Finance Committee - Budget Hearing #2 - Aug 14, 2026

Good morning, and welcome to day two of the budget hearings to discuss the fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget. Let's go ahead and start off with introductions to my left, Ms. Moyer. Angela Moyer, Budget Office. Mike Weinstein, Mayor's Office. Philip Peterson, Council Auditor. Brian Parks, Council Auditor's Office. Mary Stifopoulos, Office of General Counsel. Good morning, Rockman Johnson, District 14. Good morning, Rory Diamond, District 13, The Beaches. Good morning, Chris Miller, At-Large Group 5. Will Lane in District 3. Good morning, Terrence Hydrating Freeman, At-Large Group 1. Mike Gay, District 2. Randy White, District 12. Nick Holland, At-Large Group 3. Ron Salem, Group 2, At-Large. Matt Carlucci, At-Large Group 4. Ken Amara, City Council, District 1, and glad to be here this morning just visiting. I hope today is, I pray today is a lot less frustrating than yesterday. All right, good morning. Frustrating? I thought it was fun yesterday. A few housekeeping things. First off, so if you looked at the schedule, Council Member Amara, you recognize. Through the chair. It may have been fun to you, but when you're watching it on the other end, it doesn't appear that way. Well, thank you for tuning in. A couple things. You may have noticed on the schedule, so JAA is not presenting today, and due to that, I do expect it to be an earlier day, or at least that is my hope, going into the afternoon. We will have a break for lunch as well. Two housekeeping things also. No surprise, woke up, saw on the news that we cut a lot of money yesterday. However, I wanted to go through what we did yesterday. Yesterday, we reviewed $1.5 billion of the budget. From that, we amended 0.86% of the budget that was presented to us. So I want to make the point that over 99% of the budget that was proposed to us was approved yesterday, and we amended 0.86%. So, again, just trying to keep that perspective that of all the stuff we did yesterday, all the work, all the different budgets we went through, we, the legislative body of the 10th largest city in the country, amended 0.86% of that. So, again, just trying to keep perspective on what actually happened yesterday. One other thing, the only thing we didn't get to yesterday was the Wolfson's request for the additional almost $2 million. I know there was talk about a noticed meeting, potentially. I said it, that I am good with that. Dr. Joshi and some representatives from Baptist and others walked me through that. I will be a yes when it comes up to vote for it. But I also understand if you do have questions, try to get them answered. Dr. Joshi did volunteer that he could present what he walked me through a few weeks ago at a budget meeting. That may be easier than trying to get a noticed meeting. So I'll look for head nods around the dais. Would you like me to do that instead of trying to set up a noticed meeting? Right. And again, I try to limit the amount of presentations we have during the budget hearings, but seeing how this is the only item we did not get to, Councilman Freeman, you're recognized. Sure. And I'll always defer to the chair and the council president. So no problems with that. I just want to make sure that in the discussion, if any party is mentioned that is not here, then I'm going to ask again that we give all parties a chance that are a part of this conversation to be here for. That is a great point. And I think the parties would be, because again, we're only talking about the Wolfson's piece. We approved the UF Health piece yesterday. I think the only parties are Baptist and the administration. So would that be okay if those are the parties? Okay. So Mr. Weinstein, if you could connect with Dr. Joshi. My understanding, it's the same materials he walked me through, which I think he can probably do in five, maybe 10 minutes. But we also need, I believe it's Mr. Bennett from Baptist, because I want to make sure we have someone from the entity that I'd be getting. Councilman Freeman? I'm sorry, I didn't know what you're saying. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was going to say, you're in an area that some of us have done some extensive research in, so this may be a lengthy discussion. So if you want to have that at the beginning and the front end of the meeting, I'm all for it. But then we may end up finding ourselves saying, all right, you guys still have your notice meeting. So I won't probably still be in a position to vote after the day, because there's a reason why I want to have the notice meeting, and I want to make sure I talk to all parties. Okay, understood. So with that then, I mean, let's go the notice meeting route. My only request is let's get that notice meeting on the books so we don't drag it out to beyond the budget meeting cycle. To the chair, it's already scheduled. 10 o'clock next Tuesday, I want to say, or Monday or Tuesday. Okay, that is new information for me. If I had known that, I would not have even brought it up. So, okay, so we have a notice meeting on the books. I did not know that. So we will proceed that route, and I encourage my colleagues that still have questions to attend. And there were two meetings, but I know one of them was scheduled for sure, and I'll check with my assistant to make sure all these same parties are in both of the meetings. Great. Council Member Johnson. I was just going to ask, so does that mean there will be, Mr. Chair, no presentation at all? Given that new information that there's already a notice meeting, I don't want to duplicate things. So let's have the notice meeting stand by itself, and any questions that Council Members have, or just call Dr. Joshi and Baptist if you have other questions. Gotcha. The reason I ask is if we do have any of those, especially in this process, presentations, I would prefer them send the presentation to this body. That way, when they come in front of us, we can be efficient by just asking questions based on said presentation. Thank you. Got it. Ms. Stafopoulos. Through the Chair, I just wanted to remind everybody, if there is going to be a notice meeting on Monday or Tuesday, you need to at least have, we recommend, no less than 72 hours notice, and you can't count the weekend. So that notice needs to go out immediately if it's on Monday or Tuesday of next week. Understand. All right. Anything else before we dive into the budget again? All right. I'll hand it off to Mr. Peterson. All right. That puts us on page three of your day two handout. This is the Executive Office of the Mayor. If you're looking at your budget book, it is page 109. The Mayor's Office also includes the Public Affairs Office. Salaries are budgeted at $3.7 million, an increase of $350,000 over the prior year. The net increase is due to adding back the $435,000 that was removed by City Council during the 25-26 budget process, as well as an increase of approximately $100,000 for collective bargaining increases. This is offset by employee turnover, reducing costs by approximately $150,000, and also a decrease in part-time salaries based on personnel changes. Employer-provided benefits are increasing $149,000 year-over-year due to the planned increase in the group health premiums. Internal service charges, budgeted at $390,000. Most of those increases are related to fleet costs. Inter-departmental billing, you'll see $375,813. This is the cost of the mayor's security that resides in the Office of the Sheriff. Other operating expenses of $77,000, the increase of $17,000 is mainly due to an increase in the United States Conference of Mayors dues that are increasing from $28,838 to $50,146. And this is based on the city being billed at a higher rate now for being over a $1 million in population. On page four, there's a divisional summary breakout. I won't cover those, similar to other departments, but happy to answer any questions. No service level changes. Employee cap changes. There's no change to the employee cap. However, 306 part-time hours were added or are being proposed to be added to better align with the current operational needs, and we have no recommendations. Thank you, Mr. Peterson. I have no one in the queue. Let's move on, then. Council Member Diamond. Is this where, Mr. Chair, you want to talk about the mayor's budget, or do you want to do it later on here? Say that one more time. Is this where you want to talk about the mayor's budget for office? Yes. Okay. All right. Well, I mean, first of all, I noticed that salaries are going up over there faster than city council salaries. So I would like that we at least discuss holding it flat to whatever city council is doing. I'd say very publicly, as I have many times, many of these people are making three times more than they were making in the private sector before they got these jobs. So this is a $5 million salary for this team. It's just shocking to me. It sickens me that we're spending this kind of money. So I want to do something here. And also, like, like, Conference of Mayors, I think that's a complete waste of time. I don't think I'll have the support to cut it. But at least we need to hold the salaries flat after all these raises that have been given to whatever city council has done. Mr. Peterson, did you pass out this handout to all the council members, or am I the only one with them? So Council Member Diamond, it's a little bit of repetition from what we did last year. Uh, so, uh, the council auditors are passing out essentially what the dollar amount would be to match the exact same growth that city council has in the budget. And again, we don't have a motion on the floor. I'll just say like last year, the lowest I will go is to match what our growth rate is again. So we do have a motion on the handout, which just to be clear what the handout is, it would reduce the mayor's office budget by 245,000. And that makes it match exactly what city council's year over year growth was in our compensation line. So that is the motion that Council Member Diamond has made. I have not heard a second. Do I have a second on Council Member Diamonds? Okay. We do have a second. Council, uh, uh, Mr. Weinstein, I'm going to go to you first, then Council Member White, Freeman, Carlucci. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, this is the fourth year I've sat here, fourth year this has occurred. When we submit the budget, we don't move your positions around. We don't tell you how to salary them. You take your responsibility and you build your staff. The mayor's office, as you know, has the same authority. We will structure the mayor's office the way the mayor wants to. We will pay her staff the way the mayor wants to, to carry out the responsibilities the mayor has. This is for show. It has no impact. As you can see from last year, you took about four or five hundred thousand. We replaced it and ran the office as we should. This year, we added no one. The raises that were given were the same three percent that everyone else gave. We submitted no enhancements. The increase in the budget is basically to get back to where we were, that we were, what we had submitted originally in the budget before you had taken it out. And the same thing is going to happen, and basically, it's just for show. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Weinstein. Councilman White. Yes, sir. I'd like to put on the record, I don't know if it's for show or what it's for, and I support my colleagues on their thoughts. But I think we should let, we've got a new chief of staff, Darnell Smith, probably one of the most recognized and respected men in this city. He's been in here a week. I would like him to look at this, and if he has the needs, it is what it is, and I'll support what is here and what's requested and listen to other comments and wait for Mr. Smith to take a look at this. Thank you, Councilman White. Councilman Freeman, and then Johnson, then Carlucci. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I will support my colleague here because I don't think that this was a dissecting, as in years past, of individual positions. I mean, you can look and see one, two, three, four, five, six people in one area when it comes to communications. There's no questioning what people do. I think the big concern, and it's really led by our chair, who I think most of us would agree does not do performative stuff. Most of us would agree does not play the game of politics, CPA, and numbers. I call you a CPA, you and Nick, right, and colonels in the military. But I think the request was that it come in flat, right? And so to me, when I got the numbers and I saw the increase, I was going to start dissecting it. So I think what you're proposing is fair. The question I have is, in years past in budgets, I've known some budgets to use lapses as kind of a means of showing a reduction. We now know that two people have transitioned out of the administration, one being Scott Wilson, the other one being Reichert, to retirement. Whoever replaces them, if they were getting paid in a different bucket, if they transferred into this bucket, with your numbers in mind, I want to know, if they transferred into this bucket, where does it count when it comes to the total? I do want to clarify, this is Council Member Diamond's amendment, not mine. But I think what you're asking, I mean, that would have to be year-over-year analysis a couple years back. So I don't think we have that readily available. But again, the motion right now... Yes, sir. Yes, sir. No, I understand the motion. I know that you're good with numbers. And so where I was going with that is if they're replaced with, let's say, $500,000, and now that's in the administration's budget, then, and indeed, when we do this amendment and it passes, that number actually goes up. It's not an actual number. So I think, to me, I would ask, does this number include the new additions or the salaries that were in place for those who left? Through the chair to Mr. Weinstein. As usual, I have no idea what you're talking about. And I'm going to try to be respectful because there's so many things I could say, right? So first, I will say this. I will say a quick prayer for you and myself that we can move through this process. It's 9.15 in the morning. I have no desire for it. I actually put it on my cup. So I'll put it up here so when you look at me, that's what you're going to get back from me. So what I was trying to refer to is that two positions are going to be replaced. Riker's position, and he did a great job. That's what we heard. I don't want to say names. Riker doesn't work in the mayor's office. That's my point. And I was told someone was getting that position. Riker worked in a department. I'm sorry. Through the chair. I was informed that someone was replacing Riker. And then Scott Wilson is with DIA. That's not the mayor's office. I get that. And he was replaced. But the question was, if Riker's spot is replaced, is that number relative in this? And if I'm missing the mark on the question, I'll put the mic down and I'm good. But I just want to make sure that the spirit of what my colleague, what you're trying to hit with the percentage is actually going to be reflected in this number. That's it. I'm going to recognize Phillip and then Ms. Moyer through the chair to the committee. Richard Reichert's position is in the Office of Administrative Services. So with him being replaced, that salary adjustment, if there is any, will be in the Office of Administrative Services, which we'll take up next week. Ms. Moyer. Or Council Member Freeman. I'm going to recognize you. And Mr. Peterson, I really do appreciate that answer because that's all I was asking for. There was no aha. There was no gotcha moment. So thank you so much for your professionalism. I appreciate that. Ms. Moyer, you dropped off. Were you going to say the same thing, Mr. Peterson, just educated us on? I was going to say that as well as the salaries that you see in the budget are for the people that are currently there. There are a couple of vacant positions and those are budgeted at the default that we normally do for all vacancies. Thank you. And then again, just to regroup and refocus here, the amendment that we are discussing is the $245,000 reduction in the mayor's office budget that would put them at the same year over year percent increase that city council has reflected in the budget we approved yesterday. I'm going to call on the council president. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to go on record supporting Councilman Diamond's motion here. I think it's a very reasonable one. And frankly, basically what it does is create a $245,000 challenge for the administration, which if anyone has ever done budgeting in a corporate level, you're always creating challenges in order to make sure that department heads or CEOs can deliver the most efficient budget they can. I mean, I want to say that the mayor is in charge of over $400 million worth of directly of business within this general fund. And she has transfer authority up to $500,000, so she can easily find that money from somewhere where it's less critical and fill that gap if she needs to. So this is a no-brainer. Thanks. Council Member Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to see – I kind of echo Chief White's sentiments. I'd love to see something – again, the mayor's office just got a new chief of staff. I think for us to come in and cut it at this point is a little performative. I don't think we – I mean, just looking at the numbers, when I look at it, if they are doing COLA allotments that usually come, and if they're – I know that council staff gets it as well, but if you're including in this number any augmentation of the council members, if that is in this number, I don't know that we could equate that because the dollar amounts that are coming to the council members are different than the dollar amounts that are going to the administration's employees. I'm not going to be supportive of it, and I do have a question, and this may be a research question that could take a little longer. I'm curious, and I just remember reflecting for some years, I've never seen this match of a percentage from a city council and a mayor's office in previous administrations to this level, and I don't mean just the one before, but I mean looking back historically at that. So I'd just like to see some data. That's one point that I missed that I should have tried to pull those data points, so if research could help me with that, and what administrations in the past have been tasked with trying to keep the percentage of increase in line with the council's percent of increase. Thank you. Well, Council Member Johnson, I'll answer that question right now. This is the exact same thing we did last year. We benchmarked the city council's office to the mayor's office. While I appreciate that response, Mr. Chair, I'm not talking about last year. I said historically. I said that specifically, meaning in the past, how often has it happened? So I look forward to receive those data, but thank you for that. Let's see. Council Member Carlucci, you're up. Mr. Chair, we are not the mayor's office. The mayor's office is in the council. There's no, this is apple and oranges, so I have no, there's no, there's no reason to try to make a comparison on this. There's just not. I have served with four mayors, and I've never seen this ever happen before, ever, except with this mayor. That's all. Generally speaking, over the years, the council has took, has stood in, took care of their own knitting, and the mayors took care of their own knitting, and we don't get in between each other. I just, I think this sets up a bad precedent to start the second day of this budget hearing off. If you're trying to save $500,000 and trying to save this budget money, well, we're not going to get anywhere close to $100 million. If we want to start out as a team, at least somewhat of a team with the mayor's office, if you want to really accomplish something good for the city of Jacksonville, then we've got to be partners in some form or fashion. This is not a good way to start a partnership. It's a bad way. I agree 100% with Council Member White. I think we should hear from Darnell Smith, at the very least. He's Chief of Staff, and this has to do with staff numbers. And without doing that, I think we're making an even bigger mistake, because I don't think we're being fair. And that's how we look right now. We don't look like we're being fair, unless we put this aside until we have a chance to hear from Darnell Smith, and do with that what you like. I'm just making an observation based on 20 years of being a council member. And that doesn't make me any smarter or less smart, but it does give me some institutional knowledge that I bring to the table, that everybody loves to say they love institutional knowledge. Well, I'm giving it to you. And we're out of bounds here. And I believe if Darnell Smith were to hear, he would give you the explanation, and then it might change your mind. And I hope that we won't vote on this until we have that opportunity. Thank you. Council Member Amaro. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question through the chair to Mr. Peterson for my own edification. Two-part. Number one, are we comparing apples and apples or apples and oranges? In other words, through the chair, are staffing comparable? Same FTEs. That's the first question. Second question on this 12.33% through the chair, is that change based solely on collective bargaining commitments? Or can you tell me why, how did you get to the 12.33%? Thank you. Through the chair to Council Member Amaro, I'm going to address the second question first. First, the 12.33% is simply taking the mayor's budgeted salaries from last year to their proposed budget for this year. And then same for Council, factoring in the Council Member salaries that are in a separate bill, so you can't just take the number that's in the budget book. The 2627 number for Council also includes the $112,000 that was added back to our office yesterday. So, that's just a year-over-year comparison. As to your first question on apples to apples or apples to oranges, we're just looking at permanent probationary salaries, just that singular line item in the budget, not overtime, not part-time salaries. It's just a singular line item. And it is based on the percentages that are given to the employees. The collective bargaining agreements that might cover someone in the mayor's office versus someone in City Council are all at 3% increases in the proposed budget. The numbers in the 2627 column would account for any salary changes that happen during the year. So, where maybe an employee left and someone was hired at a lower or higher salary is accounted for in that. It also accounts for any promotions that might have been given or probationary increases that were given during the 25-26 year. So, it's about as apples to apples that you can get. Now, you've got to take into account their different departments. And so, that's up to y'all to decide policy-wise on what you feel is necessary. But, it's as apples to apples as we can get from our standpoint. Mr. Amaro. Mr. Amaro, just a quick follow-up, just for hard numbers. When we come to FTEs, is there an equivalency there? Through the chair to Councilor Amaro, FTEs are not even close. There's 23 positions in the mayor's office. And when you take into account City Council, there's 84 positions. And so, that's why we didn't look at it on a dollar-for-dollar basis, but rather on a percentage basis. Mr. Weinstein, and then I'll have some comments and we're going to vote. I was just going to follow up on Councilman Amaro. When the two bases are very different in value, and you try to do the same percentage increase, it's not a valid comparison. It's not a valid comparison. When the bases are different, then you take the same percentage from both. It's just, numerically, it's just not a valid comparison. That's all. It won't make any difference, but that's all. All right. No one else in the queue? Councilman Carlucci said fair. I think this amendment's the very definition of fair. It matches the growth rates between two departments. And I've said in years past, I would never go lower on the mayor's office than what our own was on a percentage year-over-year basis. As for Mr. Smith, I am all ears. Mr. Smith has ideas a week from now, a month from now, and he comes to us and says, hey, if I change this or this or add this person, it's going to be a more efficient government, help me run things better. I am all ears on that, but I'm not going to defer voting on this today. Got more people in the queue now. Now, Councilmember Johnson. And let's go ahead and start the clock, Legislative Services, because we are at the 930 point, which is the time we had allotted for this. Just quickly, Mr. Chair, since you did say you would be open to hearing from the chief of staff and their office, and we could, maybe there is some justification that maybe we don't know, I'm all about data and information, why don't we wait until the end of this process before we make a final decision? That is my recommendation. Thank you. And again, the fourth Tuesday night of September, we have up until then to change anything. So we will vote on this amendment today. But like I said, even once the budget's passed, if Mr. Smith has ideas he wants to bring to us, I am all ears. Councilman Carlucci, second time. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, I appreciate what you're saying, and I don't, I choose my words carefully, but the reason I said not fair is because we have not heard from Mr. Smith. And so that's why I don't think it's fair. The second reason I don't think it's fair is because I do not believe that this is apples to apples. Maybe from the council auditor's point of view and what they're given and how they have to arrange their numbers, it may be. But the mayor's office is a totally different, they are the executive branch, we are the legislative branch. It's two totally different departments, two totally different branches of government. They do different things. So they're not alike. And I just don't think you can say, well, we did this for this, so we should do this for that. That's why I don't think that's fair, just to be clear. I saw this coming up, and I thought, you know, the mayor doesn't get into our bailiwick, but sure, it's shooting. We're going to see that happen this morning. We had a chance this morning to kind of be a team player, and we have chosen not to be. But I will be a team player on this. I'm not going to support this when I have a chance, eventually. And last, I'll say, there's no reason why we can't vote on this today, but perhaps postpone this until we've had a chance to hear from Mr. Smith. I think that was a good recommendation by one of your committee members. But again, I'm just a visiting council member, trying to impart something that I think makes common sense. God forbid. Thank you. I have no one else in the queue. All in favor of the De-Diamond Amendment, please raise your hand. All opposed, raise your hand. The Diamond Amendment is approved. With that, we are done with the mayor's office. And again, the amendment we approved puts the compensation line at the same year-over-year percentage that city council's budget was. Any, let's see, Mr. Peterson, I think we're back to you now. All right, that takes us to page six of your packet, advisory boards and commissions. It's budget book page 82. This budget includes the Civil Service Board, Construction Trades Qualifying Board, and then the Mayor's Commission on the Status of Women. Within the revenue line item, charges for services, budget at $254,000. The increase of $130,000 is the result of the nature of the Construction Trades Qualifying Board contractor certification. These certifications are issued and renewed for a two-year period, and so this is the year in which we see that spike next year that we would expect the number to go down. Expenditures, salaries line of $335,000. The net increase is due to the 3% salary increase for non-public safety collective bargaining agreements. There's also a lump sum payment for non-public safety unions that we'll hear throughout the rest of the budget process, and then an increase in longevity pay. Employer-provided benefits are going up $22,800 due to the planned increase in group health premiums being covered by the employer. Internal service charges, net increase of $19,000. It's mostly due to OGC legal charges to better align with recent billings, and then an increase in the computer systems maintenance charge due to an overall increase in the technology solutions new cost allocation system. On page seven is a breakdown by division within the advisory boards and commissions. You'll see at the bottom of the page they have a $150 food and beverage line item. No service level changes, no employee cap changes, five FTEs in this fund, or in this department, and then we have no recommendations. Excuse me, I have no one in the queue. Mr. Peterson, I got a question. New term for me, longevity pay. Could you define that for me? Yes, sir. Through the chair, to the chair, within the collective bargaining agreements and then the appointed pay plan for every five years that someone is here, there's an approximate, don't hold me to this, approximately $300 annual amount that is paid to an employee of the city. Okay. Thank you. I have no one in the queue, so let's move on to the next. All right. Page nine is public libraries. This is found on page 327 or beginning on page 327 of your proposed budget book. The Jacksonville Public Library consists of the main library, 20 regional community and neighborhood branch libraries, and then they also have a virtual branch library as well as express lockers out in the Ocean Way area. They have revenues of $313,984. Most of that is in the charges for services line, which is increasing $24,000 related to charges for internet printing and copying. This is based on recent actuals, and we would note that any fines and late fees that are accounted for, are accumulated in the library go to a special fund for capital projects, and we appropriate those dollars when there's enough funding available. Expenditures, they have a $45.7 million expenditure budget, which is a total increase of $4.2 million year over year. Salaries budgeted at $19.6 million. The net increase of $741,000 is mainly due to three items. First, the 3% salary increase for non-public safety collective bargaining agreements. There were some other salary adjustments that occurred during the year that were offset by the elimination of two positions within this department. There's a $141,000 increase in part-time salaries to better align with recent actuals as well as the minimum wage changes that go into effect. And then $112,300 in lump sum payments to non-public safety union employees. Pension costs are up $243,000 due to the salary increases noted above. Employer provided benefits. Net increase of $1.5 million is due to the planned increase in group health premiums. Internal service charges are increasing a little over a million due to the new allocation method within IT, $400,000 within the technology solutions system development costs, which is a one-time increase for the replacement of the integrated library system to a new hosted software system. This system will come with a $50,000 annual recurring charge in the future. They also have an increase in OGC charges based on recent usage. Professional and contractual services of a little over a million dollars has a net decrease of $31,000 to better align with recent actuals. And this is mostly due to the frequency of armored vehicle pickups, decreasing due to an increase in credit card usage and a decrease in the amount of the Wi-Fi hotspots that they are lending out. Library materials, the amount is staying flat at $4,894,000, which will be subject to approval of the library board. But based on the proposal, we've got that chart for you on page 10 of where their proposal is. And then flipping to page 11, the library also receives a state grant at $559,238 that is deposited into a self-appropriating fund. And proposed use is outlined there for you, but is also subject to the approval of the library board. Flipping to page 12, they have $25,250 total of food and beverage items that they are requesting for the upcoming year. And then on page 13, no service level changes. I did mention their employee cap is decreasing by two positions. One was transferred to the budget office during the 25-26 year, and one was transferred to the planning development department. We have no recommendations for this department. And then if you flip one more page, it does show the hours of all of the libraries, the main library, as well as all of the branches. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Peterson. I only have Council Member Salem in the queue, and then I got some comments and questions as well. Council Member Salem, you're recognized. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me. Through the Chair to Mr. Peterson. Are the two new libraries, the Brentwood and as well as the one in Council Member Gay's district, are they reflective of this budget? Through the Chair to Council Member Salem, they'll be discussed as part of the CIP. There's additional funding for both of those libraries being added in the CIP. Right now, they are not operational, so they're not a part of this departmental budget. And they will, through the Chair, they won't be operational in this budget year? Through the Chair. That is my understanding. If there's anything different, I would defer to Mr. Rogers. Is that correct, Mr. Weinstein? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I'd like to say hello to our Chief Librarian, Mr. Rogers, out there in the crowd. Mr. Peterson, one question, and maybe it's a Mr. Rogers question, armored vehicle pickup. Explain to me how that's connected to our library system. Through the, or to the Chair, for any cash that's collected at the libraries, it's transported via armored pickup so that employees aren't transporting it. Okay, thank you. And then Mr. Say, or Council Member Salem asked the other question. The time to talk about the libraries that are in the CIP will be on CIP Day, correct? Not now. Okay, thank you. I have no one else in the queue, so no recommendations, no action to take, so we can move on. Thank you, Mr. Rogers. All right. Page 15 is the Library Conference Facility Trust. This is found on page 330 of your budget book. It has a total budget of $402,684. The main library charges a fee for any use of its conference facilities. That revenue is deposited here, and so, and that's in the miscellaneous revenue line item. There's a slight increase of $7,788 to reflect recent actuals, and then also a rate increase that took effect during this fiscal year. And then transfers from other funds is increasing by $36,000. That's a transfer from the general fund needed to balance the budget. We do have a recommendation on that. Within the expenditures, salaries of $199,000, the proposed increase of $21,000 is due to an increase of $14,000 in part-time salaries to better align with recent actuals, as well as an increase of a little over $5,000 to reflect the 3% non-public safety collective bargaining agreements. Pension costs are increasing based on the salary changes and employee turnover. Employer-provided benefits is increasing to $20,000 for the group health premiums. Other operating expenses are increasing just over $1,500, primarily due to an increase in the credit card usage and the fees that get charged to this fund. Employee cap changes, there are no changes to employee cap, three full-time positions, no service level changes. Our recommendation is to make an all-years adjustment to reduce the contractual services by $40,000. This can be offset by a reduction in the transfer from the general fund to bring it below the contribution for $25,000, and this does have a positive impact of $40,000 on special council contingency. Council Member Salem. Thank you, Chair. May I bring Mr. Rogers up for a minute, please? Absolutely. Mr. Rogers, while you're walking up, we've had considerable discussions in past budgets about the conference center and trying to get it at a break-even standpoint. I noticed your increased rates for that center. Can you enlighten me on what those rates were? Yes. Through the Chair to Council Member Salem, we increased the rates. The Library Board approved the increase as of March of this year, and all of the rates increased by about 10%. Additionally, we added some of the fees that we had normally absorbed, for example, custodial and or security costs. We pulled those out of the fees. That way, it was a truer representation of what the cost was, and we put those back on the customer. So, those fees have been increased, and we are seeing a slight increase, certainly, in the fees that have been taken in this year. It hasn't been a substantial amount, primarily because, especially most of the large events that occur at the Library, weddings and things like that, are booked a year in advance. So, we won't see those. Obviously, anybody who had a contract prior to March, we honored the old fees. One last question, if I may, Chair. Through the Chair, are you providing the facility free of charge to anyone at this point? The only organizations that get the facility free of charge are any department within the COJ, Consolidated Government, so it doesn't include the authorities, and the Library, of course, and then any of our affinity groups, for example, Friends of the Library or Foundation, especially when they're doing fundraising events. How many of those bookings a year, roughly? Of the free events? Or of the... Of the free, how many free events are you doing each year, roughly? Roughly, I would say probably, if you count the Library events and all of the COJ plus the other things, it's probably about 250, 250 events. Now, some of those events, I should explain, some of those events are meetings, so it might use a small meeting room with very little setup or engagement. However, most of the, for example, the COJ events are larger events that do require conference staff to be pretty involved. And how many of those are you doing free each year where they're sort of larger events, not a conference room? I would have to get the numbers, but my guess would be in the one to two dozen number. Okay, my time is up. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Dr. Salem. Good questions. I do have a follow-up to one of Dr. Salem's questions. So, with that approved new fee, was that reflected in the budget, do we know, or does this assume the previous fees? It was, to the Chair, it was reflected in the fee, in the revenue. However, we took a very conservative approach, and keep in mind, this was months ago when we originally prepared this. So, I would say that it's probably very conservative. I, you know, I think we're very close to beating our this year's number, or next year's number already this year, so. Okay, great. Yeah, because it comes up every year, and I know Dr. Salem and I have both asked about it in years past. How do we make this a fund that pays for itself? So, hopefully, that's the first step in the right direction. Council, or I'm going to go to Mr. Peterson first, who probably has something to educate us on. Through the Chair, I just want to add to your question. Since the general fund provides a subsidy, if you will, to this fund, we will look at this as part of the recapture process, and if the fund's in a good shape, we'll be able to pull back dollars into the general fund. Great. Council Member Gay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through the Chair to Mr. Rogers, or just the whole finance committee. There's got to be some way that when this department is expending finances for other departments, just like the building department, when a permitting is done, it used to be no charge for a city parks department to have work done that they did not have to pay, but they have to pay now is not just, oh, it's for the city that is exempt. There should be some kind of accounting credit, credit that's applied back to the library for what they're having to expend. And Mr. Peterson, y'all may already have that tracking, but it seems like we should have that, those figures to balance out what the library is having to spend to sit there and help out on accounting for their budget. Through the Chair to Council Member Gay, I agree with you. It was determined a number of years ago, and that's what we were discussing over here. There was a ruling that the Library Conference Center could not charge COJ departments. It doesn't make sense to me, but that's what was determined, and so that's how we've been operating. That's just some food for us all here. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Gay. That's a good question, and could the administration write that down, maybe get back to us on seeing if that's something we can change in the future? Because I know we do enter department billing for a number of things. OGC pops to mind, so maybe we could get in the practice of doing that. To the Chair, that's an OGC binding legal opinion that was issued on that matter, and I'm happy to pull that and circulate copy if you would like to see it. It was from the prior administration when that opinion was rendered. Okay. Can you just email that to the whole Finance Committee? Happy to do so. And when we have the time, we can review that outside of here. Dr. Salem. Thank you, Chair. I have one other question. Mr. Raj, you and I have had this discussion in past budget years about AI, technology. It's hard for me to believe that 10 or 15 years from now, we're going to have libraries as we have today. I just don't believe it. I know you travel the country and such. Can you respond to that? What do you think the future of our library system will look like, and what are you seeing as you talk to your colleagues around the country? Through the Chair to Council Member Salem, certainly I understand how the use of technology and how specifically AI is starting to impact the way libraries deliver service to our customers. And I don't disagree with you at all that 10 to 15 years from now, it's going to be very different than the way it is right now. It's very different now than the way it was 10 or 15 years ago. We don't notice those differences now because, of course, we've been living it every day. But one of the things that we have seen is that many of the functions that potentially will, that have been done and will be done for the next year or two by our staff, by many of our vendors and so on, it may be, we may be able to simplify those things. We may be able to eliminate certain actions and certain processes. That doesn't mean that we will eliminate cost. And the reason I say that is because, as we've talked about before, and Council Member Boylan is a big booster of e-books. And e-books are a perfect example of technology that has made it so much easier to use the library without actually coming to the library at a time when it is convenient for the customer. Can I keep going? You can go on, sir. Yep. Having said that, the average e-book costs a library four to 12 times the amount that the physical book costs. Now, there are some trade-offs. You don't have to move around in e-book. An e-book never gets lost. But the license does run out after a certain period of time. So, cutting it short, I have talked with many of our colleagues. We have visited a lot of libraries. We are seeing some of the advantages, and we're taking advantage of those things now. We have, I know we'll talk about CIP next week, but part of our master planning process that we hope to embark on next year will include an evaluation of what are we doing right now that we need to do very differently as we go forward, and how can we start those processes out. At the same time, I will share with you that the use, so the way we measure use and success of use of the library is by the number of individual people, not just a gate count where, you know, any person can walk through there 15 times, and it counts them as 15 people. I'm talking about distinct cardholders using the library. That is how we measure our success, is the breadth of the community that we're serving. And what we are seeing is that those folks who are using the library digitally, that number is growing. The number of people who are using the library, borrowing e-books and such from the library, is growing in double-digit figures. The number of people over the last three years, the number of people who have used the physical library has gone up 30%. So people are still using the physical library. I don't disagree that it will change how we deliver that service, and a lot of that will not be seen by the public at all. But the things that people still count as being in a library, the use of the material and borrowing, the use of public technology that people can use to connect to the world when they don't have a computer or printer, the programs and services that we offer to both young people as well as those of us who are a little bit more seasoned. And then, of course, the use of public space where meeting rooms and study rooms are the only public space that is available for people at no charge so that they can go and do what they need to do, whether it is the telehealth that you are all talking about yesterday or whether it's something else. These are the core services, and they're supplemented by our staff. But ultimately, what we have tried to do over the last two years, specifically, we have moved to an almost entirely self-check for physical borrowing. So 82% of all of the borrowing that is done in a library, a physical library, is done with a person checking it out on a piece of equipment. Well, of course, that's what we do in grocery stores all the time. But three years ago, it was 60%. And two years before that, it was 42%. So it takes a little bit of time. And I will say, innovation costs money. So as we look at changing the ways we are going to do things, we will absolutely be evaluating it, we will be looking at our peer libraries and emulating what has been successful for them. And we will still provide the best possible library service that we can. Thank you, Chair, for allowing him to do that. I think this is one of the areas that future councils really need to be on top of. I tried to add some board members, as you know, and it was not successful. But I think the changes in the library system are going to be huge, and we need to be a part of that. Thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Sam. Thank you, Mr. Rogers. That was a great update. I think I just doubled my library knowledge with all the facts and figures you threw at us there. Council President. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And Mr. Rogers, just to give you a heads up on one question, when we get to the CIP portion about the libraries, I will ask, have you ever coordinated with Daryl, I think you have in many cases, to combine library functionality with community center functionality? And if we're getting ready to build one more library, did you consider renovating a community center and incorporating library facilities? Because there's just got to be ways that we can be more efficient with our capital spend, because that then saves money on our operating costs for maintenance in the future. Through the chair. We definitely have been talking about that and have several opportunities for that going forward. We'll ask again about it in CIP. Thank you, sir. Councilmember Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through the chair to Mr. Rogers. One, good morning. Thank you for being here. Love your temperament. You always have that calming spirit. I just want to go on the record, because my colleague asked an amazing question when he talked about technology, and we know with Amendment 3 and all these other things coming down the line, libraries always, parks, libraries, things of that nature, always at the top of the line. But I want to just give you a shout out. I mean, obviously, you know, the Freeman girls, oldest now is 18. They have been frequent members and visitors of libraries since, I don't know, since she was probably three or four. But what I noticed is as they got into high school and middle school, and they started getting their summer school reading, they were able to utilize e-books, because getting mom trying to get everyone where they needed to. So I see the value in hearing you kind of cite those numbers really kind of register with me. So you're going to always have a huge supporter here. Served as a trustee at one point, a liaison, and anything I can do to help, don't hesitate to move forward and ask. All right. Thank you so much. With that, I have no one else in the queue, and we had no recommendations, correct? Or I'm sorry, can I get any motion on those recommendations? Page 16. I got motion second on the audit recommendation. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. The amendment, or I'm sorry, the recommendation passes. Thank you, Mr. Rogers. We'll see you on CIP Day. With that, we are done with three of 11 agenda items. We will now move into IT. Mr. Peterson. All right. Page 17 of your handout, page 364 of your budget book. This is the Technology Solutions Information Technologies Fund. This is kind of the main IT fund. This houses all of their current application maintenance costs, computer software and equipment owned, leased, or operated by the city, and then select independent agencies. This does have a budget of $40.7 million, which is a $1.7 million increase year-over-year. Within internal service revenue, this is just the charges that are billed to other departments, and the increase is a result of an overall increase in the operating costs that we'll discuss in a minute. Investment pool earnings are down $7,000, just reflective of the recent cash balances in the fund. Salaries are budgeted at $12.4 million, an increase of $465,000 year-over-year, and that's a result of the 3% salary increase for non-public safety collective bargaining, as well as an increase in part-time costs based on recent trends. This fund does have its own vacancy rate or the salary and benefits lapse based on the average turnover, and it is going down this year. Pension costs are at $3.4 million, an increase of $200,000 year-over-year due to an increase in the defined benefit costs based on the actuarial report, as well as an increase in the defined contribution costs due to the staffing and salary changes. Employer-provided benefits, same explanation, increasing $700,000 due to the planned increase in group health premiums. Within the professional and contractual services line, there is a decrease of $725,000. It's mainly attributable to moving a cybersecurity contractual service to the software maintenance and license line, so we'll talk about that in a second, as well as due to the removal of a $239,000 item in software hosting services associated with a Motorola Command Center Aware contract due to JSO moving away from that platform and to another platform that they thought was more beneficial slash cost-effective. Other operating expenses are increasing $840,000 due to that cybersecurity contract being moved to this area, as well as the addition of an operating license cost associated with the Rubik Enterprise Data Security Management Software of $431,000. Grants aides and contributions is remaining flat. That's a payment to JEA for a fiber connection to the CECL 911 Center. This fund does have a supervision allocation related to costs that are allocated to the radio communications fund. There are no service level changes. Employee cap is staying flat, as well as part-time hours. There is a capital outlay carry forward item of $14,181 for specialized equipment that has not yet been encumbered that they're asking to be carried over, and we have no recommendations. I have known in the queue, Mr. Peterson, could you jog my memory when you look at their budget two years ago? It went from $44 million to $39 million, and then just up a little this year. Was there a reclass within categories on the IT side? It just stuck out to me to see that they're still quite a bit lower than what they were a couple years ago. Mr. Parks. So, on that last column, I mean, the first column, that is actual cost. So, sometimes what we have is encumbrance carry forwards. And so, there may be, when you're looking at that, actuals may be up or down slightly depending upon the timing of payments of contracts and other things of that nature. There are some things that have moved around. They did reduce some contracts a few years ago, so that can be playing in as well. But you're kind of more looking at the budget to budget. I don't think it actually went down by $4 million on a budget standpoint. Thank you, Mr. Parks. And on to the next one, since I have no speakers and no recommendations. All right. That takes us to page 19. This is the Radio Communications Fund. This internal service fund has all the costs for radio communications, and we service JEA, JTA, JAA, JPA, Atlantic Beach, Baldwin, Neptune Beach, the school board, and UNF. The internal service revenue represents the costs that are billed to all of the agencies served by this fund. It does have a transfer from fund balance of $1.2 million, and this is resulting from collecting revenue associated with the repayment of debt in advance of when it was needed. And so to keep from double billing customers, the fund balance is being used rather than billing the customers again. Expenditures. There is a salaries line item of $874,000. The net increase is related to that 3% increase, and then also an increase in standby pay and overtime based on the current year actual expenditures. This has its own salary and benefits lapse of $17,900. Pension costs are up due to the salaries increase, as well as defined benefit pension costs based on the actuary report. Employer provided benefits are increasing $30,000 for the group health premiums. Other operating expenses are increasing $71,400, and this is mainly due to hardware, software, maintenance licenses associated with the fire station alerting system that the radio communications oversees. Capital outlay is increasing $1,000, but that $150,000 is being used this year to purchase portable radios as well as mobile radios for JFRD. The debt management fund repayments, this is the reflective of the transfer from fund balance being paid towards the radio tower and backup system project, as well as the radio site expansion at Montgomery Correctional. Grants aides and contributions is the funding to reimburse JEA for the tower rental cost at the three lease sites, as well as the utility repair and maintenance cost of those sites. No service level changes, no employee cap changes. There is a capital outlay carry forward of $136,458 for radio equipment purchases that have not been made in the current year. They're asking to be carried over and no recommendations. Looks like no one in the queue, so we'll move on, Mr. Peterson. All right. Page 21 is the technology equipment refresh fund within IT. It is also found on page 370 of your budget book. This fund represents all pay-go items. There's no debt funding in this fund. This is for the refresh and replacement of all equipment and infrastructure related to the technology department. The internal service revenue represents the customer billings to refresh the equipment replacement. Within expenditures, there's two categories. The first other operating expense are those that do not meet the $5,000 capital threshold, and the other category is capital outlay, and those are the ones that do meet the $5,000 capital threshold. And then on your page 21, there's a chart of the items that are being purchased, broken down non-capital and capital, equaling the $2.7 million budget. There are no positions in this fund. There is a request for a capital outlay carry forward of $3,479,700 for the purchase of computer equipment that has not yet been encumbered in the current year. But there are no service level changes, and we have no recommendations. Council President. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Quick question for Ms. Kendrick if she's here. I don't know if she is or anyone from IT. Way in the back. Okay, I'll ask it, and I'm sure you'll have an answer by the time you get up here. It'll be fast. I remember hearing several months ago from the representative from Motorola that there were several mobile telecommunications, times where mobile telecommunications equipment was lent to IT and JFRD for specific events like the triathlon and things like that. And they were kind of lent, no charge, lent, no charge. And I think JFRD or IT was considering buying them for permanent mobile telecommunications. Has that happened or is that reflected in the budget? Do you know? Good morning, Wynanya Kendrick, Technology Solutions. Firstly, I'd like to thank Mayor Deegan. We understand she really loves this city, particularly the three zip codes that I've lived in. That is 32209, 32208, and possibly the Chair's favourite, 32224. Through the Chair to the City Council Finance Committee, I know that you love this city as well, and I appreciate your service. To answer your question, President Howland, that is correct. We are looking at next steps in terms of supporting that equipment permanently. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Ms. Kendrick. And, yeah, my district, we have a sheriff. We have the CIO. We may have a quarterback as well. So, it really is Jacksonville's best district, and thanks for pointing that out. So, I think with that, it's time to move on to the next fund. All right. On page 23 is the IT System Development Fund. This is where IT System Development projects are housed. This is an all-years fund, and it is project-driven. Within the revenue line of internal service revenue of $6 million, this is the billings to departments and agencies for the system development projects that will be tackled in the coming years. The increase is due to more IT projects being billed to customers in 2627. Within the debt funding debt management fund revenue line item, this represents the amount of borrowed funds to finance the personnel payroll management system phase two, one cloud project. That increase of $8.5 million is almost all attributed to that project. Within the expenditures, the capital outlay has a negative budget. This represents an all-years adjustment because of the all-years fund. It is closing and or moving funds to other accounts for various IT projects, all reflected in the five-year IT plan. And within the capital outlay debt-funded line item of $8.8 million, that does represent that $9 million project for the personnel payroll management system. This is partially offset by an all-years adjustment of $129,000 to remove debt funding for the care system upgrade and replacement project that is no longer needed. Within the capitalized internal service line of $759,000, this is increasing. It represents an all-years adjustment related to capital expenses being moved from the capital professional services account for the enterprise permit and land use management project due to this project being done in-house. And this was partially offset by an adjustment of $18,000 related to a cybersecurity infrastructure project. The capitalized internal service debt-funded line has a budget of $1.27 million, which represents capital expenses for the personnel and payroll management system phase two, one cloud project. Debt management fund repayments are increasing based on the scheduled debt. This does have a contingency budget of $600,000, which represents an all-years adjustment to reallocate funds from the cybersecurity infrastructure project to a contingency for future use towards the project. This fund does have a cash carryover, which represents revenue over expenditures due to the timing of when departments pay this fund back. No service level changes. No employee cap changes. We do have a recommendation that Schedule B-4A be amended to correctly reflect the customer billing amount as $400,000 for the library print and computer management system project and to correct the revised budget to $500,000 for the JFRD electronic patient care system project as shown on the next page. Those changes are reflected there. This has no impact to special counsel contingency. I got a motion and a second on the recommendation. All those in favor of the recommendation say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. The recommendation passes. Ms. Kendrick, I did have one question on the payroll system, and I get that payroll and financial systems are very expensive, but is this the final estimate? Are we sure that I believe it's $22 million now? Is there any chance that could go further up, or is this the final estimate for that project? Well, Noni Kendrick Technology Solutions, Chair Layden, this is our projection for this project. This project supports all public safety salaries. It's over $35 million of payroll that we run on a biweekly basis, and those checks have to be right for our police and fire. And so we have made a decision that we're going to extend the project to ensure that those checks are correct. Okay. And my question simply was, do we think that's the final price? Because it had a significant year-over-year increase in the estimate. Do we think there's a chance there's a further increase, or is the price that we're approving now, will that get the project done? Yeah, Chair Layden, we believe that the projection is correct. Nevertheless, I am in technology, and so there is also a chance that if we have concerns that police and fire checks are not correct, that we would have to come back. Okay, thank you. No one else in the queue, so was that the last IT one? Through the chair, it's the last IT fund, pages 26, 27, and 28 go over the five-year IT plan. So in case there's questions, Ms. Kendrick should stay. On these pages, this shows, this is a comparison of the five-year IT plan that was presented to you last year and approved versus what's being proposed in the current year. And we do our best to highlight changes that occur from things that you would have expected to roll forward year-over-year. So on page 26, that top box show projects that were removed from the five-year IT plan. The courthouse complex antenna system was removed because the project was completed and no longer needs additional funding. The JFRD personnel accountability software is no longer being requested by JFRD. The two radio site expansion projects have been pushed back as they do an overall assessment of the radio system. And then the clerk of the court computer refresh, rather than being in the five-year IT plan, is just going to be included in the clerk's budget moving forward. That second box are new projects that were added, and you'll see the 26-27 budget has a cost of $657,500 for the proposed year. Total increase add to the five-year plan of $5.6 million. The next box on the page 26, which also carries over to page 27, are changes, significant changes year-over-year from the projects as they were presented last year. I'm just going to hit on the items that have footnotes. The JFRD electronic patient care reporting system has a total project increase to reflect the final pricing from the selected vendor. The personnel payroll management system, going from $14 million to $27 million, Jerry. You might need to use your glasses next time. That's a $27 million cost, not $22 million. But that is a, as they expect, the total cost as reflected by Ms. Kendrick's statement. Looking at item G, this is the disaster recovery in city business continuity. They removed the annual operating costs from the IT plan, and will put it in the appropriate department's budget. Computer laptop and tablet equipment refresh. They are currently doing a citywide inventory analysis for all computers, and so they've requested a smaller dollar amount in the current year. Server equipment refresh reflects what they project the necessary server refresh to be over the next five years. And then the three radio items at the bottom are part of an overall analysis of the radio system. And then as they finish that, they will update the IT plan in future years. Thank you, Mr. Peterson. And since you were doubting my vision, I was referring to the $22 million on page 25 for the project. But I will see your point on page 26, the year-over-year increase. All right, with that, thank you, Ms. Kendrick. I think we're ready to move on. Do we have here who we need for police and fire pension yet? Okay. I see Ms. Brochet if we want to jump ahead to finance. And then, because we are running about an hour ahead right now. So let's jump ahead to finance. All right, so that takes us to page 33 of your handout and page 112 of the budget book. The finance department houses the office of the director, the accounting division, budget division, treasury division, and the grants and contract compliance division. Within this department, they have miscellaneous revenue of $87,000. The increase of $15,000 is due to an increase in actual revenue from charges by the accounting division for performing billing services related to certain payroll deductions as authorized by a prior city council approved ordinance. We do have a recommendation as it relates to this. There are $18.3 million worth of expenditures, which is an increase of $1.1 million year-over-year. Salaries are increasing $270,000, mainly due to the 3% salary increase, as well as the net impact of employee turnover, various promotions, and other salary changes that occur during the year. Pension costs are increasing based on that employee turnover, as well as the salary changes. Employer-provided benefits increasing $511,000 due to the planned increase in group health premiums. Internal service charges have a net decrease of $189,000. $400,000 of that is related to IT system allocation methodology, as well as $50,000 in building costs allocated to the grants and contract compliance division, as they have decreased the office space that they now occupy. Part of those decreases were offset by an increase in the legal charges. Professional and contractual services have a budget of $679,000, increased by $283,000. And $185,000 of that is for the funding of consulting services that were removed by the finance committee as part of the 25-26 budget process. They are adding those back in to the office of the director, as well as a $90,000 increase for one of the lobbyist consulting contracts. We do have a recommendation to reduce the budget amount for lobbyist contracts by $30,000, and that would just keep them at their current contractual flat amounts. Debt service is going down due to the funding for banking service charges of the city. There is a divisional summary for you for the five divisions that make up the finance department, if you have any questions related to that. If not, on page 35 is the schedule of grants that the finance department receives, four grants that do not require any city match. They have all been previously appropriated by council, but it does fund four positions and 1,300 part-time hours. There are no service level changes, no employee cap changes. We do have two recommendations. The first is to increase miscellaneous service and charges revenue by $37,448, which we believe is a conservative projection of revenues that will have a positive impact on special counsel contingency. And then the second recommendation, just to get the lobbyist contracts, the budgeted dollars for the lobbying contracts to be flat with what their current levels are, would be a $30,000 positive impact to special counsel contingency. And we would also request that any non-departmental portion of the lobbying contracts be moved to the finance department so they're all in one location going forward. So, Mr. Peterson, jog my memory on the $120,000 yesterday that was a non-departmental lobbying. That was part of it. The rest of the lobbying is within finance, and the recommendation is to essentially have anything lobbying fall under finance. Am I following correctly? Through the chair, that's correct. Yes, sir. Rather than being budgeted in two separate locations and talking about it twice, move it all to finance and have that conversation here today and then in future years going forward. Okay. And one more question that I'll call on you, Dr. Salem. With this recommendation, is total lobbying expense essentially flat year over year with that recommendation? Through the chair, the recommendation gets the lobbying contracts to be flat with the current amounts in the lobbying contracts. I am hesitant to say year over year that it's flat. Okay. Dr. Salem. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me. Number one, the part-time hours is almost equal to four full-time positions. It just seems like a lot. Can someone enlighten me the purpose of those part-time hours? I would defer to Ms. Brochet. I saw her sitting here, and she's there. Ms. Brochet, can you answer that for me? And number two, is the lobbying, what is the purpose of this lobbying contract? And it would seem to me, and this is just my opinion, that depending on what this person does, they all should be in the mayor's office versus being in finance. That seems like a strange place to have lobbying contracts. But let's get the part-time hours answered first. Ms. Brochet, you're recognized, and I think the question is elaborating on the part-time hours of the budget. Yes, thank you. Anna Brochet, finance, through the chair, to Councilwoman Salem. It's my understanding that we've had projects in the past where we invited people to do special projects through the finance department, working on certain areas. In addition to some of the compliance areas that I have, I think we've had people in the past do things on solid waste and whatnot. And I'm sure that Mr. Weinstein can speak to that as well. Those hours are there in case we have a need for those. So, through the chair, these might be projects that are beyond the scope of the finance department, but they're just present in your budget? Is that what I hear you saying? No, it would be finance-related projects that are beyond the capacity of the individuals that we currently employ in finance. Okay. Just seems, I mean, it's almost four positions. That just seems excessive. Ms. Moyer's got her hand up. Maybe she can add something. Ms. Moyer. Angela Moyer, Budget Office. So, the bulk of the part-time hours and part-time dollars are sitting within accounting. We have a couple of retirees that are very fluent in the prior financial system that have been helping us for several years to work on the ERP and the OneCloud. And we're going to continue to keep them until we are to the end of the road related to that. But that's where the bulk of the funding and the hours are sitting. Through the chair, when do you anticipate that concluding? I'll have to go back and look at the five-year plan. I'm sorry. I couldn't hear you. That would have been part of the IT five-year plan. I don't know how long it would be. I would say for at least the next couple of years. Okay. Then is the lobbying part of this, what is the use of the 275 in lobbying here? It's not length and obvious, so we do know that. Mr. Weinstein, do you want to take a shot? Okay, Mr. Peterson. Through the chair to Councilmember Salem, this includes Langton as well as the Florida group in the finance department. Well, please elaborate because we looked at $120,000 earlier in another department. So is this an additional contract with Langton? Through the chair, no, sir. The $120,000 was for a non-departmental lobbyist, no specific identifier. Langton and the Florida group are paid out of the finance department. And so that's part of our recommendation is it gets a little confusing, the $120,000 that sits in non-departmental, and then we get to finance and talk about other lobbyists. It all needs to be in one place so we can have that one overall discussion. Okay, one additional question, if I can, Chair. So the 275 is for Langton and the Florida group, or better known as the Ferentino group before. Who was the $120,000 used for last year? Mr. Parks. Through the chair to Councilmember Salem. So this is where this gets confusing. Again, it's all paid from here. A piece of this was allocated. They would move the expense to the non-departmental. And so it was all really a contract within this fund here, within the finance department. So, again, there was $300,000 related to Langton in total, and then $150,000 for Florida group. You guys did cut those numbers last year through the process for the pieces of one of them that you did not like. But there was a – it did not approve. But they continued the contract at the same amounts as what they had done in the past. So, again, so it's $450,000 combined. I wouldn't get hung up on the non-departmental versus this because it actually kind of – that's the whole problem is it gets a bit confusing there. Well, if I – through the chair, if I can. Yeah. I'm not the savant. My colleague is – I'm lost as well right now. Okay. For the record. If I add 275 and 120, I get 495. Yeah. 395. Pardon me. And you mentioned 450. So, Mr. Parks, through the chair, can you enlighten the committee and us out here? Yes. And if I may real quick, I thought in our pre-meeting there was an exhibit – maybe I made it up in my mind – that had the year-over-year reconciliation of the lobbying fees. Or maybe we just discussed it verbally. Because my understanding is year-over-year we're roughly flat, correct? In fact, is there a jump year-over-year on the lobbying fees? Or where do we stand from a year-over-year view? Councilman Johnson – or I'm sorry, Council President. I just see you in the queue. Do you want to speak now or wait for their answer? Okay. Councilman Johnson. And through the chair, I'm not on this no lobbyists. I understand the need for lobbyists. I just want to understand what we're paying and who we're paying. And I think that's similar to my question. I just want to make sure there is no large year-over-year jump in it. And so I think that's what Mr. Peterson and the team are putting together on the fly for us right now. Okay. I agree with that as well. Thank you. Councilman Johnson. I was – when we talked about this on yesterday, Mr. Chair, I did some research myself. And I pulled – I wanted to know how many grants we had received based on these lobbying contracts. And I just want this to be on the record. I think it's important. There are 11 grants that the city was awarded from USDA to FEMA, all kinds. And so we invested $450,000 total in lobbying contracts, which means that we were able to, based on this spreadsheet – and like I said, it's out there – $19 million and some change in grants, which is a 42 percent – the return on the investment is huge. For every dollar we invested – and I just did some quick rudimentary math. Certainly not you, but for every dollar we invested, we got $42.59 in grant funding. And I think that's important to put on the record because while I know we're trying to figure out – and I agree with the auditors to put it in one spot so we can look at it because I don't like looking at those two pots of money differently. I think that's the right thing to do. But this is a pretty small amount based on what we're getting back. And these are grants that we are not waiting for or applied for. This is a grant that we were awarded and that we're doing this work in the community now. So I wanted that to be on the record. Thank you. Thank you. While Mr. Peterson and team are still working on that, are there any non-lobbying questions with regards to the finance department budget? Okay. So, Mr. Peterson, do you want us to table the lobbying portion for now so we can move on? Or are you all close to getting what the request was, which I think is just the year-over-year view on the lobbying fees? Through the chair, if you could table it, I think we'll be able to provide better information. Okay. Thank you. So we're going to table that, give Mr. Peterson time to put the year-over-year view, and then we'll move on from finance to the pensions here soon. Dr. Salem, you're recognized. Yeah. Just one other point. Through the chair, Council Member Johnson gave 14 grants that we received. The assumption is all the grants received were due to the lobbying contracts. I know our congressmen are very active in bringing money to Jacksonville. I don't know who brought all these grants here, but I don't want to leave the assumption that all these grants were brought in by one particular entity. That takes away from what goes on at the state level by our lobbyists, for example, what the congressmen have brought, et cetera, et cetera. So I just want to add that, and I'm happy to wait and move on. Thank you, Dr. Salem. So, again, where we're at, we are done reviewing the finance department's budget except for the lobbying portion. Maybe after lunch that could be the first thing we take up once we get the view we requested. Council Member Johnson, do you still want to speak? And I just wanted to say quickly something I neglected to say was the other firm that, while I'm not sure, I think I learned that they were the subcontractor of Langton, but Becker and Polikoff, and their 11 grants, I just want to make sure that the ones that I pulled were 11 grants, and those 11, many of them specifically had to do with both Becker and Polikoff, Langton, and the Florida group working together. Additionally, while they did work to talk to those electives on other levels and other entities where those grants were awarded, most importantly, some of these grants we didn't even know about. And so that was part of, because I wanted to know, why are we using this? Becker and Polikoff was more of the lobbyist, and I want to, you know, through the chair to Dr. Salem, Becker and Polikoff was more of the lobbying part. But Langton was the research bringing the grants to us for us to kind of prepare them. And I thought, I just went down the rabbit hole on this one because I thought it was fascinating on what we could do and what we could bring in. Thanks for letting me share that. All right, Mr. Weinstein. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to follow up again on Councilman Salem. The contracts were not increased at all as the idea to merge them in finance, they're all financial grants. And the management of it and the deliverance of it, that's just basically where the most logical. The discussion of consolidation was really driven by the finance group up here. It wasn't something that, you know, we had asked for. But rest assured, there are no increases in the contracts. Thank you, Mr. Weinstein. And to your point, I think what just has thrown us off is that we had some under non-departmental yesterday, some here. And so I think we just want our auditors to put that together to show that there is no true or at least a significant other than what was contractually required year over year increase. So, with that, I see some pension people in the crowd. So, I think we are ready to move on to that. Sorry, Mr. Chair. Did you say we're going back to police and fire? Police and fire pension fund, yes. All right. So, that is on page 29 of our handout. This is not in your budget book. This is the administrative cost of the police and fire pension fund. This does not reflect the total contribution to the fund of all the dollars. This is just their admin side. Reminder that this fund was closed to new employees starting October 1st of 2017. And the employer contribution to the fund for 2627 is $209,381,806. The police and fire pension fund is divided into three separate areas. Administrative expenditures. They have a building operations area and then a parking garage operations. They have a total budget of $18,595,376, which is an increase of $549,868 over the prior year. You'll see on page 29 a breakout of the administration expenditures. Personnel services are increasing $124,000 due to an increase of almost $34,000 of the required contributions to the senior staff voluntary retirement plan. $33,000 of increased contributions for pension contributions related to those employees that are on the city's defined contribution plan, as well as employee turnover and salary changes. There's a $32,000 increase in salaries related to the proposed salary increases and then $26,000 for part-time salaries due to one of their employees moving from full-time to part-time. We do have a recommendation to correct a part of this budget based on the timing of when they submit their budget versus when the budget office finishes all of the internal service charges allocations. The net increase in other operating expenses is mainly due to related to IT allocations and then $15,000 in miscellaneous services related to the cost of holding events. We also have a recommendation here to properly reflect the internal service allocations determined by the budget office. Professional services investments are explained on the next page, as well as their other professional services. And the minor capital outlay item is related to resealing and painting the building exterior, various carpet and painting on the second floor, and then replacing a garage gate. On page 30, you'll see their professional services investment budget. Money managers are budgeted at $14.5 million, which is an increase of $412,000 over the prior year. And this is just based mostly on the increase in the value of assets in the plan. The increase for the investment advisor is due to a scheduled increase in the annual contract. For the other professional services, their outside legal charges are going down $50,000 based on their usage, and then the actuary costs are going up $10,000 based on the current contract. Within their building operations, they do own the garage, I'm sorry, they own the building at 1 West Adams Street, in which the administrative staff is housed, and they also lease out office space in that building. They have revenues going up $4,729 due to increased rental rates of their tenants. Within the parking garage operations, they own and operate the Monroe Street parking garage, has approximately 240 spaces. Revenues are increasing $11,600 due to a decrease in the expected vacancy rate and increased prices for select parking spaces. They have no employee cap changes. There is a box on page 31 in the middle of your page that identifies the funding positions of the police and fire pension plan. Actuarial value assets of $2.6 billion, a UAL of $3.4 billion, and a current funding ratio as of October 1st, 2025 at 43.93%. When you take into account the value of the sales tax attributed to the plan, that brings the funding ratio up to 70.7%. Our recommendations are removing and replacing the budget schedules for the police and fire pension fund to increase personnel by $7,308 in order to reflect the accurate pension costs and other employer-provided benefits as determined by the budget office. This will be offset by increasing the trust fund revenues by $7,308. Also, a recommendation to decrease operating expenses by $20,387 to reflect the internal service allocations determined by the budget office. The decrease is to trust fund revenues by that same $20,387. And then we recommend removing the $25,26 amounts from the schedule, adding a subtotal for the administrative costs, and making other formatting changes to reflect the revised schedule A, B, and A, C, which can be found on page 32. All of these adjustments have no impact to special counsel contingency. Thank you, Mr. Peterson. And I assume our friends from the pension fund are all good with these recommendations, correct? Okay, great. One thing I always like to point out, the funded ratio, we should not expect that to start going upwards until 2031. So I just like to always point that out just with the way that the half-penny tax will shift at that point in time. I have no one in the queue, so can I get a motion on – I got a motion to second on the recommendations. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. The recommendations pass. And on to the next. Okay, Mr. Chair, I believe Mr. Parks can answer the lobbying questions. So that we could wrap up the finance department. Mr. Parks, the floor is yours. Sorry, and as I flipped the wrong page. There we go. So to the committee. So last year there was a proposed budget with $360,000 a request for lobbyist fees. That was $90,000 less than what the actual contracts totaled up to, which was $450,000. Through the process you cut $185,000. So they added back the $185,000 and added the $90,000 that was short in last year's budget. So $450,000 to $450,000 is the same contractual amounts that are currently in place today. Dr. Salem. Just – thank you, Chair, for recognizing me. I think you whispered my ear that the mayor used her transfer authority to make up for what was cut by the finance committee so that the service – the amount spent was what she had budgeted. Is that correct? Right, either using the transfer authority or the capacity within the professional contractual services line there, which has some emergency stuff, which may or may not be used in a given year. So there's a little bit of stuff. So within that, yes, they move money to keep at the same contractual amounts. I just wanted the committee to know that. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Salem. And just so I understand, though, year over year, it's the same, correct? The same from a contract standpoint. From a contractual commitment, it's the same year over year. I have no questions. Does anybody else have any concern or questions on lobbying? Okay. We are officially done with finance then. Mr. Peterson? Not officially. On page 36, we have two recommendations that will add $67,448 to special counsel contingency. Well, I like that recommendation, so I will ask for a motion on it. Got a motion second on the recommendation. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. The recommendation is approved. And, Mr. Weinstein, if you could, we are running ahead of schedule. Could you just work with the other departments to make sure they're aware that we are running ahead of schedule? Or I think that's a chief of staff duty, actually. So I see the chief of staff. Hopefully, you didn't delete all the department head's phone numbers last time. So this is not new employee hazing. So where are we at now, Mr. Peterson? Where do you want to go to? We are on page 37, the Driver Education Safety Trust. This is under the finance department. This is a $5 levy on each civil traffic penalty is accumulated here. A budget of $305,125. Fines and forfeits represent that $5 fee. Within the expenditures, the grants, aids, and contributions, this amount is made available to public and non-public schools that want to enhance a driver education program. And this is overseen by the Grants and Contract Compliance Division. No service level changes. There are no authorized positions within this fund. We do have a recommendation to increase the budget amount for the $5 fee by $157,835 to account for the increase in the fee. The fee used to be $3. It got changed this year to $5. But this has no impact to special counsel contingency. And Mr. Peterson, just an accounting question. Remind me again, why would that not come back to the reserves or be a positive impact for us? Why does it have to go to the grants, aids, and contributions line? To the chair, this is driven by Florida statutes. And the fee says specifically what it has to be used for. Okay. Figure it was worth asking. I got a motion. Can I get a second on the recommendation? Got a motion. Second all those in favor of the recommendation say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. The recommendation passes. Councilman Johnson, you're recognized. Just got a quick question for Mr. Peterson. Is there, and this might be an OGC question, is there a cap on the fee that we can charge? I didn't see it. I was doing some looking through that. Yeah. Through the chair to Council Member Johnson, the cap, the only fee you can charge is $5. It's $5 or nothing. Okay. Got it. That's what I couldn't find. Thank you. Okay. That takes us to page 38. And this is the General Employees Pension Fund, similar to the Police and Fire Pension Fund, but for the General Employees of the city. This plan was also closed to new employees beginning October 1st of 2017. The employee, yours, pension contribution for all participants to this plan is $130,281,201. But this plan also covers employees at JEA, the Jacksonville Housing Authority, and the North Florida Transportation Planning Organization. The city's portion of that $130,000,000 is $56,095,923. Once again, this just funds the administrative budget of the General Employees Pension Fund. And so the revenue of pension fund contributions are what is needed to balance the administrative budget. So looking at expenditures, salaries of $427,414 are increasing $13,000 due to the 3% increase. Employer-provided benefits increasing by almost $30,000 is due to the planned increase in group health premiums. Internal service charges have a net decrease of $170,000 due to changes in the IT allocation methodology. But that is partially offset by increases in mailroom costs and legal costs. Within professional and contractual services, the net increase of $2.6 million is related to $2.5 million in money management fees. And this all can be seen on the chart on page 39. There's an increase of $94,000 in actuarial services due to the prior contract expiring and anticipating a new contract at higher rates. There's an increase of pension education for board members due to increased interest in attending education conferences. And then a decrease in the investment manager performance tracking due to reducing the number of services contracted. We have no service level changes, no employee cap changes. There are five FTEs in this fund. Flipping to page 40, same chart as we saw on the Police and Fire Pension Fund related to the funding progress. As it relates to the city, we have a UAL of $896 million. The plan as a whole has a 52.91% funded ratio. And when taking into account the sales tax attributed to the pension surtax, it brings the funding ratio up to 76.64%. We have no recommendations on this fund. And I have no one in the queue, so move on. All right. Through the chair to the committee, last pension fund is the correction officer's pension fund. Down on page 41 of your budget book, this has the administrative budget for this pension plan. The employer contribution for $26,27 is $28,508,367. Once again, this only reflects the administrative costs. Within expenditures, the $3.7 million budget for professional and contractual services is increasing $518,000 year over year, due mostly to an increase in the money manager fees, as you can see on the chart on page 41. Actuarial services are also increasing $44,000 in anticipation of a new contract. This fund does have supervision allocation for the employee costs that are housed in the general employee's pension fund. It is increasing $7,211 year over year. No service level changes. There are no positions in this fund. And then on page 42, you can see the funding progress of the correctional officer's pension fund being at a current funded ratio of 46.79%. And then taking into account the pension surtax, we're bringing it up to 72.75%, no recommendations. And no one in the queue. Dr. Salem. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me. Through the Chair to Mr. Peterson, when you say 72.75% with the half cent sales tax, is that for this year? Is that for 2060? I know I've heard the number of 2060 is when this thing's going to be roughly 100% accounted for. What year are you using for 72.75% and the others that you mentioned before this? Through the Chair to Council Member Salem, that is the present value of the anticipated collections of the pension surtax. When it begins in 2031, going through, I believe the plans get fully funded. It's in the late 2050s. I don't think we make it all the way to 2060. But that's just taking into account the present value of those collections. The present value of the collections starting in 2030. 2031. 31. Okay. I don't quite understand that, but I'll get with you separately. Thank you. Mr. Warrenstein. I was just going to add that all three funds by statute get to 100% at the same time. It's ratioed out as the half penny is done. And basically, the statute required the actuary to take into account those dollars. And also, it basically, probably each of the funds have looked at it, and it's probably 23 to 25 years to get to the 100%, not all 30. Okay. All right. That takes us to page 43 of our handout. This is the General Employee Survivor and Disability Pension Fund. It's on page 131 of your budget book. This fund also only reflects the administrative costs with enough revenue to offset those administrative costs. And the revenue of $224,385 does represent the amount needed to balance the fund. And you'll see, similar to our previous pension plans, the chart outlining the cost of the professional and contractual services, minor change. And the reason for those changes are the assets of this plan as a percentage of all of the assets of the Jacksonville Retirement System. This has a slight decrease. No service level changes, no employee cap changes, and no recommendations for this fund. Thank you. Seeing no speakers in the queue, we can move on. Page 44 is the Public Safety Survivor and Disability Pension. Same thing as what we've seen previously, the professional and contractual services breakdown right there in the middle of your page. And the decrease, once again, similar as the previous fund, is based on a slight decrease in the assets as a percentage of the total retirement system. No service level changes, there are no positions in this fund, and we have no recommendations. Okay. Thank you. Still no one in the queue? Please proceed. All right. That takes us to page 45, and this is the city's self-insurance fund, which covers the general auto and workers' comp policies. This internal service fund also services JEA, the JPA, the Housing Authority, and the Aviation Authority. Charges for services remains flat at just shy of $1.2 million. Charges for services. Charges for services insurance premiums, this represents the premiums billing to all participants, $52.9 million, an increase of $1 million year-over-year, and that's due to costs based on the actuarial study. The investment pool earnings are going up $381,000 based on anticipated earnings in the coming year. Within expenditures, there is a salaries line item of $1.7 million, and the net increase is due to three things, the first being the 3% salary increase, as well as some promotions that occurred during the year, and these were partially offset by the elimination of a vacant position. This fund does have its own salary and benefits lapse of $35,609. Pension costs are increasing due to that employee turnover and the increase in salaries. Employer-provided benefits of $366,000 are increasing due to the planned increase in the group health premiums. Within the insurance costs and premiums of $48.7 million, this represents the costs and premiums for all the city's general liability, auto liability, and workers' compensation programs. The net increase of $1.46 million is mainly due to an increase in the general and auto liability program of $2.1 million, attributed to an increase in claims based on recent claims experience and the actuarial analysis. This was somewhat offset by a reduction in the workers' compensation area of $676,000 due to a reduction in the heart and hypertension costs based on recent favorable claims experience. Professional and contractual services of $323,000 is seeing a year-over-year decrease of $425,000, mainly due to a JFRD in-house physical therapy and injury prevention program being discontinued due to its low utilization, as well as a decrease in other professional services based on a change in contract providers for the city's third-party administrator of workers' compensation, medical bill review, and payment processing services. This fund does have a supervision allocation, which represents the cost of the administrative staff housed in the insured programs fund as allocated to this fund. No service level changes. The employee cap is going from 26 positions to 25 due to a vacant safety officer position being eliminated, but we have no recommendations. Council President. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through the chair to Mr. Peterson, what's the philosophy behind everybody grouping together for the workers' comp and general auto liability, JEA, the port, et cetera? Is it because there's kind of a return to scale cost for those two? Through the chair, and I would let risk also weigh in on that, but yes, it's kind of to pull things together so that it's more consistent across everybody. You also have one administrative area as well. So, for example, Jacksonville Port Authority or Jacksonville Housing Authority would be saving money by joining together rather than doing it on their own? That would be the goal, yes. I mean, there was times where one of the independents was looking at moving out on some of this, and so it was better for the city as well and them, because there's actually both actually benefit from there, because we save costs because we have our personnel that is allocating some of their costs to them. So they pay for the administrative cost of our staff as well, so we are benefiting as well. It's both sides. Okay, and then do the entities have to have some affiliation for workers' comp groups or those who offer auto liability policies to consider putting them in the same group, for example, part of the consolidated government? I'm not sure I follow the question. So you're saying what allows them to be in ours? Yes, and it's specifically mentioned in the code and everything else. Like Chapter 128, I believe is the right number, would be the – sets up this entire program. They can opt to leave, and there's a process for that. But, yes, you have allowed them to be in there, yes. Like a third party just can't join it that's unrelated to the city? I would defer to legal if that would be possible. I do not know of why that would be – you know what I mean? You might get into a public purpose and everything else at that point, sir. Okay. That answers my question. Thank you. I have no other speakers, so on to the next one, please. All right. On page 48 is the Insured Programs Fund under the Risk Management Division of Finance, and this is the city's property insurance. This covers the city, the Jacksonville Port Authority, and the city maintains property coverage, aviation insurance, a blanket crime policy, and a policy covering the Riverwalk. The charges for services revenue line item is remaining flat at $900,000, and this represents recovery of damages and lost deductibles. Charges for services insurance premiums, budgeted at $16.3 million, is down $832,000 year over year. This represents the billing to using agencies. The reason for the decrease is the budgeted operational costs are also decreasing. There's a transfer from fund balance of $500,000, and this is used to cover any lost deductibles. If this is used, it's billed to the applicable using agency in the following fiscal year, which then replenishes the fund balance. Within the expenditures, there's $802,994 of salaries, which is a net increase of $22,000 year over year, and it's due to the 3% salary increase. Employer-provided benefits going up $46,000 for the group health premiums. Insurance costs and premiums, there's a net decrease of $818,000. That's primarily driven by a reduction of property insurance premiums based on current year's costs of $616,000, as well as a reduction of $203,000 for special events insurance since the Florida-Georgia game will not be held at a city venue next year. Supervision allocation of a negative $1.3 million. This represents the cost of the administrative staff housing this fund that are allocated to the self-insurance fund. No service level changes. Employee cap is staying the same, as well as part-time hours, and no recommendations. And no one in the queue. And that wraps up our finance departments. Next would be the employee services department, starting on page 50. This is the- Mr. Peterson, real quick, we're about to get into group health, correct? Group health is a component of employee services. We'll hit their general fund area first, but then we do get in a couple pages later as group health. Okay, because to the committee, the food is here. I think group health will be one of the longer discussions of the day. So maybe we knock out the first part of employee services, take an earlier than normal lunch, and then come back. Does that sound like a plan? Okay. Employee services. Go ahead, Mr. Peterson. All right. The employee services department consists of the employee labor relations division, talent management division, and the benefits division. Compensation of benefits is mainly housed in the group health fund, which we'll discuss later. Their expenditures budget of $7.5 million is increasing $179,000 year over year. Salaries represents $104,000 of that increase due to the 3% salary increase and also that lump sum payment that the non-public safety unions will be receiving based on their collective bargaining agreement. Pension costs are going up $20,934 due to employee turnover as well as the salary changes. Employer provided benefits increasing $260,323 due to that planned increase in group health premiums. Internal service charges budgeted at $1.29 million are decreasing due to the computer system maintenance allocation methodology change as well as a portion of the work related to the personnel and payroll management system ERP project that will be built separately within the main IT fund. Professional and contractual services are going down $16,240. The $1,074,000 that's in this line item is made up of professional services related to occupational health and medical services, consulting services for JFRD promotional exams, software licenses for the city's application tracking system, and it also includes $154,600 related to background screening and drug testing. On page 51 is a divisional summary of the employee services general fund department, but overall no service level changes, no employee cap changes, and no recommendations. And I have no one in the queue. All right. Page 52 houses within the general trust and agency fund the city's fitness and wellness fund. This $200,000 is a contribution from Florida Blue towards the city's wellness and fitness program. The contract, the expenditures within the professional and contractual services does adjust that for the fitness and wellness fund. There are no positions, no service level changes, and no recommendations. No one in the queue, Mr. Peterson, my only question was, and I didn't notice it in our pre-meeting, what's the $600,000 of the transfer from other funds? Yes, sir. So in this fund, due to prior activity, it houses the MHOP program and then the city's fitness and wellness fund. And so we break them up separately, but they're in the same fund for reporting purposes. Gotcha. Okay. You know, so we blew through that in about two minutes. It's only 10.56. I guess we can go ahead and get started with group health. And if we need to take a break and discuss the rest after lunch, we'll do that. So go ahead, page 53. And actually, Mr. Parks is our in-house group health expert, so he's going to present this fund to you. All righty. Mr. Parks. Yes. Through the chair to the committee. So the group health fund is on page 53 of your handout, and page 105 of the budget book has the financials. Some background on the fund. The internal service fund provides for the cost of group health, life, vision, dental insurances. On January 1 of 2015, the city moved to being partially, mostly self-insured, I would say. We have a stop-loss program that protects against certain risks. Currently, that is at a million dollars per claim, but could be increased whenever the quotes come in September. However, the city remains fully insured for the other insurance types. On January 1 of 2020, the FOP and IFF members moved to their own health, dental, and vision plans as authorized in their collective bargaining agreements. The employee portion of their contributions no longer flow through this fund, but the employer portion does, and I'll explain that in a few minutes. The city is required to have two months of average claims paid per month on hand at all times pursuant to the Office of Insurance Regulation Standards, or the city needs to certify that it has enough in the city's operating reserves. Since the fund had a deficit of $292,000 as of December 31 of 2025, they had to certify that the city did have enough to cover the $10.1 million of operating reserves that was needed. They did that in a letter on March 10, 2026. Per the administration, the health insurance premiums are planned to increase by 60% for the non-FOP IFF plans. The increase is budgeted to be paid almost entirely by the city with a change of no more than plus or minus $5 per pay period for employees. Per the administration, the city is covering the increase in premiums for retirees and the clerk of court state-funded employees for one year only. You saw a subsidy in day one related to $1.8 million for that. The Jacksonville Housing Authority, Northeast Florida Regional Council, and the First Coast Workforce have been notified of the rate increases and will be responsible for those effective October 1st. The administration has stated that rates are not expected to increase for any of the other insurance plans. Before I kind of get into going line by line, I'm actually going to go to the financial book on page 105 and start in the expenditures. You will see a $12.4 million increase right there. There are two things that are mainly causing that. There is a $4.5 million increase that we have to do related to the FOP and IFF collective bargain amount where we have to pay $665 per employee instead of $605. And then the remaining $8 million is mainly made up of moving the rebate out of a negative expense, for lack of a better term, and moving it up into the $10.3 million number above, which is the miscellaneous revenue line item. So expenses, so that's what's causing that piece to go up, is mainly just related to the FOP, IFF amount. The rest is fairly flat. So I'm going to start back up at the top on the charges for services. So you'll see a net increase of $25.7 million. Four lines down below, you have the negative $23.278, which was the contribution from the general fund and other funds last year. That is mainly just moving that contribution up into the charges for services line, as that's been built into everybody's employer contribution in all the departments that you are seeing. The 10.349 number represents a rebate amount of $8.5 million and the $1.8 million subsidy from the general fund for the retirees and clerk, which in total is actually $2 million and 1.5. They all set this slightly, factoring in that they will receive a fifth quarter, basically, of the rebate. If you remember, during the Duval-Doge committee meetings, talking about the timing on when rebates are happening, they're making the switch to going to quarterly. So this is a one time where they're going to get the full rebate for $26 and one quarter for the next year. So that's happening. And so the next thing would be the investment pool earnings. The amount of $2.24 just represents the anticipated investment pool earnings. There are no transfers from other funds as described above. The salaries are increasing by $104,183. Oops, sorry, I'm on the wrong page right there. So the increase of $33,771 is due to the 3% increase for FY2627, consistent with the non-public safety collective bargaining agreements, as well as an increase in part-time costs based on recent trends. The pension costs increase of $20,880 is primarily due to an increase in defined contribution costs based on the plans these employees are members of. Employer-provided benefits, again, this is the main increase in group health is causing that $64,886 increase. Internal service charges are increasing by $40,227, primarily due to an increase in building costs within the city hall due to adding additional space. $6,000 related to OGC and $5,000 related to the mailroom charges. Insurance costs and premiums, I've already kind of went over that. That's a $7.7 million is related to the claims paid with that 6.5 of that being specifically related to the rebate moving up above and then a $4.4 million increase in the FOP-IF contribution amounts pursuant to the collective bargaining agreements. Professional contractual services, the budget amount contains $200,000 for the wellness program and $429,000 for consulting and actuarial services for the city's self-insurance health plan, employee assistant program, the flexible spending account administrator, and an AI-powered prescription navigation platform and affordable care act compliance. The supervision allocation amount represents of negative 4483 is this fund allocating back to the general fund that Mr. Peterson mentioned related to a person that works in this area and related to the general fund activities. The indirect cost is that this is the allocation to operate central services of the city. There are no changes in the cap, but there are some service level changes we wanted to mention. Per employee benefits as of January 1, 2027, the Florida Blue Care 65 high deductible plan is being eliminated. Additionally, the default plan for employees, if a plan is not selected, will change from the UF health plan to the Florida Blue, to the Blue Care 128, 129, lack of better terms, it's a high deductible plan that has a HSA account on top of that, I think that's HSA, not H-A-S. And then additionally, an AI-powered pharmacy navigation platform designed to help members, employees, and healthcare providers identify a clinically equivalent cost-effective prescriptional terms that is being launched in October of 26th. It will help function like a comparison shopping tool for medication and integrate seamlessly with existing health plans and pharmacy benefit managers to lower costs and increase price transparency. Thank you, Mr. Parks. And I will say I had multiple meetings, met with Ms. O'Leary, met with Ms. Brochet, as well as multiple meetings with our auditors. To me, this is probably the most financially complex part of the budget this year, so thank you for everyone walking me through this, and I got to a place where I was comfortable with everything, and a lot of us, I see Dr. Salem's in the queue, but I'll say it first, group health has been one of our biggest concerns, just with the deficit that it was costing us each year. So I am glad to see that there is some action being taken on this, and I will recognize Dr. Salem now. Thank you, Chair. Some significant action. I mean, I think this is the year where we're seeing the most changes and clearly moving in the right direction. Never quick enough for me, but number one, the proposal out to determine the trying to get a better price on those high claims over a million dollars. That was a recommendation of the Bailey Group. Glad that's being done. Changing the default plan to this high-deductible plan is a good idea. The more people we can get in that high-deductible plan, the better off we are as a city. I can just tell you in the private sector, I was in a high-deductible plan for many, many, many years. You can manage it if you know what you're doing, and I think that's very positive. Mr. Parks, through the chair, do you know what the rebates were? And the movement of getting our rebates paid quarterly versus yearly is huge. I mean, they were holding our money for a year, basically, and able to do whatever they wanted with it, and now we're getting those rebate dollars on a quarterly basis, which is a huge change for us. Do you know what the rebates were last year versus this year? I had a preliminary number. Last I knew, we had not actually received the amount yet. This also includes a MAF rebate as well, and it's a little over about $8 million, actually, after you factor out the fact that we were, if you remember, there was an offset where they were holding some back, but what the rebate amount would be about $8 million. Okay. I mean, that's huge, and that's very positive. I just also want to mention that the Bailey Group did an analysis, and I know Darnell's in the audience, and they did an analysis of all the third-party plans that could handle our employees, Florida Blue, United Health, et cetera, and Florida Blue came out ahead. So I think the administration plans to bid that out in January, but as of when that analysis was done by the Bailey Group, Florida Blue was clearly the best. They did have concerns about Gallagher and the use of prime therapeutics. They recommended express scripts. I should also mention for the committee that Police and Fire, who pulled out from our plan, uses the Bailey Group, and they use express scripts as well. They're doing it for a reason. I've talked to the people at Police and Fire. They're very happy with that, and I think they are. Are we bidding out the Gallagher portion of this through the chair to Kelly? Kelly? And I have a couple more minutes. Chair? Yes. Thank you. Good morning. Kelly O'Leary, Mayor's Office. Through the chair to Councilman Salem, yes. I think what I reviewed when we were able to meet is that we are going to be bidding out the PBM. We are going to be bidding out Gallagher, also the administration and standalone care management. Those are all positive steps for us. Again, I wish it had happened before, but we're clearly moving in the right direction, and the spreading out of the costs of the plan to all the departments, I think, as I understand it, will lead to a look at rates that employees are paying for health insurance. It hadn't been raised, I think, in 12 or 13 years, something like that, and clearly. And I hope we tier it to where employees that are making a lot more money pay more for their health insurance. I don't want the person that's making $40,000 to carry the burden of those increases. That's my own personal opinion. So some very good news here. I wish it had occurred earlier, but I think Ms. O'Leary and her team are moving, clearly moving in the right direction. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, and I thank you, Dr. Salem, for leading this effort. I mean, a lot of you really focused on it this past year as well, and I think that helped ultimately in the direction we're moving as well. So I appreciate you taking on the challenge, and thank you to the administration as well for taking action on this. So, gentlemen, I was going to say let's take lunch, but I think we got about 15 minutes left in the agenda for the day. So I say we power on through. Is Mr. Conyers here? He's not. Can we do Human Rights Commission first? So we're going to do Human Rights Commission. And I'm sorry, there were no recommendations we needed for employee services, correct? So the only two things left on the agenda are Human Rights Commission and Military Affairs. So let's go with Human Rights Commission. All right. That is page 59 of your handout, proposed budget book, page 155. The Human Rights Commission has revenues of $22,215. This is a projected reimbursement from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for employment discrimination investigations they perform. They have an expenditures budget of a little over $1.1 million. That is increasing $99,000 year over year. Salaries of $681,000, increasing $13,152, is due to the 3% salary increase. Employer-provided benefits are increasing $35,326, due to the planned increase in group health premiums. Internal service charges, $243,000 are going up, mainly due to an increase in OGC legal charges. As well as an increase in the IT systems allocation. These increases were partially offset by a decrease in the ITED replacement costs due to the replacement of 13 PCs budgeted in 2526. Professional and contractual services are going down $3,140 due to these funds not being used in recent years. There are no changes to the employee cap. On page 60, there's one food and beverage item of $800, as well as no service level changes and no recommendations. Thank you, Mr. Peterson. I have no one in the queue. Before we move on to military and veterans affairs, yesterday there was a question on the cooling centers. I cannot remember who had the specific question, but we do have folks here to speak to that, if we so desire. It was Mr. Freeman. Okay. Well, we have certainly mismatched our schedules then. So, but I do thank you for being here. Let's see, Mr. Peterson. Go ahead. Councilman Johnson, you're recognized. I can go ahead and ask those questions, just so they're on the record. If the cooling center folks want to come up. Sure. Is that Andre? Who's here to speak to the cooling centers? Just so we can, since we do have you guys over here, if you could just answer. I think the question with a colleague, I don't know. I'm fine with it as I see that it works, but Chief Ayub, thank you so much for being here through the chair. The cooling centers, could you give us some data as to the number of people that are serviced at those cooling centers and then why it's necessary, obviously you being certified and prepared in emergency preparedness. Could you give us some data on that, please? Absolutely. So, I'll talk first about the warming centers. For this past year, we activated for 10 days. We serviced 207 people for the warming centers. For the cooling centers, we activated one day so far, potentially this Sunday, but we serviced 101 people. But a total of 308 people in 11 days total. And let me tell you, to answer your question about the necessity for it, when I was appointed this position in 2023, I met with Dr. Joshi, and we talked. We looked at certain services in the city, how we can help our most vulnerable. So, our elderly, our homeless population, our young children. Not everybody blesses us, you know, to have central heat and air. So, we know there's that vulnerable population. So, we came together, brought a task force. So, it's not just COJ. We have many organizations that are part of this task force. And we came up with this plan. It's been very helpful to provide that service for our community. Thank you, Chief. Continuing, is this something that is commensurate for other cities of our size around the country? And how are they implementing it? And how's our implementation juxtaposed with theirs? Great question. I'll say this. We researched that to see what other – we didn't want to reinvent the wheel. Not every community is doing what we're doing. This isn't really a national model. We've taken it to the next level, how we partner with JTA for free transportation and all our partners. So, this is really a national model of what we're doing in Duval County. Let's talk about your numbers as well. JTA provides cooling buses for events. I know I've gone to several events with cooling buses when I sat on the JTA board. No, sir. JTA provides transportation. No, no. I'm just saying outside of what you do. Yes, sir. They do cooling buses for events. Yes, sir. Like I went to, I think, Juneteenth, I believe it was. They had a cooling bus there. We were doing it for the Jaguar games. Jaguar games, things like that. Are any of those numbers put into your numbers to bring the total number of the work that we're doing as a city to help those vulnerable populations, number one? And then the second part of that is I know yesterday one of the members, I'm not sure who it was, I can't remember, said something about the libraries. Obviously, those libraries are other facilities that are used as cooling centers. And I'm assuming, since the fire departments, you can walk up to a fire department and get your blood pressure checked. You can probably go there if you're having some heat issues. Art, do you have numbers on the total of people that we're servicing? Because I think it's probably larger than we even anticipated. So the first part of your question, Pastor Johnson, we, JTA, we don't have those numbers, you know, for JTA. To answer your question, for the woman centers, Monday through Saturday, I mean, our libraries, our splash pads, community centers, all that, we don't track those numbers. So to answer your question, the numbers could be so much more that we want people to feel free. You know, we don't want, you know, obviously it comes with, if we try to do that, the first year we tried, and then you're trying to track all these numbers. Are people going to the library just to go to the library, or are they seeking, you know, space for, you know, to cool off? So it's very labor intensive. So the numbers can be so much more than the numbers I gave you. Gotcha. I think that answers the question. And if I can share one thing, you know, and me and Dr. Josie talked to us, and with Chief Golden, I think the thing we have to think about, as I said earlier, not everybody blesses us to have central heat and air. So these 308 people I've said, those are 308 people that we potentially save from going to the emergency room and or passing away. So those are lives that we are saving and providing that service. So I'm very proud to be a part of this task force. And thank you for the, I passed a resolution earlier this year, was it last year, earlier this year? But thank you, I just saw all of the work that you had done. And I want to say this on the record again, the model that you have done through emergency preparedness of getting our city ready, and that Chief Golden has done to make sure that you have the resources that you need. We are a national model for emergency preparedness. And that includes cooling and warming centers. And I wanted to make sure that we recognize you both for the great work that you're doing for our city. Thank you. Okay, well, I'm considering this matter settled. Mr. Freeman, if he asks questions again on it, we can relay the information that Andre gave us. So since Harrison's not here, I say we keep on asking hard questions to Andre. Unless anybody has a better suggestion on how we spend the time. Harrison's on his way. He is moments from being here. Yes. Y'all want to take a five-minute break until he gets here? All right. We will take a five-minute break and then come back for five minutes and then be done with the day. I don't know why I paid for everyone's lunches. It's military and veterans affairs. So, Mr. Peterson, if you want to get started on that. All right. That takes us to page 56 of our handout. It's your page 173 in your budget book. The military affairs and veterans department has a total budget of $1.7 million, which is increasing $243,265 over the prior year. Within salaries, there's an increase of $48,856 due to the 3% salary increase, as well as to cover some promotions that occurred during the year. Employer provided benefits are increasing $75,000 related to the group health premiums, internal service charges, $154,380 due to increases in the IT allocation, as well as ITD replacements of computers, and then an increase in OGC legal charges. In the grants, aids, and contributions line item, there's an increase of $60,000 related to a Feeding Northeast Florida Food Pharmacy program. We have a recommendation as it relates to that. Flipping to page 57, they have two items on the food and beverage expenditure attachment that total $600,000, or $600, sorry, not $600,000. On the schedule of B1A grants that require no city match, they have four grants totaling $230,000 that funds three FTE positions. On the schedule of grants requiring a city match, there's one grant at $276,425 with a $30,000 city match that does fund three FTE positions and 1,040 part-time hours. No service level changes, no employee cap changes. Our recommendation is if you do want to fund the food pharmacy program previously mentioned, we recommend a direct contract with a term sheet be added to the budget ordinance to avoid the need for separate legislation. This does no impact to special counsel contingency. Thank you. I have no one in the queue. I got a couple questions and comments. First, I want to reflect on what a great year it's been for this department. In January, Harrison was named an American Defense Community Champion, which, again, individual award, but a recognition of the entire team that we have. So I think that is the first applause in this budget season. I didn't even get to the team award. Just last week, I believe it was, Jacksonville was named a great American defense community, acknowledging the support that we give to our veterans and active duty service members. And certainly, Harrison's department was key in us getting that award. One thing I do want to ask Mr. Harrison about is we're up to $8.6 million in the Veterans Community Center. Could you just give us a brief update on where that stands? Because the mayor added $400,000 into the CIP. Rather than having you come back here on CIP, I figure now's the time just to save everyone time in the future. If you could just give us a brief update on that. Sure. Through the chairman to the council. So thank you for that opportunity. It's been about a year and a half process. To get us to where we are able to move forward with this. So in this year's CIP, we've got $400,000 for site prep. For the Veterans and Military Families Community Center. This will be really kind of a first of its kind center. Now, there's other communities that have meeting space for veterans and have some level of social services. But this will incorporate not only the meeting space. It will incorporate social areas. It will include a coffee bar to support those social areas. A gymnasium, green space. And then access to the Emerald Trail. Where we'll be able to have a gymnasium to do community activities. But we'll be able to have bike and kayak rentals for our military families. And for our veterans here in the community. So really, nobody else incorporates kind of the wellness concept like we're trying to do with this 10,000 square foot facility. We have submitted a federal Department of War grant for this. We're hopeful. This will get word in September whether we're tracking forward with that. But yes, sir. In next year's CIP budget, currently I believe there is $8.6 million for the construction of this facility. We did utilize a community-wide survey through a group called Endeavors that we did two and a half years ago to help us come up with the service levels we wanted to provide at this building. So we took actually the word of our veterans and our military families in the community to help scope what we want to do. Council President. Thanks, Will. And Harrison, thanks for being here. And I reiterate what Councilman Lane had said. You've done a great job. You've had a great year. Regarding Endeavors, have we potentially reengaged with them about contributing cost to the veteran center? Because when they originally approached us, they were thinking about doing just that, and they've done that in other cities. Through the chairman and the council president, we have had conversations with Endeavors. They're actually kind of in a retrenchment mode right now. They've closed up some facilities in Texas. They were looking to expand into Florida, but they have since backed off that. But we are using their model to help push this forward. And a question that you might be asking is, are we engaging with community partners? We are. We are looking for naming rights and other kind of supports for this facility, not only to help us with the construction of it, but also the future cost. I wasn't thinking of that question, but it was nice that you kind of pretended that I had been thinking of that question, because it's a very good one. Second thing, Mr. Chair, if you don't mind, regarding great American defense communities, we've always known we were great. It's great to see someone else outside of Jacksonville acknowledge that. And then one final thing I wanted to bring up, because it was at this point last year that I talked about potentially moving the Veterans Memorial Wall. And I subsequently put it upon myself, I think we had a short notice meeting, and then I put it on myself to explore whether we could do that. And if you remember, the goal was to potentially move it to a more solemn place, potentially on the river, given what is likely to become the larger sports entertainment complex. But the risk was based on how the wall was constructed and how difficult would it be to move breaking the wall. And we all know for all those Gold Star families just how special that wall is and how it evokes so many important emotions, and we treasure that in our city. We're a very military and veteran-friendly place. Well, I met with three riggers. Riggers are companies that specialize in moving factories or walls or delicate objects. And the first rigger said it was a rigger that moves factories. The first rigger said, no, it'll break. I then went to a museum rigger that specializes in, you know, more delicate moves, moving museum pieces. That one said, the wall's going to break. So finally I went to, you know, tried and true Haskell in town, and I asked them to come take a look at it, and they said, the wall will likely break. So that became too difficult for me. The only option then if we wanted to have a wall in a more solemn place would probably be to build one, and that would cost a lot of money. And I'm not sure that would ever be the intent of the Gold Star families or the desire of the Gold Star families whose names are on that wall. So about two or three months ago I decided I would not pursue this anymore. It doesn't mean that my colleagues can choose to pursue it, but I think at this point whatever we do to develop the sports and entertainment complex, we make sure we do it with that wall and its solemnity in mind and make it a, keep it a sacred place despite that. So thank you, Harrison. Sir. Thank you, Council President. And while we're talking about military and veterans things, you may have seen in the news something I've been working on. Whether or not I was on city council, I would have been a part of this team. Only one warship ever named after Jacksonville, the USS Jacksonville, which was a submarine. And a few weeks ago, it was like years in the making, but the Navy did finally release the sail superstructure to us. It's all privately funded at this time. Been working with Landstar as well as Fink and Terry Marine. In the coming weeks, it's in Seattle, so it's about as far away as it could be from us. But we're going to, it's going to be four trucks is what it takes to get it here. We're going to move that sail from Seattle to Fink and Terry Marine. They've offered to store it in a safe, secure place. And then our parks director knows that we want to put it near the Orlick. So as part of the shipyard's west design, it'll not just be the Orlick, but we'll also have the sail superstructure of the USS Jacksonville. Again, the only warship ever named after our hometown here. So excited about that project. If you've ever been to Buffalo, New York, they have a kind of a naval museum park. Ours won't be as grand as that, but we'll have the Orlick, the USS Jacksonville sail, and who knows what else we can add there in the coming years. So that's a project that Harrison's been involved with as well, helping to coordinate that. And I'm excited about that going to be in its namesake hometown pretty soon. So any other questions for Mr. Conyers? All right. And Harrison, don't worry about coming on CIP Day. That was why I wanted you to talk about the community center now. So with that, committee members, we are done, I believe. Is there any? I got a motion to second on the recommendation. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Mr. Peterson, what do we have as far as any other loose ends to wrap up now? The only large one I was tracking is Wolfson's, which Council Member Freeman evidently has a notice meeting on that. So I'd encourage others to tag on to that if you do want to go and get your questions answered. Any other loose ends for today? For today, no. We do still have the WJCT issue to circle back towards. And Wolfson's, and that's the legal opinion related to conference facilities Mary's going to send to you off. Okay, great. And remind me, what's on the schedule for next Thursday? It is a lot of the courts related items, public defender, state attorney, then we'll get into tax collector, supervisor of elections, the Office of Administrative Services. We'll hit solid waste, fleet management, copy center, and then finish with parks and rec and the planning department. Okay, great. And then I believe all the independent authorities except JA are next Friday, correct? Okay, and so Council Members, I just encourage you, I don't want next Friday to be the independent authorities presenting to us. I want it to be the time for us to ask questions and discuss amongst ourselves. So if you haven't gotten the pre-meeting done, try to get it done next week just so we can clearly focus that time on any changes we potentially want to make, not to see it for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Chair, my apologies for stepping out. I thought you were going to be a little behind, and my daughter just voted for the first time. So I raced over to try to meet with her schedule. I heard you mention about the notice meeting. I've been advised that it's a 48-hour notice at minimum that we have to have, not a 72-hour. So Jerry's going to work on that. Is there something different in it? Because I want to make sure she's right on that. If it's 48 or 72, we want to make sure we're within that window. Through the chair to Council Member Freeman, so the consistent counsel from our office is as follows. For standing meetings, you would provide no less than seven days' notice. For special meetings or notice meetings, we recommend no less than 72 hours' notice, and that's based on attorney general opinions on what is a reasonable notice. Okay. We'll stick with that. I'll make sure she understands that, and that puts us closer to it. And so thank you for that. And then the last thing I want to say is just to the body, to this committee, you know, this is my ninth budget and the 11th overall that I've seen. And how you all have communicated with each other, how we've been working well together is something that I must commend you on. It reminds me of the very first ones when it was Lloyd Boyer and Greg Anderson and those individuals. I also want to reference a point to Mr. Weinstein and say, Mr. Weinstein, I had a mentee ask me the other day, like, what do you do in this political space? And I said, one, you have to have thick skin. You've got to work hard, have thick skin, and be able to move on. And so what I want you to understand is I don't know whatever I might have experienced this morning, but I'm not one that's going to carry a grudge or move on with it. Whatever happened, happened today, and I'll move on from it. And that's one thing that I've learned, that we've done it up here as well as a council, so I want to thank you all. And I wanted you guys to hear that, because my mentee is watching, and I know that they watched how I responded, but I want them to also watch how I, in a public place, acknowledge the great work that you've done in this city over many, many years, Mr. Weinstein, and I want to thank you for your service. I'm going to go to Mr. Peterson, who is a CPA. I want to correct for the record. I am not a CPA. You called me that this morning. No, it's a, I'm forward-looking, and then CPAs clean up the mess that I create. So, Mr. Peterson. Through the chair, I just wanted Mr. Parks to provide you the balances of the various buckets that we have, because I know I'm going to get a request from the press, and I'd like you to hear it first. Through the chair to the committee. So, within the referendum contingency would be the $7.6 million. With the designated go-to reserves, $12,719,591. And within special council contingency, $2,504,144. That adds up to $22,823,735. Mr. Parks, so the way I think of it is, again, we're probably going to roll into the year with what I would call a surplus budget. We always have to send it somewhere, whether it's reserves or whatever. But I believe the total expenditures of the budget as submitted was $2.023,026. Okay. All right. Thank you. Council Member Johnson and then Boylan. Actually, mine had nothing to do. I'm wrapped up, so I'm excited. I literally, with all the great things that Councilman Freeman said, I was going to tease him for having an 18-year-old to talk about how old he is, but he said such nice things, so I will not talk about how old he is. And I must say to you, Mr. Chair, the Bible says, and I'm not a preacher, but that Abraham was called a father before he knew he was a father. So, Mr. CPA, we appreciate you. Council Member Boylan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I apologize for not being here this morning. I was doing my canvassing board duties. Sadly, of the 67 counties in the state of Florida, we rank 66th in terms of voter turnout. Wow. So do what you can to encourage people to take the time to go to their precinct. And early voting now, it's easy to do. Any precinct, you can get that done. All right. Anything else? All right. With that, we are done with day two. Thank you.