COMMISSION WORKSHOP - Sep 01, 2026

Good morning, and welcome to the September 1st, 2026. How did it get to be September 1st? How'd that happen? City Commission Workshop. I want to call the meeting to order. And before we start, and I'll let Jen do this. You're going to have a moment of silence. You're going to do that, okay. And our Pledge of Allegiance, and so we'll go to Jen. If we'd just stand. Let us begin this meeting by taking a brief moment of silence and turning our thoughts to the family of former Mayor Bob Hackworth. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, and just to reiterate, our thoughts continue to go out to former Mayor Bob Hackworth's wife Gwen and his son Bobby and his daughter Maddie as they kind of, you know, go a new way, and we're with them, and I know a celebration of life has been set, so that'll be out there. So, okay. We have, we're missing two of our comrades today, and one is out of town on a contract that he had to be at, and then the other one, I think, is returning from out of the country, so he might be in flight right now. So, if I could have a motion to excuse Vice Mayor Walker and Commissioner DeGuard? So moved. I just want some dramatic effect. Yeah. Sergeant. Jen, there's actually, there's no motions or action taken at work. Well, that's true. Okay, so we don't have to say. You don't even need to. We kind of, okay. Well, we kind of do because, I mean, because they have to. Can we do it on Thursday? Yes, we can do it on Thursday, because they have to have the excuse for other ways. They get dinged, so. Yeah. All right. Okay, we'll do it Thursday. Okay, well, thanks a lot for that, then. And we, and, we, yeah. And, yeah, the joke was on you, I think, so, yeah. And, and, and we don't have our city manager this morning, but we do have our deputy city manager, Jorge Quintus, so we'll try to be brutal on him. That's, you know, kind of, that's always our strategy. Okay, so we've got presentations with library card sign-up month, and Commissioner Sandbergen is going to, I'm going to turn that over to him for proclamation and. Phyllis, can we bring him up? Got the whole team here today. Look at him. How are you coming? She's got, she's got the famous dress on, too. She does. So you're going to be by yourself, then. We'll recognize all of them. Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to read today's proclamation. In the last year, the library, I knew it was important, but it's even become more important to me personally and as a city commissioner on July 30th. I had a chance to read the end of summer with the Dunedin Blue Jays, and I think it went absolutely incredible. You know, those little kids get to see these pro baseball players and realize. And then August 15th, I got to go to the summer reading challenge at TD Ballpark, and again, to recognize the kids for what they've done and to, you know, give a real thumbs up to the library. And then on the 19th of August, Kimberly was fortunate, you know, willing to come on Toronto Blue Jays' podcast with me and to talk about what the library means in the relationship with the Blue Jays and not just baseball on the field, and it's exactly what the city needed. And lastly, over the weekend, I got to go read again with the Juvenile Welfare Board. But is that what JWB and Firefighter Joe Ray and I and Kimberly read to the kids? And I appreciate everything that this library and you all do for this community. So, because before you read, so is his writing skills getting better with all this, or is that helping him? It's getting better? Okay. I have to say thank you to Kimberly because she gives me, each page has about 10 words on it. So, I do, and I do, I appreciate everything that you do. And, you know, before I read this, I heard a word mentioned down there this weekend that really stuck with me. And I believe it was said by one of your staff members, and it was to Joe and I. There was a young lady in there that was asking questions, and it was referred to as a spot where she feels safe. And, you know, that really landed with me. And I see it's being discussed back there. And, you know, it really made me feel something as a city commissioner that the young people of our city can go in there and be safe. So, with that being said, whereas libraries, librarians and library workers across the country are joining together to celebrate Library Card Sign-Up Month for the month of September, and whereas libraries are foundational to education, imagination, and opportunity, offering everything from early literacy programs to digital tools that support lifelong learning and personal growth. And whereas libraries welcome all people serving as a community hub that connects individuals across cultures, generations, and experiences. And whereas libraries contribute to thriving local economies by equipping job seekers, entrepreneurs, students, and creators with tools and training to succeed. And whereas in time of both crisis and calm, there we go, libraries and their staff remain steadfast in supporting and strengthening their communities. And whereas libraries provide programming for kids, teens, and adults, from story time to book clubs to crafts and entertainment. And whereas a library card offers a front row seat to everything the library offers, from books and technology to lifelong learning and online resources. And whereas this month in 1996 marks the opening of the current library building, a place that has served as a cornerstone of our community for 30 years. Now, therefore, I, Stephen Sandberg, and by virtue of the authority vested in me by Mayor Freeney and the City of Dunedin, and on behalf of the entire City Commission, hereby proclaim September 2026 as Library Card Sign-Up Month and encourage all residents to sign up for a library card. All yours. Thank you. Okay, I will say a few words. And I just want to recognize I'm so thankful I have a lot of our staff here. We're going to try and get back in time to open the building at 9.30. But I want to thank the whole team for being here today. You know, the most important thing about making our library feel safe and welcoming is the people that work at the library. And we are so lucky, too, because we have friends, and we have foundation members, and we have advisory members. Some of them, I tell them, we don't pay overtime for volunteering, but thank you for their time. So I do want to recognize I know we have some of our members in the audience, and we're so lucky to have all of them dedicating their time to the library. So Library Card Sign-Up Month, this is our big month to promote getting a library card. And just in case someone hasn't been there in a while, library cards do expire every three years. So if you're overdue for a library card, please stop in and get one. And Commissioner Gao has his, yes, I was going to card everybody that walked in, but we'll leave that for later. And when they do get a library card, we have these lovely bags, library bags filled with goodies. So we really want to encourage everyone. This also marks our 30th anniversary in our building, and Winston Churchill has a quote that, we shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us. We have a very special library, and we're so thankful for the support from our city and from all our residents that do visit. So if you don't have a library card, please stop in and get one. We're so excited to welcome everyone, and thank you for recognizing us today. You all are welcome to read any time, so we don't have to always put Commissioner Sandberg on the spot. But thank you again for recognizing us. And again, this is a big anniversary year, our 30th anniversary in our building. It's also the 30th anniversary of our contract with the Sheriff's Department, and we also have a fire station that was built 30 years ago, too. So that was a big year, 1996. We are going to recognize our 30th anniversary on Friday, October 2nd. So we're going to have a display of photographs of the building, the demo, and you'll see the Blue Jays field right next door. So we're so excited with them as our partners next door. The trailers that the library was in for about one year, really fun for the staff to work in that. And then just some treats for all of our residents that stopped by on Friday, October 2nd. So thank you for recognizing us, and I hope to see you all at the library. Thank you very much. We love our library. So I think we need a picture. Why doesn't everybody come up so we can do a picture? Everybody who's involved with the library? Staff? Mayor, while we're doing that, may I? Sure. Phyllis, I'm wondering if this was intended for Jennifer and not me. I have a sticker that says, I like books more than people. Me too. I know quite a few people like that, actually. Would you like us all to stand here? Yeah, come on up here. Okay, everybody. Let's get close. People are here on the side. I love it. I love it. But it didn't do a total of wine in that. Yeah, let's get a few people in the front. Let's see. Scoot in a little bit. Getting cozy on the left. You better do it on the right. All right. We got it. All right, everybody. Library. Library. Over the front. Over the front. Thank you. Thank you so much. Go get that library open. We love you guys, though. You did an awesome job, and we appreciate all you do. I think that's the year we started EMS, too. So library, sheriff, and EMS, we took back EMS. So 30 years, yeah. That was a big year. Yeah. I think there's a few pictures of me looking a lot younger. Hopefully not too bad, yeah. All right. Well, I'm feeling better now that I know that Commissioner Sandbergen's getting a lot of good reading, skill, training. Yeah, you read that very well, so it's obvious. Well, they've been working with me down there, yeah. You've probably had that for like a month, right, going over it. Well, you know, it's kind of funny because I, you know, dare I say, because it's the talk of the news, is Dolly Parton and how important she was to literacy. But, you know, let's face it. I mean, the more literate our kids are, that's everything. And I wasn't making that up about this young girl that came in, and she was kind of troubled. And they said that this is where she feels safe, and that really, really hit home with me. I'm sorry to interrupt you. Yeah, no, no. I mean, I think that's so important. So we have great library staff, so. All right. So let's move on to citizen input. Anyone in the audience wish to speak on a topic that is not on the agenda? Okay. All right. Okay. She's trying to hide, too. Because it's like, hey. Okay. All right. So we'll move on from that. You don't want to talk about the 30th year of the sheriff's office, Julie? Or, you know. Okay. Okay. We're going to go to something really exciting. Right, Whit? Which is Ford Pinellas update on Tri-County MPO merger. And we're going to do, I think, I guess, Nicole, you want me to go right to Whit Blanton is here, Forward Pinellas. And so I'm going to let you take it. Whit, thank you for being here. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm Whit Blanton. I'm the executive director of Forward Pinellas. And I appreciate a little bit of time on your agenda today because I'm going to talk about some fairly big, big items that we're dealing with, both regionally and countywide. And I think it's important for the city of Dunedin to weigh in and let me know what you think and give me some guidance as we move forward. So I do have a PowerPoint presentation that I think is set up and I can just quickly go through. There we go. There we go. So we're going to talk about the proposed merger of our three metropolitan planning organizations that serve the Tampa Bay area. And I want to say before we start that we're a little bit of an outlier nationally because the norm is that you have a metropolitan planning organization authorized by Congress that serves a single urbanized area. Well, we like them so much we have three serving our single urbanized area and not many places other than a couple do that. So, in fact, Atlanta, I think, has 20 counties in their MPO and Chicago has many and Dallas has like 15. So it's we are different. Let's see. I think I pushed down. There we go. So just a little bit about Forward Pinellas. We are a unique organization. We have two legal organizations under us. Forward Pinellas is a fictitious name. We are the Pinellas Planning Council, which is created by a special act of the Florida legislature, which handles land use, decision making countywide. Set a framework that all 25 local governments have to fit within. And then we are the metropolitan planning organization designated by federal law and reinforced by state statutes. And together, we have a single governing board that covers land use and transportation decision making countywide. And that's pretty unique in the state of Florida. Nobody has a setup exactly like us. And it's been 11 years since I was hired to facilitate the merger of this organization. And we have evolved a lot. And I think that's an important point to keep in mind as we talk about the merger of the MPO. This is our board. We have 19 members. Thank you, Mayor Freeney, for serving on this board. We actually are down to 18. Commissioner Eisner resigned. So we will need a new Tarpon Springs appointment. And they'll make that in September. So the regional MPO merger is a big deal because the legislature has gotten involved. And like everything else in local government, the legislature has a preference for how we do things. And one of the things that the legislative intent seems to be is that Florida should have fewer MPOs in the state of Florida. We have 27. And not only does the Tampa Bay area have this legislative mandate to consider the feasibility of merging, which we did in response to 2023 legislation, it's now covering Charlotte, Lee, and Collier counties as well. And there are multi-county MPOs in the state of Florida, but there are also a lot of county-based MPOs. The motivation for creating a single regional transportation planning organization is that this region is growing. And the organizations that serve the region need to evolve with that growth of the region. And for years, we've been requested by the governor of the state of Florida, going back to 1990, that we should merge. And since that time, we've always said, well, Pasco is different. Hillsborough is different. Pinellas is unique. We have so many differences. It really doesn't make any sense to merge. And we still have a lot of differences in the counties and how we work, but the traveling public cares less and less. And as housing becomes less affordable, people are moving to Pasco County, and they're still working in our counties. People are moving to the fringes of Hillsborough County, and they're still working in Pinellas County. And we are not creating any more beach. People are still coming here. And even though we're adding 2 million people over the next 25 years to our region, they're still coming here for entertainment and fun and all the things that attract people. This is really important because transportation is competitive when it comes down to funding. We have formula-based funds that are based on population, but the real heavy-hitting dollars that can move a region's needle are going to be in the grants that are competitive, whether it's federal or state. And 75% of Florida's transportation trust fund, which is $15 billion or so, is allocated to what we call the strategic intermodal system. And that's U.S. 19 here in this county. It's the interstate system. And we compete against every region for those dollars. We have to have a really good project, a really good ask, and we need to be unified that that's a project we want. When we have three MPOs serving three counties, sometimes it's hard to be unified, saying this is the number one priority or the number two priority. Over the last year, we have hired a consultant that has been working with us to guide us through this evolution of the organizations. And we have looked at the culture of each organization. We've looked at how each one operates, the structure, the decision-making process. And we've developed a full suite of reports and bylaws and interlocal agreements that will now be presented next week to our board at a workshop. And today, it's actually being presented at the Hillsborough MPO and later this afternoon at the PASCO MPO for their consideration. So we get to hear what they talk about first. This is the population based on 2020. And this is important because by federal and state statute, the governing board of the MPO must be apportioned by population. And you can deviate a little bit, but you need to be pretty consistent with that population allocation. We are the second largest county in the region, but we are also the slowest growing county in the region. And so over time, we do expect Pasco County to get closer to a million, and Hillsborough is going to be at 2.5 million in the next 25 years. So that does affect the allocation of seats. So as we look at the apportionment plan, we have recommended a body that has 25 members compared to 19 that we have today in Fort Pinellas. That would include the port and the airport, Port Tampa Bay, and then the Tampa International Airport as voting members. They are already voting members in Hillsborough County, so we wouldn't be taking anything away or adding anything new. It would just be keeping that consistent. And they would not be represented by elected officials. They would be represented by their CEOs or designee. And then the remaining 23 seats would be allocated by population. The rationale is that those two organizations are regional organizations. If you get your gas at a gas station, it comes through Port Tampa Bay, and 44% of the emplainments at the airport have an origin or destination in Pinellas County. So that's pretty significant. The Hillsborough County delegation would have 10 representatives comprising Tampa, Hillsborough County, Temple Terrace, Plant City, the Expressway Authority. Pinellas would have eight representatives. The way that allocation is currently shown is two for the county commission, two for the city of St. Petersburg, and then one seat for every city over 50,000 population, and then one rotating seat for smaller local governments. That does have an implication for Dunedin because you have a voting seat today on the Fort Pinellas MPO board. You would not have an as-of-right seat on the regional MPO, but you may have a voting seat. And then PASCO would have five seats. Can you say that again? But we may have a voting seat? You may, because you may be one of the smaller rotating cities. And there are some other mechanisms that we could look at as well. Yeah, but that decision hasn't been totally made. It has not been voted on. I just wanted to... That's still a tentative decision. This is, at this point... I want my hairs to start popping. Staff recommendation. Yes, I understand. We've had this conversation. Yes, we have. And then we would have the transit agencies as non-voting advisors. Today, the transit agencies do vote on the MPOs. That was a decision we made early on, mainly to ensure we stay under the 25-member cap because that is enshrined in Florida statutes. So we can't go over that without changing statutes. So, as I mentioned, we have put together... This is no longer under development. We have actually completed a draft set of bylaws, interlocal agreement, a memorandum of understanding, a staffing plan, an org chart, and a financial plan for the organization. What's interesting is today we are hosted by the Pinellas Planning Council. That's my other land use agency. And it's important that we think about how the MPO operates and functions because rarely is an MPO a standalone agency. It does happen. But all the funds coming to an MPO are federal funds. So it's no local funds. It's all federal. But the Pinellas Planning Council is the host agency because I only get the federal funds every quarter. And in the meantime, I have to pay staff. I have to pay rent. I have to do those things. So we need a float. And that comes from the millage levy that the Pinellas Planning Council has on countywide residents. It's not very much, but it does provide that float so that we can operate. And then the federal funds reimburse the Pinellas Planning Council. The Hillsborough MPO is hosted by the Planning Commission. And then Pasco is hosted by Pasco County government. We are proposing a more independent MPO that would not be hosted by any of the three counties or by any city. The goal would be it would be an independent organization that contracts out certain services like HR, benefits, maybe IT, and other back office functions. But that the board would have oversight over the executive director and the executive director would have oversight of an independent staff. And I think that's critically important because there's a little bit of a tug of war that's been going on in Tampa Bay about responsibilities and roles and leadership. And if you have an organization hosted by Hillsborough County, is it a merger or is it a takeover? And I think they would think the same thing if it was hosted by Pinellas County. So we've kind of settled on, let's make this an independent organization. It could be hosted by an independent special district. So those are options. The airport is an independent special district. The Hillsborough Aviation Authority. PSTA is an independent special district. They could be a host agency. The Pinellas Planning Council could be a host agency. So that has not been determined how that would function. So this all ties into, and I'm going to come back to the MPO merger in a minute. And I know you have a lot of questions about it. This ties into the Pinellas Planning Council special act because it is an act of the legislature. And when the two organizations were merged, it said the MPO for Pinellas County shall have the same board as the Pinellas Planning Council. So if we merge the MPOs and we de-designate the Pinellas MPO, it doesn't exist anymore. And now there's no governing board for the Pinellas Planning Council to consider land use cases. So I have been working with the legislative delegation to find a sponsor to amend our special act. And last year, or last time in 2010, it took five years to accomplish this. And I'm hoping to pull this off in one year. So we have been working with a subcommittee of the board that wrapped up its final meeting this week, or last week, and has developed a set of recommendations. And those recommendations would address the merger of the MPO and also a few streamlining issues related to the Pinellas Planning Council. So the PPC sets broad policy framework for land use in Pinellas County. Its governance, as I mentioned, is the MPO. So what we have come up with is an if-then statement that says if the MPO is merged, then the Pinellas Planning Council would revert to a 13-member board representing the cities and the county here in Pinellas County. It would be one seat for the county commission, one seat for the city of St. Petersburg. Dunedin would have a voting seat on the board directly, not a rotating seat. And then there would be some rotating seats for the very smaller cities and the beach communities, for instance, but a 13-member board. The Pinellas Planning Council provides a lot of services, and we've provided some here to the city of Dunedin. We're actually working with your staff on the downtown master plan update. So that's happening now, and we provide a lot of technical assistance around the county to help people visualize development changes, whether it's increases in density or a new parking structure or changes in your transportation network. And so what the board has done is also recommended a series of streamlining steps so that the organization evolves with Pinellas County. And what that means is it used to be that the Pinellas Planning Council was a very regulatory-minded organization that if you wanted to do something here in the city of Dunedin, you had to check with us and pass go and jump through a lot of hurdles, and then we might still say you didn't do enough. We have moved away from that over the last 10 years and have really tried to let cities be cities. And rather than saying, no, unless you do these five things, we've said, how can we help you? And I think that's been a big difference. So we hope to continue that and expect to continue the linkage formally between the Pinellas Planning Council and the regional MPO to address land use issues and transportation linkages going forward. We haven't really figured out exactly how that linkage will take shape, but we look at the Pinellas Planning Council potentially being a formal advisory body to the regional MPO on issues affecting Pinellas County. And I think there's support for doing that regionally. I don't expect you to read all this, but just to know that I do have a bill sponsor potentially. And by November, we need to have that language drafted and ready for the legislative delegation to meet. The session meets in March, and I would love to be able to pair this with anything moving forward on the regional MPO. Now, before I wrap up, I do need to say that today at the Hillsborough TPO meeting or MPO meeting, State Representative Michael Owen is in attendance, and he has issued a statement that I read this morning that says he is prepared to file a bill to force the merger if the local entities can't agree on doing that. And he would prefer that the locals make the decision. How that decision is made is there are four principals involved, including the governor of the state of Florida, and that are the three Board of County Commissioners and the city of Tampa as the largest organization all have to say yes to this merger. The timeline of that is we have our workshop next week where we will be getting feedback. We will take the feedback from the three MPOs that happened this week or next week, and then we will have a leadership group of the regional entities on October 2nd. It's called the TMA Leadership Group, and we will present the feedback, and we will see if there's a desire to make any changes in response to that feedback. Then we will simply present this to the four principals and ask them to take it up whenever they are willing to do so. We're not sure if that will happen before the March election in the city of Tampa or after that, but it will happen sometime in 2027. When that happens, and if they vote in favor, we transmit it to the governor, and then the governor either approves or sends it back for more work. If that happens and the governor approves it, we have six months by law to stand up the MPO. So we have already created a set of personnel policies. We've created all these things to grease the wheels to make it easy. The bylaws for the MPO have some provisions in there that I think are important to share. So one concern that I've heard consistently is that the growth and the population are in Tampa, in Hillsborough County, and there's concerns. That they will make a power play to take the money and put it on projects that benefit Hillsborough and Tampa. I'm here to tell you they can't do that. The Florida Department of Transportation is required to make sure its five-year work program is equitable according to population in each county. So in the course of that five-year period, they have to ensure that we get our fair share of dollars for transportation projects, even if the top ten priority projects are all in Tampa. They will skip over one through nine, and then they will go to number 11, which is Pinellas, just to make sure we're equal. In any one year, there might be a SKU. And I'll give you an example of that. The Ford Pinellas Board and the Pinellas County Commission were first to say the number one project in the region is the interchange by the Tampa Airport, where I-275, State Road 60, and the Veterans Expressway all converge. We got letters from around the region. We made it the number one region priority. That project is under construction now at $1.6 billion. That's all in Hillsborough County, but that directly benefits Pinellas County. So in one year, it might look like they're getting a lot of money, but over the next five years, we have U.S. 19, we have I-275, we have a lot of other projects that are in the pipeline in the five-year work program serving Pinellas County. In addition to that, we've put in some provisions in the interlocal agreement that would require not only a majority vote of this regional board, but a majority of each delegation, so that everybody supports it. That would require a state statute change, so we know that. We're keeping a running list of where the legislature should be involved. And in addition, I've also heard some concerns that, and I should say, that with the apportionment plan that we've settled on, with eight Pinellas and five Pasco, that would give us 13 combined, and that outweighs the 10 or 12, if you count the port and the airport as Hillsborough. So it does kind of give a little bit of a buffer, assuming that Tampa and Hillsborough vote in lockstep, which they really don't. In addition to that, we've created in the bylaws an executive committee that does look like Tampa Bay water, which is a concern that I've heard from some folks that we need to have equal representation among the three counties. So we have a chair, a vice chair, and a treasurer that would all be from the three different delegations, and then we've added an at-large member from each county. So that would be six, and that would be two, two, and two, and that would be equal like Tampa Bay water. One of those at-large, or one of those representatives on the executive committee must represent the city of Tampa, and another must represent a city in Pinellas County, irrespective of size. So that could be Dunedin, for example, on the executive committee. So that two, two, and two gives, I think, a balance to those who say we should create a board more like Tampa Bay water. I'll stop there and see what questions you have. Again, the timeline of this is sometime in 2027 to ask for a vote, ideally before the legislature starts meeting in March. And then, or take it during the session before any bills get passed. And then we would expect the MPO to begin functioning July 1st of 2028. So we have a few more years. Nobody's made any decisions about who the executive director would be, and I'm certainly not making any assumptions about that. But the org chart does call for an executive director and two deputy executive directors, which I think would be a good way to transition into this, because I don't know PASCO that well. And I only know Hillsborough a little bit, and they don't know Pinellas. So, you know, that would provide a seamless transition. And thank you for your time and opportunity, and I'll open up to questions, concerns, comments. Great questions. I do think you're a logical choice, though, just saying. Okay, so questions. I'll start over here with Commissioner Gao. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much for being here. I know I did ask you before the meeting, but now that we're on camera, I'll ask again. You didn't ride your bike here this morning. No, I didn't, but I do commute to work pretty regularly, so I'll make an effort next time. Very good. Well, thank you very much, and you always do make an effort. Yeah, a lot of questions went. I'm glad to hear that there is a balance between Pinellas and PASCO versus Hillsborough. And you, at the beginning, you had mentioned there are several regional MPOs, and I understand the concept of a regional MPO in theory and in discussion, but in practice, how well do all those different municipalities or regions representative, how well do they really work together in those other regional MPOs? That's a great question. We took a field trip to Orlando where they have a three-county MPO, and I spent most of my career in Orlando. And our board members, we brought a bunch of our board members there from all three MPOs, and they talked to city, county, elected officials. And I think our delegation was incredibly impressed about how much trust and confidence they had that their voices would be heard and respected in that process. And we had people from the city of Maitland in the room. Maitland is 14,000 people. We had representatives from the city of Winter Garden. That's 20,000 people. And they felt like they were heard. What Orlando has done is they've created a municipal advisory committee that is comprised of the elected officials. It started out being a mayor's advisory committee, but they've changed it a little bit. That represents all the local governments, the cities that are not in a voting position on their board. And they elect somebody to serve on that board. We've chosen a little bit different model, but we have not precluded the notion of a municipal advisory committee. All the cities in Pasco County are under 20,000 population. They don't have that many. I think they have six. The Temple Terrace in Hillsborough County is 20,000 people, plant cities about the size of Dunedin. So those dynamics are really important to Pinellas because we have so many smaller cities. So they feel like it works really well. I can't speak for everybody. Tallahassee is a multi-county MPO. They cover four counties. They just don't have that many cities. Outside of Tallahassee, they get really small. But it's important that you have a mechanism for those to be heard. And I think what I've told people generally is that we need an organization that can telescope between these big regional issues and these small granular issues like what you did for Skinner Boulevard out here. That's not necessarily a regionally significant project, even though it's a state road, but it's a super significant project to the city of Dunedin. And we work with you very closely on that. I'm very proud of what you were able to accomplish. I don't see that changing. We have, in the org chart, created, I'm trying to remember, I think they're county liaison positions, one for each county. And that person, whoever is selected, would be responsible for working with the local governments and ensuring that we have the pulse of what's going on in each community. Well said. You must have rehearsed that. Very good. Common question. You know, what is, you got the, and I'm showing the list of potential member numbers. Yeah, I can back up to that in the presentation. Page 10. Right. And rotating smaller cities, I guess that would be where City of Dunedin would lie. How is that decision going to be made? Who is going to make that decision on whether that really is representation or is there a way for Dunedin to get a permanent seat? Well, we are recommending that the Pinellas Planning Council board make that decision. Again, that would be, Dunedin would have a voting seat on that board. There would only be one seat for the county commission. So the one thing, and I know I'm on the record here, but I really don't want the Pinellas County Commission to decide who that one small city seat is. That would be another model, and we have not even considered that. So I think an independent organization representing all 25 local governments would be the best venue for that. Okay. And is this questions only? Yeah, questions. We'll have comments later. Okay, then I'll save my comment on that. You had also mentioned there's going to be an executive committee, and right now discussions are maybe two, two, and two, and that would be a place for Dunedin. And where and how and who would we advocate to? What's that process? Well, I think you would have to be on the board first. So Dunedin would have to have a seat on the board, and then the executive committee would be typically appointed by vote of the full board. You know, that would be a determination of the next board. I'm not even sure the bylaws are specific enough yet about how the executive committee would be appointed. All right. And you had mentioned that also one of the seats is going to be for the Port of Tampa. Can you explain that again to me on why they have a seat? Right. So the rationale is that Port Tampa Bay and the Hillsborough Aviation Authority or the Tampa International Airport are already regional entities, and they are already voting members of the Hillsborough TPO board. And they feel very strongly in that role, and they've both written letters stating that they need to be on the regional board. And I've understood that Hillsborough County feels that that is absolutely essential to have them on the board. They are transportation providers. While Port Tampa Bay doesn't have maybe the same impact that Tampa International Airport does on Pinellas County, it is still a main conduit for freight and goods distribution in this region. They tend to operate more operationally, focused on their port operations. Same with the airport. There is a little bit of a fly in the ointment, just to be candid with you, is we're proposing that the CEOs, staff, be the voting members of those entities. And I think you'll find that staff tend to be very regionally minded. They look for what's best for the region, and they're not really beholden to politics. But they do have a governing board, and their governing board is comprised of the mayor of Tampa, a county commissioner, and then gubernatorial appointees. All of those gubernatorial appointees have to reside in Hillsborough County. So I have requested our legislative delegation members to consider if they are truly regional entities and have a seat on the regional MPO board, that let's open up their gubernatorial appointments to people who live in Pinellas or Pasco County as well, or expand their board to include that. So those are additional considerations that we're looking at. And if this goes forward, what is the impact on other smaller committees or boards like the Pedestrian Advisory Committee? That's still in flux. We need to work that out. My sense is that our Citizens Committee, which meets at 7 o'clock on a Thursday night, and our Bike Ped Committee, which meets at 8.30, a lot of those folks arrive by bicycle, aren't going to want to go across the bridge and meet at the airport or someplace like that. So I think what we will probably end up doing is having those committees still functioning in each county, and then a subset of the committee members would probably get together twice a year to talk about regional issues related to those modes of transportation or citizen input in the transportation process, but that has not been determined yet. The Citizens Advisory Committee, when I asked them how they saw themselves in the regional MPO, they would prefer to have the ability to meet virtually and vote virtually without having a physical quorum present. And that's one of those little statutory changes that we would need to make. So we're keeping a running list of that. And there are provisions. I believe it affects the water management districts and some of the other multi-county organizations that don't have to have a physical quorum present to adhere to the Sunshine Law. It's very limited. And so we think a carve-out for a newly formed regional organization like that in certain instances would make sense. Okay. And because I look at the list of cities, counties, and things on the member list, and I don't see a lot of representation as it sticks out. I'm not talking about the individual members that might sit. But therefore, anybody who thinks of transportation in any other manner but car-focused. And I'd be concerned that as we go regional, that car-centricity will play a stronger role when I feel, I can only speak for myself, that we should be looking at diversifying our transportation system. So are we losing? And we as Panamas County for Panamas MPO, I think we've done a good job. We can always do better. But we do a good job. And I'm afraid we're going to lose that focus going forward. Can you speak to that at all? Sure. Well, I think Panamas County is different in the sense that we don't have a lot of land to continue to build and widen roads. We've done a little bit, but not a lot. So, yes, we need to be more multimodal in this county just by our geography and our density. I think you'll find that the same concerns that you've expressed have been echoed by the city of Tampa. Tampa wants to see eight allies on the board, and they look at St. Petersburg, they look at Dunedin, they look at Largo as allies, and they want to see that representation before they're comfortable with this. They've been pushing, pushing, pushing for investments in transit, bike safety, pedestrian safety for years in the city of Tampa. And they've largely been thwarted by Hillsborough County and the way their board is comprised over there. So they've actually kind of come around to the regional NPO because they see more alliances being formed than hitting their head up against the wall the way they've been for the last couple of decades. So I think that's something that I'm taking heart in. And I'll even say one of the strongest proponents for the merger is Commissioner Catherine Starkey in Pasco County. And she is laser-focused, so is Commissioner Mariano, on getting some kind of rail or passenger rail transportation in the Tampa Bay region. So I'm not saying that's going to be like a project coming out of the chute, but that's something that they are very interested in. You're not going to get that done without a concerted regional effort. So I wouldn't recommend this, Commissioner, if I felt like we were going to give all this progress up and have an automobile-oriented focus. But we are pushing against some very significant state and federal headwinds in terms of policy, and we need to recognize that. And those headwinds change. It was five years ago we had a very different policy framework than we do today. And I'm confident that eventually things will change and we'll have a little bit more receptive policy framework at the state and federal level for those kinds of initiatives. I mean, even our county commission changed four or five years ago. So it happens with elections. Yes, it does. It's hard to have a plan when things change every two to four years. One of the things I think that gets lost in all this is how the money works. And it's really important to speak with a unified voice and say this is the priority of what we want. Orlando, years ago, when I lived over there, advocated for the Sunrail commuter rail corridor as the number one priority. It was one of three top priorities. And they got all three done because consistently they went to their federal and state delegation and they had the champions and they had the priorities and they were working together and there was not disharmony. They were in unity. They also had to come up with a lot of local match dollars. When you're talking about public transportation especially, the federal government's maybe going to give you half your capital money and the state maybe is going to give you half of the non-federal share. You still have to come up with 25%. And that was the recipe for the Sunrunner project in St. Petersburg. And then you're on your own for operating it because you don't get federal assistance or state assistance much for operating. So it's different than highways. And I think when you think about car-centric and highway-oriented, it's simply because the policy playing field is not level. When the state builds a highway, we don't have to worry about maintaining it. The state just takes the money off the top and maintains it forever. But with a bus, that's you and me and all the taxpayers here locally. Interesting, interesting. And thank you, Witt. And I could go on, but I am respectful of my colleagues. I have one last question. And that is on the current structure of Ford-Penalas. How's our mayor doing? Is she holding her own? She's writing the checks. Yeah, she's on the executive committee as our treasurer. She's doing great. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Witt. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Questions? Commissioner Sandbergen? Did you say that the population of Pinellas has reduced? Did I catch that? I didn't say that. It's holding steady at around 960,000. We did have a dip that was reported in the media. I believe that was pretty much hurricane-related for people who had to relocate. And I think we'll bring that population back because the homes are being rebuilt. Right. But are we going to significantly add population in this county? I don't think there's the appetite to dramatically increase the density of our county, and that's what you would have to do. Pockets of density in the U.S. 19 corridor and in certain locations make a lot of sense, but it's got to be the right place, and we've got to have the infrastructure, and there's got to be a local will for that. I understand. And we talked a lot about transportation. What are some of the other roles of Forward Pinellas? Well, I like to think that we are the conscience of the county, so we're not beholden to the county commission. We're not beholden to any particular local government. We can be independent thinkers. So we're an independent staff the way I look at it. So we provide land use technical assistance and policy guidance. We ensure consistency among the comprehensive plans and land development regulations with the countywide plan. And we also provide a lot of guidance on transportation analysis. So, for instance, we are studying traffic patterns on Clearwater Beach, and we have done an extensive traffic analysis with the city of Clearwater that might result in changes to the Clearwater Roundabout on the beach to have a more efficient traffic pattern. They're building a parking garage down there, so we're kind of working on the operational details of how that would all work. And that's not really – I mean, that was an initiative with the city of Clearwater, and unless they apply for federal funds to build something, that doesn't really fall under the MPO. That's just our technical expertise and use of consultants that they're taking advantage of. You know, so if Dunedin were to lose that seat – I know we've talked – you talked at length about that. Would it diminish our role? I mean, would it be a significant loss to our city? I mean, how would Dunedin be recognized? That's a fair question. I'm, you know, I'm 62 years old. I'm not going to be here forever. But my commitment is, as long as I'm here, I'm going to work to ensure that we build a culture where we're doing the telescoping of really being there and responsive to the local issues. And I think the avenue for that would simply be pick up the phone call or let's have a conversation or work with our liaison that we've identified in the org chart to make sure that we understand those issues and can really work with you on advancing those. That's a commitment we've made. And, you know, we just awarded some planning funds to Kenna City, which is one of our smaller cities in Pinellas County. They've never received any funding from the MPO in the history of the MPO in Pinellas County since, like, the 1970s. Well, that's changed. And so I think if we can do it for Kenna City, that's kind of a similar kind of example. I think we could do it for a 40,000 city here. Good. That's kind of what I wanted to hear. That's all I had, Mayor. Okay. Well, I don't have any questions since I get to ask a minute forward, Pinellas. So I'm going to open it up for public input. Anybody in the public wish to come forward and speak on this issue? Mayor, I had a question. Oh, sure. Go ahead. Hey, Wade. Nice seeing you again. Quick question on the rotating for the smaller cities. What's the cycle on that rotation? I think we're calling for two-year terms on that. Right now we have a three-year term for our rotation, and that's because it takes a year to find the bathroom and figure out the acronyms, and then you get up to speed and you rotate it off. But because of the number of cities, I think two years is probably where we'll go. That's been a really important question I got from the city of Plant City. They are really worried that they might get appointed, and then it would take them half their term to understand what the issues are and get their feet. So they really want to make sure that there's a process for keeping everybody who might be in a rotating seat informed. And that's going to be a bigger challenge for Pinellas County. Yeah, because doesn't Plant City get a seat? Pardon me. Doesn't Plant City have a seat? They would have, and they were talking about it today, this morning, they would have a rotating seat with Temple Terrace. Oh, okay. Okay. They only have four cities. Right, I know. I mean, we're insane. Right. We are who we are, and we love who we are, but it does make things complicated. Okay, anyone in the audience wish to come forward and speak on this issue? We've got Nan, Mark, and Julie. There's potentials out there, so, okay. Okay, I'm going to close public input, and I go to final comments, and I will start with Commissioner Sandberg. Nothing really to add, Mayor, other than, you know, thank you for your presentation this morning, and obviously we have the best interest of Dunedin, first and foremost, from up here, and it sounds like that you're looking out for our interest, too. So I appreciate your presentation this morning. Thank you. Okay, Commissioner Gao. No, thank you, Mayor. Whit, thank you again for being here. It's always wonderful to hear you talk and hear the things that we're doing at Forward Pinellas. Now's my opportunity to advocate for Dunedin having a seat, and the only thing I'll say is we've had a seat since the very beginning, and what you get with Dunedin is we can sometimes be obnoxiously vocal. We can be, but that is because of pride, but we're active, and we're a guaranteed active seat. We will participate, and my concern is that we have, there have been some other municipalities that have been in a rotating seat that have just said, yeah, never mind, skip us this term, and I won't go into who those other cities are. Some of those cities have taken a recent liking and interest in becoming on the board, and I love that, but that's also late in the game given the history of Dunedin has. So when it comes to somebody with experience, somebody with passion, somebody who's not shy about being an active member on the board, you can't go wrong with Dunedin. And so that is my vote for Dunedin. Also, I would just make the comment of I'm still not getting Port of Tampa and why they have a seat. I don't understand it, especially if it's about the fuel they bring in. So all that they do is they're just a beneficiary for the infrastructure that we build. So we know where their interests lie. I think a better interest might be in the Florida Bicycling Association, or so that way you're able to unify and have a place where bicyclists and people who believe in that diversified transportation system can go to to make sure they have a voice. It can work with members of each commission, but then it's up to those members within that community to understand they've got to seek that out. And then when that person rotates out, who is it now if they still have one? Where if you truly have a Bicycling Association that's always there, you know where their interests are going to lie. And so as an avid bicyclist, I know where I can always go to. And if Dunedin gets to be on the board and somebody on that board favors bicycling, that's just extra for me. But without that, I still know that I've got a place, and other bicyclists and pedestrians would know they have a place and a voice that will hear them and be heard through them. So that's my advocacy for maybe thinking a little differently than all that. So with that, I'll yield my time, and thank you, Whit, again for being here. Thank you. Go Dunedin. Okay. Well, I'll kind of reiterate some things that I said before, Pinellas, which is, you know, I fully believe in a well-organized, merged MPO. I mean, big picture, it makes all the sense in the world. And the last thing I think we should be as parochial about that because, you know, I just think we have a lot to gain by, you know, controlling our own destiny by working together for bigger projects. So I totally believe in that. And I think that that's paramount to everything here, and we need to make that happen. So, you know, so way in the distance is how our own county's apportionment happens. I don't like the current way it's laid out. Whit knows that. We've had discussions behind the scenes. I brought it up at the board meeting. I think I have some support on the board meeting for that. I mean, there's 20 small cities out of our 24 cities in Pinellas, and they're just lumped together. So, and to me, that's not representative. I think there's plenty of representation for unincorporated and for some of the big cities, and that's just too many cities all lumped together. And I think specifically in the north county, there's some underrepresentation. So, you know, Whit and I have had some good conversations, and he's told me, hang on to that chip, you know, and to be discussed. I know that even, you know, I've had discussions with Commissioner Eggers even on that, and he kind of sees it the way that we do. Dunedin. And not necessarily Dunedin, just the north county piece, you know, and the benefits even to the Pasco, you know, north county connection kind of thing. And, you know, as I've said, even on the board, you know, we've got State Route 580, we've got Alt 19, we've got, you know, Curlew, we've got Honeymoon Island, Caledese, most visited park. So I just, I think by, you know, basically being the largest city of 20 cities that are kind of thrown together for one seat is not enough. So those are my comments. But we've had good conversations, and that's yet to be determined. And I'm going to keep my finger on that button and keep the pressure on. I know that, you know, even an alternating seat with Pinellas Park would be better than what we've got. So those are some of my thoughts. But overall, Whit, you have done an amazing job with this. I do think you're the logical person for me. I've met the other two people, and they're very good too, the other directors in Hillsborough and in Pasco, and they're very good, credible people. But to me, you make the most sense. But that won't be my call. But I think you guys have done a lot of work here, and there's a lot of political moves and sways. But I have a feeling with a little push that it's going to be forced on us, you know, that'll get everybody off the dime to make it happen. And you guys are, you know, you've done a lot of the legwork to make it work. So I'm supportive. And anyway, but we appreciate you being here. Thank you. Giving a good update. Thank you very much. That'd be good. Horry, anything? Okay, thank you. I'll just say finally, my wife and daughter both work for libraries, so I really appreciate the proclamation. And I sent them pictures of your pictures. That's great. That's great. Awesome. Thank you very much. Take care. Sorry you're not biking back home now. Yeah. Okay, we're going to go to the next. Unless you guys want to take a short break, or are you good? Do you want to keep going? I'm going to take a short break. Okay, let's take a short break. Okay. Short break. We have legislative discussion, reviewing the 2026 session, staff presentation. We have Nicole and we have Laura. Laura, our lobbyist. And Laura, first of all, I just want to say, like you couldn't have kept Amendment 3 from getting passed and put on the ballot. Come on now. Okay. All right. I know you did. I know you did. Yeah, there you go. Very good. Very good. I like it. I like it. Okay. I'll go to Nicole. Good morning, Mayor, Commission, City Manager, sitting in. Nicole Delfino, Strategy and Sustainability Manager, here to provide you with a post-legislative update. We wanted to go ahead and bring this forward. I know I think for most of you, we know where we landed with a lot of items, but as we typically do each session, we wanted to kind of comprehensively provide this and keep record of where we're at. Attached to the agenda item as well, which we can discuss, but is also the BMO memo in regards to how the legislation affects our city and any operations specifically. We've already been working with staff to get that information out to them so that any changes that were made at the state level are reviewed and then amended as we need to do so for our operations. You also have attached the Florida League of Cities very comprehensive update if you want to read every single bill. Super fun. And also, lastly, there is a preemption tracker. I know this was discussed previously as far as, you know, what legislation has been passed over the past several years that preempts the city or municipalities from certain things. So, that has been a document that was created by the Florida League of Cities. It is not currently up to date. It just goes up through 2025. But as you can imagine, there will be a lot to add and amend to that. So, once we have an updated preemption document, I will certainly make sure that you all get a copy of it. From my perspective, I think we've talked about preemption quite a bit. But there's probably not a lot that isn't filed that isn't preemptive. So, we'll leave that there. I am here today, of course, with Laura Beamer of the Southern Group to walk through just what the session looked like. Do you want to take that? Okay, great. Fantastic. As far as what the session looked like, this year, we always track, you know, the bills. So, we had a little over 1,800, almost 1,900 bills filed. This was a unique year in that there were so few bills that actually passed through session. Obviously, we were, you know, keeping you all informed as we made our way through session. There was a lot of issues that were happening between the House and the Senate, which then created what you see here, which was only 237 bills passed. So, there were a few wins for us there with bills that did fail. Again, an unusual session, to say the least, in that we had not only just the regular session, but then we had additional extensions to the session and special sessions to address the budget, redistricting, and then, of course, as we all know, the property tax reform. So, here we have the budget. As far as what was signed, we had $1.6 billion that was vetoed out of the budget, the total state budget being $117.63 billion. I did want to make particular note that the state has $18 billion in reserve. That is an increase from prior year of about $15.7 billion. And then we have discussed this internally as well, but there is an expected state budget deficit in the future years. So, they're doing some, you know, similar to, I think, what we're doing as well as far as looking at right-sizing future year budgets. A lot of what we talk about through your priorities are not accomplished through a bill or through legislation. They are accomplished through the budget. So, I just wanted to highlight a few of those items here. I'm not necessarily going to go over every single item that's listed in the budget, but you have maintained for your priorities over the last several years support of affordable housing, the museum cultural historical preservation support. They did receive, as far as cultural museum programs, a little bit less of an appropriation over prior year. But as we all know, in 2024, there was a complete veto of any of that support. So, happy to have some funding there. Through the environmental aspect, there's several components there that continue to maintain support. The Resilient Florida program is an increase in funding over prior years, as well as some of the others. There is actually quite a large increase over the Florida State Park System, $63 million over the 34 from 2025. And then, finally, the tourism economic development of Visit Florida maintains funding pretty consistently year over year. And then, we've got the job growth. So, I just wanted to highlight those as far as what was in the budget. Why don't you take this? So, you know, we're in an election cycle, obviously. So, you know, there are some seats that are up for grabs throughout the state. But we do know already, you know, who the legislative leadership is going to be for the next few years, you know, the outgoing Senate President Ben Albritton and Speaker Perez. So, we're coming into next session. We go to a session in March. Jim Boyd, Senator Jim Boyd will be the Senate President. He's from just down the road in Manatee County. Great guy. I think it will be kind of a new day in Tallahassee with these two leaders. Sam Garrison's up from north of Jacksonville. Very different personalities than our previous leadership. And then, after that, we have Jennifer Kennedy, who's just over in Polk County, too. So, somebody, you know, pretty close to us. And Jay Trumbull from the Panhandle. And then, you know, we've got Mike Redondo from Miami. And Tom Leake, who's also from Flagler County area. And then, as you all are well aware as well, this past session, we received three appropriations, which were approved and then signed into the budget by the governor. Those include a support, a $200,000 support for a high water rescue vehicle for our fire department. $1.5 million for replacement of the Bayshore water main project. And then, $3 million to support the marina repair and restoration. So, all told, pretty banner year, I would say. Thank you. For $4.7 million. These are just a few of the bills. As I mentioned, the Florida League of Cities, you know, summary is attached. It goes into a lot of detail. During our advocacy in Tallahassee, we really talked about really streamlining and focusing on, you know, those things that are most impactful. And so, these are some of those bills that you'll see here. Of course, we've talked about the budget. Unfortunately, property tax is on there. We have, we are working with staff, with leadership in the community and providing educational sessions on the property tax impacts. So, those, we have a few more sessions coming up. We had some, I wouldn't say success with sovereign immunity because it did make it through but was vetoed. There's some, however, I think in our discussions when we were in Tallahassee, we did get the bill to, you know, a decent place as far as some increases that were manageable, so to speak. We've got the DEI bill, prohibition, which I know we've reviewed in great detail with our attorney as far as the impacts that we'll have to, that we'll face because of that bill. In addition, we have the utility bill, government spending, which is really just about transparency, getting a lot of information on our, you know, made public. We do those things already. And there was a lot of discussion that went on with this bill as far as all of our budget and our audits are already hosted on the state's platform, but that's okay. We will make the little modifications that we need to make as far as what that bill detailed. We had some building permit and inspection impacts that are being reviewed by our community development team. And then, of course, my favorite, our farm bill, which really impacted biosolids. I learned a lot about biosolids this last year. Very fun topic. And then that, it really concludes just the overview of the session. We did talk about, you know, looking ahead to your priorities for next session. And I actually spoke with Laura about this yesterday as well. We're going to put your priority discussion on for a future meeting because we would really, A, like to have everybody present for that discussion, but also to have that discussion after the election to see, you know, how things have changed as your priorities may shift depending on what happens there in November. So do you all have any questions? Questions? Commissioner Sandbergen. You know, while we were up there, I guess I don't recall ever talking about that high water rescue vehicle or the water main replacement. How did those, how did we end up with those as victories? Laura? Would you like to? Well, we did file appropriation requests for all of the items on your list. And we just were able to successfully work it through the budget process. And then when we went to special session, we were able to secure the funding fully. Good. Or hey, this might be for you. Where exactly is that Bayshore water main replacement? It is along Alt-19, not too far from like Palm Boulevard intersection. North of Palm or south of Palm? I think it straddles both. Straddles? Good. No? Okay, Nan's shaking her head no. Nan, can you? Can I tell you? Yeah. Guest speaker. Nan, if you can just state your name and address for the record. Oh. 1990. Are you on? Yeah. Nan Bennett, 1990, Saddle Hill Road North, Dunedin. It's along Alternate 19. It's the last remaining part of online ductile iron pipe we have in the water system that they've been trying to replace the entire time since the 90s. Okay. And it's in the brick streets, a little bit north of Wilson, going, it's not as far as Palm. It's a couple thousand feet and it goes into some of the brick streets. I can't give you the names of the streets right off the top of my head, but it's a little further south than Palm. Thank you. Go ahead, Jim. I was going to say, we can confirm the location with our city engineer so you have the exact stretch, because I know that was included, but I can't reference the streets off the top of my head. That's all I had, Mayor. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Gao, questions? What was the logic behind the sovereign immunity actually being vetoed? Well, that's a good question. I'm actually a little disappointed it was vetoed, but I'll talk about that. I'm trying to decide how to phrase this. I would suspect that the governor's office wasn't crazy about giving the trial lawyers more room to sue local governments. I suspect. Somebody was thinking nicely of local governments. Well, I was kind of surprised. No, and my comments, Mayor, was because I know the last several sessions, they've been trying to increase this limit by millions, billions, trillions. I mean, it was the numbers that they were asking for were just insane. And I'd look at these, and I'd go, okay, at least it's reasonable. If that passes, then they'll shut up about it. But now that it vetoed, oh, it's going to come back. And again, we're going to be back to the millions and trillions. And especially with Amendment 3. And to me, it just didn't make sense that he chose this session to veto that when it was a reasonable increase that cities could absorb instead of the millions that have been proposed in previous legislative sessions. And I will say, from an advocacy standpoint, I mean, we did work very hard when we were in Tallahassee independently with our group, with the Suncoast League of Cities, with the Florida League of Cities, to get the House and the Senate bill to align in regards to sovereign immunity because they were not aligned at all where they started. And so it was a little bit more of an increase than we had hoped. I think from the individual per-person claim, it was a little more manageable than the larger, you know, claim. But again, we got the number to a point where we felt, you know, we understood that an increase hadn't happened for many years. It needed to happen. So I think, you know, again, we're just going to have to work, likely going to have to work the bill again. I mean, you can see that it passed almost unanimously. I mean, there was only one no vote in the House, and it was unanimous in the Senate. So we were at a place where everyone was comfortable with the language. And that was the item that I championed when I got up there. And I was very well prepared, thanks to City Attorney Jen Cowan. She said, you had my notes prepared, and I walked in with a lot of confidence on that specific item, and it paid off. I appreciate your help on that now that we go back and see where we are. You must have met separately with the governor because he's the one that vetoed it. Did you have a separate meeting with the governor and we didn't know about it? No, I'm just kidding. Sorry. No, that's a good point. No, it was just on one hand, it was very nice that the legislature finally got together on this and with reasonable increases, especially given we haven't had an increase in several years. And if you want to talk about compromise and playing nice in the sandbox, this would have been a nice olive branch from the municipalities going, okay, we see it. We'll do our part. Well, I get it, but since you've just dangled it out there, as a former risk manager who sees the demand letters from attorneys because government's an easy target, whatever the cap is, that's what they want. It'll go right to that cap. That's what we're demanding. And so all they're doing is giving the attorneys another higher cap to shoot for, and we're an easy target. So, and, you know, if we're wrong, we're wrong. And there is a way through legislative bill to get the money if we're wrong, and it's egregious. But, yeah, so. Anyway, I just couldn't hold it in any longer. That's not all attorneys necessarily. So we want to throw them all in one basket. But, no, which we can, that's true, but guaranteed next session it's going to come back in a million-dollar increase. No, I understand your point. And so it's like, man, we'll be begging for this next, you know, sadly. But anyway, that's my comment so far. Okay. So any other questions, though? No, ma'am. Okay. All right. I have a few. You never ask a question you don't know the answer of, I guess, but I'm going to ask it anyway. So when the state reduced its budget, how does that compare to prior budgets for them? And how, what are they doing to reduce their budget? Well, they haven't actually reduced the budget yet. They've added more to reserves. You know, they're saying that they're going through an exercise with all the departments, the state agencies to look for efficiencies. And then, you know, obviously a previous legislature can't, you know, mandate a future legislature to do anything. But if you talk to the incoming leadership, they have told their members that, you know, it's going to be, you know, they're going to clamp down on member projects next year, you know, expect less, those types of things. Which they've been saying for the past few years, knowing that this expected deficit is coming. I mean, some of the areas I know they're not fully funding are some of the parks areas, you know, which if they take over city parks, you know, I have no reason to think that'll go well. Well, I mean, if Amendment 3 passes, I think it's going to be a much different conversation in Tallahassee. Right? Yeah. Okay. I'm going to put the balls in every park. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Anyway, I try not to be snarky, but it's hard not to be. I'm on my way out. I can be snarky. Yeah. Jen, well, actually, let me ask you this. On the one bill that passed, sorry, I lost my sheet here, on local government spending, well, whoever, what do we have to do that's different than what we do now because of the local government spending House Bill 1329? Like, what do we do? What are we going to do differently? I think one of the components of it was enabling the budget to be in a searchable format. So I think even with the way our budget has been prepared with the software that finance is working with now, that allows a little bit more of that. But there were some of those components that, you know, a lot of cities and municipalities, they may have just posted their budget, whether it was a Word or a PDF document, that you're able to do some searchable components now in how you can view the budget. So that's one thing that we want to make sure we're, you know, the list of items that is now in the bill that we have to adhere to, obviously, posting the budget. We have our budget posted on our website. We have several years of that. So we're already meeting that requirement, but there's some little details as far as how it's posted and how it can be searched and kind of compared that we need to make sure. Is that going to cost us money to do it differently, even though we pretty much provide all that information now? Yes, potentially, and we did talk about that when we were in Tallahassee, that some of these programs that would be required to meet some of the requirements of this bill or the items in this bill would require municipalities to purchase software or different software. I think we're in a little bit of a different position because we have a software that manages our budget, so we are working through those. However, with a municipality that doesn't, I think we actually did the math on what the software would cost, and it was, you know, millions and millions of dollars across the state that cities would have to spend. So at the same time, you're saying be more efficient, spend less, but then you're mandating to actually increase. So that was an interesting component. Jen, do you want to add? Well, the only thing I was going to add to that is that I think in 1329, there's also a different process that you'll go through next year when you go through your budget analysis that will have to be presented where there will be a fiscal year budget that has a 10% comparison or reduction of 10% to compare with the current year. So you'll be going through, like, a different analysis than you normally do with your budget that was included. But with regard to adding additional things onto your website, there's a laundry list of them, and they have to be kept for four, I think it's four years on the site. While that in and of itself may be a little bit of labor, one of the other things that's coming in place is the different ADA requirements with regard to your website. So budgetary information is kind of notorious for being hard to put in an ADA format that you're able to easily see and use, unlike, like, Word documents and things like that. So this additional requirement, coupled with when the ADA requirements go into effect, could produce some additional, may require the city to either get additional services or have additional expenses in putting the required information on the website in the legally required manner. Make sense? So it's not directly from this bill, but it's this bill coupled with what else is coming down. Okay. Yeah, I mean, to me, it's, I believe in full transparency. It's just if you're giving information now you've got to do it in a prescriptive way, you know, that just costs more money. So, but, okay. So, and Jen, tell me what you learned about the DEI prohibition bill and what that impact is on our city. You sure can talk about Scottish culture as well. Right. So, let me pull it up real quick because I don't want to misspeak. But basically the DEI bill prohibited the city from promoting, in particular, it's, cities and counties are not allowed to fund, promote, or take any official action, which includes adoption of ordinances, programs, policies, rules, or anything as it relates to DEI, defined as diversity, equity, and inclusion. And so when it comes to not spending money, not only on a DEI officer, but also not in promoting any of those, anything that relates to DEI, that can impact the events that the city has. And so one of the things that we've done in working together with Nicole and the park staff and everyone is to identify all of the events, because some of those events you support. Also, some of the, it could even be groups that you support that have, like, a DEI event or a DEI program. And just to be clear, DEI includes Scottish culture? Yes. Okay, I just think that the normal citizen of Dunedin doesn't think of it like that, and that brings it to life, when you're talking about, you know, St. Patrick's Day, Scottish culture. So we're having to go through those events. And just so you know, I mean, every city is now having to go through those events. We've also had to include language in all of our contracts, because it affects your contractors, and what their policies can be, because of the certifications that your staff has to make in stating that they're in compliance with these requirements. So all of those have been added to your contracts as well, or will be. It comes into effect on January 1. And then there are, notably, several different exemptions that are provided. So certain holidays that are designated by federal law, certain state holidays, and then there's a litany of monuments and celebrations that are identified in state statutes. So we've kind of gone through those, because we just want to make sure that the city is in compliance with the law. But we're allowed to say we're an inclusive community, though, right? Is that illegal now, or? I'm just asking. So this isn't effective until January 1. I'm asking the question. We're allowed to say we're an inclusive community, though, right? Even after January 1, 2027? Well, it's not prohibited, per se. I mean, I don't know that that's an activity. Yeah, okay, thank you. I'm just, you know, it's a sledgehammer in search of a problem. But anyway. Mayor, if I may just piggyback on that. But within that list, Jennifer, are there events such as Halloween, Christmas, which could be considered DEI by some groups and not DEI by others? So DEI is specifically identified as anything that could influence composition of employees or that is a special benefit or preferential treatment or recognition of groups based on race, color, sex, ethnicity, gender, identity, and sexual orientation. So I say that when you asked about Scottish heritage, is that an ethnicity, a cultural heritage that would be implicated by this? And so with regard to Christmas and those other, yes, we've had to go through each one of those and identify whether or not some of them are identified in state law as holidays that can be celebrated. So therefore, they would meet the exemption criteria. Is there any money or any way that there can be pushback? I mean, if we're allowed to celebrate Christmas and Halloween, which, for the record, I'm an opponent of both of those holidays. For them to justify why they can celebrate those, right? If they're listing what we can and then what we can't, why can we do the things that they say you can? What's different about those holidays and events versus Halloween games? Sure. Those have been recognized in state statute. That's the distinction. And when I say you all understand that this applies specifically to each of you as a public official in particular, as well as what the city can do as a whole. What do you mean by that? So when you're acting in your official capacity, you are, you know, obviously will be in January 1 limited by compliance with this law. And if you are found to have violated this law, I believe this is the one where you can be where it's considered malfeasance or misfeasance of office. So, in other words, if you promote, as a public official, if you promoted activities in opposition to the law, you could be found to be in, it could be malfeasance or misfeasance of office. As a sitting elected official, not as a commission, but a single elected official. Correct. Which could jeopardize your position. So at some point, though, we're going to spend a lot of time on the specifics of holidays, events. I mean, this is very broad the way we talked about it right now. Right. So, actually, like I said, we've gone through, with regard to the requirements of this law, the language that needs to be added in for your contractors to do their certification for doing business with the cities. We've gone through, we've identified the events that are sponsored and groups that are sponsored and have talked about what could be impacted by that. We're looking at the exemptions, and we're doing some additional research with regard to many of the Scottish festivals that a memo from my office will be forthcoming on. So we won't be put out of office if we promote a Scottish event based on your research, which is costing a lot of money, by the way. But go ahead. Well, at this point in time, you're fine, because the law doesn't go into effect until January 1. But after January 1, I'm working on an opinion as to that, as to whether or not you're going to be. The fact that that is even in question is sad. Yep. That's my point. That's my point. Yep. So how about. Do you know when you'll have that, I mean, when we have it in December, by December? Oh, yes, you'll have it before the law is in effect. Okay. You know, even going so far as if someone wanted to rent one of our facilities, do we dig into what they are, who they are, or what they're there to celebrate, or? So we, so there's a difference, I would say, and we've talked about this a little bit, in, like, promoting activities and supporting events and allowing the public to use facilities. So there are certain facilities that you have that you would rent to anyone, and you don't really, there's no discriminatory basis on whether or not you rent to them. You know, if somebody wants to, you know, be in the park or using maybe tennis courts or whatever, I don't believe that you have any kind of requirement for that person, and that would not change with this. Okay. I'm just picturing someone walking in and saying, here's my $50. I want to rent the shelter at Weaver Park. Yep. Congratulations. Enjoy it. And all of a sudden, we show up, and it's, you know, I'm not even going to try and imagine what could go on there. Right. And right now, and I believe Parks either has this in place or is working on it, but just in that, that there are policies that we're not asking, you know, what you're renting it for. Beyond understanding, and I will say this, with some of your event permits, depending on the number of people that are going to be at the event, there could be other needs, like you may need additional garbage or you may need security or any of those type of items. And so for those events, you know, it's more asking how many are attending more than what is the event really about. I think we'll let it go. We spend the whole day on this. Thank you, Mayor. Sorry. It's obviously a pet peeve. I would assume if any place does do a legal challenge on this, it would have to be after it goes into effect. Correct. You know, I don't know, I guess if we had up, you know, the Scottish, you know, we have a, you know, we spend some money on welcoming a Scottish group into town. What was the group that was going to come, the band, or the soccer people? Oh, oh, my, Carton Army. Yeah, so if we, like, met as officials and welcomed them and then we got removed from office, that's when we would say, hey, you know, we're going to, you know, we're going to legally challenge this. Is there, yeah. Yeah, yes. Or if an individual brought a suit against the city saying that you didn't somehow violated this. Right, by meeting the army, the Scottish army in downtown with our shirts on. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to be a little bit snarky this morning. Sorry. Okay, back to kind of good questions here. So is there any thought that if amendment, and I'm assuming Florida, I'm going to ask this question to Florida Lee too, because I'm going to be on their finance taxation board. Any thought that in lieu of the amendment three not passing, that cities and counties might put forward some type of more proactive approach to what would be some positive thoughts on property tax reform that actually might make sense? Well, there's a few components to that. Obviously, you know, we've talked about, I think everybody in the room is familiar that, you know, in 2027 there is going to be a taxation commission review at the state level. It's mandated in our constitution to occur every 20 years, and that's on the schedule for 2027. So I think if amendment three does not pass, you're going to have in place what was intended to review the finance and taxation structure of our state at that constitutional level. And I think that opportunity to actually review it, to really understand the financial impacts, really drill down into what cities or counties are going to be significantly impacted and how those changes can be made. I think we're going to see recommendations come out of there, and that's where we would be able to, you know, have some discussion with our elected officials as far as, you know, again, we talk about this one-size-fits-all formula a lot that the state passes, and that doesn't necessarily work for every community. So where there's some communities who could, you know, potentially absorb that sort of increase that's on the table now, there's others that will be completely bankrupted. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for those discussions to take place with our own officials, through the leagues, you know, Suncoast League, through the Florida League, you know, through the commission. But that's kind of, we'll see what happens in November. And I'll add to that that I think you'll see with new leadership in the House and Senate, and then whoever wins in the governor's office, there's not going to be such a rush to just, let's go, let's go redo this next session. Correct, yeah. There's going to be more of a thoughtful discussion on what property tax reform should really look like, or tax reform in general should really look like. And do you see them re-approaching the insurance crisis issues, property insurance? I do, I do. I think, you know, you know, there's been the constant conversation in Tallahassee is, you know, we passed this law, we need to give it time to kind of see the effects of it. When they passed it, what, in four years ago? It was about six years ago. So I think that enough time has gone by now, or maybe that's not really holding water anymore, and they'll have to look at it again. And again, I think with new leadership, fresh eyes in the leadership positions, I think you'll see that. Yeah, that's good. Good. And then I wonder, too, if you all could put together maybe a, I don't know, top 10, 15 home rule intrusions that have occurred. I just think it's, that actually makes sense to citizens, that they can kind of see it, touch it kind of thing. You know, like I think of the trees, you know, which they did partially fix that. But just ones that, like, are really impacting our everyday citizens. So they can kind of, I just want to be able to have those as talking points, right? Yes. In addition to that, how about also, looks like we may need some very solid clarification of Live Local with some projects on the road. Yeah. There's one. Okay. Now we're all going to learn a lot about that, get closer to that one. Okay. I'm going to open it up for public input. Anyone in the audience wish to come forward and speak on this issue? Seeing no one rushing forward, I'll close public input. And final comments, starting with Commissioner Gao. Well done. Thank you for all your hard work. And Jennifer, thank you for your hard work as well. And this is no small feat in the amount of time, effort, and dollars it took for you guys to put this together for us. And that's just not including me every day on the phones or keyboarding to everyone. So thank you. I just yearn for a time, because there's so much to be done if the state legislature would actually work with local municipalities and we could compromise and see a single, you know, if we really were Team Florida. But for the last several years, it just seems like we haven't been Team Florida, where we know best and you don't know what you're doing, so we need an adult in the room. And sadly, most of the time, the adults in the room are the municipalities, not the state. But, um, uh, and so anyway, that's, that's kind of my comments. I mean, I don't have any comments. Good comments. Very well said. Uh, Commissioner Sandberg. Nothing really to add, but, uh, you know, thanks. You work hard when we're up there, Nicole, and Lori did a good job for us up there. And I, I, I think it was very successful. And, you know, I'm still only been only my second year up there. So maybe, you know, someone might disagree with that. But I appreciate all your hard work, and I'm ready to do it again this year. We'll, we'll get our, our plans together, and we'll make it happen again. Thank you. Um, I'll just tag on to Commissioner Gao's comments. I, I thought those were awesome. I mean, I was sitting here thinking that, like, because I, I find myself, you know, being so frustrated with the state. And, and how, and, and you kind of said it, the disrespect of local. I mean, we work hard for our communities. We work hard. And I think that, um, the disrespect is just hard to take. And I just think if they would kind of have a different mindset, and it sounds like you're saying some of the leadership coming in, um, is, is maybe going to have some of that. And depending on who our governor is, I think that there's so much opportunity. And I love the Team Florida. I mean, for, for state, local, county, for us to work together. Because I agree. Like, I still am a firm believer. Best government's local. And we're closest to the people. You can grab us at the store. You can grab us on the dance floor. You can grab us anywhere down in the park. And, you know, and all of us are very open. And so, uh, it's very frustrating. Uh, and I, and I, I understand. Not all communities are the same. And there might be some bad actors. But, but treating them all the same and acting like we're all bad actors when most of us are not. And we're not making a lot of money doing this stuff either. We're doing it for love of community. So, it's just frustrating. But I think that your comments, um, Jeff, were great. Because, again, you know, talking to, you know, our state people is, you know, we're, we're people too. We work hard for the, our communities. And, and, you know, we don't deserve to be disrespected. We want what's best too. Uh, we want affordability. Uh, we don't want to drive our people out of our communities. I mean, but we also want a quality of life that people come to expect. So, I, um, I think you, you just said that well. And I, I just think it could be so much better if we've got leadership in Tallahassee that shows respect for the local, uh, work that's done and works with us and doesn't see us as an enemy. Um, so, uh, hopefully that'll happen with the new leadership. It sounds like you believe in some of that with the new leadership. So, I like that. Um, anyway, um, so, thanks for all the hard work though, ladies. You guys do an amazing job up there. Very appreciative. I was slow to want a lobbyist, as you know. And Lori, you've done a fantastic job and, you know, we don't pay you that much and you work really hard for us and it's appreciated. So, um, and Nicole, you're doing a great job up there. So, thank you. And, uh, yeah. And obviously, Jen, I don't want to forget you because you've been working your butt off on some of this stuff and interpreting what they put to us, right? And so, it's a lot of work. So, okay. We're going to move on. Thank you, everybody. Um, okay, we're going to go to strategic plan dashboard review. Oh, this is Nicole too, so. It's the Nicole show. Mayor, if I may, um, before we get started, um, Commissioner Sandbergen, Clay was listening in and he wanted to clarify. So, the water main replacement project that you asked about, the limits of that are north of San Salvador, uh, to north of Buena Vista Drive on Alt-19. Okay. Good morning. Bye, Laura. Clear. I love that cleared room. All right. Good morning. Uh, Mayor, uh, Commission, uh, Nicole Delfino, Strategy and Sustainability Manager, uh, here to, uh, provide an update on the strategic planning dashboard, um, and I will just jump right in here. Um, so, as you know, um, the strategic plan was developed, um, uh, throughout, uh, 2023 and 24, um, where we determined that we had these seven strategic themes that are listed here. Um, all of the, uh, all of the themes, uh, then had. Uh, goals, uh, goals, objectives, and action items under them. I'm not going to review every single, uh, item that lives under each theme, but this is just a kind of a summary of what the goals are, um, within those themes, um, and how the plan was developed. Um, again, this is the second part of it. We couldn't fit everything on one slide, um, but you'll see there, uh, a few kind of overarching, uh, goals. Um, once we developed that, uh, the, the, the concepts of the, the concepts of the, uh, the plan itself, the themes and the goals, uh, we then wanted to host it onto a dashboard. And so we explored our options. Uh, we settled on a, uh, dashboard, uh, called ClearPoint. I know you've looked at this a little bit before. Um, this is our internal facing dashboard, and there are a lot of really great, uh, tools that the dashboard offers as far as reports and summaries. Um, so that I'm just kind of showing you an example of, um, the staff that are working on the item. So there's, you know, a hundred and twenty or so, um, action items and each action item is assigned to a staff, uh, member or a lead, uh, employee, and they're responsible on a quarterly basis, uh, for updating that item, um, providing information, um, indicating, you know, how far along the process it's complete. Um, and then once it's complete, marking that item as complete. And so all of those components of those action items are then able to then be filtered in various ways. And again, just kind of showing an example, building on, um, how we're ultimately getting to the external dashboard because the external dashboard really is built with the data that lives in this internal dashboard. Um, again, so the, so the first phase of, uh, the, the software was to upload. The entire strategic plan. Um, so that was, that was completed first. Um, then we moved on to uploading the, uh, CIP and BPI initiatives. And so with, within, with having that, uh, capability of the CIP and BPI capital, uh, improvement plan and business initiatives, just for the record. Uh, I did think it was humorous that your first one has to do with Scottish culture. So, um, so, um, so, uh, within that, within each CIP BPI, they are tied now also within this internal dashboard to, um, a strategic theme, um, and then a goal or an objective within the theme. So again, it allows us to run a lot of reports to understand how many items are assigned to which theme. This is just an overview here. I know it's very small because it's a screenshot. Um, but this is an overview where you can see, um, there in the strategic theme, the designation, whether it's a community amenity, good governance, so on and so forth. Um, again, this is just another view of kind of how the data can be sliced and diced, so to speak. Um, this is just pulling, um, the community amenity, CIP, BPI, and again, all of this can be run as, um, reports within the system as well. And now that we've been using the system for over a year now, um, there is starting to be some good data in there. Um, so as we moved on from there, I'm just going to skip the screenshot. Um, but as we moved on from there, um, it was really important to build up some of that data, uh, get staff comfortable with using a new system in order to then create this external dashboard. And so, um, again, all of the data that's being pulled onto the external dashboard is coming from, uh, this ClearPoint, uh, ClearPoint software. Um, and so now we have an external dashboard. Um, and this is actually on our website now. Yes, and I, I can, I, I actually do want to shift over and show you a kind of a live view to, so to speak, but just so everybody is aware. When I created this presentation, uh, the update to our website hadn't been completed, but I will show you where it's at. It's exactly, um, when you go to the homepage, um, now rather than it saying strategic themes, it now says dashboard, um, and you can access the dashboard directly from there. Of course, it will also live in the strategy and sustainability, uh, page on the website. So there'll be a few different ways to find it or access it. And then of course there's direct access. If you're wanting to pin it or bookmark it, once you, once you go there, then you can check on it there. So, uh, I'm just going to switch gears just for one moment, just so you all can see where it lives now. So like I mentioned, um, this is actually a live view of the website. It has been updated. So there at the top of the ribbon, it says community dashboard. That's where you can, uh, click on it to select the dashboard and it will take you right there. Um, within the dashboard itself, uh, this is what it looks like, uh, when you open it. Um, so here, remember when we talked about building the strategic plan, we talked about, um, it all goes back to those seven themes. And so, uh, it's all built out. The dashboard's built out by theme. And so you can click on any of the themes, uh, here to be able to see some of those measures. Um, of course I do want to preface, you know, we selected some initial measures, uh, to kind of push out. And as we, you know, move through as the environment changes, uh, uh, not just, you know, the local environment, the state environment, if there are things that are become more critical to measure that it allows us the flexibility to change the measurements that are being displayed. Um, and again, these measurements, um, that will, I'll, I'll show you a example here. I'll actually just go here to city services. So when you click on this, you're going to see, uh, you're going to see four different, uh, measures specific to city services. Um, uh, we've got some training, we've got, uh, fire response, uh, street sweeping and, and, um, debris removal of, uh, vector truck debris removal. Um, this is kind of just a summary. You can click on any of the items to provide more information and I'm used to a touch screen and this is not one. Um, so this, again, the, the, the data is being pulled from the dashboard. So the updates are made, um, in the ClearPoint software. So what it details is, um, the, the description of the dashboard, what we're looking at, kind of what the goal is, as far as the, uh, why we're, you know, tracking this, why is this important to the community that we maintain, um, the emergency response time. Of course, that's something that's important. Um, but you can look through each of these various, uh, items that are selected, um, to, um, you know, see the additional details to see what's been completed. Um, we've got goals set as far as, you know, this, again, this is the street sweeping, uh, measurement, uh, goal set as far as, uh, how many miles are, are swept and then what is actually achieved. So though it's being tracked again in specific departments, um, and if there is, in this case, um, you know, in quarter two, uh, we didn't reach our goal, but there was an explanation for that as far as the truck was being serviced. Um, but this is, I know we had, I think you, Mayor, you had actually mentioned, um, in one of our budget sessions, wanting to have this brought forward. Um, it has been complete for a little while. We got a little sidetracked with special session. Um, but within this, again, you can really select any of, uh, the themes to drill down into those items that are being measured. Um, I will go to the environment here. Um, we have, um, Natalie is tracking our solar energy production. Um, and this is looking at, there's a lot of data, um, but this is looking at, um, the energy production that our three facilities are making and how it's kind of tracking with, uh, what's expected. And she did that as an average, um, over, over the last few years to be able to put that expected or target information in. So do you, you all have any questions? Um, questions, Commissioner Sandbergen? I guess my only question is, are we getting this word out to the citizens and the public? And so how? Yeah, well, this is, this, this is the introduction. Um, so I will, I have worked with Sue Burness. We're going to probably do a blog post or story, uh, which will be included in the newsletter. So they'll know where to find this information. And then of course, periodically, now that this is live, we can reference it. She can reference it, whether it's in social media, um, other articles that are written by other departments. If they talk about anything that's related to one of our measures, we certainly can link that back. Um, so we'll have that constant, you know, reference back to the dashboard. Uh, Commissioner Gow, questions? Thank you, Mayor. I'm still going through this, Nicole. First of all, fabulous. I've been talking about a dashboard. Oh my God, I don't know how many, how long. Um, so this is exciting to see. I think it's certainly, uh, will help us. It'll help staff and certainly it'll help, uh, the residents. Um, and it might be in here and I'm just not seeing it now, but I thought it would be nice if we could add, uh, I don't know where, good governance somewhere, but more really detailed financial stuff so that the residents are more aware on how much things cost, why we're doing that project, where the money is coming from, right? Because it could be, it's not even done eating money. They're upset about it, but it's not done eating money. It's county or it's state or it's federal. And just the, the more we can educate, the more transparent we can be with our, our residents, the better educated they can be, the better residents they'll be. Yes. And, and I will say, I know, you know, with Sue Burness and our communication team, um, we have transitioned our project pages. And so a lot of time when residents have questions about specific projects, you know, they can go to our, our website, then go access project pages, um, and then see a lot of that information. So description on what the project is, the timeline, the documents associated with it, the funding, um, there's now, uh, the, with the, the change in the project pages, which was made recently, residents can sign up for notifications when something is updated on that project page. They can, um, post, you know, questions. They, it's, it's a little bit more interactive for a resident. So we do, we have that component also, um, which is really helpful. And when people, you know, again, Sue, I think a communication team takes, um, references those project pages quite a bit. So if somebody has a question on it, you know, that's, that's sent to them so that they can maintain, you know, keep tracking it. We don't have project pages for everything that we do. However, um, a lot of our big projects that we do, um, impactful projects, those all have, uh, you know, independent pages that have all a lot of that information there. Thank you. So if I go to multimodal transit and I go to pedestrian bicyclists, so can you explain that to me? This here? Mm-hmm. Yes. So through, um, our community development team, um, they work with, you know, our sheriff's office and, um, uh, other agencies as far as tracking accidents, incidences, um, you know, that sort of thing. And so unfortunately, um, in this case, I, our target is obviously zero. I don't know if somebody was coming. Our target was that there are zero fatalities, accidents, or incidents when it comes to a pedestrian bicyclist, bicyclists and golf carts. Um, but in the past we have had incidences and that's how that's, we are tracking them and reporting them. Um, one of the things that, you know, uh, we, we hope occurs. I know we talked a lot about, you know, the, the trail crossing at 580 and the things that were put in place to help, you know, improve that intersection and the, the, obviously the hope is that those sorts of things then reduce incidences that happen, um, in those areas where there's a lot of, um, contact between vehicles and other individuals. So October, 2025, there were, there was one. One, yeah. Okay. Because why does it have 111? Well, there was one in October and one in November is what this is, is reporting. Yeah. But if you look at it, the, on the, um, the, um, the left axle 00111. On the graph. On the graph itself. I see. Yeah. I will take a look at that. It looks like it's just an error on the graph. Does it make, you could interpret that to be then there's three, three in each month, which I know that was okay. Um, I, um, I, so, I mean, it's a good start, you know, I'm, I'm just used to the dashboard being like, you look at like 10 different things, right. When you hit the first page, like their graphs, like, you know, I'll give the example. Like when I, when I worked for, when I was director of Peralta Scan Animal Services, every morning I came in and I could immediately see number of dogs, number of cats, you know, number of citations given the day before, that kind of stuff. Um, and, and I don't even know what those comparables would be with us, but, um, I don't know, it seems like there's a lot more information to add, but maybe this is just the starting categories or. Yeah. It doesn't have, yeah. And, and, and, and there's a lot to read too with people versus dashboard to me is like that, you, you, you know, the graph says a lot and you get it. Like, you know, I mean, not that you don't have to have any verbiage, but so, yeah. Right. And, and yes, it was, this, this initial push was to get, kind of get it started. Yeah. We know that we want to keep refining it. Um, as I had mentioned, you know, we, we have a lot of action items in the plan itself. Um, however, we also want to be cognizant. We don't over want to overwhelm people when they go to the dashboard that you say there's a hundred and, you know, 20 measurements and it just, it gets, then it, then you get so bogged down that you end up really not exploring those. So we tried to pick some high priority items, um, that we are currently tracking or measuring that we can start to report out. We have worked with departments on things that we want to measure, um, that are important to measure. Um, so we know that those departments are kind of having to make those changes as far as tracking some information that maybe they hadn't been tracking in the past. So that's, it's all kind of been part of the process, um, you know, kind of changing how things, how we've always done things, um, in some cases, my favorite, um, to really be, to really kind of understand the data and how it tells a story and how it's really getting us to where we want to be. Mary, can I take you back? Yeah. Um, yeah, I'll, I'll hold my atlas. Go ahead. Yeah. Uh, just cause it, it focuses on fatalities and, uh, that was a bicyclist fatality, right? Question. Okay. Yes. Yeah. And because the headline is pedestrian, bicyclists, and golf carts. Okay. And so I think that just leads to the question of, well, was this a pedestrian? Was this a bicyclist? Was this a golf cart? Or I don't know whether if we had others in other categories, they'd be different colors. They'd be, I don't know, uh, if that's, or is it just, it'll all be blue and. We can, we can work on separating that data and reflecting it in the graph in a, in a different way. Okay. And I appreciate that we're focusing on, on deaths. That's good. But do we also have a graph for just accidents or citations? Because the, the public just screams and hollers about right now it's e-bikes, right? So at least we'll be able to show the residents there's been three citations given this month or something. So they know that we're trying, we're doing something. We're not ignoring the situation. And so that's why I like the transparency and the, the, uh, outward facing just so they can at least see. The, the great thing with this dashboard is that we can, we can add and change however we want to change it. We've, we've built it and we can modify it. And you've got to do balance between information and paralysis through analysis, right? Oh, let's have another graph. Oh, let's have another graph. And it just gets out of control. Right. Just because one resident says, Hey, what about this? You know, but responding at least to those major categories, at least starting out would be good. I'm sorry, mayor. No, that's okay. I'm because I'm kind of thinking, cause I, you know, I kind of same thing. If I go to, if I go to amenities and it says membership levels, the first thing I thought was, Oh, golf course membership, because of course it's got golf course rounds down. And then I'm like, Oh no, that's too high to be golf course membership. And then I know it. And, and so I always call my D cards, resident, non-resident ID cards. I assume that's the equivalent of what you're calling membership. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. In that, in that measurement, because I am familiar. Yes, that is the case. Which is interesting. Cause that seems low to me. 500 something. Well, but, and it's tracked on a monthly basis though. Yeah. Well, that goes back to, I still think we should be requiring non-resident cards for outdoor facilities, but that's the argument left to be had. So, cause then everybody be having them. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I, okay. That's all my questions. I'm going to open it for public input. Anyone in the audience wish to come forward, speak on this issue? Julie's left. So it's just, yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. And I, I will open it or close it from public input. I don't see anyone. And final comments, starting with Commissioner Sandbergen. I think this is really a dynamic program. It's going to be a lot of work to keep it updated. And it would be so nice if the public would simply go here to find the answer rather than go out on social media or any other way to ask what or who or how much. This is going to give the answers. So it's going to be important, keep it up to date and get it in front of the, uh, the citizens that have those questions. So thanks, Nicole. Thank you. Uh, commissioner again, um, I certainly agree with my colleagues comments. Uh, this is fabulous and probably a great start in, right. We can go down rabbit holes real quickly on this. Uh, and you probably used, I'm not sure how you came up with these categories. You might've said it and I, I missed it. Uh, certainly through SimCity or, or whatever, but I would also reach out to the community. Those are our categories, right? We picked the categories just so you know, you got it. You created them. Right. We did. I didn't mean to like jump in on that. Um, but to actually reach out to the residents because it's, most of them are fine. They work well, but you've got those keyboard warriors that will just absolutely complain about anything and you're never going to get rid of them. But if we can at least reach out to some of them and say, Hey, how can we make this better? And we'll at least show goodwill and attempt, you know, anything that keeps them from just posting the question into the atmosphere, right? I'm hoping somebody will answer them. The answer is here, but well done. Thank you, Nicole. Thank you. I did love how someone in our community who we all know put something out on social media yesterday and then later in the day actually said, Oh, that's why the city shuts their comments off because Hey, you may actually learn, you might learn some things and people talk facts. And I think, I think he actually gained some knowledge from his post. Um, okay. So, uh, you know, so I think it's a good start, but it's, it's definitely got work and I, um, and, and, and the biggest thing for me is what's the most important data that somebody wants to see. And one of my suggestions, if you haven't already done it is I think if you got a few citizen focus groups together to see like, Hey, when I go and I think about, and including us, cause you know, there's stuff that I like to see and, you know, I think you're, you know, hitting on some stuff, but it's, I think some really good focus groups on what some of the key data that actually tells the story the best. Um, because I, cause my fear is if you send people to something that's just adds more questions that it doesn't solve the issue. So what are the, what are the key data that would actually create this kind of a more holistic view of what's going on? And, uh, mine, I think focus groups by citizens and the commission would be awesome. So that's my suggestion. Awesome. I know you don't have anything else to do. So you're right. I don't, um, but I, I will say as part of the strategic plan project plan, we were planning in 2027 to kind of revisit cause it will be at that point a few years old. Um, and we said, you know, it's a three to five year plan and we're not looking to make, you know, significant changes, but again, things happen, um, that may shift some of those priorities. And so we want to revisit, not just with the commission, but we, I have actually already talked with Sue Burness about doing some community forums. So it's a perfect opportunity to, to have them review this and give some feedback there as well. So thank you. Yeah. I mean, but a lot of me is like, we started out the venture and it was all about the dashboard at the end and, you know, got to be good data going in. And I realized that you guys are just trying to get, change the culture, make sure we're getting good data in. Um, but at the, at the end of the day, it's all about dashboards that have the best key indicators. Um, and we want to make sure we hit those. So, um, okay. I think anything else for, I think we're good with this one. Thank you, Nicole. Well, I know you're working, you've got a lot of balls in the air. We appreciate that. Um, so any other informational items, uh, Jorge? We didn't really make you work much. No, but I'd like, I'd like to point out the time on the clock and this is the earliest in a while. Even Julie came back. Well, we didn't have those two, uh, you know, we'll blame them for, you know, Hey, if we had you two here, it would have been gone for sure until 1230. Nothing else, Mayor. Thank you. Okay. Any, anybody else for good of the order? Any information? I don't, Mayor. And, uh, I will, I will make a, uh, more formal comment on Thursday, but at least I want to acknowledge that September is suicide awareness month. Yeah. And so, so please stay one more day and you are enough. Love it. Love it. And, and I do want to say during our little break, I actually ventured over for the first time in a long time to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium and got to see up front and close to no personal hope, uh, the Dauphin. And I'll tell you, it was, it was good. They've done some great changes over there since I've been there and it was great. I highly recommend it. Um, and, um, yeah, it was pretty cool. And if you've got a kid, that's even better because they'll be into it. So, all right. I don't think anything else, Jen, you got anything else? Michelle, anything else? First, uh, night of citizens Academy this evening. Oh yeah. First. Okay, good. And we got to be here at what time? We begin at six. Six. Okay. Sounds good. We'll be here. Okay, great. Well, let's adjourn the meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.