All right. Good afternoon, everybody. It is 1 o'clock, April 7th. We are going to have the finance committee start here, but we are also going to be taking a 15-minute recess for the Sexual Assault Awareness Month kickoff that is in the atrium. So with that, we will do quick introductions, and then we are going to recess for 15 minutes, and we will come back right after that. So introductions starting on the left, please. Brittany Norris for the administration.
Colleen Hampsey, Council Research. Barry Stafopoulos, Office of General Counsel.
Philip Peterson, Council Auditor's Office. Tim Taylor, Council Auditor. Good afternoon,
Rory Diamond, District 13, the Beatles. Ron Salem, Group 2 at Large. Nick Howland,
at Large, Group 3. Joe Carlucci, District 5. Raul Waries, District 11.
Will Lane, District 3. Jacoby Pittman, District 10. Good afternoon, Tyrone Clark-Murray, District 9, visiting, and I have a bill of 2026-207. Okay, we will take you up.
Towards the beginning, we have one other bill with Ms. Sherry Hall, and then we'll go to—what number is that, Ms. Clark-Murray? 17? Okay. Okay. We'll go to that third. All right. So we are going to take a 15-minute recess. Everyone, if you're going to exit and go to the kickoff, go out these doors right here, not these doors to the left, and it is 101, so we will be back here by 1.17. Thank you. All right. We are going to go ahead and reconvene our meeting after our 15-minute recess. So committee members, what we're going to do is we're going to hear from our public comment cards, and then we're going to go into our two presentations that we have, one from the Tree Commission, which will give five minutes, and then one from Ms. Taylor, which will be about five to ten minutes on her two presentations, and then we'll go into the agenda. So up first, we have Mr.
Carnell Oliver. Yes. My name is Carnell Oliver, and I want to ask a question. There's a great deal of projects that have a dollar amount that's associated to it, and I want to ask this question. Has anybody ever actually took a look at, for every city dollar, just like the school system, they put a dollar amount that is associated with each kid? If they move to a different part, the dollar goes with them. Has anybody ever looked at all 14 districts, how many citizens live in a specific district, and how much in federal money, state money, local money is tied into them? Because there's always a fight during the budget process when it comes down to allocation of resources. If we know that we have 25,000 people who are U.S. citizens that live in District 9, that money stays in that community. We always have a tendency, over the years, I've actually learned the process, and I'm starting to get more honed in on the nuts and bolts. If there's 25,000 residents, and each of them, each resident of a specific district carries $50,000, whatever the whole calculation, the projects, the resources stay in their community. And a lot of the actual work needs to be done by those neighborhoods. And the only thing that the city council members, I believe they should be able to, if certain districts are not meeting certain thresholds, then it comes to an upper-level approach where you may have to have a conversation of raising taxes or something like
that. Okay, thank you, sir. Next we have John Scott. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. For the record, John Scott. Address on file. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of item number 13-2026-0186. As I saw yesterday, it was deferred in neighborhoods, and I am hoping, Mr. Chairman, that you do the right thing and take this bill up and undefer it and have it spoken on today. This is the right thing to do because it truly shows your commitment to the issue of life. Is there any more important issue? There certainly is not. I was born on a Saturday. I've never met my birth parents, but was adopted by a loving family shortly after birth. Although I have no knowledge about my beginning, God placed this bill on my heart, and I thank Councilman Diamond for sponsoring this legislation because I can't help but believe in my heart that one of these babies that can be placed in these life-supporting boxes could have been me. There was a large contingent of members at the press conference that Councilman Diamond called before the Neighborhoods Committee, all providing full-throated support. Even though it was all praise, I am surprised to learn that in Neighborhoods Committee yesterday, there were a couple of members who supported the bill who had concerns about where the money was coming from. As Chief Golden said, this is life, and even if it saves one life, it's worth it. I have not heard of any city council members oppose this. Chief Golden does not oppose this, and I hope and pray the mayor does not oppose this. In closing, thank you to Councilman Diamond again for standing and taking an issue on life. Mr. Chairman, I hope that you undefend this bill today and do the right thing and stand courageously in the fight for this
extremely important issue. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Scott. So with that, we're going to go into our first presentation for the Tree Commission. Who is here for that? Mr. Curtis Hart?
Yeah, absolutely. Councilman Arias, you're recognized. All right. Thank you, Chair. As some of you already know, I sit on the Tree Commission as the liaison for City Council. I asked Mr. Hart, as the chair of the Tree Commission, as well as Ms. Shannon McGillis, to be here to answer any questions you may all have. Right now, we're sitting roughly at $30 million in the tree fund, $20 million from the ordinance part, and then $10 million from the charter portion of it. I'll go into more details of it, but they're here for a presentation. And then from there, I do have a bill upcoming today, which is the reason why I package this together. So, yep. Thank you, Mr. Hart. Rolls-Royce.
Mr. Chairman, members of the body, Curtis Hart, 8051, Terrell Lane. Which button do I, this, yeah, okay. Go to page nine, please. And these are the, these are the areas that we spend the pot of money out of. Remove and replace and 630 City are level one fundings, and the city administrates these. Remove and replace, tree dies, car hits a tree, whatever reason for the replacement, we go out and the city goes out, replaces it, and puts a new tree in, we pay for it. 630 City, if you want a tree in your, right of way, in front of your house, you call that number, and you, we go out, we have to actually go out to the site, send our arborist out to the site, check the soil conditions to see if a tree will grow and plant your tree. And then, and then, we'll go to the next slide. So, tree planning programs, all trees have to be in street right of ways, parks, schools, or other public property. So, we can't plan them just anywhere we want to, so we're limited on where we can plan them. Move and replace the city. Level, level two is, we take recommendation from staff, it has to go to MBRC, and then it, it, it, if it exceeds $300,000, it has to come here, and you approve it. Level two is where we plant probably about 80% of all the trees. We, we go through a level two, and this is a design process that the city does. Uh, this is a project here. I'm not sure where this is, but it just shows a tree that we put in place. This is the remove and replace here, where a tree died, and we're putting one in, in place. This is a median, I think it's over in Ron's district, this particular project. Um, this is 630 City. Uh, it's just dial up and ask for a tree in your yard, and we send it out there to plant a tree. Uh, it's a little bit harder than I just made it, but this is actually in the right-of-way. Um, it's in the right-of-way. It's not, it appears to be in front yard, and it is in the front yard, but it's in the right-of-way. Um, level two, we've got a design staff, uh, contract management, installation, and an inspection process, and, and we, this is where we plant most of the trees here, and this is, uh, Nate Crystal Park on San Jose. I don't know if you've been by there. This is a before picture, the way the park looked before we planted, and this is an after picture, so if you get a chance, it's, I don't know if y'all knew Nate, but he was a builder here in town. Nate, his park's named after him, and he, um, and it's a very attractive park now that we're out of there. Uh, this is the, uh, POW MIA, um, planning that we did along there. It's a level three greenscape came to us and said we would like to, to plant this right away, so we've, and that's a picture of Randy when he was a different guy. Um, this is the overall, we have planted 16,758 trees since 2018, and, uh, this is broken down into, uh, different, uh, this is the 6-3-0 city planning. This is the, uh, remove and replace. Uh, this is the, um, level two from wherever we put a tree, and, uh, this is level three. Level three has to be instigated by a not-for-profit, comes to us, and wants to plant trees, and they come with a project design, and we oversee them. Any questions
that you might have? All right, give me one second here. Yeah, we'll go ahead, uh, into the queue, and, uh, Barbie, if you will just put, uh, three minutes on the clock just so we can get to the next presentation. Uh, Council Member Landon, you're recognized. Uh, thank you, Chair, and through the
Chair, good to see you, Mr. Hart. I think my question may be more of a public works question, but there's a picture of trees and parks there, and we have a lot of, uh, generational high-dollar, uh, parks going in right now. You drive down by Riverfront Plaza, who knows how many dollars worth of trees. Uh, when we do projects like that, do the trees come out of the tree commission fund, or is it part of, in a lot of cases, this is all debt-funded, uh, CIP-type project? And I've been meaning to ask that for, for a while now. Not sure if, uh, Mr. Hart knows. I can answer it. If,
if that project, it's a CIP project I assume that you talk about, if whoever's doing the CIP, the city's doing it, they can come to us and ask for those trees to be paid by us. They don't necessarily do that, but they can. We have never turned anybody, I don't think anybody's ever been turned down for a request if it was a legitimate request. So if the city, through their CIP program, wanted to fund some trees in public right away, they could certainly get it from us. So it's up to them to ask that, and we, and we say yes. Through Tara. Great. Thanks, Mr. Hart. Uh, because I think
when we were elected, the first term was, we had like 20 million-ish. Now it's up to 30 million, and I know Ms. Sickler's out there and I hope she's listening. And maybe that's something we can do if we haven't been, that as we have all of these trees that are significant cost to these new parks, maybe we can use the tree commission fund because it seems like it keeps on growing. Otherwise, we're just going to take out debt that helps covers those trees when we have an alternate funding source there. So thanks for, uh, humoring my question there, Mr. Hart.
Right. And, um, and just as a reminder to that point, um, I did legislation, I don't know if it was last year or the year before, to really loosen up some of the guardrails on those tree fund dollars to be used for different staffing, different ways to get more trees in the ground. It's, it's very tight. It's very confined on how you can use those dollars. So due to litigation. So we, uh, passed that as a, as a, as a council unanimously and really broadened it up quite a bit. So I hope that's working well. Um, and just want to add that note. So, uh, Council Member Arias, you're
recognized. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Next time I want to go before Will, because he takes my questions away from me, but that was one of my questions, um, regarding the, the CIP projects and the general fund dollars. Um, I think moving forward, what we need to do is when we get a project from any parks department, um, we, as a council need to ask the question, how are we going to fund this project? And if the answer is CIP and going to debt, then we need to say, hold on a second. We have over 30 million next year, we're going to have $37 million because right now at the rate that we're going, we're increasing it by $7 million every year. Previous year was 6.8 million. This year is another $7 million. So we're not spending it as fast as we're receiving dollars. The problem is that we're receiving these dollars from developers. And so what's happening is we're talking about affordable housing. You think these developers are just eating the money? No, they're actually passing it on to the home buyers. So we're talking affordability. This is one of the ways we can mitigate it by saying, okay, well, the tree commission, the administration is not using the dollars, then we need to stop collecting dollars potentially to offset some of the affordability issues that we have here in the city. But that's one of my points. The second point would be, um, I have two minutes. Um, are we in a position where if we keep on receiving these dollars and we're not spending them fast enough or spending them at all, are we opening up our, ourself for a possible lawsuit from developers? And that's a question that I may have for anybody that could answer it. Ms. McGillis, if you could answer that, or does anybody know that answer? Because my worry is we're, like I said, we're increasing it. We're taking these dollars from developers, but we're not spending them. So can we potentially get sued? And no. All right. We can get sued. All right. Um, okay. So, and then the last question I have, and I'll have more later on, uh, would be the uses of these dollars. So we have charter and ordinance. Um, and I, and Mr. Uh, is Justin here? Any chance? Justin, if you don't mind coming up here, Ms. Gerhart. Can we, uh, so he's the expert on all these dollars, but, um, can you at least let the council, the body know how these dollars could be used for charter? Because some of it could be used for not just trees, but also irrigation is tree as well too. We have some projects in downtown that are going to come through fruition at some point, and we need to actually dig the holes a lot deeper in downtown because of the, the infrastructure here. So can you kind of expand on the uses of that? This is more of a, um, informative session
more than anything else. Go ahead. Um, Justin Gerhart, uh, Public Works through the chair to the committee. Um, so charter and ordinance basically is used to plant trees with a charter fund. It is canopy trees. There's a certain list of them. If you look at the charter, that includes live oaks, your bigger, more distinct canopies. Um, so with that, you can use the charter fund to not only plant the tree, but the maintenance of the tree. If it includes irrigation for that tree, um, anything to create that planting habitat, such as underground, et cetera. So, um, you know, if it needs new soil, you can use that as well. Thank you, sir. Okay. I'm, I'm done for now. Okay. You're done. Okay. Uh,
Ms. Pittman, Councilwoman Pittman, you're recognized. As a follow-up, I know, um, to the chair and whoever can answer this question, um, we also do, or we have a contract with, uh, FDOT and some of the streets like, I think Moncrief or Myrtle Avenue, those areas. Um, I'm wanting to know more about the maintenance of those. I know we talked a little bit about it last year, but, um, are we expecting public works to do those? And also I wanted to ask about the lands that are being mitigated. Um, are we planting trees for every tree that, um, was taken down? And, um, particularly I'm asking about Lonnie Miller, um, Hart, how is, how is that done? I wasn't really sure.
Good afternoon. Nina Sickler, Public Works. So I'll try to address each of those questions individually. The first is about DOT and, um, I guess a couple of things there. The, the level two tree plantings actually can be planted within, uh, DOT right of way as well. So, um, they just have to be public property and we have to get permission to do so. Um, when we do that, typically, uh, we are negotiating with DOT as to who, uh, maintains them. So if we do something that's typical that DOT would have planted themselves, which is typically just trees and grass, we can, um, sometimes get them to agree to maintain. But, um, if, uh, if it's something that maybe they don't agree to, that does, that does present greater maintenance responsibility by, by public work. So, um, it's, it's a case by case basis as we look at those locations. Um, we do have an ongoing contract, a maintenance contract with DOT to maintain certain areas of their, um, you know, of their right of way. And it's spelled out in a new agreement that we, um, we executed, I don't know, has it been 14 months now or so? And so, um, we, we do get paid. We don't get, um, we don't get full payment for the work in their right of way because they essentially, uh, reimburse us for the level of work that they would do. And anything above that, the additional cycles that the mayor's office has, has provided funding for in our, in city rights of way, um, we, we, they don't pay for that level of care. And so, um, we do to make up some of the additional efforts in those areas.
And, and I asked that question because of the corridor work that we're doing in certain areas. And I noticed down, um, US one, there are a lot of trees. They were very beautiful at one time. Some of them are not there and some of them not well kept. So I was just wondering if the dollars in the tree fund, if we could use those dollars for that, if they're enough, um,
if they're of a condition that warrant remove and replace, we can certainly look at those and assist
with that. All right. If we can talk about that, please. Thank you. Yeah. And I'll just add to
you, sometimes these trees come with warranties for like the first year or two years or whatever. So that'll at least let them establish themselves. So that maintenance piece will kind of be, um, not an issue, so to speak. All right. Um, thank you, Mr. Hart for coming down and thank you for all the hard work you have been putting in year after year after year on the tree commission. I know that is definitely kind of one of your babies, so to speak. And, um, and keep up the good work. We just planted a, a big centennial oak in district five as kind of a commemorative tree. And it was a big success and, uh, already getting a lot of compliments on that. So thank you to Liberty landscape and tree commission and public works, everybody who worked on that. That was a big project. Um, it's enough. It's enough out of you guys trying to take credit for my tree. Um, do you, do you want to speak? You're in the speech. Okay. We'll end with councilman various. All right. Thank
you, chair. Um, I am the liaison, so you're welcome. All right. Um, one very quick point to know is that these dollars, um, they're, they're having to come through the, um, the request of the administration. So if we're talking about like the tree commission is not spending fast enough, it's not really their fault. They need to be asked to spend money. Right. So, um, we also, as a body, you know, I know that a couple of years ago, there was a challenge for a hundred trees or whatever the case was in each district. So I encourage all of us to look at our district and to, to see how we can plant some more trees. One fun fact is that we could actually plant them also on public right away CD for CDDs. So any neighbors that have a CDD, they have a public road, we could actually use that for that too. It doesn't just have to be on beach Boulevard, you know, so get creative with it. Um, there's a lot of money and like I said, it keeps on going up every year, but, um, it's not, don't blame the tree commission if they're not doing their job. As a matter of fact, thanks to Joe with your bill, um, they're having, we're having more manpower. So now we can plan a lot quicker. So, uh, they're doing a great job out there and you're going to see more legislation coming from me in the next couple of months, um, to see how we could also maximize these
audits. So thank you, sir. All right. Thank you. Okay. Ms. Taylor, we will go to your
presentation next. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through the chair of the committee, uh, the first report that we issued is a follow-up on our electronic fund transfers in audit. So I think most of the money comes in through the tax collector, but there is quite a bit of money. Um, at the time we originally did the audit about 670 million that comes straight to the treasury division. A lot of these are wires. So you may get a wire from the CME receive a wire from the state, um, for half cent sales tax, for example, different things come in through that mechanism. Um, so this was our second follow-up and there are two remaining issues. Um, the first one, just a very important control that we always look at. And this is the fact that, um, money that had been received is not interfacing, is not getting into the system into the right buckets. Think of it as, um, so hadn't, and that's due to reconciliations that are not occurring in a timely manner. So we are still, um, you know, trying to get those. They are trying to get them when they are on a monthly basis. I know for the year end, it really was a year of bank reconciliations to the books. So trying to make sure that all those transactions are recorded in our financials, of course, very important. Um, so that is something that they are still working on to accomplish. Um, they recently have had some staff turnover and are hoping to get that. They've got some new staff in there that are making, um, great headways when we've met on the, um, external with the external auditors, um, to try to get that accomplished where it can occur on a monthly basis. Uh, second thing was access to our ERP system. So that houses our, our financial system, procurement module, all those types of things. Um, still having people that have been terminated from the city having access. Some of that is read only, but some of it was not. So if that employee, for example, can get access to that system, we always like to minimize those risks. Or what we've seen is people may come back in a part-time capacity or in a different role may still have access to perform those functions that they did in a previous job, um, within the system. And we always want to limit any type of thing, particularly beyond read only where they can do transactions, uh, within the financial system or approve something, for example. Um, so those are the two issues there on the follow-up. We'll continue to, uh, monitor this and do another follow-up in the future. I'm happy to answer any questions on this one. We have no one in the queue for questions. Okay. The next one, um, was an audit of the supervisor of elections. Um, we looked at payments to polling locations. We're required under the ordinance code to do an audit every five years of the constitutional officers. So this was part of that every five-year, um, item, uh, the requirement. Uh, what we found was that, um, payments to polling locations were overall accurate and timely, um, but we did have some issues with the support that was there for the payments. Um, basically, and I'll get into it in just a second, but the overall items related to, and these are for your early voting sites and your election day sites that we looked at, um, um, over our audit scope period, um, policies and procedures, um, were lacking on need to be finalized on how they select the, the polling locations, how they contract with them because they negotiate a rate with them, and then how those payments are made, the process for that. So all that needs, needs to be enhanced on the documentation related to those procedures. Um, as far as a rental agreement, um, we found that 14 out of 376, um, non-city polling locations did not have a rental agreement, and we should have one for contract purposes just to ensure we know what those payment terms are, the person, you know, that we're negotiating with, that we know that the city's protected and, and all the expectations related to that. Um, there were no agreements for city-owned polling locations. We did recommend that there are agreements there just to ensure that, um, for scheduling purposes and for, for knowing where those, those sites are, that those agreements be entered into even with the, the city sites. So out of the 158,000 payments that we looked at, uh, 43,000 approximately was not supported by an agreement, and this was mainly related to one site, uh, for early voting. Early voting under the statute requires government facilities that does allow for one non-governmental facility, and so it was with this non-governmental facility that there was a lacking agreement, um, for, and so payments, they did have invoices, but not an agreement, um, out of that 43,000. And then there were, um, issues with 28 locations that were not, not accurately paid, um, actually some under payments, 27 locations were not paid, um, totaling 7,425. We recommended they look into those if we do owe those entities funds, and then an, uh, over payment of 125. And then just a few, um, timeliness issues on getting those payments out. Um, we also, as part of our audit, did follow up on our last audit, which, uh, related to payments to poll workers, um, looked at that and did not, uh, all those items were cleared that we had originally noted in our audit. Um, so that concludes my overall report on this one, if you have any questions. All right. We have no one in the queue
for no questions, so thank you so much. And we're going to go into the agenda, uh, and committee members, if you recall, we are going to skip, um, to item number 15 and 16, first and second, to accommodate Ms. Hall. But items number one, 2024, 627 is deferred. Item number two, 2024, 966 is deferred. Item number three, 2025, 361 is deferred. And item number four, 2025, 775 is deferred. So with that, committee members turn to page eight, item number 15, 2026, 189. All right. We have a motion second on the bill. No discussion. Open the ballot. Record your vote. House member Howland needs to vote verbally. 7 yays, 0 nays. By your action, you've approved, 2026, 189. Item number two, 2026, 190. Motion to second on the bill. No discussion. Open the ballot. Record your votes. 7 yays, 0 nays. By your action, you've approved, 2026, 190. Should have taken that up before recess. Did you need, what, did someone, councilman race, you good? Okay. All right. We're going on to item 17, committee members on page nine. This is for visiting Councilmember Clark Murray. Motion to second on the bill. Ms. Clark Murray,
would you like to say a few words? Sure. Thank you, Chair. This is a appropriation to purchase six parcels in my district, which will become a passive park. It is a total of 1.3 acres. The appraisal price was, sorry, appraisal value was $375. I purchased it from the, I'm purchasing it from the owner for $350,000. $375,000 was the appraisal. So, once again, it's going to be used as a passive park. The location is really perfect for the seniors who live in that community. It's going to allow them, once I'm done with it, to just sit, enjoy some coffee if they want. It's going to be a perfect place for the students who attend KIPP to potentially catch the bus or just have a safe route to school, because it's not very far from KIPP, which is Bessie Coleman, the Bessie Coleman location. So, with that, if you have any questions, I will take them at this time.
Okay. Council Member Howland, you're recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council Member Clark-Murray, thank you for that explanation. I had read through it, and I put it on the map, and I noticed that there's some comments here on the agenda that says it'll eventually connect to the Emerald Trail. So, I looked at the Emerald Trail map, and it looks like that is in likely segment six of the Emerald Trail, which is not yet funded. So, six, seven, four, and eight of the Emerald Trail are for certain we don't have funding when we lost the $127 million federal funds.
Right.
So, I was thinking, gosh, why would we invest in this if it doesn't connect to the trail? So, my questions were going to be, do you see a use for this as a park, you know, buying these properties, even if it doesn't eventually connect to the trail? And I think you just made that case. So, if you can just confirm that, that this would be a great park regardless of if segment six ever gets funded to the Emerald Trail, then I'm absolutely supportive.
Yes. It will be a great location for a park, a passive park. Yes. And even if, through the chair to Council Member Howland, even if the Emerald Trail wasn't going to connect with the location, it was going to become a park, a passive park anyway.
Sounds like a great project for your district. Thanks.
Thank you.
All right. We have no one else in the queue. So, let's go ahead and open the ballot. Record your vote.
Seven yays. Zero nays.
By direction you've approved, 2026-207. All right. Thank you. Now, we're going to go back to item number five, 2026-146. All right. We have a motion to second on the bill. No one in the queue. Notice. Okay. Council Member Diamond, you're recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to explain my no vote. It was really nice to have Mr. Ford come and talk about the revised budget and all the rest. And look, it was a great presentation this morning at Doge. Got a lot of questions answered. But this budget still includes NAVI. I've been very public and open that we need to cut it as fast as possible. I think it's a boondoggle. I think we could save the city literally millions and millions of dollars. I think JTA could use millions and millions of dollars of extra revenue right
now. And so, I'm a no. Thanks. All right. We have no other speakers in the queue. Open the ballot. Record your vote. Six yays. One nay. By direction you've approved, 2026-146. Item number six, 2026-179. There's no amendment. Second. All right. We have a motion to second on the bill. All right. No discussion. Open the ballot. Record your vote. Six yays. One nay. By direction you've approved, 2026-179. Item number seven, 2026-180. Motion is second. On the amendment. Can someone please explain the amendment? Through the chair of the committee,
the amendment corrects a bill reference number, attaches a revised BT to correct the amount of the appropriation in the account that the dollars are coming from, and then corrects scripture's
error. On the amendment. All in favor of the amendment, signify by saying aye. Any opposed? The amendment carries. Motion is second on the bill as amended. Councilman Marius, you're
recognized. All right. Thank you, chair. So, this bill actually comes up like once every two years or every three years, depending on when the funds get depleted. And they're actually working against the clock now. They need the funding here. This is going to be appropriated for level two planning. So, one of the pieces of legislation that we're going to work on starting after this bill is to see how we can make this more of a recurring annual request. That way, it's not such a large number, but also, it's not a request based off of an emergency action. It's based off of just regular operation. Last year, there was a request for removal and planting of trees, not level two projects. Level two projects was like three years ago. So, just wanted to kind of put this in the brains of you guys that in the next couple months, I'm going to come up with a new legislation to make this more recurring. Just FYI. Thank you. Okay. Good. That sounds like a good thing. All right. We have no
other speakers in the queue. No discussion. Open the ballot. Record your vote. Seven yays. Zero nays. By your action, you've approved 2026-180 as amended. Item number eight, 2026-181. Motion to second on the amendment.
Someone please explain the amendment. The chair of the committee, the amendment just attaches the
state grant agreement. All right. All in favor of the amendment, signify by saying aye. Any opposed? The amendment carries. We have motion to second on the bill as amended. No discussion. Open the ballot. Record your vote. Seven yays. Zero nays. By your action, you've approved 2026-181. Item number nine, 2026-182. Motion to second to withdraw. No discussion. Open the ballot. Record your vote. Seven yays. Zero nays. By your action, you've withdrawn 2026-182. Item number 10, 2026-183. Motion to second on the amendment. Mr. Peterson, will you explain the amendment? Through the chair of the committee,
the amendment attaches a revised CIP sheet to reflect all prior appropriation dollars towards
this project. All right. All in favor of the amendment, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? The amendment carries. Motion to second on the bill as amended. No discussion. Open the ballot. Record your vote. Seven yays. Zero nays. By your action, you've approved 2026-183 as amended. Item number 11, 2026-184. Motion to second on the bill. No discussion. Open the ballot. We have Council of Vice President Howland. You're recognized. Is Ms. Long here? All right. Would you
mind coming up? I'd just like to know where this artificial reef is going to be. I don't know
harm's ledge. Hi, I'm Melissa Long with the Environmental Quality Division. It's about
25 nautical miles off the shore. Fantastic. And I imagine the Waterways Commission is just loving this, aren't they? They are. Yeah, they've been pushing for artificial reefs for a long time.
Mm-hmm. Do you own 12 nautical miles? It may be off the shore a bit from District 13.
All right. Appreciate it. Thank you, ma'am. All right. We have no other speakers in the queue. Open the ballot. Record your vote. Seven yays. Zero nays. By your action, you've approved 2026-184. Item number 12, 2026-185 is deferred. Item number 13, 2026-186. All right. We have a motion and a second on the bill. And we have a few speakers in the queue. Okay. We'll go to Council Member Salem. You're
recognized. Thank you, Chair. I'm always concerned when we dip into reserves, particularly during the year. And I have an amendment where we would use some debt savings, which we've used before to cover this $314,900. Very supportive of the bill. Love the idea. Pro-life. Second. So that would keep us from using reserves, which I think we should try to stay away from at all. Okay. Great. So we have a
motion and a second on the floor from Council Member Salem to change the funding source from operating reserves to debt savings. I'm assuming, Council Member Howland, did you jump in for that?
For the amendment, yeah. Okay. You're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I fully support that amendment, particularly because, as I understand it, the full $314,900 is one-time capital expense, right? And then maintenance. How will maintenance be done in the future? Through the Chair and Mr. Howland.
We haven't announced this yet, but we've got a private funding source. Fantastic. Then I'm fully
supportive of the amendment and the bill. Thanks. All right. Is anyone else in the queue for the amendment? All right. All in favor of the amendment, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? The amendment carries. Motion is second on the bill as amended. Council Member Arias, you're recognized.
Thank you, Chair. I like the direction we're heading in, so I'm not going to be too aggressive, but I was pretty livid this morning once I saw the articles come out. We spend money on studies, $200,000, $400,000. And for us to defer this yesterday to actually save lives and to actually make a deep impact in our community, I was, quite frankly, a little bit disgusted. I'm glad that this committee is doing what it needs to do to move this forward. And the report from Michigan, I could care less what Michigan does. They have their own problems to worry about, except for the football team, or basketball team, sorry. Aside from that, I'm glad we're going. So I was actually going to use some of my CBA dollars for my district, but never mind that. So thank you.
All right. And Council Member Diamond, you're the last one in the queue. You're recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, thank you for taking up this bill. Yesterday really did catch me by surprise, especially considering, you know, that a lot of those folks in the committee had already worked with JFRD to figure out where they wanted their safe haven baby box. So thank you for taking up the bill. Thank you, Councilman Arias, for your comments. I didn't thought of a study as an example, but that's a great one. We spent a lot of money on studies. This is actually saving lives. Thank you, Councilman Salem, for your amendment. I'm not a good appropriator. It's really against my grain. So my new strategy is just to appropriate, and then you seem to find the money somewhere else. And it's a really good bank shot. So I'm enjoying this process. Let me say this about the substance of the bill. First of all, it's bipartisan. I'm told the mayor's office supports it. It's a very, it's supposed to bring us together to celebrate something that we are for, right? It's really easy to be angry and against things. The abortion issue makes people very upset one way or the other. This is outside that box. It's literally to bring people together to change our culture to make it easier to save a newborn. And the criticism that a very small number of people outside this building are bringing is that there isn't a need for it. So here's the research, just so people know. 38 babies have been surrendered since 2000 in Jacksonville since 2000. There were three unsafe abandonments, including deaths since 2000 in Jacksonville. Okay, that's Jacksonville. Statewide in Florida, 428 safe surrenders, 67 unsafe abandonments, 33 alive, 34 dead. That's what we know of. Okay, so those are the facts. The odds are very high that if we do 14 boxes, we will save at least one life. And to me, that's worth $300,000. I'm sure a lot of people here agree with me. But it's more than that. It's not just about saving that one life. It's about changing the way we talk about surrendering an infant within those first 30 days. There's not enough discussion about it. There's not enough knowledge about safe abandonment. And there's not enough destigmatization of the issue. We want to save lives. Jacksonville can be the best county slash city in the entire state of Florida doing this. And I guarantee you there will be a ricochet effect across the entire state. And my hope is across the country. We're already talking to folks in St. Johns County, Nassau County, Clay County, like we're pushing them now. They're filing bills now because we took action. So thank you for bringing this up. I strongly suspect there's the votes for this on Tuesday. And so I hope that the council president will discharge it and simply have our amendment and push it forward. But literally, there's no reason not to do this. I really want to thank JFRD and Chief King for working with the individual district council people. We did it that way. And I haven't had a chance really to talk about this yet. But we did that way because each district council person knows their district better than anybody else. With all due love to my at-large council brethren, when you work in a district, you know where the need is. And I picked Jacksonville Beach right on Third Street because it's so highly trafficked and people will know it. I've seen where everybody else is selected and it was like, this makes sense. So this is a bill I hopefully on Tuesday will bring people together. In addition to that, we are doing an analysis on first and second trimester healthcare availability for women who are recently pregnant. There's a gap in Jacksonville for that. So again, not just being against things, but being for things. We're looking to see who our providers are for first and second trimester and see what we can do better as a city to help brand new, brand newly pregnant mothers. So thank you all for the support today.
All right. We have a motion in a second on the bill as amended with no one else in the queue. So let's open the ballot. Record your vote.
Seven yays, zero nays.
By direction you've approved, 2026-186. And legislative services, I'd like to be added as co-sponsor to that bill, if you don't mind. All right. We're going to have a whole committee up here do that. Ms. Pittman? Okay. All right. All right. Item 14, 2026-187 is deferred. We already took up 15 and 16 and 17. And I'm going to go ahead and read the rest of the bills in the second reading, and then we're going to have discussion on Council Member Landon's bill, 2026-213. So the following bills are on second reading, 2026, 213, 214, 215, 217, 218, 219, 220, 224, 225, 226, 227, 248, and 249. So committee members, if you will, please go back to item number 18, 2026-213 on page nine. Council Member Landon, you're recognized.
Yeah. Thank you, Chair. Now, first off, I may have caused some confusion. I went to rules yesterday only because on April 20th, that Monday, I have a work commitment. I didn't want this to get deferred. So I went to rules to talk about a bill on second reading. I will be here at finance that Tuesday, though. And really what this does, it kind of follows the theme on putting more guardrails on cash completion grants. We saw Council Member Miller had legislation recently that basically said that any cash completion grants coming due that year, they need to be budgeted for in that year's budget. What this does is within our budget ordinance of 106, there's actually a subsection, 0.106, ironically enough. That's the balanced budget and budget stabilization reserve section. There already was a governance around that essentially when you go to the next year with a surplus, the first thing you do is you have to make sure your operating reserve is within a certain percentage, and it's the 5% to 7% of the, I believe it's the annualized revenue. Uh, this bill simply adds two more sentences to that ordinance. It basically says that once you're at the high end of the target set forth in that section for the operating reserves, which we've been above that for years now, um, I think we're, we're well into the teens of what our operating reserves is as a percent of our, uh, our revenue. It says once you're above that, you're going to fund any previously unfunded, uh, cash completion grants. We don't call them cash completion grants here. We call them city approved economic development agreements, but it's basically cash completion grants. And then, uh, it's going to go into a sub fund. Uh, also one point out, and I did say this at rules, and I believe Mr. Peterson's going to have a technical amendment recommendation, but we also draw a line in the sand that saying that the reserves also has to be above the amount in our most recently completed annual comprehension, uh, comprehensive financial report, which I believe was just shy of $400 million. So it has to be above, above both the high target percentage in the ordinance, which is 7% and above that last completed operating reserve level. And then we've done such a great job. Like we're no longer facing 62 million next year, which was, I think we were when we started out the year. Uh, I think we've cut that in more than half now, but when we, uh, get to our next surplus, we're going through everything, the recapture process, what this bill would say is, okay, let's make sure our operating reserves are where they need to be. The next priority will be any excess after that we put into the unfunded cash completion grants. And then there's the money available for us to debate on what to do next with it. So this is just adding operating reserves, unfunded cash completion grant liabilities, and then everything will fall for us to discuss at that point in time.
Okay. I mean, that was a pretty clear explanation, but Council Member Salem, you're not in the queue. Did you want to speak? Yes, please.
Um, I went home last night and was thinking about this and, um, the, the, the concern that I have is as this budget grows, that, that, uh, 400 million becomes a much smaller percentage of the entire budget. This would be three, five, six, seven years from now. Right now, as you just stated, our operating reserve, I think is around 17% of our budget approximately, while the requirement is only 7%. And I feel strongly that we need that 17% because I've been here when we've had, you know, three hurricanes in a year. We have been very fortunate this past year and in the last couple of years with, with, uh, with our weather related events. So what I was suggesting is an amendment that would make the operating reserves, and I'll pick a number of 15% versus 7% so we can ensure that we keep those kinds of dollars in this account as, as the budget grows over the next several years. Does that make sense?
Uh, yeah. Governor Landon.
Through the chair. So, so there were multiple ways to handle this. I think what you're saying is one of the reasons that we wanted to kind of put the baseline in what the last audited amount in it was, which is well above the 7% that's in there. So that's something I'd be okay looking at. Like, okay, instead of 7%, let's just change what that, the range is 5% to 7%. Maybe we change the range to a much higher number. Uh, and then the other thing too is, uh, the best way to fix all of this is let's not do any more cash completion grants. Like, I'm actually hoping this is a couple year type thing, and then this is a guard rail that this ordinance, these two sentences I'm adding, we never have to discuss again because this is a temporary time in Jacksonville history that we used cash completion grants to spur economic development. Uh, so, so through the chair to, uh, Councilmember Salem, there's probably a little bit of math we'd want the auditors to do on that. Like, I think the best one is the 390 million that's referenced in the last audit financial report. I believe that was in the mid double digits, uh, or roughly as far as what the percent of operating reserves that was. So maybe one thing we could do is let's see where we're at right now. That 390 million, whatever makes that as the percent of the reserves, we could make that the percent we put in the bill, something like that.
I'm fine with them looking at it and coming back. I know I had a discussion with Mr. Peterson, uh, I think it was this morning, early this morning, and, and we came up with this 15%, but if they, they want to fine tune it between now and, uh, the next finance committee meeting, I'm fine with. Now, I'm, I'm, I'm all with you with completion grants and doing everything we can for loans, but there are a couple of projects out there realistically, such as a lower street trio. So if, if that does move forward, I'm sure there's going to be completion grants involved. It's just too large of a product if it is to go forward. So as much as I would like to eliminate completion grants, I still think we're going to have to deal with completion grants to some extent going forward. I just, I just can't imagine a project like that can be done without a completion grant. So, um, um, my amendments, 15%, would, would, would y'all prefer to, to take a look at this and come back with a recommendation through the chair to Mr. Peterson?
Yeah. Cause we're not taking any amendments right now, but y'all can take a look at that, get with Salem and then we'll bring it back next committee. Yeah.
Through the chair, we'll put a chart together that lays out where certain percentages would, what dollar amount would require. And then you can make an informed decision from there.
Thank you. Council Vice President Howland.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't even have points. I have thoughts. So I wanted to go through them real quick. One is the reserve discussion we just had the lane in mechanism, which says you've got to be higher than the previous year is meant to address, um, dropping our reserves below what we consider healthy as a, as a body, which seems to be in the, you know, 17%. And then, um, Salem in conjunction with that, if they were to be set at 15 would almost be like a floor because as the, as the city's revenue would expand and we make sure that we don't drop below previous year operating reserves, it would drop, start dropping as a percentage. But you're saying, let's set a floor of 15. So you could work the lane in mechanism and the Salem mechanism together, um, to, to kind of be a better protection to keep those healthy reserves. If indeed, and I do, um, this body supports that level of reserves as healthy for the city. Uh, so I love that discussion. Um, my next thought was when you explained it, uh, Councilman Lehman, um, talking about, um, this is a fund to first, uh, take care of unfunded completion grants. It made me think, oh, this is going to incentivize any future unfunded completion grants, but it can't because in conjunction with the Miller legislation that went through, we can never have another unfunded completion grant again, right? So this is a mechanism that will, um, solve the problem within a matter of years.
Through the chair to, uh, Council Vice President Helen, uh, exactly. The Miller amendment basically says, if we get to the point that it's coming due, we have to budget for it. This says, if we approve them, we have to start putting money towards it. Yeah. So this is kind of, and in fact, the sub fund name, um, let me bring it up here. The sub fund name will be the multi-year programs and initiatives fund. Uh, I don't think we want to call it the cash completion grant savings fund. So that'll be the name of the fund. Uh, and again, uh, one of the questions that came up in rules yesterday, we would never put more in this fund than what we have committed already. Uh, Mr. Peterson, he, uh, he keeps track of the, uh, uh, DIA and OED cash completion obligations. I believe the administration does something similar in the CFO office. So they would work together to make sure we're never putting any more into this than what we have completed. And then when we go to actually pay the cash completion grants, the legislation would be drawing from that funding source to get the cash out the door.
At some point, we won't even need to fund this new fund that you're setting up for unfunded completion grants. We won't have to, right? Because we will be in the practice of budgeting every single one, every single year.
Theoretically, if say we had $30 million of cash completion grants in the pipeline, and we had a surplus of 40 million one year, and that we are at the right levels, whatever we decide for operating reserves, 30 million would go into this fund. We can now say all future cash completion grants are fully funded. Uh, doesn't mean we need to do more, but we can at least say it's not going to be a budgetary headwind. And, uh, then they would just get funded from this directly appropriated, uh, from this funding source. So when it was time to actually send the check out, essentially.
Fantastic.
Mr. Popolis, did you have something you wanted to add?
Yeah. When this, when this item comes back next cycle for consideration, to the extent that there's an amendment to add a change to the operating reserve percentage or range, uh, it's likely that I'm going to be recommending that the bill would need to be re-referred because that is not an aspect of the bill that was advertised with the original filing. And it is a pretty, it could be a significant shift in that range. So just to prepare the committee that that might be a recommendation from the office of general counsel, it would add two weeks. It wouldn't add a significant period of time, but I just like to make sure y'all are aware of it.
Okay. Ms. Taylor, did you want to add something as well?
And I just wanted to add, and we'll work with the bill sponsor, whoever's requesting the amendment. It sounds like a slightly different, and I may be misunderstanding. Council Member Salem seemed to indicate addressing the, the targets that haven't been really adjusted since 2006 on the operating reserve. That's correct. Yes, sir. He, when, it was actually your bill that addressed when you moved money to kind of get to that minimum, you've ranged, you increased the target ranges on the emergency to seven to 10% from that five to seven. So the other, the operating reserve has not been addressed. Council Vice President Howland, I want to clarify, were you wanting to make the floor, like it's a slightly different interpretation, and we can talk offline as well, to make sure that the floor is kind of an and or a minimum of that 392 million at base for 9, 30, 24, or at the 15%, like that you're, you're dealing with an and or situation?
Go ahead.
Yeah, go ahead.
Thank you. The, I was kind of thinking through the thought process for how the, the lane in mechanism in, um, zero to 13, uh, is meant to address maintaining the healthy reserves that we have, which are above the five to 7% in ordinance. Um, at the same time, uh, how Salem's is trying to do the same thing, but Salem's is saying, uh, there, there has to be, you can never drop below a certain level by setting a harsh, you know, fixed number. Um, so I was just talking about how that works together because, you know, we're 2 billion in revenue now and say we have, um, rough numbers, 300 million in, in operating reserves. That would be, um, gosh, tell me what percentage that would be about 15%. Yeah. And then let's say next year we collect, uh, two and a half billion. Um, he's saying, you know, uh, we need to do at least do 300 million again next year, which would now put it below that 15%. And he's saying, let's establish a hard number to maintain that at 50%. And so my random numbers actually told the story perfectly there. It didn't even mean that. Um, so I'm thinking through how those two things would work together. Will's legislation and Ron's amendment. And they seem to would work together pretty well. If indeed now they can be an amendment to the, to zero two 13. All I was doing was thinking through the scenarios. So thanks.
All right. Council member areas. Then council member Landon.
All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Mr. Landon. And so, um, when we talked about the completion grass and, and, and having them identify a funding source, is this a funding source that you're expecting them to identify or, or not? And if not, then go ahead.
Uh, through the chair, council member areas. No, this is where we'll put all surplus money for known committed cash completion grants. But then the separate piece of legislation would be when it is due to be paid out. In other words, we're not going to use this for new cash completion grants. So this is just clearing a future liability off our books, putting cash in an account. So we have it there and we won't have to budget for it. It takes it away as a, uh, a budgetary headwind, uh, and through the chair, council member Salem, I think, I think we could solve for your concern rather than changing the official targets. I think we can just, and section D where it's written, we can add or X percent as far as if it's above this or X percent and we can work with the others. I mean, 15% is probably as good as math as, uh, we could work three hours and it'd still be 15% probably. So that sounds good to me, but we'll, uh, I'm sure we'll both talk to the auditors after this and, uh, get their take on it as well.
All right. And, uh, last question that I had before you hijacked it, um, for you. So let's say, um, we fund this, this, uh, pot, right? And the money doesn't need to be used. What happens to it? Does it go back to the operating reserves or do we file legislation or by default, does it just, just drop back in?
Through the chair, council member areas. I believe at that point, the only way that would happen is if essentially a developer defaulted on something. If that happened, it probably would require legislation to move it from this account to that account. But again, our control over that is the fact that we track our cash completion grants. And so we would know, uh, council member Howland had legislation early this year, I believe on one that fell through. I can't recall, but we moved that directly back to the reserves. And again, with all the sensitivity on these cash completion grants, we're going to know the first question we're going to ask is, can we bring this back to reserves? So it would not automatically fall out of there, but there would be enough people asking about it. Um, and I'm sure there's probably some sort of annual true up process we could do like we do in other funds to make sure it doesn't just stay trapped there forever. All right.
Um, council member Landon, you're in the queue. Did you want to say anything? You're done. Okay. Council member Salem, you're recognized.
Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to make one other point, uh, about the 15% or whatever percentage it is. You know, we begin the year with good reserves, 15% or whatever it is. We get into the year and you have, as we have seen two or three hurricanes and we're doing all sorts of work to keep the roads clear and everything else. It could fall below that during the year. The goal would be over the next couple of years, we gradually get it back to that particular point. So it's not like it's never going to fall below that. Depending on the catastrophic situation we have, it could fall below that during the year. I know we've had situations like that in my first term, but then you gradually over the next two or three years, bring it back up or as quickly as you can, clearly. Thank you.
All right. There's no other speakers in the queue. So I am looking forward to, when this does come to committee for a vote, there will be absolutely no discussion since we basically just had it. All right, guys and girls, thank you. And this meeting is adjourned.