CC03-26-2018Min_WSLONGWOOD CITY COMMISSION
Longwood City Commission Chambers
175 West Warren Avenue
Longwood, Florida
WORK SESSION
MINUTES
March 26, 2018
5:30 P.M.
Present: Mayor Ben Paris
Deputy Mayor Richard Drummond
Commissioner Abby Shoemaker
Commissioner Matt Morgan
Commissioner Brian D. Sackett
David P. Dowda, Acting City Manager
Michelle Longo, City Clerk
Clint Gioielli, Acting Police Chief
Lee Ricci, Human Resources Director
Mike Peters, Fire Chief
Chris Capizzi, Leisure Services Director
Craig Dunn, Information Technology Director
Lisa Snead, Financial Services Director
Tom Kruger, Economic Development Manager
Richard Kornbluh, Division Manager Utilities
Tom Smith, Division Manager Streets
Greg Kirby, Purchasing Manager
Rex Grice, Financial & Procurement Analyst
1. CALL TO ORDER. Mayor Paris called the meeting to order at 5:30 p.m.
2. BUDGET PRIORITIZATION WORK SESSION FOR FISCAL
YEAR 2018-2019.
Ms. Snead said we want this to be an opportunity for you to let us know
what your vision is for the upcoming budget, and some of the things you
see might be outside of what you might see for this year. We want this to
be kind of a brainstorming session, and we realize things can change as
numbers and everything comes along throughout the process. In other
words, if you decide today that your priority is a fire station, and later on
in the process that changes, that can happen. We want to get out in front
of it with you today with your priorities and make sure we capture all of
those and incorporate those into the budget, so that when we propose a
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budget to you, it takes into consideration what you, as our leaders for the
City, see. Instead of you having to unravel it this summer after staff had
done a lot of work, so that is where we started from, and what we are
going to do is have this be a free kind of process where if somebody wants
to kick it off with what their idea is, but we are going to make sure we get
everybody's ideas down. Once we get everybody's ideas down, we are
going to print this and are going to give it to each of you individually and
ask you to look at the list and determine a priority ranking, one through
ten. Before we give it to you, we are going to divide it into funds, so it
doesn't make sense to have a priority that is utility funded compete against
a priority that is general funded. So, you will be doing your banking in
groups, and we will split that out for you.
Mayor Paris said he has never done one of these particular meetings, so he
asked, do we have any estimated costs for any of the proposed budgets.
He gave the example of wanting to do a fire station, but if a fire station is
three million dollars, a fire station might not be an option, so we can
prioritize it all we want, that doesn't mean it is going to get paid for.
Whereas, something like prioritizing our birthday event for the City of
Longwood opening of the park is something more manageable, and he
asked do we have any numbers.
Ms. Snead said we would have very rough numbers, like for the fire
station, the rough number would be four million dollars because there are
no architectural drawings. She said I think we all know we have a need to
fix the existing situation with the fire station. It is just a starting point.
Commissioner Shoemaker gave her priorities, not in any particular order,
and not inclusive. She said infrastructure, especially dated and desperately
needed repairs. Employees are our biggest assets, and would like to be
certain we don't overlook any single employee, everyone is rewarded for
their years of service, and we are competitive. I am looking at wages, and
I don't want them to go down or anyone laid off. Those are my priorities;
infrastructure and fund raising.
Commissioner Sackett said I have fifteen, but I put sixteen because I want
new chairs up here, but you can put that one aside. He said he has noticed
we have 35 subdivisions in this City, and we have 35 subdivisions that are
about 30 to 40 years old, and therefore the roads are at least a dozen to 20
years old and beyond. We need a plan as to how we are going to be
resurfacing all these roads around town on some sort of scheduled plan.
He said if you are in a certain subdivision, you have an idea five years
down the road we are going to be paved, and that pot hole will be
temporarily filled. He stated, we know a mile of road is one million
dollars and that is a lot of money. We finally got all these roads paved,
with the exception of one dirt road near the high school. He said his
priority is subdivision repaves, and I am also sick and tired of Utilities,
Inc. I would like to see, if we move forward, to buying them out.
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Regarding Ronald Reagan Boulevard (County Road 427) and road
improvements, he asked are these things already paid for. He said when
we beautify Ronald Reagan Boulevard we need to figure out what extra is
that going to cost us with lighting that is architecturally historical. Street
lighting, if you drive around the City of Longwood, there are too many
streets that are dark. There is a road by Candyland Park that has three
homes on it, and there is no lighting whatsoever. He said park events and
now that we have a glorious park opening up this spring, I look at
Altamonte Springs and Crane's Roost has events with sponsorships every
weekend. I'm not saying we should do a major concert every weekend,
but we need to look at themes for the months and work it that way. That
will cost money. The birthday of the City is this year, so if we can do
something with our park, that would be wonderful. He wants to look at
salaries and positions and overtime. Overtime is always the one within the
budget that costs us much, and we don't quite understand it. With our
previous Administrator and previous Public Service Director leaving, I
don't know who works where and who is in what building. He asked do
we need these extra buildings. Can we give them up or sell them or rent
them out for something else. He said I don't know where everybody
works. I know we have a person or two that haven't been to work in about
four months, so what is going on with positions? Let's make the salaries
equitable and across the county as best as we can. He thinks we can do
better with Christmas. We have the lighting over at the City Hall
Complex, but if you drive State Road 434 through Winter Springs, it is
glorious with all its lighting, but we see nothing here unless you meander
into the historic center. We have always promised we would do
something more with that, but never have. Also, what is the reserve right
now, and what percent is it at, and what do we want to live with, 18, 15 or
20 percent? I think we do have to talk about the reserve. There are a lot
of high -quality people who serve on our boards, and we really don't
recognize them like we used to. We need one or two celebrations a year to
recognize all those people that work on all the different boards within the
City.
Commissioner Morgan said immediately new fire department, taking care
of our police department as far as contracts and negotiations go, and
making sure we are paying accordingly to the work our brave men and
women have been doing here for years and being severely underpaid. He
said staffing is next and piggybacking off Commissioner Sackett, the only
difference is instead of doing a three percent pay bump across the board,
and we need to realize that someone in Parks & Recreation getting a three
percent isn't good enough versus someone in a high -paying position at
City Hall. It is not the same pay raise, and I think the raises need to be
based off of what they have done. He said not just having been here for a
certain amount of years, but what type of improvements, and basically,
merit -based. Not just an automatic, three percent across the board for
everybody in the City, because that affects everybody differently. He said
Water and Sewer Treatment Plant, this past weekend the Arbor Park Event
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was very successful, but everybody smelled that horrible, foul odor. There
has to be something we can do as far as putting money toward that. I
know this was not an issue there and at Candyland Park area as far as
being as bad as it is now. He said that is very important as far as the
City's overall aesthetics go. He also said septic to sewer conversions and
do we have a map of septic areas to target conversions and an itemized
plan. He said water cost and the annual increase in water is going to
happen, so what will the increase to our 2018/2019 be to increased
revenue. Are these increases being appropriated, and is there a chance that
it could be put on hold. He piggybacked on things that Commissioner
Sackett suggested, such as creating a community economic development
plan that might foster a beautification program to highlight our entrance
corridors. He asked to have entrance corridor beautifications, like pole
banners to add charming community spirit to our City marked down and
that definitely sets it apart from others. He also mentioned a tree
replacement program. Every time we pull up a tree, we need to be
planting another one. It doesn't need to be the same size, but we need to
replace it with a smaller tree to some effect. We have to do a better job
with that.
Deputy Mayor Drummond said these are all great ideas, and I am looking
forward to trying to prioritize all those. He thinks we have a few big
projects that we need to at least talk about. The first is the fire station,
which includes not only finding a new location for that, which the City has
some property, and figuring out how we are going to finance that. It also
includes selling the property the fire station is sitting on now when the
time comes. He talked to Mr. Kintner and there are some different things
we can do to try to move forward with, which would be requests for
proposals he could put out, including site surveys determining what size of
location we need, and how we can benefit from selling some property the
City has. Like Commissioner Sackett said, we have several different
properties downtown we could probably look at consolidating. The other
thing is the Police Department. We have a very valuable piece of property
sitting over here, and the Police Department's building needs some work.
It is not big enough. We need to look at possibly consolidating fire and
police, or City Hall and the Police Department. He said those are
probably three to five year projects as opposed to one. He said another
would be to decide what we want to do with City Hall. Whether we are
going to rebuild on this property. I know there has been a committee that
has spent over a year studying that and came with a proposal from GAI,
but that is as far as it has gone. We need to talk about that also, perhaps
building a three-story building on this property or moving it somewhere
else.
Mayor Paris said this is a great laundry list with a lot of great ideas and a
lot of wants, and some needs. One of the things he would like to see is to
continue sidewalks in the City of Longwood. There are plenty of streets
around our schools that don't have sidewalks. I get complaints about
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Maine Avenue on a regular basis. I don't know if we have the easement
for a sidewalk on Maine Avenue but there are plenty of roads like that. He
asked did you want the Commission to prioritize these today.
Ms. Snead said that was kind of my thought. There is definitely quite a lot
of different things here.
Mayor Paris said he doesn't begin to know how to quantify a price on half
of them or even which budget line they would be coming out of.
Commissioner Sackett said he has two more to suggest. He said being
around here for 15 years or more, we are a band aid sort of City. We look
at the Public Works building they used to be in by the water tower, and
that used to be the band aids holding the band aids together to hold the
roof and walls up. You can only paint a building so many times before the
paint is the only thing holding up the walls. We are doing it to the Police
Station too. That building looks to me like a building that should have
been built in New Mexico or Arizona, with those flat rooftop, things that
leak, and the A/C is bad. The Fire Station is decrepit. We really need to
build a City Complex and put all of us in that centralized location.
Regarding our Community Building, it is about 18 or 19 years old now,
and is showing its age a little. Blue siding doesn't stay blue for a long
time in the Florida heat. So there are things we have to look at to make
sure that is still an amenable, pleasing fixture. He said the old Pic `N Save
lot, I think we should take that by eminent domain and build something
right over it. I am tired of it being the way it looks. Potentially, it could
be donated to us as a park and other things. We can do something with
this.
Ms. Snead said it sounds like it is too complicated to take this list and try
to prioritize it. She asked, do we want to entertain discussing potential
funding options for some of these, and what you are willing to consider.
For example, the Fire Station. Obviously, there are different options. One
of them is a fire assessment. That might be something you all might want
to have a work shop on and learn more about that, or if you want us to try
to fund it from existing revenues. We created this thing to talk about how
you perceive these types of things being funded. She asked do you foresee
them being funded through new fees, or do you want us to look at the
reserve for funding them, or look at the current budget and try to come up
with funds? She gave an example for a four million dollar Fire Station. If
we were to amortize that out over 30 years, it would be about $200,000 a
year in debt service. That gives you an idea for that. One of the things I
like to share is basically, a two percent ad valorem tax growth for us
equals $100,000. Last year we were really lucky. We had an eight
percent growth, which equals $400,000. A three percent salary increase
for employees in the general fund costs $304,000, so even though we are
making strides, things are costly. I put together these charts I was going to
hand out when we were prioritizing, I can share these with you. What I
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did was a ten-year analysis of where our budget is over the past ten years.
The thing I found really interesting is that our operational budget in 2009
for the general fund was 17 million dollars, and our operational budget for
2018 is 17 million dollars. She said we have really managed to maintain
our budget over a long period of time. Back in 2009, our tax revenues in
the City were 9.7 million dollars, and our tax revenue today is 7.9 million
dollars in the general fund. That is a 19 percent decrease in tax revenue
the City gets. She said things that fall under tax revenues are the ad
valorem taxes, some utility taxes, and as things become more energy
efficient, we actually give money back when they put in energy efficient
appliances through the REEP Program.
Mayor Paris said we have Homestead Exemption coming next year, so we
have to prepare for that.
Deputy Mayor Drummond said he doesn't know how familiar the
Commissioners are about the fire assessment, but I have had some talks
with Chief Dowda, and I think we should have some kind of work shop
where that is explained. He said it is an assessment that is spread across
the board, so places that don't normally pay any taxes into the City are
going to be assessed for fire safety. It is a way to provide a portion of
those funds that we need to fund a new fire station because that definitely
is a priority.
Commissioner Morgan said he would like that also.
Commissioner Sackett said his concern is ad valorem has been 5.5 percent
for a few years now. I can see it coming that cities are going to be
sneaking in more and more fees. We don't raise the ad valorem, but we
add the fees, or we add the fees and add some more fees, therefore, instead
of my $1,000 tax bill, I'm getting $1,000 plus $400 in fees. That will
become annoying to me after a while, that we are piggybacking off of
fees. He asked about the chart she had and if there is an idea of where the
funding would come from on the chart.
Ms. Snead said what we were planning to do was actually identify what
funding source, like general fund on this chart.
Mayor Paris said maybe it would be a good idea to let staff take this
laundry list and work with it because some are overlapping and some
aren't even budget issues, they are selling assets. He said consolidating a
City Hall complex, there is a lot of moving parts and a lot of things on this
list, and we should look at realistic costs from staff also. We need to
know about property value come next year, and how much we have in our
reserve balance, and what we want our reserve to look like. That has been
a lot and a very hard line in the City of Longwood. That line needs to
move in my opinion.
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Commissioner Sackett said in the past three years it has moved, and that is
a good thing.
Ms. Snead said yes, the reserves were at 16 percent this year. Government
standards will tell you that you should be at 15 percent and not go below
that.
Mayor Paris said unless anyone has any other suggestions, he would like
staff to try to make sense of that and put together a report we can review at
later date, especially since we have a new City Manager coming in this
week. This will be nice to give him an idea and a great project for him to
work on and look at, and then we can all sit down as a consolidating group
after the fact and make some major decisions.
Commissioner Sackett said he is encouraged with us having a meeting like
this instead of a bunch of budget directors telling us this is wants and
needs, and then there was a nickel and dime subtraction from things we
were doing like we don't need 40 uniforms, we need 35. That is nickels
compared to millions in the budget, so this is really positive seeing this
now. This is a great start, and the sooner, the better. Buildings are
expensive. Our Public Works Building was supposed to be a one million
dollar project and ended up at two million dollars. Our Reiter Park was
one million dollar when it started, and now it is a four million dollar park.
The sooner you get them done, the better. He said the city spaces are
worth something, and if we can make something on that Police
Department property or on this property, we need to do that sooner than
later because five million dollars is going to be 12 million dollars later on.
I just don't want fees to be the catch-all to pay for everything. I will
disapprove of that.
Commissioner Morgan asked what happens if they say fire department,
and we were thinking grant money for example. He asked is that a
category, because I don't see it.
Ms. Snead said you are right, we left that out. We definitely are wanting
to pursue a potential FEMA Grant. I will be coming to talk to the
Commission individually about a plan I would like to get your support on
with that. You know you want to do something now, but we also want to
make sure we look at it comprehensively since it is such a big impact
financially on the City, and that we come up with a plan that is in the best
interests overall for everybody in the City. One of the things we are going
to try to do this year is a better job on the capital project process and put
together a better long range plan for you. You have put together a lot of
great things up here, things that have been talked about, but let us put it
together in a plan so we can see how we could phase this in and what does
this look like ten years down the road.
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Commissioner Morgan said thank you for this. This is a first of its kind
and we are being incredibly transparent with our City with people
watching at home are able to tune into what we, as Commissioners, stand
up for and put money towards, and I am proud of our Commission.
Ms. Snead said she wants to share with you something you may have
talked with Mr. Kintner about, but he put together a summary for us on
how much revenue we would get from the different developments out
there, and she passed that information out to them.
Commissioner Sackett asked her to put it together in a package so they can
see what is coming in the next few years in revenue.
Commissioner Shoemaker said she would like staff to look at professional
services citywide. She has to give staff the credit for being awesome
department heads and awesome staff, however, it seems we spend a lot of
money paying the professionals for doing what we are capable of doing,
so I would really like to look at that and make sure if we budgeted
$40,000, can we do it for $20,000. Did we pay the company too much
money to tell us what we really didn't want to hear, that we couldn't sell
the property. I would like that addressed. She said I would like to see in
what you are going to prepare for us by fund or by category, total amount
of debt the City is in for the next budget year, proposed increase in that
debt, and the total that is being expended for interest only payments and/or
principal and interest payments. Because it is very easy to say we can
finance that over 40 years, no big deal. However, if we are doing 25 of
those, that $200,000 adds up real quick. We need to answer the question,
how much are we in debt and how much is going out of the budget for that
debt so we can weigh our thinking better as to whether we want to go into
debt.
3. ADJOURN. Mayor Paris adjourned the meeting at 6:04 p.m.
Ben Paris, Mayor
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