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Fiscal Year 2011-2012

FY 2011-2012
CITY COUNCIL GOALS
ADOPTED OCTOBER 04, 2011

I. SUSTAIN AND STRENGTHEN THE CITY’S FINANCIAL STABILITY

  • Develop a long-term debt early retirement plan and enhance the budgeting process by including more historical trend analysis and by extending operational budgetary forecasting to five years.
    Develop a feasible plan to early retire the City’s long term debt in order to reduce the City’s annual fixed costs and to produce substantial finance cost savings for the City of Sanibel’s taxpayers. In FY12 establish a sinking fund with an initial investment of $600,000 to be utilized to retire debt prematurely. Consider retirement of all the City’s obligations: the Series 2006 General Obligation Bonds (Recreation Center); subsequently the Series 2002 General Obligations Bonds (Pond Apple Park); unfunded pension liability; and other debt with the main goal of stretching taxpayer dollars to achieve the greatest economic benefit. In addition extending the operational budget forecast to five years will provide information on the effect current decisions will have on future revenue sources and operating costs and will provide the framework to analyze the City’s capability to cover its five-year capital improvement plan. In efforts to balance budgets, often capital improvements are deferred to future years. This produces a compounding effect on future services, infrastructure deterioration, increased maintenance costs and funding requirements.
  • Develop a facility component replacement plan
    In order to preserve and protect the City’s facilities periodically major components such as roofs, HVAC systems and flooring must be replaced. The plan will identify the City’s facilities’ components; each component’s estimated replacement cost; and each component’s scheduled replacement date. Procedures and funding requirements will be developed to establish a sinking fund account that will be used for the replacement of these components. Level annual funding into a sinking fund to finance major component replacements will prevent experiencing funding spikes when the components need to be replaced.

II. CONTINUE THE CITY-WIDE REDEVELOPMENT WORK PLAN

The redevelopment work plan for the Resort Housing District has been completed. Using similar guidelines and strategies applied to the Resort Housing Study, the next steps, in priority order, of the redevelopment work plan will focus on accomplishing the following tasks listed in priority order:

  • Adopt appropriate revisions to the Sanibel Plan (Coastal Zone Protection Element, Section 3.2.1; Policy 3.1) to allow for the reconstruction of lawfully existing resort accessory swimming pools and structures currently located within the Gulf Beach and Bay Beach Ecological Zones
  • Prepare a redevelopment work plan for the existing resort housing properties that are located outside of the Resort Housing District
  • Develop a “best Practices Green Technology Check List” that will be required whenever any new development or redevelopment project is approved
  • Prepare a redevelopment work plan to address the Town Center, Town Center Limited Commercial District, Town Center Limited Commercial District, Residential District and Commercial District Redevelopment

III. IMPROVE WATER QUALITY

Local Goals
Continue with implementation of residential and golf course fertilizer Best Management Practices to improve water quality.

  • FY-2012 goal - Review progress towards implementing fertilizer and lake management guidelines with golf course managers to ensure that all are making progress towards compliance and improving scores on their annual report card.
    FY-2012 goal – Continue education campaign on fertilizer Best Management Practices and develop stormwater information package for homeowners to address water quality in community lakes.

Develop a well-defined plan to meet future water quality standards including numeric nutrient criteria and Total Maximum Daily Loads for the Sanibel River and Sanibel’s coastal waters.

  • FY-2012 goal – Complete a comprehensive nutrient reduction plan for Sanibel, which includes a list of priority projects and management measures to effectively reduce stormwater runoff and nutrient pollution to the Sanibel River and coastal waters.

Regional Goals
Develop a regional stormwater rule for Southwest Florida, which covers the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council’s (RPC) study area including Charlotte, Collier, Glades, Hendry, Lee and Sarasota Counties.

  • FY-2012 goal – Work with local governments within the RPC study area to develop a planning document with a strategy on how to move forward with development of a regional stormwater rule.

Work with the SFWMD and other local stakeholders to implement water storage and treatment projects within the Caloosahatchee basin to improve water quality and reduce ecological impacts associated with high and low-flow issues.

  • FY-2012 goal – Support the South Florida Water Management District’s efforts to implement cost-effective short-term projects (e.g., distributed storage, Lake Hicpochee, C-43 interim storage)