setting uh yes i want to thank uh the police department for allowing us to conduct our meetings here temporarily and of course i want to thank city staff for building this beautiful dais uh which uh will remain probably a permanent fixture going forward after we build our new city hall but uh wow pretty nice right anyway so um let us begin the meeting we're going to uh start with our our joint workshop with the budget advisory board um mr uh clerk would you please call the roll the commission commissioner herbst present commissioner glassman here commissioner beasley fitman here vice mayor sorensen here mayor trentals here and the chair of the budget advisory board you want to call the roll of your committee quorum great mr city manager please proceed great thank you mayor so we're going to start with the presentation from staff with laura reese and just before we get started i just want to acknowledge the work of the budget advisory board and chair brown um you'll see in the work program in the backup this team this committee in particular has put up put done a tremendous amount of work this year to get us to where we are now and we are just grateful for their support thank you um good afternoon mayor vice mayor commissioners laura reese um i hope you enjoyed your summer we're very excited to be back with you um as you know we have a regular cadence of the budget advisory board meeting with the city commission it happens three times a year this is the third of three meetings that they have um at this point the city um the city commission has set the maximum millage rates and the budget advisory board spent the summer weighing in on the budget and making recommendations at their last meeting so before we turn it over to the chair to get going um can we have the tentative budget presentation um so before we turn it over to the chair to share their presentation and their recommendations staff would like to go over some summary information of changes that happened between when we met with you last time in june at the joint workshop and this meeting because we got new taxable values and a few things changed over the summer so we want to make sure that we're all on the same page the budget advisory board has already received this information at their july meeting so i'll quickly go through it just to make sure we're all aligned at where we're starting um so today i'll be going over taxable value growth tax bill comparison the operating budget by fund and we'll talk about the general fund a little bit more that's really where we focused our time in in june when we had our joint meeting with you um we'll talk about where the money comes from where it goes some key changes since the proposed budget in the general fund 2027 tentative ft snapshot will share with you the projected budget and the capital improvement plan some strategic budgeting balancing strategies that we implemented since we met in june and which were part of the proposed budget that was shared with the commission at your july meeting and then some key takeaways for the budget so the first item is the change that we got between june and july so our proposed budget was based upon the assumed taxable values as of june 1st which we got from the property appraiser the city's required to use the july 1st values that we received from the property appraiser as part of the adopted budget that we bring forward at the two public hearings in september so the good news is it went up so in june we shared um 67.3 billion dollars and that has now increased um which will result in 756 000 in additional revenue to the general fund one thing that's kind of cool to know is the net new construction increase this year it's the highest it's been in over five years so that's a good indicator of the economy in fort lauderdale when you say this year you mean 2025 um so the tax rule for 2026 is what we use so it's as of june or as of january 1st um so it would reflect any growth that happened the year before january 1st right and so it grew um by 1.75 billion dollars okay thank you yep you're welcome and so we shared with the you we shared with you this tax bill comparison for illustrative purposes in june sharing it again it really hasn't changed um but just as a reminder tax bills will or trim notices will be going out to residents within the next week and so they'll start seeing their trim notices a part of that is the city's tax rate in the city's assessments so for a 640 000 taxable value um the amount that comes to the city on the tax bill is in 2026 was 3 493 dollars um the increases that are being proposed on the tax bill this year um millage rate stays the same but because there's that cpi cap or the cpi growth in a homesteaded value that'll go up by 2.7 percent this year or 69 dollars voter approved debt goes down because the taxable value went up and that's the calculation of what it takes to make that payment so that'll go down by approximately five dollars stormwater assessment is scheduled to increase by 75 or 20 percent to support the new debt that we'll be issuing and fire assessment the full cost of service true up was 41 or 10.2 percent increase so the total increase for the city's portion of the bill will be 180 dollars or 5.2 percent so the total operating budget for the city the tentative operating budget is 1.3 billion dollars the general fund is the largest portion of that bill or of that budget at 561 million dollars or 43 percent and the second largest is water sewer and central regional wastewater system at 310 million dollars in the general fund approximately 50 percent of our revenue comes from property taxes or 47.6 percent and the rest come from fire assessment fees utility taxes and other revenues to support the general fund um we we share every year that this is a pretty good place to be where we have a diversified revenue sources um so we think this will position us well even if property tax reform occurs unlike some municipalities that are even more reliant on property taxes and police and fire drive the largest portion of the general fund budget over 60 percent followed by parks and recreation community services and other functions that are funded through the general fund there are some key changes that we wanted to highlight for you since the proposed budget went to the city commission on at the beginning of july um key revenue changes are the increase in ad valorem that we spoke about 756 000 in additional revenues um we are proposing to shift some costs in the city attorney's office there are two positions that are being recommended to be funded in the city attorney's office through an offset or a reduction in the risk management charges for external counsel so that'll come in as a revenue to the general fund for a service charge and will be used to support those attorneys um and then another item is wilton manners has requested an additional position to be dedicated to the fire rescue contract with them so that's 194 000 to support one new fte and so that's a cost both of those are cost neutral proposals to the general fund additional expenditures are an increased transfer to the capital improvement plan of 450 000 we talked about the city attorney and paralegal position that will help to offset some external expenses related to auto liability and general liability cases the fire safety captain position for wilton manners additional contractual services and operating expenses and parks and recreation to offset some positions that were reduced in that area an increase in the tax collector payment related to the true up in the fire assessment and an increase in transfer to the cra based upon those july first values so those are the changes that you'll see when you vote on the budget in september if anything else is added we'll add that to a change list that we bring forward um the fte snapshot remains the same as what we shared in july with the exception of the three positions we just shared and so the net increase in the general fund is a net of two new positions and again three of those are fully supported through um reductions in other expenses or revenue from wilton manners um as part of the city um auditor's review of the budget i believe he'll speak more about our fund balance um we've spent some time with them over the summer so i'll leave that to him but our estimate is that 9.4 million dollars above our 25 percent target is available in the general fund fund balance and for cip this also really remains largely unchanged since our july meeting um 8.1 million dollars in seawalls we have funding for sidewalks streets five million dollars is kind of a key number for the bond parks bond gaps so if there's shortages in the parks bond program we can turn to those funds to help to fill the gaps in funding repair and maintenance for city facilities remains in the budget and traffic mobility and bike lane improvements so when we shared this general fund forecast with you in june um we shared that there was an 8.9 million dollar projected deficit in the general fund due to some new expenses that were coming online including the new city hall um including some new fire or some fire grants that were going to be expiring but we spent some time in the month of june developing strategies to fill those gaps and those were incorporated in the proposed budget ahead of the decision related to city hall and so here's some key things that were implemented um revenue enhancements for fire ambulance transport fees interest earnings um we reduced six vacant positions in the general fund and payroll attrition was budgeted in areas with a history of vacancies all of those were incorporated in the preliminary budget in the proposed budget we added some additional strategies a shift to internal pension bond payment 2.1 million dollars 2 million dollars for interest in general capital projects fund we eliminated the subsidy for health health insurance administrative costs reduced fleet replacement charge so we have to extend the life of those vehicles or rely upon interest in those funds we're reducing the fire rescue department overtime budget as we briefly mentioned and a reduction for grant writing services so the total reductions and balancing strategies implemented were 10.9 million dollars in the 2027 budget and that was really to prepare us for 2028 so the new model shows that we're balanced essentially for 2028 and um we started a neutral position heading into that year as well and so our key takeaways for the 2027 tentative budget is it addresses the city commission's priorities we spend a lot of time identifying that in the city manager's message the key ways where each of your priorities are funded is structurally balanced it accelerates the completion of key capital projects it maintains a healthy fund balance and prepares the city for the future um any questions okay does that complete your presentation that completes my presentation okay does anyone from the budget advisory board want to add to this presentation or comment at this point they have wait until you have you have your own presentation okay very good uh does anyone from the commission have any questions of laura at this point thank you amazing job i see you you did your you you um made a very serious attempt to reduce our expenditures by almost 11 million dollars so that's that's great and uh i know a lot of work went behind all this so i want to thank you and the entire staff the team that works for the city and in making this happen so thank you so much thank you mayor and commission and thanks to the manager um assistant city manager and the whole team we appreciate it all right great mr city manager so if there's no further questions for our staff we'll turn that over to uh chair brown for the budget advisory board hello bill welcome back you're instrumental in building the dais and it looks fantastic and thank you so once we'll get to the slide deck up um first of all i'd like to thank uh opening with the the budget advisory board members uh this past year they've spent a tremendous amount of time working with key identified staff from omb on special projects to to look at you know like affordability uh operations and each each one of us took a section on like revenue enhancement areas and everything so and we we presented that at our last workshop so today we're going to focus on the future and kind of set a stage to help you in january when you have your next works for the priority workshop as a commission and also i'd be remorse if the vice chair to letting the commission everyone know it's her birthday today happy happy melissa happy birthday what a way to spend so during our summer meetings we focused a lot working with staff on the uh the physical year fy 27 budget which was just proposed budget my final budget presented to you earlier and then we took a look at the city hall we've uh talked about property tax reform if that were to pass certainly we met with strategic communications they came in did their presentation on the public outreach of that referendum and then also the balancing act which is a tool online and trying to engage the general public um we come here before you as a board to endorse the fy 2027 budget as presented by staff by unanimous vote from our last meeting as presented it's realistic it's a responsible budget that meets all the city's current needs and it's also balanced uh as required to uh for 2027 with priorities for public safety and supporting the uh initial costs the general fund cost for the new city hall i believe it's 11 million next year in this budget if i'm not mistaken and then it includes the reductions that was addressed uh as concerns for 2028 as staff presented so as i mentioned we're looking ahead as a citizens advisory board to help you and the commission to meet the goals and your priorities and what we feel the residents and taxpayers are most concerned about and we've identified five key areas that we feel we're going to all have to roll up our sleeves as we move forward for 2028 and that's affordability the millage rate and the fees do we keep continue to keep them the same same or will there have to be increases if property tax reform comes in development slows down we're going to talk about development we also are concerned about keeping a business a business friendly environment anytime you raise business taxes or fees and permits it's a double edged sword what what do those developers what are those business landlords do they they raise the price back on their tenants and and so in essence it's an increase in their rents and that has some effects same with affordability uh when you have more cost involved then the landlord will always raise the prices on their tenants and the big elephant in the room is property tax reform we won't know until like we said until november um how that's going to play out but we do have concerns so here's what we do know affordability approximately somewhere around it says 49 there's some statistics say 46 49 that the average income household income household income are below the thresholds of the basic cost of living or poverty standard here in broward county and the housing cost in fort lauderdale the medium of cost for a home now this was in 2025 is 530 000 and the fair market rent for one bedroom in 2025 is 1900 so the impacts that those have is is it's increasingly challenging for young young people to move in here especially first-time home buyers and make living in fort lauderdale uh achievable and affordable so we i know we have a housing affordability board that works on certain issues but we have to keep in mind any impacts that we recommend to this commission will have an effect on affordability some businesses are having trouble finding the availability of work workers and we have and we like to keep our workforce here in our own city because they're spending their tax dollars and fort fort lauderdale has had the opportunity to strengthen uh its appeal to promote fort lauderdale and it's a place to live in a vibrant community as we know the current billage rates been maintained now this budget's approved for 20 years uh and and the other cities have seen a substantial increase in communities around cities around fort lauderdale has the millage average millage rate has increased 36 percent over that time period and we have those seen cost of fees as such as the fire assessments fee the storm water utility rates and the impact all this has is you know it it affects the holistic preparation of future budgets and proactive addresses affordability challenges we must take into concern development new construction as you just discussed uh we had a good year uh with new growth coming online we had i believe the saline they came on the tax rolls this year and that was two high-rise condo two 30-story buildings down on the beach and i think flagler village had a couple projects a couple yeah and there's a couple more still well that village will yeah is it amazing is it it's going to be an intense uh development project that's going to add significantly to the tax rolls during when when the year the year in which it uh finally gets its co correct and that and that's that kind of leads me into what we're we're concerned about because currently we're seeing a slowdown in the development market due to high construction costs and the interest rates i'll just give you an example i'm sure you're aware that planning and zoning typically on a good month will have three to five zoning or development projects come before them month of june they had one month of july they had two on their agenda month of august zero so what's that tell you we're seeing a slowdown but everything is centricle we understand that in the construction world we have to take that in into consideration as we do future planning for budgets so but we also have to be cognizant of when we have that downturn and we don't see those seven and a half percent increases in assessed value if if it were to drop below five percent in any given one year historically looking at a five percent increase will be eaten up just in salaries and benefits of our workforce of fort lauderdale that you know that's what giving future raises and paying the health insurance costs and everything else so that that's a you know pretty staggering number five percent automatically is eaten up in personnel costs and benefits as i mentioned earlier keeping a business friendly environment we did increase the property or the business tax by five percent um that mean that's within the florida statute and the maximum every year can go up five but as i'm as i mentioned it it has a double-edged sword there when you do that and we have to take that so as we look at future budgets we can't just say okay we go out here and raise start raising the permit fees and business taxes and things uh without fully taking in consideration the impacts that those will have and to our next big one property tax we all know what's being proposed taking homestead up from the 50 000 next year to 150 000 with 2028 going to 250 or to pass five-year residency five-year residency if you move here you can't will be able to homestead for five years after the end of the year and then the non-homestead properties will no longer be taxed maximum ten percent it drops to five so we know it 2028 if this were to pass 17 million we know 2029 then a reduction of 27.3 million so as often off to offset all this we have to come up with some strategic reductions and or increase the military it's pretty simple we're not advocating increase in military traits to do it but we're going to have to make tough decisions as a community and as a commission and as an advisory board you know does it mean we start cutting uh services or does it mean we start defunding non-for-profits do we next year you have to take a look at the cra it was a two-year proposal to come back and look at it being funded at 50 percent maybe the choice has to be made you don't fund it for the next two years at 50 percent at 50 percent those are some of the things not that we're saying this has to be done but we're going to have to really really take a hard look at a hard dive to to balance the budget next year property tax reform passes and that's why we're setting as i mentioned the stage as we move to the your workshop in january on what the priority is going to be and it's going a lot of those priorities are going to be driven on what happens to property tax reform keeping in mind that public safety is always priority number one and that concludes my presentation okay great any questions of mr brown um i do have a question please go ahead um mr brown um on the on moving forward and looking at those areas we may need to um reduce um you said services what services are you um suggesting that we reduce maybe the programs that the parks offer might have to be reduced um services that we do for for the special events for district certain districts in the parades you know those who carry a big impact on services city services and the cost of those so i'm we're not saying we're cutting anything at this point but we i think collaboratively we have to all sit down and figure out what is the best model that works best and we do know police overtime you'll hear about this following this presentation is high fires reduce theirs but one of the reasons is police overtime we're seeing more protest that requires public safety support than we've ever seen in the past in our community so that drives up overtime costs you can't cut those types of services because those are still required for for certain types of security measures so i i think at this point i know the the previous city manager presented a list of some strategic thoughts of her and the staff at the time that maybe if property tax were to pass we'd have to take a look at but i think overall um i don't want i don't want to predict what's going to happen but just hearing and seeing and it truly people don't understand the impact if this really happens and hopefully you know we're trying to educate strategic communications doing a great job but we just got to keep pushing that message out and when the voters will decide and i think the the message voters are hearing is oh great our tax bills will go down well it might on the on one side but services still have to be provided if they want that same level of service and that was the reason i was asking when we say service that's a broad statement so that's why i asked what where were you saying the services that would be suggested maybe or what we need to look at specifically right so that was the reason for my question right and and there's at this point we we really don't have a looked at particular yet and uh hopefully once we have clear guidance from your workshop in january what the priorities will be i think we're gonna have clear guidance on in november yeah so uh we'll probably but then your the priorities will have to be built around that budget and that resource right you know and we'll have neighborhood meetings and and and try to determine what the priorities of the community are and uh um and then make decisions going forward so whether it be services whether it be staffing whatever it may be you know the commissioner would have to make a decision about the millage rate and any other fees that we we charge um you know these are all you know questions that will have to be answered at some point you're right i we agree with you but you know uh it's going to have an impact you know my my windstorm insurance just went up about three thousand dollars so uh there goes my savings so well and uh october october november the historically and we are this year too the board does not meet because we've met so much throughout the year we're one of the boards that have probably one of the most meetings throughout the year and so we we give gives staff a chance not only to take a take a rest from having to work closely with the board but then they also are the process of doing every year and close out for the previous physical or that physical year we're coming off of so but then we'll possibly come back in december if we see a need to and then of course in january and we'll we'll hit the ground running again as because mayor as you said we'll definitely know by november and uh i think once we know in november we'll probably meet in december okay very good any other questions if i may i just also wanted to echo everyone's sentiments thank you so much to you and your entire board for the work that you do on throughout the whole year yeah i mean it really is amazing to track what you guys do how it all starts the process and i really hope the public understands the commitment that you guys all make and the work that you all put into it uh it's very helpful and i i you know i i'm really happy that it's jiving with the tentative budget that was proposed by laura want to reiterate so your board is firmly uh in support of the tentative budget as proposed yes unanimously okay excellent and i do look forward to the work we are going to have to roll up our sleeves especially if this passes um but i i think we'll get there i what i really feel sorry for all the small communities in our state um that so much rely on that ad valorem tax that that that homesteaded tax that they collect uh which really is their entire budget uh we are fortunate that we are a diverse economy we are diverse revenue sources for taxes um it's going to be very interesting to see uh if this passes what happens to those smaller communities towns and counties in our state i really don't know how they survive actually but well one of those cities might be something like parkland which has 75 to 80 percent of their tax base based on homesteaded properties right did they become did they become unincorporated do they you know they merge with another town in broward county i mean what happens so you know we'll see uh luckily for us we're not in that position um but i i i do hope that everyone uh understands the ramifications for the entire the entire state uh and what can happen and it's interesting mayor that you mentioned the increase in your windstorm we we seem to not think of those things or the state doesn't think of those things that uh it's easier just to say let's cut your property taxes and in the meantime the other issues that affect us so greatly like property insurance uh as you mentioned windstorm uh those all get no attention uh so that this almost becomes like the out uh for the state without basically focusing on a lot of the issues that affect us day to day as citizens of the state so um it's an interesting concept we'll see how it plays out uh but again i wanted to just say thank you and i'm thrilled that you are 100 behind the budget as proposed uh again thank you for your work uh you will have a few months off now and we'll see you in december thank you and then just closing i can't emphasize enough the per the staff and omb i mean they're and then not not to alienate any other department but we have more inner contact and directly contact with that staff they are tremendous i know even a former board member mentioned and came from the private sector was always so amazed at how well omb and how they were always on top of things and the kudos and i think they deserve a round of applause thank you thank you can i ask him to stand up come on thank you mayor had a couple bill before you sit down just a couple questions one thank you again for your work and and especially in partnership with omb how is the how's the process been going because you all dig deep into department spending and so forth is the is how we're collaborating and working together and working with staff is that going well is there anything we can do from a commission standpoint staff point standpoint to do better no i i think it's working well uh everything we've asked for you've been some members have been supplied uh okay yeah great what i think i think as we move forward coming once the elephant in the room is exposed on the property tax that's when when things are really going to get figuring it all out right yeah and and that's that's one of the questions i get from neighbors regularly is hey is there say are there savings now that we could be putting in place and and not waiting until november and so you all have had obviously dig in and so forth what would be your response to that and you shared a couple of the savings possibilities but are you feeling and you know it's always been the commissioners the the non-for-profits yeah okay we've always had concerns there's not been a really good vetting system for those um some of the non-for-profits feel like it's an entitlement program you know well you guys came up with 11 million dollars of savings um yeah so so that's amazing you know right yeah it's a good it's a good start yeah i mean there those vacant positions those those funds were always carried on the books so in essence when you eliminate six vacant positions off the books that frees up that money that all ultimately would at the end of every year go back into the general fund to be used for other things throughout the year is that explain properly yeah so so like like you said mayor that was a big savings right there yeah not reabsorbing it basically right right like yeah okay so so those are some of the things and it's you know as i mentioned uh non-for-profits and uh cra you know if the cra has a lot of money in that account that they that we can maybe hold off another two years especially with development not moving right now maybe that might be a time to take a pause i mean that's a that's a strategic decision that this commission is something we can discuss we have a CRA meeting after this and uh it's an issue that i would like to address also because um i understand was it six million dollars a year it uh that we're generating now approximately six million a year and uh that's just city funds you know doesn't include the funds we used to uh take advantage of when we had a you know the full complement of of taxing authorities that were contributing to this but um so something we can think about um look at the schedule of opportunities that we have in the CRAs and what our expectations are what are what the opportunities are and what we can afford and uh and maybe that would be another source of income so we'll see i agree great but i i think we all have to agree that we have to keep a mindset as we move forward as everything should be on the table excluding the key elements like public safety providing good quality water sewer you know storm water and protect this community for the infrastructure needs that those that are required and for life safety and sustainability after that we should be able to look at everything on the table yeah okay good thank you thank you thank you appreciate it thank you all any other questions of mr brown yes i'm not mr brown if we can have laura come back up laura would you mind coming back up for a second thank you um again thank you to everyone and all the input the reports and the time that has been shared and added to this um opportunity this afternoon but i i want us to roll back a little bit and i want us to um really for the record and for the room let's dive a little deeper um and really say um the sources of this a million 11 million dollars that's been identified um if we could say um what buckets exactly how much money is coming from these buckets um are they in a sense uh encumbered or encumbered um what what is this money because i want to know you know exactly where it's coming from and then how else we may need to look at using it going forward thinking about this um property tax referendum sure um thank you commissioner um just to reiterate so i'm answering the correct questions so in the proposed budget there are 10.9 million dollars in strategic reduction that are incorporated are you asking for me to talk about those yes okay yep absolutely so um the first item on the list is revenue enhancements and so we've been partnering throughout the year with departments and with the budget advisory board bringing forward then to the commission certain revenues and fee increases one of the main ones that was incorporated was fire ambulance transport fees that were increased and that was already implemented and then they um fire rescues really spent some time trying to enhance collection efforts in that area so with the revenue enhancements um which included interest earnings a new program that finance put together to enhance our interest earning program business tax those fee increases and fire ambulance fees for like the three major ones that was 3.2 million dollars in revenue enhancements um the second item that we pointed to and this was incorporated in the preliminary budget was a reduction of six vacant positions so many of them had been vacant for over a year um an example we pointed to was parks and recreation had trouble um recruiting for polymer positions some of those technical positions so we did add some contractual services later but we did reduce six positions to the tune of um seven hundred and sixty seven thousand dollars for six positions and that reduces the ongoing increase in growth in the wages for those positions in our modeling as well the next item is what um chair brown was talking about which was the attrition we previously used to budget for positions at the full amount even though we realized there was vacant positions throughout the year so now we factored in an attrition factor for departments that have um vacancies from year to year that allowed us to budget for 550 000 in the general fund for attrition and so that reduces our expenses meaning we don't have to actually cut positions but we're just budgeting for less salaries um so those are the ones that were incorporated in preliminary and we talked to you about those in june um but since then we added some enhancements and for proposed budget the first one really what we were trying to do our strategy was to impact services in the least least amount possible by um looking to the resources that we already have one of the things we identified in concert with finance was that our we issued pension obligation bonds and they have a limited life i believe seven years seven years left around seven years left and we had a fund balance um that was reserved for payment purposes we used to pay that one 12th every month for cash flow um our cash flow is really strong in the city right now so we can do our transfers from the various funds into that fund on october 1st and that frees up the fund balance we had in that fund and we can spend it down over the last seven years of the bond and that freed up 2.1 million dollars a year so that was this uh financing strategy using our own money to reduce our expense um question just is that considered um operational or is that falling under a different category am i in the wrong yeah so we're repaying debt okay and so we have a separate fund set up for debt and let's say the police department's portion of that debt um to support the unfunded liability let's say it was a million dollars we would have spread or 1.2 million dollars we would have put a hundred thousand dollars every month into the account to make the payment now we're going to pay it all at the beginning of the year so that we don't have to have it's kind of like an escrow for your mortgage we don't need that escrow anymore we can spend that down and um take advantage of funding that we have in place by paying for it at the beginning of the year and so that was 2.1 million dollars over the next seven years we were able to realize um the next item is budgeting for interest in capital projects account so previously we didn't include a budget for interest um but our capital projects um balances have grown over the years um and our interest program is better so we're earning pretty consistently two million dollars a year we're going to start budgeting for that to offset how much we need to actually cash contribute to fund our capital so um if we have 10 million dollars in projects we only need to budget for 8 million because the fund itself is generating two of the million so that was one of our strategies that got us an additional two million dollars um the next item is related to our health fund we're self-insured for health um but previously the city also paid for the administrative costs related to the health fund the health fund the health fund is now in a healthy enough position where we don't need to do that so the general fund portion that we won't have to pay um is eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars with no increases to employees premiums so that solution was eight hundred and fifty thousand um the next item is eight hundred and eighty two thousand dollars and um it's similar to the other funding that we talked about it's reducing the fleet replacement charge so our city has an internal service fund that's set up to replace our full fleet so if um a general fund position like somebody in code if we purchase a vehicle for let's say twenty thousand dollars we put money aside every year so that when that vehicle it needs to be replaced that we have money saved to replace the the vehicle what we were doing before is we are funding it at 95 and that took into account that we could sell the vehicle for five percent of its cost to offset it we're seeing that we're getting higher prices at auction and we're earning interest in that fund so we're able to reduce the amount that we put aside for replacement by five percent to ninety percent so again that was that change in mechanism would be eight hundred and eighty two thousand dollars in savings um two more to go um 350 000 reduction in fire rescue overtime um fire rescues implemented some really strategic approaches to how they fill their vacant seats um they're experiencing ongoing savings um so the city manager recommended three hundred fifty thousand dollar reduction to their overtime which is an ongoing savings and then the last one was a pot of funds we used to budget for grant writing services the city always wants to be prepared to leverage grant funds and we had 250 000 set aside for that um what we've seen is really only around 50 000 was spent so we're reducing the amount and if we have a higher amount we'll have to come to you to ask for permission through a budget amendment um where i'm going where i'm trying to land yeah okay bottom line where's this money capital or operational okay all right so we're looking at operational right this is where the majority of this fund is coming from we're looking at the november tax property tax referendum if that goes into effect how is this going to affect our operation ability so these strategic reductions prepare us for 2028 before property tax reform um if in 2028 we see an additional 17 million dollar reduction in revenues we'll have to implement additional strategies we'll try to look to something similar to this um you know we'll try to impact services in the least way possible but you know it'll be collaborative we'll have to bring ideas with our departments we work really closely with all of our operating departments to come up with ideas but um but we will have to bring additional ideas this only gets us through 2028 and what are we going to use this 11 million or what are we oh so this is already incorporated into the budget to into the proposed budget so it's if you would identify of course um so the primary thing we were able to do was to enhance our capital contributions because we don't want to add to ongoing operating expenses so one of the things things i'd point to is five million dollars for like the parks bond placeholder and items like that so we we didn't enhance um operating programs based on these reductions because we're specifically trying to balance for 2028 any further questions um yeah i'm just trying to formalize the question because um while she's formalizing these are recurring savings these aren't just one-time savings correct correct these are recurring every year yes yeah okay yeah so the structural balance budget means ongoing revenues tied to ongoing expenses we do still fund a large amount of capital which is one-time costs we have the opportunity to look to reduce that as well um yeah you can ask a question because there's something that's one other direction i want to go in um because this um this board they've really done an amazing job with pleasing in their presentation and i'm hoping that um i've i've i talked to some of you and you all have had some great input and mayor is this an opportunity now that we allow some of the board to share as well i would i would love to hear from mr oliver if that's um well if they have if they have something they want to if well i'm asking for mr oliver i don't know if he has something to this year but i would like for him to share well laura is up there can i just ask a question okay thank you so much so laura i just want to talk about um the grant writing services um because i i don't want to cut off our nose to spite our face if we are facing some really heavy decisions next year what what are the opportunities i want to make sure that we're still going to be able to fund what we need because i'm thinking that we need to go after as many grants as possible and even maybe accelerate what we've done in the past i don't know um right now what the temperature is out there in in in the the world of grants um but it seems to me that that's something we're going to have to be really aggressive about uh and making sure that we don't leave any you know any grant out there that we don't go after obviously especially if we're going to be facing you know some cuts so are we still prepared to be as aggressive as possible with uh grant writing even though we are looking at you know that reduction of two hundred thousand dollars yeah commissioner i'll take this so you know we are and continue to be aggressive in our grant program there are a lot of grants out there that we don't need that grant writing assistance for so our fxc grants for example are are usually completed by staff or we don't need that x that external assistance so we're basing this reduction on our historic trends for what we've actually needed the assistance for in these cases and we think that that'll be adequate going forward now if we see new grants come out if the federal or state government start to create new programs and we need to get more assistance as laura said we can come back with a budget amendment to seek those funds if we see an uptick in what we need okay great thank you again i just want to make sure that we're as aggressive as possible uh especially you know facing the climate that we're all going to face thank you and even and even with that aggressiveness um awareness of um what is actually we're possibly facing and um i'm in i'm sitting here because i'm i'm really in a personal moment and i'm remembering and recalling just what um just being a homeowner being the person who i am a resident in this city and just living from day to day what i'm facing what i've faced in the past um um um just remembering a time when i had to look hard at my personal budget making true decisions and being real with myself that hey i need to do some things differently and being um humbled enough to say this is not the time for what i'm i'm hoping to do so um i'm i'm having a uh out-of-body experience if you want to say that because i'm really um i'm really taking this in because you know you all gave us six weeks off so um what we did with that time some of us may not admit but um a lot of bad time reading here but um with that being said i'm i'm i'm i'm with the fact that we definitely need to be aggressive for what we're doing but at the same time with that aggressiveness being um responsible with our neighbors or what we're moving forward and not acting like november isn't something that more than likely is not going to be what we consider to be favorable okay i'm going to get off the soapbox right now so a couple of things and if i may since i haven't had a chance yet so um i want to make a just a statement this is not a question but a response to um mr brown's statement so one of the things that i haven't heard yet and this is um in line with with your statement but it's also in line with everything that i've read all the editorials that i've read all the speeches that i've made by my elected colleagues here locally and throughout the state never once never once have i heard anybody ever mention the word we're going to be more efficient all i've heard is we're going to raise fees we're going to raise taxes we're going to cut services we're going to cut police and fire and never once have i ever heard anybody mention that we're going to get more efficient and and i think that's just a travesty um and this is a global issue this is not just with us here again i spend a lot of time consulting in the private sector i have a lot of clients that i work with and when our revenue drops the first thing we do is we look at ways that we can do things more efficiently we look at ways that we can do more with less i don't start thinking about how i'm going to you know look for ways to you know keep my staff employed while my revenue plummets uh you know i'm thinking about how am i going to do more with less i don't say i'm going to cut services i'm going to cut product offerings i look at how am i going to continue to deliver on the expectations of my customers while i have less revenue coming in because that's how you grow your way out of a problem you don't grow your way out by by saying you know um we're just going to cut all of our services and we're going to put our clients at at risk because you know the residents are our clients and so we can't say we're going to cut our services to our clients that that's not the answer and we can't simply say we're going to charge all of our clients for it that's not the answer the answer has got to be that we're going to do better and we're going to do more with less and that never seems to be the answer in government government has this unique monopoly where we just say great we're going to charge you more and i just think that that's a shame and i think we need to be thinking more about again how we drive efficiency and how we can implement again the thing i'm doing right now is i've incorporated ai into everything that i do my work is 50 percent more efficient than it was a year ago i've increased my productivity my output and the quality of what i do because i'm using chat i'm using claude i'm using grok every single day multiple times a day in every single thing that i do and again i encouraged our our city staff here to do that and they're doing it i know they're doing training classes on co-pilot and i thank you all for for embracing that but over time our workforce is going to decline naturally through attrition and also it's going to have to be through strategic layoffs where we're just going to simply find that we don't need as many people to do the job that we're doing today and we only have to remember that government is not an employment agency we don't exist to employ people we exist to provide services to our residents at the lowest cost possible and we lose that we lose that concept all the time i never hear people say that that's our role but i always hear people say we can't lay off staff we can't cut staff we can't do this we can't do that i never hear people say here's what we can do and so i just want to encourage us all to have a different mindset when we're looking at this scarcity drives improvement nothing focuses the mind like scarcity i learned this a long time ago when i was working for a company that was experiencing financial distress and i will tell you nothing focuses your attention like bankruptcy so you know i would encourage us all to look at this not as as a crisis but as an opportunity for us to get better and and to be more focused and and it's a challenge to us to get better at what we do so uh and i would love to hear from olivier so olivier if you would care to share your thoughts can you hear me yes yeah thanks for the opportunity uh commissioner mayor uh vice mayor and uh commissioners uh when chairman brown described um um the unanimous vote on this budget uh i would uh mention that i was not able to vote because i was stuck in in italian road um and i couldn't participate via zoom as i had anticipated that's so difficult italians if i had been in greece and i was there a week before uh i would have been able to do it um and i was thinking of socrates uh mayor trent alice um who encourage everybody to question to uncover the truth uh self-knowledge uh aristotle with ethics uh logic and politics and i think it reminded me of the fact that at bab and i've tried to champion this approach for the past two years uh with some degree of success among my peers uh and talking to some of you at the commission is to try to bring ideas that are concrete um and anchored in the reality of numbers and putting into perspective what we have done for the past three or four years and i put a lot of analytics on the table shared with my colleagues to see the trends and unfortunately and i we can't blame staff or uh government uh for doing that but to echo uh commissioner herb's uh um comments there's bless you there is a there is a tendency to uh copy paste from one year to another and generally with increasing uh of the general fund and a lot more on charges fees etc etc and we have incurred a lot of burden on our residents um and i was advocating all this year uh for um some task assignment from everybody to gather ideas uh in anticipation of the loss of revenue how to stimulate our revenues and there is a lot of ideas from staff as well we can do better in positive enhancement of revenue now the other side of the equation is how do we save money and i think we need to get better uh for you uh to make the arbitration that you have to make and anticipate that uh before next year or before 2029 when we have 15 million deficit uh with tax property and city hall because we added city hall at a very difficult time and we have to this is the worst timing to actually commit to city hall which is funny enough the same amount on the load on the budget per year uh as the uh the the tax uh property impact so basically i don't think the budget this year i would have voted to approve it because i think we didn't anticipate enough structural uh reform that we could have done and i think waiting for next year when we'll be in a more difficult position and the year after is going to be a little late i think we had an opportunity to bring new solutions this year i'm hoping that as we start our new cycle we'll do go deeper uh um as a group into uh pushing staff to get better ideas and and more announcements and we we can't create miracles i think we need to cut some budgets i don't think that's going to be uh off the table uh maybe some service level changed um um in general city hall seems to be the wrong decision at the wrong time uh we're adding a lot of weight to uh 270 million dollar baseline uh and we're still very expensive per square footage uh commissioner glassman you um at the last commission meeting we you mentioned sunrise uh you mentioned uh other cities around us and i looked at the numbers and the price per square foot is still uh much less than what we're going to pay and we all know that like this building if we budget a hundred million dollars it might land at 150 so what about the 217 especially when the design is not uh finalized this train is is moving apparently but i think this was the the worst idea uh for the worst time my concern for the budget next year uh is that we should put affordability not at a gimmick or word but really at the center of our budget process and we cc staff i think we should help residents to get some some sort of relief and find ways to not increase you know beyond the the constant 41193 uh millage rate uh which provides more revenue as we expand the tax value we have taxed our residents uh with fire assessment with storm water those increases are you know gigantic i made a calculation on the budget based upon a 640k uh homestead house and it's staggering uh you know per year it's not the numbers that i've seen uh previously so i think we missed an opportunity this year to go further in structural reforms and there is positive revenue announcement there is positive use of ai i'm tired of hearing about ai and we're training and we're learning i'd like to show me the money how much are we going to save with ai rather than cutting some jobs but it's eventually i'm afraid that if this commission doesn't do it uh the next mayor or the next commissioners are going to do the dirty job of uh cutting uh uh cutting jobs and and cutting employment remember we are relatively well-funded and we have a lot of uh employees they cost a lot of money every year the uh cost of those employees is increasing structurally without even increasing the budget so i think we need to really go deep and i'm echoing this out of body uh a sentiment that uh commissioner uh bisley pitman uh had is that we need to be more concrete as bab uh and pushing staff towards more tangible solutions positive and also sometimes hard solutions so that's all i wanted to say thank you so much i do have one question though when bad meets for all the departments uh because you've mentioned that you think we need to go deeper so have you had those discussions with staff or have you looked at the departments where do you see the bloat where do you see the need to cut uh departments or uh staff uh where do you see the need to cut positions have you have you been able to have those discussions yeah i have i had analytics at the beginning of the year that i shared with my colleagues and staff obviously about the ratio per uh you know per capita in terms of employees budget looking at other cities in florida across the nation i've done the same thing with city hall cost per square footage where we saved a little money we went down on the proposal of city hall but we're still overpaying we're still overpaying compared to renovation across the nation i'm talking about staff now i'm talking i i don't care about that i'm asking you about staff and where have you dug in to say this department is over staff these these positions are too many for this department this is where we need to cut this is where we have some bloat have you done that yes i have done that uh commissioner where do you see that and i saw that in the city manager's office city manager's office i have seen that at stratcom those departments have grown a lot in the past three or four years and their budget even if you look at and i don't want to put a public safety on the spot but the office of the chief of police has grown a lot there might be some good reason and i will hear more about it tomorrow because we are meeting with the chief of police on that and the kpis and the performance of the police department compared to the the well-funded budget that keeps growing but i have identified and shared with my colleagues i think what we need to do better as a as a board is to take those analytics and hard numbers and bring you some more uh you know in in insider solution and we need to get better at challenging staff and heads of department at how you can do better with less money i think it's not a a private sector versus public sector i think we should get on board by the way miami-dade broward county the school board all have done something to do uh better with less money cut jobs and uh even provide some degree of relief for their um residents in terms of tax uh pay your money well the school board has seen drastic reductions of students to service as opposed to our city where we've seen increase in population increased growth so i can't see how we can compare ourselves to the school board plus the school board is exempt from the property tax reform lucky them and also the school board has another ballot initiative on november even raise more money in addition to the military money that they raise isn't that true it was one of the example i cited we can revert to miami-dade um and broad county i think there is an effort to be uh made in terms of hard measures uh if you don't swallow the pill now you might have to have surgery later so i think we need a and i said it six months ago in front of you we need to go on a diet we're gonna on a severe diet uh bab can help you find some solutions you have to direct staff to be serious about it whatever the city manager in charge uh previous uh and current i think this is a hard job at heart field but we need to swallow it now because in the next two years we're going to be in a difficult situation and we can't declare bankruptcy but uh i don't want to be an alarmist but i think we need to to do better and i hope we can start the next budget process uh with my colleagues to actually be more of what we should be which is a sort of a consultant that helped beyond city staff open some more questions and more ideas we want to be more proactive we want to push staff i think that should be our role and with the voice of residents at the center of our process affordability should be not a nice word on the slide but it we should actually do something about it and if we can't if we don't raise the millage rate don't cheat the residents who are not stupid by seeing the fire assessment or the sanitation uh fee or the what you go so so much higher than three years ago i have those numbers as well to share with you later if you want okay great thank you so much thank you i look forward to that work actually i want i'm really curious to see those numbers and that that that outlook from you because i you know just mentioning the city manager's office or stratcom those those are insignificant numbers in terms of our overall budget so we need to see definitely a lot more than that but i definitely look forward to that work uh i think it's important but uh i think staff would be very happy to you know basically work along those lines we're all going to be in a position where we need to dig deeper i don't doubt that i just think that our role as bab is not to do kumbaya and actually we should ask the hard questions and and that's part of our role we represent the residents we are a budget advisory board so let's do our advisory job it requires lots of lots of work and research but i think we have right minds on these boards it's a matter of leadership and and really pushing hard so i think we need to continue that i will meet with you gladly with those analytics that i presented to my colleagues uh six months ago excellent i look forward to that and by the way kumbaya is not necessarily a bad thing if you actually agree with what the staff is doing you can be kumbaya i think we can do both we can do it's great and i i i think i work well with staff uh we meet we talk it doesn't mean that we can't challenge our idea is to have a different perspective from city staff and it's okay we can we can disagree we can have a different uh uh reading of the numbers i think the problem so often is that we go one year and the next year and we don't take the time to take perspective to take uh you know some uh some long-term perspective and i think we need to do that and i think bab has an opportunity to do that more no and i understand although the projections that we see do go out into the future so we can continue the discussion and i look forward to it we're all going to have to roll up our sleeves and work really hard uh when this next cycle comes along commissioner the projection from syntax still a show negatives in 2008 28 and 29 all right so we'll get to that let's just just let's just focus on what we're doing today and uh and i and we appreciate your words and your and your perspective yes bill last word and we're going to conclude this meeting very quickly uh the question about uh department heads and efficiency this past year they've been more efficient than i've seen a long time in accountability in this in this government what are the things a previous city manager did and i make this as a suggestion not coming from the bad but because we've not taken a position but i think the previous city manager did an exercise of what if it everyone had if you had to cut five percent i don't know if that was shared with this dais or it was never shared with the board we can't direct staff for something we can ask but that doesn't mean i think it'd be behoove us all to take a look at that and because this recommendation to five percent off of police five percent off of fire every department what was the how was the exercise all right let's not go there all right okay but it would be interesting actually no i think that's a great idea i'd love to see that i'd love to actually see whatever was put together if if staff has already done that exercise please share that with me thank you yeah we have not seen that yeah all right that because that's going to that could help the foundation moving forward for next okay thank you very good all right mr city manager yes you have one more item on this agenda which is the auditor's review of the budget but for this item um again want to thank the uh babb chair brown and the entire team for their work this year um it was really great to participate with you and thank you for bringing us a recommendation today thank you mr reilly good afternoon mayor and commissioners the city auditor's office has performed a review of the fiscal year 20 26 20 27 proposed budget the budget is compiled by the city manager pursuant to section 4.09 of the city charter we have several objectives for our review of the fiscal year proposed budget the primary focus of our review was to ensure that the budget is balanced revenue and expenditures estimates are reasonable and materially correct and that the priority established by the city commission's priorities all show funding allocations in the coming year and that the proposed millage rate is in compliance with florida statutes the scope and methodology of our review consisted of the following the city auditor's office performed various analytical procedures reviewed budget support worksheets and made inquiries to omb as needed additionally the ceo compared the line item detail from the proposed budget to the projections actual expenditures through september 2026 furthermore the city analyzed trends and variances of the three prior fiscal years budget versus actual to gain a historical perspective to identify opportunities um to to look to see that the accuracy and revenue of of the expenditure estimates the documents we reviewed also included the executive summary uh we reviewed uh reports um that were provided through the city's um uh software system and uh any reports that we were able to um request from omb the um again um finally as part of our audit work the ceo attended all budget meetings and relevant meetings as they related to the development of the new budget this participation further gave us further gave us further insight as to the conditions and uh recommendations of that were being prepared for this year's budget as i mentioned in in uh prior years the uh city budget review the ceo's budget review is performed each year the commit the communication between management bab the ceo and the city's commission are ongoing and frequent throughout the year and the budget office has had continuity of senior staff within the department and in prior years no material errors were noted on previous reviews the ceo's conclusion is that the fiscal year 2026 2027 proposed budget of the city of fort lauderdale is considered a balanced budget as presented in addition the priorities established in the city's commission priorities also show funding allocations in the coming year and the proposed millage rate is in compliance with florida statutes the areas of concern section noted in our memo which is not not all inclusive but currently represents areas the ceo deemed important enough to be brought to the city's commission to brought to the city's attention these concerns are related to ongoing events and may may impact the budget in the city resources going forward forward areas of concern over time wait are you trying to take away our parties no more fourth of july no more great american beach party uh when you say events what do you mean well i'm just uh you know depending on um you know things that we may in the future might there's some that were i don't believe we're ever gonna cut out but there's some maybe future ones we're not we won't do it's okay keep going all right keep going okay i'm hoping any questions no because everyone's all right no um yeah i know you know the thing is we're hearing a lot of very nice sounding things but when it comes down to the nitty gritty what are we talking about right okay someone says efficiencies in departments that means that means telling people to work longer hours or doing better at their job or we're laying off people those are the realities so you know and we can dance around those those those uh topics but those are the realities and and people don't want to say it or or hear it but that's ultimately what it comes down to if we have x amount of dollars and we're going to have x minus 17 million all right well it means we got a cut somewhere it's going to be staffing it's going to be events it's going to be contributions it's going to be all the all those things and that's why we have to reach out to the community to decide what are the choices and those are the priorities that the commission would have to follow i'm sorry go ahead pat all right um the first concern that we had was was overtime the ceo continues to note a significant amount of city funds allocated to overtime based on current operating practices actual overtime expenditures consistently exceed the amounts included in the proposed budget police department overtime remains the primary contributor the to the projected budget which they they are the largest department it would make sense that they would have the most um but during the uh the fiscal year 2026 um the projected um this is the final year of the fiscal year 2026 it's projected that overtime for the for the police will be 13 million dollars and it is underfunded by approximately 1.9 million dollars currently under current operating practices the total i'm talking about all the different departments the fiscal year 2027 overtime costs including associated 6.5 in fica costs is projected to be approximately 26 million dollars accordingly the overtime amounts included in the fiscal year 2027 proposed budget do not appear to reflect anticipated expenditure and may require reliance on salary savings from funded vacancies or other available appropriations to cover overtime costs next item is the capital improvement plan regarding sorry city are if you just pause there what mayor if it's okay i'd like to take these kind of in turn the city manager responded to your concern about overtime which i think is a valid concern and i just want to hear a little bit from the city manager mayor if that's all right sure so chris you know given this concern if you could just share with everyone especially folks who maybe haven't read your response on overtime what's how are we addressing that yeah thank you vice mayor so i will say and start off with we largely agree with the areas of concern that mr riley and his team identified and in that response you'll see both alignment as well as things that we've done to address these areas as well so you saw in our reductions for next year's budget looking at the fire department over time where they were able to find more efficiencies in their service and scheduling or we've proposed a reduction to that budget next year police and fire we continue to work i'm sorry please we continue to work with our police department i work with the chief we review those overtime statistics monthly we go over the causes and the needs that that department may have to overcome those overtime challenges i will say we're also looking for ways to recover those costs so you'll see later tonight on the agenda an agreement with the fifa host committee to recover about 1.7 million dollars in overtime expended by the police department so this is ongoing it's something we're very aware of and we've been working internally to try to alleviate and find ways to adjust so we can have less overtime occurrences although we know you know public safety especially we're going to see a need for overtime from time to time yeah thank you and what chris what patterns are you seeing in overtime in other words is it event driven is it gaps for um shift work where we're down a person or two what's what what are you seeing yeah i would say in the police department in particular it's a combination of some vacancies and those vacancies kind of go up and down depending on when we have classes graduate and we can fill those vacancies so right now we're probably in the 20 vacant position ranges but we're waiting for that class to graduate if they haven't already to be able to recruit and fill those positions you've got everything from fmla leave it's a large department so that can affect scheduling as well and just vacations absences and things like that with events we we usually recover the cost so if we expend overtime for a special event that's approved and that we have awareness of you know we're able to cost recover when we have situations where there's an unforeseen thing if you know protest pops up or there's some unrest or something that the police has to deal with you know that's something we would have to cover and those are the things we budget for and how do we if if you kind of rack and stack us versus cities of our size police force of our size in terms of overtime are we kind of similar to other cities uh similar size yeah so i haven't looked at the data compared to other cities um you know we are unique we do experience a lot of different factors other cities don't so i would assume we're a bit ahead of the curve in terms of the overtime need and we have a spring break season we have some other seasons that do require some overtime staffing so i would assume um i don't like to assume but i would assume that because we have some of those factors other communities don't have that we do expend a little bit more in overtime than your average community okay okay thanks pat based on that i just want to get your feedback the response i mean are comfortable um i mean i i think um the city manager's made some points there there's other different factors to consider too if an art schedule that we prepared you can see over the last several years just overtime is is exponentially increasing so there there are certain things too that are in you know certain contracts when overtime kicks in um before 40 hours of work has been uh completed but you know you can include sick days and vacation days as part of your 40 before it kicks in and there's a there's certain things like that regarding when when the overtime kicks in but i i think um i understand that you know police department definitely and fire will have more overtime they have more emergencies and like mr brown mentioned uh you know sometimes there's there was a lot more you know um activities in the committee that were unexpected relating to you know protests or and things like that so they have to be out there regardless so but you know i think there are some things that could be done um and um that sounds like done through the collective bargaining something process is what you're suggesting yeah okay thanks great that's good for that one and if unless there's other comments feel free i'd like to just also talk about that a little bit so either pat or city manager so when we talk about overtime and police first of all are we adequately staffed to meet our operational needs in the police department so i'll ask the chief to come up and answer um from his perspective i know we um we've discussed this and you know i know we experienced some vacancies a few years ago that we're a driver for overtime but um i think for now we're we're more staffed and chief thank you for being here and thank you for hosting us today as well and into the future um what i'm what i'm concerned about is when we talk about overtime and say oh my god look at all that money we're spending on overtime um first i want to know if maybe we should be a larger department to meet the the growth of our city the growth in the number of people that are visiting our city uh the growth in events the growth and as was mentioned earlier when we have to go out and we have to help with you know if there's a state or a national protest whatever it is um because i think when we look at overtime correct me if i'm wrong but the rate that we pay for overtime is less than if we were actually hiring uh more people correct so while it sounds like an exorbitant number uh actually it is less than if we went out and and increased staffing correct me if i'm wrong that is correct uh good afternoon mayor vice mayor commission bill schultz chief of police uh several things uh that you brought up that is correct uh overtime is less expensive than a full-time employee um overall uh currently we have about 31 sworn vacancies within the department and then you add on to as the city manager mentioned fmla at any given time in our department alone and i'm sure the other departments have uh similar concerns uh we have 20 to 30 individuals uh sworn individuals who are not able to report to regular duty so you add that to the 30 or so vacancies we currently have that's a good chunk of officers that are there now to answer your question um how do we compare with full-time employees full-time staff of officers we are currently uh beginning a process where we're going to do an updated comparison to cities of our size as you mentioned vice mayor uh to include various issues we'll look into see if we can get those overtime statistics but also see where they are with their sworn staff um i've had conversations with my colleagues the other chiefs around the state uh and it appears that cities that are similar or comparable to our size do have more sworn officers so that's where i want to really compare and contrast uh what their uh levels of staffing are compared to what our levels are and i'm i'll be prepared to make a recommendation on that no and that's very helpful that's what my next question is going to be because i think that's really important i i think people don't understand that um the number of sworn officers that we're working with now what is that number right now we're at 571 571 571 yes right now we have 30 31 vacancies uh we are in the process of processing uh certified officers who have applied uh but i have yet to hire uh any of those as those files are just about to be finished i'm told we'll have about eight that i'll be able to sign in the near future right and i i think when you look at all of those other cities that you've mentioned you're going to find that we probably are understaffed uh i would not be surprised if we're understaffed by even maybe a hundred um and i just think it's important as we go forward and we consider everything else that we have to consider uh public safety being what it is uh we have to be cognizant of that but i just want to make sure that we're putting the overtime into perspective because again we're spending less right now on overtime than we would if we were paying for those full-time positions that's all that is correct and what i'm going to look at as i look at this i want to make sure we are doing apples to apples here uh we are a beach community with a lot of tourists a lot of special events um potential for severe weather impacts so i want to compare us to those same cities uh for st pete for instance i know for off the top of my head they have over 600 sworn in st pete so that's what we'll be looking at and i'll be happy to report back as soon as that's completed no and i look forward to that and i i do want to just thank you for your service in the entire department because i think for the numbers that we're talking about in our department uh you guys do an incredible job and i just want to say thank you thank you sir and also um to add to this conversation um yes thank you for the great service that is given to the city um i'm a little unsure about what's being said about that overtime and it being um less than the higher full-time employee because i'm thinking about those employees who have seniority that's at a higher pay rate than some that would be lower so is that a apples to apples when we say that we are paying um less for um the overtime than it is to actually hire someone that we can utilize in that space where's that balance and that was a generalization and let me clarify um if we had more sworn officers we would have more officers available to cover per se the vacancies and the non-regular duty that we currently see so that's where that would come into handy uh come into play when we were talking about what the status is right now that was the comparison of the overtime versus the full-time employee but if you have more full-time employees that gives us the ability to have that that backfill so to speak right okay thank you for that you're welcome can i also chime on that too because you know our vacancy rate has fluctuated so in you know the last two decades i know when i first got here in 06 we were under uh chief roberts we were running a very high vacancy rate back then but a lot of that had to do with the fact that we were in the middle of the war and a lot of the people who would otherwise have been interested in becoming police officers were over fighting in iraq they weren't they weren't signing up to become police officers and so it was very difficult for us to recruit at that point in time um not too long ago i think within the last couple of years we were at like zero vacancies so i'm actually surprised to hear we're back up at 31 i mean obviously we have retirements we've got people in drop and so but i know i know statistically speaking it has been my experience over the last several decades in various cities that it tends to run about six to eight percent it tends to be about that number right so that's not unusual to to be at to be at roughly six percent which is where you are just in terms of the pure vacancy number not counting fmla correct um you know the the issue that commissioner glassman brought up there's there's there's some truth to it but not entirely right so we see this a lot in the manufacturing sector where for example on a manufacturing line your ford motors and demand increases and we want to increase productivity production not productivity um it's cheaper to pay overtime on a production line to increase output than it is to hire a new employee but that's within what we refer to as a relevant range at a certain point that no longer works for two reasons one you've spent too much on overtime and two you've burnt out your employees right so there's a significant decrease in in performance amongst your staff when you start having them work double shifts on a regular basis so that model falls apart at a certain point um and also to commissioner beasley pitman's point if you have you know sergeants and lieutenants out there working overtime at six figure plus as opposed to you know um your your new recruits out there running and gunning on the street the the the numbers change dramatically so it's it's it's a much more nuanced question than simply overtime is cheaper than new people so i think we need i think we need a much more robust analysis on this to to really have an answer to that question agreed thank you uh any of the questions of the chief thank you chief you're welcome and i will take this opportunity please to uh thank uh and commend my officers they have been working diligently especially over the five to six weeks of fifa world cup soccer uh i unfortunately had to cancel their days off uh hopefully they are forgiving me by now but i do want to i do want to a few less parties there chief a few less parties okay all right thank you chief on that on that point about world cup i just from you know what i saw and and heard and experienced you all did a fantastic job there was so i just want to give you a hand thank you they did because there were there are several instances in my understanding where we had large crowds gathered didn't anticipate the size and scope and so just amazing job officers did to handle that so well so i'll like that i got some feedback some from my my friends with the fbi and they said that the the coordination and collaboration was just outstanding so to all your guys and and and ladies again same thing thank you commissioner thank you chief thank you mr ryle you want to proceed with your presentation we have to wrap this up soon we have two other meetings we're late for thank you okay um the next yeah the next item is capital improvement plan you know again this this is something i've mentioned in the past but regarding projects um starting projects and completing projects and uh additional uh change orders and and delays and uh have a significant effect on the amount that's uh added to the the cost of these these projects and uh i think you know we've made some some uh strides this year because we've we've broken out that department there's a lot more activity going monies transferred to to the cip to move some of the older projects to get those because you know the longer you wait it's going to cost more so you know some some of the uh some of the examples that we we saw i listed it in my in my memo but you know we had some you know significant um change orders related to the water and sewer projects that we had to increase and some couple things at the water treatment plant we had some things with parks and um bond projects you know we definitely have understated what we really needed for that and a lot of it is because it was a long delay in design and getting things getting things rolling and getting into construction so that's kind of general comments on the cip area uh next item is um reserves general fund unrestricted fund balance again we talk about this often um the reserve balance for municipality as per the government finance officers association is having expenditures approximately 16.7 percent of your revenues or expenditures um the city has established a reserve balance of 25 of the expenditures as um two months of you know trying to get two months of reserve and and keep it the uh restricted balance unrestricted balance at a at a reasonable rate um during the review of the budget the ca was able to confirm that the current balance of balance for the city or the monetary difference is in excess of the 25 percent that we've established by uh two percent and that represents approximately 9.7 million dollars in uh additional um funds that that could be used for you know various things that's paying down debt uh possibly paying down the uh uh cola increase that we had last year for the general employees retirement system pension plan and there's other things mentioned even uh uh allocating some of it to a new fire station which you know had a somewhat to do with the you know that we are paying for um the assessments uh fire assessments we've added fire um stations in there so that that could reduce um future uh fire assessment fees and um then you know really um the the last thing i just wanted to go over is the union negotiations you know as union negotiations are currently underway um you know we we we feel that really at this point it's interesting because at this point in time even um there's only one really union left to go and we've um successfully got those um two of them completed uh before they they expired or matured and uh my understanding as of um this date the fire is is coming forward with a tentative agreement today so it's really mainly with with the police department's um negotiations and you know we had mentioned with um meetings with budget and city manager some ideas while that's still open that that could be uh um considered there and um we're just you know hoping that um that you know we can get that one done before september 30th 2026 but you know i'm not sure if that's still possible but uh you know one of the things that we had mentioned in the past is that the idea of and i've seen others other cities some other cities do it some other cities don't is have a point in time where um you won't be retroactively paying for um the changes to to the uh to the uh increases or salaries in that so it we're this year we were trying to encourage to get everything in by uh the you know the maturity of the existing contract but that's something to maybe kind of look at while we're still negotiating to see if we can speed that up because i believe the last time it went three years before we finalized the um the contract and it was retroactive for three years so those are the kind of the main things i just last day i'd like to recognize the office of management budget um yvette matthews law reese and their staff and for helping us go through this um process of reviewing the budget and i also have our staff here our city order staff that did a great job in putting that all together and i guess i thank joey for giving us the court side seats over there but um i don't know can you stand for a second let everybody know uh our audience so at this point i'll i'll uh address any questions you may have does anyone else have any additional questions of mr reilly there being none thank you thank you so much for your great work and for the team that you work with we appreciate is it that matthews here i don't see her oh there you are in the back okay all right great thank you pat thank you so much mr city manager does that conclude our presentation and joint workshop it does thank you okay okay we'll now conclude that meeting