[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] n [Music] n [Music] oh [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] n a [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] w a [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] w [Music] [Music] good afternoon and welcome to the May 13 2024 regularly scheduled meeting of the Orlando city council we're going to begin today's proceedings with the invocation and the pledge offered and led today by commissioner Jim Gray thank you mayor uh if you're so inclined please join me in prayer dear Lord we come to you today asking for guidance wisdom and kindness as we address the Affairs of this community help us engage in meaningful discussions that lead to decisions that Advance the city and its residents we also ask for your intervention into current disputes throughout the world we ask for calm Minds rational decisions and healing hearts in your name we pray amen amen to the flag of the United States of America and to the for it stands indivisible andice I'm going to call the meeting order Madam clerk would you call the role and make determination of Quorum please commissioner gray here commissioner Ortiz here commissioner Stewart here commissioner Shen here commissioner Burns here mayor Dyer here mayor you have a quorum thank you madam clerk first order business is consideration of minutes from the agenda review and city council meeting of April 22nd 2024 motion by commissioner she and second by commissioner Stewart all in favor indicate so by saying I I those opposed and so the motion carries we have no Awards recognitions or presentations today so I'm going to start with a quick mayor's update this week is National Police Week when our country honors the law enforcement officers who have given their lives in the line of duty over the last several years we've had two OPD officers Lieutenant Deborah Clayton and officer Kevin Valencia who were taken while heroically serving our city their bravery and dedication will never be forgotten we send our love to their families and to their OPD colleagues big month this uh May is for the Orlando fire department last week they celebrated 139 years as an agency of the city of Orlando and little bit has changed since 1885 when they had one lone fire apparatus which I'm sure was either hand pulled or horse driven one of the two and uh we'll see more change this coming week commissioner Ortiz when we come out to your district for the ran cutting and grand opening of fire station 11 on Curry Ford Road okay and in the near future we'll have fire station 6 at the Orlando Executive Airport there's a um agreement on the agenda today with Haj high for the design of that station uh we have an election a week from Tuesday special election for District 5 interim City commission uh it'll be Tuesday the 21st early voting started today I encourage you to go to orlando.gun ways to get an absentee um and to uh where your polling places will be Memorial Day commemoration ceremony uh I invite you to join commissioner shien and our veterans advisory committee on May the 24th at 6 PM for a Memorial Day ceremony at Greenwood gives our city the opportunity to honor the military service members who made the ultimate sacrifice for protecting America and I just have a couple items of note uh that I would like to specifically call out today and that's item C11 and C four which relates to tra travel and Leisure coming downtown it will approve agreements um that will bring them downtown with uh close to well 900 jobs currently in existence and another 100 jobs that will be um coming when they move here there is Central Florida's largest Le publicly one of the largest publicly traded companies and they focus on as you might have guessed the vacation industry and Kim Marshall the chief HR officer is here today Kim would you stand and be [Applause] recognized okay well that will move to the consent agenda the consent agenda is a number of items that are acted upon through a single V of council we give each of our council members an opportunity to comment on the consent agenda and update you on important happenings from their District we rotate the order that we do that and commissioner gray is first up today thank you mayor I hope everybody had a great Mother's Day whether you were celebrating or being celebrated I hope everybody had a great Mother's Day it was a beautiful day yesterday um I want to a quick thanks to uh Chief Eric Smith and the OPD group uh they did uh their kind of quarterly meet the chief meeting out in the L vest area in southeast Orlando very well received by the neighbors and I just want to thank the chief and his team for making the effort to connect with the community uh was much appreciated and I just want to thank them for taking the time um going forward tomorrow neor Children's Hospital is opening their Family Resource Center you know neor is a great resource for uh our community and is one of the first um groups out in the Lake Nona area but the the the Medical Care they provide for for kids that are having some medical challenges is amazing so they're opening a resource center to help those families with even more um resources that they need to to help them go through some tough times so congrats to them and then also tomorrow night at 5:30 uh we have the taste of Lake Nona uh hosted by the Lake Nona Chamber of Commerce it's at the Aloft Hotel so starts at 5:30 for you culinary experts I invite you to come out there on the agenda um I'm um acknowledging a um an absent from voting on items C11 12 and C4 those are the items that the mayor talked about um so I'm abstaining from voting on those based on a business relationship and I filed the paperwork with the clerk and that's all I have mayor thank you thank you commissioner commissioner Ortiz thank you mayor um basically you already announced the uh session 11 so I'm going to skip that I just basically want to go ahead and say happy Mother's Day to I hope every all the mothers had a great day yesterday and spend some good time with the family and I'm going to just hold my comments until the next city council because there's a lot to be covered today so thank you commissioner commissioner Stewart uh thank you for your time Tony I appreciate it um think it's 45 minutes and talk a little bit about what's going on uh the um let me just share a couple things um um I want to say thank you everybody who worked on the earth day um Earth day work day I appreciate that we have a new business of the month over in uh Ivano Village Theory Salon it was good to be over there with them some of you who are photographically inclined uh We've announced this past week we're opening up the 2025 historic preservation Board calendar I don't normally mention that but I mention that because it happens to be recognizing the 100th year anniversary of College Park and so we're doing that the same year so we're excited about doing that thank you for that um happy Mother's Day of course that's one of the things I should have been on top of my list that'll make my wife not very happy when she hears this uh and then um I want to say special thanks to the mills50 group and Lake Highland we had a great tour commissioner Shen and I was over with them and and had a chance to to see some great artwork over there and um they did a little project where they put a QR code that goes to a website that tells about the artist and about the actual Pro actual thing that's uh uh that we went to go see the visual art so it was really really neat to see that and see the excitement the kids learn about artists as opposed just about art so I appreciate that May 2nd we have the National Day of Prayer I appreciate Tony spending time with you thank you very much for doing that Vision Orlando did an event here in downtown down in our rotunda and then um yesterday they announced the central Flor of the year and happened to be my friend Eric gray who was uh took my place over at the Christian service center I'm happy and proud for him I appreciate that some upcoming things real quickly um FR starts tomorrow uh excited about that we have the grace Hagadorn we're taking a presentation plaque over to her house uh for 100 U her her house being 100 years old we're going to recognize that um Saturday is the District 3 Community shred event so if you have stuff you wanted to get shredded uh old checks business records um anything that you want to get sh we going to be at rosem Elementary from 9 to 12 uh on Saturday and of course then highly anticipated Great Southern Box Company Food Hall will be opening up next week so we're excited about that on the agenda let me mention a couple of things um I3 uh we are putting charging stations in over at the tennis center so uh Patty you can get over there Patty you can go over there and now play tennis charge while you're playing tennis won't that be great for you my charging is fine in Orlando Commissioners well I go somewhere um we also are accepting um are sending 20,000 to dueling dragons some of youall are familiar with that project that we're doing I appreciate Andrea alisu she was a finalist for Central florid of the year um both of them dear friends of mine and I appreciate that uh and mayor on today on B17 I'm going to vote no uh I've asked the um the representatives to provide some information for me and they have not done that until I can get that information I just simply can't support that so I'm a no on b 17 please and that's all I have okay I think you mean c17 c17 yeah c17 sorry you're correct you are correct okay commissioner Sheen thank you mayor and I too want to wish everyone a Happy Mother's Day and uh my I lost my mom a couple years ago miss her every day so if you have a chance to to to spend some time with your mom and honor her please do it because you never know how bad it's going to be when they go there's no one like Mama like there's lots of times I go to pick up that phone and I wish I could hear her voice at the other end so happy Mother's Day everyone um on the agenda today on item A2 is the rainbow run we're going to be starting at City Commons Plaza going over and running over to pulse um I just want to say that there's been some uh some comments about how it's disrespectful and different things like that is someone whose Community was devastated by the pulse Massacre I want to thank UCF sports management for putting this on because it actually is a fundraising fundraising for building the permanent Memorial and I think that's something that's really important to do so I can disagree with some of the comments that have been made I want to thank UCF and the UCF students for doing this on behalf of my community and on on behalf of those who are impacted by this because we need to get a permanent Memorial built to honor those lives lost on item C11 again the travel and Leisure agreement I think this is a great corporate relocation support this wholeheartedly um item G2 Bloomberg philanthropy's public art Grant I think that's just so cool that they're they're giving us $1 million to um to to on social and ecological relationships between food and community and food is a right I think that's an amazing opportunity to to bring awareness and to support artists so I'm really glad to see that on the agenda today as well um on item H3 um dueling dragons that is a wonderful program and thank um thank OPD for supporting that for many many years and also on Andre alisu was nominated as well for cedra FL year for all the year work that she's done and I think that's just an amazing program building relationships between the Orlando Police Department and at risk youth and uh something else that was really really cool on it was just in the CRA minutes but I wanted just talk about is the global peace Film Festival is going to be having a year-long outdoor movie series at luminary green and Lake Yola park I think that is just absolutely wonderful I'm glad to see the Global Peace Film Festival it's one of the great events that put on um it's um it's it's local and International Film filmmakers and I just think the fact that they're bringing this to outdoor facilities where everyone can enjoy them is just an absolutely wonderful thing and I'm glad to see that the CRA is going to be supporting that and that's all I had Mar thank you thank you commissioner commissioner Burns uh yes good afternoon thank you mayor good afternoon everyone uh want to start off with a a few updates uh first allow me also to wish everyone a belated happy Mother's Day uh I had the opportunity of uh attending several events throughout the community celebrating Mother's Day one at the uh Grand Avenue Neighborhood Center El Claudia Allen Senior Center and a new event uh for me I hope this this is the first annual event uh where we had uh lunch in the poppy park over in the carver Shores neighborhood with uh a lot of our our mothers there to celebrate uh Mother's Day so uh thank you Miss Heath our uh Association president for for pulling that together and including me in that also ID like to uh congratulate also Eric gray for being recognized as the central Floridian of the year uh for all of his work in homelessness and poverty and I'm uh fortunate to have been able to work with Eric uh for the past 15 years in those areas um also on Wednesday April the 24th I had the opportunity of uh spending some time with Congressman Maxwell Frost and uh Democrat uh whip Katherine Clark Lisa early and uh AB Morris with the uh family Parks and Recreation Department to talk about our community violence Intervention Program talk about the additional resources uh that will be coming to our community to address um violence that's happening so I just like to say thank you to Congressman Frost for his uh advocacy in those areas and bringing the resources to our community to help us locally uh address some of those issues um also um on May 2nd I had the pleasure of attending the African-American Chamber of Commerce golf outing uh this was a a great turnout opportunity to engage with local uh small business owners uh the atmosphere was uh vibrant uh filled with excitement uh and we enjoyed truly uh playing golf uh my team did not win um but we did pretty good so uh thank you to the African-American chamber for that also on uh Saturday May 4th uh I attended the senior Fitness day hosted at the James R Smith Center uh this event hosted over 60 seniors uh who came together to prioritize their health uh the day was filled with energy and enthusiasm and participants were able to take part in uh different activities based on their um on their uh Fitness level so again i' just like to say thank you to everyone who participated but also to our fpr team for uh putting that together but also I just wanted to take this time to highlight some other senior activities that happen at our El Claudia Allen uh Senior Center we have a fitness that happens twice a week we have a senior Jam that happens once a month uh a game night as well as a billiard night so I often hear our seniors uh talk about uh what are the what are what is there that the city is offering for our seniors so I ask you all to get involved call the El Claudia Allen Center because there are a a host of activities that are available to our seniors also May 6 I had the opportunity of traveling over to Tampa to the Tampa Housing Authority to see some of the in Innovative work that they've been doing with the choice neighborhood uh Grant uh as you all know that the um our area has been awarded a choice neighborhood planning Grant to see how we can go about potentially redeveloping some of our public housing so we uh I learned a lot on that Tampa site visit and looking forward to our community moving forward with our plan in process um also um on May 7th I attended the Jones High School 2024 scholarship uh award ceremony uh my office were uh we awarded three $11,000 scholarships to deserving uh Jones High School graduating seniors uh but also it was inspiring to see that another 30 uh Jones High School seniors received the Harris Rosen scholarship which provides them a full scholarship ship to attend college uh junior college or Technical College um in the name of uh Harris Rosen so he's done so much for our community uh he does this um he has the scholarship program in the Tangelo Park area and recently moved it to Jones High School and so it's just uh inspiring to see someone being so giving of themselves to help our youth uh uh pursue their educational Endeavors um also um let me see also on May 9th we uh attended the uh UCF Rosen College of hospitality management 20 years uh celebration of Excellence uh for their 20-year reunion uh again this was an opportunity to highlight some of the Investments that Mr Harris Rosen has made in our community um also I would like to acknowledge uh well on the on the agenda uh this afternoon well before before that I wanted to point out that uh today the RFP for the Redevelopment of the patmont boxyard uh was released and this is a notice that we're inviting proposals to uh experience developers to to develop affordable multifam housing in the Holden Heights um community in district 6 uh and this was a a a lot that was previously held the um the uh dumpsters that the city maintained uh and so we got that lot cleaned up and now we're making way for affordable multif family housing so I'd like to say thank you may D for your support uh and getting one getting that lot cleaned up but then also to repurposing it for uh affordable housing um also uh upcoming events uh continue to have my mobile satellite office hours held on Wednesday May 22nd uh at the El Claudia Allen senior center from 10:00 a.m. to 4: p.m. also uh district 6 family reunion Funday will happen Saturday June 8th uh from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the Dr James R Smith Center so we invite the community to come out uh enjoy uh the day we're going to have some water aerobics uh some funing game so again family reunion style outing we invite not just district 6 but the entire city of Orlando to come out and enjoy on the agenda of this afternoon mayor I wanted to uh highlight item A4 uh approving of the submission of the Energy Efficiency and conservation Grant I think that's uh impossible so I support that also uh c16 uh the small business facade Grant to medin ramps uh in district 6 I'm not sure if they're here with us this uh afternoon but we often times don't see okay there you are congratulations uh we often times don't see these facade grants coming to district 6 so I'm excited that we finally have uh this facade Grant in district 6 uh also um I uh F1 on the agenda support the adoption of the resolution uh adopting a new process for the local governmental Pro uh preference under the lowincome housing 9% tax credit program uh this is a program that uh is D designed to help spur affordable multifam developments in our community and how that works is um each area is given a a tax preference so with uh the city of Orlando in Orange County we alternate who gets that preference uh before now there has not been a a true review process uh so I'm glad to see our housing department putting together a transparenter process that everyone will know what happens when they apply for that 9% tax credit and for the for the preference uh mayor that's all I have thank you motion motion move to approve second motion by commissioner Burns second by commissioner Sheen all in favor indicate so by saying I I I those opposed and so the motion carries so that is the entirety of the consent agenda so if you are just here for items that were on the consent agenda you are not required to stay for the remainder of the meeting and now is a good time to exit if you so desire now's a good time to get out and otherwise um if there's no objection we're going to move to recess the city council meeting and convene the CRA meeting David I think I can handle the first one it which is CRA meeting minutes from April the first is there motion to approve motion by commissioner Sheen second by commissioner Stewart all in favor indicate so by saying I I those oppos motion carries number two is accepting CRA Advisory board minutes from the 27th of March motion by commissioner Stewart second by commission Sheen all in favor indicate so by saying I I those opposed and so the motion carries number three thank good afternoon mayor M of council uh so item three is the item referenced a couple times welcome remarks as well as commissioner shien's this is a high wage high value job creation agreement on behalf of the CRA for travel and Leisure Co I wanted to take just a moment to walk you through a little bit of background about the cra's high wage high value job creation program as well as a little bit of context on some of uh how the former agreements you have approved have been performing uh so as you may recall this program was originally created in 2006 with the goal of incentivizing companies to move into downtown and create new jobs uh that were both High wage and high value to bring more economic impacts uh to our local economy last year uh there was an amendment to that that uh uh you will recall being called the Paramore headquarters incentive uh which was specifically targeting businesses to come make very large presences um in our Paramore community that were of 750 employees or more uh but the program in its entirety has four different uh qualifications so to speak where you can get incentives they work as a menu of options so we can craft uh an appropriate incentive based on the company that we're working with the first one is the job creation incentive so this is the must you have to have that uh that's the create that high wage high value job uh after that the Paramore head headquarter incentive which I referenced the downtown living incentive and the public transportation incentive so how the menu of option works is you can kind of piece together um any of the incentives that I referenced before for a total incentive up up to $4,000 per job and I'll walk through that just real quickly on how that works um so of the first for that high wage high value job uh if that company is creating a job and it has a specific wage level you'll see the table on the bottom if the wage that they are paying is 115% of the Orange County or state average wage they're eligible for up to $750 as that wage increases up to 200% our incentive increases all the way up to $2,000 per job and as I mentioned you have to have this component you can't choose the other items on the program without first qualifying and receiving this as it is uh the foundational level the new incentive that was approved last year is the paramor headquarters incentive so this is for those headquarter corporations that are making a commitment to our Paramore Community uh and are bringing at least 750 jobs along with them during that process they must lease a space that's paying property taxes and they must sign a base term lease of 10 years so making a long commitment to be a significant part of that Community uh the next component is the downtown living incentive so this is working with um companies to hopefully have their employees also live within the downtown CR area um obviously if they're moving here their employees may not live here yet but we want them to encourage to be part of the live work and play environment so you'll see kind of a uh a a tiered system for year one we ask them if they meet the 15% uh that will go up to 20 and then 25 and year three that they receive $1,000 per employee um that they're bringing and then uh similarly along that context $1,000 per job for a public transportation incentive so uh the city and the CRA have made significant investments in being multimodal uh and we want to come alongside those companies that are going down that route with us uh so same context and percentages that I ref ref in downtown living um but if a company uh incentivizes their employees um um by creating a uh public uh savings account uh it works a lot like a health savings account uh where employees can deposit pre-tax funds uh into this account and spend it on public transportation they are eligible for $1,000 per job you'll see that those uh individuals those employees need to fund that account uh to $560 annually and what that equates to is an annual SunRail pass so you can understand the context there uh and then as I mentioned just real briefly as far as how some of these uh prior incentives have performed um in 2021 uh we approved sesta uh coming to downtown Orlando uh they moved into uh The Landmark buildings on the north side of Lake Yola uh we incentivized them to bring 80 jobs here uh and for $220,000 in funding uh so so far they are on their way they've created 53 of those jobs and have been paid out just shy of $99,000 uh towards that and the average w of those employees is in excess of 990,000 uh in a uh shortly after that 20 well yeah it was shortly after in 2021 we incentivized assured Partners uh they brought 200 jobs here into downtown they're located right next to us here in the CNL building so far they've brought 131 of those 200 jobs um have been paid out 123 just over that $135,000 towards that and the average wage of those jobs are just shy of 160,000 and then Granite telecommunications um you'll see uh which is also known as iron Galaxy kind of their more General name were approved for 25 jobs uh at an average wage of just over 68,000 but great story here because they've actually already created 89 so drastically exceeding what they initially thought they would bring uh average wage of those jobs Sports uh and they have brought over 930 jobs uh to downtown uh since they made uh their new location here at over $145,000 average wage so very excited to continue to bring uh more high quality and High Caliber jobs to downtown and to our community uh so specifically about travel and Leisure several of these the mayor mentioned uh in his opening remarks but travel and Leisure uh they are uh looking to move into uh what is formerly known as HD Supply building or 501 Church Street uh they are the word's leading membership and Leisure Travel company they've been recognized by Fortune Magazine as one of the world's most admired companies and the largest publicly traded companies in Orlando uh they have a portfolio of over 20 Resort travel club and lifestyle travel Brands um and they currently have more than 900 employees they're located in the Williamsburg area of Orlando which is out near SeaWorld uh so they would be bringing all of their employees here to this downtown location the image you see before you uh is an image of that building uh what you can't see uh is off to the right which was where the West Court project would be uh that was voted on uh at our last meeting uh so a lot of investment a lot of activity spurring uh specifically into this Corridor but absolutely at the heart of our Paramore community in addition to the 900 jobs that they would be bringing they would be creating another 102 jobs all at the 200% average wage um uh which is currently just shy of $121,000 and they are excited to be a part of the community and will be submitting a community action plan uh before March 1st of 2025 detailing the various Partnerships and programs uh that they intend to establish to benefit the youth uh in the Paramore Community uh so the job incentives that they qualified for uh were the high wage high value job incentive at $2,000 per job as well as the Paramore headquarters incentive which I detailed before totaling the maximum allowable by the program which is $44,000 per job uh in total for the ,0 jobs that they would be bringing uh their CRA investment would come out to $4,400 that gets paid out over a 10year period of time uh you heard me mention that they needed to make a minimum of a 10-year commitment uh the payout schedule in front of you just shows how that would ultimately be paid as long as they uh are successful in meeting all of their benchmarks you see a kind of a some larger payments on the front end of that because they are bringing those 900 jobs here initially uh and then that starts to taper down in the latter years so with that I'm happy to address any questions questions for David otherwise a motion second motion by commissioner Shen second by commissioner Stewart discussion hearing none all in favor of the motion to indicate so by saying I I I those opposed and so the motion carries any more business to come for the C deid that is all mayor all right thank you and we will stand adjourned as to the CRA and we will reconvene the city council meeting and that will bring us to new business and we need to elect two new mayors Pro Temp for a term of May 2024 through December of 2024 is there a nomination for the mayor pro1 mayor I'd like to make a nomination for mayor pro1 commissioner Burns second are there motion is second is are there further motions then I'll declare the nomination closed all in favor of commissioner Burns for mayor protim one indicate so by saying I uh we don't have any other so by acclamation congratulations uh protm One Burns is there a nomination for May I'll make a motion to have commissioner Stewart be made pretend to Second Motion in a second for uh commissioner Stewart for mayor protm two are there further nominations and I'll declare the nomination ation closed all in favor indicate so by saying I I I those uh well I'll just declare commissioner Stewart mayor proem to by acclamation so congratulations to each of you okay let's uh move on to uh hearings ordinances on first reading number one Madam clerk ordinance number 202 24-9 and ordinance of the city council city of Orlando Florida relating to District you stand s within the Paramore Heritage overlay District amending Chapter 58 part 2 AI Land Development code entitled Paramore Heritage overlay District pH providing for separability codification correction of scor's error and an effective date motion by was it commiss motion by commissioner Shin second by commissioner Stewart um Madam clerk do we have any requests to speak no speakers May no speakers discussion hearing none all in favor of the motion indicate so by saying I I those opposed motion carries okay let's move the hearings ordinances second reading oh you're right okay Commissioners let's not move away from that ordinance just yet this or ordinance requires a public hearing after 5:00 unless we vote by a super majority to hold the second public hearing at our normal city council meeting time staff recommends we hold the second public hearing at our next available regularly scheduled city council meeting beginning at 2:00 do I have such a motion second motion by commissioner Stewart second by commissioner Shen all in favor of the motion indicate so by saying I I I um and so the motion carries okay we're going to hearing ordinances on second reading I said no okay commissioner Ortiz is noted as a no on that last one okay we are moving to hearings ordinances second reading um the first one has about 30 comments the two and three and four have nobody want wants to testify and number five has three people that would like to testify so I'm going to propose a as a matter of courtesy that we take up number five first and let those three uh speak on the annex uh coordinates and not wait for the other 30 members if that's other 30 comments if that's okay with you [Music] guys let's do this and then we'll come back and take care of it commission okay Madame clerk there is no objection we're going to go ahead and move to 202 24-20 which is number five [Music] on ordinance number 202 24-20 an ordinance of the city council the city of Orlando Florida annexing to the corporate limits of the city certain land generally located south of Stanton energy plant and State Road 528 East of the Starwood Property and north of the Oola County Line and comprised of 5,398 094 acres of land more or less providing for separability correction of scrier error and an effective date move to adop Second motion by commissioner BR second by commissioner Shen we do have three request for a comment on this um first up is John Weiss thank you mayor Dyer and good afternoon uh to you and Commissioners as well uh my name is John Weiss a deputy County Administrator with Orange County government 2011 South Rosland Avenue Orlando Florida 32801 on Wednesday May 8th the county submitted into the record its concerns and objections to the proposed sunbridge voluntary annexation ordinance I'm here after this afternoon to briefly speak to some of the key points raised in that letter as the city is aware the county formerly objected to the phase one annexation ordinance uh for similar reasons as shared in our written comments uh the county has spent more than a decade working with this landowner uh We've approved significant entitlements with specific considerations entered into a series of complex developers agreements with the landowner and invested millions of dollars uh from the county CIP and infrastructure to support this development the county contends that this annexation does not meet the criteria and of the character to be of the area to be annexed as required by the Florida Statutes the county contends that the key that there are key growth issues that remain unresolved related to the future of the city's land use and resoning approvals for the phase 2 annexation area the county further contends that this annexation leaves significant Transportation matters unresolved and the county contends that this annexation places at risk the Environmental Protections uh that that were adopted by the county um in environmentally sensitive area so the county formally objects to this annexations for the reasons uh detailed here and those further detailed in our letter dated May 8th 2024 thank you thank you okay Andrew Mai thank you uh for moving this item up I appreciate it um my name is Andrew Mai I am an assistant County attorney for Orange County Florida 2011 South Ro Avenue Orlando uh John has already uh said much of what I'm going to say so I'll I'll be brief the county requests that this annexation uh be delayed or denied on April 23rd the County Commission adopted a resolution which initiated the conflict resolution procedure pursuing to Florida's statutes regarding the stage one annexation we believe it would be prudent to delay this annexation until resolution of the conflict with the county is completed in addition the annexation before you today is defective because it's not compact creates a large Enclave creates pockets and is in a serpentine pattern the county has submitted an expert report which you should have opposing this annexation and indicating the harm caused by the annexation to the county the county requests that you delay or deny adoption of this annexation ordinance thank you so much okay thank you Chris roer good afternoon my name is Chris roer I'm attorney with the acran law firm for the record the address is 420 South Orange Avenue Orlando Florida 32801 I'm here today on behalf of the petitioner Tavistock e Services LLC just wanted to let you know that we disagree with the county we agree with the city staff uh in that the proposed annexation does meet all the requirements of Florida law and I submitted an Evidence finder last week to the city clerk's office containing our data analysis and expert report um that was distributed online also and I just wanted to submit a hard copy as well and that's all I have um if there's any questions happy to answer them uh again Chris rer thank you thank you okay that's all the cards I have had for information and public comment discussion hearing none all in favor the motion indicate so by saying I I those opposed so the motion carries okay let's go back to the top of the second reads number one madame Clark 2416 ordinance number 202 24-16 and ordinance amending chapter 31 city code storm water utility code by amending section 31.4 City Cod to modify the basis on which the storm water service charge is calculated and to provide for increases in the charge and applicable rate providing legislative finding cability codification correction of scor's error and an effective date second motion by commissioner Shen second by commissioner Burns okay I do have a number of people that would like to comment on this particular item I haven't counted them all but I think they're close to 30 so some of you probably haven't been here before you just need I'll call your name come to the lecturn uh state your name and your address and you'll have 3 minutes to discuss this item so we're going to start off with Mike Alderman followed by Raymond Funk and pora m mby mby mby m speak hi good afternoon uh I'm here on the U behalf I have a piece of prop my name is Mike Alderman I'm sorry um a piece of property uh two pieces of property in the city of orlandoo um so far the proposal is to raise my water storm over 100% um as I have spoken with uh gentleman Mr Knight earlier he had said had told me said this hasn't been raised since 2008 well in 2008 it started in 20 199 8 as a fee not a tax if it was a tax the people of the city of Orlando we would have gotten to vote on it as a fee yall imposed it and we didn't get to vote on it and was put as a fee as as on our tax bill so in 2008 I pay $1,575 a year for water that God puts down on my land and runs off they want that fee to go to $3,300 a year at this inflation rate the the way inflation is the people the city of Orlando the people that live here can't afford that that's an outrageous amount to increase our our our our fee I mean a reasonable about they say well all this new development charge the developers charge the people that are buying the new buildings charge them for the storm water runoff not businesses that been there since the 70s um Winter Park uh as we discussed earlier I went on and I've talked to Winter Park went on their sites they charged $43.50 per acre for commercial property 4350 and you want to charge me for under an acre $ 3375 or $ 3350 that that's absurd to do that um inflation is too high to impose this right now people can't afford to go to the grocery store and you're going to raise this over 100% um I would assume I I I don't even think this would be an issue if this was an election year you people would throw it out and say forget this they not going to charge these people this kind of crazy money it's going to it's going to drive the people to move out and to move into the county I was Orange County and I got annexed into the city supposed to be better everything's supposed to work I can walk out of my driveway walk into the county driveway the gentleman across the street three times the amount of my property pay 600 a year his hasn't went up isn't going up 600 a year I pay $15.75 a year and you're wanting to ra and I'm small compared to what every other business is fixing to raise so I've tried to keep it as short as possible I'm totally against it and I really hope today you will vote no against this rate at least review it too much thank you okay I'm going to revert back because I forgot to let Corey make his presentation and he would be sorely disappointed if he did not have that opportunity thank you mayor thank you Commissioners yes I would have been disappointed as to not get a chance to do this um so I'm going to real quickly go over um and you'll see this on your um on your monitors about where we're at um and as as was brought out and as I want to make clear we have not updated the utility rate stor water utility rate in over 15 years you guys know in the last few years we have had extreme price increases across the board we understand this we are sensitive to this we don't necessarily want to do this but we had to borrow $17 Million last year just to to to fund our Stone water program and at the rate we're going um we cannot keep that up so um real quickly in 2019 we actually um started to look at the update needs based on our Revenue projections we could see that something was happening and so in 2019 we started to look at this and Co hit so we decided not to to um go further on that uh but currently right now and I want to make this point and I want to make this point to everybody our storm water utility rate is at a point where revenues no longer cover our projections okay so our operations are going to be affected um all of these things that we try to do we we um have street sweepers we um have vacuum trucks we try to maintain uh a healthy storm water system it's very complex um we got hit with a historic rainfall during Ian and it inated pretty much every part of the city was was um was um affected at one point so we feel like um when we looked at this was something that we couldn't push down the road any further and we had to do it um we also wanted to look at this because we think we need a system of less complex calculations um that we that we want to see here there's some there's some uh questions about you know the discounts the Caps how those that come about so we wanted to try to to get that less complex uh system of calculations so the study task um that we had we had rap Tellis who is a consultant for us uh look at the stor water utility rate um that we charge and we the study task was to review the current storm water program was to I identify the stormw water funding need it was to evaluate what kind of a storm water rate structure uh was utilized all throughout the state um and try to get um uh up to up to to par with that and then compare those Stone water utility rates and fees for other Florida communities so what was happening all throughout Florida um we also have some management issues that we need to we need to look at because we have a Regulatory Compliance we have uh regulations handed down uh To Us by FEMA for our some water mitigation for our flood plane management all of these things we have flood control resiliency that we look at we look to improve and protect water quality this is important to understand because the water that comes down um goes somewhere and either goes to a lake it is infiltrated or it comes into our system it eventually ends up in a either a retention Pond or a lake somewhere um and then we need to look at renewing and replacing our aging infrastructure we have some storm water pipes that are some 80 to 100 years old um they're in need of replacement in certain areas we wanted to to be more proactive in that approach um and take an approach of um not only preventative maintenance uh but some uh replacement of the Aging infrastructure as well and then we expect our our residents expect a level of service here that we provide them um and that requires us to have the operation and maintenance activities our you once again you see our street sweepers out and also our Capital Improvements um what we do with that so some of the rate study issues we wanted to look at were this was the method of billing and this method of billing um is called a non-ad Valor assessment it is assessed on your tax bill it is not a tax it is a utility rate you get a service for what we provide um but it is not connected with any at any any bit with your property um value so that's called the non-ad assessment um we wanted to look at projection Revenue requirements what what our funding levels needed to be for a healthy um a healthy Capital Improvement program we wanted to evaluate the rate classes and rate structures and then we wanted to phase in those rate adjustments so real quick we've heard a couple questions well how do you use this Revenue where is this Revenue going towards so we wanted to show you that this it funds our operation and maintenance expenses that's number one that's what we put uh a lot of stock into we we want to have a robust maintenance program to try to avoid um some of the problems when you see the leaves falling out of the trees they go into the gutter um and a lot of times they plug up those systems we have Vector trucks that go out and have to clean in our inlets uh we have street sweepers like I said go out and sweep up the the debris the leaves and and uh try to take care of that um we have an annual City dividend that we pay we have services that we have to use um that are provided we need to pay for those we have a capital Improvement program so we wanted to get debt for our major projects we have some major projectss that we're ongoing right now um and then we wanted to have pay as you go funding for our annual renew and replacement needs those are the smaller uh projects that we need to come out maybe if you have a a pipe that's collapsed in the middle of a roadway um we wanted to come out and do that and then we wanted to maintain or or actually get a stone water Reserve fund we don't want to go through another in none of us do um we want to have some AA availability to reach into the reserves if we need to and fund some of the emergency projects that go on uh during uh either an emergency or disaster so that was very important to have a um to to try to get back up to a fund balance that we can carry so real quick um the stor Mar issues needs this is the vac truck that I have been talking about these are our street sweepers um that sweep um this is our water quality we have um staff that go out and measure our water quality keep track of our water quality we have a vegetation program we maintain in our Lakes to try to help with the vegetation that's in the Lakes um a lot of times you'll see um um blooms that'll come up as far as hydrilla and this other um um Aquatic Life aquatic plants we want to make sure that that's not overcrowding our ecosystem um and um this is this is a little um this a little clip of something we see quite frequently that's actually a bag of leaves that somebody has done the right thing and bagged up but they put it in the curb and it eventually found its way down to storm Inlet and it plugged up the inlet this calls for a lot of uh a lot of calls that we get hey my the water won't go down what's going on uh we go out there Center Cruise out there clean up this kind of thing and then this is a picture from Ian um we all know that's the Cherokee Davis area that flooded pretty much the entire area down there um four more pictures this is some more aftermath of what we had dealt with uh during um the historic rainfall that we got during Ian and the importance in maintaining a healthy um storm water system so um a few facts at a glance on an annual basis we the streets and storm Water Division of Public Works maintains water quality in 80 Lakes we have 84 Retention Ponds and 86 control ditches that we maintain we manage over uh 50 wear Board Water control structures those are the boards that keep Lakes at a specific level and then on an annual average we sweep almost 82,000 miles of Street on a bi-weekly BAS bis that's collecting 34,000 cubic yards of debris um we have almost 50,000 storm water inlets we have to maintain in 548 Inlet baskets that's something we put in some of the inlets that helps maintain uh helps keep some of the leaves from going in the Lakes over 1,000 miles of storm water pipe over 4,000 outfall pipes that are discharging into our lakes and ponds and these numbers are increasing as we see we've had tremendous growth here in the city since 2008 um which is great but as we grow as we grow as a city we also need to fund our storm water system so what need needs to be done and what we got down to is we need to enact a new rate in two steps um this is some of the questions we heard the other night too step one is to update the rate so what we're doing right now is updating that rate try to get us to where we can get um more money to cover what we need to do right now because we are at a point like I said beginning we no longer can cover our Capital exp or our um operating expenses if we continue where we go we want to reduce the funding Gap and then the next step and this is an important step The Next Step that we're going to do is we're going to look at another we're going to have the consultant look at another study to look at the modifications of our discounts and caps there are several caps on here currently right now the the um Residential Properties are capped at 2500 square ft that's that's a conversion of what we did before because today we are we measure our property and equivalent uh residential units which is an estimate uh we are we are converting from that eru to a square foot of impervious area that's the impervious that's the area that the rain falls on a hard surface uh and runs out that's what we are going to so we're getting away from an eru but currently right now everybody is capped residentially at a specific number we tried to make that likewise as we transitioned into square footage so the 2500 foot number was where we where the um consult made the recommendations to do that and we agree and then we're going to look at some of the discounts currently right now there's a lot of um commercial properties that have some kind of a discount built into their storm water rate so we want to look at those discounts understand it it's a very complex uh system of of what was uh created and through the years it's been modified somewhat and we want to understand what that is so we can bring a better um uh program forward and then this is all to balance our Stone water budget and add capital projects by year five it's going to take us a while to get there um that doesn't mean we're going to sit back and not do projects too this is something that's very important to us at Public Works is to create and and add uh storm water projects not only storm water projects but Public Works projects is General but specifically to this we want to add more projects uh going down the R so um the basis for that stone Water fee structure um was to recover our recover our Revenue requirements we want to look at Fair fairness and equity in there we wanted to look at our administrative feasibility and then we want to create customer classes so we have single family residential we have a multifam residential rate we have non-residential commercial and we have vacant properties okay and each one of those are busted up into a specific class um I wanted to show you a chart real quick this is our projected Revenue requirements right now if you look at the dashed line that is our that is our Revenue rate at our current rate now like right now and you can see in the teal that is just our operating expenses and you can see by this year we're getting into the point where we can no longer cover our operating expenses so by 2026 we'll be even further in debt if we don't adjust this rate so um the rate that you see is the revenues at projected rates is the is the heavier dark line there and we have a capital deficiency we've currently right now we had to borrow about 7 million just to to to make us um even right now and so we need to pay that back over time so that's what you see the capital deficiency there and as we go forward that capital deficiency is going to decrease because we'll be able to pay that money back so real quick um we wanted to see we we had to pick a number that we said this is uh an average number that we were going to use it was 2,000 we took a 2,000 square uh 2,000 impervious uh square foot lot and we calculated basically what the projected rates were going to be for fiscal years 25 through fiscal years 28 so next um next year if this is enacted you will see a change in monthly fee uh for a 2,000t impervious uh lot to be about $3.50 okay from that point the next year it goes up 337 the next year after that it goes up another 337 and then in 2028 it rises $11 that helps resolve our annual Capital funding deficiency as you can see by year 2027 we can have uh money to do more projects uh which is uh eventually which is actually where we want to be this is an existing versus proposed calculation it shows real quick a residential single family commercial and the commercial owim the O owim is the or Orlando Urban stormw Water Management manual that was developed um to enact some of the discounts um since then this has been replaced by something else and so the discounts haven't been quite studied that's the importance of doing this second study to understand the the Caps into discounts is to go off of what we have uh currently right now instead of what we used to use and is no longer in use and then our rate comparison this is a chart showing our rate comparisons with other larger municipalities in the state of Florida um we're in the middle um we were currently in the middle existing right now it changes to about 1349 which puts us uh above cities like um Gainesville and Cape Coral but below Tampa has actually two charges um that they charge they charge U what's called their base rate um and then they have a capital um a capital charge of projects that are going in in specific areas that's broken out in specific sections in Tampa so that's why you see Tampa on there twice uh so their actual rate you would have to add both of those rates and see that they're um um fairly significant on that rate charge um and I'm welcome to have any questions um that yall have um I want to recap real quick uh before those questions we did have another meeting last Wednesday we had some good input um a lot of the questions had to deal specifically and this is what we talked about about you know the cap why is it why is the cap at 25 500 s ft and we try we explained that that 2500 ft is basically what's happening now is there is a cap on our Stone Water fee right now we tried to transer that over that's essentially where the 2500 foot came from there's some questions about the rate the the Second Step basically which was you know the caps and the discounts what's what's happening with that is there any availab is there any possibility that we can put a discount in or or a cap on this we said we would love to do this study and we'll bring back the recommend after the study was was U um was created um and then we had a we had some um questions about why hasn't it been increased since 2008 um and I said well we can start at this point we're going to go forward but what we want to do here is we want to go forward um it's not any of our fault but it's our problem so let's go go forward and get that taken care of and so what we want to do is we want to bring more projects uh forward we want we have uh built a capital Improvement program that is fairly robust because we understand there's a lot of needs especially since the historic rainfall of Ian brought out those needs um so this is something that we feel um uh very strongly about and um we appreciate um y'all's consideration and wel can to have any questions questions for Corey commissioner Burns all right thank you mayor uh thank you Corey for that presentation uh and also I had a chance to attend that meeting on uh last Wednesday and I want to publicly uh commend you for the job that you did in uh explaining uh how we got here and how we need to move forward uh so you know so thank you for remaining poised and answering all the questions uh as as you did uh you know this is a is is really an inconvenient time for many of our residents to be experiencing a uh increase uh whether it be you know $3 or $4 a month or anything larger than that but also I I understand that we are at a critical point right now where we have the Aging infrastructure and I have the privilege of of serving a uh a district that has a lot of those older homes older communities and we experienced some some some flooding doing Ian some things that really uh shocked me I think we all recognize that uh some of the vulnerabilities that Ian uh displayed of our our infrastructure so there is a need for us to move forward with that those infrastructure improvements um but one of the things that I I I after I listen to some of the comment in the the meeting on Wednesday there was this talk about again the rate caps and some of the discounts and so uh when we talk about rate camps I think there was a lot of good points that were made so with how what does that look like if we go back to review the rate caps how how early can that can that be done and then if if the decision is made that we need to get rid of caps uh when would the recalculations kind of happen for us to be able to communicate the new rate that our our residents will experience so that's a good question July we have a study that's going to to to take place um that's going to start that's going to dig into those discounts and into those caps and try to figure out what's going on with those and try to recommend in recommend some some further steps the next steps I'm not sure the timeline I can get you the timeline back on how exactly long that rate that study will take but we want U to start on that and it's it's proposed to be started in July okay and so at that time uh when we look at discounts we'll look at the current discounts yes and then have some discussions about some potential additional discounts moving forward as well yes sir okay yes sir all right thank you thank you Mr sh yeah to to add to what commissioner Burns just said yeah that's what I'm hearing too because in in my neighborhood there's a lot of infield development especially in our two lots there used to be a single family house they buy the lot they take down the single family house they put two monsters on it and part of the problem that I'm having and part of the problem I think the residents in my district have with it is that you know these houses are having an impact on the neighborhood they have them put a landscape Swale in and the first thing they do when they move in is fill in that landscape sale and then that increases the flooding for the the other neighbors so I think that we need to have a two-pronged approach to it we need to look at the cap because I do believe that the infill development is impacting storm water because there's not as enough in impervious surface available but we also need to have a punitive aspect with it because if there's no disincentive for people to fill in the percolation lot or what what is they called retention areas ret if they fill those in then they are impacting and they are creating a storm water problem for the other residents in the area so I think it has to be a two-prong system and you know I I don't think it's fair for the smaller houses to have to absorb that now now wait a minute y'all going to be happy we're going to have to raise it okay I'm just said I can't do $17 million all right we can't keep this is a lot of money that we owe but I want to make sure that we're doing it fairly all right and in order to do that I think we do have to look at some of these some of these other other issues including the cap and there's going to be other residents y'all are aren't going to be happy with me because they're going to lose their cap but I think if you can if you have a larger house you should be able to afford that if you can afford to build a 5,000 ft house you shouldn't be having a $2500 bill yeah that's kind of where I'm at with it I mean I'm going to support it but I do think that we need to look at it and if and if taking the cap away then gives relief to the people in the smaller homes I would like to see that as well thanks and let me say on the the the newer if a newer development has come in or new house has come in it has to go through our engineering permits they're required to hold their Stone water on their lot um it's also an enforcement thing and we realize that sometimes there are some bad actors out there that aren't necessarily doing what they should do so it's it's an Enforcement issue as well I have seen it in College Park I have seen it in colonial town I have seen it all over where these you know especially where there's R2 development and it's going to start happening in the other areas too as as this as this gentrification goes on M you're going to be having more houses I don't like what the zoning is either y'all been fighting these I've been fighting a lot of this large outscale development too but the the concern is that there isn't once they fill in that retention area there is no way for us to know or to inspect or do any of that so that's the frustration that I have with it and I'm wondering why we even allow it if we don't make sure they keep it yeah well I mean it's it's by code right now is what we're doing is by the engineering standards so they should keep it now the enforcement afterwards is where the where the issue is they fill it in they fill it in the minute that they get their Co yeah okay that's all hmer thank you let's see commissioner Stewart then gray then Burns um Cory we've talked about a lot [Music] I've given some figures to you about having a fixed amount just the idea of setting a fixed amount as opposed to you couple questions I have come to mind the the rate schedule you have what happens after 2028 nothing happens currently after 2028 there is no proposed increases after 2028 currently right now it ends that rate stays where it is right now in 20 28 what is sh okay um I mean the comments I've heard generally are once you once you add a tax you never take it back I mean that's and that please please please um and and there is some value to that I mean but at the same time um our citizens have not had the opportunity to contribute to where we are today uh to the tune of somewhere between you know over their 16-year tax bill uh roughly about 60% would have gone to operations and the balance would have gone to capital projects if we had just added a 3% per year increase so we got to figure out how we're catching up um uh so I I don't I'm trying to figure out [Music] I I think we need the money that's number one number two is we need to look at the difference in where we are with discounts that we have and then how do we yes how do we do that in a timely manner that has an impact back on on U where we are I mean as an example I I'm completely okay with the first year because that's we we're trying to catch up I'm kind of okay with the second year CU we're kind of catching up after that it's seems to me that we've we've we we don't have a formula or a plan that says wait a second the second year is where our cap is going to be because we're going to come back and bring some other projects that will help with the revenue stream at that time that's my point um if you go real quickly if you if you look at the numbers if we just do what you want to do for the first two years that really only catches us up at a 3% increase roughly two years ago I mean I done to Qui math and so we we really aren't really caught up but we but we kind of get there um and and if that's the case and where are we two years from now do we do we have a study do we have ability to to readdress discounts can we impose it at that time uh I mean the idea of I I know from a financing standpoint we need to have a longer term so you can go borrow money that makes sense I'm I'm just trying to figure out where does that fit because if you if you end up going to the next two years and then AR arbitrarily oppose a 5% increase per year after that you get to where you want to go but it's 10 years from now 10 years from now the cost is much higher than what it is today and that's the estimate you've got so you I'm trying to figure out where the fairness comes in yeah we want to do another study just to to put this out here too we don't want to wait this long to do another study right and so the key is to to keep up with the studies to try to continuously analyze if you will um you know it's just the same thing with your Finance you want to look at where you're at you know year over year or every other year saying hey are we are we where we want to be right so so the um the the thought is hey we do the caps and discounts and then we almost basically commission another study it's going to say where we at what have we gotten done where do we need to be to understand where we are so where we are in a danger I shared this with the neighbor Association a couple weeks ago where we are in danger is that if we don't figure out how to fund this MH then the funding essentially will come through General Revenue that's right when it comes to General Revenue then our property property holders are paying twice for the same thing y that's a really dangerous place to be in yeah um and and that's okay but that's the money is going to come from someplace and this has to come out of one of those two that's number one the other second which thing I'm I'm a little bit I always get puzzled at when I look at the county um the county doesn't have a storm water fee effectively they do MTSU or M what they call those things and part of the reason is because the city residents give the county $215 million a year and that money is spent and not in in outside of unincorp outside of incorporated city of Orlando so while those who I mean I I would love nothing more than to say Tre is like a separate jurisdiction give us a $25 million a year I promise you we could do something better with it yeah but today today what we're doing is that um um somebody's trying to call me and I don't know why they're trying to call me um today that money that we give to the county inside the city is spent in unincorporated areas essentially for storm water and they do it through General Revenue and a general Bond through the general tax stuff so we've got this really kind of weird deal so the county says I don't need I don't need it and the answer is because they got this additional Revenue coming from the city m um and um that becomes kind of a cumbersome to me and I don't know how to correct all of those issues but people need to understand that as we move forward yeah um and there are some things just to to to put this out there there's some things that we work very closely with the county on because there's some weird areas especially around some of our Lakes where they kind of split in the middle almost and so there's some you know there's some exchanges there where hey you do this we do this so there's some cooperations in there um I don't know MoneyWise how that divided out into you know specifically what we need but I would argue I mean somebody's going to yell at me about it I would argue that we're funding what they're discussing with you too uh and I don't know how to fix that from that standpoint yeah um because um uh our stand we we've got to figure out how to increase this and don't quite know what that is but the third and fourth year the problems I have because that now we're now we're ahead of where we were we've got caught up um and I I I want some kind of assurance that within two years we we're looking at where we are after two years yeah cuz cuz you know if if we go to two the two-year bump and we go to automatic 3% for the for imp perpetuity that gets us about where we want to go in about seven years as opposed to four years so that's kind of the math of it mean my I'm not a math expert I can know how to run an Excel spreadsheet but but we can get there if we go a little bit different um and then people will say look I'm sorry I didn't pay for 17 years I'm going to get caught up we're all going to get caught up and then now we're going to but we're going to have a fixed time where we're not going to have to go any further that's kind of what I'm looking at sure I don't know how to address that within within the current current ordinance so those those my questions to you thank you okay thank you commission gray thank you mayor I I'll be very quick because I know we've got a lot of folks that want to talk but I wanted to offer another perspective of what I hear from my residents as most of you know I represent the southeast part of town uh which is for all intents and purposes from kind of the Vista Lakes area think Lee Vista Boulevard and and uh and Hoffner all the way down east of the airport to bogy Creek and so there's two things we know about the quote unquote Lake Nona Southeast area one the the land is very low which is one of the reasons why it's the last part of uh Orlando to develop is because there's a lot of undevelopable land because it's very low and the second thing we know is the majority of the housing stock and the commercial stock is within has been built within the last 20 years and so as this last storm came I was scared to death because I didn't know given those two things how we would do and with the exception of the Vista Lakes area where we had some flooding and we think that was a lot about design more than capacity working with Public Works what we found is that because everything is relatively new it's been built to new design standards the pipes are bigger the storm water lakes are bigger than what a lot of the rest of the city has and so with that we did not have a lot of flooding issues in Lake Nota much to my surprise but here's what I hear from my neighbors and I rep I understand nobody wants to pay more and why are we doing things different but what I hear from my neighbors is wait a minute Jim um we kind of paid for a kind of a souped up uh storm water program on steroids because you know the developers don't pay for that they pass that on in the the housing cost and the commercial cost so what I hear from my neighbors is Gee Whiz jim I've already kind of paid for this through having an upgraded system and now you're asking me to pay for it again but and and I get that but I think what we learned even earlier today with you know the new jobs we're a city there are some areas that that uh we have to help s and that's okay so what I push back and the reason I support this is I told my neighbors look I understand uh we are maybe paying a premium because our stuff is brand new and to higher standards and cost us more but the rest of the city needs some serious upgrading and that stuff's expensive and so that's why I support it um is because there's parts of our city that are a lot older that just don't have the the capacity in the storm water to cover it and so thank you mayor for letting me share that and it's just another perspective that that while some of us feel like it's it's a you know it's it's kind of a burden and it is there's others that say wait a minute I've kind of already paid for a for a for a more advanced system now I'm going to get a higher increase well unfortunately we've got to do that to help the all of the city so thank you mayor very much commissioner Shen and and if I can just add to what what commissioner gray just said um when we read we had to redo Anderson it was so bad you could look down the road and it was literally nothing but potholes that follow follow the storm water you you could just see you could follow that line of potholes where that's where everything was leaking and when they dug that road up those baffle boxes were made of Cypress Wood that it was it was Clay pipe and Cypress Wood so yes while commissioner Gray's got new infrastructure we don't and we need to upgrade it and it's expensive so you know those are the difficult choices we have to make thank you mayor commissioner Burns uh yes thank you mayor uh just one question if if we do nothing today what does that look like um if we do nothing we're going to have to cut some operations definitely um we won't be able to do as much with um our upkeep our Stone water upkeep I mean we have we have people that we employ to do a job and we have to P we have to pay for those saying they can't hear you we have people that we employ and we have to pay for those people to do a specific job and if we don't have enough money to pay for those to pay for the operations we're going to do the operations right but we're going to have to get the money from somewhere so as as was thought we're and you're already 17 million and we're already 17 million with with an ask for next year of s more million do just to try to do some some um some facilities that we have put off for a long time we're doing work right now that we probably should have done before now um we just kind of said well let's look at it next year let's look at it next year and we're to the point right now where we can really no longer kick that can we're kind of at the cold of sack right now and we got to figure out whether we want to kick it back up the road or if we want to just get our hands dirty and and get to work and do these things all right thank you yes commissioner Ortiz thank you mayor I'm really at odds with this decision because of I seeing the work that our staff have done and it's it's cannot be compared to anything else they they have really struggle with this and I know that for a fact you guys have done a wonderful job and as you said before it's not your fault it's not our fault but it's our problem so we have to we have to deal with this but then again I'm thinking of my seniors on fixed income I'm I'm thinking of disabled people on fixed income and I'm I'm wondering how we going to I want to help them keep their homes and and because inflation things are everything is going up insurance rates are going Skyhigh um just going to a point where a lot of people were creating well we're trying to solve the problem of homelessness we we may be creating more problems with this so and and we discuss and and as I said before that our staff has been wonderful and and they we have looked for all kinds of options to see how we can deal with this and I asked for a for a study to prolong this to to make the decision because we have to do a a more detail a scientific study on how to do this we have to deal with the Caps I think 25 2500 ft of imp imperious area uh as an umbrella for everybody it it doesn't do the job for all of us the same thing goes to the commercial side we need to be more Equitable when it comes to those things so and then I'm I'm trapped because I also know that we have to make a decision so as you know totally between a rug and a hard place here but you know what I today I'm going to rather see us a little bit of less services but not put our seniors out of their homes or or or disabled people because um that's a even greater concern and I cannot lay my head on a pillow thinking that there's people out there that won't be able to something to to sleep so with that well with that being said with that being said I did promise I was going to I'm heading to Washington next week so going to see if we can get some funding over there somewhere somehow but we need to find other other ways of um creating this making this money because we don't have we're in a we're in a black here we're in a hole and we need to come up with those monies so uh somebody has some other greater ideas please bring it to the table because we do need because other sooner or later this is going to I mean it's hitting us right now it's not like sooner or later it's going to hit us it's hitting us right now we have to do something about it I do believe I also believe that because of course the increase of population and increase of development that's creating a heavier burden to all of us and that's creating a lot of these issues we have so I don't know maybe and I know that we cannot have impact fees while we have a rate that we charge but something have to be done in order for some of these new developers to pay for some of this too so that's what I stand thank you thank you commissioner so thank you Corey so there's two things here here we should have gradually increased rates sometime between 2008 and now so it does it and then the second thing is it's never a good time to raise a fee that's right never so I've been here for 20 years and whether it's storm water whether it's garbage whether it's sanitary or any other fees we have it's never a good time to raise a fee and unfortunately we and I'll take the blame for it Kick the Can down the road for 14 years so now it's when it's time to catch back up it comes as a shock since we haven't done it at 2% a year for the last eight years or whatever well and let me say this I don't think anybody anticipated the the amount of inflation that we have experienced especially in construction projects and let me say this kind of as as the end here I've I've witnessed over just over the last five years the construction projects have increased by twice of what we what we thought they should be and and anybody that is has experienced somewhat of a construction or anything in that realm have seen how astronomically these prices have increased and so I don't think you could have looked out in the crystal ball and said yeah it's going to be this bad that's fair I would say probably the first 10 years of that we looked at this and said oh we don't need to increase storm water rates right and then the last four or five or six years the construction sir and everything we've done yeah has doubled has just doubled yeah okay but we have people in the audience would like to weigh in on this as well so let's get back to that so next up is Raymond Funk and then porsche malsby I get that right commissioner Burns yeah yes and then clay Rivers hi good afternoon my name is Raymond funk I live at 2816 Huntington Street 32803 um Mr Mayor and Comm commers thank you for this opportunity to share my objection to the passing of um this agenda item I don't I I think it's safe to say that everybody doesn't mind paying their fair share to live in Orlando in this amazing City but what um I do object to today is the methodology used that was just stated a few minutes ago and discussed on the way that the increase is calculated and I'm going to speak specific to my situation uh single family residential dwelling unit the idea that um the rate is calculated on impervious area in the case of the letter that I received uh it states that you calculate the impervious area of my property to be 2,728 square ft um and the assumption would be that because you're using that calculation the impervious area my rooftop my driveway my pool deck and the like that the assumption is that all of the water that hits that sheds into the city's storm water system but I would say that that that methodology is misleading and in fact in many cases not true I know and I'll speak to my street most of the storm water that hits the driveways or the rooftops or any other hard surface sheds and percolates into the the planter beds and the yard and the grass before it enters into the city's storm water system in fact I would I would um say that even my driver way most of that water sheds into a dryw on my property because of the way it was designed it's an older um 1950s home the only part of my property that actually sheds into the street is about 200 square ft of the curb cut at the entrance to my driveway so I would encourage you all and it sounds like the discussion today was going in this direction that more consideration be given to a more Equitable way to assess the cost of the people of the city we do not want flooded streets I'll speak for myself I don't want a a flooded Street um so I understand the price of things increases and that there are going to be rate increases but I do object to just this blanket approach of um applying uh a calculation that really is not applicable or appropriate to the way the increase is Justified so thank you thank you Porsche and then clay rivers and then Carl maltz B to May Dia and commissioner the council members uh thank you for this opportunity I'm aware that and I understand that the need to generate additional Revenue uh for providing the storm service utility and that it has not increased since 2008 nevertheless I express my opposition to the storm water utilities fee increased for the prop for the following reasons many communities have been subjected to Decades of inequalities in the funding of infrastructure Community maintenance services as a form of compensation I propose exempting these communities from these fees but I also propose passing on the cost as indicated earlier to new development and building entities also to consider other ways of funding these needed services including I was mentioned earlier Federal funding my second objection has to do with the number of senior citizens that was also mentioned earlier who have from these communities who have own their properties and have maintained them for years and the proposed 20% incre increas does not consider the ability for living on them living on fixed incomes and declining incomes to budget this increase for this group I propose that the current rate is grandfathered in and any percentage of increase is tied to the P the increase of their annual Social Securities income thank you for considering these suggestions than you thank you clay followed by Carl Maltby and Aon kmana mayor Dyer and City commissioners thank you for having me here today um my name is Clay Rivers I live at 911 West lakan Drive Orlando Florida 338 5 I'm a native Orlando A Jones High and Rollins College graduate and the Washington Shores neighborhood association president in 1946 Washington Shores was established as Orlando's First Neighborhood explicit Orlando's First Neighborhood explicitly designated for black professionals many came from across the state and made Washington Shores their home and have been blessed to age in the for ever homes they or their parents built and purchased but they live on fixed incomes Washington Shores infrastructures have been willfully underfunded and underdeveloped by local administrations for decades and pale in comparison to those of white neighborhoods our neighborhood regularly suffers Street flooding overflow and standing water due to an insufficient or inadequately maintained storm water infr structure to raise our rates while the current fees don't sufficiently address the community's needs is unjust between 2024 and 2028 the proposed storm water utility fee will increase 131% which is well above the rate of inflation and will force many of our seniors and seniors across Orlando to sell their homes and will ultimately Le lead to gentrification a quote attributed to Mayor Dyer at Central Florida pledge reads together we can continue to show that our community is welcoming inclusive and compassionate displacing seniors on fixed incomes is not compassion it's a municipal hardship to people already residing in economically oppressed neighborhoods this Council and its Partners have many tools at their disposal to enact genuine compassion why isn't there a sliding scale based on income level age disability or length of residence on behalf of the Washington Shores residents and others unable to voice their opposition to this rate of increase I ask that you reject your current proposal and present your constituents with an equitable and compassionate solution thank you thank you Carl Maltby Aaron kasano Brett gelio may Dyer council members and a special shout out to councilman Burns council member Shen for attending Mr Knight's Community Workshop I I understand the cost of providing the storm water utility service has increased since the 2008 rate was set however I'm against the storm and water utilities fees increases as proposed one the metods used to derive the proposed figures are flawed for example comparing our rates to Miami day County in which the city County government structure is one and the same and not separate entities as in Orlando and Orange County where are the comparisons of the rates between the municipalities within Orange County two the Capp amounts create inequity in the implementation of the fees a more Equitable scale needs to be created and I know some of this is sounds redundant but I think the more we hear it maybe we can get to a more desirable solution number number three for we seniors who for 25 to 15 plus years have been faithful stewards of the properties in our charge and keeping Orlando the city beautiful the possibility of 20% increase per year of a plan imposes a hardship when our earning potential is on the decline any plan should grandfather in their forementioned seniors at the current rate and any percentage of increase should be tied to the percentage of annual increase of social security income not everyone who wants to live in orando means that that person has a right to live within the confines of a small restricted area environmental and federal grants thank you commissioner Ortiz I'm glad to hear you going up to Washington make that pitch this these are a lot of this is climate related we need to use all the federal resources available to us to try to help us resolve our problems so please reject and send this plan back to staff with the instruction to do further research amend and limit with limitations time and fun limitations thank you Aaron CH mono or something that sounds similar to that okay Brett gelio J Deli lray Williams Jonathan Fitzgerald Brello 226 East murial Street 32806 um I feel about the same way that I'm not really objecting to an increase in taxes if it's necessary the manner in which they're going about it seems it doesn't seem it is regressive everybody pays basically is going to be paying the same fee for storm water I live in one of the smallest houses in town and I'm already at the max tax at 25 2400 square square feet of impermeable surface surfaces somebody builds a 6,000 squ foot Mega Mansion they're going to be paying the same storm water sewage fee as me which doesn't make any sense at all it's completely regressive if this was part of our property taxes we would be protected from this kind of increase because your property taxes are based on the value of your house if you buy a $10 million house you're going to pay more in property taxes if you buy a $100,000 house you pay less in property taxes why is the storm order sewage charge separated completely from our taxes if it was connected to our taxes it would be proportional to your wealth based on your home it doesn't make any sense the way this is being done if Bill Gates moved into this town and bought a $10 million house he'd be paying the same storm water fee as me it it's nonsense it doesn't make any sense at all and you know commissioner she stole a lot of my thunder when point out the same thing they're they're knocking down these little Cottages in my neighborhood like mine and building these mcmansions they're supposed to keep the water on site but they're not they cut down all the trees to build the house and now we've got a storm order problem and we're all paying the same storm ERS charge which doesn't make any sense if you have to raise taxes we want to live in a civilized society you got to pay taxes that's the way it works but it should be proportional the wealthiest should pay the most the poor should pay the least thank you thank you ly Williams Jonathan Fitzgerald mayor Commissioners mayor Commissioners Jonathan Fitzgerald Patty especially nice to see you um dear mayor and Commissioners I do appreciate your service and also providing me with the opportunity to speak with you today uh and my peers I think we understand storm water is becoming more of an issue especially what we saw during the hurricane with Ian and many others and what I think we're hoping for is there is an opportunity to look at other ways for providing this funding um I understand the city has taken out a loan of 17 million while this is significant and we want to take care of our city we understand we have to pay taxes and we want to keep the city beautiful also understand that there's consideration to give a 40 million tax credit to a new developer who is to uh proposing to build on Church Street the reason I make this comparison is developers are in the IND indry of making money typically significant amounts of money whether they are large developers even small developers as Patty pointed out earlier many of the homes I live in Eola Heights and as I drive through college park uh Delaney Park other areas I'm seeing homes that are being taken down and either two three homes are being built or a home that has substantial square footage put on that lot so my hope would be the consideration is taken into charge a fee add some typ of tax some other method um I don't pretend to have the answers to it but to figure out a way for some of these developers to participate at a more substantial rate rather than kicking this back to the homeowners the idea of a tax or fee on a smaller homeowner which you've heard today who are already experiencing the burden of higher taxes higher Insurance higher cost of goods inflation is just probably not the most logical way to go my major concern is I I think this could become a hardship for some of these people and in the near future they would be forced to move from their homes or from the city beautiful so I hope today you will just hear our plea our suggestions our our comments our reflection and that there will be more research more work done to come up with a better plan thank you thank you Jonathan Fitzgerald that was Jonathan oh that was Jonathan sorry I got one behind Okay David coats Kates David Kates May niome and then Celeste Thomas then Donna Cooper good evening masine isim wooden Boulevard this is the day the Lord has made I come to you with a message from him how can you continue to charge the citizens of the city for something you didn't take care of with the funds that were already given to you in advance the west side of Orlando has been underserved for years back as far as 1946 our our infrastructure is very deteriorated but you continue allow people to build in that Community without checking the land before they build we have investors that come in they don't even do what they're supposed to do if you dug out there in Washington Shores now you would be surprised what's under the ground out there was told just the other week um orange Center you allowed them to be a pandana and it was infestors out there and they never told the people that that was there and all that stuff went right out into um Clear Lake and I don't want that to happen I don't want anything that would cause us any more sickness please stop these investors for building in neighborhoods that has been underserved so many years um my suggestion to the city's citizens in Orlando today that we need to appeal this decision if you go forward to pass this bill and we need to appeal it to the Supreme Court in the State of Florida because we need more transparence for the people who are sitting and leading us City Commissioner and the mayor we need more transparence of how our money is being spent I happen to be one of those seniors that's on a limited income and what they're suggesting here today I don't understand if my house is 15 ft uh 1500 square ft and you telling me it's 2,000 something and I have cuz you using my garage I mean my uh roof and I have gutters around and let me tell you the water goes in the backyard little water goes down that driveway so I'm asking you all today to make a different decision about what we going to do about the city of Orlando and I know I have said that West Orlando is in bad shape but I've been told by an engineer the whole city of Orlando is in bad shape as far as the infrastructure Celeste Thomas Donna Cooper or figoo hi good afternoon um mayor and Commissioners thank you for letting us all speak our mind here um first I would like to say that I appreciate um your service to the city I also love my city having served on numerous boards over the past 25 years from Parks and wreck to the board Review Committee and currently the chair for the nominating Board of city of Orlando I understand the need to increase the fees for maintenance and to keep things running smoothly because this department has not raised fees in over 16 years that makes it look like it's very mismanaged not Corey's fault because he's only been there two years I did find that out the other day he's trying to fix the problem now so now acur a millions of dollars in debt and trying to make up for not having a constant increase a consistent increase over the years has been very very badly mismanaged so a few things I would like to address I do not feel like due diligence was done to notify homeowners about the workshops and seminars that have been held over the past few years about this capping the residential fee and making um an average 2,000t space pay the same fee as a 10,000 sqt um space is totally unfair and wrong the city is allowing lots to be cleared of houses and trees then zoning it multif family charge the developers more because not only are they taking away all the Green Space they are adding six to 12 times as many cars which means it adds soot dirt and oil that goes into the runoff into our Lakes as I suggested at the open house last week every company that has issued a license or permit to mow and Landscape should have to take a class every time they renew this way they understand the impact of blowing the clippings into the street and the and the of fees that they will be charged if they are reported this will cost less than marketing campaigns and the studies that have been done and I would like to find out how much it's been cost uh the cost is for all these studies that it keep being done we we asked for that last week and I would like to see the the fees on that so over 25 years I have watched Lake robama robama where I live being sprayed with chemicals to control weeds and algae I am sure this is being done in many lakes around the city this is not fixing the problems it's just wasting our resources and adding unnecessary chemicals to the lake you know what Einstein says about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result not working so I think that we do need um also to if you're I'm sure you're going to pass this because we do need the money and we we can't move forward without the money but I do think that if you could add to that that you want a specific date on when you're going to readdress um some of these caps and discounts and different things that are especially like the 2500 versus the 10,000 square ft so I would like a specific date on that instead of you just passing it without having any of that thank you thank you Donna Cooper Jorge Figaroa Lana gelzer Donna Cooper's on Zoom if you can please unmute your device say that again she's online she's on online okay I can you hear me we can okay I apologize little congested um I was wondering um that you know President Biden had gave each state money for infrastructure have y'all not gone to Tallahasse to get money from them also like I said I'm just upset right about now y'all can write grants yall write grants from everything else but you want to nickel and diam these all of us and like I say I've been in Richmond Height since 1966 I've live behind the canal since 1966 this canal has not been cleaned out in over 30 years trees are hanging over in this canal and nobody has been out here you come and cut even the people that come and cut don't even report these trees hanging over in this canal and y'all want to raise power rap and y'all don't do anything and as far as the storm goes for an end let me tell y'all something that night that storm came through here this canal has never leveled off and the street not flood that Canal leveled off about 8:00 p.m. I watched it I stayed up at 2:00 in the morning the street had not flooded I went to sleep when I woke up the next day we got flood in the front and the back somebody released that water to be back up in that street could not believe that for the first time in our life town that that canel leveled off and the street was not flooded but that water was released back up in that street we was flooded front to back so the infrastructure is already there and y'all want to keep nickling Diamond up go to Tass and get that money that Biden gave infrastructure and stop nickeling Diamond us to death because we are older neighborhood just like these people saying we don't have these new houses that these people got but why we got to pay what they pay and y'all haven't done any thing in years you going to talk about y'all s and kick the RO down down Road that's not our fault y'all kick the bucket that's not our fault that's your fault don't nickel and DME up y'all got enough money and if you don't have enough money get the Tass and get some of that great money that was given to the state and stop nickling Diamond us to death I want to make sure I got all my my points across I'm so upset um but yeah I think that's that's basically it but yes get the money from tasset it was given to the state I'm done thank you okay Jorge Figaroa yes here thank you I want to thank you mayor I'm George Figaroa I live at 1049 Kristen Park Drive I'm part of commissioner Gray's uh residence I I want to thank you you mayor and Commissioners for your service to our community I appreciate all you're doing I appreciate the staff who has spoken and outlined all the different facets that are involved in this there's been a lot of great uh information I learned even more than what I knew walking in here uh some of the arguments I think are very valid uh the seniors in particular are part of what I uh wanted to spouse in this morning not only do I have a mother but I'm a pastor and I also represent many people um with that said I'm speaking to you as a resident as a homeowner and as a community leader and East Park 5 Community I'm here to represent the 900 Plus Homes of the East Park communities as I said of which are represented by commissioner gray I understand as the Orlando Sentinel reported what I believe is correct Orlando's proposed stor Water fee hike Sparks outrage understanding you as city leaders have a difficult task ahead of you I believe that the city perhaps is underfunded in this area and that you do need to close the gap and that there is a a definite need in our community but the time of sacrifice should not be now there are many people who are suffering financially in this difficult time as I said I have a mother who's on limited income like some of the ones that have spoken here and her $400 Surplus would literally put her under if her home was uh giving the storm water uh increase the law of timing suggests that when that when to lead is as important as what to do at the time when the nation is suffering of severe inflation the residents of of our city are having to make dramatic limitations on what to spend with the limited resources they have I think sometimes even the city needs to make tough decisions and cut back in other areas perhaps I wanted to speak to something I know commissioner gray knows this when I first moved to Orlando I lived in different parts of Orlando the West Side certain parts on the inside East Side now I live in the Lake Nona carer one of the things that was presented to us was the CDD and at the time when we bought the home we didn't know fully what it was but now it's been described as what we we the residents that moved into those areas were responsible for paying a portion of the infrastructure I looked it up and it says in the Florida Statutes 1912 and I'm sure many of you know this part of the fees that the district collects from US every year on top of the taxes on top of all the other different fees that were charged is the water management and control for the lands and the district is the CDD is responsible for the water supply the sewer the Wastewater management Reclamation and reuse of the water is used for the construction and operation uh to conduct sewer Outlets sewer maintenance sewer pipes I think you know the rest of it we've been paying not only our taxes in the Lake Nona area and I'm not rich by any stretch we pinch our pennies just like anybody else and we've managed to be there I'm an original owner in that area I've been there 19 years going on 20 I've been paying my fair share through the CDD we've also paid our taxes I appreciate the time if you just give me one more moment but the thing is there needs to be Equity as some of the residents have said if we've paid into this fund the CDD fund on top of our taxes then something has to be done because we've literally paid for the piping that saved us during all the storms so why should we be taxed again excuse me given an assessment fee or an additional fee when we've already paid not only our taxes the CDD fee for the last 18 years in my case and now we're asked to pay an increase of 100% to help cover different areas of the city I want to help my neighbors too but there's a place and a time I don't think now is the time to raise our taxes or to increase this fund I hope you'll pause it and hold back on it God bless you Lana gelzer Cynthia Harris after Cynthia Harris Ralph sorz and Eric curtsy Cynthia Harris 12 chanon Avenue Orlando we can all agree that something must be done to offset future flooding however before Ian I have come here numerous occasions to talk about rattlesnake park for more than 10 years my cries for assistance of this constant flooding have fallen on deaf ears why because if you don't live east of I4 you're not a priority many of our communities are already struggling to meet today's cause especially with inflation and under a taxing system that is well outdated now you want to throw a detrimental intrusion that would certainly be a significant burden for us especially for those who are on fixed incomes we don't need any more studies we've been studied enough how long have you been studying us a cap of 2500 square ft is unfair and you know it especially when most of us have homes that are less than 1100 square ft and that's including the roof why should we bear the burden of the rich people at late Nona at College Park they can afford these big homes that they live in we cannot this fee should be assessed on a Case by case basis with the emphasis of protecting low and fixed income residents also there was just an announcement of a new sports complex how much will they pay or will they have to pay do we cons consider do we have to constantly bear the burden of large entities and corporations who will not give back to our communities it is unfair and unjust the rich get rich and the poor remain destitute we should not be penalized for the failures of the storm water depart Department not adjusting their rat since 2008 you had no problem adjusting our taxes by 17.7% in 2014 and we bit that bullet but now you want to penalize the residents for your failure to protect us from constant flooding and poor roads that have not been corrected in the West Community for over 40 years what I will request is that new developers be required to design permeable pavement as an initiative to go green as they are the cause of the destruction that's going on in our community peral paven has a 25e lifespan I will also ask that you table this until you come up with a more feasible solution to protect the residents you claim to care about again we are tired of being studied stop bringing those street sweepers in there and they are polluting our drains as well thank you Ralph Suarez Eric curtsy ktky and then Cecil Stone good afternoon mayor and Commissioners U my name is Ral Suarez I live at 9719 Lake District Lane that is over in the East Park area near one of the first subdivisions over in uh in the Lake Nona and um we too Echo the sentiments of each and every one of you in this room uh we would hope that uh this petition could be reach considered um we did suffer at least on the my street of very similar incidents with our past hurricane uh where uh we had youngsters the day after canoeing like we saw many of the pictures in the news reels uh in our street uh the Water took about five or six days before I res resided the big question here is we've been there almost 20 years and this was the first time that we had experienced that so the only Co thing we the only thing we could think of was two things ear either our drainage system water um storm water drainage system wasn't taken care of the way it should have been or new development in the era was be was having a secondary effect and it wasn't good um as I mentioned I just like to for uh this to be reconsidered and maybe come up with some creative ideas thank you thank you Eric ktky Close okay and then Cecil Stone and Debbie Smith those are pretty easy mayor Commissioners I want to thank you for the opportunity I I'm very familiar with how this process works this is what I do for a living uh and I have had intimate relationships of on a professional basis with uh the planning department the engineering department the zoning department permitting and inspection services and all I can say is that everybody who works there knows what they're doing and they do an exceptional job of it and I am subject to their determinations on a weekly basis to tell my clients that they have to hire a civil engineer to design the their residential uh uh drainage patterns and Retention Ponds how it's maintained I completely agree with the commissioner that there's problems with it but it it has to be done there's costs associated with it but on a personal basis when I got this form and notification that my rate from today until 19 uh 2028 was going up 23 30% I got bothered it may be a hundred or so dollars whatever it is doesn't mean that the 230% isn't wrong that is the part that bothers me the most and then as another gentleman pointed out a few minutes ago within a week or so of getting this notification uh the news was letting us know that a major development of a very profitable organization that is associated with downtown Orlando is getting a substantial tax credit to develop a new piece of property the two things made no sense to me at all that they are going to have their taxes reduced while we encourage them to build more and we have to compensate for their tax credit with ours going up on a on a high on a percentage basis it's not just the numbers it's the percentage other than that um I live in an isolated little community that about 30 years ago used to be a an Orange Grove which froze out and it was built and designed according to the uh requirements of the city of Orlando it does not connect to any system outside the city is it an isolated storm system that eventually drains into a small Lake that's suffering the consequences we even accept drainage from Orange County because of the way it was designed for me to have to pay more to support that system again it bothers me everybody here who's contributed to this I agree with everything that they said it is just that it is not appropriate at this time or it should have been handled differently but I appreciate the opportunity to present thank you very much thank you Cecil Stone forward sir okay followed by Debbie Smith and Charles [Music] Zito uh good afternoon Commission M Mr Mayor Etc really do appreciate you guys giving us some time on this and we know this is dragging on for yall um my name is Cecil Stone I was actually a born and raised Orlando person uh been a native of Orlando for six years and um we've been in 120 East K since 96 when we moved into town the um I'm very proud to call Orlando my home and show off my T my town to visitors from all over the world to come to my to a couple of different businesses that I own I'm 100% behind Orlando staying be staying ahead of the curve on storm water or nearly any other program uh my particular situation is I have a house that's got a crawl space so the only bloody impervious surface I have on the whole place is my driveway so water actually perks when it's under my house the um I'm concerned about the escalation of the rate every year to a point that is in my opinion very high um to say that to say that we the public are reeling from these rate increases is an understatement I agree with commissioner Sheen and commissioner Stewart that we need to stop these increases especially after two years um and I would like the city to re-evaluate the escalation of the rates as indicated in the legislation proposed to possibly voting for a single-ear rate increase and re-evaluate the needs annually thereafter the goal would be transparency and accountability to prove the need continues to escalate um we we know that there's a need we think um we think that there's a better way to get this money I also strongly agree with the state of Florida's got an excess of funds they say that they're going to give them to the to the cities and the counties let's call them on their Bluff thank you all for your time I appreciate it thank you [Applause] Debbie Smith Charles Zito Richard [Music] neelson hello my name is Debbie Smith I live at 830 Palm Drive in commissioner shean District um I attended the storm water meeting on May 8th and listened to the concerns and suggestions made by the city of Orlando residents and business owners I do not feel that the fee structure as proposed is fair and equitable which is actually stated right here as one of the goals from the city um the step two evaluation of the cap and the discount structure will begin next year that's when the evaluation and the study happens however step two wouldn't be implemented until year four and Beyond as stated in the presentation um therefore there would be four years of fees at the proposed structure for example under the proposed structure uh single family homes would be capped at 2500 ft of impervious area what this means is that homes with more than 2500 ft of impervious area are not paying a fair amount these larger homes are being subsidized by those in small homes with less impervious area this makes no sense to me and is obviously not fair just because there was a cap this was a reason it was given given to us just because there was a cap before they just decided to keep it now that doesn't mean it shouldn't be corrected now smaller homes should not have to subsidize the larger homes for four years while step two is being reviewed if the cap was removed um then it would be possible to adjust the fees possibly fairly reducing the financial impact currently being proposed so I propose that we scrap uh the fee or scrap the cap um for a fair and Equitable fee structure that's my main proposal but I am very confused about how the impervious area was calculated um my home I actually measured it and I measured 900 and I'm getting charged for almost 2,000 so that must be some kind of government logic I just don't get it so thank you thank you Charles Zito and then Richard neelson followed by Conroy Williams hi everyone my name is Charles zto I'm at 4806 Coachman's Drive in Orlando and I want to make this short and sweet none of us want this some of these things studies how much do a study cost let's have another study call Mr Big hey Mr Big I need another study make it good how much does that cost us we don't need studies the money you pay for studies pay for your debts $17 million $17 million is a lot of money for a lot of us but not the big companies the corporations the greedy people the CEOs they write it off they send it to wherever they put it on the little guys like us they all stink we know that somebody's got to say it you know it's the truth we agree so anyway these companies are uh they should be paying the bills the um the formula again I think this beautiful gal said the formulas and somebody else said it they're not proportionate X Plus yal Z not for everybody okay everybody's in a different category somebody's this big somebody's this big somebody's that big so that's got to be proportionate you got to get your math together hire a scientist and a mathematician that's what you got to do forget about all these people who know nothing get the right people to do the right job that's number one okay or number two or number three keep it going the developers next point the developers who do all of these things again the guy said it make a lot of money well they need to be put on the list of fixing all of these little problems before they go and develop the land and cause US problems later that has to be on them okay the developers um okay now who is in charge here who are we we the people we are the people put you where you are we say no we don't want it so we pay your salaries we say no so back it off just forget about it okay that's it there's another one there we don't need um again people mentioned you know four years doubling their their situations with the fees 100% 200 % the first gentleman over here I think his name was Mike came up the poor guy $600 he was paying now he's paying what $ 2500 he was in the city he was in Orange County and he got assess into the city right I think that's what it was he went into the city but he didn't ask for that but he certainly gave him the bill that he didn't ask for either we're all suffering because of these things that you guys decide that shouldn't be we are the ones who should be deciding what's right for us okay we said a prayer before gentleman let us in a prayer and you know what he said we're praying to help the community and to help the city of Orlando like it needs help right yeah it needs help the community is your first thing oh what are we on is that Jeopardy Vanna can you go get $17 million $17 million that's what we need right okay thank you than you thank you my time is up corre well let me tell you we don't want it okay Richard neelson Conroy Williams John Parker thank you mayor uh Dyer and all the Commissioners I appreciate this opportunity to talk um I my name is Richard neelon I'm the vice president of coach hommes Mariners Village and I am in District 2 Tony otz um the reason why I decided to attend here today is because I did get the letter like everyone else and um I'm opposed to the raise the increase because of the fact that I live in a community with a lot of elderly people who are on fixed incomes as a lot of other people have said and uh either on social security or on a retirement and which they can't afford these increases these increases would probably devastate a lot of those people I mean with everything going up price you know your cable your phone taxes this that it's very hard on people who are on a fixed income so I think I speak for them and and many other communities in the Orlando area that I think um we should try to revisit this and maybe determine if there's other ways of uh maybe getting the appropriate funds to take care of this and one of them maybe by impact fees of these new big uh housing developments that are coming around uh businesses as well and you know I mean as one person stated the rich get richer the poor get poorer and the middle class support everybody I mean it's unfortunate the middle class pay the most in taxes we're the backbone of America basically so um me being a retired postal worker I know because I paid a lot of money in taxes and I see rich people paying a lot less but that's near near her there I just want to say that whatever you guys can do as our elected officials if you could revisit this and try to make uh some other arrangements uh especially for the older people and maybe get discounts or maybe some caps that would be greatly appreciated I thank you and I my community thanks you thank you Conroy Williams and then John Parker Conroy Williams no John Parker want to thank the Commissioners uh for hearing us today uh basically I have the same uh question about the fuzzy math used to decide our the perious services The Improv surfaces in the but my house is surrounded by grass all around and only a small portion of the property which is mainly the driveway which floods into the or or puts rain water into the street however our uh Community which is a Grand Station um homeowners association we have our own storm water retention area we have private roads we put in with the storm water uh drainage goes into the storm uh storm water retention area but I don't think any of that's being um investigated in these fees it's just like you're just throwing this flat rate um with fuzzy mouth to determine what fees everyone's paying and I don't agree with those fees so um I think rather than uh charge people to um solve this problem through taxation or through these fees I think you should try to incentivize uh way to reduce uh mitigate storm water retention from um FMS and swes or uh maybe investigating um storm uh drainage um for your rooftop spouts to drain into storm barrels things like that so rather than charge fees for the residents you should look into incentivizing um ways to reduce or mitigate storm drainage thank you thank you all right that's all the requests we have for public testimony so we're on discussion we've had a lot of discussion from the public and a lot of discussion from you guys before we got to discussion from the public so do uh I hear anybody that needs to have further discussion commissioner Stewart yeah um mayor let me go go back um Cory what show us the breakdown again I'm assuming that that we could make changes here if we needed to or the second question is from a timing standpoint um any changes that need to be posted need to be done prior to what time to be able to get on next tax bill um right now I think um if we change it is July one before it goes on June I thought it was June Roy do you know if we make changes to this is it June become effective October 1 it would become effective but we if we made a 25 yeah it would be on the 25 but if we made a change to this ordinance right now what would it affect the October but when does that have to go on so so it matches the trim statement 25 no but when is a deadline to communicate that information to put on the trim statement do we know when that is is that July 1 to get to the trim statement do Roy when is that do you know Michelle do you know is it July first ju July July the 1 sorry all right so yeah sorry I didn't know it was June or July couldn't so to put on the 25 we have to have the information to trim by by July one yeah right okay yep okay back back to the I hear a lot of concern about the the sizing of the property I think there is you and I shared there is a lot of of ignorance about that um from the standpoint of of people don't equate the size of their house to the size of the impervious surface on their lot I didn't either so I had to go back and figure that information out for myself um uh so tell me the scale sure and and I'm it's kind of a loaded question yeah because in 2020 2005 we raised the rate 16% in 2006 we raised some 10% and 2007 raised some 10% we had a 31% increase over 3 years when the interest rate the cost of living was going up at about 0.1% yes so um that's correct which is probably why we had such a large cushion for such a long time yes that's correct just a little bit about the the impervious area um res a lot of residents would look at what is on the tax assessor um site and it might say gross square footage of your house at let's say 2,000 um square feet and then they get their notice for 2300 or 2500 and they say well why and this is a common question that we tried to address at the best of probabilities we have GIS data that we can accurately pinpoint what your impervious area is on site so that's what we were utilizing for this but we have made it very clear if somebody thinks that there is an error on there they're we more than happy to email us and we would send them the information that we have and if they you know still don't you know agree with that we would be happy to to meet with them and and talk with them about that but for the most part um I think that's what's caused a little bit of the confusion here is like hey I've got a, 1900 foot house but I'm being charge 2400 and then we say Well that's your impervious area which may be um you know it may be a a patio it may be a you know an extension may be a driveway it may be a concrete sidewalk or whatever that the case is so that's that's part of where that is coming from yeah yeah but we've set of limit at 2500 we have because currently right now there is already a cap and all Municipal most all municipalities have a cap on their uh storm water utility fee and that cap is is VAR throughout whoever you know wherever the community is but ours was when we measured by the What's called the equivalent residential unit which was the old way that me that we measured um it basically equated all properties to a certain you know square footage area so I think it was around 2,000 foot is what we had as our traditional equivalent residential unit right so um our residential unit was capped at like 1.25 erus which put a dollar amount card pan basically on the upper end of what anybody could be charged so since it's Inception there's always been a cap right on whatever that square footage of you 1.25 erus is so we we wanted to keep that as we Mo moved forward so that's exactly what we did which is where the 2500 square foot um area came in so is it is it possible to readjust those in such a way that there's a broader distribution of that the idea is that somebody who's got a 5,000 foot houses paying the same as somebody who's got 2500 the the odds are that the income for each of those two households is probably significantly different sure um now I can't argue 2, 2500 quite so much but you could argue a th000 to 2500 is a pretty good Gap is that is it possible to to figure out how yeah absolutely and we we've done that I mean it goes all the way down to a th000 you know 1,000 foot is charged much less than a 20 you know than a 2,000 foot square foot house I think a th000 square feet goes all the way down to I believe $80 I was looking on the ordinance I can't I can't find that detail on the actual ordinance I just see the rates so I was looking for that information the th 1,000 squ ft is your is the low point of of what we had and then the cap is 2500 so it's basically between that 1,000 2500 yeah the minimum the minimum is, th000 so it is feasible that we could do 1,000 I think the study and that's what the study that we're trying to accelerate is going to tell us exactly that because we can't we need the consultant our consultant to tell us hey this is where it's at this is how it it looks and I think one of the things I heard okay everybody can swall of the first year but we need to come up make sure that we're equital in years 2 three and four so I would encourage you to make sure we do complete the study on caps and discounts yeah so that at this time next year we can be back to discuss that absolutely and we're going to we're going to try to accelerate that usually it's going to take about six months to do the study so that's what we're looking at right now but we're hoping to get that out quickly is there any option to have a change of for us to discuss a change of rate now is there an option that there's other formulas that may be available that mean I heard about a third of the comments are it's it's disproportionate older smaller houses usually fixed income yeah are paying a disproportionately high amount compared to uh 3500 foot the the new study is going to tell us that this when we look at this this exactly what we want to get into about the caps and the discounts like you know there's discounts already currently that we want to look at right and we want to get our hands around and our head wrapped around where those came from from you know cuz some of them we know where they came from some of them we're not really sure where they came from but in that we're going to look at all sorts of is there any other discounts that were not you know they were not thinking about and that that was going to be brought up during that study let me ask again more pointed can we change these rates right now as a fee or can we modify this or should be we can't change the rates without going back to a study I don't believe this is right okay so please please please please please Mary does it make sense and I guess and I'm not quite sure it does but does it make sense unless we can get something that comes back in a different way to delay this till the first to postpone this decision till the first week in June so we could see a another formula for rates Ian and and I I I I'm trying we don't have another formula for rates yeah I'm I'm not sure I mean the the formula for what we have is switching we went to the square footage unit right now for our and going away from the eru we went to square foot so that that is kind of what and that's what most municipalities are switching too before it was harder to get that data before now it's easier to get that data because the gis and most cities have a GIS a rigorous GIS program that they can use in there so this is supposed to help us get more accurate calcul calculations about what you know the impervious area is on on specific properties themselves and so that's just analyzed over the you know over our expenses over our CIP and that in itself is the formula that drills down to what our rate is based over that 5year CIP period that we looked at so that's what the formula is derived from that makes sense I'm I'm trying to come up with a compromise but all I'm hearing you saying is this is it or it's not yeah I mean we can come back we can look at it next year commissioner this is the thing we're going to take a look at the caps and discounts over the course of time that we don't have time to do that if we want to have this increase and if we want to continue to keep go deeper into debt with a storm water system yes sir yes sir may M Sheen yeah this is the problem you have to have a required notice based on the the tables that he provided we have to then we have to have the public comment and two public hearings for the trim notice all right we've already put this off because there was concern we had an additional public hearing which we heard this input on okay the problem is now we're up against the trim notice deadline yes so what I'm hearing most people saying is it's not the first year that's the big problem it's it's it's cumulative if we can just go ahead and and and vote on this one looking at possibly removing the cap by next year and if that would alleviate some of the pressure moving forward but we can't do it because we can't keep going in debt folks we cannot it's not responsible leadership is not about kicking the can down the road that's how it get us to this mess all right we got to make a decision today if you don't like the decision vote against it but realize that you're voting for debt and we can't continue to to do this debt so I think that we need to go ahead with this one but I agree I I'm the first one that said we need to readjust this Cap all right we need to look at it for next year but we we don't have any time before we up up against this this notification that's all I have thank you okay uh May D commission Burns and commissioner Ortiz uh yes uh again I and I apologize for having to step out I have a flight to catch but I just wanted to um kind of reinforce uh What uh commissioner Shen just mentioned I think we do need to move forward in the first year revisit the Caps uh as well as the discounts uh because you know as I mentioned before this is is very inconvenient uh but I think we have to uh move forward with what's uh prudent versus what's popular I think a popular vote would be to vote against it but I think the prudent thing for the council to do is to move forward uh at least with this first year and do the uh proper assessments and studies so we can come back with something that uh feels to to be more Equitable and makes more sense so that would be my uh my input and I am in favor of the increase for this first year thank you thank you last shot Commissioner Ortiz thank you I don't want to I don't mean to be argumentative but leadership is not about making a decision like this all of a sudden we can also make loans that we can go ahead and cap this while we're doing the study um we do have to need to change the caps and in the meantime and and we have to do another study that's a fact cuz there there other ways of changing this uh but there's Al other CH other ways of also dealing with this I mean we can well we discuss issuing bonds bonds is not going to be something because we need to have something to back them up with but uh a loan can be can be make yes it will increase the deficit for a period of time until we can make a decision to go ahead and come back and pay it but there a risk we have to take and then account accounting with the community and of course getting the the support of the community but there's other ways of solving this so let's just be careful how we pronounce those you know the things we'd say out there mayor can I say one more thing one last thing just to kind of say say this cuz I've heard a couple people bring up grants and funds and stuff like that there are matches with these we've turned down a couple matches or turned down a couple um projects because we could not fund the match for these projects so that's the kind of situation that we're in right now so just I I hear what people say and we do go after after these grants and some of them were successful but some of them have a larger match through them so we were not able to go after some of those so just to yeah and understand our these are basic this is basically a standalone entity like it was separate from all the other parts of the city and it has to pay for itself it's not supposed to be funded by General Revenue it's supposed to be paid for by fee for services and if the fees don't pay for it then we have to raise the Fe It suffers yes it's an Enterprise fund yes okay all in favor of the motion to indicate so by saying I I I those opposed no okay I got it 51 thank you for your input motion carries okay we have other business to do so if you want to do that take it out to the hallway okay Madam Clark If you would read 2417 ordinance number 20247 an ordinance of the city council of the city of Orlando Florida relating to maximum floor area ratio and historic preservation overlay districts amending Chapter 58 part 1B of the Land Development code entitled zoning tables providing for separability codification correction of scrier error and an effective date so moved second okay motion by commissioner Shen second by commissioner gray Madame clerk I don't have any requests for public testimony no speakers mayor no speakers discussion hearing none all in favor the motion indicate so by saying I I those opposed motion carries number three ordinance number 202 24-18 and ordinance of the city council of the city of Orlando Florida regarding drive-through facilities replacing all references to drive-in facilities with drive-through facilities and updating the use regulations for such facilities providing legislative findings and for superability codification correction correction of governers errors and an effective date motion by commissioner Sheen second by commissioner Stewart I have no cards for public participation discussion hearing none all in favor the motion indicate so by saying I I those opposed motion carries and number four ordinance number 202 24-19 an ordinance of the city council the city Orlando Florida amending to the city's growth management plan to change the future land use map designation for certain land generally located south of turnill Drive West of Camp Commander Drive North of Hoffner Avenue and east of South samron Boulevard comprised of 10.45 acres of land more or less from industrial to community Activity Center amending the boundary of sub area policy s23.3xxa Gateway special plan overlay districts to community activity center with the aircraft noise and samron Gateway special plan overlay districts providing for Amendment of the city's growth management plan and Zoning Maps providing for severability correction of scrier error permit disclaimer and an effective date commissioner Ortiz second motion by commissioner Ortiz second by commissioner Stewart I have no cards for public participation discussion hearing none all in favor the motion indicat so by saying I I those oppos so the motion carries okay ordinances on first reading ordinance number 202 24-3 ordinance of the city of Orlando Florida annexing to the corporate limits of the city certain land generally located south of Monarch Drive West of Conway Road and North of McCoy Road and comprised of 19.03 acres of land more or less and amending the city's boundary description amending the city's adopted growth management plan to designate the property as residential low intensity in part mixed use Corridor medium intensity in part and conservation in part on the city's official future land use maps designating the property as one family residential with the aircraft noise overlay District in part medium intensity mixed used Corridor with the aircraft noise overlay district and Conroy Conway Road special plan overlay District in part in conservation with the with the aircraft noise overlay district and Conway Road Road special plan overlay District in part on the city's official zoning Maps providing for Amendment of the city's official future land use and Zoning Maps providing for severability correction of Governor's error perit disclaimer and an effective date second motion by commissioner Ortiz second by commissioner Stewart I have no request for public participation discussion hearing none all in favor of the motion indicate so by saying I I I opposed so the motion carries Madam clerk we need to go back commissioner Ortiz voted against the motion to um have the move the well you actually voted on the second motion which was to move it away from a 5:00 to a 2:00 so he'd like to be shown as a yes on that number 11 number 11 there come on t Okay Ed could you get us ready for General appearance [Music] [Music]