After a long budget workshop that wrapped up not long before the commission meeting officially began, commissioners sat back and observed multiple in-depth presentations from the community.
The first came from Marshall Middle Magnet School Principal Dennis Mayo, who took a moment to discuss the school’s International Baccalaureate Program.
Marshall is undergoing a transformation while it seeks to finalize the authorization process for the IB title, which ends up taking years to complete from start to finish. If Marshall is authorized following its candidate phase it will make Plant City the only place in Hillsborough County where families can send their children to an IB school from K-12.
The commissioners praised Marshall for its hard work and dedication, and Mayo said their main goal now is to get the word out that the unique program is being offered.
Following that presentation, the Plant City Economic Development Corporation did its routine update where it discussed everything that the group has accomplished over the past five years. It’s announced 50 projects, helped create more than 2,000 jobs and helped lead the development of more than eight million square feet of property.
From there, commissioners unanimously approved the consent agenda.
One of the items the community will soon see the impact of was the decision to alter the agreement with Fry Entertainment, Inc. to include creating a communication plan for the city’s upcoming transition from a manual to an automated trash collection system.
Fryed Egg Productions will come up with a communication plan proposal to help educate the community on the change as well as have engagement and integration with city residents and businesses that will be affected by this phased alteration.
Commissioners voted in April to begin the transition from manual to automatic in an effort to not only save money, but to keep employees safe. They project cost savings from an automated collection with its new rate structure to be approximately $200,000 per year and, with the automated trucks, employees won’t have to jump on and off of vehicles right next to busy roadways.
The new program will roll out in phases. The first will convert three of the six residential garbage routes and the other three will be finished in the next fiscal year. The transition plan spans three fiscal years — FY 20, FY 21 and FY 22 — so Fryed Egg needed its contract adjusted to reflect the three-fiscal year alteration. The cost adjustment this fiscal year is $16,650 and the increased cost will be $14,300 for FY21 and $14,300 for FY22 when the agreement is renewed.
“The communication plan spreads over this year and next two fiscal years because rollout is in phases,” City Manager Bill McDaniel said. “It’s going to address some of the large categories that need to be done initially like brand creation, logo development, templates for communication, setting up video parameters and doing all of our promotional design. Then we move into multimedia storytelling, community outreach with meetings with HOA groups, civic groups, any community group that wants us to. Presentations. We send out mailings, update the website, basically anything and everything we can do to make the transition smooth. We will have e-newsletters, surveys… the idea is to make transition as smooth as possible to make sure the entire customer base is completely informed.”
Residents will soon see the results of this change and can expect to be updated well in advance of the program rolling out.
Toward the end of the evening, a public hearing was set to once again expand the boundaries of the North Park Isle Community Development District. Currently, NPI has approximately 360 acres. The proposed addition would add another 163.49 acres to the total, bringing the development district to 523.49 acres total.
Those interested in taking part in the NPI CDD hearing can do so during the Sept. 14 city commission meeting, which starts at 7:30 p.m.