Good evening and welcome. The Wednesday, September 18th, 2024 City of Plantation final budget public meeting is now called to order at 530. Ms. Begrove, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson. Here. Council Member Andrean. Here. Council Member Fadgen. Here. Council Member Horland. Here. Council Member Reisun. Here. Mayor Stolz. Here. City Attorney Ezra. Here. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Horland has invited some people to lead us in the pledge. So we're going to start the pledge here with the pledge tonight. So could the student council members from Mayor Lake Elementary please come up. And Council Member, you might want to come down and meet your counterparts and take a photo. So the special thing about Mayor Lake Elementary, there's so many special things, but there's student council representatives near our seats up here. So come right up here and you guys are going to start the pledge and then we're going to come down. So Mayor, right up here. Make sure the green light's on. That Mayor. The Mayor with the microphone. Mayor Singh. Yes. Okay. Read us in the pledge. Everyone stand. Two hundred four minutes. Parents, can you come on up here. Pledge of Allegiance. States of America, considered in public, religious stands, one nation under God, and the leaders of our community and justice for all. So students, I'd like you to introduce yourselves and say what your position is and we're going to come down and take a picture with you, okay? Go ahead, ma'am. What's your name? My name is Sandra Singh and I'm mayor of student council. That's right. From Mayor Lake Elementary School. Oh. Sorry. My name is Braden and I am a part of the student council. And what seat do you have, Braden? I am in the best seat. I am in the best seat. Look over at me. Two. Seat two. Yes. I am in seat two. Well done. Okay, next. My name is Nakaya Rolt and I'm fifth council member. Just. Seat five. Seat five. Okay. Go ahead. My name is Sophia Neen and I'm the class ambassador. Right. My name is Sienna Palmer and I'm seat one. Yep. My name is Amaya Alexandria and I'm the class ambassador. Wonderful. So we're going to come down and take a picture and we have principal Marlene Villas here. We have Deb DeBruyne and vice principal Hanifat. So thank you so much for coming and parents too. Let's take a photo. Congratulations. Hope your election went well. Waiting on a mayor. That's okay. You can wait. All should participate. Okay, that brings us to the legislative section. Anna. Good evening, Mayor, Council President, Council Members, City Attorney Ezra. Before we get, I don't have a presentation tonight. I think we did that last week. But I do want to read into record some information and then I guess we can proceed with the resolutions and discussion. Okay. The City of Plantation fiscal year 25 proposed budget is based on the general fund operating village of 5.8 mils. This is an increase of 7.18% from the rollback millage rate of 5.415 mils. The voted debt millage rate for fiscal year 25 is 0.2980 mils. This is the millage rate required to fund the voter approved debt. The Plantation gateway development district fiscal year 25 proposed budget is based on the operating marriage of 1.7108 mils. This is an increase of 5.69% from the rollback millage rate of 1.6187 mils. The Plantation Midtown Development District fiscal year 25 proposed budget is based on the operating marriage of 0.9707 mils. This is an increase of 6.04% from the rollback millage rate of 0.9154 mils. The City of Plantation aggregate fiscal year proposed budget is based on the aggregate millage of 6.0273 mils. This is an increase of 7.19% from the aggregate rollback millage rate of 5.6231 mils. The increase in ad valorem revenues in fiscal year 25 are for the specific purpose of funding increases in operating costs, increase in personnel costs, and to fund operating capital needs. Thank you. I think we had our presentation last week. We had a pretty robust discussion. I don't see any comments from the DAIS. I'll just repeat what I said last week regarding thank you for your hard work, your staff. Yes, accountants don't get enough credit. We keep the whole thing together. This is the only thing we get it, so thank you. Thank you to all the department heads and everyone involved with the budget. Like I said, my experience this cycle was a little bit different than my past experience. And I think I said this before, that the process, when I was sitting in the mayor's office, you know, it's everything I think everybody would expect it to be. It was thoughtful. There was tough decisions made. And it's responsible. So I have a millage problem, but the budgeting I don't have a problem with. So I just want to say thank you one more time. And I see that since I filibustered and we have an hour until the next meeting, Council Member Orland would like to speak. Thank you, Mr. President. I just want to say, again, we want to thank you for everything that you and your staff have done. But there's something that I don't know if the council knows, but recently we know how in what high esteem we all hold, Ms. Otaniano. And she recently was elected to the 2024-2025 FGFOA Board of Directors statewide. So I think that's really impressive. We celebrated Mr. Spencer recently with Team Plantation just continues to do great things. So I think when people, when it comes to budget time especially, that's the time that a lot of our residents get to see you. But we trust you so much. But the fact that you've been elected by your peers to the Board of Directors says a lot. So we just want to congratulate you and thank you for everything that you do. Thank you very much. Thank you. How did I say your accounting degree? It was because we went to school together. Yes. All those study sessions. Council Member Orland. Andrea. Thank you, President Thatch. And I just wanted to see if we could get a final okay. I know we were looking at the price analysis for getting some type of mailer, whether it be what you shared with us, the proposed budget highlights. But did we get a final okay and do we have funding for that in the budget? I believe, yes. But we talked last week about taking some items out of the budget and fund it with ARPA. So we looked into that for you to see what we could do there. And unfortunately, a project is going to be difficult because, you know, we have to get the funds obligated by 1231. So instead of maybe funding the project in parks, maybe we could fund some equipment instead to free up that $200,000. And we thought if you want some of that money to go towards the mailing, we could do that. But also there is some bridges in the parks and recreation area that we thought could use some funding as well. So whatever we free up there can be discussed where that money can go. But we definitely want to move forward with that. The project is going to be tough because you know how hard it is when it goes out to get funding. We don't want to lose any money. So we figured we would maybe take some equipment from parks because that's easily obligated and we could get that done and then free up some of that money and be able to use some of that for that and then for the bridges instead. Am I saying the bridges? Is it the bridges? Is that? Yeah. The volunteer park? Yeah. Okay. So they could be turned into piers. And that probably wouldn't fund all of it, but it would be some funding towards that. That's an excellent plan. So thank you for that. I was waiting for the opportunity to talk about that with us. So thank you for bringing that up. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I do not see any other comments from the DAIs. There's some comments from the Chamber. We're going to speak to all six items at one time. So if you're signing up to speak to multiple items, you're just going to do it one time. And we'll go from there. So let's go with Ms. Gobel. Good evening. I just wanted to- Oh, one second. State your name and your address for the record and- Sure. Lisa Gobel, 1340 Campanella Drive Plantation. Very good. Go ahead. Thank you. I just wanted to state that in the Lauderdale West community, there's been a great amount of growth with apartment buildings, with the new townhouses, with the proposed complex going up where the Bank of America is. You know, we have a lot of congestion coming around us at a 55 and over community. So I don't know if there's any budgeted information or items that will help with the traffic concerns and the risks. In addition to that, with all of these other income sources, I'm assuming are, I'm hoping that we could have our marriage be rolled back. And that's it. Thank you. Ms. Sword? Ms. Sword, 16th and 1st and 2nd Avenue. I'm going to talk about the budget, in particular, the midtown. I would like to request that we roll back the marriage for midtown. We need to be attracting more business. Increasing taxes isn't going to do that. Also, I would like to talk about the marriage for the city of plantation. Property owners, you see their appraisers increase. Taxes will increase. We need to roll back the marriage so that we're not paying more taxes. And also, I'd like to make a comment. We can't leave this idea of what if, what if. We're just leaving the present. We can't worry about the future. If I'm leaving what ifs, I've never done all the things I've done in my life. Thank you. Hey, Carol. Mr. Conklin? If I may approach, there's a set there for each of you. Dennis Conklin, 458-1 Northwest 6th Court. In the handout that I gave you, you can see a terrific job that the city's been doing on reducing its debt. You can look at this cover sheet here. It says, look at the back. And basically one year ago today, not quite, it was $64 million of total debt. And today, it's $50 million, so that's paying down $14 million of debt. What I'd like to draw your attention to is this part from the CAFR and suggestion. Again, we've been building up an amount of money, and you can see from the item number one here, there's a discrepancy in the amount of money that the mortgage rate is going to be pulling in for the gateway, and the budgeted money is $300,000. So that goes into the amount of money, which you can see here. It's that $313 million figure there. I've asked once the CRA was developed to please put the mortgage rate for the gateway 7 to 0. Well, the CRA this year is going to be, according to the report, $4,700,000. The Great Lakes exceeds that $800,000 from the mortgage rate. What happened there today was that gold closed at $2,573. And one year ago, when the report was issued for the 30th of September of 2023, gold was $1,862. That's basically a loss of purchasing power of 38.2%. And you're sitting on a pile of money. It's just you're not able to buy what you could or provide services what you could for that value. And I would like to encourage you to look into promoting the state legislature, the Florida Depository, and that would be for gold and silver, according to the Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution, where the states can actually make their own coins as long as it's gold. And it would basically lack in everybody else because they would be on the escalator, which they are not. When I started work, minimum wage was a buck and a quarter, five silver quarters. That was in the 1960s and the other one. And if I had those five silver quarters today, the minimum wage, $30,000 an hour. So we got to hook into that because meeting after meeting, you have people talking about affordability of housing. You have to basically get onto a standard where you're on the same escalator because nobody's wages have been able to keep up with the loss of the value of the dollar because of the federal reserve just issuing money. And that was another thing about becoming debt-free for the city. You have so much money in the page right here, right, of the unrestricted funds that if you took out even a portion of the federal U.S. treasuries, you could pay off all of the same debt and still have $150 million left over. And that's a suggestion. In other words, I don't think there's a municipality in Broward that's debt-free. I know the county isn't. I know the school board isn't. I think Plantation could set a great example. You've got the money, pay off your debt, and then continue on into the future. Thank you. I'm going to back my time. Thank you, Dennis. I have no other speaking cards submitted. Is there anybody else in the chamber that would like to make a comment regarding the millage items or the budget items? Okay, seeing none, we're going to vote on each one of these individually. So item one is fiscal year 2025, final millage resolution for Plantation Gateway Development District. Can I have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Ms. Beggarro, please call the roll. Council Member Reinstein? No. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Paget? Yes. We did reduce this. Yes. Okay. Legislative item number two, fiscal year 2025, final millage resolution for the Plantation Midtown Development District. Can I have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Ms. Beggarro, please call the roll. Council Member Reinstein? No. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Paget? No. Legislative item number three, fiscal year 2025, final millage resolution for the City of Plantation Consolidated? Motion to approve. Second. Ms. Beggarro, please call the roll. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Paget? No. Legislative item number four, fiscal year 2025, final budget resolution for the Plantation Gateway Development District. I have a motion. Motion to approve. Second. Second. Ms. Beggarro, please call the roll. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Council Member Paget? Yes. Legislative item number five, fiscal year 2025, final budget resolution for the Plantation Midtown Development District. Can I have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Ms. Beggarro, please call the roll. Council Member Reinstein? Yes. Council Member Horland? Yes. Council Member Anderson? Yes. Council Member Andreu? Yes. Councilmember Paget. Yes. And legislative item number six, fiscal year 2025, final budget resolution for the city of Plantation Consolidated. May I have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Ms. Beggarrow, please call the roll. Councilmember Bernstein. Yes. Councilmember Warren. Yes. Councilmember Anderson. Yes. Councilmember Andreu. Yes. Councilmember Paget. Yes. Okay, so with that, our business is done, so we're going to adjourn the meeting, and the next meeting will start at 6.30. meeting adjourned, 5.51.