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2016-08-23 Handwritten MinutesCity of Okeechobee, August 23, 2016 meeting Minutes taken during the meeting by L. Gamiotea I. CALL TO ORDER: Mayor Kirk called the Special City Council Meeting to order on August 23, 2016, at 6:01 P.M. in the Council Chambers, Room 200 located at City Hall, 55 SE 3rd Avenue, Okeechobee, Florida 34974. II. MAYOR, COUNCIL MEMBERS AND STAFF ATTENDANCE - City Clerk Mayor James E. Kirk Present Council Member Noel Chandler Present Council Member Mike O'Connor Present Council Member Gary Ritter Present Council Member Dowling R. Watford, Jr. Present City Attorney John R. Cook Present City Administrator Marcos MontesDeOca Present City Clerk Lane Gamiotea Present Deputy City Clerk Bobbie Jenkins Present Police Chief Denny Davis Present (Major Peterson in attendance) Fire Chief Herb Smith Present Finance Director India Riedel Present III. MAYOR KIRK OPENED THE PUBLIC HEARING FOR ADOPTION OF FIRE ASSESSMENT RESOLUTION AT 6:02 P.M. A.1.a) Motion and second by Council Members Chandler and Ritter to adopt proposed Resolution No. 2016-07, related to the provision and funding of fire protection services and facilities — City Attorney (Exhibit 1). b) Public comments and discussion Attorney Cook read proposed Resolution No. 2016-07 by title only as follows: "A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF OKEECHOBEE, FLORIDA, RELATING TO THE DELIVERY AND FUNDING OF FIRE PROTECTION SERVICES AND FACILITIES WITHIN THE CITY; DETERMINING THAT CERTAIN REAL PROPERTY IS SPECIALLY BENEFITED BY FIRE PROTECTION SERVICES AND FACILITIES; ESTABLISHING THE METHOD OF ASSESSING COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH FIRE PROTECTION SERVICES AGAINST REAL PROPERTY SPECIALLY BENEFITED THEREBY; ESTABLISHING OTHER TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE ASSESSMENTS; APPROVING THE FIRE PROTECTION SERVICES ASSESSMENT ROLL FOR FISCAL YEAR 2016-17; PROVIDING THE METHOD OF COLLECTION; PROVIDING FOR CONFLICT; PROVIDING FOR SEVERABILITY; AND PROVIDING AN EFFECTIVE DATE." Burton & Associates Erick van Malssen, Consultant Manger. Peter Napoli Consultant Analyst in attendance and presentations. Fire assessment background. City fire rescue services currently funded through property Taxes and other general fund revenues. General fund supports many functions without direct funding sources. Fire rescue assessments are an alternative funding mechanism to directly fund fire rescue service. Apportions cots amongst property owners by the benefit received for services. Costs are more wide spread to those who benefit. Less exemptions. More predictable source of revenue. Diversifies revenue sources away from property value swings. Can be adopted at any level or below 100% cost recovery. If adopted, the city is considering a 0.5 millage rate decrease. Page 1 of 6 Methodology. Calls for service methodology. Tested and verified in the florida court system. Allocates costs of fire service to property classes based on historical demand for services. Property Classes: residential assessed per unit. FY 2017 spread sheet. Total net revenue $2,091,216.00. Calls for service analysis. Basis for allocating costs to property classes. 4-year of call data, fire/fire responder calls only. Ems calls and costs are excluded city properties are assessed for EMS services by Okeechobee. Table of call allocations. FY 2017 100% cost recovery table. 25% cost recovery table. Property Impact examples 25% cost recovery fire assessment table. Property impact examples net impact 25% assessment with a -0.5 mil reduction. Implementation schedule. Adoption of resolution of intent. Decision 2015. Adoption of initial assessment resolution July 19. First class mailing of notices to property owners 20 days before final assessment. Frank Irby, costs slide 5, property appraiser and tax collector each get 2% of each tax bill. Fire Insurance Premium. State shared benefit city receives. India it comes from the state has to go toward any pensionable costs for fire fighters only and does not come to the city but to the pension funds. Allen Patterson, 1404 SW 2nd Avenue. Speech on two fronts, here on behalf of the Presbyterian Church. Philosophically disagree with wording of the letter "non -ad valorem tax" but at the bottom if you don't pay for it a lien can be put against. Long Standing tradition that non -profits and churches should not be taxes. With respect to the fire department staff we appreciate their service, this is not an attack on them. Third, you're taxing a church where you have already received the tax from our congregation. The churches provide many community services to the community. Two recommendations, before voting please amend to put non-profit and churches in the exemption categories, second with all due respect to the consultants that you fire burton & associates immediately. Erick, approximately $25,000 to $30,000 our attorney said if you exempt one you must do both. Ave-, Daniels, Church of Christ pastor, like my friend before me we are concerned about this assessment, we like the police and fire department are public servants, they put out a blaze but we then go and help people pick up their lives after the fire is put out. Just last week we helped a local woman whose house burned down. We don't have a budget for these things, it's only by donation. We ask that you exempt the churches from the assessment. 207 SW Park Street, Devin Maxwell, commercial building owner, impact on local businesses, when you take valuation out of the equation, check written in November the amount is important to them. Assessments increase and then value increases, think this is untimely since we have not recovered from the economic state in the state. Commercial properties have not recovered, we still have a lot of empty properties. Secondly consider based on square footage impact will be lessor value will pay same Page 2 of 6 amount as one that is more lucrative. Way of example one of the slides had a 10,000 sf commercial building $800.00, printed a tax bill from a building I have co ownership in, assessed value $5,479. Ad valorem including EMS assessment is just about 15% of the value, that increase the liability of the property owner. Take into account compare that to, local owned business, to CVS value $1.5 million pays $ in taxes last year, take sf and multiply by , difference in my building and CVS and they are in a better position to absorb this type of assessment. In an area with more businesses like CVS you probably would not have such a negative effect on the community. Without questioning the methodology this is going to create dis-proportionate burdens that could stime our ability to recover from the economic and then rent this property. $5.50/sf rent on my property, versus outparcel at walmart $23/sf. National franchise like little ceasars can handle that type of assessment but compared to the property I own it makes it very difficult to absorb. Down side worst time and worst properties to put the burden on. Potential increase and tax liability can hurt our commercial properties, please take into consideration. Briefly reviewed the study. The type of use was not taken into consideration. The types of calls are put in based on types of use, the data may have been emergency medical calls such as nursing homes, doctors offices, they are more recession proof and they are the bulk on the commercial calls within the study. Don't have answers for you but ask you to consider the type of uses would also be more fair. P Debra 911 sw Street. Agree with everyone who has spoken so far. I live in west palm, own a 11,000sf warehouse in Okeechobee, basic, no a/c, think Maxwell point is very important to consider. Passing that aburden onto th etennant. Okeechobee is growing, all sorts of different things coming in think discon to raise the taxes at a time when things are going in. M ers i rner Loy r, Director of Ministerial Association, 312 NW 12t" Avenue. Took us by surprise and having only 20 days to respond. Collection falling under tax laws. Historically vast iron clad to not collect taxes from churches. Dania[ Webster quote. Its not going to destroy us but it is going to impact us. Assessement but we all know it is a tax. We believe strongly this is the wrong way to take a stand and tax a church. Freedoms we enjoy, canary in the coal mine. We are very concerned. If this was something of a fee that would be something . Jay Leno with natural disasters, terrism is this the time to remove God from our currency or the fear of God from our ordinances of state. Friends and neighbors here, respect each of you. Take into consideration how this can effect. Frank Irby, was at the December meeting. One reason expressed number of properties that aren't paying taxes, spread cost of a service and fairer way to have them pay. Implementing a fee like this, if you don't implement a fair across the board fee it's a wash. If ou don't do that htne we are all implementing . Said the same thing to the BOCC when they implemented their assessment and what I said would happen has happened. Millage continued to go up and the assessment is also in place. Majority of people taxes .... Don't know how many people aren't paying property taxes. Spent $38,000 on the consultant that is more than amount people arenot pay. Shared numbers and budgets. Commend this board 2009-2015 5, $5 done a great job controlling your expenses during the hard times. Revenues in 2009 were $ and in 2015 were $ . Revnue is up a little bit from 2009. Rev to expenses $500,000 net over expense, 90,000. -190, -207, 677,000, add and subtract all those you get a $881,000 over expenses. Cook we did have a one time revenue .... I understand but this is a net position from your audit. You have almost $1 million in unrestricted surplus. Submit its Page 3 of 6 not to cover amount recovered from loss of revenues. I believe if you provide a service and want to charge that's fine. I submit you call Kirk if you are here from a church you don't need to come up individually. I do not intend to pass it with the churches being including. Daniel Fennell, American Legion, we are a 501 c3 non profit, we fill at the post all our members are veterans, don't believe its fair to tax us. Ask not to tax us with this. Mack Worley, business within the city and state Christian believer hope my Christian believer friends wont stab me in the back. I believe this assessment. There are churches and non profits in this community that I do not believe we should group them all together. Hindu temple in our county and don't believe those should be exempted. Peter to go get a coin out of a fishes mouth to pay the tax, think its okay to tax churches. Businesses follow business opportunity. We must reverse the trend and create an environoment where people who have disposable income want to come and live and spend their money here. Landscapign assessement as well. Directgor OUA members to put landscaping at all the businesses so they can be as beautiful as the areas on the coast. Kirk — comment made for consultant, he's not the bad guy here, he's doing the job we hired him to do, if you want to fire someone then fire us or be mad at us. Watford - remember correctly 144,000 sq max limit. How did you make all the changes I suggested. Erick ran out and wrote them down and made them. If we were to no adopt them in this budget year could we do it in another year? Absolutely, you can keep this study as long as the rates aren't more than the maximum sent to the owners. Ritter lets just say fire assessment we don't have to do one next year or the year after. Erick you have to readopt it every ye3ar, if you want to raise rates then you have to go therough the full adoption and notice. Cook — a lot of people sympathyic to Worley position. We cannot pick and choose which ones we want to exempt. When you don't collect from non-profit. MDO — maximum that was mailed out was 25% over five years. Dave Elberg when businesses mobile home parks. Erick each space is a unit for mobile home parks. RVs are assess by sf as per state statute. # of spaces. 50 x mobile homes you have to use the per unit. Frank Irby proposal adopt 25% of the full funding. My understanding is to go to that you have to have public hearings and send notices. You cannot adopt more than the rate that was advertised and noticed. Ritter mobile home park, vacant lot only 15 occupied whats the rate, same? Erick assess number of spaces, can adopt a method to exempt, % exemption rates researched and applied at the end. Bring an issue that I don't want you to forget people on social security wehre I live I don't have a house on there right now, trying to get some type of a home on the property and we just try our best to keep as clean as possible, to go up higher would cause a struggle an dplease put into consideration. Linda Maysell, husband, Espinso. Page 4 of 6 Mr. Patterson you took The implication we spent $38,000 on this study to recover $20,000, unrestricted assets are there for you, you cant tax your way into a business opportunity. O'connor would it be wiser to wait just like when Watford asked about no we can put it off until the economy got better especially people who own commercial property, wonder if waiting might be better, think might be wisest thing to do. We can always go back to it. Ritter — I have gone back and forth in my mind, weighed the options, services paid for by people and those that are exempted, looked at the math on that, irby is correct on that, recovering what he said. Then those are the folks that are on fixed income. Then Devinand Deborah comments, didn't think about the types of businesses and their ability to generate the types if income. The other part of that is what o'connor alluded to be nice in better economic situation. The city from a financial standpoint, makes me think why do we need this at this time. Agree with you all from the ministry association, you all do contribute more to our community than a lot of people realize, you minister to the community and I have a hard time put that tax on them. Agree not the time, we can reconsider it. Chandler it puts a burden on everybody, you cannot keep saying we canot afford this or that and we have been good with expenses but there are things we cannot do in our city because of funds. God will provide and I agree not to tax the churches. You'll be happy when you leave here tonight but remember keep smiling because we have to have funds to provide services that the community wants. Watford difference in EMS and Fire assessment. Attended BOCC meetings when they enacted. Disagree in that EMS is for a person Fire is for a building. The church would receive the service. Timing is everything. If we learn from this, if we do something like this again we need to remember not to be forced to go too fast. Need to always have more time. I don't think taxes are ever fair, my home taxes, EMS assessment is probably more fair than my ad valorem taxes. Dotn know if we can break down differently and then someone else will be complaining. Surprised by the calls I got. Thought community was used to having assessments and surprised with the shock of the city property owners. Figure 57% of the taxable value in the city is non-residential or commercial property. The tax collections is what I shoud (have asked. 33.1 % residential taxes. Think a very unfair on the commericial properties, timing is not the best time with the economy. Agree to spread the cost but when you do the numbers the amount isn't spread as we thought it would be. Biggest reason canot support is there is no gurantee we wouldn't increase this, give a millage this year we all know how governemtn operates don't think wed see that rate stay. Suggest that we vote not on this resolution and save for a later date. Budget workshop was last week if we vote no on this tonight its going to be interesting and will have to maek some adjustments. Cook by FS that we have to operate under, time frame is January to September 15. Worley if you don't pass this how much money have you spent? Deborabh if not past you will have to make budget adjustments. Ritter — commend our consultant, don't a great job, could very much undertand the numbers you provided and could make correct assumptions. The money spent on these consultants was money well spent as they helped us by bringing the information. Page 5 of 6 C1- 14 (1,0_ + t Lane Gamiotea From: Phil Williams <pwilli02O7@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, August 29, 2016 5:37 PM To: Lane Gamiotea Subject: Re: Chief of Police position I don't know how many applications you are interested in receiving but http://www.psea.coin has a wide audience if you want me to reach out to them. I have been a member for years. On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 12:27 PM, Lane Gamiotea QgamioteaC cityofokeechobee.com> wrote: Good Afternoon Mr. Williams, Would it be possible to have the attached notice posted at your City, we're in the process of hiring a new police chief. If you know of anyone personally who might be interested, feel free to share. Hope you have a great week! Lane Earnest-Gamiotea, CMC City Clerk/Personnel Administrator City of Okeechobee 55 Southeast 3rd Avenue Okeechobee, FL 34974 863-763-3372 ext 215 863-763-1686 fax 863-697-0345 cell cityofokeechobee.com PUBLIC RECORDS NOTICE: All e-mail sent to and received from the City of Okeechobee, Florida, including e-mail addresses and content, are subject to the provisions of the Florida Public Records Law, Florida Statute Chapter 119, and may be subject to disclosure. 1 City of Okeechobee, August 23, 2016 meeting Minutes taken during the meeting by L. Gamiotea I. CALL TO ORDER: Mayor Kirk called the Special City Council Meeting to order on August 23, 2016, at 6:01 P.M. in the Council Chambers, Room 200 located at City Hall, 55 SE 3rd Avenue, Okeechobee, Florida 34974. II. MAYOR, COUNCIL MEMBERS AND STAFF ATTENDANCE - City Clerk Mayor James E. Kirk Present Council Member Noel Chandler Present Council Member Mike O'Connor Present Council Member Gary Ritter Present Council Member Dowling R. Watford, Jr. Present City Attorney John R. Cook Present City Administrator Marcos MontesDeOca Present City Clerk Lane Gamiotea Present Deputy City Clerk Bobbie Jenkins Present Police Chief Denny Davis Present (Major Peterson in attendance) Fire Chief Herb Smith Present Finance Director India Riedel Present III. MAYOR KIRK OPENED THE PUBLIC HEARING FOR ADOPTION OF FIRE ASSESSMENT RESOLUTION AT 6:02 P.M. A.1.a) Motion and second by Council Members Chandler and Ritter to adopt proposed Resolution No. 2016-07, related to the provision and funding of fire protection services and facilities — City Attorney (Exhibit 1). b) Public comments and discussion Attorney Cook read proposed Resolution No. 2016-07 by title only as follows: "A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF OKEECHOBEE, FLORIDA, RELATING TO THE DELIVERY AND FUNDING OF FIRE PROTECTION SERVICES AND FACILITIES WITHIN THE CITY; DETERMINING THAT CERTAIN REAL PROPERTY IS SPECIALLY BENEFITED BY FIRE PROTECTION SERVICES AND FACILITIES; ESTABLISHING THE METHOD OF ASSESSING COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH FIRE PROTECTION SERVICES AGAINST REAL PROPERTY SPECIALLY BENEFITED THEREBY; ESTABLISHING OTHER TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE ASSESSMENTS; APPROVING THE FIRE PROTECTION SERVICES ASSESSMENT ROLL FOR FISCAL YEAR 2016-17; PROVIDING THE METHOD OF COLLECTION; PROVIDING FOR CONFLICT; PROVIDING FOR SEVERABILITY; AND PROVIDING AN EFFECTIVE DATE." Burton & Associates Erick van Malssen, Consultant Manger. Peter Napoli Consultant Analyst in attendance and presentations. Fire assessment background. City fire rescue services currently funded through property Taxes and other general fund revenues. General fund supports many functions without direct funding sources. Fire rescue assessments are an alternative funding mechanism to directly fund fire rescue service. Apportions cots amongst property owners by the benefit received for services. Costs are more wide spread to those who benefit. Less exemptions. More predictable source of revenue. Diversifies revenue sources away from property value swings. Can be adopted at any level or below 100% cost recovery. If adopted, the city is considering a 0.5 millage rate decrease. Page 1 of 6 Methodology. Calls for service methodology. Tested and verified in the florida court system. Allocates costs of fire service to property classes based on historical demand for services. Property Classes: residential assessed per unit. FY 2017 spread sheet. Total net revenue $2,091,216.00. Calls for service analysis. Basis for allocating costs to property classes. 4-year of call data, fire/fire responder calls only. Ems calls and costs are excluded city properties are assessed for EMS services by Okeechobee. Table of call allocations. FY 2017 100% cost recovery table. 25% cost recovery table. Property Impact examples 25% cost recovery fire assessment table. Property impact examples net impact 25% assessment with a -0.5 mil reduction. Implementation schedule. Adoption of resolution of intent. Decision 2015. Adoption of initial assessment resolution July 19. First class mailing of notices to property owners 20 days before final assessment. Frank Irby, costs slide 5, property appraiser and tax collector each get 2% of each tax bill. Fire Insurance Premium. State shared benefit city receives. India it comes from the state has to go toward any pensionable costs for fire fighters only and does not come to the city but to the pension funds. Allen Patterson, 1404 SW 2nd Avenue. Speech on two fronts, here on behalf of the Presbyterian Church. Philosophically disagree with wording of the letter "non -ad valorem tax" but at the bottom if you don't pay for it a lien can be put against. Long Standing tradition that non -profits and churches should not be taxes. With respect to the fire department staff we appreciate their service, this is not an attack on them. Third, you're taxing a church where you have already received the tax from our congregation. The churches provide many community services to the community. Two recommendations, before voting please amend to put non-profit and churches in the exemption categories, second with all due respect to the consultants that you fire burton & associates immediately. Erick, approximately $25,000 to $30,000 our attorney said if you exempt one you must do both. Ave-, Daniels, Church of Christ pastor, like my friend before me we are concerned about this assessment, we like the police and fire department are public servants, they put out a blaze but we then go and help people pick up their lives after the fire is put out. Just last week we helped a local woman whose house burned down. We don't have a budget for these things, it's only by donation. We ask that you exempt the churches from the assessment. 207 SW Park Street, Devin Maxwell, commercial building owner, impact on local businesses, when you take valuation out of the equation, check written in November the amount is important to them. Assessments increase and then value increases, think this is untimely since we have not recovered from the economic state in the state. Commercial properties have not recovered, we still have a lot of empty properties. Secondly consider based on square footage impact will be lessor value will pay same Page 2 of 6 amount as one that is more lucrative. Way of example one of the slides had a 10,000 sf commercial building $800.00, printed a tax bill from a building I have co ownership in, assessed value $5,479. Ad valorem including EMS assessment is just about 15% of the value, that increase the liability of the property owner. Take into account compare that to, local owned business, to CVS value $1.5 million pays $ in taxes last year, take sf and multiply by , difference in my building and CVS and they are in a better position to absorb this type of assessment. In an area with more businesses like CVS you probably would not have such a negative effect on the community. Without questioning the methodology this is going to create dis-proportionate burdens that could stime our ability to recover from the economic and then rent this property. $5.50/sf rent on my property, versus outparcel at walmart $23/sf. National franchise like little ceasars can handle that type of assessment but compared to the property I own it makes it very difficult to absorb. Down side worst time and worst properties to put the burden on. Potential increase and tax liability can hurt our commercial properties, please take into consideration. Briefly reviewed the study. The type of use was not taken into consideration. The types of calls are put in based on types of use, the data may have been emergency medical calls such as nursing homes, doctors offices, they are more recession proof and they are the bulk on the commercial calls within the study. Don't have answers for you but ask you to consider the type of uses would also be more fair. P Debra 911 sw Street. Agree with everyone who has spoken so far. I live in west palm, own a 11,000sf warehouse in Okeechobee, basic, no a/c, think Maxwell point is very important to consider. Passing that aburden onto th etennant. Okeechobee is growing, all sorts of different things coming in think discon to raise the taxes at a time when things are going in. M ers i rner Loy r, Director of Ministerial Association, 312 NW 12t" Avenue. Took us by surprise and having only 20 days to respond. Collection falling under tax laws. Historically vast iron clad to not collect taxes from churches. Dania[ Webster quote. Its not going to destroy us but it is going to impact us. Assessement but we all know it is a tax. We believe strongly this is the wrong way to take a stand and tax a church. Freedoms we enjoy, canary in the coal mine. We are very concerned. If this was something of a fee that would be something . Jay Leno with natural disasters, terrism is this the time to remove God from our currency or the fear of God from our ordinances of state. Friends and neighbors here, respect each of you. Take into consideration how this can effect. Frank Irby, was at the December meeting. One reason expressed number of properties that aren't paying taxes, spread cost of a service and fairer way to have them pay. Implementing a fee like this, if you don't implement a fair across the board fee it's a wash. If ou don't do that htne we are all implementing . Said the same thing to the BOCC when they implemented their assessment and what I said would happen has happened. Millage continued to go up and the assessment is also in place. Majority of people taxes .... Don't know how many people aren't paying property taxes. Spent $38,000 on the consultant that is more than amount people arenot pay. Shared numbers and budgets. Commend this board 2009-2015 5, $5 done a great job controlling your expenses during the hard times. Revenues in 2009 were $ and in 2015 were $ . Revnue is up a little bit from 2009. Rev to expenses $500,000 net over expense, 90,000. -190, -207, 677,000, add and subtract all those you get a $881,000 over expenses. Cook we did have a one time revenue .... I understand but this is a net position from your audit. You have almost $1 million in unrestricted surplus. Submit its Page 3 of 6 not to cover amount recovered from loss of revenues. I believe if you provide a service and want to charge that's fine. I submit you call Kirk if you are here from a church you don't need to come up individually. I do not intend to pass it with the churches being including. Daniel Fennell, American Legion, we are a 501 c3 non profit, we fill at the post all our members are veterans, don't believe its fair to tax us. Ask not to tax us with this. Mack Worley, business within the city and state Christian believer hope my Christian believer friends wont stab me in the back. I believe this assessment. There are churches and non profits in this community that I do not believe we should group them all together. Hindu temple in our county and don't believe those should be exempted. Peter to go get a coin out of a fishes mouth to pay the tax, think its okay to tax churches. Businesses follow business opportunity. We must reverse the trend and create an environoment where people who have disposable income want to come and live and spend their money here. Landscapign assessement as well. Directgor OUA members to put landscaping at all the businesses so they can be as beautiful as the areas on the coast. Kirk — comment made for consultant, he's not the bad guy here, he's doing the job we hired him to do, if you want to fire someone then fire us or be mad at us. Watford - remember correctly 144,000 sq max limit. How did you make all the changes I suggested. Erick ran out and wrote them down and made them. If we were to no adopt them in this budget year could we do it in another year? Absolutely, you can keep this study as long as the rates aren't more than the maximum sent to the owners. Ritter lets just say fire assessment we don't have to do one next year or the year after. Erick you have to readopt it every ye3ar, if you want to raise rates then you have to go therough the full adoption and notice. Cook — a lot of people sympathyic to Worley position. We cannot pick and choose which ones we want to exempt. When you don't collect from non-profit. MDO — maximum that was mailed out was 25% over five years. Dave Elberg when businesses mobile home parks. Erick each space is a unit for mobile home parks. RVs are assess by sf as per state statute. # of spaces. 50 x mobile homes you have to use the per unit. Frank Irby proposal adopt 25% of the full funding. My understanding is to go to that you have to have public hearings and send notices. You cannot adopt more than the rate that was advertised and noticed. Ritter mobile home park, vacant lot only 15 occupied whats the rate, same? Erick assess number of spaces, can adopt a method to exempt, % exemption rates researched and applied at the end. Bring an issue that I don't want you to forget people on social security wehre I live I don't have a house on there right now, trying to get some type of a home on the property and we just try our best to keep as clean as possible, to go up higher would cause a struggle an dplease put into consideration. Linda Maysell, husband, Espinso. Page 4 of 6 Mr. Patterson you took The implication we spent $38,000 on this study to recover $20,000, unrestricted assets are there for you, you cant tax your way into a business opportunity. O'connor would it be wiser to wait just like when Watford asked about no we can put it off until the economy got better especially people who own commercial property, wonder if waiting might be better, think might be wisest thing to do. We can always go back to it. Ritter — I have gone back and forth in my mind, weighed the options, services paid for by people and those that are exempted, looked at the math on that, irby is correct on that, recovering what he said. Then those are the folks that are on fixed income. Then Devinand Deborah comments, didn't think about the types of businesses and their ability to generate the types if income. The other part of that is what o'connor alluded to be nice in better economic situation. The city from a financial standpoint, makes me think why do we need this at this time. Agree with you all from the ministry association, you all do contribute more to our community than a lot of people realize, you minister to the community and I have a hard time put that tax on them. Agree not the time, we can reconsider it. Chandler it puts a burden on everybody, you cannot keep saying we canot afford this or that and we have been good with expenses but there are things we cannot do in our city because of funds. God will provide and I agree not to tax the churches. You'll be happy when you leave here tonight but remember keep smiling because we have to have funds to provide services that the community wants. Watford difference in EMS and Fire assessment. Attended BOCC meetings when they enacted. Disagree in that EMS is for a person Fire is for a building. The church would receive the service. Timing is everything. If we learn from this, if we do something like this again we need to remember not to be forced to go too fast. Need to always have more time. I don't think taxes are ever fair, my home taxes, EMS assessment is probably more fair than my ad valorem taxes. Dotn know if we can break down differently and then someone else will be complaining. Surprised by the calls I got. Thought community was used to having assessments and surprised with the shock of the city property owners. Figure 57% of the taxable value in the city is non-residential or commercial property. The tax collections is what I shoud (have asked. 33.1 % residential taxes. Think a very unfair on the commericial properties, timing is not the best time with the economy. Agree to spread the cost but when you do the numbers the amount isn't spread as we thought it would be. Biggest reason canot support is there is no gurantee we wouldn't increase this, give a millage this year we all know how governemtn operates don't think wed see that rate stay. Suggest that we vote not on this resolution and save for a later date. Budget workshop was last week if we vote no on this tonight its going to be interesting and will have to maek some adjustments. Cook by FS that we have to operate under, time frame is January to September 15. Worley if you don't pass this how much money have you spent? Deborabh if not past you will have to make budget adjustments. Ritter — commend our consultant, don't a great job, could very much undertand the numbers you provided and could make correct assumptions. The money spent on these consultants was money well spent as they helped us by bringing the information. Page 5 of 6 Kirk never in favor of churches and non profit being included. 'Vle got here because our fund balance has been the same. But we have been putting project and services off for several years. I have looked at all this information, probably end up $335,000 in the red for this budget year and we can absorb that from the fund balance. But that is money that will not be replinshed. The future council is going to have of reach a point wehre the budget is balanced within the means. Need to be aware of this. Its been an honor to be up here and represent the citizens. The putting off has started to come due. We are putting 10 year plans in place. We are making some large expenditures in this FY and at some point adjustment has to be made either from millage or other means because you cant keep pulling money from the savings account. This is my city, I love it. Unless our economy takes a turn for the better we will have to make adjustments in other areas such as the millage rate. You get a great service for your dollar. What started all this needs to be explained. We only have $4million of $6million started with. 95% of the tiem enjobyable all up here are here to serve our citizens. And they take that serious. Clerk Gamiotea reported that a total of 24 calls were received pertaining to the Fire Assessment. These calls range from explanation of the Fire Assessment, how it will be billed, and a few calls transferred to the Administrator's office. One appeal letter was received from the Okeechobee Presbyterian Church. 107 notification letters were returned to City Hall. c) Vote on motion. VOTE: KIRK - NO CHANDLER - NO O'CONNOR - NO RITTER - No WATFORD - No MOTION CARRIED. MAYOR KIRK CLOSED THE PUBLIC HEARING AT P.M. 7381V. ADJOURN meeting @ P.M. Page 6 of 6 C1- 14 (1,0_ + t Lane Gamiotea From: Phil Williams <pwilli02O7@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, August 29, 2016 5:37 PM To: Lane Gamiotea Subject: Re: Chief of Police position I don't know how many applications you are interested in receiving but http://www.psea.coin has a wide audience if you want me to reach out to them. I have been a member for years. On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 12:27 PM, Lane Gamiotea QgamioteaC cityofokeechobee.com> wrote: Good Afternoon Mr. Williams, Would it be possible to have the attached notice posted at your City, we're in the process of hiring a new police chief. If you know of anyone personally who might be interested, feel free to share. Hope you have a great week! Lane Earnest-Gamiotea, CMC City Clerk/Personnel Administrator City of Okeechobee 55 Southeast 3rd Avenue Okeechobee, FL 34974 863-763-3372 ext 215 863-763-1686 fax 863-697-0345 cell cityofokeechobee.com PUBLIC RECORDS NOTICE: All e-mail sent to and received from the City of Okeechobee, Florida, including e-mail addresses and content, are subject to the provisions of the Florida Public Records Law, Florida Statute Chapter 119, and may be subject to disclosure. 1 Phil Williams Lake Placid, F1. D46(d� kwe c 011 sou 4 1�' sl� LkV Pli'lietawl-2-r /Acl ku� YX 40(ja- tf R!�-o�mk wkk Phil Williams Lake Placid, F1. 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