Committee of the Whole Workshop

Agenda for Committee of the Whole Workshop Tuesday, February 16, 2021 Page 1 of 2 VILLAGE OF PALMETTO BAY Mayor Karyn Cunningham Village Manager Nick Marano Vice Mayor Leanne Tellam Village Attorney John C. Dellagloria Council Member Patrick Fiore (Seat 1) Village Clerk Missy Arocha Council Member Steve Cody (Seat 2) Council Member Marsha Matson (Seat 3) In accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, persons needing special accommodation, a sign language interpreter, or hearing impaired to participate in this proceeding should contact the Village Clerk at (305) 259-1234 for assistance no later than four days prior to the meeting. AMENDED1 AGENDA COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE WORKSHOP TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2021 - 7:00 PM Village Hall Council Chambers, 9705 E. Hibiscus Street, Palmetto Bay, FL 33157 (305) 259-1234 1. CALL TO ORDER, ROLL CALL, INVOCATION, PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE, AND DECORUM STATEMENT, IN THAT ORDER: Any person making impertinent or slanderous remarks, or who becomes boisterous, while addressing the Council may be barred from further appearance before the Council by the Mayor, unless permission to continue or again address the Council is granted by a majority vote of the Council. Applauding speakers shall be discouraged. Heckling or verbal outbursts in support or opposition to a speaker, or his or her remarks, shall be prohibited. No signs or placards shall be allowed in the Council meeting. Persons exiting the Council meeting shall do so quietly. All cellular telephones and beepers are to be silenced during the meeting. 2. PUBLIC COMMENTS 3. VILLAGE COUNCIL/ADMINISTRATION DISCUSSION ITEM: A. AGE-FRIENDLY ACTION PLAN (Mayor Karyn Cunningham) B. COMMUNITY SURVEY (Administration) C. COURTEOUS AND SAFE PALMETTO BAY (Councilmember Marsha Matson) 1 The Agenda was amended on February 10, 2021 to include discussion item 3D.

Agenda for Committee of the Whole Workshop Tuesday, February 16, 2021 Page 2 of 2 D. VILLAGE FINANCES (Councilmember Steve Cody) E. FARMER’S MARKET (Councilmember Marsha Matson) 4. NEXT COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE WORKSHOP DATE AND ADJOURNMENT ________________________________________________________ WE, THE VILLAGE COUNCIL OF THE VILLAGE OF PALMETTO BAY, HEREBY COMMIT OURSELVES TO MAINTAINING CIVILITY IN OUR PUBLIC AND POLITICAL DISCOURSE AND PLEDGE TO THE FOLLOWING PRINCIPLES: • We will respect the right of all citizens in our community to hold different opinions; • We will avoid rhetoric intended to humiliate or question the wisdom of those whose opinions are different from ours; • We will strive to understand differing perspectives; • We will choose our words carefully; • We will speak truthfully without accusation and we will avoid distortion; and • We will speak out against violence, prejudice, and incivility in all of their forms, whenever and wherever they occur. ________________________________________________________________________ PURSUANT TO FLORIDA STATUTES 286.0105, THE VILLAGE HEREBY ADVISES THE PUBLIC THAT IF A PERSON DECIDES TO APPEAL ANY DECISION MADE BY THIS COUNCIL WITH RESPECT TO ANY MATTER CONSIDERED AT ITS MEETING OR HEARING, HE OR SHE WILL NEED A RECORD OF THE PROCEEDINGS, AND THAT FOR SUCH PURPOSE, THE AFFECTED PERSON MAY NEED TO ENSURE THAT A VERBATIM RECORD OF THE PROCEEDING IS MADE, WHICH RECORD INCLUDES THE TESTIMONY AND EVIDENCE UPON WHICH THE APPEAL IS TO BE BASED. THIS NOTICE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE CONSENT BY THE VILLAGE FOR THE INTRODUCTION OR ADMISSION OF OTHERWISE INADMISSIBLE OR IRRELEVANT EVIDENCE, NOR DOES IT AUTHORIZE CHALLENGES OR APPEALS NOT OTHERWISE ALLOWED BY LAW.

member patrick feary, council member steve codi council member marsha mattsson there we have quorum thank you for calling for chaplain council for your yes thank you Madam Mayor if we could all of our heads and give thanks a reading from the book of psalms 40 verse one and two I waited patiently for the lord and he inclined unto me and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of the horrible pit out of the mary clay and set my feet upon iraq and established my goering's name to council member cody. Could you lead us in the pledge of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God in defense of liberty and justice for all . Wonderful. I'm going to go ahead forego the decorum statement. We'll start this evening as everybody knows, this is hypercube. So we have three ways the public can comment. One is through a public comment form the other is in the virtual lobby and the third is here publicly present. So we'll start with were there any form comments? No public comments were submitted form. Thank you. And I'm going to rely on it this evening because I haven't yet logged in. So if I could get you to take a look at the virtual lobby of anyone has their hand up that evening mayor and council no one has their hands raised right now. Thank you. And we don't have anybody here present on this rainy evening. So we will move into I'm going to go ahead and close the public comment and we'll move into the discussion items. So the first item and Mr. Manager, do we have any carmona with us this evening? Yes, ma'am. She should be on the first item this evening is the friendly action plan. As you know, I brought it to as an item to the council our February meeting and we continued it until the March meeting when the age friendly committee had the opportunity to meet. But I wanted to give everyone the opportunity to review the document and then get an update from our director the liaison fearne carmona and then see what questions or discussion we wanted to have this evening. Obviously we're not going to take any vote this evening but it's just really for a matter for discussion. So with that I'm going to go ahead and if I could I would say I don't know. Director carmona, if you have the time line that you can share since we have two new colleagues but you know, this has been a long process of course than we had covid jump into the middle of a process and so the group. Done about the comments are you updating it or what's the situation? Yes, so I am in receipt of your comments the become the task force is scheduled to meet February twenty fourth. All of these comments will be addressed at that meeting and the corrections will be made perfect. >> ok, I'm done. Thank you. Just curious to where the bulk of them corrections as opposed to philosophical or ideological I would just say distinguished . I can read them to you fitness equipment are permitted by park is in bad shape. The devean the incentives are gone. The community center should be removed. The bus is not operating. Freebie is mostly empty. Where are the where are the data on utilization and the last one is is replaced by downtown palmetto bay so I gave pages about where those would be ok and if I can just make a comment I think that what I like to to do with these is take it to the task force members since this is the document that they created that they completed, I'd like to take the comments to them for them to review the comments and then as a group decide on on the changes that need to be made and that doesn't preclude you from making changes when it comes at the next meeting I I would say based on that, Mr. Manager, if we could make sure that we have an update on ibs and the freebie since appears to be a question that the Councilwoman May ask as it relates to the the plan for the next meeting will do. thank you. Happened to roger that I'm trying to demilitarize. Don't do that. Is anything else a council member codi yes. I read through it and like my colleague I was very much impressed. I did enjoy our sunshine meeting. We went through it and also talked about some disability issues and I think that it speaks well of us that we are going to address issues for people who you know are we are all getting older. We're making sure that our town can address the needs with the town as well so. If you are in need of, you know, a paper copy, you know, here's here's the different ways you can perhaps take take the survey. I think at the end of the day we're just trying to get the largest number of single responses right as to the point the vice mayor was making. You know this idea where people can take the survey more than once and perhaps proffer positive responses or you know ,not so positive responses. So it's just something I think to think about. You've got a good communications team and folks that you're working with I think maybe you can figure out how to make sure that the information gets out at large to the community. I do agree with the Councilwoman That and I do understand the budget constraints but which I think we're going to talk about in just a few minutes. But I I agree with her in the sense that we do have I think it's 19 percent of our communities over the age of 65 and mind you 65 is not old but we do have folks that are less you know, large number of folks that get their information from mailers and and that sort of thing. So if we can figure out how to touch that group as well that might be helpful. And again, maybe the first you know, we're going to try as as council member cody said which has stuck with me I'm not going to get this exactly right. But do we forego good for perfect. So you know, the very fact in my mind that we are launching a community survey I think is important and I know you've spent a tremendous amount of time on it and for that I think you I think in many respects it's going to as unbiased as it's going to get with you working on it because you are as unbiased as it gets as you're you know, coming into the community almost blank slate. There might be a couple of chalk marks on you now but you know, I'm going to leave it to maybe just report back in March unless the council wants to have some kind of final stamp in the form of resolution and I don't even recall Councilwoman You would remember because it was your item did it require to come back to the council for final approval by paul? I don't recall any requirement so maybe that's something the clerk can just look at just to make sure that whatever we passed in the past that we're following it. If that's not the case, then you know, we give our input between now whenever you say March 1st or whatever the date is and you know and then you take it from there. But I think all the remarks are you know, are very important just to bear in mind. Yes, ma'am. Councilwoman, this is super important to council and it's important that every vote, every billboard a lot of so I mean a lot of the interest on it this question is look really good and it's going to make such a big difference in our policy how people answer. So I'm counting on you both to come up with a good scientific study really not one that can be disputed by me in terms in terms of its reliability and validity. Really I'm counting on you. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. I think together with the council member cody, I think it's going to be a good effort again if you want to take a little more time look through the questions. If there's if there are additions or recommended deletions, please let me know. I do believe the language said that the manager is required to present the if I remember right I think that was the language in the resolution I have to present the survey to council if it is council's desire I'm happy to bring it back in the form of resolution for your for your action in March I would need to know pretty soon and I'll confirm with the clerk here at the end of the council exactly with the language in that previous resolution said just to make sure we're adhering to it. So thank you for your comments . I'm just going to add one last comment based on. So maybe one of our officers could take a look as well and then it would be up to staff to implement as far as whether we want this to be a trifle brochure or whether we want to have something on the other side of it. And when you have a pdf that we can distribute I appreciate getting that final pdf so I can share with the yeah and I would just take it one step further. I don't know what what your thoughts are just asking. Oh ok welcome welcome to palmetto bay. This is my sister wendy visiting from houston. Welcome. I would say if if if you're able and you want to have one of the amazing I know we've got a couple of amazing people that work with the fliers and graphics maybe there's a way to, you know, jazz it up a bit . We got in fact I I thought these two items weren't together. I mean my assumption was one side would be the map and the other side would be kind of our trifold here so we would we would distribute a single page right? yes. I mean that's what I would assume. Maybe you're right. I think it's whatever whatever you decide at this point I think we're just kind of saying it's ok. Yeah yeah I'm pretty it up with palmetto bay but stuff on it I'm pretty. Mr tilburg use any indication with a notation at the bottom or in the footnotes whether this is somebody else's document that we're using it just looks pretty particular cpb does what w y cd done maybe we can clarify with them just to make sure that we've got the full rights . Ok, is there anything else on that? >> ok, I want to thank you and thank mr wohlberg who is an intrepid resident activist and I think this is really a good document that will be very helpful to a lot of people and I just just I put it into my mail to bring it up and this dates back to the first copy I think he said it was July 17th twenty nineteen. So I know he's been working on that for a while but he has ok then go into item d council member codi village finances ok and if I can have it put the powerpoint up I have to move up move john out of the way. All right I. Again, using the avatar for me and because this is a cow I brought back because the mayor loves them so much my cows and I did want to point out to you we're talking about finances that the last time that I did this the mayor kept insisting that my brown cow was actually a bull and having had a uncle who ran a dairy farm, I can tell you that that's no bull but to get into palmetto bay by the numbers and I think that putting everything that we're talking about in perspective is where we should start. Our town has got about twenty four thousand people I'm not sure exactly how accurate this next census is going to be. The numbers are going to be released fairly soon. Mike, this is an estimate twenty four three thirty three. I think we're going to be within a thousand or so either up or down but that's the people that we're going to be providing services to and this is economically how we are our per capita income is fifty two thousand nine hundred. Our median household income is one hundred and twenty three thousand and a half. We are about one and a half to two times wealthier than florida on the average. And that's not to say that everybody isn't hurting or everybody could use more. But again, I wanted us to get into the perspective of where we are right now. >> now we have seventy four hundred and fifty nine households in our community and three point three people per household which again is higher than the state and county averages telling me that as somebody who has played with demographic information for a very long time, we are a community that has a lot of children and this is our schools are important to the people who live here. Our parks are important to people who live here. The kind of services that we provide safety all very important to the people who live here and who pay the taxes and make our lives great. This is a chart that I got from the manager when we did our visioning session and as you can see it's a comparison of revenues and expenditures over the last six fiscal years and you could see that we were doing fairly well until we got to the most recent year when a number of things got in our way including covid and a reduction in sales taxes and that's I believe our current deficit is like one point six million as I recall. And so I said to myself, you know, you're only a a former lawyer but how we how do we solve this problem and so what I did was ask how do we close this gap and you know, if palmetto bay were a business everybody says the government will always be better if we were run like a business. Well, somebody who was a political science major I know the professor mattson taught political science the worst idea is to treat a a government like a business because it's not because if we were a business well, we could hand out pink slips. We could do things like fire staff. We could sell our assets and we could even fire neighborhoods closed down locations. but as a government we can't do any of that. So the idea that we should try to act like a business and I know that there are several people out there, some of them have blogs. Some of them have. But we really can't and one of the reasons is we need a four fifths vote, I don't think that we could ever come up with something we'd all agree four out of five of us to sell certain assets. I mean we're the village apart . The biggest thing that we have our parks and so if we start selling off land that we own, that's not going to be in the best interests of the people in our community. I mean some places they do they landbank community just like detroit and other places that have declining populations and blight will buy a property and then sell them cheaply in order to build up. We can't do that because that's just not our our present situation and even when we communities do that again, Dr. Mattson could probably take you through the literature. But going back to the 70s and 80s when a lot of local communities did try to sell off assets to balance budgets budgets, they always came out much worse than when they went in. It was a shortsighted solution to a bigger problem. Now one of the other things that we could conceivably do and I've heard this again out on the various sites is well, we could just cut salaries, we could cut benefits and that's how we we make up on all of this. If we tried to do that, I'll tell you the employees morale would drop. We have a community that likes our employees, our employees love serving our community. If you start doing things like well you have to get back a lot more than or not a lot more but you make something more than minimum wage. We need to cut it back. That's not a way to encourage the kind of esprit de corps that we have built up in this community. If we did that, people would head to the doors and if we had to go through increased training we would eat up whatever savings that we might conceivably come up with just to retrain people and then after they've been here a while they'd be picked off by recruiters would be sitting in our parking lot saying hey, now that you've been trained, let's that's how you another potential thing that families do when they're short money and somebody gets a part time job evenings, weekends. Well, it's not really a viable alternative for us and I mean the biggest question for me became one of you know, if we did it could work for the kids. So that's about so let's talk about revenues and again, this is from information that I got from both the manager Mr. Chin and spent some time going through it. If you take a look at our village revenues, the biggest slice is property taxes and then going around clockwise the seven largest categories include utility taxes, sales taxes, fp franchise land line taxes although that's going the as we were told because people are not really having landlines so much and then the last three categories are under two percent each. So we're not going to find the money there. The purple one is park rental fallada state and the other things that we do. But I want to talk about the franchise and property taxes because I think those have the most promise the franchise fee that's what we get paid for the electric company having their polls through our community. Six percent as the fee, however ,it's currently three percent in palmetto bay which represents about 800 thousand a prior counts. I mean we're all part of the same council. Everybody has one fifth vote here but there's some out there who try to lay this on a current administration versus prior administration that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me but eight hundred fifty thousand is what we're probably going to get this year at three percent and we're going to sunset two years is something else that was was done prior. How it works is a typical customer who takes a thousand kilowatt hours will pay about a hundred dollars a month fpl and right now the franchise fee at three percent means that each household pays three dollars a month on top of their electric bill for the franchise fee which gets conveyed back to us now three percent again three entered and fifty thousand each percentage point is two hundred eighty three thousand dollars. And if we don't sunset the franchise fee and take it back up to six percent, the village would realize an additional eight hundred and fifty thousand no we're behind one point six that gets us somewhat close. But I know that there are folks who are watching now or who are going to be reacting to this saying oh my gosh, you're talking about raising my taxes, raising my fees. How dare you what? You've got to put everything in perspective when you do the math. What it comes out to is three percent works out to ten cents per household per day or again three extra three dollars a month per household. I think that we can afford this without driving residents way without causing problems except among those who are going to complain in any case. But that gets us a good bit of the way towards where we need to be now 10 cents a day is a good start but by itself it's not going to help us close that gap so I want to talk about real estate taxes and this is where I know people are going to go oh at home but sakal now if you take a look at this chart, this column these are mileage rates over the past six years I put a green line in there to indicate our prior mayor and our current mayor just to give you all again, it's not something that the mayor has any special control over versus any of the rest of us. But just to give you an idea about timing so we started off six years ago at two point four four seven it was steady and then the council began slowly cutting the taxes. Eventually it got down to two point two mills and last year it went up to two point three five mils. And again we've there's been a lot of criticism out there, our residents that oh my God, you raised taxes. How dare you raised my taxes? Well, you got to look at this in what it really means. Let's take a typical palmetto bay house that has a taxable value of half a million dollars . Everybody has got a homestead exemption. As somebody who is nearly blind ,I could probably get an additional one and somebody who's now disabled I could get a third one and if you are a widow or widower you can get one additional one for that. But just saying after taking off all the those exemptions we're going to just use a half million just for ease of calculations now if you take a look when the property taxes the military it was two point four or seven that house was paying one thousand two hundred twenty three dollars and fifty . This was put out by a pac run by developer which is operated by a local accountant and it's supported by two ousted members of the village council. they gave our mayor even though five people had a decision, gave our mayor an f grade for increased property taxes and service fees. But again, I think we have to not only understand ourselves but be able to convey to our residents what this all really means. Now what if it ended being was that five to five cent piece the nasty gram didn't tell you that property taxes went up less than five cents a day on that typical home they went up less than 18 dollars a year on that typical and yet they want to create the issue that we raised taxes. Well, we did and frankly I'm going to say we need to raise them for what also again four point seventy nine cents is actually the amount that went it went up and that slight increase in the stormwater fees that the service fee they're talking about was more than offset by a reduction that will be coming in flood insurance premiums paid to fema now just about everybody who has a mortgage in palmetto bay has to have flood insurance. The only place to get flood insurance is from fema. The only way to reduce the amount of our flood insurance premiums is to make sure our stormwater system is adequately maintained. We had not raised it I think in 15 years we raised it slightly and we're going to start seeing that come down this this is when you when you can pay a little bit more but see a much larger reduction in a thing like stormwater premium than arming your flood premiums. I think that's a good deal and something that can be justified . But let's take a look at the village rates in real life now the first one again is our typical house charging what our current rate is in palmetto bay two point two three five mils. That's eleven hundred and seventeen dollars and fifty cents per year. Ninety three dollars and 13 cents a month. Now if we were to let's say charge what they charge in pinecrest just to the north of us, well that house pays about sixty dollars but fifty eight dollars more a year about five dollars more a month. And then if we say ok, let's take a look at what paul cutler does to the south of us that same half million dollars in value at two point six one nine eight they pay thirteen hundred ninety nine thousand eight hundred ninety 90 cents or one hundred and ninety dollars one hundred nine dollars and 16 cents a month. We're not talking about huge amounts of money on that kind of macro granular or micro granular level. But let's take a look though the effect that that has on a more macro level. Billion just under three so I rounded up to three if we just use our property tax rate that would give us six point five million. Pinecrest would be seven million if we went up to what cupper bay charges we'd be at seven point eight million dollars in property taxes. now again, I know that they're going to be some people out there, maybe even some people who have certificates and accounting who will tell you oh my God, you're going to raise taxes by one point three million dollars next year. How dare you? Well, what you need to do is to think about moving just from our rate up to cut their base rate and if you do that well, the difference between those two comes out to 75 cents a day per household. I don't know of anybody who lives in in cutler bay who would say I can't afford an extra 75 cents a day. It May not seem like a lot on the individual household level but it makes us a significant amount of difference to us at the city level and so we can get ourselves out of this hole if we're willing to impose an additional approximately eighty five cents per household on the folks in our community. And Madame Mayor, I can tell you that that noble so I wanted to go through it because very often when you look at large numbers they can very, very scary and people can come to you and say be scared because you're talking about a million and a half dollars. Well, yeah, but when you're talking about it on a per household level it's five cents per household per day. I think the people in our community can't for that they want police service at the level that we have it. They