we've done a great job and I'm impressed with the work and, um, yeah, let's just keep forging on, but good job. Thank you, Harry. Thank you, Sue, Jorge, Michelle. Um, thanks for bringing this forward. Thank you. Okay. Okay. We're going to take a short break and then we're going to go to Gladys Douglas Preserve phase two. Okay. And I get the meeting rolling again. Uh, that's still a lot to do on the agenda. Gladys Douglas Preserve phase two development update, uh, staff presentation. We have Tony and we have our consultants. So I'll let you lead the chart and chill. City commission, uh, members of the public, uh, pleased to be here to present an update on the Gladys Douglas Preserve project. Uh, phase two design has been ongoing. Can I get the PowerPoint up? Screen. Here we go. All right. Um, I want to take, uh, take everybody through a brief history of the project. Just a reminder, it hasn't been out in the public for, for quite some time. Uh, a little bit about the management plan that helped with some of the funding. Uh, Tony, before you do that, do you want to just introduce everybody who's kind of here? Yes, absolutely. So, um, we have Joe McLemore from our, our parks operations. Uh, we have Bruce Wirth, who's been assisting with the, uh, the management of the project. Uh, WJA, if you'd like to introduce yourselves. Jeff McDowell, a studio director for WJA and project lead. Also have over here, uh, Jason Sheridan, our civil engineer from Pannoni and the project manager from WJA architects, Stephanie Ezell. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Sorry to interrupt, but go ahead. Oh, great. Um, so I'll, I'll take you through a little bit of the recap of the phase one development, some of the activities that have been taking place since, and then we'll hand it off, uh, for the phase two overview. Um, so Gladys Douglas preserve. This is a different than some of our traditional parks. This is a special place that has, uh, a variety of flora and fauna that you don't see anywhere else. And it's, it's, uh, a preserve that is meant to protect the watershed, protect different, uh, the various animal and plant life that is there. Uh, so the management plan reflects that as a conservation area and the activities that we're doing in there are, uh, to preserve the natural resources for, for basically, um, all time if possible. Uh, when the space was acquired, it was the single largest open space in Pinellas County that was undeveloped and unpreserved. The single largest in Pinellas County. So, uh, the densest county in the state of Florida, and this was the largest space. Uh, pretty, pretty remarkable. I didn't, didn't realize that when I started looking into it. So it was really a special process. Uh, 2019, uh, was the passing of Gladys Douglas, who was, uh, a nature lover and philanthropist in the community. Um, heard a lot of stories and a lot of, uh, tales about people's time out on, on the property. Um, but after the passing, the property went into, uh, contracts, uh, for a development agreement to, to build. Um, the community obviously wanted to preserve this space. And when that contract fell through, the opportunity was provided to the city and the county to come together and purchase this property in short order at the, uh, tail end of 2020, uh, think about what was going on in 2020. And just that even compounds how amazing this process was, uh, over 1100 donors provided money, private money to this with two, uh, giving $2 million each towards this. Um, the sale was completed in May of 2021, uh, the 44 acres of the, the Douglas estate was completed. And in November of 2021, Florida communities trust, uh, a grant was awarded for $2.4 million based on a conservation management plan. In April of 2022, the city, uh, agreed to purchase Jerry Lake from Swift mud and, uh, utilize park impact fees to complete that sale of the actual lake. And then in February of 2023, three, the grand opening of phase one took place, uh, with April 2025 phase two design approved. And we're here to provide an update on that. Uh, the Florida communities trust management plan kind of outlines development and, uh, kind of limitations on the site as well, but to preserve that conservation space as, as discussed before and provide public access, which includes recreational amenities such as picnic shelters, trails, observation platforms, canoe, kayak launch, uh, appear an interpretive signage, kind of, uh, educating the public about the special resources that are in the site. Um, support features include access through, uh, entry roads, parking lots, restroom facility, drinking fountains, benches, the, the common amenities that you'd find in a trail space. Uh, the responsibilities as part of this management plan management plan is divided between the city of Dunedin as well as Pinellas County. The city of Dunedin is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the site and security provided through, uh, Pinellas County Sheriff's office. Uh, we're also the lead development of elements included in the approved management plan with the exception of the, uh, passive nature center that the county will be operating and, and building out in the existing recreation building on the, the homestead site. Uh, and they also provide maintenance of conservation area, which is inclusive of invasive control, uh, to eliminate non-native species and keep this natural Florida space. And then also a construction of a sidewalk connecting, uh, the, the preserve to nearby neighborhoods. So we've, we've been working with them on, on, uh, accomplishing some of those goals and, and mapping out what the future looks like. Uh, phase one was, uh, 44 acres, added trails and access to the property with a parking area and temporary restrooms. There are site furnishings, including some benches and both regulatory and interpretive signage. Uh, there's 143 native plant species on this site, including 11 that are endangered or threatened. And it's the last rosemary scrub in Pinellas County. Uh, you see the, the photo on the slide here, uh, is some of the reindeer moss that is an endangered species and very unique to the site as well. Uh, and there's active, healthy gopher tortoise population as well as, uh, many other animals such as bobcats, coyotes, uh, plenty out there. Uh, phase one grand opening took place in February of 2023. Uh, see the little map here, uh, it identifies the future development where the existing homestead is. And that's what, uh, we're going to talk about the design phase on that today. Uh, activity since phase one opening, uh, the county has performed some exotic invasive vegetation removals and installed the sidewalk connection. They continue to, uh, perform that removal work, uh, through ongoing maintenance. Uh, we have periodic update meetings with them right now. We're meeting quarterly that, that frequency, uh, may increase as activity increases out there once we, we start building out. And then the Douglas residence was evaluated for structural integrity. Um, unfortunately, the results indicated significant deficiencies and safety concerns. And the recommendation was against any type of restoration due to conditions and usage limitations of the design of the structure. So we've been coordinating with the Dunedin historical society to identify and preserve items of significance within the building. And, uh, this last weekend they, they held a small event out there to, to kind of commemorate, uh, the importance of that building to the community and, and remove anything of value, uh, before we move forward with, uh, demolition and redevelopment of the park space. Uh, I'll hand it off to, to our contracts here for their presentation on phase two. Thank you all for the opportunity to present our progress to you and provide an update. Uh, first say thanks to Bruce, um, and city staff for all their, their help. Uh, they've been, you know, instrumental in getting this to where we are right now. So thank you very much for everything. Uh, we will provide a brief update and we'll make sure it's not, you know, 48 slides, um, and keep all your interests. Um, starting out, this is, oh, can I control it with this? We'll see. Just up, down. All right. Uh, starting out, uh, we do believe this is a hidden gem for Dunedin. Not a lot of people know it's there. And then when you're in the site, you truly don't see any other, uh, houses or anything else. So to have that in the city, uh, close by for an asset to the community is going to be huge. Uh, our intent, oh, is that the right way? Our intent is to not overshadow nature is to enhance the natural aspect and kind of coexist with the existing surroundings. Um, so you can see our phase two is in the smaller kind of rectangle where the P is, to the right. Uh, we did go to the site extensively and you guys stop me if I miss anything. Um, we walked around quite a bit and we really wanted to understand what it was like to be there and what aspects that we wanted to highlight. One of the things was, you know, just the trees, you know, like you said, there's a lot of natural, um, rare, uh, species there and we wanted to make sure we coexisted with that and then, you know, try and create something on top of it. We don't want fireworks at a fairground. Uh, it's already a beautiful place. We just want to create the amenities, um, you know, and highlight a lot of these species that are already existing in phase one. Uh, phase two is more of the recreational side where people can come, uh, you know, relax, have a pavilion, uh, use the water, um, and, you know, actually coexist there without hurting any of the natural, um, aspects of the site. Um, there were considerable utility upgrades we had to make in order to accommodate, um, the map of what we're trying to do in the future. Um, I don't know, Jason, do you want to talk about some of the utility aspects? Sure. So the site is currently, um, is there the next slide? I believe that shows utilities. The site's currently served by, um, on-site, on-site water, uh, well water and on-site sewage disposal. So getting utilities to the site was one of the major hurdles. As you can see in the light blue, it's about 1700 linear feet of, um, water surface running up Cemetery Lane and the light green, you can see it more on the, uh, the plan view, not the aerial. It's going to be the sanitary sewer that's going to the existing lift station to the north. We also had to include a, uh, dry pump line and a fire hydrant for fire suppression, as well as the, uh, stormwater management improvements. So that was one of the major lifts to get the site to, uh, function as needed. Um, and then note the blue water line actually goes through the cemetery, so we had to take extra care in routing that to make sure we don't disrupt anything, um, that already exists within the earth. Uh, there will be a lot of directional boring and such to make sure we get it there properly. Uh, this is the, the site plan which could be phased obviously depending on, you know, which, which route we take. Um, we have two pavilions, a restroom, facility, parking, um, and we had to enlarge the actual driveway in to create fire access of 20 feet, uh, and be able to circulate and safely put out any fires or anything that could, could arise on, on, on site. Um, the yellow in the middle is the, you know, uh, future Pinellas County recreation building that is not part of this particular phase. Um, and then, you know, the three red are two pavilions and then the one restroom building, um, in the center along with a kayak launch or, um, you know, just a water access and a observation, uh, platform dock that goes, you know, a little bit out in the water probably about 20 feet. Um, and then also in the existing phase one, we were adding an observation platform, which was ADA accessible as well. Uh, here's some renderings of what we were trying to create. We wanted to, you know, uh, blend in the pavilions. So we went with, um, columns that were not rectilinear straight up and down. They kind of mimic the tree, uh, um, not the canopy, but the, um, you know, the stalks. So they blend more in with nature and then we create a more organic roof form, uh, to blend in. Uh, you can see, we also use materials that are natural and low maintenance to ensure that these will last and look good for, you know, decades to come with minimal care. This is the restroom building, same concepts. Uh, you know, there's two sides, open air, um, low maintenance facility, uh, with epoxy floors, uh, sealed concrete, and then a, uh, kind of exposed, um, brick veneer that's doesn't have to be painted or sealed. Uh, interior of the restrooms, we used a mesh to keep out bugs, uh, epoxy floor, and then solid surface materials that even if they chip will, you know, be the same color body through. Um, here's our little observation dock, uh, going over the water. Again, we tried to use materials that are naturalistic and blend in with the facility without, you know, causing a lot of maintenance issues. It was kind of the look, you know, with kayaks, obviously kayak launches in a different location, but this, you know, is where people could go out and actually experience the lake, um, you know, from the dock. Uh, kayak launch, again, we wanted a minimal impact. So we would do, you know, stabilized, uh, stone and then, uh, a natural grade walk-in. To bring your kayaks in without creating any additional structure. Quick, you know, estimate probable construction costs. We've been working closely to try and break this out correctly. Uh, site work, uh, again, as Jason mentioned, is the majority of the, of the budget here. Uh, pavilions, we did a few studies of a conventional construction versus a prefab. The prefab, uh, came in within 5% of the, of the, um, other pavilions. And this can be re-implemented if you needed more anywhere throughout the park. Without redesign, you would just need to pour a foundation. So there is efficiency there over time. Um, uh, restrooms, about 18%, uh, appear, uh, 4%. And then the observation platform is only, uh, 1%. And then, I don't know if there's anything about the shared costs we wanted to go over, but, um, there are additional costs for, you know, construction and whatnot that we would account for in the last item. And that's it. We'll open it up for questions. Uh, let me know if you want me to go back to any previous slides or have comments on any of those as well. I can go back. Okay. Um, questions. I'll start with Commissioner Sandberg. So I'm not sure that I have as many questions for you as I do for this table. Can we go ahead and, is that, is that okay then? If I, yeah, I'd say whichever. Yeah. All right. Um, you know, uh, I was out there on, I guess it was Saturday and, uh, it's really, it's really quite a piece of property. The cost involved, have we looked into every possible dollar that we can share with the county or any, any other, uh, entities to help offset the cost? So, uh, every possible, I, I can't really speak to the whole part of that, but we, we are reviewing as we look at these costs and, and see the numbers. Uh, of course, costs are high right now. Um, you know, we, we are looking for ways to be efficient with how we implement things. Um, we're working with the county on their portions of the project as well. Uh, it hasn't really gotten into the, the nickels and dimes conversation on that, but that's, uh, certainly conversations we can have. You know, I'm sure that it will require, you know, in looking at the, the, the opposite, the little pier area where the people were, I'm sure that's going to, uh, require permitting. Is there any way we can get out ahead of this on the permitting rather than constant delay after delay? What, what are your thoughts on that? We're already going through that process. Okay. Is it easier to permit this because it's inland water, fresh water versus what we're running at the marina? I think it depends if there's, uh, um, protected species involved. I think that's one of the delays we've seen with the, uh, the fishing pier at the marina, but, um, uh, I, I don't anticipate any major hangups. Okay. Now we've already done our ESA phase one for this area and we didn't have any issues. Um, and then we're on top of the permitting for the pier. So we don't see any delays forthcoming. Okay. Will dogs be allowed in this park? They are not. I thought so. Okay. Um, and looking at the, the shelter, um, is that wood or steel? What, what are we going to, I mean, I know we have a termite issue out there. This is a steel, steel structure. It's steel. Okay. With a, what do we use for the deck is a wood, um, with a standing seam metal roof. Yeah. Okay. And I noticed the, uh, the long run of water lines, um, having to come along the, the cemetery is there. So I don't have, I don't understand exactly how utilities are moved, but isn't there water already at the cemetery that we could hook into? Is there any way to reduce that cost? Oh, that's coming off of a pump that's currently supplying the cemetery. Yeah. It's, there's a pump. It's connecting to a pump down at the, um, the south. I think it's the, the west. It's very close to the entry of the cemetery. There's already a pump and that's kind of where we're getting, you know, so that'll be the drinking water. Yeah. It's, it's, well, there's already a tap there. So we're just tying into that pump to supply. Yes. It's, it's potable water. Okay. I misunderstood. I thought we had to go bring water all the way from Keene. There wasn't accessible water to the south. I didn't hear what you said. I'm sorry. Yeah. Virginia. And I know there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a demarcation right there from what they served by the city and the county. So the nearest county line was just tying into the pump and you won't have to pay the actual, the additional tabbing fees either, because there's already the tap made. Okay. And the last question I had, what is a dry hydrant? So it's interesting. A dry hydrant actually is a pipe that will go underground into the lake. That way, um, when the fire, the pumper hooks up to it, they're actually pumping lake water out and using that to extinguish any fires on site. Okay. Very quick. You can see it kind of in the, the red demarcation that goes from the middle of the site to the actual lake. So it goes kind of underground, pops up, has a strainer on it, pulls in the water, and there's another strainer, and then they'll be able to use it to extinguish any fires. Yeah. That's all I had there. Okay. Okay. Questions, uh, Commissioner Gow. You might have mentioned it, and I just think it's from the slide. You've got the orange line. That's just for any future development. That's going to tie it. I think, I believe that's the stub out that we're going to go ahead and put in for the, um, renovation of the, uh, what do you call it? The Pinellas. Yeah. For the nature center. So we wanted to go ahead and get that infrastructure in place, because if any pavement goes over the top, they'd have to rip it out to hook to that, because that's on well water. So in the future, when that gets developed phase three, that they'll already have all the infrastructure they can just hook up to it and, um, you know, plummet from the water line that we already established. And, uh, jog to the right. And then, uh, that jog, uh, that's where the children's. Oh, there you go. Sorry about that. Yes, sir. Um, that's where the, the children's, and I believe the Potterfield is the cemetery. So, uh, and I'm not so sure about the extension there. I think that's the, uh, south boundary to the cemetery. And I think we're fine there, but that little jog to the, to the right. Tell me about how the sensitivity that you'll use on laying the pipe there and what you'll do to make sure that I'm, are there going to be any sites that are going to be into being relocated or? No, the plan is not to relocate anything. We're trying to stay as close to the existing road access way as possible and actually going under and directional boring, uh, where possible. Um, I believe we already got GPR and most of the spots to ensure the route. So we did a, you know, subsurface investigation, um, with ground penetrating radar, uh, to verify the, the route. So we did our best to not disrupt, um, anything existing on the cemetery. That's why there's so many bends because we're, we're hugging the side of that road. Okay. Okay. Very good. Very good. Um, and I think that's it. Although I did ask the question, uh, during my agenda review and it really doesn't pertain to the project, but Jerry Lake has been there for decades and decades and decades, centuries it's been there. So it's not just water that stormwater collected. Right. So it has to have had its own water source. So do we know what that water source is? Do we know that it's spring fed and here's where the spring is? How many gallons of water it discharges a day? Do we know anything about that spring? It's just groundwater fed. So that, that, yeah, the line there is, is the approximate elevation of groundwater. Really? Mm-hmm. Wow. So it's not, it's not a runoff generate, it's not generated from stormwater runoff. It's... Oh, and that, that I knew. Yeah. Right. Because it existed before the developments did around there. Uh, but since it's always been there, what was that water source is, is my question. Yeah. I mean, groundwater. Groundwater. Groundwater. Okay. Runoff. Thank you very much. Um, that's all that I have, Mayor. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner DeGuard, questions. Thank you, Mayor. Um, I've never worked with a preserve before, and so I had to go in and look up a few things. Uh, for instance, what is a nature preserve? And as it reads, a protective area of land or water set aside to keep plants, animals, and natural habitats safe from harm and human development. Um, I had a little bit of challenge putting my arms around that because we are citizen-centric. That's just the way we think. Um, and so I would imagine that your biggest challenge, and just, this is where I'm going with my question, is developing a minimalist approach to allow the most natural, nature-based things to occur. Is that a correct statement? Yes, that was, uh, that's correct. Uh, we did, you know, approach it to, you know, create the minimum impact on what was existing in the phase two. Um, but I think phase one is really where more of the nature preserve is, and we're more developing where, uh, the homestead of, of Gladys was, um, as opposed to where the endangered species were. But yes, that was still the approach, is to kind of coexist with the environment without trampling over it or removing it entirely. That means everything you do has got to be a tug of war. It's placement, decision to have something, even the restrooms have to be kind of a tug of war relative to maintaining the natural, natural preserve aspects. Tell me how you face issues like that and how you sort them out. Well, uh, the survey helped us a lot. We were able to identify any species that we wanted to preserve, um, natural grades so we could use some of the natural grading to help, uh, you know, funnel stormwater to certain areas, um, specific, you know, areas which were already, um, having, you know, infrastructure on it like the septic tanks or there was, uh, the caretakers trailer, places like that were already disturbed. So we tried to use those spots as redevelopment while creating a harmonious path throughout the site. Do you have, uh, attendance restrictions? We don't anticipate any, but if we saw problems, we would make adjustments. So you could? We could. Okay. I just, I, I, you know, somebody decide they're going to have a family reunion out there and the next thing you know, 400 people show up and that may not have the impact you want it to have. Correct. Okay. I just wanted to be sure I understood who's to benefit from this. Thank you, Mayor. Okay. So, um, what would you, when do you think that, um, passive, uh, nature center that actually occur with the county? Is there any sense of that at all? So, um, I might defer to Joe to see if he remembers details on that, but we did a walkthrough, uh, in September with the county and they are kind of taking their notes and they're going to bring us a plan of what they need to do. There's significant renovation that has to take place to that, that structure. Um, so they're, they're trying to figure out their timeframe on that and they, they want to have some additional people from their team take a walkthrough. So we'll, we'll get those details soon. So what's the structure they're going to renovate? It's the, uh, garage slash recreation room that was out there. Gotcha. Okay. Gotcha. Um, I just want to be clear. Um, so cost of pavilions and bathrooms, you know, seems pretty high, another half a million dollar bathroom guys. Um, so why? Because everybody, you know, we, we gotten kind of grilled about the bathroom at the park in downtown. And, um, so, so why would this cost that much? Um, I mean, escalation, commercial construction combined are, are expensive. There's, you know, uh, different regulations you have to follow that are different from a residential and, and input higher costs. Uh, you also want to look at, uh, long-term life costs of maintenance as well. So we try to use, like, I think it was mentioned, uh, you know, stronger materials that are more robust that will last a lot longer without putting a strain on your maintenance budget. Um, and, you know, just really we're seeing still, I think, uh, three percent raise in construction costs every, uh, six months. So the longer we wait to do it, the more it's going to cost. The next time we're talking about it, you know, it could be another 12% higher. So you really, it's been unprecedented since COVID. Um, it's killed tons of budgets because it's impossible to keep up along with other, you know, uh, material issues, political, uh, tariffs and stuff like that really drive up at additional costs. So we were careful to try and source, you know, materials that weren't, uh, experiencing issues with tariffs, but we did explore a traditional construction verse this. And you will see if you implement this, um, more time savings, um, and this, cause it's already designed and all you have to do is provide a foundation and then you can pretty much put it, you know, wherever you want. It's scalable. So, uh, we, we did, you know, work with city staff to try and create the most economical, um, long lasting, um, design that we could for this scenario, but. So let me ask Tony. Um, so are you convinced, I mean, obviously we'll got to bid, so that'll be the ultimate. Are you convinced this is a decent estimate or I mean, are you convinced that there's no better? I, I believe it is. And we, we even talked to the county about that on some of their, uh, restroom projects that they've had. They've had, uh, some prefab restrooms that are, are very smart and very small, um, that weren't quite this expensive, but you start adding size, you start adding location, things like that. Um, I think one of the biggest considerations with like a public restroom or something like that is I want a public restroom people can use and it's not broken. That's not offline for six months because we have to get specialty parts or because it's not built to the standard that we need. Because. Which is a higher standard because it's got a lot of usage and it's not like a home. Correct. And there, there are a lot of facilities that you'll see that are out of order and it, it really is a level of construction that, that goes beyond, um, normal use because people use parks very, very hard. Great. Yeah. And I think this one will be used hard. Um, there probably, it probably exists out there already, but with kayakers, like there will be like caution alligators, right? Cause I'm not going in there. I'm not kayaking. I'm just telling you right now. Okay. Gotcha. There will be a caution 10 foot alligators. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm, I'm good. I'll watch from the shore. Um, okay. Uh, I don't have any other questions. Um, so let me open it up to the public. Does anybody in the public wish to come forward and speak on this issue? Okay. Name and address for the record and three minutes. Nan Bennett, 1990 Saddle Hill Road North. So I have a couple of questions on slide six, the utility plan. Yeah. I'll take down your questions and we'll ask them after all comments. That's what we. Okay. Um, I'm wondering what water line that, that water line they show in the park project, what that terminates into, um, and who's going to serve the water service, whether that's the city of Dunedin, Clearwater or Pinellas County. And then I was wondering about the observation deck, how tall it was going to be and will it be ADA, um, accessible. Great. Thank you, Nan. Um, okay. Anyone else that wants to come forward and speak on this issue? Okay. Seeing no one, let's, um, let's answer these questions. Um, so on the water line and then height of the tower, who wants to? Yeah, let Jason take the water line. The water line terminates at, um, it's at the pump house on Cemetery Road. So I get, I'm assuming what was meant was. And the other question I think was, who's managing that as well? That's the city. That's the city's line. That was one of the reasons that we had to go out that far. Um, the only other option would be the counties. So it's city, it's city service that's going to be at that pump house currently serving the cemetery. Is that an answer? That and then no. Okay. All right. Sounds good. And then how about the height of the tower? Uh, the observation deck is, you know, I think, uh, less than a foot and it is ADA accessible. It's more of a little, you know, place, uh, in the middle. I don't know if Stephanie has any information on the observation? Yeah, it'll be ADA accessible. It'll bring you out into the nature a little bit further, uh, for access for a bench. Is it really a tower? No, it's not. No, it's really like a platform, right? Or a deck. And it just gives you a safe place to sit without disturbing the nature around it. So it's, it's not a tower by any means. It's just a, you know, slightly raised area that's ADA accessible with a bench. Okay. Okay, good. Could we just have the bench? Without the platform? Yeah. Going out into the water? It's not going out into the water. Oh, this is a different one. This one's in the actual phase one preserve, I think. Um, but the, the problem with the bench is ADA. You have to be able to mount it and then have access to it. So the, the wood and the ramp and everything were kind of necessary to create the, uh, permittable ADA access. I think Tony can elaborate. If I may, this was a feature that we're kind of value engineering out and, uh, it, it's something as we look at things where it's not high priority. Well, and just to, right, just to add to that too. Um, it's something that will be lovely in the future, but given the budget that we have right now and the size of it, we, we think that we'd rather concentrate on the other elements. Yeah, I think it was original program element that, like you said, can, could be eliminated without any real issue. Well, and I'll, and I'll let that be my final question. Obviously this exceeds what we have budgeted. Um, and I know, I think, you know, I won't ask the question. I think you guys are going to look at that and give us our options as well as it will go out to bid as an ad, add on so we can see what we can afford, what we can't and what money we have. You're going to, that's going to be separate. Yeah. So what you want to just comment now about. Yeah. Assuming what, you know, that, that the city commission gives a consensus direction to move forward, then we'll put this, this, uh, project out to bid. We'll have some ad alternates inherent within that bid. Uh, we'll get the results of that bid and then less than nine. Tony will put together the finance plan, um, for the elements. Um, any other follow-up questions by anybody? Uh, yeah, just speaking of the costs, um, and I know a lot of this is under the agreement of the, the, the trust. And, um, when it comes to the costs and the requirements of the agreement, what does that timeline look like? So if things are too expensive, we can dial it back because of the status of the economy. We're waiting to see if prices drop or whatever. How flexible is that agreement or how flexible is their understanding of any hiccups we might have in our timeline? So the, the priority of the FCT, uh, funding is to conserve land and to, uh, keep it as conservation space. These management plans, uh, as long as we're making progress towards those, there's annual stewardship reports we have to file and, and, uh, they will provide feedback if, if we run arrears, which we hope we wouldn't. Um, but there, there is extended time to, to move forward typically on these. Thank you. Commissioner Degard, you had a question? Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Um, I'm going to ask a question that may be difficult for us to fully understand within the context of the law, but as I understand, this is a perpetual nature preserve. Is that the case? That's correct. Does any governance authority have the ability to come and revoke that? I'm in reflection on what happened out at Hammock Park, uh, this last, uh, a couple of years ago when they wanted to turn part of it into a golf course? Um, can the state have effect in changing that? There was, um, grant funds that were used in this and as part of it, you had to record, uh, I want to say a revocable easement or deed as part of that transaction. And so to the extent that you were no longer using the property in conformance with that grant, they could come in. Okay. I just want to be sure we understand what our boundaries are relative to keeping at a preserve. But keep in mind also, if I may add, we've changed the land use and zoning as well. It, it, it is a city of, it was unincorporated when we purchased it. We annexed it into the city of Dunedin and we changed the land use and zoning. So it's open space and that, that, you know, the preserve versus open space, but, but the land use and zoning would restrict it. So it has to stay open space. Yes. Right. Regardless if it's, it's tweaked as not a preserve or something. And to change that has to go before the voters. So in order to, to sell, yeah, first of all in, to change it, that go before the city commission, change a land use or zoning. But in order to sell it, that would go before the voters. Yes. And I thought we had some restrictions under the community trust. You do. We got with all the donors. You do. Yes. So could we really do that? It's, it's, I'll, I'll defer to Jennifer. Yeah. I think the other issue that you have with it is because there were state money, like I said, included in it. There was a restrictive covenant. That's the word I was looking for. It was put on the property and I believe it has a, like a reversion clause. So if you went and decided to sell the property, I believe the state would have, for lack of a better term, like first rights on it. Right. But what about the agreement we had with community foundation? You also had, with all the donors. So you had an agreement with community foundation. You also, I believe had agreement with the county because I believe county money was used as well. So before you did anything with it, all of that would need to be looked at. Yeah. Well, I want the answer to be no, no one ever, ever, ever has a way. Well, I think that that's what the state has done by making you put in that restrictive covenant. Okay. I'm convinced we've done as much as we can to lock that down. But I think that it's only fair to realize that the authority by which we operate is state granted. And yes, I mean, we exist through state grant. So actually, so the FCT helped us purchase the property. FCT was $2 million for the property. The remainder was the city of Dunedin is $2 million. The county's $2 million and so on. So there are a whole bunch of different entities that contributed to purchasing the property. So I think that if anything were to happen to it, we would have to make them whole moving forward. So in the agreement with Pinellas Community Foundation, as I recall, was that if we don't use it as intended, we have to refund to the Community Foundation those funds. So there are four or five different agreements on this property, different layers on this property to ensure that it remains preserved. And everybody signed off on those. I am absolutely sure that everything possible has been done to keep this a preserve. But with the fragility of home rule, I'm not sure we can guarantee that in perpetuity. And that makes my point. It appears as though home rule is being eroded on a daily basis. And so I think that we've done all we can here in good faith with our donors and with the general community. And I'm pleased with what I see. But I don't want to have a sense that this is not challengeable at any other level. I just don't want that to be the case. Thanks, Mayor. Okay. Thank you. And we're going to go to final commission comments, I believe, we're at. So I'll start with Commissioner Gao. I'm excited. Well done. Thank you for the hard work for everybody. Certainly, when you talk about the size of the open space and the most densely populated county in the state, it just makes this a bigger and bigger and bigger win for the residents of not just Dunnean, but the entire county. So in the region. So thank everybody for their hard work. Okay. Commissioner DeGuard final comments. This is extraordinarily exciting. I mean, it's like having a little bit of the Rocky Mountains right here. I mean, you get to go out, you interact with nature, you have a nice afternoon, you don't put your wrappers on the ground, those kinds of things. That's what we've got here. And that's wonderful for our citizens. The fact that we pull this off, I think, speaks volumes about what Dunnean thinks it is. And I'm just proud to be a part of it. Thank you, Mayor. Commissioner Sandberg and final comments. You know, I was on the planning commission many years ago when this started. It's come a long ways from picketing signs out on the roads because there were high-end townhouses coming to what we have today. You know, going out there this weekend, that's a beautiful piece of property. And I, you know, there's a lot of history behind that. And I would love to be able to somehow, you know, not forget what that was and how much that's changed over the years. If there's any artifacts, I know we've talked about items being removed from the property, anything that could be brought back to remind us where it was and what we had before. And the last thing is, you know, going forward, this seems like the spot for outings of scouts and school groups. And to be able to, when you're out there, it's like you're in a completely different area. There's no cars. You don't hear any noise. And I think this is really, this is a real gem for the city of Dunedin. And this is big. And, you know, I'm glad to be a part of this. So thank you guys. So I want to thank Tony, Joe Mack. I want to thank the consultants. Bruce. Bruce, good to see you here. You know, I just, this is Dunedin, right? And so when we, you know, we've got another property tax forum tonight and talk about the impact of that. We spend about six million dollars of our recreation and parks budget on parks maintenance. And this is exactly, you know, the prime example that we got here intentionally, not accidentally. This is Dunedin. And so it's just, I'm proud of this. It took a lot. And some people up here, obviously our manager, city attorney, we're heavily involved. Former Mayor Wajalski, commission, very involved. Former Mayor Bob Hackworth, you know, kind of planted a seed early on. He always wanted this to happen. And it's part of his legacy. But this is, it took a lot of people, but more than anything, I mean, I say to people, a 10 million dollar preserve, which is now what, 120 acres, including the lake. And we spent two million dollars. And the state helped, the county helped with their two million. But then it was all donors. I mean, this is Dunedin. This is intentional. This is who we are. And I'm proud of it. And I didn't realize it was like the largest open space. That's awesome. Preserve. So that's great. So I think the, I think what you guys have done with the layout is great. Um, I think we'll have to figure out the, the dollars and cents of what we can do. I mean, obviously I'm going to do it right the first time person. So we're going to have to figure that out. You know, there's too much investment in this already not to do the, this part right. Um, so, uh, but great job up to this point. And obviously, you know, I think we're all in favor of moving it forward. So great. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. I was going to say gentlemen, but I can't say it. Is it Stephanie that is Stephanie and you are the project manager. So good job. Okay. We're going to go to our next item, uh, which is the ARPA update and we're making good time. So let's stay on a brief and brilliant pace here. So we got a long day ahead today, including tonight at the health center. So, um, and, uh, so we're going to go with staff presentation by, uh, uh, Les and Jean. Yes. Good morning, mayor, vice mayor, commissioners, Les Tyler, the finance director. And I'm here with Jean, our budget manager. This item is a final, uh, ARPA update for the 2021 ARPA grant for our city. I'd like to also mention that we have Ryan Vergara, who's the senior fiscal advisor for Wood O'Brien, who is with us today. He's here on zoom in case we have any technical questions that might come up. Uh, Wood O'Brien's been working with our, our city since, uh, 2021 assisting us with ARPA eligibility, financial reporting, and technical support for ARPA funds for the agenda today. Just want to briefly go over, uh, an ARPA overview, status of projects and initiatives, ARPA interest earnings and commission direction. I want to mention also we have two exhibits in the staffing report today. We have an exhibit A, which is the status of all ARPA projects, uh, completed to date and exhibit B is a list of eligible ARPA projects and initiatives with brief description of each project. Uh, just a little bit of brief background on, on the ARPA funds, American rescue. It was signed into law in March 21st, 2021. It was a $1.9 trillion aid package to, uh, governments, uh, businesses, schools, nonprofits, and others due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. There was 350 billion for state and local governments. And to highlight that, uh, the county's, uh, allocation, Pinellas County was 130, 189 million. And the city that needs allocation for us was 18.3 million. The eligible uses, uh, there's 10 categories of eligible uses. And, uh, there were seven originally, and I'll just briefly mention them. They were, uh, uh, support public health, uh, expenditures, address negative economic impacts, serving the hardest hit communities and families, provide premium pay for essential workers, invest in water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure, revenue replacement, uh, standard allowance up to $10 million per agency, administration, natural disasters, uh, service transportation, and title one. The, uh, uh, I also want to mention for revenue replacement, uh, number six on that list, that's a very important one just because, uh, uh, our total amount is up to $10 million for our city. And that, that, uh, particular category is the most flexible category that you can have. And it, it is, uh, under the program and funds are subject to more of a streamlined process and compliance requirements. So it's a lot less risk of an audit later, uh, falling under that category. And that's one of the reasons you'll see that we put quite a few projects in that category. Uh, a couple of things that are ineligible, you cannot spend ARPA dollars on are you cannot offset reductions in taxes. You cannot do deposit into pension funds. No, you cannot do funding for debt service and also, uh, no funding for legal settlements or judgments. And you cannot, uh, put deposits into a rainy day fund and build up your reserves with the funding. Uh, there's a listing of ARPA projects, uh, and status on this page here. And this shows all the ARPA projects that we have to date. And, uh, I just want to point out towards the middle, uh, under the status column, there's a TBD and that's, uh, that's the, that's the amount that has not been spent. Uh, as of today, we've had about $382,000 that have not been spent as of today, but, but, but the remaining of the $18,299,690 have been spent, uh, uh, in the ARPA grant. The deadline to spend these expenditures is December 31st, 2026. And that's why we're here today. We want to get in front of that and, and have some proposals today to the commission. And, uh, as far as the categories that we have, uh, we've got, uh, uh, the ones I just mentioned, there's 10 categories, we've got about 9.3 million in negative economic impacts, revenue replacement about 8.52 million, premium pay 311,000 and administrations $158,000. And the total of that is the, uh, 18.3 million. Some of these projects could have fallen into a few categories, uh, uh, as an example, uh, and when that happened, we put them into revenue replacement since it is the most flexible category, as I mentioned earlier with less audit risk and bypasses some of the strict requirements of the other categories. For, for the unspent ARPA funds, uh, due to the timing of a few projects, we've got our Highlander aquatic complex design project that, uh, that is still has about $331,000 remaining on it. And we also have a broadband internet project with 43,693 that was remaining, was remaining. Pickleball court has, uh, $4,485 remaining. And the Washington Street improvement project had $3,900 remaining. And we also had a small amount for Wood O'Brien, an adjustment. We'd, we'd allocated, uh, a certain amount to the grant and the rest to the interest. And there was a, there was a timing thing. So we have a credit of $680. So the main reason we're here today is, is the next slide really, and that is to, uh, focus on the unspent ARPA funds. As I mentioned, the deadline's 12-31-2026. We've gotten $382,000, $382,508 of ARPA funds on, uh, on eligible revenue replacement expenditures for grant reporting purposes. And that's our plan. Our plan is to apply this, this $382,000, uh, put it, transfer it to the general fund and spend it on governmental services. This will allow the flexibility for the general fund to pay for the remaining $331,000 for the Highlander aquatic complex design that is not complete yet. And the $51,398 remaining from projects that were completed, but under budget. And we will, and that will, that $51,000 will increase the general funds available fund balance by that amount. Uh, the reason again, we're doing this is we want to make sure we spend 100% of the ARPA funds by our deadline at the end of this calendar year. Uh, exhibit C in the Stafford is, is the budget amendment. And that's basically moving funds from the ARPA, moving dollars from the ARPA fund to the general fund, then the general fund will continue to pay for the project for the Highlander aquatic complex. The other piece we have was we have ARPA interest earnings. Uh, the interest earnings to date has been just over a million dollars. We've got it, the interest earnings are $1,025,000. Uh, we have about $470,000 currently with projects applied to that, uh, an estimated uncommitted amount of about $555,000 as of today. I want to point out that the interest earnings are totally flexible. They're not restricted for any purpose and there's no timeline or deadlines for spending those funds. The, the projects that are currently assigned to the interest are mentioned are in this slide and the total, I'll just mention a few numbers. The total amount of actual dollars that has been spent are $349,000. That's the far left column, uh, total. We have, uh, uh, $40,000 encumbrance with Wood O'Brien for ARPA administration. Uh, and that, uh, once the grant report is complete, we've got two more quarters. Uh, once that's complete, uh, in the treasury portal and the program closeout forms for each project or will be completed working with, uh, finance staff and Wood O'Brien. Uh, we also have a Clearwater ferry project, uh, has funding set aside in the amount of $45,670. I want to mention that, that, that the monthly payments to PSTA are paid out of the general fund, not this fund. So this is sort of money set aside just in case that could be reprogrammed to anything. Uh, the boat, uh, club foundation structural assessment, uh, which would now be considered a contribution to the new boat, uh, club and selling center. And then we've got the surplus pumper truck purchase from Palm Harbor, uh, uh, a couple of years ago, a year and a half ago. And so that includes our general comments and be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Okay. Questions, uh, starting with Commissioner Gow. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, you wouldn't mention, was it $382,000 is unspent? Yes. Correct. Yeah. $382,000. And then we've got the interest. Is that in addition to the $382,000? Uh, yes, it is. Yes. Uh, no other questions. Okay. Questions? Commissioner DeGuard? Just to refresh me, deadline for all expenditures, including interest is when? The deadline for just the grant expense, only the grant expenditures is December, the December 31st, 2026, but the interest portion has no deadline, no, no restriction deadline on the interest. Correct. Has any of that been obligated in any way? The interest interest or this? Uh, yeah, the, the, the, in the grant portion, we've got, uh, uh, the $311,000 obligated for the, the design work for the, uh, uh, Highland Aquatic, uh, complex. Yeah. And, and we've also got some encumbrances also on the, on the interest portion as well, but yeah, but both of them have some encumbrances. Yeah. So assignment isn't spent. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Yeah. Assignment does not, assigned means, does not mean spent. That's correct. That just means it's assigned for that. And those interest projects, some of those could be moved to something else, uh, if, if, if the, if the commission decided to. So between now and the end of the year, we have to spend, actually spend that money. And we won't have the ability to spend it on the aquatic center. Is that correct? Or will we? No, we, uh, what we need to do by December 31st is spin down the grant. And, and our plan is, we're moving dollars from the ARPA fund to the general fund. And then the general fund will, the general fund will continue to pay for the hydro aquatic complex project. But the grant, the grant, uh, amount of three 82 will be applied to general government services. And we'll be applying that to our, uh, our contract with the sheriff. We'll take one month of our contract with the sheriff and that will be the final expenditure that we'll do in the grant because it, because that's, that's eligible. Pass me on that one. I got news for you. You know what you're talking about. I'm not sure I do. And I want to make sure I understand. Sure. So by moving the money to the general fund, it becomes spent or not? By moving it to the general fund, it's just really just transferring money. It becomes spent by the, by the, once it's moved to the general fund for the grant purposes, we're going to be applying that $382,000 to general government expenditures, which will be, uh, which for us will be sheriff contract. And then we'll, so that $382,000 on our final grant submission will be charged to our sheriff contract, uh, payment. Got it. Good question. Very clever. It's a good question. I appreciate that. Thank you, mayor. Okay. Questions? Commissioner Sandberg. I understand. I think you said it a couple of times that interest money does not need to be spent by the end of the year. Correct. And have we had any plans, any, uh, thoughts of where we, that money may go? We have, we have, uh, currently we have, uh, some uncommitted. Yeah, we've got, go back to the slide for a sec here. Oh, we've got $1,025,000 in interest, and then we've got, uh, $470,000. Go back there. $470,000 of, uh, that's, that's right now assigned to a project. So, uh, that $470,000 right now is, is assigned to, uh, uh, to certain projects. Right. And, but that $555,000 is completely unassigned, could be spent on anything. I guess kind of what my question was is when will we start to zero in on what we may spend that money on? Yeah, that's, that's a good question. Our plan will be to, uh, first we'll, uh, once year is complete for 2026, which will be probably around, we'll have final numbers in a, in a couple of months, we'll know exactly where the, uh, where we end up in the ARPA fund with what's left. And all that's really going to be left is this interest in the ARPA fund itself, the special revenue fund. And then through the 27 budget process, as we work through the, the beginning of the 27 budget, 28 budget process, excuse me, for next year, we'll be working with the city manager. And as we're developing the 28 budget, we'll be bringing to the city commission, uh, our plan for that, those interest dollars, that $55,000 will work, will make recommendations of where that, where that would go, whether that would go to a, to a project or something else. But the goal would be ideally at the end of 20, at the end of 27, as we work through our budget for 28, we make those decisions. And then we, we do a transfer and we close out the ARPA, ARPA fund because it really doesn't need to be around anymore. The dollar is moved to the general fund. And then we would, uh, uh, apply those dollars to whatever projects that the city, that the city manager, the city commission, one of those interest dollars should go to. So, so the point is ultimately though, the city commission will decide where that money is spent. Good. That's all I had. Thank you. Okay. But obviously our general fund can always use to help. So yeah, I mean, we just, it just goes there and we help the funds. Um, oh, I don't really have any questions other than that. So, um, the, um, open it to public input. Anyone in the audience wish to come forward and speak on the ARPA funds, the projects. Okay. Seeing no one, I'll close public input. Final comments by the commission. I will start with commissioner Samberg. You know, I think, uh, just to add a little bit to that uncommitted, you know, that's the community, the city, the citizens suffered a lot during that time. And I sure hope we can focus going forward on something that everyone in the community can enjoy and maybe, you know, going forward, whether it be the young folks, the older folks, something that we could put that money towards everybody. So that's all. Thank you, mayor. Okay. Uh, final comments. Commissioner Gallo. Thank you. Uh, just to piggyback on, uh, Commissioner Sandbergen's comments, I certainly agree. And I think 500,000 will get us another bathroom. I think so, you know, and that may not be really a fun thing like he was talking about. Yeah. I don't know that enjoy would be the use maybe. Relieved might be. At least for men. I'm sorry. Or that, or that platform at GDP. Maybe that's another six inches up. We could go. So I don't know. No. Um, thank you very much for this presentation. Les, I'm managing this, getting it is one thing, but managing it is something else. And you guys have just done an amazing job on keeping up with this. So thank you for everything that you've done. Appreciate it. Thank you. Wood O'Brien's done a great job too. I just want to point that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although that does sound like Wood O'Brien when you say that. So I have a whole nother context. Okay. Final comments. Commissioner Degard. Thank you, Mayor. Um, a lot of people forget that this money was placed in various communities all across the country in order to be sure that we could sustain an economy through the pandemic. Um, and it's interesting how we have either repressed or suppressed. I don't know which term you wish to use. Some of those days in our minds, we don't hearken back to those days where we were all afraid to get within distances of each other and all of the things, but it was a threat. It was a national threat. And it's interesting to note that our country survived the pandemic economically better than any other country in the world. Now that may seem trite, but the reality is that it is government that has to come together at times when we're in crisis, because the people can't address those things on their own. There are those that just challenge government in general, right up until they have a personal crisis. And then suddenly they want government to fix it. Well, there are many problems with government. I'm not going to deny that. And there is those people that will point at it and save waste, fraud and abuse all the time. The reality is you put us in a state of shared concern and threat. You're going to want government and you're going to want government to work well. And in this case, I believe it did. Yeah, there are, you can point to one or two cases anecdotally and say those people misuse the money. That's always going to be the case. No system is without friction. That just happens. In this case, our country survived and thrived. And I think we should thank those people that made that happen. Thank you. Yeah, I kind of second that. Commissioner de Gard, I think that's well said. And I would also say, when you look at these projects, you know, out of every tragedy comes some blessings, right? There's some projects in here that, you know, there's no way we could have done these. And I mean, I just turned right to basically making sure the golf course, you know, which, you know, got redone, right? It got redone to the back to Donna Ross standards. And now it has the real chance of, I mean, I think it's actually starting to make money now. It has to be green space. It's the linchpin of our biggest neighborhood. And, and it was in dire straits. And without this money, I'm not sure how that would have moved forward. Um, but there's a lot of things in here, you know, it assisted with Skinner Boulevard. It helped some of our nonprofit individuals that were very, really hurting at that time. Um, you know, I, I think there was some things with special events. So we tried to put it out into the community. Um, there, there's just, uh, and of course, tremendous help to our general fund in general that, that had been hurt with revenue. And, um, and I look at, you know, the interest money now is, you know, again, it's again, a way to help our general fund and that, and help that so we can help keep costs down for people. Um, so, um, yeah, so I think it's great to think about what it was given to us for. I mean, when you think about 37,000 population and we got 18 million dollars and you look at some of the money that got put out there across the United States, but I know I can only speak for us. We did some great things with this. Um, some things that needed to happen, uh, whether they were on the quality of life side or on the critical service side, um, they were important and, um, I, I'm, I'm grateful and, and I agree. It was all about basically getting the communities going again after the devastation of economic economics after COVID. So, um, it's good. But anyway, uh, so I think you have what you need, right? Thank you for the update. Both of you, always good. Thank you. Okay. We will move to grants update. So I'm going to go to Nicole after she has time to get up here. Um, and we're four minutes to 12, brief and brilliant. Good morning, mayor, not vice mayor, commission, Nicole Delfino, strategy and sustainability manager, uh, here today, uh, to review the, uh, grants update with you. Uh, one of the things that we had committed, uh, when we brought the grant specialist position on board was to bring an update to you annually. Um, so this was already scheduled, um, ahead of course, uh, our grant specialist, uh, departing, um, uh, Camille had left, uh, us in September. And so I'm here to provide the update and just go over where, where we're at a little bit of a look back, um, as far as what was accomplished since that position came on board. So this is kind of the, the big summary slide here. Um, in fiscal year 24, 25, um, there were 19 grants that were applied for, there were seven that were awarded, um, in the sum of $8,316,300, $308.86, uh, very specific. And then also in, uh, 26, which when this present, uh, presentation was put together was just a few days shy of, uh, the end of the fiscal year, but again, 24 grants were awarded or applied for six were awarded. Um, we do have outstanding grants, uh, that we have yet to be notified on in both years, fiscal years. Um, but as far as a total award value to date, uh, that number is just a little 11 and a half million dollars. Um, and I know one of the questions that you had asked, uh, when we were looking at this, uh, during one of the budget discussions was what was the match funding, uh, for these grants. Um, that match funding for 12 of these 12 awarded grants is just shy of $700,000. So there were only actually two grants that required matches in this, in this funding. Um, one was for the water treatment, the water treatment facility. And then the second was for, um, actually an award that we just received about a week and a half ago, uh, for rehabilitation of lift station eight, which was for about 500, a little over $500,000. So just to share with you, these are some of the grants that have been completed and completely closed out. Um, that does include the hurricane loss mitigation, the water treatment plant administration building hardening, um, as well as, as you were aware, the Florida city County management association funded a student intern that we had over the summer. So this, if you haven't seen the water treatment plant, um, it was completely refurbished windows and doors, um, for hurricane resistance. And so that was funded, uh, primarily with grant funding. Again, there was about $99,000. That was a match for this project. Uh, this is just an in process grant. Uh, this is kind of the, the big, the big grant that we currently have open. It's our USDA emergency water, uh, watershed protection grant. We were initially awarded, uh, close to 4 million. We had an additional award of about two. So the total project award was about six and a half million. Um, we have been reimbursed for a portion of that, um, with obviously we've got a significant amount of funding remaining. Um, the second phase of this project is actually supposed to kick off next week, uh, with some additional clearing from Jerry branch. Um, and we're working through, um, some of the design for Gabion replacement and putting RFP together for that project. Uh, this is also in process, uh, the first set of grants. It's the, uh, Volkswagen, uh, diesel, diesel emissions mitigation program. Um, the first set, uh, was for two trucks and for the value of about $520,000. Um, those, those are the two new trucks that were purchased. Uh, we're in the process of decommissioning, uh, the two trucks for that grant. Um, and then a second award, uh, came in as well, uh, for, uh, for additional trucks. And then of course we've got the, uh, clean vessel act, a new pump out that is going in the, uh, Dunedin Marina. So this is a little bit of what's upcoming. Uh, I mentioned the second of, uh, VW emissions, uh, truck grant that was for an additional $800,000. Um, again, to replace two additional trucks, that contract has been executed. Uh, the HMGP, uh, grant that's listed there for the wastewater treatment plant. Uh, we were notified of the award for design. We're still working through all the, all the components of that, but this is upcoming. Um, I believe Camille actually had shared and potentially stormwater also shared their, uh, they applied for the stormwater education grant, uh, through TBRPC. Um, and then the, uh, HMGP, we were, this is the one that we were just notified on, on about a week and a half ago. Uh, it's a federal grant award for 1.25 million, uh, with that local match of 581,000. Um, again, the email notification came through, but still working through contracts as far as that grant goes. We do still have some active, uh, applications that we have yet to hear from. They're listed here. A few for, uh, our firefighter, uh, equipment. We have one for our Weaver park, uh, installation, uh, living shoreline. Uh, we have requested, uh, through resilient Florida for the rehabilitation of lift station five. Um, and then I think you all have, are aware of the, um, parks and recreation, uh, grant through the USTA that is pending. Uh, we do also still have one HMGP grant that is still, uh, open that we need to hear back from, and that is also for Gaby and replacement. And I did include just a brief summary here of, of the appropriations as well, because how appropriations are handled is once they're appropriated, signed into the budget by the governor, then they're transitioned over to, uh, state agencies and handled as grants. Uh, so you can see both in fiscal year 25 and 26. Um, I know you're quite familiar with a lot of these amounts. We've discussed them in the past. Uh, we had two, two awards in fiscal year 25, three awards this past year, uh, for a total of, um, a little over $7 million there. And again, this is just a breakdown of those appropriations and the value of those appropriations. Um, there are, we actually, as this slide was created, uh, we actually received the grant agreements, uh, for both the 2026 Marina and the Bayshore water main, which are being reviewed. And that is it. That's a summary of where we're at with the grant applications and awards. Okay. Questions for staff, starting with Commissioner Sandbergen. Going back to the, uh, the available grants, 2024 through 2025 was 19. And then the next cycle, it was 24. Was our grant writer here during both of those terms? Yes. We, that's, we basically started this tracking when, when that individual came on board. I do, I do want to share, there are a handful of grants, um, in both of those categories that, that she did not, uh, she did not apply for. They are smaller grants, um, that certain teams like the TBRPC grant that I had mentioned, uh, was applied, uh, directly by stormwater. Um, parks and rec has a few kind of recurring grants that they get, uh, through various sources. But those are all now tracked in one location, regardless of who's applying for them. Okay. That's all I had, Mayor. Okay. Questions, uh, Commissioner Gao. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, yeah, back on slide two, uh, right. The total value to date was 11.5 and then the matching funds was 696. If I understand that correctly, that, right, the difference between the 11.5 and the 600,000, so approximately 11 million, uh, was free money for us? Free money. That's incredible. That's incredible. And the, of the ones that are still outstanding, uh, the live applications, what are the probability on those? How, how good do we feel? Um, I mean, you know, as you can see with the amount applied versus the amount awarded, there's always, you know, more effort that goes into kind of casting the net, so to speak, um, and seeing what, you know, what, what, what works out. So, you know, again, um, I think that probably of this list, the most, uh, positive application or perspective application would be the Resilient Florida for the lift station five. Uh, we see a lot of that. That's actually a really good example of something that is directly tied to our vulnerability assessment. Um, that is the program that funds a lot of those projects through our vulnerability assessment. So it was an item when we walked, you know, talked with engineering, um, you know, what was going to be the most, uh, beneficial to again, see that rehabilitation to protect for future, for future years, future storms, rain, you know, all that sort of thing. So, um, that would likely be, um, something we, you know, we'll cross our fingers to hear from. Okay. And right. All of this isn't government funding, right? We have the firehouse subs. And so you've got all of these, is there a central location, uh, that the state can see, um, on how much money different cities or organizations have been awarded? Is there any possibility for any one of these organizations to go, well, wait a minute, city of Dunedin has already received X millions of dollars. So no, you need to slow your roll, Dunedin. We're going to give money to some other municipality. Is that, is that a thing? Um, I, I don't feel like it ha it has been to date because we haven't really felt that. Um, we have, we have probably, I don't know, about six or seven outstanding agreements right now with FDEP. Um, so they obviously, they see a lot of, of the grants are coming through them for environmental work. Um, I'm not really sure how well the agencies talk with each other to be frank. Uh, so that's, you know, which is in the end, I suppose, beneficial if that's what they are looking for. Um, I haven't seen anything that, that, uh, has a database like that. We are keeping our own database for all, you know, all of our grants, um, or application process, but, um, not that I'm aware of. It could exist, but. And right now these grants are being administered through finance. Uh, no, no, through, through Nicole. Yes. Okay. And maybe I should direct you to the city manager then. Yeah. Is, is there at any point on the number of grants, the administration, the amount of time it takes to where the administration of grants will outgrow the person doing them? Certainly. And that's a quantity question, not a quality. Yes. Right. Right. Exactly. So, um, and I, and Nicole's been doing a fantastic job, um, on that aspect of it. And we're keeping a really close eye on it because she's busy doing other things as well. But, um, as you know, as part of the contingency plan, uh, I recommended not filling that position, eliminating that position, uh, from the budget at a minimum. And we can, we're going to discuss this again when we do the contingency plan. I'd like to clear out, you know, some of the, you know, the potential grants that we have and some of the existing open grants that we have to open up a little bit of, of, um, uh, time to, uh, uh, administer those grants and close them out successfully before we move forward with, with additional grants. We did, uh, contract with two, uh, two, uh, companies, as you know, who administer grants, um, looking at whatever we could hand over to them to administer, because a lot of the grants have like a 3% administration, um, cost or line item within that grant that we could spend. So we're keeping a really close eye on it, uh, keeping a close eye on Nicole and, uh, and you know, what she's doing as far as administering, she is working with the departments, whichever is, is the one that is most benefited by the grant. But we, we need to keep a really close eye on it. You know, Camille had, had just was, was amazingly successful in acquiring these grants. The program was very successful. Um, but the other side of it is that we've got to make sure. You've got this tiger by the tail now and it's right, right. We got to make sure that the tiger is calm before we get more tigers. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Gard, questions? Thank you, Mayor. Um, you said that we had no cost associated with the 11 million five in grants or so, except for what would, what did we have in 696,000? Is that what I see? Yes, sir. Yes. Matching. Okay. Do, are we encumbered in the future though to continue aspects of the grant that are not funded by the grantor? In other words, are there future, you know, the safer grant, for instance, it, it leaves us now with employees that if we keep, we're going to continue funding. Do we have anything like that inside these grants? Not inside these particular grants. I'm going to defer to Jennifer to address the safer grant. Yes. Um, and, and so the safer grant, uh, obviously is subject to amendment three and we'll find out what happens with amendment three, the safer grant. We are, um, required via the grant to, uh, not decrease levels of, uh, staffing in the fire department, the new fire rescue until March of 2028. So thereafter, it is our decision as far as staffing levels. And as you know, 2028, 2029 is if amendment three passes is when we're really going to be feeling the impact. So that's going to be a discussion. The city commission's going to have to have well in advance of March of 2028. Thank you. Uh, the other question I have is, um, when I, I, I don't know if you've had a chance to do an analysis of our expenses to generate these funds, but Camille obviously had a salary and we had probably some other expenses associated with it. But I would be willing to bet that our ratio of return is somewhere around $1, we get a hundred, something like that. Would you have any idea of what our cost to benefit was? Um, I, I mean, to be honest, you know, Camille, uh, it really was just Camille's salary. Um, there wasn't, uh, any additional, um, expenses, um, outside of the salary that was paid to her. Um, her, you know, her salary was split, uh, because the, the grants that are coming in, a lot of them are funding enterprise fund projects. Um, so it was split between general fund, uh, water, wastewater and solid waste. Okay. Thank you very much. Um, final question, uh, in the five years prior to Camille coming on board, do you, can you have any sense of what our grants were in that period? Yeah. So that was actually the, one of the first things I tasked her with was to build this database and to go back, uh, five, actually five years. Um, so we do have, you know, we do have a few kind of scattered here and there. I mentioned some of the parks and rec, um, especially related to their, you know, their aftercare, um, programs, JWB grants, that sort of thing. It's kind of a, they, they have some recurring funding that happens. Two million, three million dollars. Promise time. Less than, yeah, less than that. All right. So in other words, in that two years she was here, we picked up, um, 11.5 million as opposed to two million, maybe at the most in the prior five years. Is that a pretty broad statement? But correct in general. I mean, I would have to look at the exact numbers, but yes, it, the, the numbers were pretty, pretty minor in comparison. Okay. Thank you very much. Um, I just have one question. Um, the, um, resilient Florida, the city requested 460,000 to support the rehabilitation of the lift station number five on San Jose drive. And I thought that was done. So this, uh, you know, obviously before we go through any sort of application, uh, process, uh, we talked with the lead department. So Camille worked very closely with engineering on this project, on this application. Um, and this was one of the ones that, you know, it would have was brought forward. Um, and, and actually this was, I think one of the last applications she submitted probably less than, less than 30 days ago. So. Yeah, actually may, as I look at it now, maybe it says say San Jose drive. The one I'm thinking of is the one at San Jose is actually technically on Santa Barbara, but it's part of the mini because it lifted my bio. It's, it was, it's great how it got lifted. I mean, so from resiliency. So maybe there's a different one. That's just, uh, so thank you. Um, I don't have any other questions. Um, uh, I'd like to open it to public input. If anyone wishes to come forward and speak on this issue. Okay. Officer Julie doesn't want to know. No interest. Okay. All right. Uh, close public input. And, uh, I don't know how you stay awake back there sometimes. You do good. You do good. Um, okay. Final commission comments. I'll start with, uh, Commissioner Gale. Uh, thank you. You know, what a wonderful presentation. Um, we should maybe do this more than annually, although I can't imagine the labor it takes to put all this together, but just a constant reminder on the grants that we're receiving and so that we can show back to the residents. This is, you know, throwing good money after good money. Um, but anyway, thank you very much, Nicole. Although I will say, and I did come in at the end of it. I did think the, uh, San Jose lift station was the one. Yeah. Santa Barbara. I, it's where my head was. So the fact that it's closer to the school is also good. So, thank you. Uh, final comments, Commissioner Dugard. Thank you, mayor. Um, Nicole, thank you for the reports. Very comprehensive, complete. Um, but I'm going to speak to this in a broader sense. Um, because right now citizens are valuing or weighing the value proposition of local government and how much it should be funded. And this is a great example because we have an employee that performed extraordinarily well. She brought $11.5 million. And I would be willing to bet her costs were under half a million in total, no matter what you threw into it. So that brings $11 million of benefit into this community. Now that's, that's multiplier effect. And if you take government and diminish it, those multiplier effects disappear. In other words, those benefits to the citizens stop happening. That's what local government can do. And we've forgotten that value. And I think that if we don't bring that value forward, and I know we're not supposed to lobby one way or another on a pending referendum, but it's also important to inform the citizens that that value exists and that value won't exist in the future if we're not careful. Thank you so much. Uh, final comments, Mr. Sandbergen. Before I say comment, um, have, is it less, less cost to the city to hire groups to do the grant writing than it was to actually employ one? Do you, do you know that? Uh, I mean, I, I know it's comments. I just, just curious. I would say, um, probably because you don't have to pay the overhead, 33% and benefits and that type of a thing. So I think it's cheaper to have a consultant do it. That's right. As far as writing the grants go. Oh, I, and they would take, I disagree, but you're the city manager, but anytime you get a consultant, they're tacking on the profits. So I, I'm not sure. So I, yeah, I don't think it's a, I don't think it's a, I don't think, where is your loyalty line? I don't think it's a 33% profit on the position, which is what we pay for benefits. I don't think it's a 33% profit and it really depends on the grant, I think. Yeah. So I, I, I guess that's what I understand how important, and I think it was shared down here, how important the grant writer was when you start seeing these bottom line results. You know, thank you for your presentation today. And, uh, I'm wide open for any questions or comments from you. And cause you know, we need to really take a hard look at where we're going with this. Thank you. Thank you. Um, you know, one of the things I thought about when I was looking at this, cause this is great and you know, come on, Nicole, you got plenty of, you got plenty of extra time, right? Um, it's just kidding. Um, you know, I, one of the things I thought about was a conversation I had with one of our state reps and talking about how they were looking at, you know, amendment three and, and basically in my estimation, discussing it in a way that was not differentiating local cities at all. You know, that there's some good, some bad, you know, just all lumped together. And I think, and, and my comment at the time to this individual was, well, I mean, how do you even do that? How do you judge everybody together? You know, you can take us who 30 years ago, our community went through the difficult task of disbanding its police department, a hundred year police department, and contracting with the sheriff, lowering a full mill ultimately, um, reducing staff, um, same services. Um, and this is another example where we're, we're leveraging a lot of, you know, minor matching money to get big money to help our citizens to, to be more resilient, to do all the things really that actually, um, in some cases is put upon us by the state, even though it's good for us to do. I just, I think that, um, this is just an example of, of, of good management. Um, and, um, and I fully understand that, you know, we can't keep the pace either, which may bring, you know, maybe there is something to be said for if we don't have to, if we're not doing a lot of grants and maybe we don't need a full-time grant person, but, um, we'll have to weigh that. But, um, but I'll tell you, I mean, it's just a good example of, in my opinion, um, managing things really well to bring, uh, you know, when you said throwing good money to get good money and it's kind of throwing good pennies to get big money to do critical projects that have everything to do with storms and drainage and, you know, flooding and things that really matter in terms of core services. So, uh, this is a great report. Thanks for doing it, Nicole. I appreciate it. And Camille, wherever you are, thank you for the good work you've done. Um, okay. So on that note, I don't think we need anything else. There's informational items. City manager, do you have any informational items? Uh, I just, I assume you're going to talk a little bit about Thursday night in the sheriff's office celebration or. Yeah. I mean, actually I'm, you're, I'm happy to let you just at least give the, the, the, the times. Right. So, so starting at five 30, uh, in the evening, we're going to have a number of, uh, uh, like a little touch a truck event. It's the 30th anniversary that we're celebrating with the Penelope County Sheriff's office of executing that contract that the mayor was just talking about. Uh, we'll start at a five 30. We've invited the community. Um, the sheriff, Bob Galtieri will be here. Um, we'll, we'll, uh, uh, start the meeting here in the city commission chambers and then go out to, uh, the front stairs. Um, because I think that's where the public's going to be, uh, and read the proclamation regarding the 30th anniversary. And then the commission will come back in here. We'll continue the meeting, but the public and the community is more than welcome. Um, we have a whole bunch of equipment and apparatus from the sheriff's office, uh, including some, some interesting surprises as well. Uh, I, I assume deputy Julie will be here too. Yeah. With her taser and her. Yeah. But don't taser anybody, everybody in order. Um, so it, it's going to be a really fun community event. Um, you know, I'm a little bit concerned about the rain, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. So I need to chat with staff. The department had this afternoon a little bit about, uh, uh, uh, what we're going to do about that, but not that we can stop the rain, but it's going to be a fun event and I really hope the community, uh, shows up for it. Okay. We'll have to check on that. Um, so, uh, yeah, no, that's great. And I'm just going to say this here because I don't think, I don't know if I want to say this Thursday because in light of amendment three, one of the things that we could hit, could hit with the sheriff said it is increases in our sheriff's contract. But, you know, at the time of the study 30 years ago, it was estimated that we'd save two to two and a half million dollars a year. Okay. So which means in excess of well over 60 to 75 million dollars over 30 years has been saved to the taxpayers, which was reflected in a 10% decrease in millage, then five, then 10, which lasted, you know, I mean, it's lasted the test of time and, uh, way less staff. And, um, I actually, uh, looked at the study recently because I was involved in the study and at the rate that our police department was growing at that time, 30 years ago, I went, I went and just extrapolated that out. So we pay about 6.7 million to the sheriff's department. And if I extrapolate out the cost of our Dunedin police department at this time, it would have been around 21 million a year. I mean, we're talking, and this is what I mean by, you know, this is what local government, this is what I think Dunedin does well. It's like, it was hard for the community, but, but again, how do we, at the time it was kind of, is that our identity? But the determination was, we loved our Dunedin police department, we love our sheriff's department now, and there's more money for quality of life items. So, um, you know, my point being, we don't want to, I hope we don't have to gut some of those quality of life items. Um, because again, I think Dunedin has got there intentionally. We've, we've, we've managed intentionally towards that goal. And that says nothing about not caring about making our, you know, our citizens and their lives more affordable. You know, property tax reform absolutely needs to happen. It's the question of how, how do you do that? So in the right way. Um, so, uh, two things, uh, that I just wanted to add, I, I would really like to schedule a do over on the vulnerability assessment study, uh, for a workshop. That was a long night that night. And at the end of a long night was a hugely important, um, thing that we've been waiting for with huge documents that went with it. And in fairness to our staff, um, I, I just think we need to make sure we're fresh and good and have fully looked at all that and then come in and really look at it. Because that really is a very visionary, critical piece of, of, um, looking to, you know, us as a coastal community and making sure that we're doing the smart things with our own vulnerability. So I just like a do over if everybody's okay with that. Yeah. Okay. And then, um, and the only thing I'd say, I don't know if we're going to end up, we'll have to talk about this on Thursday, uh, whether or not, um, we need to have a workshop on election day. We typically don't, but we typically have a commissioner up here that is impacted somehow. So it's been courteous not to, and you need to think about whether or not we have some things that we have to do. But my point being, if it, if we don't have it, then this is, this is, uh, Commissioner Gall's last workshop, even though he will have other meetings and, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll miss your, your banter and, uh, your trees and small vehicles and, you know, but we'll say more in later, but, uh, you know, anyway, I, I just wanted to recognize that. So, um, okay. Uh, any other, Michelle, anything? Are we good? I have something more to add. Sure. Go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. Um, one of the, in the two years that I've been sitting up here, almost two years, I have been amazed at the community engagement of the commission, where we are, what we're doing, the events that we're asked to attend, and they're growing. Uh, and that growth seems to be organic. Um, and I would like a workshop to talk about our community engagement and how we do and do not participate with organizational activities. I'd like to have that workshop. Thank you, Mayor. I mean, everybody good with that or? I agree with that and get it out in the open because right now, I, it seems like we're so concerned to talk to each other that we may be tripping over each other and, uh, maybe it's time to have that open conversation about upcoming events. I, I agree with you on that one, Tom. Okay. Sounds good. Um, and that note, we are three minutes before our end time and I'm going to adjourn the meeting. Thank you to our firefighter union.