So I would first like to recognize some dignitaries that came. Candace Eriks, who's our lobbyist. Not Candace Eriks. Lauren Jackson. I promoted you. I gave you a raise. Josh Freeman. Do you count as a dignitaries? You're not in the dignitary seats. I don't know. And from MPO, Carol Henderson and Paul Cavalisi. So thank you. Did I get everybody, Carol? I mean, Lauren, did I get everybody? And from Sheila Scherfelis McCormick's office, we have two more sit up here. I do get to mention, please, when you talk to the representative that I have her coin from her inauguration. You guys remember going to that? Right there at Howard Center. And it's a coin with Sheila on the front and Elsie Hastings on the back. I thought it was a really cool giveaway. All right. So welcome to State of the City Address. I kind of want to use this time to pull back the lens a little bit. Let's take a wider view on where we are as a city. Stop and take a breath, if you will. I always kind of giggle when elected officials present their state of the city because everybody says the state of the city is strong, right? Well, it's kind of like the fox guarding the hen house. The elected is reporting on their own thing. So unfortunately, it hurts cities like us where our state of the city really is strong. So in some ways, you know, we're going to keep going with that. And you're going to see that the city has ample reserves. We've made a ton of progress. Still have a very long list of things we want and need to do. I think you've got to believe that we always got to want to get better. And we always do. We want to get better. I do want to comment for a second about the positive culture at City Hall. I see people excited to come to work. I see people who aren't afraid to speak up. They know administration is fine with being vetted. And they're also fine with the same vetting for their jobs. We can challenge each other. But like I said, I'd prefer we do it with a smile on our face. You're going to see this presentation focuses on the status of city government. We respond to twists in terms of economics, resident preferences, whole buffet of unknown factors. But I'm going to be talking about the accomplishments and challenges of our city government, what we control. I oversee 16 departments, extensive help from CAO Jason Neunemaker, assistant administrators Carol Morris and Laura Carpaviacciutti, and an excellent, excellent support staff. I have my notes here. Right here's where you clap. I ask the heads of those departments to give me their take on where we are as of April 10th, 2024. Several departments that are valuable but you're not going to hear about because they're not as forward-facing. That includes IT, city clerk, and procurement. I wanted this to be for the public. For council members, almost all this is familiar. There's probably no surprises because these are all things we've been working on. My admin tries to operate with no surprises. And you're likely to know what the issues are. So you ready to get started? Okay. First up is the mayor's office. Here's what we do. Of course, you know the number one is we prepare a budget for council's adoption. What you may not know is that we work on that year-round. We see Anna in the hallway starting in January. We're talking about positions, right? We talk positions. We talk capital projects in the spring. And then we set a millage in the summer. And then in September we have our budget. Council approves that tax rate. And that's important that we have those conversations. Sixteen departments, like I said. The thing that you'll see about our city is every project we do, one department's got to talk to the other. Nothing is just one department. So it's very important that everybody here has trust. Those guys in the back room, there are guys and women in the back room. Everything we do, when we put in a new parking space at the fire station, Samara has to talk to Don Todd, right? So that happens like everything. So my office kind of becomes then an air traffic controller office. Everybody comes in every two weeks. Information comes in to me and Jason. And we make sure everybody knows what's going on. We keep those lines of communication going. Intergovernmental affairs. Plantation has greatly accelerated the amount. We reach out to talk to state government, county government, the school board, and council. Here's where council has been epic. Council has somebody who's going to be Broward League of Cities vice president. They have somebody on the South Florida Planning Council. And they have a Florida legislative advisory committee member. Of course, one person is all three of those, Denise Horland, right? That was pretty good. You've got to give that to me. And, of course, we answer a resident concern, resolution, and responsiveness to emerging needs. That's us in council. People love to email the mayor. People love to email council. And our job is to be responsive. And I think we do pretty well at that. Where are we at now? Oh, lastly, yeah, people like to email the mayor. Which leads us to talk about the public. The public, they want safe and attractive neighborhoods. They love nice things. They love the parks. This is what we found out is people want plantation to be just a little bit better. Maybe a lot better. And so we have to look at how we manage and run our city through that lens. And let's start with police of that because people care so much about safety. Police Department is looking forward to body-worn cameras. We have grants to offset the cost. We have a selection committee evaluating who the vendor is going to be. And once we get them, council will look at it, approve or not approve. And once we get approval, we're good to go. Our citizen community engagement, that unit has been spectacular. Public's done a good job getting to know our police officers. That's what we want. And we're going to do even more at National Night Out in August if that's possible. For example, police added a social media coordinator, or what Chief Harrison calls strategic communications officer. I like social media, but we'll give it to you. We've added license plate readers. Police continues multi-agency test forces, Internet crimes, burglary apprehension, working with county government. And as we talk about county government, I get to introduce a latecomer, County Commissioner Hazel Rogers, who represents the north part of our district, and also former council member Pete Tindjim. The class of 2018 learned a lot from Pete about how to conduct ourselves as council members and everything. And I think Pete gets a lot of credit, at least from me. Okay, so we are license plate readers. On to fire rescue. Oh, no, I missed. Police department recently promoted a new deputy chief, Chad Fowler, a captain, Rudy Brown, a lieutenant, Jay Kowalewski, and two sergeants, Ryan McWilliams and Casey Smith. So we can clap for them, too. Okay, fire rescue. In a meeting just a day ago, we talked about the cadet program, and this cadet program they have is really taking off. It's a maximum of 20 people because of the gear. They're high school age. It's kind of we are looking at this as a farm team for growing more firefighters. They have competitions in first aid, trauma, and we get to develop them and see. They get to see if they have the goods, and we get to see, you know, what they do well. Chief Todd would give us a wave on this, but he's out fighting a fire, right, Jason? That's what he – so he's at work. That's not a bad thing. Plantation's the largest combo volunteer fire and career in EMS. We successfully maintained ISO 2 rating for the seven years, working at updating our fire stations to modernize them and harden them against hurricanes and severe weather. You're going to hear that a lot. We have a lot of talk about hardening the buildings we already own. They call it hardening. I call it protecting against hurricanes, and we're doing that to make sure that when the storm comes, we have – we're secure. So you're going to – that's something we talk about a lot in admin. Most of the days, they have fairly routine calls, right? Most of the days, they might help a heavy person out of a garage. They might have somebody who has a flutter or maybe, you know, a possible heart attack. Two weeks ago, they had a harder day, right? Two weeks ago, a policeman had to jump in the water and fish out a child who had expired. EMS had to treat two people who had already died and then a person who was on the edge. And at the same time, they are trained to understand that this is a murder scene. And if it's a murder scene, then you have to look for a prosecution. So you have to know what to say and what not to say. If it's me walking into the room, I go, oh, did you did it? Did you do it? If I do that, I blow Miranda, right? So fire and police are trained over and over, years and months, just for that part of data. But the whole point is there's going to be bad days. There's going to be days they remember the rest of their life, and that was one of them. So if you see any of those people, give them a hug. I went to visit some of them the night of on Flamingo and Hiatus and Sunrise. Usually, they're boisterous people, and that day, you could imagine, they couldn't even talk. So we did use our critical incident stress management team, and we're still working on emotional support for them. So on to parks. Parks, we have improved plantation preserve contract. People love the front end of plantation preserve. We get all kinds of positive reviews. They love the course. They love the layout and the challenges. We had some things we wanted to fix with the back end of the house. How were people getting paid? How were we documenting the pay? Those kind of things. I think the contract comes to them tonight. So that's the basis behind the contract tonight. The sport, paddle, ball, pickleball. You guys heard pickleball? So pickleball, we try to address the popularity. If you put them close to their home, they'll have a place to play rather than Central Park. So we've added 14 total, scattered them throughout the city. They're in the process of getting done that way. Central Park is something we've studied for more than a year. You compile the thoughts of what it would take to execute a master plan, and I'm not comfortable with asking for that number, and I don't think anybody's comfortable talking about that number. So we are talking about a rec building, which I think we desperately need to get us caught up to every other city. And so put a rec building on the other side of the pool. And so, in my mind, that's the lens I'm seeing that through right now. Attendance? Oh, we got one more. Yes, so smoking rules are enacted now. We don't want to have to make people be vigilantes, but we want people to follow the rules. We are working on a six-foot leashed law for dogs at non-active parks. Dyke Park, Jacarenda Lakes Park. If you take a dog in a restaurant, if you take a dog here and there, maybe you should be able to take a dog in a park. We'll come up. It'll come up to a vote. Parks has worked studying other cities and their policies and how they implement this, and we're going to take best practices from there. So that's on the table. Just trying to get ahead of you all. Attendance. Using our Placer AI document program, look at that trunk or treat number. Almost double, right? Rock the park. Touch a truck. Earth Day. Independence Day. People like our parks. People like things to do. So, you know, that's something that we want to keep an eye on, and that's something I'm really proud of. We're talking about the state of our city, but also we have to understand that people, there'll be more needs and more demand. Not a bad thing at all. So, where are we at next, Public Works? Public Works. Matt Thompson, I really admire the way you express these things. Matt's words are livability and safety of our city. So, Matt has recognized that there are many trees in our city that break the same sidewalk. We are fixing the same sidewalk every two years. That is not sustainable in Matt's eyes, and I agree with Matt. So, we are looking at certain trees in certain places to being removed and being replaced with the right tree in that place. We do that with a certified arborist. We evaluate everything. But what we're doing in terms of having our infrastructure broken right now, it's not sustainable. So, we've got to look at that. Matt's also right that we need to update our road signage. And one thing that surprised us as we began looking at our road improvement process, they weren't as good as we thought they were. Our roads aren't as good. Back to this comparison again. The roads are here and the city is here. So, we've got to get the roads up to here. And to do that, council, we had a great talk about that for a good workshop. 4.2 million a year. So, where are we going to find that 4.2 million? Improved communication. So, Public Works. Felix Casato, your name is up there. Very good. We've improved communication in terms of making sure residents know the storm is coming. Get your drain clear. Here's where you want to put your trash. And not only that, it's going above just Public Works, utilities, water, keeping people informed. We can do a better job coaching up our residents and having a better city that way. So, that's a purpose. I guess that's a purpose behind you. Sometimes I wonder. That's one we're going to go with today. Engineering. Being prepared for storms is a big point of emphasis for us. The weather pattern is changing, as you know. We now have Bill Mulder as stormwater manager. That's another time to clap. There's Bill. It's really interesting this year. Bill Mulder came on. Felix Casato came on. Alison Soto come on. It is a very close race for Rookie Employee of the Year. So, the balloting is coming down. That's not a real award, by the way. So, you're not getting anything extra. But, you know, that's a lot of talent coming on. And that's exciting. That makes everybody else work a little bit better. And you bring in people that know things we don't. That's what we want. So, very happy with where that's going. We get a lot of requests from residents about speeding. Our engineer, Samira Shallan. I guess we'll clap for you, too, Samira. Clap for Samira. She has a good system down. We evaluate the traffic. We come up with ideas. And then we get the public involved. The days of just a council member or a mayor saying, put a speed bump here. Those days are long over. MPO knows this. And you're nodding, right? It's based on math and science. And they put together the plan. So, again, we have more communication going back and forth and talking about these things. And we're not afraid to ask people who know things and are experts, right? Let's use everybody. So, utilities. EPA has tightened regulations regarding PFAS. But the thing is that the PFAS that a person consumes, less than 20% of it is from drinking water. We consume it in other measures and food and that kind of thing. So, we are working on reverse osmosis plants, waiting on some state rulings, right? Jason, we're still waiting on some state, for the state to come out with declarations of policies? Or is that all set for PFAS? State issued something today. Okay. But our water is good and drink up. So, we built our first RO plant in 1990. And it is still holding up good. Some places are way behind on building their reverse osmosis plants. So, this is good. Capital projects. So, we have things we need done in our city. We don't have staff and building for everything. So, we contract. And we go through procurement. We make sure that we spell out exactly what we want. And then we make sure that they do what we want. And you need experts to do that. So, that's why we have Elson, Jim Borelli, and Judy McBride. That is the capital projects team. We meet every two weeks. And here is their main report. And like we said, up here, we're working on an annex building. Engineering will move into that building. And building department will get more room. And like I've talked about, hardening buildings. And if you want to see these 25-plus projects, get with them, get with me. City Hall, ADA, fire station, dyke structural repairs, pop traverse. So, we are cooking there. On to building. The building has been praised quite a bit for their electronic building plan submission progress. Contractors, we've gotten a lot of positive things from them. The annex building, like I talked about. The big thing we added this year is we take account every day of how many permits we have out by department. We have nine departments. How many does P&Z have? How many does structural have? How many does, by each one, and just by having that accountability, and saying, you all here, where do you need help? Just that much has helped us move things along. You all know we're out of the HOA business. So, if you want to paint your house purple, you talk to your HOA. That's between you and your HOA. And I sit on the Affordable Housing Committee, and we've passed many measures that can make affordable housing go smoothly here to at least go better. Affordable housing is not just on the developer. You can't just point a finger at the developer and say, build cheaper things. It's going to take everybody. So, we're doing the things that we can. More building. David Claus, Florida Building Inspector of the Year. Ted McLean, Electrical Chief of the Year. And dedicated direct broadband service. So, the annex building now has better reception because they've got these big plans, and you're downloading big PDFs and JPEGs that are like megs and terabytes and everything. So, that stuff's got to cook there. So, very happy. Thank you, IT, for setting that up. Planning and zoning. Very excited that we are completely rewriting our code and our comp plan. Again, we're updating this. Michael Alpert has stepped in on this, and he is very passionate about this. You all know we've seen things where a statute might conflict with a resolution, which might conflict with everything. So, we need to get all those rules right. So, we're sweating the vacation rentals right now. Governor DeSantis, we hope he vetoes the bill that would basically render us useless, but we're trying what we can. And we've done a lot, but you're at the mercy of Tallahassee sometimes. As you know, we are a tree city. As you also know, we have developed these tree city clings. I wanted bumper stickers and clings ruled out. Proud resident of the plantation. These will be right there. If you would like to put them in your window, put them inside your car window. I would like to develop pride in plantation about this, and for us to tell our story. Everybody tells a little bit, and remind everybody who we are. So, and they are free, and they will also be rolled out at Earth Day, and in our four major community buildings. Gateway. Yeah, so the Urban Land Institute, that's a nonprofit. They help start things rolling, right? They open up the dialogue with HCA, and along the way, we've gotten the plantation in closed. Publix is coming. Thank you, Glennon Hall. So, when I buy a BOGO there, I'll think of you. And it's ripe for affordable housing. The way I look at it, the land values on that side are more affordable than land values at Broward Mall. Broward Mall, some people say $5 million an acre. How is the math going to work to put affordable housing there? Over here, you know, there are different ways that we can do that. So, Midtown, Midtown Plantation Walk. They've opened UFC Gym, you know that, Taco Craft, Frank Pepe's, Rock and Brews, Ford's Garage, and the Breakfast Place Cracked. One thing we learned is people like to eat. And when people like to eat. So, when I send out my newsletter, and I mention restaurants, that gets the most clicks. And people say Plantation doesn't have anything. What they mean is restaurants. And, of course, we're fixing that, right? We've got R.A. Sushi coming, Pollo Campero. Burton's is a couple months away. Burton's will be in the old Carrabba spot. Burton's has, what is it, if you're lactose intolerant, I think, right? They have a specialty. I mean, they're known for, yeah. Popular in the Northeast, on par with Alexander's and perhaps Kaloo's. So, like I said, people like nice things. The apartments there are the live-work play. That's where this is set up. We're trying to do this. And Broward Mall, you know, remains a puzzle. One of Lauren's business partners, Robbie Holroyd, and I went in January to see the emergency services head in Tallahassee. And I explained to him, hey, they're under protection by a hurricane order. Ain't no hurricane ever hit them. And we looked like we were going to get our way, and somehow a curveball got thrown. There might be an exemption where we can go after them. We're working right now. Bill Gale, Kerry Ezraal, and us are trying to find a way. And there are other measures that we are, other avenues of enforcement that we're looking for with seritage. Because we're not happy, and we're ticked, and you all should be. That's the biggest blot we have, right? Our featured spot, our best spot in the city, and we're held up by an executive order. That's not a partisan thing. It's not a red-blue. It's just hurricanes. Affordable housing. We've worked hard. Like I said, I'm on the Affordable Housing Committee. We're partnering with other entities. We're talking about things. We have one going on Peters Road that's in line, and other people, we're talking here and there. You know, so that's about where we are on that, transportation. The thing most people don't know about, it's funny, I've talked to Hadassah. I've talked to a homeowner association, and nobody knows that we're working on this Midtown Bridge. Internally, we feel like we've been working on it for years. The Midtown Bridge, for those who don't know, the worst traffic spot in Plantation is going south to 595 on University or Pine Island. That's a place where you possibly could sit through it and have a light cycle, and you not make your light. The Midtown Bridge is going to be in the middle, not far from Temple Colomy, and people in the middle could funnel that way. This will put them over the bridge and onto State Road 84. Special props to Council Member Tim Fadgen for your work on MPO. You're following that through, you meet with them, and your attention to detail and the time you're spending on that, we really appreciate it. Thank you, really appreciate it. Everybody clap here. We're looking at improving Cleary Boulevard. We're making it easier for people to bike and walk. One of the many areas we're doing that. And we're really close to having an electric vehicle service, so, like many cities have. Communication. Thank you, Laura. She put a picture of Brad Pitt up there instead of me. No? No? Okay. As most of you know, we've worked really hard to tell our own story. It's our job to drive the information out to our customers. They're not going to wake up in the morning and go to plantation.org. We do a good job for those who are on social media, but we're looking at people who aren't on social media. How do we communicate with them? We've got to figure that out. I'm very proud we have a social media committee. They meet every two weeks, staff from all over, and we communicate about a lot of things. And we want to tell our story. Here's where Council has also been huge, right? Louis, Denise, and Jennifer, you guys share things every time with people. Also point out, Jennifer Andreu and Reinstein are both good do-gooders. Jennifer has a scholarship that is shared with people, right? You created – do-gooder is a good word. Assets to the community. Do you like that better? They're both good assets to the community. Okay. I'll take that correction. So she has a scholarship. Louis is everywhere at schools and everything. And those kind of things make people know our city better. They know plantation better because they know the people who are sitting up here on the dais. That's a good thing. I know I've got to go quick here, don't I? Okay. Initiatives. So I have this marker board up in my office. I start with, wouldn't it be cool if – and then I write down things. And if three out of ten work, then I'm happy. So this one was strategic plan. We got done, university plantation and community garden. And I'm very proud that we do. And 19 people at university plantation. And it's a good way to get people to learn about the city. Finance. You guys see that? That's our property values. That's what it went up. Unassigned reserves, $50 million. That might look like a lot. We had a hurricane in 2018. It was a small hurricane, $20 million. So I look at it as, you know, people say, save six months' salary in case you lose your job. We have to save enough money for two hurricanes. So that's why that number is big. So, yeah, we're going to hustle up here. Where are we at? HR? Oh, COVID recovery assistance. Always looking for a way to leverage money. Always looking for a way to find ways other than the millage to help people and to help our city. HR. HR paid parental leave. Increased involvement. The health fair is April 25th. Health fair and take your child to work days April 25th. Employee picnic May 8th. 99.8% participation in three steps to wellness. That keeps our insurance costs down. Makes our workforce healthier. We had runs. We had corporate run. And the winner of the corporate run happened to be Eric Anderson, council member. And we added mental health, and that's a big deal. So two other things real quick. Library. Library and the museum. Lost my page here. Staff is focusing on security and sustainability. And the museum had more than 4,400 visitors. Library has been 62% increase since they moved back. So they're outlining goals. As you can see, the team dynamic is what makes things better here. I believe that this is the best we've had between administration, the mayor, and city council, and staff. And that best serves the residents. That's the way to take care of our residents for us all to share. And we disagree on some things. No doubt about that. But it's good, productive conversations. And like I said, we're all able to listen and give back and forth and do it with a smile on our face. So we're always talking to each other, and we always got to be willing to do better. So that's it. Let's get to work. Thank you very much.