If we could do a roll call, please. Gurness. Here. Hanowitz. Here. Big Sanders. Here. Hardin. Here. Gabbard. Here. Okay. We have an agenda in front of us. Committee members, I want to obtain a motion for approval. Move. Move approval. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. We have minutes from May 14th, 2026. I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay. We're going to jump right into it. New business today is the 2026 Management Evaluation. It's the review of the RFP proposals for a management evaluation of the Billing and Collections Department. We're joined by Boreana Pollard, our city auditor, and Sokka Reed, Senior Procurement Analyst. And I'll just jump in real quickly. There's no real formal presentation, but you can see it's really only staff today. And so, Council Member Harding, did you watch this process last year? Yes. Okay. So, again, really, I think everybody has the matrix. So, today's discussion is really surrounding the matrix, and we do have the option of bringing in those who applied to the RFP or responded to the RFP if we decide to shortlist. Or if we decide not to shortlist and make a selection today, we could do that. So, that being said, staff, any comments before we jump into committee? Because there's no formal presentation or anything. So, we'll go to committee members on any questions or comments. Chair Hanowitz. I guess I'll start it off. Well, first of all, I want to thank Boreana and team for the work that you've done on this, preparing both the evaluation criteria, the press for proposals, getting the proposals in, and then preparing, you know, the starting matrix for us so we can have this discussion. So, thank you for that. Well, just to kind of start off the conversation, you know, I reviewed them, and one of the things I typically do, I first go to the cost line. It is the budget committee. Yeah. Isn't that our job? So, I figured I'd just start there before we get into the little minutia. And I would say, and maybe to keep this and start narrowing things down, it seems like the majority of them fell within a certain range, which was from the 125,000 down to 95. The other two are a lot higher at 263 and 290. So, I think just based on that alone, and given the fact that I think the ones that are left, there are qualifying factors for them, I would just start the conversation and say, I don't know if I want to have the conversation about continuing the conversation with those two. So, I'll start the conversation there, and then, you know, the other concern I have, then I look at it and look at our criteria, and then I look at, okay, so what does our preliminary due diligence show? And, you know, you have two of the four that are left are under the preferred qualifications minimum. And so, I probably put those to the side and then focus on the other two, and then if there's issues with the other two, then there may be one of those two that could be considered. I don't, you know, I don't want to, like, speak for the whole committee, but that's where kind of my thought process has been. And so, that means that two at the end, local government solutions and Malden are the high bidders, way much higher than what I think merits for this study. Then we have creative ascension services and eco-consulting, which do not meet the requirements for preferred qualifications. It's below five years. One is three years, and the other one is one year. And then you have the other two, they have exemptions to that, and we've dealt with that in the past, and that we can talk about. So, that's how I'm starting off. Thank you, Chair Hanowitz. Any other committee members? Council Member Fix-Anders. Thank you. I was just going to ask a quick question in regards to your comment about we can choose today or we can shortlist today. If we shortlist today, what does that look like in bringing it back? When we brought it back, we would invite those respondents to the meeting, and what would happen is they would be in room 101, and we would bring in one at a time, so they couldn't hear each other's answers, and we'd kind of keep it separate. And then, while we would deliberate, without them in the room. Okay. Yep. Okay. And I'm trying to remember what we did last, well, that we did have them present. I think we shortlisted three last year, interviewed all three in a meeting, I think that lasted, I don't know, approximately an hour and a half, and then made a decision at the end. Yeah. Okay. And so, I just wanted to say that would be my preference, but I just wanted to clarify that process. Thank you, Chair. You're welcome. Before I go to Council Member Gabbard, Council Member Harding, you have anything? Okay, Council Member Gabbard. Thank you. Joe must call me Council Member Brandy. I would have been okay with that. I did. I answered them both, so thank you. That's exactly what was about to come out of my mouth. So, I mean, you know, we live in the sunshine, otherwise I would have thought we, like, you know, you looked at my notes. Because I'm right on the same page. Like, as soon as, you know, we get these, I think all of our minds, especially in this, you know, time of tight budgets, go straight to the line item. Like, where are we at? Because that's an easy way to kind of eliminate, right? There's no way that we're spending over $200,000 for this. Like, that would just be fiscally irresponsible, in my opinion, when we have other, you know, very qualified groups that we could work with for substantially less. So, I would be very comfortable just to eliminate. Let's see, I put my glasses back on so I can make sure I get their names right. Local Government Solutions and Malden and Jenkins. I would just be fine with going ahead and moving past those two, strictly due to price. When we come to, you know, the qualifications, I do agree. I think that AECOM and Baker Tilly certainly stand out. But they are so close in price together that I would feel more comfortable bringing both of those two in. You know, I had the happy experience this year of sitting on my first ever RFP panel for Ford Pinellas. I got to do that to pick their lobbying firm. And, you know, we've done this many times. But then I got to do that as well. And so I got a little bit even more, like, in the weeds on how to do selection. And I think that it's really important to hear from the people who we are looking at. And, you know, I think there was even one a couple ago. I can't remember which one it was, where we opted not to do that. And I didn't really care for that. Like, I wanted. I remember being like, no, we need to interview these people. I just think, you know, it's so important. It's such an important part of our process to do this. And, you know, we need to hear from the people who are going to be contracting with our city. So I would be very comfortable to, if the decision was made, I'm not a voting member today. But if the decision was made to bring in a common Baker Tilly, I'd be very happy with that. So thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I'll just say I'm pretty much along the same lines. I will voice some of my questions and concerns just so committee members can ponder them. I think because it sounds like we're going to bring a couple of firms in. And so I agree with the price. I mean, certainly as we know what's allocated. Only once, I think, have we gone above what's allocated. And that's because we had some money from the prior year. And that's kind of what we've been doing ever since. And so, and I agree with Council Member Gabbard. You know, when you look at what's allocated in comparison to the overall cost, you're just, I mean, you're talking about like a 75% increase in cost. And I'm just not willing to take that on, especially when you have firms that look qualified to be able to do it inside of the scope. I was concerned about the companies being so new. And so I'm glad other committee members share that same concern. And again, it's not, I always, I want to temper that a little bit just from my standpoint is because I also believe that there sometimes are opportunities for new firms to do that. I just feel like in this instance, in this case, we were so, we were leaning hard into this study. And so I'm just not sure this is the time to utilize that newness, for lack of a better word. So I, again, I think going back to Baker Tilly, I will, actually, I'm going to pause on Baker Tilly for a second because I want to finish there. AECOM, my one concern is that they do have some pending litigation going on. I will say I reviewed the pending litigation. None of them really seem to be in this realm. It's mostly design. And so I am interested in asking them some questions around that. Obviously, we've just had a massive project that they helped complete at the TROP. And so I just think that they should have an opportunity to come and talk about that. And so I'm glad that it sounds like we're leaning towards a short list. I will say when reading the responses, I noticed that Baker Tilly just did a study for Tampa Bay Water. Yeah. And I was wondering what your experience, what if any experience, Chair Hanowitz, you had. I'd love to hear that before we brought them in. Again, I think we're all on the same page. But just prior to going into that conversation, I think it would be helpful in any perspective. Thank you. So first of all, I'm pointing on a lot of things. And before I get to that, I wanted to say, just to put on the record, because you put additional stuff on the record, which I think is important. Besides the fact that the other two that do not have that many years in practice, one of them doesn't even, is not registered with the state of Florida. I mean, to me, those are threshold issues that I think are extremely important. And the other thing is, and with our billing and some of the issues with meters, I think there has to be an ability to handle, and you touched on this, Chair, to handle complex data analysis with meters that I think the other two, ACOM and Baker Tilly, are going to have the better capacity to do so. Besides- They've done it. Right. Exactly. Right. And so I, you know, and I was really interested in ACOM. They did something with Miami-Dade and the advanced metering that I thought was interesting in this. So I'd be curious to ask questions. In terms of Baker Tilly and what they did in our strategic planning, I thought they were great. Like, you know, we met, they actually interviewed all the board members and got information. And the staff was actually reviewing it and the recommendations and working on it. I never heard anything negative. And because I didn't want to put, because we hadn't made a decision as a body, I didn't want to go and ask those questions yet because I wanted us to have this conversation. If they were shortlisted, then I get more information from staff in terms of what they actually thought and what their experience is. But they listed them as a reference. I would assume that my impression of them was good because they also listed them. So I thought they were great, but those are all good comments. So, you know, going back to what Council Member Gabbard said, I mean, at the top of my sheet, I have shortlist number one and number two. That's what I have here to actually bring them in and have the conversations that we need to have with them. And also for the legal issues, I think we can have, it could be reviewed by legal. And whoever in administration reviews those issues, then we can review those issues as they need to be reviewed. Agreed. Okay. With that. Council Member Fitzsanders. I'm sorry. I did not. No, no, no. You're good. You're good. Go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. Quick question. So I agree with the top two, but when I look at the number of years, is it the number of years that they work together or is it the total number of years of experience of the team? It's total numbers of year operated under this name. And then also total number of years offering this type of service. Okay. All right. Which is important. Right. Okay. So you can see Baker Tilly had a name change. Right. They've been doing, the firm has been doing the service for 95 years. And that's really the more important, the name, you know, you see mergers and acquisitions happen all the time. The name is less important to me. So you can see the number of years doing the service is really what I'm paying attention to. Okay. And the reason why, I just wanted to be fair. Yeah. You know, I didn't want to take anyone's experience in doing this particular work away from them because of a new and recent collaboration that they wanted to provide. But I think everybody's on the same page. Okay. Okay. I was going to say something and I forgot what it was. Oh, I appreciate that. I'm interested in hearing feedback from staff. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. And, oh, and then the other thing is, so when it comes to from a scheduling standpoint, just to let everybody know, we have an open meeting on July 23rd. I could add it to July 9th, but it's art in public places and I'm worried that we would go over and I want ample time. So I'm assuming everybody is okay with July 23rd staff. Yeah. Are you okay with that? Okay. I believe so, yes, sir. Probably gives them an extra couple weeks to schedule. I totally agree with all those, with all those things. So, okay. So I'll open it for a motion. Motion to shortlist AECOM and Baker Tilly for the management evaluation so they can come back to present for us. Okay. Thank you. Any comments before that? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay. So we'll be inviting AECOM and Baker Tilly back to a BF&T meeting on July 23rd, 2026. And then we have one more meeting before our summer break on June 11th. We will be discussing. I better get my stuff in order before this meeting later. FY 2010-27 utility rate study meeting number one in parentheses if you didn't notice because there will be multiple. Thank you very much, staff, for all the work. Looking forward to inviting Baker Tilly and AECOM here to join us in a few weeks. If there's nothing else for the good of the order, you get a little time back, folks. We're adjourned. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you, Chair. Good job. Good job. Good job. Bye.