Today is Thursday, August 6th. This is the August meeting of the taxation, revenue, and utilization of expenditures, or the true commission. We have five. We need six, correct? Correct. So we do not have a quorum. We may not take any action until we have a sixth person to arrive. Do we have any excused or unexcused absences? I have two excusals, one from Mr. Barr and one from Kishon Hargrove. The others are unexcused, I assume. All right. We are going to go out of order a little bit so we can have a nice uninterrupted flow of continuity. Mr. Nooney, if you'd go up, please, and deliver your public comments. And if you'll excuse me, I have to make a phone call. All right. Well, hello. I am John J. Nooney, Jacksonville City Council Resolution 20230819. I'm in City Council District 4, CPAC 3, School Board District 3. And what I just want to do is just share with you, you know, with the true commission. And, you know, let me just – first of all, you know, I'm going to be making a donation. You know, gosh, you know, here you're being up first. Well, real quick, this is how I'm reflected in the minutes. And this is the true commission meeting minutes. John Nooney talked about various special revenue trust funds. Mr. Nooney was interrupted by the chair several times for not addressing items on the agenda. Okay. So, anyway, I'm going to a whole bunch of meetings everywhere. And listen to these minutes. John Nooney discussed the importance of expanding public access to Jacksonville waterways, including additional access points and boat ramps. He referenced city reports identifying access deficiencies and highlighted potential park property acquisitions, including sites near Pottsburg Creek. He also discussed our real city trust funds, including the Parks Trust Fund, Veterans Trust Fund, and Artificial Reef Trust Fund, encouraging greater public awareness and use of these resources to support community projects. Additionally, he highlighted regional organizations like the Northeast Florida Regional Council and funding opportunities, including the Florida Inland Navigation District that could assist with improving waterway access. And I don't have it right, you know, it's on the table. But you know what? The other day I was at the Board of County Commissioners for St. Johns County. Here is the agenda. You know, I just came from the Northeast Florida Regional Council at seven counties. And listen to this. Number 11, potential impacts of property tax reform, Mrs. Payne. Well, just keep this in mind. Amendment 3, you know, our place is a revenue source. And Duval County could be one of the biggest embarrassments when it comes. One minute. Well, I'll tell you what. You know, like I said, I could give you some shirt updates. We've got some hat updates coming. We are making a movie. And let me just highlight those trust funds. You know, 2009, 442, that's the Artificial Reef Trust Fund. 2026, 0004, Park Trust Fund. 2025, 0463, the Veterans Trust Fund. 2026, 0396, that's the movie trust fund. 2025, 0867, Duval County Public Schools, CIP. Wendy Kahn, Capital Improvement Projects. You know, we got crushed at the Finance Committee. You know, I'm in CPAC 3. It's probably the worst CPAC you could be in. You have 30 seconds. You know, we were a complete no-show for finance. And so, City of Jacksonville, there are seven school board districts. I got my Dr. Bernier shirt, you know, and this hat, FWC. It's a spin of the Fish and Wildlife Commission, CIA. Well, it's classrooms in America. So all I can tell you is, you know, here's two checks. And Roche is here. Awesome. Thank you, Mr. Dooney. Your time is up. All right. All right. We have a new member joining us after we... Oh, this guy's awesome, too. You know, I'm... All right. If you'll state your name and address for the record, then you can fill out the speaker card and hand it in. Yes. So thank you. Ernest Smith, 400 East Bay Street, Suite 901. Thank you for allowing me to indulge you, Chair. Just wanted to give an update. I know that the current Urban Corps CPAC representative to the True Commission is absent, and we have one in the hopper right now. So be looking for that to come through in the next cycle, if you will. We have a participant that is willing to volunteer to come to the True Commission. I believe Kim Pryor was the last representative from the Urban Corps, but we have another representative that is willing and ready to step up to take on that position. So just want to give you an update. That's all. Are you the Chair of the CPAC? Correct. And your name is Ernest? Ernest Smith. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Look forward to having them join us, hopefully in September. Yes. So I keep forgetting that we begin the committee meeting at 4 and then commission meets at 4.30. Maybe in light of today, we will not bifurcate the process, but maybe unify it since we do have our Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Brochet, former member of the City Council. If you would like to make a presentation, I'm sure there are many questions we would love to ask you. So, Ms. Brochet. Thank you, and good afternoon to the True Commission. As Chairman Day shared, my name is Anna Brochet, and I have with me Michelle Begley, who is our comptroller, who was actually just appointed, formally appointed at the last council meeting. So Colleen reached out and said that there were questions about the financial reporting process, the closed process, I guess, is probably more appropriate, and we don't have any specific presentation, but would be happy to answer questions. There's a difference between the monthly closed process that we have and then the annual closed process that we go through in preparation for our external audit. And so Michelle's the one who actually oversees the closed process on a regular basis, her teams, and it's actually more broad than accounting. Michelle oversees the accounting division, and she's one of the five divisions that report to me, but she actually collaborates with procurement and with treasury to make sure that all the different modules within our system are properly addressed in the process of kind of, I wouldn't say locking down, but saying, hey, we're done with this month, and we're moving on to the next month. So yeah, there's a lot to it, so I would really prefer that you actually ask us your questions, and then we can get more specific. So we will go ahead and get started. We will go alphabetically, so that would put Mr. Lures, you're up. I don't have any questions regarding the topic at hand, but I do have something regarding the work that I've been doing with the PSG thing, but I can absolutely. You're on the agenda, so we'll get back to that. All right, so in that case, we're going to go to Mr., I'm sorry, Ms. Roundsville, then Mr. Tyson, then Mr. Youngblood. I don't have any questions at this time. Mr. Tyson. I don't have any specific questions. I know we were, a lot of things were discussed. A lot of it was the process itself and how it all came together as far as the monthlies, the quarterly, and the annual, and how the carryovers and the, my brain's missing right now, but how the carryovers and those things that are approved but they're not spent until maybe sometimes can be moved to leave in the next year and how that process works. Okay, that's a great question. Thank you. So there were a number of questions in there actually, and I'll start with the, you know, we're rocking along and we're paying bills and receiving money every month and processing a lot of different things within the city. And we have a close schedule that indicates that the month will close by a date certain of the following month. And that's really basically telling the system we're closing the different modules and so that anything going forward is reporting in the proper month. So there's a process that we go through in the system. And when then, so each of those months and then, you know, we have a string that's, you know, the next person in line to close, there's an order that the system dictates in terms of the modules that close. And then, boom, the general ledger is the final piece that needs to shut down. So that's for the month. And that happens every month in a quarter. And the quarterly reports that you hear about, which our council auditor receives and evaluates and then presents to the finance committee, it's a matter of those three months rolling into the quarter. But the end of the quarter is a little bit more important in terms of the reporting because there is, I say it's more important. We're just making sure that anything that might have been found in a prior month or a prior quarter that we're addressing so that we can make sure that it's a clean presentation to a lot of different constituencies. Those quarters roll into the year and the year-end process is even more stringent in terms of the reconciliations and the documentation and the steps that Michelle and her team go through to make sure that we invite our external auditors in and give them the records that they need to conduct that audit. With respect to carry forwards, I'm glad for the opportunity to explain the distinction that every budget that gets approved, it truly is for that year. The $2 billion budget that we proposed is for the operating budget for the year, the fiscal year, ended the 27. But there are things that we do, like our capital projects, specific pieces of legislation that don't necessarily have an end date of the year. There needs to be drivers, legislatively driven authority for things to happen outside of a particular fiscal year. And then besides that authority for something to take longer than a year and for the system to reflect that, we also are given the authority to make purchases. And some of those purchases do cross years in terms of a purchase order having been issued because we were told we could spend a million dollars on something. And we issue a purchase order and with all the tracking and the paperwork and the billing from the vendors and people that we use to provide services, that might not necessarily all close down before an end of a fiscal year. And so there may be some purchase orders that stay open and eventually get closed. Michelle leads a process at least quarterly where she's telling our departments, here's a list of all your open purchase orders. And unless we hear a justifiable reason that we agree is true justification, we're shutting it down. And so there are a lot of different things that we do to make sure that people don't have access to funding from long ago that they really shouldn't have. Just because somebody can't say, I need it to stay open. And that's not a justification to keep a purchase order open. So the carry forwards are out there in terms of things that do cross years because they are intended to last longer than a year or because there may be purchase orders that need to cross over and let them clean up and finish up after the end of the fiscal year. Anything to add, Michelle? I'm doing pretty good. I'm acting like I'm in the weeds. So basically, if they don't close it out or know they are going to, then they need to file some reason to have it move carried forward and then it has to be approved before they can do that. So if it's not legislatively approved to stay open beyond the end of a fiscal year, like it's automatically going to take three years to do a particular public works project that's going to stay open. But for regular purchase orders that are for items intended to be only for one fiscal year, quarterly, Michelle reaches out to all the finance managers in every department and says, here's the list of open purchase orders that you have. And we're shutting them down unless you give us good reason for them to stay open. Mr. Youngblood. No questions at this time, but I just learned where I was able to park and I found the restroom. So we're still learning how this all works. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You're ahead of my process when I joined, so that's half the battle. I have some questions. Sure. Sort of macro. How far out do we project the financial, the operating budget for the city of Jacksonville? I know we approve a budget annually, but do we have a strategic mindset where, you know, we know our tax rolls. We know that we're going through a development process. We know that some properties come from unimproved to an improved status. We know that there is a general increase in the market value of our tax rolls. Do we make some assumptions and then try to prepare a three- to five-year forward projection on the revenues and projected expenditures from the city government? Thank you. We do that through the form of, I believe, Tommy, you would know, I believe it's in the code that we prepare a particular schedule that we submit with each annual budget. It's Schedule B3. It's in the schedules on the legislative gateway attached to 2026-504. That provides a five-year projection for revenues and expenditures at a pretty high level. So we're having, in general, we know where we're headed, but the GPS functions on an annual basis, so to speak. Yes. Right. And then the capital improvement programs, it's a five-year look forward, and are all of the capital improvement programs generally started and completed within that five-year time frame? Absolutely not. What would be the general distribution then? What's the most extreme case that you've encountered, and you've been involved in this circus for a number of years now? I'm not even sure, but I'm confident that there are projects that have taken longer than five years to start and complete. And let me explain some of the reasons why. At times, there's some eminent domain work involved. There are easements that we have to get. There's collaboration with different parties like FDOT. There's just a lot of moving parts, and each project has its own characters and web of issues that have to be navigated in order for things to move forward. So things change. You find environmental issues that people didn't anticipate. So what I'll share is that every year we do propose a five-year CIP, capital improvement program that you mentioned. And the first year of those five years is what is being appropriated in the budget process. The remaining five years is approved by the council, but not for spending. It's basically kind of a look at what's ahead, that strategic look that you're talking about. But everything that has been approved in the past doesn't necessarily show up in those pages. There's a section in the CIP book that describes authorized, not yet lent, because even in this year, $1.4 billion of projects has been previously approved, but not even showing up in the, you know, one point whatever billion or $2 billion of five years of work that we're proposing right now. The good thing about the way that we have structured, the way that we fund these projects is that instead of presenting a plan and going out and borrowing money to do those projects, we actually leverage the city's cash portfolio to spend. And before the end of the year, we go to the market and issue bonds to, quote, refill the buckets of spend. So we only borrow for projects based on spending that has actually occurred. We are not paying interest on debt for something that's still trying to go through some attorneys to do eminent domain work. What would, what's the current or the latest information you would have as to what are the cash balances for the city of Jacksonville, just the city of Jacksonville, not the independent authorities? So our operating portfolio, I can't tell you what today's balance or yesterday's is, but the average balance across a year, because you know, we get taxes, we start collecting in November and December. So we, we, we receive a lot of cash early and then we ride that cash through the rest of the year. But the average balance for the 12 months is $1.6 billion. With a B. With a B. I want to go back a little bit and talk about the lapses. And this is sort of my observation that has come to me is that we, the budget gets approved by the council, goes into effect October 1st. And then as we get these quarterly reports, we, we see that there is a shortfall that one of the agencies or some departments have overspent their, if you were to look at this on a quarterly basis, they have spent more than one fourth of their budgeted expenditures. And the explanation is always given, well, we're not too concerned about it because we know we can make it up on the back end, which leads me to question, why aren't we budgeting on a monthly basis as opposed to a lump sum annual basis? Because I think what that contributes to is an attitude of, we'll go ahead and spend it. We'll make it up on the back end, as opposed to saying, okay, this is, this is the level of physical activity that's going to occur by department within a month. And this is going to be the level of financial commitment and expenditures required. Now, I came out of Barnett Banks. We knew monthly what we were budgeted to spend. We had the ability to project monthly what our revenues were going to be because we had, you know, the great bulk of our assets were in contracts, legal contracts, you know, promissory notes. So we could project with a relatively high degree of certainty. And we knew what our profit target was. So we knew that if our revenue was X and our target profit was Z, we could only spend Y. And if Y exceeded what was budgeted, you had to explain what that was. And I believe that that's one of the strengths of the private sector in being able to manage an organization. And I don't see that discipline in city government or state government or certainly not federal government. And do you believe that if we were to go to an actual monthly budgetary process, do you think we could create and instill a culture of financial discipline within the city that is perhaps lacking? Because as we, every month we hear these presentations by Mr. Carter and it's like, okay, why was this money spent? And nobody really knows. We just say, well, it got spent and, you know, it was in the budget. But, you know, do you think that that would be a, it would certainly be a, I think, a more complicated process to follow that budget. But do you think that would contribute to a better level of discipline and a different culture within city government? I don't think that we've ever said that we'll make it up on the back end. And maybe you're paraphrasing your, your interpretation of, of, of what is there. I think there's an explanation of the favorable and unfavorable variances from a categorical perspective. But yet, I'll take, for example, sports and entertainment's budget is not going to happen ratably. And that might be what you're talking about. Like if they have spent a lot of their money because the jazz festival happens at a certain point in the fiscal year that causes it to be spent earlier or whatever reason. If we, if we receive somebody's rent at the beginning for the whole year, is it going to change things? Maybe so. And there may be some different nuances within each department that would cause some of those fluctuations. Mr. Carter might not know or other people might not know, but I'm pretty sure that the department director and the finance people within the department that's reporting knows what happened and could speak to it. It just might not be apparent to everybody else why certain, certain money has been spent. So to your overall question, do you, I believe that moving to a monthly budgeting process would create a different culture or a kind of discipline that would be helpful? I am not sure. And I'm so glad that you said this in your remarks. It would be a much more complicated process and be more involved. I'm not sure that the investment in resources that would be required in order to implement such an approach would be worth the difference at the end of the day. Why would it be more expensive to do it that way? You're talking about... I mean, the rhythm of city government, it's pretty well established. We're going to start the budget cycle in October. We know that in November and December, we're going to have this huge infusion of cash. And, you know, probably by certainly into March, we probably have collected, what, 96, 97 percent of ad valorem taxes. Maybe 3 percent is going to be in the delinquent category. And so we know that that's the rhythm of the revenue side for ad valorem. The non-ad valorem, so it comes in and it's a litany of revenue line items. And it's just, you know, things I've never heard of. And we can now look back historically and we know, okay, this month, this amount of money should come in for, you know, let's say utility tax or JEA pays their franchise tax or AT&T pays their franchise tax or public utility tax or, you know, the different revenue categories. So why would it be then, why would it require a higher level of investment? Well, you're asking, you're asking for projections to be updated monthly. Which is a managerial process. Yes. I will just submit to you, it would be more involved. You said, like, help me understand what you mean by it would be a more complicated process. Well, because you have, the management team has to begin thinking on a monthly basis as opposed to an annual basis. I think too often times, at least I think the perception of the public is that, okay, government says, all right, this was what we spent last year, so just mark it up by 2% and that's going to be your budget for next year. We don't go through line item by line item and say, okay, for the month of October, these activities are going to occur. These are the number of staff hours that are going to take. Therefore, we can calculate payroll. We can calculate travel expenses, educational expenses, the various related operating expenses. We know that we have a computer, a bank of computers for parks and recreation that in May of 2027 is going to hit the five-year mark. And I don't know what our policy is about upgrading technology, but we would know that in May we need to budget that expenditure of funds to cover that expense. I mean, that's how we did it in the public sector, in the private sector. How do you know that's not happening here? Well, that's my question. Is it? It is. All right. How do we know that? How do I know that? Because I oversee a nine-month budget process. And a nine-month budget process, you mean that we start this process in January to culminate September 30th? We do. So we began preparing the city budget in January. We do. And how much of that budget is projected through historical performance versus new, I think Mitch Attala called them betterments, new aspects of city spending, new programs? I think both. It's not an either-or. It is an understanding of what, you know, we don't say your budget was $50 million and we're going to give you 2% more. We don't. You don't do that. I agree. I think that's the perception of the public. Yeah. How do we begin to correct that perception? Well, you know, if- Maybe the mayor needs to, as she goes through her town hall meetings coming up, she needs to maybe explain that? Would that be one way of doing it, perhaps? Could be. I'm sure that there's a tremendous amount of education necessary. I think people who are involved in the process, like Mr. Nooney, and come to the meetings and spend time with the budget information to understand. And there's an explanation through every fund in terms of what it is that it's based on and the fact that we're trying to put forth current level of service, like what does it cost to deliver the same services that we do today? We have a process by which departments can request enhancements for new programs or new things that want to happen. And I've led the departments, at least for the last two years, through a process of meeting with me and other leaders in the city to understand if you had to cut your budget 10%, how would you do it? And so I have the information available to me to understand when it is that we do need to make cuts, should that be the case. And oftentimes the need to create room to afford those new programs that you're wanting to do. We go through and periodically prune programs, say, look, we've been doing, you know, I don't want to say, I don't want to pick on a program, but let's just for the sake of argument, meals on wheels. Okay, we've been delivering 10,000 meals a day last year. This year, you know, we think it's going to drop to 9,000 meals a day. How do we project that type of spending? What's our process? How do we manage that at city government? Well, if we're doing 10,000 meals and the wait list is 10,000, we're not going to prune it to 9,000. Then how do we go about adding it? And this is the other part, because I asked this question of Mr. Weinstein when he led Kids Hope Alliance. And I said, all right, I've heard you make this presentation and you're getting, I think it was 32 million a year. And this was probably three years ago, but you're only, and you are hitting this many clients. But we know in the city of Jacksonville, that pool is probably twice that number, but we're not delivering that service. So what is the process by which we begin making the argument that we need to increase the investment in certain programs, whether it's social programs, you know, capital spending programs, or, you know, economic development programs? How, what's our process for going through that? Or do we have a process? I'm not sure that there's a large city process. Each director is responsible for coming up and making the case of why something needs to be different and more than what they're currently offering. I do know that the mayor's, the mayor's review, the State of Jack's information that you've heard, stateofjacks.org, where we're getting down to very detailed levels of understanding demographic information that's impacting. I know that might be what Mr. Lohr's is going to talk about in terms of data and leveraging very specific data within the city to determine how is it that we utilize our PSG funds. There are different pockets of data analysis being performed. KHA uses NLP logics to evaluate, you know, what zip codes are in most need. And so there is an approach to determine the most effective and impactful way of deploying scarce resources, because resources will always be scarce. And there's no high-level city other than the State of Jack's in utilizing that information and trying to determine return on investment. Each department director would be responsible for defining and leveraging our data analytics folks to come up with that base case to make for increasing. And finally, just the closing dates. When are the monthly reports closed, the quarterly reports closed, and the annual reports closed, in order for it to go to the external auditor? Monthly reports. Three days after the close of that period, after the end of that period. Monthly reports, I'm just going to say generally 15 calendar days. So that's pretty typical, I would think. Then the quarterly reports are 30 calendar days after the close of the quarter. And then the annual audit is more flexible in terms of working with our external auditors to determine when they need the information and when we'll be finished with it in order for them to make sure that we file by the June 30 required deadline. Which baffles me. We're not doing the annual audit until nine months after the close of the fiscal year, but I know that's the law. Yeah, that's when the state requires that delivery. Why is it so long? I mean, at Barnett, we had our auditor's report usually dated by April the 2nd so we could file our press release on how much our earnings were for the prior year in order to meet the usually April 10th to 12th deadline for our stockholders meeting. It's a really good question, and Michelle and I both have very deep and extensive audit experience, and so we can appreciate and also understand exactly what you just said. I think that the timeline has been complicated by our conversion to a new ERP system. Is that the one that we did about 90 years ago and it's just now functioning? No. I'm being facetious, but it was at least four years ago? 2020. Okay. Exact same time as COVID. All right. So we implemented a system when everybody went home, and so we have spent years trying to… Is the learning curve that steep? Is the learning curve of an ERP system for a $2 billion operation with hundreds and hundreds of funds and thousands of charts of accounts steep? Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. So you don't feel that we're abnormally behind the curve? You think, are we about where we should be or…? We are not where we should be, and Michelle and I are excited about shortening that timeline, and we've developed a plan. We've already filed. Okay. Yeah, we've already filed, and we're already planning to… We're not going to say by when, because we have said within, and we've told our team by within, and we've told our external auditor by with a certain date, and it will be earlier, because that's what we expect. That's all I have. Sorry to grill you, but I just, you know, as a numbers geek myself, and I'm not an accountant, but, you know, I'm a financial analyst by education and training, and I spend every day in front of a spreadsheet looking at real estate operations. So I just, sometimes I'm bewildered at the slow pace at which city government operates. You know, I'd love to give some commentary here, because when I decided to run for office many, many years ago, and I met with someone who worked in city government, and this was back in 2008, I think. And I said, it was back in the days when Rick Scott was talking about bringing efficiency to government, and I think those of us who've been in business can appreciate that, and we do. We have a lean program in full force here. We've deployed, we're in the crawl, walk, we're in the crawl of the crawl, walk, run phase of deploying AI. So we're doing that. But I remember that person telling me that government wasn't designed to be efficient. Government is designed to be transparent. And effective. Absolutely. And like I said, please don't mistake what I just said to mean that I don't care about efficiency. You can't even get that out, try to get that away from me. But I do think it's important to recognize that the difference between me walking over to my printer and picking up a QuickBooks printed check, and signing it and sticking it in an envelope, and the processes that Michelle leads her accounts payable team through when she's processing 100,000 checks and invoices per year, and the level of detail and checking to make sure that we're watching your taxpayer dollars, and that we've got every record to prove what we're doing and what we're approving so that when you come and ask for that documentation that we're able to prepare it, provide it, is very different from walking over to the printer and picking up a check. If you had the ability to change either a state statute, maybe in some places federal law, or in many cases, of course, the city ordinance, to make Jacksonville a model for financial performance among municipal governments, what would you do? I don't know off the top of my head. I think that's a really broad question. I think it's up to us to keep delivering the transparency that you expect and then to work with the tools that are available to us and the smarts of the great team, the public servants that you have working for you, to make things better all the time and to create the efficiencies that we know can exist. Are our department directors, are they timid in asking for additional staff or in seeking increases in salaries for staff? Mr. Chair, just real quick before she answers, I would like to get in myself. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, no, perfectly. I'll let her answer this and you bring your... Of course, of course. Velma, any questions you might have at this point? I just made a comment and before I moved here, I moved to the private sector and also I worked with city government. So I understand a lot of the things that you were saying and I just want to say I do appreciate you coming and I know there are a lot of differences we as the private sector would love to see within city government, but I know a lot of that is a long time coming and sometimes it seems impossible. So, thank you. Thank you. Are department directors timid? I don't think that... I can't think of a department director who's timid. They're not afraid to ask for more staff if they honestly believe they need more staff to accomplish the goals of that department. They can ask. And you think they're... And they're not afraid to ask? I don't think they're afraid to ask. They also know that we're not increasing employee cap. Yes, we're committed to maintain our level of employment. How do we compare in terms of compensation of our city employees? Lower. What would it take to get us to average for... Let's just take the five large cities. Us, Miami, Orlando, St. Pete, and Tampa, I think, were the top five. I don't have off the top of my head. I know employee services has done a look on that. Public safety, we've taken some action to get them in line with where they need to be. And they're still not at 100%, but they're the closest amongst everybody. But the general employee population is probably paid at 65% to 70%. Of average? I don't know if it's average. I can't remember off the top of my head whether it was compared to private. And I think there are some challenges with doing that, or if it was to other cities. But they're not paid in total compensation across the board at the same level. And if you try to get private and what they have and public employees with all the pensions and whatnot, it's not on par. Mr. Lures, and then does anybody else have any questions that have come to your mind since I've been yammering on here? All right, Mr. Lures. So regarding the projections that you – it was for the CIP, right, that you were talking about the projections? Five years ago. Yeah, just generally, yes. So what methods do you use, statistical methods do you use for projecting revenues and expenditures over that period of time? There's going to be a lot of reference to historical trends in terms of the performance. And the budgeting and the projection that we do is very conservative, which is what you expect. And we've been lauded by ratings agencies for our conservatism in terms of financial performance because we'd much rather under-promise and over-deliver. Of course. So would you say that that is more like a move in average that you use? I would – so what I would recommend, and maybe this can be a more efficient way of doing it, is like a regression-based method where you take some economic and demographic variables, you know, like population growth, inflation, employment, so on and so forth, and use that to predict – maybe you can do that like a backtest where you can do it using historical data and compare it to a move in average where you can predict the revenues and expenditures and see which one outperforms – what method outperforms and is more accurate generally. Generally, a regression-based method will be more accurate in predicting those revenues and expenditures because, simply put, with a move in average, it's just historical data. So if your revenues have been – over this period of time – have been flat, the projection is, yeah, it's going to be flat. But there might be some other variables or demographic variables that might better predict that. And, of course, there's always going to be some exogenous shock. I don't think anyone predicted a war with Iran this year and the gas prices. So I think that's always going to be something that we have to account for. But I think that would be a way that maybe we could be more productive than that. And I don't know if you're going to stick around for the PSG subcommittee discussion of data, which is what I've been working on. But there are some things that I think maybe the council order, your office, might be able to help me with with regards to gain in data. So I don't want to get into that and kind of overstep or anything like that. I am not able to, but Ms. Hampsey can definitely connect you with me and or provide the information that you share. Perfect. Thank you. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you. Just to follow up on the CIP discussion, what happens if an item is on the CIP? What would, I guess I'm going to talk specifically because back in the day when they first started the Better Jacksonville plan, my road was one of those that was supposed to be built. And all of a sudden there was no money for it. And we were told there was a reason, and it would be given back to us, but it was never added until last year. They finally got my road back on to the CIP. But now we're hearing through the grapevine, I haven't got a straight answer from anybody yet, but money that was funded for this portion of my road has already been spent. And I've not heard from them about my particular piece of property that is on that road, and it's under the eminent domain. So what happens when, if, for instance, an item on the CIP all of a sudden comes up where the council has allotted $26 million, but, hey, we already spent it and we got another million dollars for the property we're trying to get. Does that require some special funding request or through the council, or what happens when the fund has run out and they haven't finished or not even started the project yet, to be honest with you? So you have kind of commingled two different challenges there. You referenced the Better Jacksonville plan, which was a dedicated source for specific projects, and then you flipped it into a question that I think is when a project needs more money because costs have increased or things have changed from a scope perspective that were required, what happens? And every year, including this year, the CIP includes upward adjustments for projects whose costs have increased beyond what we estimated however many years ago. And so there is a process by which Public Works goes through and evaluates the need for additional funding for a project for whatever reason and asks for that funding to be added to the CIP. And the council auditor's office every year asks, is the funding that's in this plan representative of the total cost of the project? Does this include all that's needed? And so they're checking back for you, too, in terms of making sure that it's there. The fact that I don't know what your road is, and even if you told me what your road is, I wouldn't know off the top of my head what the specifics are of your project. BJP does have a continued funding source through the end of 2030 for specific projects that have been added to the work plan. And they're just like any other project, that if they needed more money, that we would add that. It gets a little bit complicated because if the BJP funding doesn't cover the full work plan, what happened fairly recently was that any projects that didn't get funded by BJP just got added to the CIP to be paid like a CIP project. But those determinations would have to be made if there were funding shortfalls at the time that we closed down BJP, which isn't for a while. That's not what we were told. Yeah, I don't know what rumor you're hearing. Well, it was a widening of old Middlebrook Road South. Oh, so that's one of the projects that has more money added this year. And what happened, we were told that the reason it wasn't done under the original Better Jacksonville plan was that they took that money to do something else with. Oh, yeah, I don't know. So you hear all kinds of different stories. Thank you. I'm going to make one final closing comment, just maybe add a little bit of perspective, historical perspective. So 1973, City Council President Jake Gobbold appointed me to the first Charter Revision Commission. I was 19 years old at JU. And I remember going through the confirmation process and had to go before a rules committee. And at that point, it was called the Council President Pro Tempore, which is now the vice president, who was Earl Huntley. And Earl was very skeptical at a teenager, because I was still a teenager, I was 19, of being appointed to a city commission. And he asked me a question, and I said, well, I think that's a more complicated situation than a simple answer. And I illustrated that by demonstrating some knowledge. I said, for instance, we have a city budget, this is 1973, we have a city budget of $430 million. And I said, that's a lot of money. He says, yes, it is. So anyway, I was favorably, I impressed him favorably, and I was eventually confirmed, and I served on the commission. And as a student of consolidation, which I consider myself to be, I believe that we deliver an economy of scale through consolidation, it's probably approaching 20 to 25%. If you look at the millage rate that a person who lives in the city of Tampa, what they pay in city taxes, Advalorum millage, Hillsborough County, and I believe they maybe have hospital districts, or it might be a different county, I think they're approaching 15 or 16 mills. Now, we don't have a dedicated hospital district, but we do contribute a big chunk of money for Shands, used to be the old Duval Medical Center. But we're doing it at 11.1 mills? Is that our current millage rate? 1.919. Okay. What is it? 11.1919. Okay. So, I think that we need, as citizens, we need to be appreciative that we had a group of civic leaders who in 1967, Mr. Yates hand-wrote on that napkin in the Robert Meyer Hotel, and it used to be framed somewhere in the building. I don't remember where it is now. It's been a number of years since I have seen it. But it is framed, or was framed, and exists. It's the actual napkin on which he wrote the request to the Duval delegation for the local government study commission. And I think we need to be very thankful for the foresight that those civic leaders had in forging the path that ultimately became consolidation. I'm convinced we have an economy of scale that doesn't exist anywhere else in the United States, and I think we need to be aware of that, you know, but not settle. I think we can always look for more economies, and if we can reduce expenses somewhere, then we can, as Mitch Attala said, we can have betterments in city services without having to have an inordinate tax increase or where we can continue to provide maybe nominal but still reductions in the millage rate. As our tax base grows. So thank you very much for coming and entertaining our questions. Appreciate it very much. Well, thank you for inviting me, and happy to answer the questions. And thanks to Michelle for being my sidekick who just nodded her head and said, yeah, you're on the right track. Thank you. Thanks so much. So with that, the spending committee will be adjourned, and we will convene. I don't think we have a very long agenda remaining, but we will now move into the true commission, and I failed at the call to order of the first time, but I will do so now. We need to approve the minutes, but we do not have a quorum, so we will have to defer this action to a future meeting date. And Mr. Carter, do you have any presentations today? I have one audit. Okay. If you could bare bones, and then I'm going to give Mr. Lures as much time as he needs. Through the chair of the commission, the council auditor's office has released one report since the last true commission meeting. It's report number 907, the property appraiser, the portability calculation audit, who's released on August 3rd. And the focus of this audit was the Save Our Homes Portability Transfer Calculation performed by the property appraiser's office. This also met our requirement that we audit each constitutional officer's once every five years. The Florida statutes allows a homeowner moving from one property in Florida to another property in Florida to transfer a part, or all in some instances, of their difference between the assessed value and market value from their previous homesteaded property to a new property. And then the scope of our audit was the portability applications process for the 2025 tax roll. We found there were 2,524 parcels that received a portability transfer on the Duval County tax roll at a value of $311,369,379. Overall, we found the property appraiser appeared to have correctly calculated the Save Our Homes Portability Transfer amounts. What we found, we had found some internal control issues with the standard operating procedures. We found there were some missing necessary items related to the portability process. Some of the policies and procedures did not appear to be official and approved and did not indicate who the approver was, the date of the SOPs that were approved or slash updated, and then some sections contained outdated and incomplete information. We had a finding. During detailed testing, we found 2 out of 149 portability amounts recalculated or incorrectly calculated. This resulted in portability amount being overstated by $89,160 and property taxes underbilled by $1,518.81. Additionally, during our analytical testing to review the listing of multiple approved applications with the same previous real estate number, we found 1 out of 14 portability amounts recalculated were calculated incorrectly. This resulted in the portability being understated by $37,439 and property taxes overbilled by $664.22. The property appraiser agreed with both of our findings and indicated that they would be updating the SOPs and that they've already corrected the calculation errors and will look for additional ways to help prevent calculation errors in the future. In a situation like that, is that taxpayer rebated the overpaid taxes? Either that or credited. Any other questions? Thanks, Mike. One other. Certainly. Just for y'all's information, I'm sure you already know this, but Finance Committee Budget Hearings for the proposed budget for 26-27 will start next Thursday, August 13th as meeting one. So that concludes my report. Thank you very much. All right. So what we will do next is we move over to item four on the true commission agenda, the PSG subcommittee discussion of data. That will be next. And then I would like to make my comments, and then we will bring up an item of new business and commissioner comments where Mr. Youngblood can introduce himself appropriately. So in that respect, let's move to Mr. Lures, the public service grant subcommittee. So I managed to take the data that was provided to me by the council auditor's office, and I was able to make a data set where I combined the PSG payments and the direct contract payments and was able to calculate for each individual payment a questionable rate, meaning it's either improperly supported or there was no support for that documentation. And I managed to create a column where, you know, if it employs a council member, it's one, else it will be zero. The unfortunate thing about it is that there's only two such organizations there in that report, which is the Clara White mission for, obviously, Jacoby Pittman, and the Firewatch project, which is obviously Nick Hellen's organization. So I don't have any finance because it's simply just a very underpowered amount of data. But regarding the Clara White missions reports is that it appears that almost every single dollar that they tested was either insufficiently supported or had absolutely no support, which is obviously a serious ethical concern given that she's a council member. Yes, sir. So this is from a report that the council auditor did? Yes. So to clarify, it's... You could go in a little bit more detail on that. Right. That's an interesting observation. Yeah. So that is the Grants and Compliance Division Audit Number 901, in which the council auditor's office looked at payments from the public service grant program and also direct contracts and looked at whether these payments had either insufficient support or no support. And from that, they were able to calculate, out of all of the money that was paid out, how much was either had insufficient or no support. What would be the dollar amount and maybe the percentage total? For just in general, I believe it was about 35 percent. And so out of the 1.3, and this is kind of treading ground, we did talk about this previously, but out of 1.3 million, about $477,000 was insufficiently supported or had no support, which is about 35 percent of that. And were those expenditures direct grant or, I mean, public service grant dollars or direct contract dollars? Both, I believe, yeah. And is there sufficient information to break that out? Yes, but so the goal for this was to look at, and I'm going to get into this, I believe Mr. Carter can be very helpful in this regard to build a more robust data set that I can test this hypothesis, but I wanted to look at whether organizations that are run by council members have higher rates of insufficient or no support payments relative to organizations that are not run by a council member. Because if that is the case, then we can see that maybe we can make some conclusion that maybe they are taking liberties or maybe there is something sufficiently wrong with a council member running an organization that receives public money. So we maybe could advance an argument that organizations that employ a city council member are receiving preferential treatment. Is that your basic idea? Either that or they're just kind of more flippant. It can be many different explanations. So my question to you, Mr. Carter, is regarding this type of audit, is this a quarterly audit? Is it an annual audit? What is the frequency of this audit and over what time period? I don't have the audit report in front of me, but this was just an audit that was done as part of our risk assessment. Sure. So it's not an annual audit that I know of that's done or anything like that, a quarterly. It was just an audit that will have a follow-up done in the future. But to see if the findings and our recommendations were addressed. But as far as frequency, to my knowledge, it's not an annual audit. Excuse me real quick. So this is audit number 901. Yes. All right. So would you, for next month, I'd like to, I want to keep this topic on the agenda for next month. Of course. We'll come back to this under old business or previous business. And then I'd like to, if you could explain maybe the parameters that Mr. Lures has explained in the audit report. And let's dig a little bit deeper into that. Yeah. Well, there's actually, what I would like to propose is maybe that there is some sort of study or something like that, that in which we can maybe randomly sample payments over some longer time horizon and be able to look at whether these organizations that employ council members, whether they have higher rates of insufficient or no support payments. Because if I could get a much more robust data set where it could be over a longer time horizon, then I can conduct, you know, statistical analysis that is rigorous and, you know, sufficiently powered. And then we can draw from that some generalizable conclusion about whether, you know, these organizations that employ council members or involve council members in some way have those higher rates of sufficient or no support payments. And I think that would be very valuable to the public. So if something like that is possible or if we can have some sort of study like that, I think that would be absolutely phenomenal. Did, was there any evidence that the other organization, Firewatch, did it have any incorrect or insufficient? Their questions rate was about three, four percentage points higher than the average. But considering this is just a one-off risk assessment, I don't know. I don't know what, I don't know if you can draw any real conclusions from that data. Do, does the council auditor in a situation like this, is there, do you have the latitude to do a more frequent audit of organizations and employees, city council members? Well, that would be a call for the council auditor to make. However, you know, I will say that the, not having the, the, the audit in front of me, the objective of the audit was to make sure that, you know, these organizations were receiving payments. That was the objective, but I'll, I'm not sure on that. I'll have to, I'll have to find out the data that was collected. I know Mr. Parks had sent some data to you and I will have to see what is for that. Of course. Yeah, because like my ideal for a data set would be, it looks at payments that are made to organizations under the PSG program or the direct contracts program. And it looks at, you know, you, you take a look and you say, okay, this dollar amount is insufficiently supported. This dollar amount is, has no support. And then I can calculate from that some rate. But the issue obviously is because there's only two such organizations in this. Like I know over, over, I'm sure over, you know, the last 20 years, it's been more, it's been like significantly higher. So, um, that would be, uh, kind of my goal, the ideal for, for that data set. 20 years? Oh, no, no, no, not necessarily 20 years, but over a long period of time, a longer period of time where there's more, um, there are more payments, uh, that I can be able to analyze. Is it your intention to, uh, continue to do some research and then to issue a formal written report to the commission? Yes, that would be, that would be the preference that there could be, um, that there could be some recommendations perhaps at, at, at, at the, at the council level where, you know, maybe there is some legislation that says this is a real problem. And this is like, there needs to be more stringent reporting requirements or there needs to be more, uh, stringent oversight of these organizations relative to, uh, an organization that does not employ a council member. Mr. Carter, could you, uh, provide that audit to, uh, Colleen and if, Colleen, if you could distribute that to us, uh, as soon as possible. So we have some time to digest this, uh, and then we will come back in, uh, September and we'll continue this discussion. How does that sound? That sounds perfect. I'll forward that, um, back to you, kind of bump it back up into your inbox. Any comments? Any questions? All right. Okay. Thank you very much. And then, um, uh, what's that all you had for your item? Kevin? Yeah. All right. Excellent. Mr. Day. I want to, just to be clear, um, you're looking for data that is, was outside of our audit or you're looking for the data that was used in our audit? Um, if it, if it could be, if we could, uh, maybe do data outside, like maybe this needs to be in its entirely own study where, you know, maybe you have some sort of, sort of sample or what not, um, sort of sample or what not, um, and then compare it to non-council member organizations. I feel like Mr. Parks gave him the data that you used for that audit. Um, I don't know how appropriate it would be to ask him to create a public record, to create a record to fulfill that request. Before he's giving you something that they've already done. Of course. Yeah. There you go. Of course, I'm not sure. I will have to, um, uh, discuss that with, um, council auditor and then, um, and Mr. Parks. Of course. And then, um, it may be something that as a true commissioner, uh, you, you may have to make a request to get the data. Yeah. Uh, since you're doing a separate study outside of our audit. Mm-hmm. Um, so that might be, you know, that, um, well, just for that. Yeah. But of course there could be some data out there that might be able to more, better fulfill my request. Yeah, I, um, uh, I believe he sent everything, but I'll, I will double check with him and let you know. Yeah. And I'm forwarding that to you both right now. Thank you. All right. Uh, there's no previous, um, I'm sorry. Next item is, um, comments of the chair. The only thing I would say is, uh, as, uh, the, uh, budget has now been presented, uh, I would ask that, um, uh, we begin reviewing the budget. And then, uh, as, uh, an item of new business, I would like to once again request that, uh, each one of us take a part of the city budget, uh, and then report back at the September meeting, uh, our impressions, our, uh, quote, findings, uh, about our review. Uh, my, uh, my favorite category is, uh, uh, uh, public safety, which would include the sheriff's office and JFRD. Uh, Mr. Tyson, you, what did you look at last year? I don't remember and I don't have the minutes in front of me, but do you, you want to tackle that again? All right. Velma, what did you look at? Did you remember? Okay. Pick something out. That, that, okay. And then kind of just give us a quick overview. And then, uh, I, I think if you just kind of stay focused on this, you'll, you'll have your hands full. Grants and compliance has a budget. What's that? The office of grants and compliance has a budget. They'll present at the budget hearings. Like maybe you want to pick that. That's it. That's a good idea. All right. Mr. Youngblood, you have any special interest in the city budget you'd like to dig into? The same that you mentioned, uh, JFRD and JSO, pretty intimately familiar with those two agencies and how they operate. But, uh, why don't we do this? Let's divide and conquer. Why don't you take JFRD? I'm pretty familiar with the sheriff's office. I've done some extensive research in the past. And then, uh, we will report back. Super. Okay. So, uh, on that note, uh, we will move into commissioner comments. And, Mr. Youngblood, we will give you the prerogative of introducing yourself and tell us a little about yourself. And, uh, if you have any ideas you would like to bring to the commission. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for running an efficient meeting. It was, uh, very smooth and I appreciate that. Um, but, uh, again, Jeff Youngblood. And, uh, been serving in city government off and on for many years. But, uh, 30 years in business. Also served on the Charter Revision Commission. Also served on public service grants for many years. And, uh, now the privilege to serve with you, uh, ladies and gentlemen here on the True Commission. Uh, been married for 33 years this month. Have two young children that I'm raising. Uh, went to public schools here in Jacksonville. And been in business for 30 years here in Jacksonville. So, uh, just an intimate knowledge of the city. And I love to help and love to be a part of answers and solutions. I probably have more questions than I have answers. But, um, interesting to see Mr. Nooney here. Uh, we've interacted for many, many, many years on all boards and commissions. And, uh, I'm thankful to see you're involved in the community. And I appreciate you being here also. Thank you, Colleen, for this arduous task of, uh, keeping this all together. I appreciate that and all that you do. Thank you. Mr. Tyson, do you have any comments? Mr. Lures. Um, technically my, uh, my term ended on, I believe, June 30th. I reached out to, um, Garrett Dennis, uh, to start, restart the appointment process. And he will probably reply to me by my 50th birthday, I think. So, uh, I'll just be waiting for a little bit. I'm glad you, I'm glad you received the same treatment from him that everyone else receives. So, uh, he has no favorites. So, but until then, you will continue to serve until your replacement has been appointed and confirmed. So, uh, rest assured, we look forward to having you, uh, with us for many, many years ahead. Also has been up, but I have determined a replacement, Mr. Leroy Kelly. And hopefully by November, October, he will be present. But I should be here in September. My understanding is that the CPAC is going to vote on it next week, the 13th. And then I'll take care of the, I'll, I'll get it filed and we'll proceed with it. So, that one's good. Thank you. All right. Is this your second term? You can serve a partial term and then two full terms. Okay. So you were, you've served a full three years? Four plus four. Okay. Are we appointed for two or three years? That's what I thought. Okay. Because I was appointed. Yeah. Because I think I expire in June 30th of 27. So, I'll, I'm here about another year that I'm gone. Yeah. So, once you do your, once you do your six, once you serve two full terms, which could theoretically could put you into the, uh, eight year range. So, all right. Um, okay. On that note, um, Mr. Smith would like to see an additional public comment with your grace. Um, it's up to you. Certainly. Be glad to. Thank you, Chair Day. Um, Ernest Smith, 400 East Bay Street, uh, chair of the Urban Corps CPAC. Um, the reason why I want to speak with you again, um, is because we have a looming election coming up. And when I say election, November 3rd, we have Amendment 3 on the ballot. Um, given that this commission is apolitical and there's a good likelihood, um, it may pass. Um, I, I believe it's tantamount for this commission to be the apolitical body that it is to help city council possibly look for addressing the 300 million estimated budget shortfall that the city council, city council auditor's office has warned the city that we may be facing. Um, if this amendment were to pass. Um, again, you know, we're about three meetings out from the November election and I just want to put it on the record. Um, just to, you know, make sure that this body is aware that, um, even though I don't think it's in your purview to, again, do budget cuts, ultimately it comes down to city council. However, I think it'll be in this commission's best interest and be prudent to possibly convene a subcommittee if it were to pass, just putting it on the record. Um, because again, we only have three more meetings before that time takes place. And I just want to make sure that we have a, a political body, you know, helping out city council for those possible budget shortfalls, if it were to happen. So that's all I wanted to say. Just wanted to get on the record and, um, hopefully, um, you know, uh, you all made the right decision. So thank you. Would you be so kind to direct an email to Colleen? See Hamsey at coj.net. Is that correct? Making that request to the commission. Okay. And then, uh, uh, we have relatively broad latitude to look at taxation, revenues, and utilization of expenditures for the city government and all of the independent authorities. We do not have legal authority in the school system, but we do have that oversight capability. And, uh, it would be, uh, I would be glad to, uh, with her, uh, forwarding of your request to me, then, uh, let's put that on the agenda next month under new business, uh, and then we will start that discussion. I think that's a very good suggestion. I welcome it, and thank you for your cognizance and, uh, foresight on that issue. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you, Commissioner. Are there any other comments? All right. In that note, we are actually going to finish early today. So, uh, I thank everybody. Um, uh, I thought today was very, very helpful to have her insight as, uh, she is a certified public accountant. She, uh, was a partner in a local accounting firm. Uh, she continued in that role while she was on, uh, city council. Uh, and, uh, if I'm not mistaken, was she actually a city council president? Okay. That's what I thought. Okay. And, um, so I, I, I think her insights into city finances coupled with her professional, uh, background, her education, her training, her experience, uh, I, I think she has extremely qualified for the position to which she was appointed. And I think that, uh, you know, for the most part, uh, I'm, I'm pretty critical of city government, but for the most part, I'm, I'm grateful that we have consolidation in Jacksonville. And I think that, uh, I think the citizens reap the financial rewards of that. Uh, and on that note, if there are no further comments, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. I'm so moved. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Adjourn. Today you're meeting. No, it's not. I would have been gone. Thank you. Today wasn't the conference. I appreciate it. Thank you.