Irma relief, millage rate dominate meeting

Although Hurricane Irma has come and gone, it has left a myriad of questions and concerns in its wake.

Maitland’s first City Council meeting since the storm went for more than three hours, and much of the discussion centered on the storm and relief efforts.

City Manager Sharon Anselmo shared information regarding how the city had been handling issues surrounding hurricane prep and recovery, which included communication issues with Duke Energy.

“We were in constant talk with Duke, but unfortunately that’s a communications person that I was speaking to, and they can only release to me what they are told they can release,” Anselmo said. “I’ve been texting all day and calling — at one point, we were just calling the outages in ourselves.”

The lack of communication between Duke and those in the Maitland area was so bad that Mayor Dale McDonald discussed the issue with Gov. Rick Scott by phone.

Those issues were discussed even further during a public period during which 13 Maitland residents, many of whom still were without power, voiced their displeasure with Duke’s inability to reach their self-imposed Sunday deadline.

“It became very apparent about midweek that Duke’s so called ‘coordination and public outreach strategy’ was nonexistent — that they were caught flatfooted for this storm,” said Maitland resident Eddie Baird. “God forbid if we had a Category 3 or 4 over this town, what all we would be facing right now.”

Most of the discussion about fixing the problem, from both residents and the council, came in the form of looking to underground the electrical system — much like Winter Park has done.

The city is currently in a 30-year franchise agreement contract with Duke Energy that will end in 2035 — which was put into place back by a previous council back in 2005.

Currently, the city, in coordination with Duke, will be undergrounding at Greenwood Gardens in October, which will cost just north of $500,000. The next for undergrounding is planned to be Dommerich, which will cost more than $2.1 million — an estimate that was taken in 2003, which means it could double, Anselmo said. 

Although it is a pricey commitment to underground electric utilities, it’s a necessity to help strengthen the city’s foundation and invest in long-term solutions to the electrical problem, McDonald said.

“I get very emotional about this, but at some point in time, it is important for us to impress our grandchildren — Steve (Leary) is doing it in Winter Park, it takes character and it takes commitment,” McDonald said. “This is an interesting time for us, and it’s coming.”

Tentative millage rates adopted

The council made three separate moves to adopt the new tentative millage rates for the fiscal year 2018.

After setting the proposed tax rate of 5.00 at the July 25 meeting, the City Council moved to tentatively set the millage rate at 4.34. The rate is a 9.77% increase from the current millage rate of 4.15.

Along with the millage rate, the rollback millage was tentatively set to 3.95, while the tentative budget for the general fund was set to the amount of $25,584,109.

Although each move was adopted, it did not come without argument.

Councilman Mike Thomas was opposed to raising the rate and wanted to keep it the same, while Councilwoman Bev Reponen saw the increase as a means of helping the community by covering the projects that the city is looking to do.

“One thing I think we keep forgetting is that we are going to have a lot of new people, we’re going to have a lot of things going on that we need spending money on — including this park, this street, and a million other things around town,” Reponen said. “I admire that you want to keep things the same, but we did that for years, and now we are paying the repercussions for it.”

All three moves passed in a 4-1 vote, with McDonald being the lone dissenter for each.

The budget will be heard and discussed in full during the Sept. 25 meeting.