Good evening. It is 5.30 p.m. on May 21st, 2025, and we are going to have our budget workshop. Ms. Thompson, welcome. I'll ask you to please call the roll. Okay. Councilmember Anderson? Here. Councilmember Andrew? Here. Councilmember Fadgen? Here. Councilmember Horland? Here. Councilmember Angstein? Here. Mayor Sordell? Here. Assistant City Attorney Clinton-Morgan? Here. Thank you. So according to the agenda here, it says police is first. I don't see you as the chief, but go ahead. I was just going to say good evening, Mayor, Council President, Councilmember, City Attorney Morgan. My name is Anna Otteniano, Finance Director. Welcome to the City of Plantation Fiscal Year 2026 Pre-Budget Workshop. As you said, we will have a number of the directors come up and do a highlight and talk about some of the significant items in their proposed budgets for fiscal year 26. They're going to come up in. It's really going to be just the larger departments because the smaller departments don't tend to have much change year over year. We are all here, however, if there's any questions for any of the departments, we are all here and happy to answer any questions you have. But in the meantime, you do have a list in front of you of the departments that will come up and speak. And if there is time, you know, we can maybe throw in a few more directors. So, before I go any further, I'll call up Mr. Chief Harrison. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Come on down. And at leadoff, Chief Harrison. Good evening, Councilmembers, Mayor, Mr. Morgan. The bulk of our budget costs are primarily within the salary wages and benefits. It accounts for about approximately 90 percent of our budget. We are asking Council's approval for an additional two officers this year and converting a part-time background investigator to a full-time investigator. We have several upgrades to our current roster where we have requested a change status, for example, an administrative assistant two to an administrative assistant three. There are other positions of that to include certain pay grades, a pay grade 102 to a 104, the extra work that they've had, the increase in the workload. They've been in those positions for a while, and it's the right thing to do to move them up a level. We have increased our operational costs, primarily in the R&M maintenance contract line item, as a result of upgrades in our IT infrastructure and software. Apparently, IT, the software and infrastructure is very expensive. Our capital requests are primarily vehicles and the body cameras, body-worn cameras, and tater contract, which is on the agenda for your approval tonight. This is a high-level overview of the budget, but I'm certainly available if you have any questions for me. Councilmember Hoyland. Very quickly, hi, Chief. I know we're going to be talking about the body cameras later, but previously we had talked about the records management. Are you going to need to be adding anyone to manage those records? Good question. We already have that in place. Great. They're there. Wonderful. Thank you. Councilmember Andreu. Chief, good evening. How many vehicles do you anticipate purchasing? We're looking at 24, and we're getting rid of 25. Do you auction the 25? Some of those are auctioned. Some of those are beyond repair. Some of those have been involved in accidents and have been totaled, but there are some that are auctioned. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Councilmember Fadgen. Thank you. So how many total officers, sworn officers, are we supposed to have for a city our size? I ask you this all the time. Where are we with our vacancies? So our number includes people that are on patrol and in the academy. So what number is that at this point? So we're budgeted for 181 police officers. 181? Yes, sir. We're short nine, and that changes. And we just, within the last two weeks, it went from seven to nine. Right. Under 10 is good, though. It is. Yeah. But we have several academies coming up July and, I believe, in September. And we plan on putting at least two to three, maybe even four, in each of those academies. And then what we have budgeted for recruiting, is that just kind of consistent with prior years? Yes, sir. It's been working? We've been doing very well in our recruiting efforts. I was very pleased when we got down to single digits for our police officers. Absolutely. And the background, the full-time background investigator, is going to help us out in that endeavor as well. Great. Not only for the police officers, but dispatchers as well. Very good. Thank you, Chief. Yes, sir. Chief, also, the nine shortfall and requesting two new officers. Are any of those going to be dedicated to either Midtown, Gateway, or any more for your, essentially, your homeless task force, the group that's dedicated to that? Well, the meat and potatoes of the department is your road patrol. So any new officer is going to be assigned to road patrol. It's when we get healthy in that road patrol area where I can start expanding units or filling units that have been vacant for a while. But I've never, it's been a while since I've asked for police officers. And the reason why is I haven't been able to get to that point where, in the budget, I will be able to get to those new positions. And I've said this a lot, that depending on what model you want to use, the average model for police officers to residents is two per thousand. So using that math, we would, to be at two officers per thousand, we'd probably need to be around 190, 191. Mayor? Mayor, just a quick update. Along the way, we've discerned that council wants more information about vehicles and use and need, and they want better documentation when we're asking for vehicles. So as we went through the process with everybody, Ms. Otaniano, me, and Jason directed directors to give more information and back up and have better reasons on vehicles. So when those questions come up, we should be able to answer them better. And if I can just, maybe one other thing on that point is that one of the things we've talked about, especially in terms of procurement, is making sure that we're reaching out to local first. That if we know that there are local vendors that, you know, there's some notation that says maybe we tried and we got no response so that we could at least respond to our residents that we're looking local first. No, 100% to address the first question. I know that Captain Brown had fielded an inquiry from Midtown to cost out some additional presence there specific to them. So that'll be moving forward. And then on the local preferencing, we've had a couple meetings recently with Plantation Ford to kind of get a better understanding of their perspective. And so I do think you'll see more competitiveness and also just to make sure there's more of an apples-to-apples comparison because our bottom line, we wanted him to feel comfortable that after we bid the vehicles, everybody's bidding on the same thing and there's no confusion. So we are making that effort, sir. And just on that last point is that since that effort is being made, that there's some type of notation also for the memo that we get, whether it's on the agenda or on the memo and the backup, so that it's clearly identified all these new efforts that are being undertaken in terms of local. Sure, can do. Wonderful. Thank you. Anything else for the chief? Chief, anything further? I was just going to say, I think city administration has done a very good job in making sure that we substantiate the request. So I do have a list of all those vehicles that we plan on turning in, and I can assure you the years and the mileage are certainly evident that we need to turn these vehicles in. So nothing else? Very good. Thank you, chief. Chief Todd? Good evening, council, mayor, city attorney. Glad to see you at the golf tournament on Saturday. Did you? Well, you probably would have came in third. So this year is no different than any other year. We continue to ask for, usually every year, the same stuff, you know, hydraulic equipment, battery-operated stuff, which we've done again this year. There are a couple new things that we've asked for. One is the alerting system for the stations, and that is basically going to allow us, once we get it implemented, going to allow us to, when rescue gets a call, let's say rescue 77 gets a call, the other four rescues won't hear it. So they can sleep through the night or whatever, but if it hit, that's the purpose of it. But if another rescue gets a call, only the rescue that's needed will get that call. So they don't have to be up all night. So we've been looking at the things to try to correct that, and we're getting closer. We found a vendor that we're working with and people that, well, we're getting closer. So that's one of the new items we asked for. The rest of it, we are asking for a training dummy for the – it's a smart dummy for the training center. We're asking for that. That's something new. And the rest of it is pretty much what we ask for every year. Like I said, if it's hydraulic equipment or battery-operated equipment, we've got a stretcher and lift that we're going for this year. A lot of our stuff, like everybody else's, is getting out at, you know, end of life, so we have to replace some of it. So it's basically the same thing we do. Now, we are asking for one – on the personnel side, we're asking for one communications officer, and we're asking to change job – change titles, job title for two people. So that's – basically that's it, unless you guys have questions for me. Anybody? Letting you off easy and early. Are you kidding me? Okay. Well, thank you very much. That was a great thing. Wait, you want us to come up with something? Is that way to – No, no, Nick. No, no. I'm good. Have a great day. Get out quick. Thank you, Chief. Public Works, Mr. Thompson. Well, good evening, Council. Council President, Mayor, City Attorney. Matt Thompson, Public Works. First and foremost, I just want to thank you guys for your trust and support with all that you do for Public Works, along with administration, all the other department heads. It just reigns true and true every day. We couldn't do it without your support and guidance, so thank you. As always with Public Works, we're still working to improve, strengthen, fine-tune certain areas, so we've kind of gone through our budget with a fine-tooth comb again and looking for areas to change. We did feel a need to request for four new positions. One of the most important is being an assistant fleet specialist. So the current fleet specialist and parts clerk have been here for a number of years, and when they first started, we had about 400 pieces of equipment and vehicles. We're just about 2,000 now. So as their employment nears an end, we want to make sure that we keep strategic planning and succession planning in mind and pass on that institutional knowledge, and we can double-dip in both aspects of that, parts and the clerical work for the fleet management of the city. We also requested two maintenance worker ones for road and traffic. These positions will be maintaining. We're responsible for managing over 8,000 traffic signs in the city, all for MUTCD. So we have to make sure that we're doing that and doing that well. I think I've spoke to almost all of you about a faded traffic sign or speed limit sign, but we want to get back on that. County's responsible for some, but we want to make sure what we're responsible for, we're handling appropriately. So those two positions will be responsible in conjunction with our road and sign shop handling that. We have one other maintenance worker, one request for the crafts division. I'm sure over the past couple of years you've heard of us doing a lot of renovations or build-outs or certain things like that, but this position would assist our crafts division and then eventually have a career and become a craftsman. So as far as positions, that's what that is. I am proud to say that we're fortunate enough to work with IT and our police department. We were able to upcycle a lot of their old laptops. So it yielded a huge cost savings and hardware for public works and allow us to get to a digital work order system that our field staff will be able to do. We'll be able to capture images, create and maintain the life history of our assets a lot more efficiently, excuse me. But with that, we have to inquire some licensing for the software that we use. So you will see that in the budget. We do have some capital equipment revolved around safety, some things for the garage and things like that. We do have a request in for nine vehicles. With us managing the fleet, we also manage the pool vehicles. So a lot of our vehicles, we have to replace the pool vehicle, replenish the pool, because we give those to various drivers. It's not assigned to anybody. Through an administration, we're going to continue to be able to fund some paving, which is a great thing. We're going to continue working on our hazardous swale tree program. And we're still working on city sidewalks, so with great success of that this year. So in a nutshell, that's where we're at. Thank you very much. I know I wanted to ask, I was listening very intently to the new positions that you're requesting. And I think that, I think it was just our last meeting, may have been the one before, where we had talked about needing outside vendors in terms of the landscaping, in terms of all the tree trimming going on. And so I was thinking you were going to be asking for a whole new team in order to be able to bring that in-house. Tell me, tell us about that. Yeah, due to a lot of the canopy size of the trees within the city, it would be a lot larger ask than just staff. The equipment that we would need to possess to perform that work, it's very expensive. Not to say that we can't get to that point, but we need more of an immediate result. And I think the best way for us to do that right now is to not over-strain our staff, not try to procure this very expensive equipment and incur the maintenance cost of it, but rather than to use other sources. And that makes sense. Although I thought you had said that in terms of the immediate need, that's why we were going outside. But when we were looking ahead, we were going to start planning to do that in-house. So is that, are we not thinking that that will be the best use of the funds to start adding more of that equipment and people for that job? Right, and that's why I alluded to, we can get there, but we want to see what the price of machinery and everything is going to do over the year or so. So get there, but not starting now. Correct. I don't want to dive right into it and ask for this enormous amount when there's an availability to get the job done now at a much more reasonable cost. And get us caught up to where we need to be. Okay. So maybe a future ask. Correct. Understood. Never off of the table. Thank you. Councilmember Pageant. Thank you. So are all nine vehicles for the pool vehicle? No. Okay. No, they go to various departments, but we take any vehicle that it's going to replenish, and a lot of our pool vehicles are 20, 25, even 30 years old. We'll liquidate those. How many vehicles do we have in the pool? There's currently six. Okay. We've had to pull some out and reassign to certain staff. But we don't buy new cars for the pool. No, no, no. Or new vehicles for the pool. They're all retired. Right. Like I saw one the other day, the Crown Vic. That was probably a pool vehicle vehicle. Leave the Crown Vicks alone. I love the Crown Vic. Well, you've got one of the options if you want. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Director O'Toole. Good evening. Good evening, Council. Mayor, Mr. Morgan. In the Parks and Recreation Department, we have five divisions. And then, as I like to consider, the Preserve, the sixth division, which has its own five divisions within. So I'm going to quickly just go through all those divisions separately. Starting off, the Parks Division, one of the goals for this coming year is to install the city's first inclusive playground at Liberty Tree Park. So you'll see that in the budget. And nothing too surprising. Continue to add amenities at our playground, such as the safety surfacing, as well as the shade structures. Something new that we're looking to add are new dugouts at the Central Park baseball fields. Those have surpassed their life expectancy. As a matter of fact, there's two sets of tents at one of the fields that have been there for quite some time. So we're looking to replace those. With the grand opening of North Acres around the corner, we have funding in there to install the playground at North Acres Park. And we've got two multi-year projects that were approved in this current year budget that I'm sure you're familiar with, the artificial fields at Central Park. Recent discussions we've been having, given some of the concerns at Pine Island Park, we're looking at the possibility of doing two artificial fields at Central Park and two at Pine Island. So we may be splitting up that project. And staff is looking at cost analysis of maintenance on a natural turf versus artificial turf. So that's something that we're thinking about for next year. The other project that was approved in this year's budget is replacing that park maintenance building that I think some of you toured and saw daylight shining through and things of that nature. So that's still in the works to be completed over the next three years. There are no new positions being added in the parks division. And we are requesting three vehicles, an F-250, an F-150, and a transit van. The two pickup trucks are for our roving crew. They're replacing a 2006 Ford F-250 and a 1999 Chevy. The third vehicle is a van that we're going to be dedicating to our crafts division. They're currently using a 1995 freight liner that we acquired from the fire department. Thank you, fire department. But it is long beyond its years. So that's the third vehicle that we're requesting. The recreation division will be looking to infuse art. We're going to be taking over the utility wrap projects from Public Works, so we're going to be taking on that project. We're looking to create, speaking of art tonight, an art festival for the spring of 2026. We've added some funding, and we're actually looking at a grant opportunity through the county to host that. We will be acquiring, you'll see in our staffing, we're taking 12 seasonal employees from our tennis division and putting them under the recreation division. We just think having our summer camp run under the same umbrella under the recreation division. So there will be 12 deleted from tennis, but those 12 would be added in the recreation division. Capital items for our facilities. We're looking to replace the electric room dividers at Volunteer Park and the community center. They are in constant need of repair, and it's difficult to find company to come out and service them. You will see a slight increase in our R&M maintenance contract. If you recall, we recently installed security cameras in all of our facilities, and there's just a subscription fee to keep up with that service. In our tennis division, nothing really outstanding there. We're going to continue to improve our clay courts, so you'll see the repetitive maintenance projects there of laser grading and resurfacing our clay courts. We did add a line item to invest in continuing education for staff in the tennis division. There was never anything in there for them to attend classes and training, so we added some funding there. Again, you'll see the reduced number in summer camp staff by 12, and a slight reduction in revenue due to them not hosting the summer camp, the Orange Bowl, and we have a women's tournament that happens every other year. So they're not here next year, but they'll be back the following year. In our aquatics division, again, an ongoing multi-year project is the renovation of the pump room and restroom building for Pool 1. That's been in our budget for several years, and if you need a refresher, there was some structural issues with that building. It was closed in 2020. There was some emergency shoring put in place between 2021 and 2022, and we're looking now to move forward with that project. Previous department leadership was researching different options of making sure we had the proper number of restroom fixtures for the pool deck, but I think it's best if we just move forward and renovate the existing building. So you'll see that coming forward soon. In conjunction with renovating that building, we're looking to replace the pool equipment that is housed in that building. We're going to do it all at the same time, so we're requesting some funding to replace that pool equipment and upgrade the swim meet timing system. We did get a new scoreboard recently, and the timing system we use needs to be compatible with that scoreboard. In the equestrian division, we're looking to restart contracted programs at the equestrian center. Since COVID, we have not had any pony camps or horse lessons, so we're looking to start that to increase revenue and offer that service to the community. We're working, of course, as you all know, to repair the bridges out at the equestrian center in Volunteer Park. We submitted the grant, still waiting to hear on that, but I did put funding in for the next year in 2027 to continue with that. And just looking to replace the fencing and gates to enhance the security at the equestrian center, as well as replace some of the bleacher and canopy shade. In the golf division, as you all know, we're looking to move forward with the renovation of the course itself. We're anticipating that to be about a $9 million project that is expected to take place in fiscal year 27. It's slated to be a six-month project starting in April of 27, but we did allocate $500,000 out of the $9 million in 26 to start the design and planning for that. For the food and beverage division there, we're looking to make some upgrades to the clubhouse. The clubhouse has not been renovated since it opened in 2006, so we're looking to just do some upgrades to the restrooms, the bar area, things of that nature. And the maintenance division is looking to replace a spray unit, a mower, and two utility carts that are over 20 years old. And that's all I have. Council Member Fadgen. Thank you. The North Acres Playground. Yes, sir. When do we expect to have that installed? I was just asked that last night. Oh, really? Okay. I believe Mike Ambrosio is starting to put together the documentation, so that way as soon as the new fiscal year hits, it'll be already in the planning phases, and we can hopefully get it installed, I would guess, maybe November, December. And it'll be about a $300,000 playground. Okay. And then regarding renovation of the golf course, what is the plan would be to, if we can get this all done, the design and all the bidding and all that stuff, to have it started right after season of that fiscal year? I'm hoping to start in April, and then it would be about six months to reopen about November. So basically right after season. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Yeah. Council Member Andrey. If Council Member Andrey wants to turn it over. Yeah, so just to be clear on the golf, right now, Jacaranda Course 1 is closed. Next year, Jacaranda 2 will close, and then we will close. We're not going to close well together, too, because we're leaving business on the table. So you can figure out your years that way. And, yeah, we do it when peak season's over. So, yeah. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Andrey. Thank you, President Weinstein. With the preserve also, you didn't mention storage. I know when I did my tour, that was a big part. So I'm assuming that will be part of the remodel as well. That would be part of the clubhouse renovation. I know they talked about maybe expanding the restrooms and locker rooms and then also storage for the kitchen and different supplies. So, yep, that will be part of that. Okay. And how about the flooring situation at Jim Ward? Has that been rectified? That has slowly been rectified. The company is coming back this weekend, as a matter of fact, to make their final corrections, and then they will be complete. Okay. But we've been in constant communication with them. They've come back several times to make corrections, and at some of those times they've made things worse. And so we've just had to continually stay on them. But they should be here this weekend to make their final corrections. And we're not closing the invoice until those corrections? No, we have yet to even receive an invoice from them. Great. Yes. And I know you mentioned Volunteer Park, but you're doing renovations to the inside in terms of the restrooms? That was in this year's budget, and to be honest, due to the debacle with the Jim Ward flooring, that's not something we felt we wanted to tackle in the department, so it might be a discussion with the capital projects team at a later date. But we don't anticipate doing that in this year's budget. Okay. Even though you had it for last year, you don't want to move that forward for 26? It could be something that will be rolled over, yes, through the finance department. Okay. And last question, because it also came up at Paha last night, the gazebo at North Acres Park. Is that under Parks and Rec or someone else? That might be a Samira question, but I'm really not sure. It wasn't around when that was chosen or who selected that, but I know there were some complaints with the size of it from what I understand. Correct. Good afternoon. Can you please repeat the question? Because I wasn't in the meeting, so. Just the size of the gazebo was raised by one person. Yeah. Is it unusually small? So during the design, we worked the design elements with the Parks Department, so they were involved at the time. The idea was during the community meeting, we didn't want to install larger gazebo to invite larger party, because the idea was it's more a passive park for shade and looking the view of the lake. You can come in, enjoy the lake under a kind of a shade structure, but not to invite a bigger party there. So if the community wishes are different now, we will continue to work with the Parks Department through their operational budget, the right time to ask, and they can add it into their operational budget. So we can, as I said before, this park is going to evolve. This is the starting point. It's not the finish point, you know, so that's the answer. And I think we replied to the resident to that effect, you know, they communicated with us, and between me and Trish, we communicated the same sentence to the resident, just to add to that. Thank you. Two questions. One, Tower Park. Yes. How's that on the list? I need to look at that. One of our advisory board members asked me about that last night in our meeting. I think you brought it up to me last year, and I recall when I looked, it was still several years away, but I didn't have the chance to look at it today, but I will and get back to that advisory board member. Very good. And to me. Thank you. And status of hiring new tennis director. I sat in on three interviews this morning. We have three more tomorrow, and then I'm hoping that we can wrap it up and make our final decision in the next week or two. Beautiful. And last thing, I just wanted to follow up in regards to Jim Ward. Can we get an update as to if that is completed this weekend and you're satisfied with it? Yes. We just get a note as to that, please. Yes. Thank you very much. Mayor, did you have anything further? You had jumped in before, but you don't have to. No, I don't think. No, we got it covered. Thank you. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Next, we have utilities. Mr. Polio. Hi. Good evening, Mayor, Council President, Council Members, Mr. Ezra. Tonight, we'll cover a couple areas on our department. Just for the record, it's Mr. Morgan. Ezra. I talked to you early. Hey, I'm reading what I wrote. He didn't want to stray from his reading remarks. Yeah, we're not going to do that. We're going to stick to this. I'm not ad-libbing tonight. So tonight, I want to cover several areas of our department. Where we currently are as a utility company, the status of some of the planned and completed projects, and some milestones and accomplishments, as well as some of the challenges we're going to be looking at over the next year, a couple of years, actually. As you all are aware, due to the complexity and the cost associated with most of our projects, they're multi-year, multi-budget projects. Most of our projects are – well, you see the bills. I am proud to say that we are – by October, we'll have completed $20 million in budgeted capital projects by mid-October. I think that's a great accomplishment by our staff, our utility team, administration, and it shows the team including Council's dedication and focus on maintaining a quality and compliant utility operation. This budget year will be no different. Staff will continue to focus on completing backlogged or delayed projects, improving our customer service, meeting all known and unknown regulatory requirements as they seem to be changing daily, and remain at the top of our game, which a lot of other municipalities wish to duplicate. Our accomplishments and milestones for this current budget year – we completed the remodeling of the billing office, the approval we received of our 20-year consumptive use permit with no reduction. That was a big push for the department. Bree sweat park phases C and D, our generator storage building, AMI metering project. We are down to the last few meters, and when I say few, up to – we're just shy of 20. So, that's been a heavy lift for several years. Upcoming and ongoing projects that we have – our customer billing portal. For the last couple of months, we've been in negotiations with our current payment processing company as well as our payment printing and mailing provider. In the coming weeks, we hope to present to administration our recommendation for an updated, improved customer portal, which will include paperless building. I want to talk about this just for a second. This – we had heard – heard you loud and clear wanting this. This could not be started until the AMI project was done. There was no way we could have handled multiple implementations at the same time. So, from switching 29,000 meters and then incorporating a new project. So, we're on schedule for where we want to be with that. You'll get more information in the coming weeks. Other projects we're looking at – hardening and expansion of existing utility buildings and infrastructure. In many cases, a lot of our buildings were built in the 70s. Some of our infrastructure – we're working through that to build to today's hardened specifications. We'll continue to combine multiple projects when we can for an overall savings. Regional wastewater plant – we are hopefully on track to put a shovel in the ground. November – December is what we're hoping for. Our Central High Service Pump and Administrative Building out at Central. A parking lot for utility field and plant staff – we're currently parking wherever we can fit them. SCADA – SCADA is going to be a big – that was pushed back last year. Our original numbers were about 9 million on that. We've split it up into three different phases. We're going to tackle the two water plants first and then move to the sewer plant, which should coincide with some other projects. Reswept Park phases – ENF are the last two. We'll be wrapped up with those. We have to look at the pricing that's going to be coming in on that because we're not sure if we're going to be able to tackle two at a time as we did this time. The main reason we did that was because we received some funding. We received $850,000 or $800,000 on that grant. So we tackled two projects at one time. It was a little bit of a stretch for us. Master sewer plan phase two is ongoing. We just did the kickoff for that a few weeks ago. That's going to identify the wastewater treatment plant needs for the next 10 to 15 years. That's going to be an interesting tell as to where we're going to be dollar-wise. You had seen some of the projects that – you know, the lids that cost $7 million a piece. That's really going to identify and nail down a plan. Because we're not asking for – we're asking for one position. It's an engineer one position which we are going to hire from within. We have a person on staff that she's received her – she's received her degree. She's finishing up her training right now with the help of Samira. She needs to work underneath a licensed engineer. So she's helping with the park currently doing inspections and stuff. Challenges. The challenges really aren't going to differ that much from previous budget cycles. Since 2020, pricing, bidding, and availability of quality contractors and equipment have been and remain a major factor in our operation. Some of those challenges are going to be ever-changing regulatory and statutory requirements. Attracting and retaining quality personnel. All utilities are struggling with this right now. Expanded tariffs. All unknown. However, some bills are starting to note that we'll be seeing some tariff increases on some of the products that we're purchasing. Limited contractors. Not many contractors are bidding some of the projects. We just put a lift station out. We have one bidder. We're putting it back out on the street. We weren't happy with what we had seen price-wise. We think that they may have missed something, not missed something, tripled something on their price. So we're reevaluating that. Material and equipment acquisition. This is going to be challenging depending upon what happens with inflation and potential tariffs. Seeking available funding now and in the future. We are going to be getting extremely aggressive in trying to seek some free money. While it's drying up, there might be some other opportunities out there that we want to be looking into. So we're going to be focusing on that as well. We have one vehicle in the budget this year. It's a F-150. That is going to our lift station maintenance contractor who is currently driving a pool vehicle. We have one crane truck in the budget to replace an existing crane truck that's reached its useful life. With that, if you have any questions. None for you, Mr. Ezra. No. Just kidding. Sorry. Thank you very much. No questions. We appreciate you. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. It says Midtown Gateway CRA. I don't see Mr. Hall. Who's? Oh. Mr. Holmes. Such excitement. We're excited to see you. Thank you. Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, good evening. Clean up. Mr. Chair, members of the council, Mayor and Mr. Ezra. For the record, Dan Holmes, Planning and Zoning Director. I'm just going to briefly go in addition to just kind of touching on Midtown Gateway. Just in terms of the planning and zoning overall budget. If you've taken a look at that, there's very little there. We're pretty much holding the line overall. As we said, with Midtown, this is probably where you see the bulk of our increases within budget requests. As you know, we're completing the comprehensive plan at this time. One of the things that the comprehensive plan does anticipate as we move until the next budget year is looking at the adoption of an activity center there. So, we do have some dollars that we've set aside for consultants to assist us in adopting the activity center. We did very modest increases. You know, we've been supporting the Reg A genealogy event. So, there's a little bit of money that was increased there. And then finally, with regard to capital, there are several projects that you'll notice that we've added into this area. We've got a significant number of people now residing in Midtown, and it's now time for us to really start looking at the pedestrian safety amenities and stuff that we need to do within the Midtown district. So, you'll see funding in there, which you guys are familiar with, with regard to the bridge, which is going to be a multiyear project. So, you'll see funding and capital there. New project that engineering has started to talk about is the Cleary Boulevard drainage. Project that we're looking to tap funds within Midtown to assist with that. A couple of weeks ago, you did get a presentation on the Southwest 78th Street, 78th Avenue, 6th Street realignment, bicycle improvements there. So, you'll see funding for that. We've just talked about the microtransit, which we want to kind of keep going as well. So, we've added that to the budget. And then, also with the city's multimodal transportation plan, we've tried to set aside some funding to support that as well. So, that's the biggest bulk of changes that you'll see overall within the planning and zoning's budget. With regard to Gateway, not a significant amount with Gateway. Very small increases in operating. No real capital there. Most of the capital stuff that we kind of see happening in Gateway is really within the community redevelopment agency fund. And we do have some monies that we've continued to set aside for catalytic projects. You're familiar with Green Mills that came before you, so we did set aside some money. We're still trying to work with them to bring that project about. And then, we are working on trying to implement improvements, landscape, other type of improvements along the State Road 7 corridor and also a portion of the Sunrise Boulevard corridor. So, that's the bulk of the projects capital-wise that you'll see within the community redevelopment. From an agency. SHIP, CDBG, you know, we did finally get the letter from the federal government with regard to the amount of money we're going to get for CDBG. We're still waiting for confirmation with SHIP. So, we're just kind of anticipating the funding that we got from last year. And so, I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. Just you mentioned Green Mills. Can you elaborate on where you are with any working with them? Yeah. We've, in fact, we just had a recent meeting with them. They started submitting to us just some conceptual site plans. We've been looking at the site, trying to work out, you know, how we could basically site the project on the site, looking at some things that we need to work out with the Briar County Planning Council in terms of the approach that we might take. So, we're kind of in some of the early stages of just meeting with them and working out how to move forward. Very good. Thank you. Anybody else? No? No. Thank you very much, Mr. Holmes. Thank you. Ms. Anna, you're back up. So, with the off chance of having a little bit more time, we do have a couple more directors scheduled to come up. They're just not on your list. So, first of all, we'll have IT and then followed by building. Let's start with IT. We'll see where we go. Antofusco, welcome. Good evening, President, Council Members, City Attorney, Mayor, John Antofusco IT Director. I'm just going to start off by saying I'm very proud of the IT department and all the work that we do for the city. We do service all the departments. And, like I said, I'm very proud of the staff and the work we put in. With that being said, a major capital project we have going on is ERP. The city is undergoing a new ERP solution. We're currently in negotiations. We are going to be making a transition with our Acela program, which does building permits and whatnot to the cloud. And then our continued subscription for our virtualization, which is the backbone of the city. All the city's applications rely on that software to operate. And then with that, I do have some requesting one new position. As you know, security is a concern for all the things that we do. It's the core of what I think the IT department needs to protect the city's data. So with that, we're asking for an IT junior security administrator. We already have a security administrator. This will just help with our succession planning, coverages and schedules and whatnot. Just make us stronger in that area. And then I do have some reclass for our support specialist positions. Just a grade reclass. Bless you. And with that, I'm willing to answer any questions. Councilmember Andrew. Thank you, President Reinstein. Mr. Montefusco, are you incorporating or how are you incorporating AI into the various functions that you do as an IT group? Excellent question. We are taking advantage of any AR components that already exist with the software we already own or we have a subscription to. I know that's a big push in the field. I know there's, Acela is one of the programs we use and they're incorporating AI to help customers or residents find, I guess, get through the permitting process easily. So it has yet to be released, but it's in the works. I know that's coming. We're looking to use AI for our website. We can improve navigating the website. We're going to look with Tigranicus, who is the backbone of our website. I believe, at minimum, they have some chatbots, but we're looking to even see if there's other avenues we can use with them. It is an expensive technology, so we try to look for what's already developed with what the application we use. That's what we have on the horizon for now. So Acela does have a chatbot feature? Well, I spoke to them. It's not released yet. They're working it into their product. So if you needed to apply for a permit, you would say, what would I need? And it would give you all the documents, and it would help you give you the forms and the process instead of you trying to figure it out, even down to the pricing of what it would cost. But it's not released yet, but that is on the horizon. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Gale. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Mine's pretty simple. My budget is pretty much the same as last year. We have no capital increases. We purchased all of our equipment for. We're just looking to exchange three vehicles for three new ones. Hopefully hybrids, if we can find them. And if we do get hybrids, we'd be adding in three chargers, electric chargers, to wear those. If not, they won't be in the budget. We're looking to increase our budget for the remodeling of the building due to increasing cost. We've started. Position-wise, we're not adding any, but we're reclassifying five positions due to job duties increased, and we've moved people. And those are, well, two of them are structural inspector ones. We're getting rid of the one and making them two, make it more attractive for people to apply, and also movement of the existing inspector ones into the two positions if they pass their test. The other three positions are permit analyst being moved up just because of increased job duties. Pretty much that's all we have. Councilmember Hoyland. Thank you, Mr. Gale. Just a quick question. Where are we on the concierge position? The concierge position has been filled, and we're moving projects into her slowly. As a matter of fact, we just moved the HCA hospital projects over to her, so she's going to be the one contact for the hospital for all of their projects. That's good. And who's handling that? Her name is Brandy Yellen. Okay, great. All right. Thank you for that. Excited about it. Anything else? Mayor. HCA's in the house, if you all don't mind. So we had a good meeting with them on Monday, and we talked to this about connecting the concierge, and we're excited because they've got a boatload of things going on. Yeah. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Gale. Thank you. Anna, it's 622. Well, we never want anything. We don't get any money. We just get to manage it. So that is all we have, but if you have any questions for any other department that hasn't come up yet, I mean, we'll be happy to send them up. Council Member Andrea. I do have two different questions. One, I'm not sure if this will fall under your wheelhouse or not. I know we always do a great job on the financial audit. What I haven't seen, at least I don't recall, have we had a recent property and inventory audit as we're talking about purchasing, you know, more and more? No, not that I'm aware of. I mean, you mean, have we had another audit come in aside from our normal annual audit? Have you done an annual audit for the property? I don't remember seeing it. No, no, we haven't done one of those. If that's a specific audit that we would need to do, if that's something that is needed or wanted by council, we would absolutely talk to administration and see where we can go with that. Have we ever? Do you know? So are you talking about like a physical inventory? Correct. So yeah, we typically. So maybe I'll let you speak to that. For structures we have as part of our insurers, John, they've gone through all our structures to true them up and that was something you saw reflected in the last property bill as far as our property coverage. Are you speaking of. Are you speaking of. I mean, like all of the electronic devices, for instance. So we purchase, you know, all of these desktops and laptops. How are we ensuring that these items are still here, that they're not. Walking away. Yeah. So we do have a disposal process that they have to go through. So those typically come to me for sign off. We do have to account for all of those, particularly in light of recent circumstances. We're very rigorous about that. So actually we are trying to work on a system to make that a little bit more efficient because it is not very efficient as it stands now. But some of that's wrapped up in the RP process because the current ERP system GP was never designed for governmental functions in the first place. So what we'll be moving to is much more forward thinking does potentially include AI components as well. I don't know. That would be. I don't know how my colleagues feel, but that would be something I think I would. It would be worth an investment just to ensure that whether you have an outside entity come in or there's somebody in house from maybe IT or some other division that could do that. But I think that might be worth the time and energy. Maybe also just for some clarification, in terms of an asset audit, it doesn't sound like we've ever – when was the last time we – have we ever done one? Maybe just ask that generally. Specific to an asset audit? I'm not aware, but there are testing procedures when we do our annual audits, but that is something they potentially review. I mean, we don't barcode, for example, our electronics. I mean – No, we do tag those. You want to talk about how we tag them? Sure. Absolutely. We do have inventory. I have inventory of all our electronic equipment. Any disposals do get signed off. We typically end-the-life stuff. If we can donate them, we donate them to Broward County Schools, and we record all those serial numbers as well. I have software that we can keep track of all our service tags and whatnot. If that helps, I don't – Let me let the mayor jump in. He wanted to also. Sure. Jason, maybe you talk about the asset disposal process that Matt kind of put together as assets approach into life. Is that kind of what you mean? Yeah. Part of the issue is not the tagged assets. The real problem is the untagged assets. So let's say it's brake shoes off a car. Well, those don't have a particular ID number, but what we're doing right now is each one of those things, whatever it is, Matt's folks are picturing them, cataloging them, and each one of those items is signed off on. And it's extremely tedious. So what we're trying to do is trying to work out another system for that, but we do track all of those. So if somebody throws away some old brake lines, I mean, it has essentially no value, but it was owned by the city. And so, again, we want to make sure that folks know that that is being thrown away. It's not going home. It's not being repurposed for any other thing. It's being disposed of. So all of those things that are disposed are truly disposed of and recorded. And, you know, the OIG likes to check on those things, and that's something we're definitely doing. I mean, it would sound like what I'm hearing, Councilmember Andreu, is that, you know, just being a good steward of all of our assets to have some type of more thorough asset inventory. But let me let Councilmember Anderson jump in. You continued on to what I was talking about because typically technology is easy because you have all the serial numbers coming in. You can track the useful life, how long it is, and when it goes out. That's kind of an easy loop. It's what you got into all the equipment. We keep buying new equipment, but we don't know, you know, and I know we've got stories of holding our vehicles for a very long time. But if we don't know, follow it all the way through to useful life, we don't really know if something got lost, stolen, or something in between. So, but you started to cover that. I know what we're doing better with GIS, with pictures, with documentation. It would just be – I'm surprised because at the school board, anything at all purchased over $1,000 as inventory. Every single thing, every technology, every television, every single thing we purchased over $1,000. Even like an air handler unit, like it's in an inventory. And we have to do self-audits twice a year, and then the auditor comes out to do a proper inventory once a year. So we have a fixed asset system that we – everything is recorded in there. And if anyone is disposing of an item, it does go through a process that goes through administration. The department head will forward it to administration. The administration signs off on it. The copy goes back to the department. The other copy comes to me. And then we dispose of it in the fixed asset system. And then those are audited by the auditors when they come in. So we do have a process in place. It's not a lot more – it's just the wording probably – It's just – yeah. You don't call it the same thing, but you're kind of doing the things separately. The risk is the untagged asset. So a vehicle – okay, you all have seen that procured. I see it disposed. But what about the catalytic converter? Well, that's not tagged specifically. That thing can walk away, and that's where there's some money. So we've had to up our game on that. So those are the particular things I'm talking about. It's what's not specifically recorded. That's a component of something else that can be taken off, disposed of. What we might have thought of in the past was just trash. Well, some trash has value. If it's metal, it can be surplused and sold. Mr. Neuer, let me just – let me jump to Council Member Fadgen since we have about a minute left. In the garage, I'm assuming that the parts inventory shop is regularly inventoried. Yes, sir. Hopefully at least once a month, probably more often than that. And is it a perpetual system? Yes. So we take something out, we put something in, it's constantly getting updated, and then we confirm it by actually doing a visual account. Correct. And then each item taken from inventory is attached to a work order for whatever unit it is utilized. Do you have any idea what our dollar figure is for our parts inventory? I can't imagine it being material for an audit. I doubt that the auditors would be actually counting that unless we ask them to. Oh, yes. We do – departments are required to reconcile their inventory. We haven't – Hansen is our inventory. We have an actual system. And so that's what Matt's talking about when it goes through a work order. So in and out. Right. In and out. There also needs to be a physical actual count internally. Right. But I guess I was trying to get assessment as to, you know, the dollar figure of the parts inventory because I'm just trying to think where other, you know, other inventory items would – it couldn't – it's not a million dollars. No, but there is reconciliations done by each department and they have to provide that to finance. But it never hits the materiality level for the auditors to actually go to the garage to count the – Exactly. No, it does not. Okay. But we are reconciling it. It's done. And then at the end of the year – And then they might want to do an existence test and roll everything back. Exactly. Same thing for the golf shop. You know, it's – that can't be material to the overall financials of the thing. So there are regular accounts. Now, regarding IT, are you able – John, are you able to know, like, what computers are not getting logged in and we go find out, okay, this was assigned to – Absolutely. And also President Reinstein. Where's his computer? And we eyeball it or – Since he mentioned me, I'm just going to ask you to wrap it up so we can move on to – Absolutely. Everything is logged. We even have the ability – But you can see – are we looking at people that have been dormant, like – Yeah, we are. Okay. We audit our accounts. We audit our devices. Absolutely. Okay. All right. That's all I – that's all I have. Thank you. And Council Member Reinstein is not stealing that. Thank you. Yeah, so that really is actually being done every year. We do it annually. And then the auditors go through the reconciliations and if there was something that stuck out, then they would go and do physical inventory and they've never had to do that. So hopefully that – okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. So we're going to adjourn the budget, pre-budget workshop.