[Music] e all right commissioner we're going to go and get started good afternoon we are back on our budget work session on Tuesday June 18th 2024 Board of County Commission seol County we're just coming back from our lunch break and uh commissioner lockart will be joining us as soon as she is able to the next item we are going to bring up is uh Judge Melanie chase the 18th judicial circuit court and I believe Mr JX has a few things to say before the judge gets started Mr JX if you want to get started and welcome judge thank you thank you for being here and hopefully we will'll accommodate your schedule for you thank you I appreciate that thank you I'm just going to cover a quick couple of budget slides before turning it over to the Jud so the uh the judicial program is funded 53% through our article 5 Court technology fund and 46% through our general fund the total base budget for the for the judicial department is 98900 the FY 25 proposed budget is 1,1 188,000 it's an increase of 3% I did want to point out that within this budget there has been some recent turnover so when we do our final uh update of our Personnel Service budget we may see some of the fy2 numbers come down based on the people that are in the positions now there's currently seven FTE supported by the county and their Department uh and the FY 25 proposed budget includes seven FES as well uh there's full detail of their budget included on page 332 of your work session book with that I'll turn it over to the judge thank you your honor chairman thank you so much for fitting me in I know I asked for special accommodation I appreciate that um anything for our judges thank you can we bring the microphone closer we're very thankful for that so um first I just wanted to say it's nice to see each of the Commissioners I uh it's nice to see all of you and it's been so great I was going to say something more about how I haven't seen some of you in a while but um h meeting um the county manager and working with him has been wonderful always Trisha Johnson's wonderful but um the people that you have working with us we appreciate very much uh I wanted to just start with uh thanking you for approving our um fiscal year 24 budget you gave us a new position that um I hope if I have a moment to tell you how well that's going because I I want to bring good news back to you um and we were able to bring the budget to the maximum of of the 3% as was requested and um good afternoon commissioner no uh and we were I also wanted to point out that we in the past have come to you for um AV related funds every year and you are kind and generous and give us those and it helps us um we usually ask for 75,000 for each of the three cour houses for all the courtrooms in the three cour houses and because you are um funding the renovations for us we are not asking for that um because we're going to have that we'll get those in another way so we're thankful for that we had mentioned possibly a new position I'm I'm aware that the general fund is not there's not going to be any new employees but if I had a moment to talk to you about why that was something that we were thinking about I'd like to be able to tell you that may I please all right so first I'd like to tell you so the the general magistrate position is a cival general magistrate that you all gave us last year we're very thankful and I can't wait to tell you how well it's working out the um she's been hearing civil matters civil hearings for just about 6 months and she has had over 700 referrals from the judges for hearings which is a lot um the I had expected the civil lawyers to be a little slower to warm up to a general magistrate some of the folks that practice civil law aren't used to being referred to a magistrate I had just myself thought that we might get even 50% of objections to being referred to the general magistrate but we're at 10% which is great um and the um the hearings and matters that have been resolved based on sending it to the GM is over 300 and the months and um exception they're called exceptions but it's like an appeal from a GM um she's had only 16 so it's really successful great we've had an assistant that's been helping the uh General magistrate that's was temporary funding Ops money that we're going to lose so we're losing that position on June 30th so our thought in asking you all if that would be something that you would consider an for an administrative assistant was that the general magistrate can do can write the reports and things that that her administrative assistant did well she writes the reports but the secretarial kind of side of it she can do that um but it would be having a person paid at a much higher rate doing something that could be supported by somebody um you know that that isn't quite it she's it paid half that so that was the thought we understand how everything is we're very Greatful so if it's not something that that is in the cards for us this year happy to talk to about it next year if we can but uh that was the thought I don't want we didn't want you to think that we're going to come to you every year and ask for new FTE that wasn't the plan we're grateful for what you've given us so great that's the report back okay so if I'm following the discussion we have a budget before us and you're asking us to consider an additional FTE is that what I'm hearing yes okay and what kind of budget impact do you believe believe that would have any idea we had asked I brought this is Kelly beIN from Court Administration and Brandy Jenkins who welcome do this every day um so are you asking how much the I can address Tim you got you've already had this discussion based on the information provided um we had the estimated total position cost at Criminal Justice Center okay we were very happy and thankful yes great thank you all right I will start Mr Gray I don't want to take anyone Thunder um judge Chase did mention this to me about a six weeks ago or talking so what I what I have done even though we don't have the position in here we have a lot of vacancies that we are I would say a lot it's going down there might be an opportunity for us and we're reviewing that now of just actually shifting one our vacant positions that we don't need at this time and when we do I could bring that one back to the board but actually um supporting uh the judge in this CA in this case fair enough okay so I'm working on that at this point great I'm glad you all are interacting and doing so we'll start at the far end commissioner Constantine any inquiries not right now no commissioner more beef jerky please so I'm gonna I'm going to change this up a little bit this is your one and only chance no no no no you can't do that well then we'll start at this end commissioner can we put him in contempt we have a judge here we have some prosecutors let me bring this back since we've rushed everybody along um first of all I appreciate you coming and Reporting the results of what we invested in last year and 300 resolved cases on behalf of the citizens of seal county is it's remarkable I mean it's remarkable just for clarification it's 300 matters so it it could have been hearings that were set but it's 300 things that are moving I I I mean I appreciate even that clarification and 700 that took place I mean it's it's those are outstanding results uh where I would leave us is that I would really love to see us figure out a way to make this happen because slowing that down defeats the whole purpose of the investment that we made to start out with so that it just seems like we're not being wise about the original investment so with that I would thank you great job and we appreciate you commissioner delari anything thank you Mr chairman judge thank you very much for being here with your staff uh we always appreciate the justice system and how efficient you all are and I would also echo echo commissioner H's statement about reporting back to us about that investment that we all made last year or for this year and you're absolutely correct uh commissioner that we should look at this additional individual uh if it's a way to move a FTE around and allow the county manager to do that if not then I'm sure that Tim can work his magic another way but with everything that's going on with the courthouse over the next couple years with all these Renovations efficiency is going to be the key so this is just one more aspect of it that we need to be efficient and thank you thank you appreciate all your hard work commissioner lockart apologies for my  so um good good things coming from the Judiciary and um I I love that you're happy because we're in such a good place you you all are doing quite a lot for us so we're thankful well thank you for being thankful there you there are there are there are a handful that maybe aren't so um so we appreciate you I think that I also would support uh the the additional support staff and how we can collaborate together to make that happen thank you thank you thank you very much that's it great um I would also thank the judge and and your staff here for being here today and helping us understand that I would support our staff working with the with the judge and on this ask um I can only tell you from working in the court systems all across this country there are backlogs that are I mean I've got cases that are 9 years old that that you know just can't move through through the system quick enough because of shortages and efficiencies so it seems to me a small ask financially if we can move things along uh for all parties involved you know plain us defendants what what regardless of what that matter might be before the courts anything we can do to expedite that I think is uh is a win-win and and the grand schemes of a billion dollar budget this is not a huge ask so that being said thank you all very much no other questions we'll let her honor get back to thank you so much it was good to see out Justice here thank you thank you all very much for being here next up we will have our state's attorney Mr Phil Archer and Tim JX do you have any I'll make a few forward information just about their uh their budget slides so the uh the County's funding of the state attorney's office is 100% from our article 5 fund for court technology the current budget is 467,000 increasing to 480,000 that includes um County funding towards uh State FTE um the full budget detail is included on page 337 of the work session document our chuckling was related to Article 5 not you that's the majority of our morning talking about Article 5 I understand and before I get started let me I know I've reached out individually uh certain events to thank you all uh for that wonderful renovation and new offices that we have and I I know Mr trus joins me and thanking you profusely you know it sets a a standard when those uh people that come before us um and enter that that that beautiful office and I can tell you we've had a horrible shortage of attorneys over the last couple years throughout the State of Florida throughout the country trying to find attorneys and including prosecutors and public assistant public defenders and it has caused at least one or two hires to come to us because of that beautiful building I actually and no slight to Bard County but I we reached out to a gentleman who had interviewed in simal county and he lived down south when I reached out to him and uh he to see if he would take the job he looked down he saw a 321 area code and he says but wait a minute it's for the simal county office right not the Bard County and I assured him yes it was in the beautiful new office so thank you all very much for that it it really is going to help us in recruitment when when you when we can interview people in those offices it's just amazing uh the other thing too I'd be uh Rel if I didn't introduce will Shiner back here will wa stand up raise your hand will Shiner is the next State Attorney uh he'll be taking over as soon as he can push me out he keeps asking me when I'm getting out of the office but uh yeah Will was uh you know ran unopposed as in an open seat which I'm not sure has evered happened in the State of Florida in a state attorney race but I think that shows a level support from law enforcement in both counties uh defense bar and uh uh and everyone else so I did want to introduce him I I've told him how wonderful you are so that so please don't pick on me today and my last time before you so with that I I like I said I appreciate that every year we've had a great uh partnership with you all on our funding and uh we stay within that 3% this year and um so I'll open it up whatever questions you have okay we'll try this one more time commissioner Constantine I'm glad you like the new building it's always wonderful to hear somebody that's positive about it thank you um no no questions about your budget but something that will potentially impact us down the road budgetarily is um the potential medical examiner situation and I know our board has discussed this at work sessions and you and I have had conversations about it um I just since we're doing a little bit of handing over the Baton passing the torch I just want to make sure that the county manager is still planning to have a Kum by a of stakeholders on that medical examiner situation yes ma'am we're we're working based on the direction that you all had given us at The Retreat we're looking at a couple options that we um are going to be bringing back with you and I know the chairman who sits on that committee for us uh we've been working with his office as well okay fantastic it's it's not a small number as as you and I discussed um but certainly your your people uh the teams that are involved have have a great stake in how that plays out so absolutely and and again I would encourage uh Stacy Salmons who is my chief assistant here in sill County been here for a long time and she is a wealth and knowledge in that and and so if you do at some point need somebody on a committee task force or whatever from our office she would be a a Natural Choice Mr shiner's up to speed on it and I'm sure he would join me um he's uh I believe is keeping her in that that role and um so she she'll be really crucial to that great thank you so much thank you for the work that you do and congratulations thank you what's next I play a lot of pickle ball so more pickle ball over here everyone of Springs has some new cour Comm Mr darari thank you Mr chairman Mr Archer thank you very much for presenting uh your level of service here in the county and for all of us has been uh truly truly uh at a very high level for all these years and I want to thank you for that uh you've been very helpful for all of us through these past years and I do wish you uh a great success in your next Endeavor whatever that may be and uh it's nice to see that you have a good successor uh and your leadership does goes very noticed so thank you for your hard work and all the things that you've done for this County appreciate you sir thank you sir commission her thank you chairman uh yeah congratulations on your I guess move into pickle ball superiority if there is such a thing and for all the work that you've done I appreciate your budget and congratulations uh I always say you're not a mom until your kid has a meltdown and Target and you have to deal with it and publicly so I don't know how I feel about the unopposed uh maybe it's jealousy I'm just going to own that um so so congratulations we are here to support you and the work that you do and if we can never be of help uh having uh I I don't know that the folks on the board know but there was a day called August 1 in 1986 when a certain young lady walked into the state attorney's office to meet a certain State Attorney on his lunch hour to get married at the courthouse and so anytime I think about you all transitioning I still think that was the day that Norm wolfinger had asked him to go to lunch and he said no cuz I have a date um and so I I just think the work you guys do all of you including the public defender is is really God's work it's what keeps our country moving and we welcome you to this position and we are here for you great well Phil thank you very much for your willingness to step up and make tough decisions on prosecutions on behalf of the citizens of this County I know you've worked very closely with the sheriff uh really making some some breaking um Moves In This opioid uh legislation that happened here a few years ago so I think it's made it a much better Community although it's a great place to begin with but it's another role of the collaboration between all of our partners in the community and ensuring that seol County remains with with a high quality of of life so we sincerely appreciate that and good luck on your retirement I I hope uh you get to enjoy your family um life is short it goes quickly uh I'm I'm sure you understand that and will you and I are going to get to know each other real well yeah it's called due process funding pH Phil and I have had the opportunity to discuss that and and we're going to need your advocacy um obviously in in this opioid prosecution stuff which the unintended consequences to our medical examiner costs have have really gone up through the roof and and we're a little different because not everybody is Prosecuting these cases uh therefore they're not subject to these costs but uh I think we all have a core belief bad people need to be put where they should be and taken away from where they shouldn't be so I'll get to know you real well so thank you Phil again thank you very much good luck to you if there's no other inquiries we'll release st's attorney thank you very much thank you all enjoy the rest of your day next up is our Guardian ad lium it's going to be Amber padrick Miss padrick welcome Tim do you have any leading the guardian Adel Lim budget is 100% funded through our general fund the FY 24 adopted budget is 155,000 it's going up to 157,00 um not included in these figures is some funding in our Fleet and Facilities Department to do painting and some maintenance at the offices for the guardian Lim they have two FTE uh and the fy2 proposed budget stays at two and you can see their full budget detail on page 330 of the work session document with that I'll turn it over to miss Patrick thank you welcome thank you I'm going to continue the the afternoon by saying thank you very much for your support last year with our budget request of a new FTE position that has been instrumental in ensuring the efficiency within our office and um loading information into our database um given the fact that we were still in transition from working remote and coming back into the office uh so that full-time employee position that we gained um has been has been a Gods so thank you very much um we are not we're not requesting too much this year um in addition to what we have um thankfully our dependency cases have gone uh slightly dipped from last year um as we continue to work with Community Partners and preventative Services and and sharing of resources that are available in the community um I'm very thankful to commissioner delari for heading the Community Alliance meetings and um his leadership there um within the conversations I've had with um many of you you um hopefully see the that we are just we're taking the difficulties to the community and and Community representation and we're we're hopefully um we've been doing really we've been real successful in getting that buy in and and accepting some more commitment from our volunteers um and utilizing Community Resources rather than dipping in funds that we know is already short um but but this county has been very supportive of our agency and we are very thankful for that great thank you Miss Patrick we'll start on this end commissioner her thank you Amber for everything you do and I would tell you that I think taking those needs to a volunteer Army Corp because what they do is amazing also provides members of our community with an opportunity to positively influence a child's life and the reward with that is huge so thank you for everything you do and thank you for the modest budget thank you Comm Mr glori thank you Mr chairman Amber thank you and your staff and all the things that you do especially for the one of the most vulnerable groups of people that are out there the children so you all do God's work and thank you very much commissioner lockart every year we have the same conversation are you sure this is all you need are you sure um you you do so much with so little um for as commissioner delari said the most vulnerable in our community and um this year when we had our conversation Amber actually said how can I help you so um anything that we can do I I know we make this offer every year and and you say I'll let you know if there's anything that I need but I but I we genuinely mean it we want to support the work that you're doing it is remarkable and um and I just I I just others others should take note thank you Mr chairman we don't sit out to too many groups yeah you're one of the few did you watch this morning by any so far the only one fortunately I had I was not able you no commissioner Constantine Amber great job you're always uh responsive to our needs and and to the community's needs thank you very much and thank you for this very uh um AER budget much appreciated Amber thank you very much and I will argue this is probably one of the largest Roi budget line items we have in this count amen um for the amount of work and benefit uh versus the cost great work and and collaborating with those Community Partners is just an additional bonus on top of all this so uh I will Echo some of the comments that were made is every year when I look at this I'm like we're really doing some great work for the actual money spent in the community uh on behalf of our children and families and so forth so again thank you very much enjoy the rest of your afternoon I appreciate it thank you absolutely thank you Amber thank you next up is our public defender Mr blae trius County support of the public defender office is 100% funded through the Article 5 fund the FY 24 adopted budget is 232,000 it's going up to 266,000 an increase of 35% 35,000 excuse me um but note that the FY 24 budget did include a reduction of $65,000 uh where the public defender office turned it in with uh full detail of their budgets on page 335 of the work session document and with that I'll turn it over to Mr trus good afternoon chairman s BAU and board of County Commissioners I'm bla trus public defender for seal and Bard counties uh I thank you for funding the office the information technology budget in the past and I thank you for this year's budget which as you can see from the slide uh there is an increase this year but that is because there was a 22% decline uh basically last year and if you go back 7 years I'm the office is basically being funded at the same level that it was seven years ago I've been able to uh save money and I've not asked for money that I don't need and and that's what I've done in the past and will continue to do that in the future um I'd also like to thank you uh and say that I'm grateful on behalf of the public defender's office and my staff for the wonderful Justice James EC Perry Courthouse anex it really is a marvelous facility it's a source of pride in the legal community and the community at large I think I think it will adequately serve the needs of the people of Cal County for it should be 70 or 80 years I would think so it's really uh s the board of County Commissioners I think four of the five up here were here when vote was for approval so I appreciate those four especially uh but seal county has always done I think a an amazing job with its capital Improvement expenditures and this is just another example of a very uh job very well done so uh thank you very much for that on behalf of the people and I'd be glad to answer any questions if you have any thank you very kindly commissioner her I was the one that wasn't here during the funding but I will pass on your gratitude to the redhead who sat here before me how about that and it is her name on the building appropriately so we appreciate the work that you do and I appreciate the fact that we're funding you at uh less than any number that we've seen here on the P the slide so um building efficiencies into the program and it is is not easy to do but you've done it well we appreciate that thank you commission lari thank you Mr chairman you've always been very transparent you've always been upfront you've always been uh Frugal with the Public's money well done have a great day commissioner lock Mr trus my question is probably more for our um Finance team than it is for you but because Article 5 funding has been a a truly not even not being sarcastic but really a great source of conversation today can you help me understand the difference between the Article Five funding that is split up between the other agencies and how some are some are able to somehow not come to ask for additional funds and others need additional funds I'm just help me understand the pot and why I'm not putting you on the spot Mr trus at all but it now it's it's just glaringly different my comments uh would be the Count's $2 Article 5 Revenue it's one pot it has historically funded the public defender State Attorney and judicial um I can say in my experience that the public defenders office budget hasn't really been contingent on the revenue those years when the revenue went up you can see that their expenditures did not um but that there has been historically you know an intent to live within the revenues of of the fund as best as possible um I I can't explain exactly how he's able to to do that but I do know it's it's the funds go towards Court technology and uh the public defender uh public defender office their budget stays pretty consistent year-over-year so one Article 5 fund that that is collected for the county to then redistribute between how many entities Judicial state attorney and public defender have been the agencies that we funded historically and where does the clerk's Article 5 funding come from any additional costs being added to that fund are coming from the general fund and then he also has as you know State the $1.90 you know so we split so it's actually a $4 fee that's that's collected we get $2 the clerk gets $2 but then he has to revert 10 back to the state so what the discussion that we had this morning about his article 10 cents 10 cents 10 cents I'm sorry yeah sorry thank you um um that the $190 um is what we were talking about this morning with the with the trust fund okay so $4 $2 of it comes to us we divide it up among the three entities the other two $2 which actually becomes $1.90 is for the clerk to spend on his needs correct got it I might make a suggestion commissioner lockart and that is that I don't believe this $4 amount in the Florida Statutes has changed for I don't know more than 20 years and it would seem to me that the uh Association of counties might be able to convince A legislature to increase that to $6 a page so the legislature really does not care what we think I've noticed this is a this is also it's a fee on the mortgages it's not it's not going to hit the the broad economy or or people where it hurts and most people in the wallet it's for mortgages the filing of deeds and mortgages so it's just an idea I've always wondered about that that it's never changed yeah very very not that I need more money very valid point commissioner Constantine and thank you blce because we've had it in our priorities for a long time at the Florida Association counties and and they've ignored it but I do appreciate the uh the idea aide um and thank you very much for um again doing such a good job with doing a lot of good with very little thank you thank you commissioner thank you very much sir for being here I'd only point out that it's not lost on me that the public defender who's charged with defending those that otherwise may not be able to defend themselves is funded far less than the prosecutor just saying I'm used to that in the legislature too thank you very much for being here uh I would point out uh hopefully my office sent to you all an email to to address that $400 fee there's actually State funding an addition to that under Article 5 that goes to fund those offices um I would share it with you but my efficient assistant grabbed this morning's folder and took all that documentation away from me but is is the office of program policy analysis and government accountability for the State of Florida and you can go in and see every funding mechanism for all the circuit courts how much they're paying in salaries to each entity including the judges etc etc etc and right on Down the Line it would be helpful for I think I shared that with Tim as well so next up is going to be our Link's presentation and we have Miss Timmy yeah Tiffany Hawkins here to do the presentation and Tim you want to open this up and welcome Miss Hawkins yeah Tiffany Hawkins is here from Lynx um I serve on the uh Lynx finance and audit committee we we've worked together for a few years and uh Tiffany provided a a group of slides that's talking about their overall budget um seminal County uh is responsible for about 12 and a half% of the total um funding with regional partners and I'll turn it over to Tiffany thank you Tim uh thank you Mr chairman Commissioners thank thank you for having us today um and allowing us to present our fy2 budget I'm joined today by Mr uh Leonard Antman our CFO uh we are going to tag team this presentation as we have done in previous years um we'll go through a brief links overview just a as a reminder of what we do and how we do it and then we will go to the budget and the funding request as you all know uh lyx was uh is a creature of State Statute our that statute goes back to 1989 when it was then the central Florida commuter rail Authority um the name was changed to Central Florida Regional Transportation authority in 1993 and um that statute changed all references from commun rail to public transportation and that laid the groundwork for the transition of uh Central Florida Regional Transportation authority and then Tri County Transit uh which that transition occurred in 1994 so here we are 30 years later um it just highlight 30 years ago we had uh 562 employees uh with 177 vehicles and 50 routes um so today we are at uh almost uh a little over 1,200 uh total links employees 85% of those are uh drivers mechanics and those who get uh service on the street Street the remainder of the administration is keeping that service on the street and for our reporting uh we do have 79 routes uh uh um with two over 300 Vehicles this is our family of services uh this has been in our family of services for over the last 25 years um with the exception of uh neighbor link fast link and sunro connections those all have come on in the last uh 10 and 15 years uh daily we are at 68 traditional um fixed rought Service uh 11 neighborlink on demand routes uh and while our buses do not run 24 hours our operations certainly are 24 hours a day um some of our uh buses and routes have 15minute frequency but over 50% are at 60-minute headways about 50% of our ridership is on the tourism corridors and those huge employment centers um in that in those corridors across all modes we're averaging upwards of 60,000 a day sometimes we are at 65,000 trips per weekday and in FY 23 our last audited numbers we were uh at little over 18 million uh passenger trips for FY 23 I I highlight parat Transit because that is is a significant increase uh coming up over the next few years um PA Transit trips for FY 23 we're just over or just a little under 600,000 and if the ridership trends continue uh we could see about 650,000 trips throughout the three County region um for FY 24 I've we provided the chart to show the increase in the eligible uh pair Transit customers from 2019 to 2024 and this trend is in line with the significant population growth of the three County region uh over the last five years and again as we always do in our annual reporting highlight those agencies and um the reports that we are required to um file on an annual or uh every three-year basis last year we had our once every three-year trienal review from the Federal Transit Administration and I'm happy to report that that was a clean report there were no findings no deficiencies and as of last week the Florida Department of Transportation completed their uh once every three-year review of links and we anticipate that report in 30 days to be uh in line with the Federal Transit Administration report um and as and as well as we report annually to the Florida Transportation Commission so with that I will turn it over to uh Mr Antman for the budget overview chairman and Commissioners welcome thank you and so uh with that um our budget assumptions just to Note have all been vetted through both the finance committee and the oversight committees for links um uh commission lockart is on our um board and uh Tim is on our finance committee and so none of these are new to them or shouldn't be new to them um in any event um our assumptions on the operating side is that we would maintain the fiscal year 24 level of service moving into fiscal year 25 and that we would have no fear increases in fiscal 25 now that is an assumption that was uh built into the fiscal year 25 budget but is always subject to change at the board discretion um we will utilize budget stabilization funds to normalize the path back to full funding back uh a few years ago at the beginning of the uh Co eror we spent three years at the same funding level and um now we're at the point where it was a five-year path back to full funding this will be the third year um on the cap Capital side we plan to uh have Fleet replacement to right siize the fleet and provide safe and reliable service for our Riders and also um balance of major pieces of the program will be for passenger amenities and for um facility improvements and I'll go over that in more detail when we get [Music] there the operating budget itself comes in at $28.15 it is a balanced budget so there are uh full funding of revenues to offset all the expenses I'm sorry may I commissioner lockart you have an inquiry please well I it's a balanced budget because the deficit is being picked up by the funding Partners well it's the funding partner I mean we have a funding uh partner um calculation that's done the way the funding works is that we have a small port funding and we'll look at that is when we get look um at the revenues is that we have some federal funds we have fairs that come in we have a block grant from the state whatever's left we don't have a dedicated funding The Three Counties pick up the balance of it through calculation based on the service hours that are received in each of the areas for fixed rought and the number of trips originated out of each County on par Transit it's balanced because we pick up the deficit understood okay okay anything further not now okay please proceed sir thank you so on um one of the things to know on customer fears is a slight increase year over-year but for the most part we're at the point where we believe our new normaly is for ridership levels um I'll and I'll go over the significant changes in Revenue um our federal revenue is increasing by $1.5 million year over year um and that's due to a rural funding from the federal government when we had the last census it was anticipated that the rural funding would be discontinued when we built the 24 budget because the rural areas were diminished tremendously however they are F providing us with a grant this year and so that represents the million a half dollar increase over there on the state revenue we're increasing by $800,000 and that comes from two areas we have about a $400,000 increase on the block grant provided by fot and we have the balance of the increase associated with the road ranger program from providing additional hours of service on local Revenue we're increasing our budget by $4.3 million and that comes from U two areas Orange County initiated this year um their atsp program which is the accelerated Transit and safety program and they're providing additional funding both both capital and operating for U additional shelters and service hours in Orange County and so out of that 4.3 million 3.8 million of the increases from the Orange County atsp program the balance of the increas is associated with additional operating costs associated with the limo services we provide uh through uh city of Orlando and then um The Balancing of the budget where we are working on the 5year program back to full funding is the use of the budget stabilization funds and you can see that this year we're air marked to use $24 million of budget stabilization funds in 24 was $32 million almost 33 each year that'll go down till we get back to full funding in another couple years and so as I referenced um the local Revenue which is local funding partner and the stabilization funds uh account for 72% of all of the revenue that we have as uh we we noted based on commissioner Lockhart's comment we do not have any dedicated funding we get a small amount from the state revenue in the form of block grants and we have some federal revenue that we use in lie of um providing capital for um Ada and for some of our preventive maintenance programs but the balance of it is all local money 72% from the local folks and 10% of it comes from customer Affairs on the expense side um same total dollar amount as on the revenue side the increases are on three basic areas uh there's an $8 million increase on wages and benefits 6 million of that 8 million is associated with contractual increases for our Union employees uh $1 million is associated with a um increase in the cost of providing medical benefits and the other million dollars is associated with the Orange County atsp program moving down to other services other services is a category that includes um Professional Services planning contract maintenance legal fees advertising uh security janitorial services and as such the increase uh and other services of $1.5 million uh $500,000 is towards the course of implementing the new Erp system that links is in the process of implementing 600,000 is associated with planning studies and the balance of it is associated with increas in the cost for Security Services which is largely labor driven uh the last major increases on purchase Transportation um our par Transit um operations is a fully um contracted out service and as such it's it's sort of the same as additional labor but any event that is going up by $1.5 million and that's uh combines both the contractual cost increase and the additional trips that we're anticipating in fiscal year 25 um out of the expenses 59% of the total expenses are wages and benefits and 177% is the purchase Transportation which is an extension of um our staff so if you look at that um over 3/4 is the total expenses labor oriented moving on to the capital side of of um the budget $145.2 million is included uh for Capital and it is also a fully funded balanced budget so as such um the bulk of our Capital dollars are usually provided through the federal government through FTA this year is no different 131.5 4 million out of the 145 is from the federal government 4.7 from the state the state funding is for a combination of um funding they provided towards the Pine Hills Transfer Center two um replacement vehicles for our road ranger program and the balance of it for parat Transit vehicles to service our rural territories on the local government side 9.1 million uh and that's a combination of funds from Orange County for um additional shelters through the atsp program they kicked off about a million dollars towards the pin Hills Transfer Center and the balance of it is the local Capital funding provided uh towards matching of federal and state grants and as you can see better than 90% of the funding is um federal dollars so the breakout of the 145 million usually almost half of the entire capital budget goes to Vehicles this year's no different there's $67 million air mark for vehicles that includes 50 uh fixed route CG 40ft buses 25 of those were ordered during fiscal year 24 and we received early in fiscal 25 and then 25 additional vehicles to be ordered in um fiscal 25 it does include one electric 40ft vehicle to Pilot in our fixed Drive service to see how that works out for us it [Music] includes um 130 power Transit Vehicles 70 of them ordered during fiscal 24 we received in 25 and 60 additional vehicles to be received during uh to be ordered during fiscal 25 it also includes seven new par um neighborlink vehicles on facilities the $4.3 million is a combination of a couple things um first there's $17 million set aside towards a future acquisition of land for uh Southern operation base based on FTA and board approval there's $85 million set aside for HVAC replacement on the three major facilities that linkx has the r original equipment when the buildings were built uh approximately 20 years ago there is $7 million set aside for window replacement at the LCS office tower and station area and three uh and $ 3/4 million set aside for bus Bay improvements at the LCS area when the uh LCS was built it was all 40ft buses we now have approximately 38 Arctic which is 60ft buses so we we will be repurposing six 40ft Bays to um create four 60ft Bays on the passenger amenity side the $32 million includes 17.5 million for the Pine Hills Transfer Center it includes $6 million from Orange County for their um uh Advanced uh uh Transit and safety program and the rest of it is associated with the traditional amenities program for shelters in each of the Three Counties as you can see almost 46.2% of the total funds are for vehicles and then 28% and 22% um for facilities and passenger amenities those three areas uh account for 96% of the total capital budget moving on to partment of funding Orange County provides 75% of the total um local funding and that's associated with the fact that they receive 75% of the services that we provide the balance of it is split pretty evenly between Oola and seal County and so for fiscal year 25 the fixed route enabling service is coming in at $7 78.1 million parat Transit at 28.1 bringing our total operating um budget for fiscal year 25 to $16.3 million uh then we have the local Capital contribution for matching on grants at 3.8 million and this is the first time there's a new item on here the Sunrail feder routes the uh Count's taking on the funding of SunRail effective January 1st and so fot is paying the first three months of the year and each of the counties are picking up their share of the cost for nine months of the year beginning January 1 so that comes in at uh 1.1 almost $1.2 million bringing the total partner contributions to $11.2 million that brings us to the specific funding request for semal County fixed draft service at 8 million par Transit of 5.1 bringing the total operating uh request to $13.1 million local area Capital at 376,000 and the 9 months of sunreal feeder service at 542,000 for a total uh budget of $14 million with that uh we'll try to answer any questions you may have thank you very kindly let's start at the far end commissioner Constantine I would like to say that I I I want to hear what commissioner Lard has to say but you guys will give me a hard time about that so I'll just start with this um I heard nothing and I've seen nothing since I was on the board about uh fixing the super station down at uh Fern Park I heard a lot about the one over in oila County I don't see anything about that that is near something that we're spending a good deal of money on at uh uh Oxford Road and um you know from for years I've been saying we needed an upgrade there and uh I I see no planning um in the in the future on that particular thing could uh somebody comment on that please yes commissioner uh it probably has been about 18 months um since we have had a conversation with staff to find an appropriate location um for the the Oxford superstop so uh the Redevelopment of the highi um and how that circulation Works uh we have we have been remiss in uh following up on that but that is something that can definitely be put in the work program okay going going um on the operating budget one of the things that um again we wanted when your when your income uh continues to grow or when I'm sorry when your revenues when your expenses continue to grow you got to have to find new new Revenue one of the things that um uh really started and pushing is things like advertising uh interest and I see both of these are either stabilized or going down um when you're talking about your 2025 um while uh you know obviously the local Revenue uh funding Partners is going up 14 million even though your whole budget is going up 12 million so I mean is there anything to do to to stop the flatlining of like advertising or and why is interest in other income going down so much uh interest um tra is going back to a more traditional level during the last couple of years with the FED rates being so high we've been able to take advantage of that and earn a little more interest in normal um going forward it's anticipated that the FED rates will start to come down and the ability to earn that additional interest will be limited um and the same thing happens with advertising pre-co we were having additional advertising um during Co that went back down right now we're collecting the contract minimum um guarantee on Advertising but one of the things just to point out on the local funding partner Revenue yes it is going up $14 million but that's and as you notice it's more than the total increase but that's not all because of increase in costs that's associated with the fact that we went for three years during the beginning of Co without recognizing any of the increased costs and asking for additional funding we were had the same budget for three years now we're trying to uh move back towards full funding because we have a certain amount of budget stabilization funds that helping us with that program by the end of five years those funds will be gone and if we don't comp back back to full funding we won't be able to provide the service that um all the counties are requesting also um and I'm throwing these some of these things out I know that there's going to be a lot more and I'm going to leave some of these to others but I see also you had a beautiful building there I remember negotiating the lease for the regional planning Council to move downtown which is where they should have been instead of in other areas um but uh even here you're looking at your leases going down um are you losing people are you aggressively not going for additional folks to um to lease up in that building no that that's lease expense not lease income that's our cost what about leasing income that's up in interest and other income uh the other income includes the lease and they have an existing contract it's not significant our lease income is from two areas from the regional planning Council and it's from the restaurant down in the lobby are you but you have space in that building for others for other leases correct we do have space in the building as uh we move forward with the SunRail transition we are going to have to look at where we put uh additional FTE with that um there's not as much space as one would anticipate it's the other side of the fourth floor commissioner so you're saying that the the leases are in the interest in other income so therefore you know that's going down like $900,000 right well the decreas is all on the interest side the lease is a flat year-over-year that probably marginal increas is 3% I recall right that's all Comm lockart um for the right to come back I yeah we all we all get get a a second shot if we need it with additional questions um a couple of things you Lenny your your opening comments about my being on the board and and Mr Jack's being on the finance committee and that this shouldn't be a surprise to us was um I I was biting my tongue a little bit because I think Mr JX has expressed during those finance committee meetings his concern and and Mr um Swenson has expressed as a member of the oversight committee his concern turn S and yet somehow those um those don't get reflected in the overall minutes in reflection when it's reported to the full board so unless you are a board member who sits at the finance committee meetings or gets briefings from their staff member or attends the oversight committee meetings which I've started doing um those other board members wouldn't know that the concerns and objections have been voiced so that's just that is a concern of mine um I think that um let me just go let me just go through Page by page with my questions because I think that'll make it a little less and if I could just want to tell you that my comment about um being aware was not meant to be covering the entire budget but the but U meant to refer to the actual budget assumptions well I think there are some budget assumptions that have been made including the statement that the funding for the southern operations center was approved by the board um and and that's further the slides further down but I mean I I don't know if prior board members knew that they voted to support the southern operations center and at what cost but I I've asked for the minutes from that meeting when that occurred because you continue to say that and no one's able to provide me the minutes of when that occurred the board hasn't voted to to acquire land for southern operation base but I mentioned in the capital budget that the $17 million set aside for the acquisition of land based upon approval of FDA and the board at some point in the future okay that's not what you said but I appreciate your clarification so on the slide um that has the trip counts daily and annual service Paratransit could we have these numbers broken out for sual County absolutely we can get those to you within the next couple days that'd be F that'd be helpful for us I mean I we all get this is a regional system and you all are doing a lot of work um with our partner counties but um I think you know we we need to understand the use and the need um for our our citizens who are funding this um then on uh key budget assumptions which is couple of slides down um wanted to address the noair increases assumption um you know the new kid on the Block asking lots of questions trying to get up to speed and it it was um I read in the audit um that there has not been a fair increase since 2009 um we've heard time and again today in our conversations about inflation and how everything is going up and so one of the things that I asked about was whether when the last time a fair study had been done and um and I think Miss Hawkins you said that there was going to be more discussion about that could you expand that yes commissioner um it with at our July oversight we will talk about the history of the fair increases uh at links as well as the process that is prescribed by FTA for doing a fair analysis um it it's fairly it's lengthy um but it is we will take it to the oversight and then to the board to get their Direction on whether or not to um pursue a fair study and I think one of my concerns and I I've I've shared this with you it the the this oversight committee um I'm not sure I understand its purpose and its role in in supporting the board and its decision making because things go to the oversight committee and they may never come out of the oversight committee um for the full board to know about or to vote on or the the synopsis of the oversight committee is given by the chair of the oversight committee who is always um a commissioner so you have staff members who are you know staff serving with one elected official um who is the chair and and the just the Dynamic for that I think it does not create a an opportunity for staff to really dig in and do the ask the hard questions and do the hard work of of really maybe finding some of the efficiencies that those conversations could be happening and maybe they aren't because of the dynamic and I've shared that before and I'm sharing it publicly now but um when the oversight committee has the opportunity to have that conversation I would hope that the board that's going to vote to make the decision on whether or not to pursue a study will get all of the in same information that is provided to the oversight committee yes okay um so the utilization of the budget stabilization funds um how much how much total budget stabilization funds have there been over the course of the last three years Lenny you mentioned that over the last three years because of Co there was budget stabilization money in fiscal year 24 was $32 million it was right around near there in fiscal 23 it was the first year we utilize those funds and so that was about 64 65,000 24,000 this year it would bring you up to about almost million million million the total was over just over a million when we started it was about right around 7008 million you said 65,000 oh I'm sorry he me million origin I think I think the the originally was 10 and something million 102 102 million or something like that it was around 107 108 million originally and where did I apologize forli where did those budget stabilizations stabilization funds originate okay what happened was we were provided with arpa and K's dollars um to help fund the operation of links all right we continue to build I mean um we had the funding partner Revenue coming in and so so whatever revenues that were used from KS and arper um the offset that we didn't have to use as a funding partner was put into the budget stabilization fund so were any of the budget stabilization funds provided by local funding Partners they were all provided by local funding Partners okay so it so it's they were seminal County cares and arpa funds somehow in in there it not cares and oper funds cares and oper funds were all spent to pay for operating expenses during that time yes well I think the question was I want to make sure I think there's two different it's my recollection that the arpa and car's money came directly to lyx correct yes from the feds it did not flow through the counties or the cities it was directly related to Transportation needs regionally yes correct okay and it was based on our regular formula funds that's how the formula came in and we were a to utilize those 100% for operating correct but it wasn't money that we at the county sent the links correct as part of our oping cares so how much of the budget stabilization so is there zero dollar in the budget stabilization fund that came from seminol County nothing SE County none of it came from seal County from Offa carees dollars but what happened was what what about money that's not arpa or car dollar trying to explain that's for three years we kept the funding partner rates the same and we offset using um running the organization with a lot of cares and arpa dollars and when whatever Surplus was left over went into a reserve that we labeled budget stabilization funds our Reserve policy allows for two different sides we have the traditional reserve and everything above the traditional Reserve went into budget stabilization because we knew when those federal dollars ran out we had a run on local dollars the local counties weren't going to want to have enough of an increase immediately in the first year to go back to full funding so it was all vetted through uh the links board with many models that were provided with what the process and and timeline would be and was agreed upon a five-year burnout of stabilization funds to gradually bring the counties back to full funding okay um right sizing the fleet so when we talk about right sizing here we're talking about making smaller but I have a feeling you're talking about making bigger no no you're making smaller not necessarily it depends on the service area and the needs okay so I have become like um a crazed woman so when I see a Lynx bus I'm like there's a Lynx bus how many people are on it I've been driving people nuts with this um I actually chased down a ly's bus at the seminal state parking lot the other day um that the driver was delightful um he was like who was this crazy woman running I have witnesses who is this crazy woman yeah um so we are running very very large buses for a very very few number of riders on on the routes that I have been able to um to observe and so how what does the what is the process for that determination for determining the right sizing of of the the vehicle to the route CU I don't think we're there on some of the routes that I'm seeing and and you're you're correct um after you and I have spoken commissioner we we have been and specifically right outside this building um we have been looking at that and so vetting those changes with staff is what what are the long-term plans for Simo County uh uh in 2019 2020 we came up with a Simo County specific Transit plan as we did with Orange County and acola if it's time to revisit that it we'll be happy to sit and have a workshop and you know what does the new Transit System look like in Simo County and I'm not sure that in 2019 we needed a a full bus for some of these routes either so I guess I just need to understand and I think the county manager especially needs to understand what is the role of our staff and how in the weeds do we need to be to give direction to lyns on what we want or does links say here are all of the opportunities and efficiencies that we see for you and here is what we recommend to rightsize your routes which which of those are should we be doing it's very it's an iterative process it's you all set the vision for the county and we can come in with recommendations um you know uh there has been discussion of about uh bela's new on on demand um with the smaller vehicles um if that is something we want to explore we we're more than happy to do that okay um on uh the 2025 operating budget expenses salaries wages and fringe benefits I know that you probably have a lot of different um uh groups rolled up into that number but um um Union negotiations play a a I would imagine a significant role in in this number yes who sits on our negotiating team for links so the links team has outside Council that leads the negotiations along with Mr Antman as CFO um our coo in-house Council HR we bet the benefits those contracts are then brought to the board um for ratification does the board get an opportunity to give direction to staff on what those negotiations should look like there depending on the discussion there can be an executive session to especially if it is going to be a significant cost increase um so and and yeah the the term sheets are are weighed in okay as with all of our organizations our our value the money that we are spending mostly is in our people and um certainly those drivers and employees are carrying very precious cargo um but that's also something that I think this board keeps a very close eye on um as as well so um when we talked about uh the 2025 capital budget funding and Lenny you made you made verbal mention of the southern operations center in this uh sorry in the in the following page the 2025 capital budget expenses under facilities that was where you mentioned that um the 17 million for the southern operations center for property um the process for selecting that property in a very reader digest version have you found the property and what was the process for determining what that would be so we engaged a consultant to look at the southern service area which included South Orange Oola County I believe over 120 properties were narrowed down um part of the process with FTA is that we cannot engage in negotiations until it is cleared environmentally and that is the process we are going through now it's the same process that we did with the currently under construction Pine Hills so if we if we get cleared with from FTA to be able to enter into negotiations we will go to the board and ask for authorization to enter into negotiations if the FTA doesn't clear it there's no reason in having the conversation so my question was actually back further when did the board give like how how did this property get selected and how did we choose to spend money to go to that like h I feel like I'm missing a gap I wasn't there so it may have happened when commissioner her was there I don't know so the the southern operations base has been in the long range plans both at links and metro plan for many years including it was just presented as the in the prioritized project list at metrop plan last Wednesday the a southern operations base as well as a new operations or a northern operations base so regardless of the merits of those moving forward with that we are currently leasing space at the city of CMI um to store 45 47 buses down there we are capped so the process is is there available land and that process started three years ago to start reviewing available land for a southern operation space so whereas commissioner you are looking for a direct vote and moving forward the southern operations base has been adopted as part of the budget for the last five years as a line item okay and and just I know my colleagues have more questions I don't you no well thank you um I just I was at the um oversight committee meeting where the slide was shown about the projection of the funding partner responsibility out into 2028 or 2030 or whatever it was and I had a heart attack because I'm trying to figure out how we how we Reign this in this is this those projections aren't sustainable for us and um and I'm I don't mean to speak for my colleagues but I know what are I know what our budget looks like and and I'm just trying very hard to figure out how how we can keep this reasonable with the current funding partner agreement that we have because there are no caps the SunRail agreement that we just all approved had caps I think the there was a prior formula that included caps and then for whatever reason over the course of the last however many years we said no we're not going to do that anymore we're just going to you know pay whatever I don't I don't feel like financially this County can continue to afford to just pay whatever our portion of the deficit is we've got to start to see something change and whether that that's uh right sizing the fleet or cutting routes or whatever it is um it I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm nervous about about the future so that's I'll this is not personal this is me this is very much a numbers holy how are we going to afford this what did you say I said holy  okay just want to make sure I said it I think I actually said that I like I'm being I'm being transparent in what I said perfect I love directness Comm Mr thank you Mr chairman I appreciate your being here today but I just received this about a day or so ago and I really didn't have time yet to go through with my staff so next time we do this I'd appreciate at least a couple more days so I can go with the staff to get into the weeds or maybe get a presentation by links in my office that would all be uh advantageous to reduce the amount of time that we're spending here uh that being said I'm a little perplexed because I can go back to 2014 where we talked about Oxford Road and the Operation Center and there was commitment from links to do something what happened can someone make a a statement I know a little bit about that but I'll wait I'm still waiting for links to move forward with the Oxford Road and now I'm hearing that you moving forward Oola County or South Orange County what happened to South seminal commissioner no excuses but 2014 was prior to my time I understand that but your links it is it's still links and you're correct and again as I stated so I'm correct so let put the correctness on the side how do we lose status that we're now looking at South Orange Oola County that being said we'll put a pin in that because that's an issue I'll I'll talk to our County Manager about that I think we all will at some point and I really think that uh our County Manager needs to figure out how to speak to whoever they need to speak to to move uh what do you call it Oxford Road back into the game I don't know what happened but something happened because we're going to be starting construction on Oxford Road and if you think I'm going to be paying to rebuild it for links you're sadly mistaken just County Manager uh I would like for you to discuss with us how you've done efficiencies and different types of processes and what those were to reduce the cost that we're seeing here today specific to Service delivery the budget the overall budget how have you reduce the overall expenditure of links over this past year so that we the citizens of SEO County are looking at a more costeffective system I think the first and foremost is that we have put a priority on hiring bus operators I think if you look at this time last year we were down um 75 to 100 bus operators which was a significant increase in the overtime we've entered into a partnership with Valencia College to train our C do our CDL training the pass rate is 100% And it's 99.9 because there was an equipment failure on one of the buses it was not the driver's fault but um it we are also seeing some longevity with that training versus the training that we were doing inhouse um uh we triy we tried hiring incentives that didn't move the needle but I'm asking how you how you been reduced in cost it's overtime lower than the overtime I was there when that would that effort took place other than the wage increases that are primarily contractually agreed to and contracts for Parish transit and things like that link staff work very hard to contain and or reduce expenses when we look at it fuel in the budget year-over-year is flat there's no increase in fuel whatsoever and we know how fuel is going um we worked very very hard there materials and supplies which includes the maintenance of our facilities and all of our vehicles year-over-year is a $300,000 increase and that's on a um $10 million line item and that $300,000 increase is a onetime increase because we have to uh run rovate the parking lot where we have a lot of cracks we have to have a crew come in and sell it and whatnot the actual maintenance of the vehicles in the facilities is flat year over year our leases and what not the expense you can see a reduction of $470,000 um we other than the areas that are beyond their control uh casualty and liability yes there's an increase of $300,000 by the course of an insurance policy that we have no control over okay thank you uh I would like to get some more information because I know there are some cities around the country uh Phoenix has one that's actually using technology to reduce their cost and i' like to get some information from our staff so it doesn't turn into another Oxford Road uh where you know Robo bus uh Uber there's a lot of different ways to offset this uh by increasing our budget for links and we're having buses as the commissioner stated that have very little ridership in them yes very very little I'm just okay or half a person buy the person Uber ticket I mean that's should be a lot cheaper than having a bus that's x amount of feet long uh I'd like to look at at that because our budget's only increased by 8% this year is that correct Mr J our revenue revenue total revenue budget increased by 5.6% general fund okay well then I think that's the that's the number we should be looking at links with you know whatever that percentage is and if we got to go below that that's fine but as the commissioner said this is non sustainable and we need to have our staff look at this to get into the numbers maybe we need to be looking at the the funding model when was the last time the funding model was reviewed so that it's has parity across the the counties when is the last time we looked at the uh mileage per bus and to make sure we're getting the right amount of Lane mileage per bus and ridership per bus there's a lot aspects of this that we should be looking at and of course the amount of people riding in the bus if there's only one person riding in the bus we shouldn't have a commissioner pointing that out I'm sorry that should be someone else pointing out I met some really nice people though I'm sure you did but we're only having this conversation once a year or maybe twice a year uh we need to get very serious with this by increasing it this much I for one will not be involved in that I will be making a motion or a part of the the motion to deny that funding increase this is not sustainable and we need to be looking at this in other Technologies other ways to do it uh this is ludicrous and the Mion thank you okay so I'll I'm going to pick up so this is going to seem rather random because it's a random list and I'm going to start from the bottom funding model the funding model as I understand it is driven by trips the funding model is driven by service hours service hours so if we want to cut the bus that has one person on it we do it and our number goes down correct so if we deny the budget request and we say this is how much we're going to give you then you're going to come back and say then this is what your bus routes will look like is that accurate okay so that's doable um with regard to Oxford Road I can only tell you that in the year that I sat on the that on your board I never heard the word Oxford Road come up I do think it was before your time it wasn't transitioned to me as a board member sitting on that board that this was a request of this board prior to me getting here I arrived here in 2020 November and served one year that was the year before commissioner lockart so I would tell you that some of that I believe is how we transition board members onto these boards which there's not a handoff there's not a you know these are the five issues that we should be working these are the whatever and we've had turnover and staff on those committees so I'll just throw that out there that we need to figure that out I think on the side of links though I would tell you that now now I'll go to 100,000 ft I have never felt that I had voice in that room let's just call that like it is we are the little potato that sits at the table that says nice to have you here and by the way here's your pink shirt that's not you that's just by virtue of the makeup of the board we sit at the will of the Mayors and now aola County because they have a bigger investment in the organization and they have quite honestly a bigger need right and so I think we have to acknowledge and accept that that's our place in the universe and figure out what it is we do with that which may be something different something entirely different um if you write size so now I am going rather randomly but if you write size the 60 foot bus that's carrying the one person to a van does that change the funding model am I paying less for the van than I did for the bus it depends on how you provide the service is it geographical or is it running this if it's running the same route no the cost of the route is the driver in the seat for the service hour I just want to point that out that when we switch all of this to vans that doesn't lower our funding rate I thought that was the answer so um so that's probably not a solution I I would tell you that that model of funding drives the lack of willingness not willingness lack of need to look at doing it more efficiently cuz the I realize the driver and the cost associated with it are the majority of the cost but you cannot tell me that running one of those big buses cost the same as running a small van could be wrong cuz some of them are electric I don't know but I bet you all in it's not um so I I just want to point that out what was the increase that was given to staff in terms of salary it looks like I did rough math 7% but that's probably not right uh in the contracts it's uh 3% 4% 4% one of the things that drives that though is that well there's benefits that and pensions and whatnot to go up on top of it um so you have to look at the cost of the pension expense but also the drivers and the mechanics have what they call a step function they come in at say 78% of top wage and every year they they're there they go up for 5% and so you might have a 4% increase but your Junior employees are also getting the step and so as senior employees leave you you're losing people at the top but as people rise up you know so once you're once you're there five years you're at top of scale so you get just the 4% but the folks that are coming in that are junior they they're coming in at three4 of the full salary so their increase might be S or 8% that year I really wish I hadn't asked that question given the number of CDL drivers that we have in this organization so I just want to give a shout out to all of our employees that have CDL license of how much we love you and how horrible it would be to be driving around Orlando in a bus we want you right here in Seal County that sounds like a heck of a deal um oh God the budget stabilization I I think you said this so there's a couple places I'm going to own that you probably said it and I was still ruminating on the fact that you said before that uh how much is left are we down to the last two years um 27 will be the last year 27 will be the last year so 25 is what we're projecting part of the reason the percentage increases so much is because we're getting back to the point where we'll be able to fully fund we're funding the actual increase plus the increase that wasn't acknowledged for three years at the beginning of covid right and so once we get past Co we've done models and timing the models um we get down to say an average of somewhere between five and 7% increase it's a lot lower than what this is this is making up for the years when there were no increase so that we could be considerate to the counties that were funding us because we did have the offer and cares dollars available so we're going to have this one and then two more behind it at this level no yes no that's what he's saying well it's not it's declining yeah it's declining it's declining the amount of stabilization dollars are using is declining the increase is flat consistent he flatlined the increase with the math so so so that way each year you need less and less stabilization funds because there's not that many dollars available so at the beginning we were using $32 million a year and the last year we'll use maybe $3 million so so we're getting three years of this is roughly a 20% increase three years we're going to get a 60% bump to end up at 5% per year at some point my at right at some point I've doubled twice in that no it's 15 and a half% a year and the average will be somewhere between 5 to seven right five to seven but I take the 15 a half times three I have three more years I have this one plus two more and I don't know I did the math from 117 to 140 and I got a 19% inre two things that happened we like I said there were three years we were at the same rate there was no increase but then also at when Co was first over we were having a really hard time hiring drivers as uh um Tiffany mentioned we were 75 drivers short at the beginning of the year the market was out there for labor I mean there were huge increases across the board we had to come up to um the rate that the market was demanding for all for bus drivers I mean we we compete with Greyhound we compete with Disney we compete with Mayors we compete with everybody um and so there was a couple years where there were unusually higher increas inrees there were you know market rate adjustments for the drivers that compensated a larger increase than normal so that Aid up some of that increase also and and I will say that we did have an executive session in the year that I was there and we were brought into consideration for the contracts Etc so I do recall that happening I also however do not recall other than a budget session the talking about the southern Operation Center and any further discussion it is it is just simply it it may happen in the other meetings I never attended the oversight meeting we had staff that attended the oversight meeting they did brief me about it it just wasn't a discussion item so it's just sort of happening in the background quite honestly probably being driven by The Advocates for Oola County which is a great thing so we have a couple of choices as I see it we either jump into this mix full boore and we start advocating and drive everybody's cost up as well which I hear is may be some of the desire at the same time that we're doing that though I would highly recommend that we figure out is there a more efficient way for us to do this I don't know whether that's on our own or with you quite honestly I think it would probably be with you because you know how to do this and we don't I'll just start with that um and and quite honestly I'm not 100% certain that the service that we're providing to our citizens is as robust as it is in the other counties and we still can't afford it so but the but the transportation need is different um and we have to acknowledge that so I I think it's all bets on here in terms of how we analyze this um and it is unfortunate that we're here and rather surprised but we're here and rather surprised that's just the reality and that's it anyone have to follow up anything before I try to close out close it well the only thing that I I would say is I do think that a session on this topic would be important because I do think you know well I hear people saying what about the Oxford Road frankly I don't know that I want to invest any more into a system that is is an old school Urban methodology of moving people around a county when what we have always pred ourself on in seminol county is being a little more Forward Thinking and and being and gosh that's going to sound horrible and I'm not slamming you for not being forward thinking but just moving a bus from point A to point B on a particular schedule I mean people are used to being able to pick up a phone on their their phone and have an app and get to wherever they want to go directly there and and and and in some cases for less money and so I'm just looking at this $14 million a year and how we could utilize that if whether it's again with links or without links um to to deliver service transportation services to the folks in our community who need it our team has estimated that we have approximately 3500 to 4,000 Unique Individuals in seminal County who utilize these Services $14 million for will be generous 4,000 people is a lot of money and um and and as much as I understand regionalism and being a team player I was elected to do the right thing for taxpayers of seminal County and seminal County Citizens and I don't know that this system and in continuing to invest more in this system with a n with a brick and mortar structure is is the direction that that I would want to go um so I I am certainly looking forward to having more detailed robust conversations and understanding where our staff is in in helping to determine these routes and how they're I I'm in the dark on that Mr chairman commissioner GL I'll make it quick commissioner you're absolutely right uh to put more money into Old technology may not be the best asset or the best direction that we should be taking for this County spending the Public's money but at the same token we need to be looking at this because this is non sustainable and I know you said that okay and at the same token you know we just can't go to get along to get along just with the region and and that's why I can't support this budget as it's stated right now and I'm hoping that we can actually have a work session ask our staff to bring things back look at uh what is the next step and how to approach this with links or without links and I think that's what we should be doing do we go to Valia County don't know and that's just an option I'm not saying that's the right thing to do but the numbers don't lie and as the commissioner stated with the small amount of people that's using this system get them all Uber tick okay what is our time frame I no like and when we talk about this what is the time frame for us needing to make a decision to either um cut routes or modify how quickly do we need to do this well I think that's maybe a question for links when do you need an answer back from it said the soonest that we can make any service changes would be December so but with this budget uh in fact as we have gone through the budget process we have been notified by Oola County that they are cutting some of their services so and we have already built that into their portion of it so it sooner is always better but the first chance that we will have to make that change is in December and and that is because because of the service changes that we have to do the process there's a public involvement process it has to have public hearings um I I just wanted you to be able to say that out loud it wasn't just because you won't it's because you can't no thank you and so it is uh it is a prescribed process that we have to follow all right I'll try to bring this in for landing if you can go to um page 120 of the presentation please What's the title of the slide uh funding partner operating share it's at the bottom right hand corner it's 118 119 should be the next one it's a pie chart 120 I guess they've got a out of order it's a pie chart yeah keep on there you go yep well it's not 120 it's 120 on mine I'm not sure why it is so I'm maybe y'all got a different presentation than I did I'll try to make this as brief as possible I arrived here in 2018 during my first budget session I met with Mr Jackson said this is the most insane operating cost inefficiency that I've ever seen as a businessman during that first budget hearing session uh commissioner that's no longer here and and at least one that is here reminded me well commissioner it's it's you know you're not going to make money on this it is it is what it is you've got to provide transportation for those in your community and we get it's not cost effective but this really tells the story and this tells the story it's not the tail waging the dog it's the dog waging the tail to commissioner hers point we are a flea riding on the dog uh and we're giving our fair share of of what is believed to be a partnership throughout the region and all I'm all about being a good partner but I will tell you at $14 million and once the stabilization funding goes away I would argue that this County could probably purchase a very small Fleet of vehicles staff it and perform a function that's probably much more efficient for those people that want to ride and and much more efficient for our budget process or contract with a third party uh to do those Paratransit type things and other mobilities I've looked at the numbers of ridership um it it just doesn't make sense I understand we have to provide and need to provide transportation for those in our community that otherwise have no Mobility or weight to get around but at $14 million and arguably if if I run some quick numbers 202 7 it's going to be millions of dollars more and in fact it looks like it'll be more expensive than SunRail um which is a whole another debacle uh in my opinion I'm out I'm done I'm done agreeing to fund this model uh completely uh you know I've gone along to get along since I arrived here in 2018 believing this was historically the best method the best model um against my own business principles and and financial Acumen um but I think staff does need to take this up have a a very candid look and discussion as to where we go from here you know just at a high level I would argue for the ridership you might be able to call Uber and purchase 5 million do worth of gift cards and accomplish what we're doing here and contract with a par a Transit company or one of our ambulance companies we already have relationship with uh to move those that are unable or need additional assistance to move to doctors and and so forth like that um I'm not going to beat that horse as far as I'm current concerned it's been dead since the day I've gotten here and I've I've gone along with what the recommendations of my fellow Commissioners and desire my fellow Commissioners Oxford Road what I can tell you about that it started out as a trip party agreement between the property owners at the high simal County and Lynx very early on it was identified that the sunrust building or the sunrust property at the intersection of uh 436 and whatever the other road was there um was identified initially to be a location uh to be a trip party agreement that it would be partially purchased by the Oxford rone property owner in exchange uh under Link's recommendations they would man it Simo County would pay to build the station which I think was somewhere around $4 million the sunrust property then went off the market uh and then of course Oxford Road negotiations did what they did and went right left all over the map by that time it sort of fell off everybody's radar uh then there was a pickup of that there was discussion between the high Li property owner and the Lowe's property owner to purchase a section of the Lowe's parking lot along Oxford in order to purchase a place to build a station but then of course the whole Oxford Road thing as far as development in that Corridor has sort of fallen off the map um I know we're moving forward with Oxford Road but it doesn't at this point include the development that was promised by the third party of this agreement so that's just a little background on on what happened there and I I think that uh my question at that time was I think the number was 3.5 almost $4 million why would the county be building a whole new station there um and I was looking for another path but I concur with a lot of things have been said but I think we really this is a candid conversation that we ultimately have to have I think the cans been kicked down the road long enough um I think we we've got to have a work session and and look at some viable options and I think that's what I'm hearing consensus from the commissioner so we'll move on from there you got your direction yes thank you both for being here today we sincerely appreciate it very much and and and hope the rest of your week as well we take a five minute recess you want to take five minutes or if you're going to take five let's take 10 can't smoke a cigarette I can't walk [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] n n [Music] a [Music] [Music] I even go have a cigarette ACC somebody I'm supposed to go have one should not you should not have had one okay thank you so next up we have the Florida Department of Health Dr Ethan Johnson welcome sir good afternoon uh thank you I'm here with Anna scer and Tom Kellis assistant director and our business manager uh I am the the new person as well as the last person on the agenda so I'll try to be uh thorough and brief um all right so for today's presentation even though we're talking about the Health Department's budget and um how you all support us I did organize it around the our core functions um the communicable disease control environmental Public Health Community Health and preparedness are the core functions that uh County Health departments in Florida are statutorily required to perform and uh you guys's uh contribution to our Direct Services really helps um secure these services in the community and uh simal County government staff also assist with these Services through partnership in some type of way uh under each service so our budget year ends officially uh June 30th uh so this was our projected revenue for the current fiscal year at the time this was submitted which was probably toward the beginning of last month um the majority of our funding comes down in state and federal and uh this accounts for almost uh well the state and federal funding accounts for almost 70% of our overall operating budget uh this outlines the projected revenue for 2425 fiscal year uh with most of the the decrease um coming from the state and federal funds category um that decrease is uh mostly attributed to special funding that we received for our STD disease intervention Specialists uh a regional minority Health work that we were funded at one point in time to perform and then the last of the 19 funding and this is just a better representation of the overall budget uh so this is the three-year um projected and actual from 22 to 25 uh the variation in the projected revenue is slightly misleading because of how some of our uh funding from special projects and federal programs has historically been staggered or delayed um another thing that I think is probably most noticeable here is the that uh deficit marked in 2425 that is an overestimate and I apologize for that the the issue there uh at the time this was submitted we had loaded the 3% increases for staff that was approved by the state legislature for all state employees as an expense that had not yet been loaded in as Revenue um from the state um also we projected being fully staffed which we currently are fully staffed but we know we will not be um by the end so uh that that deficit will be significantly lower than what's presented there for 2425 um and then something else that I would note as a part of uh my performance Expectations by the state our cash balance or trust fund percentage can't be any lower than 3% or any higher than 10% so it's still in that range so uh the contributions from s simal County government uh we're requesting uh continued funding at this level um in terms of the direct service is uh as I mentioned they're essential to supporting the core functions of the health department and I have a few slides after this that uh gets into more detail of what those Direct Services are uh but the majority of it being uh communicable disease control uh and some of the Clinical Services that are being provided um the diabetes prevention program that serves um individuals who are at risk for type two diabetes as well as individuals with diabetes who are having trouble managing uh it is a an 8 hour course um that we have a individual health educator who is actually uh performing them we've done uh We've encountered we have 44 participants in the program Each of which with individualized eight- hour sessions um and then additionally we are also doing uh blood glucose and A1 A1C testing in the community so there's about 1,175 residents uh who receed that service and then of course referrals afterwards um the school Dental sealant service program we provided uh 350 oral screenings to 9 uh and provided 910 sealants uh that's performed by one dental hygienist so uh she is working and she's also in the clinic as well uh at the health department the dental clinic um I have a slide coming up where we'll outline some of the work that's happening with the mobile unit specifically um and then for our community nutrition program that's also managed by one Health educator uh she did seven 70 79 nutrition and physical uh physical activity courses it served over a th000 simal County residents both children and adults in simal County government facilities elementary schools apartment complexes um and then in addition to that this health educator also coordinates the Health Department's um Outreach efforts uh related to this so she's uh coordinated the Health Department's participation in 73 other uh Outreach events outside of the 79 uh nutrition and physical act physical activ uh educational programs that she's hosted um so this slide highlights some of the more specific grants um outside of uh what the count what I've already outlined that comes from you all from the county um one I won't go over this because it's a bit repetitive but one of the things that I will highlight in 2425 is the closing the G the closing the Gap Grant it's a state Grant uh intended to address desp Health outcomes it comes from the office of minority Health uh within the Department of Health um over the past 6 months uh we've used that funding to Pilot two programs one is delivering a doula difference the other is cradle seal uh cradle seminal is a nursing home visiting program uh meant to improve Maternal Child Health outcomes for individuals who are at an increased risk for adverse Health outcomes uh we have a registered nurse who will visit individuals on a bi-weekly basis uh from the end of their pregnancy all the way through the first two years uh with the toddler like I said it's is the pilot that's just started a few months back um and we currently have four mothers and their children enrolled um we are also currently seeking additional external funding um to expand that uh but so far so good with that program uh so we're excited to report back more on that and then the other program I mentioned uh delivering a doula difference uh is the same thing in terms of it's intent to improve Maternal Child Health outcomes here in Simo County but we would like to get more uh registered not registered um certified douas uh here in simal County um who are also doing working with um mothers who are at an increased risk for um not so great um outcomes in terms of pregnancy and uh just for context if you're not familiar with the Doula basically doulas are um certified to be birthing and pregnancy coaches and Advocates and there's a lot of peerreview literature that supports uh having a doua present during a pregnancy and afterwards improves Health outcomes of both the mother and the child um so moving forward as I mentioned I wanted to focus on um our core functions uh because really the the cash contribution from the county uh that supports our core functions and Direct Services is really essential to protecting the health of um simal County residents uh one of our core functions is uh communicable disease control which everyone is probably way more familiar with than they wanted to be after the last 5 years or so um um but uh in our epidemiology program uh we investigate link to care and provide treatment for a number of infectious diseases uh we completed close to 1500 epidemiologic investigations since July 2023 uh each with varying levels of work associated with them of those 1500 investigations uh that was inclusive of six uh travel Associated uh mosquito born illnesses to my knowledge there's never been a locally acquired mosquito born illness in Simo County um the eight infectious TB cases uh as well as one uh measles case um and as a part of preventing as another part of preventing the spread of uh infectious disease we're also a site for the federal Refugee health program uh so we have provided 568 uh Refugee Health screenings as well as uh numerous uh immunizations to those clients as well and again that's a federal program and federally funded and then in terms of STD and HIV these numbers are only um for our Thursday free clinic day and I wanted to highlight that because um during the first 10 months of last of the current fiscal year we did uh we saw 756 clients on the free testing day of those 756 5 56 of them tested positive for uh sexually transmitted infection and uh 46 uh tested positive for HIV um which of course is great because then those people are able to get into treatment um and on top of that outside of free testing day uh our staff did still uh investigate over 2,000 other STD cases that were reported um Environmental Health Services that's another core function um I over the past six months uh for the first time in probably a few years we've been able to actually start catching up on um some of the inspections and obligations for the Department uh that's largely attributed to us finally being to being able to be fully staffed which today we're fully staffed but also I just found out we got a resignation letter or we'll be getting one from someone so we won't be fully staffed probably in a couple weeks but uh the fact that we've been fully staffed has really helped with us catching up on some of those environmental health obligations I know um the septic program continues to be a very difficult program to administer I know uh my own background I actually my first job uh with the Department of Health was as an environmental health specialist I did do septic inspections food inspections uh pretty much every program that we do I've inspected or permited um so I do know firsthand how difficult the program can be um however our permit our new permit turnaround is down to a day right now uh which is good so I know that we still get some calls you know and there's still some um folks you know that need some assistance but um I'm I'm happy in the direction that we're going there uh with EH and from July 23 to April uh 2 to April 24 uh we completed did 2255 inspections investigations and uh permits so uh the mobile unit uh which is uh funded this year through both the support of the county and the Department of Health office of minority Health um from July 23 to April 24 uh the mobile Health Services Unit condu conducted uh 202 Outreach outreaches or stops um across the county uh and provided 8,250 Services um which ranged from women's Wellness exams and Family Planning services to immunizations and STD testing um something else that we're um working on because I know that there are several mobile units in our community which I think is great uh but one of the things that we have been doing for some of those organizations that are also providing mobile services we've been trying to coordinate with them so one we're not crossing paths at the same place and also when PL when possible the services aren't duplicative um so a lot of times there are some mobile units where the we offer actually complement uh what the other units are providing if in fact we coordinate to be in the same spot on the same day um everybody is familiar with the women and infants Children's Program it's a supplemental nutrition program I wanted to highlight it because Community Health is a core function uh Wick is one of the most heavily utilized programs Wick is another program who uh that has been underst staffed here for a while but we finally are fully staff well we have maybe one vacant can see I think in Wick so uh this past fiscal year we were able to provide 67,500 individual services to 5,600 clients um and I think it's important to note that a lot of those food benefits received by our simal County Wick clients are then spent at the 48 Wick vendors here in simol County our school health program uh is also another major part of uh Community Health we increase the number of students who have in for services and that can be seen in the increases in the number of services that were actually provided uh to the students also our positive Youth Development workshops um are coordinated by the school health program um and designed to strengthen and encourage healthy behaviors in young people um as of May 15th um the school health Team completed 114 youth meetings at eight different sites um the fall prevention program I wanted to highlight that too because I've seen a few other fall prevention programs one thing that's great about this one is that it's not funded by local or state funds the National Association of city and county health officials uh funds are for all provention program and similar to other programs it aims to reduce the incidence of Falls for older adults via home visiting as well as uh Community education courses but I think also uh what makes the program a little different is that we also educate older adults on some of the social determinant of health and maybe some non-traditional um lifestyle factors that may impact um older adult Health uh so this year we did 47 home visits and provided 14 educational presentations to senior living facilities and I think the last like program that I highlighted that I just bring in front of you was something that we just did it just ended a couple weeks ago um is our um health literacy program uh we had a few staff who noticed that our uh Spanish speaking clients were struggling even with the um translated uh documents um and so we know if you're coming to the health department and having difficulty being able to understand that we know that if you go to your primary care doctor or you're encountering the system in any other way you're going to struggle uh so we partnered with simal State College to provide Esau classes to adult Learners at the health department um one of the things that with our context at simal you know they're saying it's really difficult to get um adults especially if they're older adults to come to a college campus if they've never been to one before so it was really a great opportunity a great partnership we had about 18 adult Learners we just finished our first cohort two three weeks ago we gave them certificates it was very well received we actually had uh one couple who's uh Creo uh Haitian cre speaking um so that was just really great so we're currently recruiting for the next uh cohort of that as well and I and I highlight it only because I wanted to make sure that I included some of the more non-traditional things that um not only your financial contribution but your in kind contributions help support uh at the health department so it's just it's been really exciting um so other than that of course we have other programs indirectly supported uh by you all are um our breast and cervical cancer program uh even the sexual assault nurse examiner um program uh there's a lot as you know happening at your health department and I guess I'll just say personally I just feel really grateful uh for the opportunity it's been a whirlwind since I've been here in August of uh learning engaging meeting people um but I I immediately you all told me this when I came here but within the first weeks I knew that uh simal county is a very special place uh and not to say anything bad about any other counties in Florida but it's very different here in terms of everyone's willingness to work and uh one thing I'll say about my own staff you know most recently we had the opportunity to host revive Awareness Day at the health department and we had a lot of officials and leaders coming uh locally and it was just amazing to me how the health department staff as well as some of the county staff who came to assist were just searching for things to do looking for things looking for ways to you know Assist and I just think that's a very different spirit and I never want to take that for granted because I know that's uh different here in s but other than that uh that's all we have today thank you Doctor very much and and if we could can you go to page I think it's five of that where it says commical Disease Control yes and and I'm going to ask this for the record because I'm going to tell you I know my phone and my office is going to ring or emails are going to come in and I'm sure my fellow Commissioners Refugee Health Services when it says Refugee Health comprehensive health screening within 90 days of arrival is this related to the Haiti not at all okay tell us about that yes so the so the refugee health program that's a federal program those dollars come from the federal government it's meant to screen people who have been granted uh refugee status once they come into the country they have 90 days to get that screening at one of the sites that provide the screening we're one of the many sites funded to provide it um and if they uh if they don't get that screening then they risk jeopardizing their Refugee status and the intent behind it the reason for not every Health Department puts it under Disease Control uh our rationale for having in Disease Control is because we really see it although it is a service to the individual we see it as a service to the community because if they are coming with some type of communicable disease we want uh them to be aware and we want the community to be aware understood I just want to make sure that we're clear this is not folks from the southern border that all of a sudden ended up here not at all I just want to make sure we had that for the record come y those calls are going to come yes thank you very much we'll start with commissioner her and work our way down the DI so I just want to make sure I understand understand what the ask is Mr ja is this a flat budget request their budget request is flat for fiscal year 25 I just thought we should get that out on the record and you should own that so you win the prize for the day um and I suspect for the budgeting cycle to be honest with you so that's fabulous um I'll just comment on one of the programs those language classes that you're hosting in your setting that is genius those folks are not going to go to a college campus they're just not going to go to a college campus but the universe of going to the medical clinic is just like home right we've built I've been a part of an organization that built out entire healthc care delivery system around that methodology and the social the social side of that is a big deal that's a game Cher for the health care for those individuals that are successful in going through that I happen to be in the business of translate I don't do the transl but of having to translate benefit guides which talk about how you access your healthare in the traditional system and we never get it right we can't get it right because the words don't exist and so that I just hats off to you that's phenomenal and the number of people going through it is is fabulous I hope that grows like crazy we were we were hoping to have maybe five or six people show up so that first Wednesday night when they came our staff and I have to say that you know the credit really goes to our staff we have a maintenance person we have a supervis who understand the experience of being Spanish speaking coming to the country have to learn English uh you know and they were really emphatic about please support this you know we had and of course simal County I mean uh simal College yeah it's I I mean it's fabulous because the healthcare delivery system is hard to navigate when you speak the language and now not speaking the language the written material is all that gets communicated you leave that you hand it a document that's all you you not getting a discussion and if you are you're not getting it at a point when you can absorb it so really really great program thank you and thank you for the zero budget increase commissioner lari any comments is well presented well done I know we've all said this individually to you but welcome to the county thank you commissioner lockart great work um I'm curious how we're collaborating with our community paramedicine program with some of the services that you're delivering or are we you so so we get referrals from them I I know um there's a department within the seminol county that has two case workers and they communicate with our community health workers so we collaborate when they cannot go we go okay I think it would be interesting to know um who who were what type not who specifically but what types of clients we're seeing who is getting the referrals what that Synergy is like like because um I would you know we're we're all trying to accomplish the same thing and if there is an expertise in one area or another that we know that you know the health department is the go-to for these um and and that may all be happening behind the scenes we just you know we don't know about it but um it is happening we have meetings with them every quarter oh okay fantastic and I believe Chief kinley's first tomorrow uh Mr J is right fire so we'll I'll make sure he's prepared yeah I mean it's not like I'm not going to grow you I'm not grow any on it I'm just you know it's not like you're driving a 40 foot long bus around town with one person on with with one passenger on it the but the driver said I I say how many people are on the bus and he said one every but he had to look back it was cute and then he and he goes oh no wait two me it was darling um talking about environmental health that has been um as you know a challenge hiring employees for one thing and then the the handoff and again the Synergy with code enforcement can you talk to us a little bit about how that's working sure um so a little bit which I won't go into too much detail about uh but I'm open to giving you as much information as I have so part of the the thing that's happening now at this state level is that in 2019 because of the Clean Water Act a part of that is the transfer of the septic program to the Department of Environmental Protection um with that transfer it's a phased approach um simal County could happen this time next year or the year after but no later than July 1 126 because of that that has complicated at least whose role is what um and so in terms of enforcement and in terms of how we work with uh code enforcement which it it it seems like it has been at least the last few that I've uh talked with you about and then with staff um it's worked out well I think the problem is that the legal Authority Now lies with DP however me as the health officer I am supposed to sign off on the uh the abatement letters basically that are being sent um which I I don't really understand that but you know that is the current makeshift kind of response until it is fully transitioned I will say uh locally I think one of um just my priorities when I'm talking to my staff and environmental health is that you know Staffing constraints happens you know um mistakes happen but I just want to re I try to reiterate that you know being customer focus should be the priority so even if we can't do something or did something incorrectly or maybe something felt the correct make sure we follow up call that person and at least go all the way out to what we can do and I and I do think at least from my perspective the few incidents that I've seen we we've come back and kind of tried to follow up as much as possible and a few of those circumstances have been abated by now some of the ones that I know have been like on the radar for a while and they just refused to a few of those have been addressed so I I think that that has been working well great all right well your can do attitude and customer service Focus I think is what's absolutely the this is the result of of your leadership and and we just are so thrilled to have you here so thank you thank you Mr Constantine thank you Dr Johnson it is wonderful to have you here and certainly we welcome staff being here too congratulations I guess on your budget um uh just a statement since you started in the uh in in the Department of Health with a septic tank program God love you um but uh I can just tell and you know this uh DP Kicking and Screaming did not want it and Department of Health was more than happy to turn it over to them I'm sure but it went back a long long ways from the fact that they were worried about affluent going down the streets and now it's clean water the question I wanted to ask you your predecessor had a program that um I think a lot of people had told me was fairly successful I didn't see anything on here maybe times have changed but it was in food deserts we were they were having program s where you know they would having food opportunities and fresh food and everything from there are you still doing those things or is that something that um um well and I'll let Anna speak in a second I know for us one of the um big things that our staff volunteer with is we partner with you all in the Sharing Center for our food pantry that's at the health department we actually have moved to it being every other Wednesday it was every Wednesday but the need was so apparent um or is apparent and we just just did not have the food so that's I would say from my perspective that's one of the biggest ways that we're involved is through the the food pantry um and then also one thing that I would note in terms of the utilization of the food pantry the from our observations these are actually people in need as well it's not people coming because they heard it was free groceries at no because it's not convenient you know so so you're you're coordinating then with not for profits in in in the area doing that um yeah and I think did we have a paych project that um focused on nutrition I mean uh food deserts not this time but a year ago right so you can sure so we we did have a a PC project and with gos borrow and at that time we came out with the farmers market we tested it for about three years but it wasn't going well and they decided not to keep going with it because it was more like a um flea market rather than you know it didn't serve the purpose but uh we invite the people from gow to come to our food pantry and you know we're working with the Sharing Center to see if we can increase the dollars so that we can serve the community every week instead of every other week at well it makes sense that you're putting it in a place where people are already used to going as opposed to trying to start your own thing and like you said I I did not know it turned into a flea market but you could certainly see that that would have the opportunity to do so so thank you very much anything else seeing none Dr Johnson thank you much very much for your acute concentration on filling some big shoes that preceded you and and carrying that torch forward it's uh it's great to see the focus on the community and we sincerely appreciate it very much you and your staff thank you for being here thank you so much we appreciate it thank you all right um that that concludes our budget work session I will go to the county manager have we had any um any further communication with a supervisor of elections on when he can come or can't come or yes any communication at all I had my office contact him when the afternoon session started at 1 uh his staff said he is not available next week so we gave him you know if he could come tomorrow at our meeting next week uh can't he would be he's out next week and he would let us know either way if he's available tomorrow that's the last communication I got about 1:00 and you've not heard whether he's available tomorrow no okay he would he's it says that he will let us know one way or the other but and that comes from his chief of staff okay so I have not heard as of yet what uh what would the board like to do you want to wait till tomorrow we've got a pretty full day tomorrow so we may go much longer depending on how deep we get in with our directors and their budgets so go ahead commissioner lockart well I I just think you know he's either available tomorrow or he isn't and we have a full schedule tomorrow I do not want to bump any of our directors those are our internal departments they've spent a lot of time and so if he is available tomorrow it's going it it it will have to be at a time that's not bumping one of our our departments I just um does it make sense to ask does it make sense to take a five or 10 minute break and see if you can call sure his chief of staff and I mean it's it's pretty late in the afternoon now it's 3:30 and see if we can get a commitment for tomorrow or not y I can can before we do that can I just weigh in that we're not starting tomorrow until 9:30 so I certainly would be happy to be here at 7 o'clock in the morning if he can make I can't do that no no oh it's not noticed damn it okay oh yeah it's a notice issue it's definitely a notice issue it's 100% a notice issue and everyone loves Kate today I mean I'd like to make every accommodation possible and I agree that we we can't bump staff around because we it's I spoke to Tim earlier and he says tomorrow is going to be a pretty pack day pretty packed slam day what he said it was going to be easy yeah he told me it was going to be nothing that's to he set through today um so you want to take a five or 10 minute break see if we can reach and get kind of commitment this L afternoon let try one more time Pardon Me Do we have public comment there's a slide in here that says public comment let do public comments as that canny manag is doing his thing there's no public here Bob I know but we for the record call for it right agend is there anyone here from the public that would wish to make a statement to the board regarding the discussions of budgets today seeing NB public inputs closed there we go you got it 10 minutes 10 minutes [Music] and a [Music] n a la [Music] and [Music] ch o [Music] [Applause] h [Music] [Music] gray you want to explain to us yes his uh Chief of Staff just got back with us and said he is available tomorrow afternoon so I just spoke with Mr J we did put some flexibility in tomorrow afternoon so we can do him right after lunch at 1:30 if the board likes 1:30 or 1:00 we come back at 1 right oh I'm sorry one yep we come back at 1 o'cl see I'm always used to 1:30 yeah one o' sorry so one o'clock's good with y'all great yep okay we will see the soe at one let our staff know there there's going to be just to be fair just to be fair to the staff we really need to do a hard stop on that where it doesn't go past a half hour with the supervisor of election oh no absolutely just want make sure of course yeah yeah yeah yeah no I want to make sure our staff understands all the presenters that they're from the Departments here at the BCC make sure they understand there's going to be a little bit of rearrangement in the schedule so we're not taking up more of their time that's necessary so very good anything else else good for the order commissioner her I know I said this earlier today but uh tomorrow is the standing scopa meeting uh so seal County Port Authority meeting and there are issues on that agenda that I do feel like I need to be present for so uh whatever I miss I will catch up with after the fact um I just can't be in two places at one time it now looks like I'm going to miss a little more well we'll try to we'll try to move it along as efficiently as we can tomorrow and just an abundance of caution anybody here from the public wishing to make a comment no one here we will recess our work session until tomorrow morning at 9:30 thank you all very much all righty then [Music] he --------- [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] everyone and welcome to the BCC meeting this morning for a budget review it's Tuesday June 18th 2024 I would ask that uh commissioner Constantine lead us in the pledge allegiance real quickly do honor our America I say I pledge alance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you Lee thank okay I would ask that everybody please silence their cell phones and any other electronic devices that you may have your right that's right so so we have no outbursts um in respect of the presenters today uh I'm now going to turn it over to our County manager Mr Darren gray for his opening comments Mr Gray thank you uh Mr chairman and Commissioners and everyone here welcome so today we are here for two funfilled pack days of uh budget work sessions uh as you all know um what's I believe in the stle what's exciting about uh the budgeted sets the board's priorities over the over the next year so um makes sure that we're all on this on the same page so the staff um and myself have worked really hard over this last six months eight months Tim will say over a year to actually after the budget is adopted he immediately him and his staff immediately start working on next on the next year so uh we have worked really hard this year to ensure that revenues coming in actually uh equal the expenses going out as well as in uring that we have uh the board's priorities set um in the uh in the budget for next year um just to go over the schedule for today we have the uh F first up will be Mr JX our budget uh director he will just go over our major revenues uh so that you all are aware of how they're coming in over the last couple years we have our constitutional officers uh here this morning uh the only one that was I was notified last night well actually not until this morning um um that the supervisor election Mr Anderson will not be with us this morning so I placed a call in into him so waiting for a return call uh so after Mr J um that up to the the chairman I if we'll go over the supervisor yes I will uh I will go to the board for that okay and probably now's a good a time as any flavor the board do you want to proceed with the S soe's budget or do you want to try to carve out some additional time at some later date um I know people's schedules are tight I've spoken to staff we got a full full deal for tomorrow which means we would have to schedule something additional um my opinion is and my my will is moved forward with it but I will take input from each and every one of you as what you would like to do move forward agreed agreed that's unanimous we will move forward great very good um so we'll go over the supervised elections budget then we have our Clerk of the Court is here uh Mr Malloy our property appraiser Mr Johnson uh tax collector uh J.R Crow and as well as our sheriff sheriff Lima we'll hear we'll wrap up this morning we will take a break I know on the agenda doesn't show a lunch break just to let you know but we will take a break um however we do have to be back by 1 pm this afternoon I starting off with the court support uh Judge Melanie Chase has to be in court this afternoon so we need to she needs to be here at 1:00 we'll go through the um all the court support with Guardian M lien public defender State Attorney we do have links um Miss Tiffany uh Homer Hawkins will be with us this afternoon to discuss the links uh budget uh Dr Johnson with the Ford Department Health uh will wrap up this afternoon and then any public comment or the board comment we do have um note takers here so if questions are uh that you would like us to research or if we do not have an answer for we will get those we have set aside time uh tomorrow afternoon for a wrap-up session um or if there's anything the board would like us to research to bring back at a later date we we have that as well great thank you Mr C so that all right very good Mr J we are all ready for your fantastic presentation sir thank you I'm Timothy JX director with the Office of Management and budget uh today I'm pleased to present the fy2 county manager proposed budget the document is available for public download on the County's website it includes a detail record of all 20,000 accounts in the fy2 proposed budget today we'll be going over a more summarized uh presentation focused on major budget areas and over the next two days we'll cover all of the Constitutional officers court support and County departments this first chart shows our uh general fund adorm revenues which is generated by property taxes makes up 75% of the revenues in our general fund we're projecting an 8% increase for fiscal year 25 which will generate an additional 17 .9 million this 8% 8% increase is made up 6.5 from existing valuation increases and 1.5 from new per from new construction next is our half-cent sales tax program which is generated through the state of Florida's 6% sales tax collections it's distributed to all local governments in an effort to provide relief on property tax payers this is not the same as our locally generated Penny sales tax revenue it's distributed to All Counties based on population this Revenue in FY 24 is trending slightly below FY 23 levels and we're projecting to be relatively flat for the budget going into 2025 this Revenue makes up 9% of our total general fund next are State shared revenues which are also generated through the state 6% sales tax levy they make up 4% of our total general fund Revenue we are trending slightly below fiscal year 24 and we're projecting the budget to be flat in fiscal year 25 at 15 million the county levies a 4% tax on electricity water and natural gas this is not related to our water and sewer activities this revenue is typically um fairly standard we see small incremental increases each year uh we're projecting $9.2 million in the current year and 9.4 million in FY 25 our final major Revenue in the general fund is our communication services taxes this is a 5% levy on telephone cable and streaming services fiscal year 24 is falling a little bit more we had we had seen more of a leveling um we're trending to 5.1 million in the current year uh and we're budgeting $5.2 million in fy2 so those are all of the major revenues in the general fund um when you when you look at the the whole budget there is the 8% increase for adalum um overall revenues in the general fund we're expecting $17.7 million in new additional revenues which is a 5.6% increase staying with the general fund on the expenditure side the fy2 budget includes the Assumption of the counties taking over funding of SunRail starting on January 1st 2025 uh the at this time the County's estimating contribution would be $10.3 million that includes operation Capital maintenance and insurance next line shows uh the P partner contribution to Links which is $13.5 million or 1.7 $1.7 million increase we have unfunded mandates in community services for Medicaid Health Department and the medical examiner those are increasing 6.1% in fy2 our constitutional officer transfers uh are increasing $10.9 million uh or 5.6% and then if you go to the next line line you see BCC budgets uh this fy2 budget will be the first year where we do not have the article the um arpa budget stabilization subsidy that's $13.8 million which is essentially a budget increase we have projects um that's not as much of an increase as it is a reflection of the FY 24 budget including additional Investments onetime Investments and projects but we are reducing the project allocation to 10.9 million internal charges are going up a small amount based on the cost of services going up and then you have your base BCC operation which includes personnel and operating budgets for all your departments going from 125.81614610 of our total transportation operating costs we don't pay for any transportation infrastructure out of this revenue and this revenue does require 53% subsidy from our general fund next we have tourism taxes where the county collects a 5% charge on hotel room nights uh we're projecting 6.6% and $6.6 million in FY 24 and $6.5 million in fy2 25 our final major revenue is the Article 5 Court technology Revenue which is generated from a $4 service fee collected by the clerk when a document is recorded half the fee goes to the county um and you can see that this Revenue in Prior years had been around the 700 to $750,000 range it spiked in 2021 and we're currently projecting $550,000 for 2024 and 2025 moving to FTE there are currently 1,666 FTE under the BCC the fy2 proposed budget includes eight new positions with no new positions in the general fund for a total of 1,674 positions countywide vacancies when we get to the BCC presentations each director will address their vacancies we have 130 vacancies as of the printing of this presentation which is approximately 8% and finally we have our slide on countywide reserves uh we have a total fy2 proposed Reserve budget of $268 million general fund reserves of $ 56.8 million represent 18% of total revenues uh fire fund reserves of 31 million include allocations for future fire stations which the fire chief will discuss you see our sales tax fund has $5 million reserves which is the minimum recommended amount to cover cost increases on existing projects or new unanticipated projects and uh our water sewer Reserve as of this document at 52 million is slightly higher than um than usual uh the Department's working on a master plan so some of those reserves may be put into projects after future discussions with the board and finally our special Revenue reserves include highly restricted funds like our e911 fund impact fees seminal forever an MSB that concludes my presentation thank you Mr JX any questions for Mr JX from the board commissioner lockart if you don't have this right now that's okay um looking at some of the taxes that you highlighted we are not levying the maximum amount on some of those can you tell us for future conversations if necessary what what the where we are in terms of Levy and what the maximum Levy would be the two revenues that we're not maximizing uh we have a gas tax option a local option gas tax that would allow an additional 5 cents per gallon uh that can be levied to use on Transportation activities which currently does require a general fund subsidy uh based on the standard distribution from the state that would generate 5 a half to6 million for the additional 5cent gas tax and then the county levies 4% % on utility taxes that's a general fund Revenue we're allowed to go up to 10% which would generate I believe an additional 7 to8 million okay and do we have an idea of which um municipalities and counties around us Levy those additional we do that that information is uh posted on the FD website um I know fuchia County does levy I don't have the list of all the counties that Levy um it's it's not uncommon a lot of the surrounding counties do Levy that additional 5 cents on the gas STX okay all right thank you very much any other questions seeing none we will move into the supervisor elections presentation and I'm assuming there is no one here from the supervisor elections to present is that correct anybody here from the supervis of Elections seeing none Mr JX if you would uh take a moment and inform us and Mr County Manager of any conversations that you've had other than what these slides depict are there anything that we need to be aware of I can announce the budget uh the FY 24 adopted budget was 5.4 mil 5, 45733 the FY 25 request from the S soe is 4, 729911 it's a decrease of $675,000 or 12 .5% okay any questions from the board or any comments from the board well I do have some well um if y'all were going to be shy I shall not um I don't intend to be shy I just some of the questions are questions that I I feel Mr Jack certainly won't be able to answer and with Mr Anderson not being here to answer them I I'm I'm left to make assumptions which is our job I get that but I I don't want people to think that we we're not being contemplative there's just not an opportunity to have questions answered but that's okay I'm good understood and I met with Mr Anderson um I would say 30 days ago or so to go over his budget um albeit I did not receive what we have before us today I received an Excel spreadsheet that basically had some information on it which I have and looks like commissioner Constantine has as well and I was told at that time there was going to be a for approximately 14% reduction in the budget and and I had some very pointed questions that um I couldn't get answered specifically uh and I was told that that information would be forwarded to our staff and I've been speaking with staff and I have not gleaned anything at additional than what I took from my meeting with the soe my personal concerns are you know we go through this process every year and it it's always one of there's there's wants needs desires there's things that have to be funded things that we'd like to fund things that would be great to fund um but I look back on on last year and what we funded for the S soe and arguably there were some concerns expressed it was not enough um albeit we we move forward accordingly but yet there was enough money apparently in the budget to put new signage up change literature logos and all those things um so I have some concerns there and then all of a sudden you know we were also told last year that you know we would have a bigger budget this year because it was a presidential election year but I have learned that some of that was savings that was able to be applied from p purch of paper goods and so forth that were purchased under the last budget that will not necessarily need to be purchased under this budget um I I don't know that that I'm comfortable moving forward with the stated budget as is uh I think there's additional room in there in my opinion um and again the supervisor or or no one from his office is here to answer that but I have a core belief if if if we thought there was enough money last year and we moved moved forward and yet we spent money on things that arguably uh I would argue all day long were not necessary of taxpayers dollars being spent for new signage new logos and those types of things um troubles me immensely um so I would propose an additional cut beyond the 12% commissioner lockart um I I I agree with what you've said um one of the questions from last year had that I had was regarding laps salary dollars um I think we have even more laps salary dollars this year than last year um maybe that's where the money came for um the the new um signage and logos and what have you I don't know the other uh thing that has been happening I believe is um internal space modifications of the space itself that perhaps don't need to have been done um and and I don't know about all of you but I received three pieces of mail and my at my house this last week um on Lovely heavy card stock um with a a very nice message from the supervisor himself detailing all of the great things that he has done um it felt more like a campaign piece then it felt like a uh a piece of actual election mail needed for the for the voters in my household um after conferring with the county attorney's office the statute does require that voter information cards be provided it doesn't say to to what degree or at what expense or what quality or how frequently or um there was nothing nothing in my household has changed in terms of address um voter registration so our house certainly didn't need to get one much less three so I I agree that there seems like there's additional spending going on that is above and beyond the what's necessary to do the job anyone else commissioner her chairman I'd just like to understand better the absence for today's meeting was there any disclosure it just basically uh there was um a conflict something had come up and that he would not be able to attend the meeting today he did ask if there was a a future meeting that he could attend Mr chairman commissioner Constantine thank you um I had scheduled two different meetings with him in both times he had to um cancel and I'm sure it was for or we would all hope that it was for the right good reasons he called me he was very gracious um we usually and I'm not saying it it's because we're not concent trading but we give us ample we give ourselves ample time over the course of the day in these two days to go through every budget I would just simply ask um that uh we see if he can come tomorrow um I I I do not want to uh cause any um any from our standpoint any position that we haven't given him every ample opportunity to be here I will say cuz you know you do want to talk about positive I liked the fact that even though I only received a single spreadsheet before I talked to him that he did separate it from core and election I thought that was you know um a positive from last year of of course I still have questions about it within the context of that but u i i just to avoid any any any projection of that uh that you know we are just you know going to go through this and if he couldn't make it at our time then we're never going to do it let's offer him again tomorrow and um you know let's see if he if he accepts I hope he does Mr chairman I would agree I would agree with all your comments that he the board today but I'd give him the latitude uh to present to the board if not tomorrow then when and see about how we can work with him to present to not just us but to the General Public sure okay has uh anybody tried to reach out to the soe or the SE soe called anyone back uh yes uh Mr chairman I actually when I received the the email this morning I I founded him um mailbox was full so I couldn't leave a message I also uh got back with their Chief of Staff who sent me the email um told me I would discuss with with the board if there was another time and that I would get back with them okay and I as as of now I've not heard back okay and so I want to make sure when I talked to staff earlier it's my understanding that today tomorrow is pretty packed yes we have all the Departments going tomorrow so okay do we believe that we can fit the soe in tomorrow Mr J I and I don't want to short you know your folks and and and our directors from being here to to inquire and and present their budgets tomorrow's agenda is full uh we're trying to be done by p.m. it's possible if we add more presentations we could go past 5 but um you know cly the board wanted to put it in we could do it what what is the flavor you all want to try to do it tomorrow you want to try to schedule for a different time commissioner her so right on down the line I I'll just weigh in on a couple of points number one is that this now for the second cycle has become a rather large distraction it's roughly $5 million of a billion dollar budget and maybe the intention is to do that I don't know um but we need to make sure we're focused on the other portion of the billion uh so my comment is that if he can come tomorrow evening after our day as goes as it was planned that would be fabulous if he could send one of his employees this budget is not that big and not that complicated that his team probably helped him assemble it we would be happy to work with his team um but I I I have a general predisposition that it should not displace what we're doing with the rest of our teams to make sure that we are focused on the rest of the services that the citizens are entitled to with the other portion of the billion dollar budget so I I just think the distraction is is is not acceptable commissioner lri thank you Mr chairman I would not to get into this great detail but I would agree with and copy exactly what commissioner had just stated Mr lockart um I don't think it's fair to ask our team to stay after five for the supervisor of elections in this case I think if in tomorrow I think we usually we would take two days to go over all of our internal departments and we have already compressed that down to one so um if there's time during our BCC meeting uh on Tuesday maybe maybe that would be an alternative while staff is already here um that works but I I don't I don't want to further um inconvenience our team because of whatever is happening over there okay con you have any additional ad I'm I'm willing to do it whenever I mean I think that tomorrow I I've been here long enough that I know that we usually are able to get through um the budget I I do know that we're we've concentrated a little bit we've got some serious questions we've got to ask and we've got to go through but whether it's um within the the the time frame that we have for tomorrow I I concur that I don't want to um sit here you know in the evening or you know wait and go into the evening but if it's a few minutes after I have no problem um but at the same time I um you know if we if we can do it Tuesday the point is I I I want us to um as as commissioner her indicated I mean we need to concentrate on the entire budget we have and this is a very small small portion so I I mean I do not want the the the the prospect of someone saying um that uh we didn't give everybody the full opportunity to present their budget I agree that this is not that complicated that a staff person couldn't come in that helped them do it and so therefore um you know I I could I could see our County Manager relaying that point that it doesn't have to be him we'd love to have him um but uh all we need is we have a few questions and we'd like to get them answered very well so what what I would propose is I cannot be here past about 6:15 tomorrow because live family commitments at 7 so if we're going to go into tomorrow evening commissioner her the vice chair will run the meeting uh what I would propose is let staff continue to try to contact the S soe during the course of today in his office and determine if we can get some kind of commitment for some input from either the s soe or somebody from his staff if they're not able to commit then I say at the end of the day today we move forward with this budget item commissioner just a heads up that I have a scope of meeting tomorrow night that's rather critical at 4:00 at what time 4 at 4 tomorrow so I'm already compressed so Mr chairman maybe the best if we if we can't get a commitment we do schedule the regular board meeting which will be next week and Mr um and then actually Mr J just reminded me we did hold a date the end of July July 30th for any w up followup you know that the board wants you know um so that is another potential date that I can if if you all um want me to relay that as as well but nothing scheduled that day it's just if you all wanted some further followup on one of the items that we talked about right commissioner lockart I I'll just say I mean obviously this has been on everyone's calendar for many many many months this is something that happens every year and and I hope there's not something tragic that has happened um to Mr Anderson or or a member of his family or staff that would prevent him from being able to be here today but um certainly every other one of our constitutional officer officers who have very hectic busy schedules and significant commitments found time to be here um to be able to work with us and discuss their budget so um I I hope that everything is okay and so we Mr chair just one last thing because we spent more time on it than we probably would have this more time we need so I mean so I'm really I'm tired of the conversation myself right now we've got all day today I think the somebody mentioned I don't know who hey call him up see if he can come later or have somebody staff later I mean and and quite frankly if he you know as much as I don't want any conflict if he doesn't want to or he can't today or send somebody then um maybe we do just move on okay so we'll leave it with the county manager and staff to try to reach out to his staff get some kind of commitment and let us know maybe after the lunch break or somewhere there so we can get moving okay let's move on to the clerk of the courts clerk Malloy welcome you and your staff next good morning yeah good morning Commissioners appreciate you moving us up first they happen to schedule the Summer Conference over in Orlando the clerk conference uh that's going on right now so appreciate you putting us first um we have a couple items we were going to cover today one was our proposed uh County funded budget for the services we provide for you I'll go through that uh I have Jenny Spencer here who is our Director of Finance both court and County uh Tony Landry is my Chief Information officer on the technology side and also have uh John Newton our general counsel and Randy Nunley here our Inspector General Victoria oh and Victoria where is she okay she oversees clerk Finance too so she knows all the complexities of the clerk of court operations corporations and all the state reporting there so I'll just go ahead and get started let's see here push which button to the right to the right push to the right this right I think it's probably other right there it goes okay you're on a radday so we'll go over the uh highlights here let's see here oh why I just mentioned all this we're going to go over the county budget and then the Article Five request it's probably too it's too far okay yeah I think it works better there okay okay you want to take it over here from Janie absolutely okay I you good morning Commissioners um we had an opportunity to meet with each of you to brief you on our bu Spencer if you could move closer to the mic or there we go sure for the record Jenny Spencer good morning um we the clerk and I had an opportunity to meet with with each of you to go over a budget requests both for board services and for court services um what we wanted to illustrate is for fiscal year 23 which is the year that just ended the volume or the amount of cash dispersement that happened for both the board and the supervisor of elections as you may know the controller's office also maintains the records for the supervisor of elections um we pay all their invoices and U process their payroll for for fisc year 23 those are the amounts that were dispersed for both entities um this next slide just shows the amount of payroll that was processed for the board um 27 million $164,600 okay um we're happy to report that we also received uh an award for the citizens financial report also known as the popular annual financial report which is a condensed version of the actur that's over 300 pages and this was something the clerk um you know instituted when he was elected uh to be able to share with citizens where the tax dollars um go um the next report that we prepare although it's not submitted for a certificate is the continuing disclosure report or annual report to bond holders um when the county issues Bond the chairman at the whoever the chairman is at at the time takes a signs a continued disclosure agreement commits to the bond holders of certain information that will be reported uh just uh certain debt covenants and certain revenue and certain ratios and that information is filed with the msrb which is the municipal service ruling board um along with the annual comprehensive financial report so that's the Contin disclosure report and at this point I will turn it over to the clerk ory okay some of the uh improvements we've been making um are putting more things online uh reducing the work uh processes in our side uh last year we put in foreclosure Sales Online this year we're working with the tax collector but we're moving forward with putting tax deed auctions online as well it's uh are we ready to launch that Tony it's going to come out next month or so right yes yes so that's been a project in the works always working on improving this office as I like to say my goals to make the office work like Chick-fil-A friendly service and closed on Sundays so um this just gives you a picture of what we do on an annual basis these numbers change each year uh when I was a clerk we brought back passports that's Pro provided additional non-court Revenue uh the last year we did 4 and a half th000 passports we also do passport photos to try to generate Revenue marriage applications were the one of the few Clerk's offices in the State of Florida that has a totally integrated online one where you can uh get a marriage license you can pay for it sign for the document anywhere in the world you just have to get married in Florida and then you have to record it with us but that's a great service that has been very helpful uh the e-certification is something that we created ourselves I'm very uh proud of that some clerks will use a thirdparty vendor and then uh there are certain user fees that are very high to the to the public as well as the clerk's office gets charged uh High fees for certification say the state attorney comes in uh gets electronic certified that there's a a base fee for that that Clerk's officers have to pay because we created our own software our own certific certification stamps and security PDFs and the system we created we actually don't have to pay for that cuz it's all internal so we not only save money but it generates a little Revenue as well and uh of course the uh ceremonies a little bit down we've uh as you know we closed the West Branch to consolidate staff and we also have moved staff out of the Civil so we have only two places now that do Weddings But it's still a something we uh perform and there were over a half million pages of recorded documents last year uh one of the things we've done is uh we put this in place a couple years ago our e-recording queue with your building department it's a great tool to use where uh people don't have to run from the county Services building here and drive over to the record Center on Lake Mar Boulevard to get their notice of commencement recorded and certified and then drive back here there is a queue where your building department can work with with us and uh they jump to the front of our queue where we can certify it and send it back electronically um so I get you a snapshot um one of the things I have down there at the bottom we weren't the first but I think we're going to be a second clerk's office in the State of Florida uh to create our own e-recording queue where a homeowner or contractor can record simple Pages simple documents uh online from their office from their home and pay for it as well where you will not have to use a third party vendor e recording company or drive down to our office or one of our branch locations we're excited about that uh this gives you a picture of some of the numbers we do each year when it comes to uh recording you can see the numbers and this kind of gets reflected in the um numbers that you have a lot of the recording Revenue has been dropping due to lower volume the other problem we're faced with on recording is it's the same price list as 22 years ago uh we charge the same fees and that's putting bigger and bigger strains on providing that service uh we have um not filled two positions over there and they've been vacant for quite a while because uh we simply don't have the funds to cover it with uh property transactions and recording let's see sorry one of the things we're super excited about is since I've been uh in clerk we've made an effort to go back back through all the official records of Simo County and digitize them and put them online for the public uh it's very popular with people doing property research it's also very popular with people doing historical work so this gives you a snapshot of we've gone through all the way back to 1913 on many of these documents from plats mortgages uh tax uh books you can see up there the leans the Deeds they're all scanned they're all online we still have a few more uh things we're working on such as uh marriage licenses that should be up towards the end of the year but this is a great service where any official record in the history of Simo County would be available for view right from your home or office uh this gives you a snapshot of our budget request uh there are two new positions that have been put in place I know I've met with all of you there's a extra position that's a new FTE in our um payroll department as the payroll systems become more complex uh employee turnover that sort of thing it's it's an office that's been strained there we also have an additional accounts um payable person that we're requesting there's also portion in the inspector General's office that is a lower level administrative person but also somebody that will primarily help with guardianship audits that's funded on the court side so that position is proposed to be refunded 80% Courtside 20% County anyone I kind of just discovered that part there so our FTE count is Illustrated shows a 2.77 increase and two of those are for in the controller's office it's a Financial finance uh payable Clerk and a payable clerk uh as the clerk just indicated the Inspector General added a new FTE it's more in administrative position and uh 20% of those cost are being allocated to the county uh for an overall um FTE of 38.25 this provides a summary of what our the composition of our budget uh like most organizations the majority of the costs relate to Personnel so 77.3% are Personnel costs about 5.1% relates to Professional Services and other services the rent and leases is the uh rent related to the record Center which um the clerk has spoken with you all extensively that represents 6.7 of our budget and other operating costs um represent 10.5% and there's Capital outlay that represents 4% this provides a uh a detail summary of Where the costs are related to so the controller's office U bu budget represents 2.7% of our of the board Services request Information Services is uh 1,341 other administrative support is 659 268 the Inspector General is 667,000 reled to records management which is 36381 for total request of 5,786 163 which is an overall increase of 44917 or 88.4% from the current fiscal year fiscal year 24 um and this next slid represent our article 5 budget request um the clerk will go into detail but the the composition of that is uh 75177 one in Personnel cost and we had an opportunity to meet with uh both Lori and Tim to go over the detail and the methodology used to allocate costs related to Personnel uh and some operating cost and capital for a total of 97611 so I fig I'll cover the Article 5 portion next we but first we could go back to the county funded portion I will point out and and one of the reasons I have John here is uh we've been going over to the record Center to take a look how we can simp simplifi processes on our side he's taking a look at what are the actual retention requirements what legally what legally are we required to do to a lot of that paper that's out there so we found some processes on our side to help stream that out um uh Jenny mentioned the record Center you know I've been talking with the county about the county taking that over perhaps purchasing it or leasing it um right now we have a portion of it dedicated to Sheriff's evidence storage there's a another section we could turn over shortly to him if the county wants to move in that direction uh but my goal is to reduce the footprint and their uh further and then of course once the remodeling occurs at the CJC and that's finished we'll be moving the recording Department out and moving that over to to the courthouse however the record there is a records management team they would be uh remaining there and obviously we have an investment in the vault and other uh systems as well but it's been a real blessing for the county to help us with maintenance on that building it's really taken um um a lot of stress offs off of us when there's a roof or water leak we know who to call now versus uh stressing out of uh that like a homeowner so that's a little bit about the uh and I can go into Article Five next but I'll figure I'll answer any questions about the general County funded budget that this you want to wait until the entire presentation i' rather okay okay please proceed so I what I did is I have a a short slideshow here and then I did bring and I can go over this in depth because there were some questions asked what is the you know what legally is the state supposed to pay for What's the County supposed to pay for so I put a packet here I think helps explain that in more detail wh are you Advanced it so when it comes to the criminal justice information system uh it is the it's a multi- agency system so we're dealing with the jail we're dealing with the sheriff we're dealing with judicial and state attorney and it's it's an increasingly complex type of system because there's more uh electronic flow of paperwork we're especially working closely with the sheriff on the jail right now on uh procedures and I have Tony here to go really in depth if you have some technical issues but it's really the backbone that supports law enforcement and it's important to understand that the clerk's office office is the office that has all the record so law enforcement relies on us to have accurate record as well as the state attorney judges and all the partners of law enforcement so it's important of Public Safety and uh it's important to have a secure modern working sies system and it's also important Advanced security and the technology in that with our sieges partners uh we have a very good working relationship with all the partners of it I know the over the uh last year when I brought this issue up last year uh we've been meeting closely with the county the county it and have had some productive meanings there too so the clerk is a keeper of the record in these criminal cases and it's through seious that all law enforcement uh gets that data um let's see here so on our budget request do you want to cover that Slim sure I'll let her do the numbers and I'll do the overall sure so what this slide shows um as you may know the controller's office also prepares the Article 5 report that gets filed with the Department of Financial Services and that we are presenting the budget in the format it would get reported in the Article 5 report so Part B of the article five represents Capital outlay expenditures and then our budget request is a $30,000 uh Capital request and that shown as Part B and part C these are other op any expenditures and we're showing them showing them uh consistent with the object accounts that the county uses um which totals 194 350 and the other cost is um part e which is U Personnel salaries and related benefits uh is shown is 751 771 for the total request of 97611 um what this shows I believe uh we received requests from the chairman or other members we spoke with each of you so I can't recall who request but uh someone had asked what our trust fund balances uh are and that's what it represents the court technology fund which is we refer to as a $1.90 fund which that those dollars could be used on court related expenditures as well as salaries um for court Pro IT staff the other um trust fund um that's shown there is the $150 which is a public records mization trust fund and it's shown is 5,794 504 and then um I believe the chairman ask what our budget request is for the state with uh Clerk of Court operations Corporation a budget Authority for the current fiscal year is 9,24 814 and that's that's what that represents and and so the way these trust funds work is on on the First Trust Fund it's it's primarily designed on the Civil processes uh the second one is more on Capital expenses and for uh uh updating servers as you know when you move forward with uh replacement of items they can cost hundreds of thousands new case maintenance systems can cost millions and the uh and I'll go through this in depth too with the CCOC funding of what we're allowed to do with that and what we're not allowed to do is there let me see where we're going here that should be it I think that's it so uh on the package I gave you I was going to walk through that uh because I think it explains the whole story so if you go to to page three and it's it's clearly a county responsibility under Article Five and of the Florida Statutes um to atically fund uh sieges systems so what I have laid out here if you go to page three is the different Florida Statutes and you can see the highlighted sections such as the first paragraph that says counties are required uh to fund the cost of and it goes on explaining the different things obviously you've been funding uh the telephones that we use but it does mention existing criminal M multi- agency criminal juses Information Systems in there so it's it's specifically laid out on pages three and you can see another reference under 298 subsection H and I've highlighted there it even includes the upgrades maintenance of the equipment so that's important to note uh page four is the section that comes out of the Florida Constitution you can see down in subsection C under section 14 County shall be required to fund the cost of communication systems it's basically the same wording and it goes on to say existing multi- agency criminal justice Information Systems which is what this is and what what is happening and and we're all kind of in the same boat together as you saw the slide on recording fees is dropping uh there used to be a point in time where clerks had a lot of Revenue but because recording Revenue has been dropping uh there's simply less and less money so in the past a lot of Clerks picked up a lot of costs that were County responsibilities at the end of the year there would be less money returned to the county and surplus funds because clerks were paying for it but there was this attitude especially with the previous clerk that she'd rather really not have you know what what was going on so much uh so things like Auditors were not charged at the county and a lot of uh the Erp system there was a you know fight over the maintenance cost a debate over that she paid for that from recording fees and when it came to a lot of these type of things they were paid for by recording fees but the recording fees are declining and just not adequate especially when you go on to look at the requirements of what's happening to the criminal justice system um one of the things I put in here was last year okay the next part on page five this is a recent development that I know we've talked to Darren about and uh Kate Lor in her office and so recently there was a ruling to clarify what is the role of the County uh that was uh Alvarez uh Souls who's the uh Pasco Clerk and and there was a lawsuit with the Pasco County um in that ruling it went on to the second Circuit of appeals and I highlighted the section on page five down below there where it basically says a reading of the plain language of Article 5 section 14 of Florida Constitution uh dictates that pasco's County's obligation to fund multi- agency criminal justice information system did not cease when the hardware or software that it compris the system at the time of the minute was enacted in essence it's an ongoing cost of the maintenance and the upgrades that the counties are responsible for when it comes to the criminal justice information system also highlighted on page six uh another section there that I think is important where it talks about the legislators intended for the counties uh funding obligations pertaining to multi- agency criminal justice systems to continue and it goes on from there so that's a little background of of what the clarity was on the State Constitution and the states statutes uh on page seven was uh last year when we brought this up I know there was a question I believe commissioner delari brought up to the chief Circuit Judge at the time judge Rex stedler and she said in her research and I highlighted it there that um you know it the clerk of the court will be asking for sieges funding and Essence and uh to be coming out of the general fund rather than recording fees and she goes on to say that I believe we're the only county in the state from looking into that that does not supplement it through it or fund it through the general fund if there are any inadequacies but otherwise it would it would also allow us to use let me see here well she stated uh in her in her uh think that it say not just the state attorney the public defender those type of folks but also the clerk of boort has a uh there's a funding responsibility for counties for the sieges cost uh the next page I did list in here the attorney the county attorney's uh Memo from June 12th where he does a desmin morel does a very good job lying laying out the County's requirements for reasonable and necessary sieges cost and uh if they're reasonable and necessary that that is an obligation of the counties it goes on very detailed over P the next couple pages to explain in detail what the responsibility of the counties are uh when you get to the page 13 this is something that's occurring that is putting more and more stress on us and that is the unfunded mandates that are coming from State agencies whether the courts or FDLE that's all listed and example like the uniform case reporting the UCR and enormous burden of time and effort from our office for criminal cases and when the state uh the courts initiated this there's absolutely no funding for it uh it it's it's a frustrating place to be in for clerks one of the recent things was in this list was the FDLE seal uh we received probably over a thousand cases in one week of a whole new process where we have to take these FDLE cases and then Mark them confidential when these things occur there's no filing fees there's no funding for it we just have to hunker down and and make it happen and there are some clerks around the State of Florida that I don't know where they're at now but when they started receiving these they said we're not going to process them uh we didn't take that option we do believe it's our duty to fulfill uh the the law and the requirements and this is part of a jobs bill that was passed by Tallahassee often these things have good public policy but when it comes to implementation it's not all the well thought out as what the implications are going to be in other agencies on page 14 I list and I handed this out I think to most of you when I was having the the meetings with you when it comes to the clerk of court operations Corporation it's it's a really interesting process first of all we don't get any money there is no funding from the state they tell us what they think we're going to raise buy the fines and fees and they give us a number and then it's up to us to collect that money through fines and fees through the rest of the year if we don't meet that number and there's money left over from other clerks it gets distributed and it's like a little socialist system if we make too much money it gets sent to the trust fund and distributed to other clerks but the thing is there's no funding and that's the same on recording side there's no funding when we start out there's zero there and we then we have to go work for it and then when I sign the certification you'll see on page 14 it specifically lists what I cannot use CCOC money for that was the $9 million in that previous slide and it's specifically list I cannot use uh the the Courtside clerk budget for multi- agency criminal justice Information Systems so that kind of puts us in a pickle there that's a an overview I could go on and on I think some eer blazing over here but it gets very complex when you look at how we have to try to make things work and it's it's a system that I think the counties and the clerks really need to work together on to come up with some solution long term the irony is when this article five started I was on the County Commission at the time and it was viewed as a way that the burden of the state would be shifted back to the state and away from the county because counties were picking up so much court cost and it worked for a while but when the revenue sources never change and you have inflation and you have more requirements it's a system that long term is just going to implode and so that's a little background of where how we got here uh we're trying to be reasonable in our ask I've got Tony here for technical questions on it systems uh but that is the the explanation and the request for it uh I do appreciate your staff working with us so closely uh I feel like we've been through a proctology exam sometimes with all the all the information we've given but I think it's an important process to be transparent and that's exactly what we're trying to do thank you Mr Malloy and I sincerely appreciate it and I and I appreciate um I I don't know what the other Commissioners were asking but I may be the so responsible party for this entire document that you just went through um trying to make you happy and I appreciate the time and the assets that you've shared with me and understand you're correct this is a very complex issue from a funding standpoint uh it's complex from a legislative standpoint it's complex from the funding from the BCC side in in in migrating the statutes the real intent case law and all those things um I've probably spent way more time than I really care to on it um to be quite honest with you um but I feel pretty informed based on what you all have helped me with what I've spoken to other counties about what I've spoke to legislators about my due diligence and doing a lot of background and digging through documents um and reviewing those so I want to make sure that I thank you and your staff very much for that we'll start the far in and work our way down commissioner Constantine any inquiries I may after listenting others but right now I don't masterful mastered that um so a couple of things um and it's amazing how similar some of the comments this is going to come out wrong some of the comments that were made about the uh supervisor elections budget do apply here this is a very small portion of our budget we're not talking about you know the largest portion of our budget um however philosophically I think what we are all hoping for is that we know that the funds that are being um allocated are being used in the most efficient effective responsible way possible and so um thank you for so many of the things that you've done to try to streamline and um and and become efficient I do think that fundamentally it is clear that that the board is responsible for article for for the funding of of the sies I think where and I going to look to the county attorney for for some guidance yeah some guidance on that is to to what degree are we to fund that system and if we are funding it do we not get input in what is and how much it costs um I I'm I'm struck by on page three and think and this today is the first time I've seen this so um I was reading through it while you were going through it and um I think the underlined portion on page three under letter H this includes upgrades and maintenance of the current equipment maintenance and upgrades of supporting technology infrastructure and Associated staff and services to assured continued information sharing and reporting of information to the state it it needs to accomplish a task it doesn't say how it should be accomplished it doesn't say to to what degree your expense um doesn't say who decides what what those upgrades are and in what form or fashion um and and that then the next line that you have underlined is the county shall also provide additional information technology Service Hardware and software as needed and then we stopped underlining for new judges and staff of the state court system State Attorney's offices public defenders offices Guardian ad lium and guardian ad lium offices my my reading take on that is whatever it is that you're currently doing you have to make sure you give the new guy one too they also have to have have access um I'm I'm curious where last year you talked about this technology Tech Guru team that you were putting together to create uh the clerk's version of sinet where are we with with that because well for those of you who were here back in the day the county decided we were going to build our own Grant you were here um as a county commissioner at the time and we went off and we spent a lot of money and a lot of time hiring people to build our own product and in hindsight maybe something off the shelf would have been more reasonable would have accomplished the same thing for less money I don't know don't have the rearview mirror necessarily on that but I just I want to I want to make sure that up here not down in the weeds but fundamentally if you are the one making the decision about how to accomplish this and we just have to pay the bill at what point do we get to particip at in the decision of what of what the best method is for the best cost to accomplish what it is we're required to accomplish does that make sense that was a long question well I there's a lot of background to it because it's I think what commissioner lockart might be saying is if we're required to buy a Volkswagen do we have to pay for a Cadillac for the car guy that's the perfect and do we get any input do we get any input because there are other volw I'd rather go domestic there are other stakeholders in this paragraph and so I'm just wondering if the clerk is the one like so there's a couple things here uh I think you you might have mentioned last year we talked about working with the U uh the county and creating a criminal justice a sieges committee and uh we took several attempts up that we didn't form an official one but there's a loose a loose one I guess you'd say where the sheriff and the county uh state have been involved and and Tony's been highly involved with that with your staff uh so uh the important thing there is to coordinate all these projects and I'll let Tony talk about some things we're doing with the Sheriff's Office uh when it comes to the basics the uh the nuts and bolts of it is the case maintenance system and it's it can be all over the place and in 2001 when the county pelis began to look at revamping their sieges system it had a price tag back then of $12 million and uh you know that's back at then uh we have a system that's named Athena it works very well some use other uh vendors uh most uh if you go to the clerk conference you'll hear everybody complaining about their vendor about you know how expensive is just to make a change to the program and how long it takes I gave the example I think with some some of the Commissioners the other day that I was at an event an attorney uh came to me and said that it would be very helpful if we had a search engine to search my attorney on our case maintenance system and I went to Tony with that and I threw that idea out them I said hey is that something we could do and it was done that day it was it was amazing how quickly our programmers worked on it we have a small team it's smaller than other counties but I think we have a a lot more productivity but I'll let I'll let Tony mention you want to talk a little bit about the the cost of it and where we're going for the future Yeah you mentioned uh Skynet and we had talked about partnering with um Florida Association of court clerks civitech in coming up with a new uh modern case system for the state um CIVC currently supports 41 Clerk's offices through their product which is called clericus and they need to go into a new development effort to create something new what they're running on right now is about 20 years old it's not prepared for the security needs of today it's not built to to withstand the the the malicious actors in the world now trying to do things that they're doing I don't know if you've seen But there have been agencies throughout Florida who have been hit who have been Ransom weed and and we need to get to the point where we're as conscientious as possible with the public records and making sure that we're not one of those so we were looking at a partnership with a successful vendor civatech who already has a system that that supports 41 Clerk's offices so that we can work together to build something that we could Implement here in Seal County that would be more secure than what we have and based on a modern platform and the the other thing that I wanted to to bring up is we're not really asking for for more than what we currently do we're not asking for necessarily more money we're asking to shift that funding from fees to Article 5 funding method because the fees are drying up we're not asking to grow our it any bigger than it is right now any bigger than it's been for the last six years we're looking to continue to support the Judiciary the sheriff the public defender the state attorney and the jail in the same way that we always have um with this shifting of the spending from fees to Article Five funding from the county so where so from last year to this year how much progress have we made that we've when uh as far if you're referencing to 167 it's still a concept that has life but when you have to get 67 counties around the state trying to agree on things it it becomes more complex okay uh there has not been movement on that with civitech um it's it's it's a good idea I think to have a a new case maintenance system as Tony mentioned there was a uh one County was ransomware uh fando recently with a 2.8 million on it uh you know cyber security and technology is something that to me is the biggest issue when you really get down to it in in local governments because we're all uh High targets uh but um I think it's a great idea this we're we haven't given up a not we've even talked about working on revamping some of our procedures we're always improving our uh case maintenance system but I can assure you it's a very frugal system that we have because if you go forward to do a new vendor it's going to be a probably a$3 to5 million cost and you're also going to have a lot of data uh transferring over to that new system and now you're stuck with a vendor anytime you got to change a process you got to put a work order in and that cost is always higher than than you would anticipate so I'm not sure what our what our piece of the of the input is on any of this because we are we are essentially funding it um I will say your team has been highly involved in it we work closely with uh James your your IT director and he's he's been at all meetings and County manager has something he'd like to say and to to assist to uh I think this is where you're going with your question what's happened from last year to this year so we if you remember last year we talked about Article Five funding and it was about projects it about uh technology projects that were coming that um we at that time we're like let's put together a team um we had at Lori Bailey Brown from uh our resource management team heads that we have a representative from all the court pieces that that meet on a regular basis so if there's projects it James is involved it type projects that come through we vet that through the through the group just not to say about funding but is this a um a valid system so that actually has worked really well this this year um with all the part with the partners but what's different in my opinion and Mr J correct me if I'm wrong the request for the Article 5 this year versus last year this year they're actually taking whatever the existing system is and now they're allocating their staff resources to that um that wasn't what we disc I me that wasn't presented last year this is something different based on the information that that we have well last year we we did have a request for the share of the article 5 similar to this one it was just in the budget discussions it was decided just to pay for the communication and work on the others for this year's budget presentation but but since then you also had the clarification and and the Pasco County ruling that came out which helps clarify what the responsibilities are well and so that is the piece where I think I'll defer to the county attorney about the how the Pasco case uh Compares and contrasts with our situation well commissioner I don't have the benefit of being here for last year's discussion but I think your comments uh earlier regarding the Article Five responsibilities funding responsibilities that the county has were were exactly on point I don't think anyone at the county staff included is questioning the County's obligation to fund Article 5 type expenses as they're listed in the statute in the Constitution but I think you're right that the the types of things or the manner in which uh these systems are created or purchased that's not spelled out in the statute or the constitution on who gets to make those decisions the level of involvement the county has in in choose making those decisions is not specified and I don't think Pasco County the Pasco County case sheds any degree of light on that it's very clear in that case that we have to fund these things we have to fund um upgrades to systems not just systems that were in effect when this constitution Amendment went into effect many years ago so if he's getting a new system we still have to fund that but what system that is and who picks that it's not really spelled out in that case or in the statutes or Constitution okay um how how does the and I I feel a little like this is a little bit like Groundhog Day because I feel like we talked about this some last year how does the trust fund what are those monies being kept for would they not be something that could be used to fund these these expens the trust funds have have different statutory obligations and in the Pasco case they're not even mentioned uh because well I don't really care about pasco's trust funds I care about your trust funds yeah trust funds have been increasing the trust funds have been increasing if you go back to 2015 there was a $4 million in the trust funds um when you Factor inflation that has a value of about 18 million today uh today though I think we're at a 10 and a half balance in it it's been with recording fees we've been able to boost them and survive from that interest we've helped subsidize some of our operations but the trust funds are are separate things right what are you keeping them for what is their intended use like I've got different accounts improvements to to civil processes we're doing it's for the Civil side of the case maintenance systems and it's for our recording systems uh I mentioned that e the e-recording portal that we're doing for vendors and homeowners that's something we PID for out of um we PID for those type of costs out of our records uh modernization so they have separate uses which trust fund are you referring to the 190 190 okay just want to make sure for record yes thank you for making sure that because I know that I understand there are two from the slide earlier we put that slide back up mhm Tim please I I would point out too that the way this currently is happening that the County's not properly reporting the Article Five cost on your reports to the state and if we do want to Lobby on behalf of reforming this system I think it's going to be important to show accurate information as to what the burden really is and that's that's not occurring right now with on our clerk side also on when it comes to software stop right hold on let's stop right there that's that's a quite a quite a launch are we how are we not reporting something accurately are we can we dig into that and how are we recording and how are we yeah what's help me out with that you want to discuss Article 5 reporting that we send to the state I'm sorry yes um specifically what we're not doing right on the county side so the Article 5 report um currently reports costs related to state courts the public defender State Attorney the clerk of court um the clerk of court costs that are reported are allocated costs so costs related to the the phone um building space uh a portion of the debt service for the bonds that that were um taken out for the CJC also allocated to the clerk of court those are not direct costs those are allocated costs so when the on the clerk's Finance side when there are fees that are used to pay for Article 5 costs they are not captured and reported in the Article 5 report because those costs are directly coming from the bccc's JD Edwards uh Records so so I think that's a different explanation I think what I heard is our staff is not properly recording no no it's just they're not being or report expended from the proper accounts to report correct so our staff's really not doing anything wrong no no no no I'm not and and they're not booking it wrong no no okay because that's totally what I heard just the expenses are not that's exactly what I heard that's I clarify that let me clar there's a fund called Article 5 fund and within that fund there are several business units that identify the state attorney public defender state courts so those costs when the controller's office prepares the Article 5 report we capture those costs that are in JD Edwards so if the clerk of court paid for Article 5 on the court side it's not in the bccc's JD edwards's records to be captured so that the purpose of including it in the on the board side rather than using fees it would be reported with the Article 5 that's reported and any fees instead of being used to pay for Article 5 would be returned as excess fees okay for the purpose of lobbying right that entire launch was with for the purpose of lobing I think we can do Ma and make that lobbying position well known without and I would say on the software you know I'm obviously more than happy to get input but at the end of the day it's it's the clerk's responsibility to manage its office and you know I I I doubt you know any other constitutional officer is going to you know definitely you know everybody has their own software their own processes and I think that is is a job we're doing well um I think we provide great Services we got great compliments from the judges uh the judicial viewer we provide for them has been a great uh efficiency Tool uh so and and I appreciate that Mr Malloy and and this this is not meant to be adversarial it's just we are engaging uh and I appreciate your your willingness to get into it but I don't think we have a lot of time to get into how the judges love this and somebody loves that uh and I will I just want to get clarification because I really want to understand how long will it take for the things that you say that $5 million trust fund are there for how long is it going to take you to spend that money on the things that you just what's what's the um what's the spend rate on on that how how much are you spending every year how long is it going to take you to spend $5 million um so commissioner just for clarification there's a slide that we provided to Resource Management that shows the total FTE for the information Services Department there's a total of 17 FTE the ones that are related to Article 5 are 4.45 if that slide was up you'd be able to see the ones that are under the $190 those are the cost related to the Civil side of the court side so that the 445 for the Article Five are related to the criminal side so programmers are paid out of that and any other operating costs that are related to The Courts okay so you got $5 million you know what it can be spent for you have in your mind what the plan is for that money whether it's employees or software or whatever it is how long do you project that $5 million to last you I don't have that information available at the moment um we did project for the current year go ahead so so I'll have Tony address that sure and and again we got a lot of ground to cover today if you can be very direct to the question and not get off track if you can try to narrow your answer specifically what the commissioner asked would be very helpful so Tony go ahead up until this point the dollar 90 trust fund has been used as reserves because we weren't getting the Article 5 funding that um I believe we need in order to be able to have a a firm long-term solution to supporting the criminal justice information system so you don't know excuse me you don't know I I I just want to know like you've got $5 million I know if in my own checking account I know how much in my savings account is going to last me how long if I'm planning to spend it in a certain amount of time I know I've got X number of years until I run out of money so you know in your mind very clearly obviously what this money is for you know how approximately how much you're spending every year out of it I don't truthfully I don't care what it is I just want to know how long it's going to last you if the if the board doesn't fund Article 5 about five years thank you anything else commissioner this point not now commissioner delari thank you Mr chairman first of all Grant thank you for being here it's always great to have a good relationship with all the Constitutional officers your staff's done a phenomenal job uh you talked about storage in the warehouse how big is the Warehouse square footage and what's the cost per annual uh I I don't have the square footage I know you asked me that I think earlier and I don't have the square footage trying to get the information the uh lease is about 300 uh 80,000 387 387,000 a year is the lease uh it it did have a an adjustment in it a few years ago the property owner agreed to freeze it at from not raising anymore but we don't know the square footage yet uh it's big but no I have to look that up I'm the proper appraiser might have get that to us sometime within the next day or two that'd be great yeah so then let's go to Article Five and you know mind if I continue some different types of questions absolutely I had a few more but I'll let you enjoy them so my questions are more for the county attorney so there's a the $4 is broken up into three buckets there's the 10 cents that goes to the state there's a $190 that goes to the clerk and it is $2 that comes to us so high level each one of those entities has the right to decide what they're going to do with that money correct correct high level yes the statute does specify what that money is to be spent on as long as we follow the state statute each one of those entities has the right to decide what that money is going towards as long as we follow the state statute is that correct I would agree with that yes okay high level and so we're actually the question that we should be asking is how do we think we should be spending the $2 in our bucket that's what I'm getting from this conversation and so I'd be looking for staff to help us make that determination to figure out what is the best way to spend that money and I'd also like excuse me we already are well I understand that but I'd also like to ask you know what is the projections as we move forward and looking at the staff's request the clerk's request of the $976,000 there's $751,000 for personnel is that a one-time spend so once we spend that there's no more Personnel or is that an ongoing cost is that for our staff or is that for for anyone um so these are programers that are on staff so that's going to be an ongoing cost that is correct all right so the question that I didn't have is instead of doing programming and I know I appreciate the the memory uh of uh Commissioner lockart of sign that because it was a great lesson that we all shared back in the day and uh I'd like to know if there's any offto shelf shelf software that we could purchase Andor partnership with other clerks that we could uh get involved with because we're just trying to make sure we giving the best service to the citizens uh of this County and it's most cost effective uh on the other side when it comes to the reserves we just need to have projections on how those reserves need to be spent uh since our own control is $2 that's what we should be concerning about and then when it comes to the renovation of our courthouse uh a lot of this money is going to be can it be addressed in the courthouse under those dollars that were earmarking or should be reimbursed by the $2 for that Courthouse because that's what we're talking about and then has in that budget of the courthouse that we're renovating are there Technologies and dollars in there that were spending that these $2 wouldn't have to be spent on and so I'd like to ask staff to bring that back to us so we can better understand the full picture of this money sure thank you Mr chairman you bet commissioner her thank you I'm going to try to do this without going over ground that we've already covered has the reserve the $5.8 million what has that looked like over the past four or five years well as I mentioned when I looked at the previously uh 5.4 I'm sorry thank you the uh annual comprehensive Financial reports it peaked at a little over 14 million I believe in the year 2014 or 2015 that's 10 years ago I'm asking about the past five we we provided a presentation from 2019 up through 20 2024 with the history of the trust funds and we separated the $190 from the $150 I don't know if um Resource Management can pull up that information it was called history of trust funds I can try and pull it up but I I have it here um in 2019 it was 5 million then up to 5.5 up to 5.9 in 2022 it was down to 5.7 and 2023 the last completed fiscal year 5.4 so the range change on that fund is relatively steady I'm going to do very rough math and say it's within 10% over a 5year time don't care what it was in 14 because that those days are gone um and so the trust fund is managing to stay relatively level and what I think I heard you say is that we've not been funding this all along and you've been using the trust fund to fund it and and that I can't reconcile those two so Tony I may have misunderstood your statement um and so perhaps we should talk about that I I think and I'll give you just my interpretation of the state statute which is really good for nothing right I'm not a lawyer don't want to play one except for one I don't want to be around many of them so like right me it's your entire you spend your entire life trying not to be engaged with the legal system um so to a judge yeah so my take on it is that the services have to be provided and the money has to come from somewhere I what I fail to understand is how a cosmic shift of the million dollars needs to happen immediately now last year it was an ask for a million dollars as well and it was Project based this year now we're going to allocate staff to it the services have been getting provided with whatever the funds are that are coming in it it's simply a revenue shift and so that and I understand the philosophical position with regard to it I don't need to hear that again but that's the piece the the trust has been staying relatively steady we've been providing the services all along we have state-of-the-art Services what's the Gap other than the revenue shift the the major Gap is the fees the fees keep going down and the fees and the dollars that we receive keep getting worth less money our costs keep going up while the revenue is going down and so what where is that chart that shows that Gap do do we think we have that I I remembered that one I just can't remember the numbers but I knew it was 10% Gap um I do not remember seeing a what the fee drop is over the same period of time yeah it was in the it was in the history of trust funds we started with the beginning balance and we showed the recording fees interest and the ending balance okay and so is it a million dollars Tim Tim's feverishly pulling things up reading them as we go can you use can you increase the size from 85 okay so it shows a beginning balance and it shows the revenues or recording fees and you could see 704 for O2 was in 2019 and 2020 it was 910,000 813 and 22 it was 838 998 the most recently audited uh year was 569 259 259 and for the current year we're projecting it will be uh approximately 540,000 796 so in the wildest difference between that outrageous year when probably rates dropped and the entire universe refinanced their loans or whatever wherever this money comes from the difference is roughly 500 Grand but we're asking for a million well I I think clerk I mean um commissioner sorry whoever I am yeah Andrea well first of all we're we're mixing the two subjects again Article Five multi- agency sieges funding is one issue and it's very clear it's a county responsibility the trust funds are a different issue uh and I've been let me just interrupt you gr just for a minute just for my just if we're trying to get me to understand let me walk you through the Gap the fees are up there and the fees lead to the fund is that not what I just heard the ending balance we've been supplementing with fees and I think part of the problem or part of the issue that you're not taking into account is but Tony just said the problem why we're asking for the money is the fees aren't enough right and I think you that's not the Reas the reason is we just don't want the fees to pay for this anymore no the other component I think if you look over time is there's been less money returned to the county and excess fees uh I've been trying to keep the trust funds at a stable level to be responsible for the future I mean if if if if I sent more and more money back that these could be easily at zero and then what do I got I I've got I'm in a real pickle I try to keep these in in a responsible balance to handle you know as I mentioned costs can be very expensive we can write $200,000 expenses very quick for servers and things so we are so careful with these funds and I try to manage them as carefully as possible uh We've we've I think we've done a great job and should not be penalized for saving money and they are two separate issues but part of the the thing is there's less money in recording to even return back to you guys which I get criticized for that too so uh it's it's a real pickle that recording fees are not stable this system's imploding at some point and there are counties there are 24 counties around State of Florida that are having the counties pick up for their civil side I'm not asking for that I'm just asking for what's in the state statute so we can properly do our job and and serve the citizens serve law enforcement provide Public Safety but uh the Pasco case also included a local option ask from the clerk I'm not asking for that I'm just simply asking asking for the criminal justice information system cost which I think we've more than documented 10 Ways to Sunday with your staff it's a very important component and long term uh you know if we can't find some way to subsidize the cost of this especially with this increasing list of unfunded mandates you know that it just is going to decline and there we are so uh my perspective is that I I don't necessarily disagree with you MH in terms of a subsidy somehow where I'm stumbling is the steep slope of the subsidy given the numbers that we have to work from to start out with and then my last comment is that I I do think that uh we I would I'm a proponent of a buyer build analysis which I think you've heard now three times and I think we talked about buyer build last year and I I just would like to understand better the notion of having internal coders on a government staff that are writing systems to that are homebuilt that just doesn't seem state-of-the-art I'm not saying that the system isn't stateof the heart I'm not saying that but the methodology for getting to it doesn't seem to be what most commercial entities are doing I'm not actually asking for an opinion I'm just stating mine which falls into the for what it's worth category I mean I work for a business we have for every one coder that we have on staff we have 10 offshore and so but but that's not how we're thinking and that that may be okay I just would love to understand it I would like to comment on that um that's the Chairman's decision let's just just hold up for me if I can have staff I've got something I need you to put on the overhead when I ask you to please some steps so again Grant thank you very much and your staff for indulging me and and I think there's I don't disagree there there's some State funding issues um that need to be addressed and I think we should be working collaboratively between the Flor Association of counties and the clerk's Association to push and move that but I want to I want to point your your direction to house bill that was approved signed by the governor number 977 in 2023 which revised the fees to be collected are you familiar with that are you talking the one that recently passed that was a 2023 last year okay signed by the governor on June 22nd 2023 which added additional fees and increase in fees for certain filings I don't need that up quite yet thank you and so the anticipation is at least at that level the legislators have acknowledged we can argue it may not be enough or probably isn't enough I don't know what the answer really is but there is some movement there well there wasn't an increase in fees there are redirects of the existing fees so what what the legislators did is they red redirected with the clerk LW about $28 million Statewide uh of funds uh that would have gone to the state General Revenue to the clerk of court trust fund so when you take 28 million and uh divide that up to 67 counties uh and that just can go to personnel as I pointed out in the certification budget we can't use that money on sieges cost uh it's for personnel and it's a struggle with that we have 60 last time I checked about 62 fewer FTE on the court side than at the peak of the clerk's office uh we have 20 when all this remodeling is done we'll have 27% reduction in office space uh we had an employee recently so I appreciate that and I know we're on a short but but those are are redirect so and I was but it's an increase regardless of whether it's redirected from from another fund to the clerks there's additional funding coming to the clerks is it not there is no what it comes to the clerks is what we're allowed to clerk to collect uh that the additional funding uh I shouldn't say funding the additional budget level for siml County being proposed uh was about 237,000 uh for the whole County our our CCOC budget is less than it was you know 20 years ago sure uh so even these redirects don't address the ultimate problem of how do you address inflation because the bottom line of traffic ticket is still $166 so the redirect in there just gave us an agree with you at all on that statement all I'm getting at is the legislature is attempting at least at some level whether it's adequate very grateful for that right to to provide some additional funding of some sort it it was interesting because because last year we had uh some redirects and by the time it the other part of this process is a revenue estimating committee we had redirects we were anticipating I think about $15 million Statewide and by the time it went to the revenue estimating committee and the Revis what they thought we were going to collect that $15 million turned to $300,000 Statewide so it's it's a it's it's it's such a complex in bizarre system the way the courts are funded um but there is not a windfall of Revenue coming from the state and the state doesn't fund us they just tell us what we can collect Grant nobody's saying there's a windfall I never used the word windfall we we'll move on I think I know the answer um the iGo estimates it'll be $50 million redirect funding whatever Statewide um bring up the slide if you would that that I gave staff there if you would mind and I I think this goes to what Grant's discussion is what you see is a is a segment from the Florida's judicial boundaries and workload for all the circuits in the state dating back to 1968 well you'll see the little line I drw drew there which is our district and you'll see the workload Through The Years this includes all traffic fines all civil all criminal any and all filings etc etc Statewide per District can we zoom in that has in this document Florida judicial boundaries and workload and again this is a very complex thing and I know Grant has said since I've arrived here hey you know we're not getting the funding we we've got a lot more workload we've got all these things going on uh and we don't get enough funding etc etc etc but then I look at a study that's done by the state that shows notwithstanding which makes sense the great rep the Great Depression where everybody peaked up why because all the foreclosures all the all the litigation that was probably taking place during those because of the great inflation and then I go around and I look and see sieges funding in the region Orange County provides no sieges funding from the BCC aola no sieges funding from the CCC Valia yes they do Lake County does not Bard County does not then I look at funding uh Court FTE per thousand of residents based on population seol is at30 ool is at 0.20 fuchia is at 044 Lake is at 0. 22 Bard is at 0 40 now that does not with in itself say that we've got an issue but because the complexity of it and the workloads I think we've got a lot more discussion to have between our staff and your staff and I think for me it's a business decision of if we've got all these things going on is it the right thing to be doing I have no problem funding uh things that we're required to fund uh but I need to know what I have to fund versus what I can optionally fund and that's where special projects like the ew warrant that we had discussion last year so where does that stand that that additional money for the ew warrant project that we put forward last year what is the process where does that stand the ew warrants um didn't move forward right now it's in the uh the uh criminal justice information system work group that uh Darren had said that Lori Bailey Brown is is chairing and that is the the top project for that work group and so where did that money go that the county pledged for that ew warrant system the the $160,000 I don't I think it was it was 180 160 whatever it was I don't recall the exact 160 I think was communication mhm the amount withheld from xsbs last year was that was right um Tony I recall you provided a list of things bullet points to Lori um yeah we to address yeah we responded to Lori on that regard she she act asked that specific question and I can't remember my exact response right at this moment but we did research it and we gave her a response to that question and what was the response like I said I don't I don't have that with me right now but I'll be glad to that to you is Mrs Brown do do you recall that dialogue and can you share that with us please yes Lori Bailey Brown Resource Management director um when I asked about the 180,000 that was retained from EXs fees last year specifically the ewarrants um the message was that those funds were expended on the things that were requested up to $900,000 last year so services so it was redirected correct by use the nomenclature of the clerk it was just redirected that's correct okay does that sound huh sounds plausible that sounds correct yes it does okay um some additional questions what does it costing the taxpayer to put together the citizens cafer in addition to the caffer that the County's already paying for any idea what the cost is of that I'm sorry can you repeat that question yeah the cost to put together the citizens cafer as compared to the cafer that we're already constitutionally required to do so it's prepared internally I'm sorry the the the paffa the popular annual financial report correct the citizens cffa report is prepared internally by the comp to's office the only C uh cost that we incur is the printing which is about $950 okay TimeWise TimeWise that's a different story well that's what iect um the majority of the technical work by the controller's office is really done by myself and the assistant director and then we have an accountant too um that occasionally she ends up staying very late with us or Saturdays and Sundays um to be honest the amount of time that's incurred between February and March I stopped counting basically whatever it takes um which could sometimes end up being midnight sometimes we have to call the deputies excort excort us out of the courthouse sure so so you know what what I'm trying to get at and again Grant you've always been a preacher of transparency you've always been a preacher of guarding taxpayers dollars and I think we all agree with that and and what I'm trying to get that and what what I've continued to struggle with since I've arrived here is what I must fund versus what would our agencies like us to fund in addition to what we must fund and it's and I put it a lot akin to you know a teenager that gets a used car and his friends are all driving brand new sports cars and hey Dad I'd like to have a brand new sports car okay well let's have that discussion and and that maybe is an analogy that may be very simp simp listic but I think for myself and I suspect several of our commissioners that's really what it boils down to and you you know what we went through last year trying to wrestle with this article five and so forth and understand that and so I would ask the staff continue to to work with the clerk's office to understand what is the best for the taxpayers dollars is it best that we are building our own Software System as compared to buying something off the shelf that arguably is being utilized around this state in other jurisdictions and the courts seem to be functioning just fine uh and moving on and I understand there's certain things we'd like to do and and maybe even the judges and and maybe even the sheriff would like to have some special thing done more efficiently and that's great as long as we're having that honest dialogue with this commission and saying hey we'd like to do this and it's going to cost x amount of dollars then we have a decision to make as far as what we have to have to pay for and I think that's basically the same thing that's going on at the state level and that's why they've got statutory funding which if I read it and understand it is we believe at the legislative state level this is the funding that should be responsible to run the clerk of the Court's funding etc etc etc and so that's all I'm asking for at the end of the day and I think we got to get staff continue to work and I think Tony I want to make sure it was not inappropriate but I want to go back back to this trust fund real quick real Qui quick on the 190 what I refer to as the 190 and I think what I heard you say is if you go to the 190 which is $5.4 million is it's being I think I what I heard was because the BCC hasn't funded portions of that is that fair what was said okay so the 190 fund I want to make sure understand this it can be used for the sieges system correct yes it can can be used for personel cost of sieges okay and it can be used for court facilities and Technology cour facilities no okay it cannot be used for facilities and Technology you're sure not facil technology not facilities and what about records modernization can be used for any technology Capital outlay computers storage uh contract factors for anything across the board for the clerk's office okay well thank you for that I wanted to verify that and again I think for me it's it's staff needs to work with the clerk's office and help us clearly understand what we have to do versus what we'd like to do um I'm very concerned about this ew warrant funding and how it was redirected um if we can get a handle on that and I think for at least for this commissioner you know if if you all were going to do a special project uh when you all have met with the clerk's office and if we're going to fund a special project and if it's not going to be used specifically for that project I would like to know and I think our my fellow Commissioners would like to know is that going to be coming back to the board or are we going to use that for project number two or three on the list that's somebody would like to do um and and at the end of the day you know I'll close my input at this point by just saying I want to fund the clerk I want to do what's right by our Sheriff our court system uh our citizens but I need to know what I'm funding in its entirety um if if you know I can ride in business class and get the same basic outcome I'm not really interested in paying for first class and and that's what I'm at the end of the day well Ju Just to address one thing you mentioned the popular annual financial report um that's a whole separate that's from the com controller's office and that goes right to providing transparency over County finances we make them available for folks at jury duty it's available online we won an award for it we designed it ourselves and I hardly think $1,000 of printing is is really uh you know huge issue here but it in the time spent let's be fair let's be fair well that had nothing to do with the SE sieges funding that understand right I understand that 100% and let's be fair what was said is about the printing and the cost of FTE or or time to do that and I'm not saying it's a bad thing I'm I'm glad you the county has their reports I think they look great on different things I agree they're great and so forth but I think the taxpayers need to also understand and transparency what is the true cost to put that forward I'm not saying it's a bad thing right right I'm not saying it's a bad document I think it's in full transparency what is it costing for these things that you as a clerk are doing that perhaps others aren't that aren't statutorily required and that's all I'm getting I'm not I'm not derating it's a bad thing I'm not derating your office that you did something wrong I'm just saying in transparency this is something thing that I have a concern with when we're talking about overall funding and budgeting okay that's all and and I think this handout I gave is very clear what what the County's responsibilities is i' I've tried to summarize it Asar well I know what you believe and I know what I believe and I think we're just maybe 5% apart and and I think and my hopes are we'll get there between our staff and your staff working together and again I don't don't don't believe any of these Commissioners don't want to fund what's statutorily required but I think we do want to understand what we actually are paying for and what the benefit of that it's a business argument at the end of the day so going back to the board any other inquiries I just have you know I fful it seems that uh I raised my hand right after of you commissioner lockart because you spurred something in in the discussion you are you did and then it went on I I'm just going to say the staff I mean the the my fellow Commissioners did a great job in back and forth and everything so I'm just going to ask this question you know in talking to to Tim over the course of this time we were looking at the various increases over the years and and quite frankly I believe if I'm not mistaken that this department has increased more than the average increase of they over funds almost every single year and um Grant you and I go back a long ways and I remember the wonderful debates we had more 10 years ago about the sales tax and you have put together a compelling argument here about unfunded mandates and how costs are going up and everything else so in that whole discussion I've got to assume that now you have changed your mind and you believe that the sales tax is quite an important thing that we need to um pass this particular year to to improve all of the budgets of of the county I haven't taken a public position on it privately although I've seen that you have you have suggested to some groups that that the county may not need that sales tax and therefore compeled them to vote against it I feel to see what that has to do with the budget request in front of you today well I think it has everything to do with the budget quite frankly because I keep seeing increases in your budget while at the same time I see people that are saying that uh potentially we don't need the sales tax and I think quite frankly I think it's very you it it it it it is directly to the fact that as you as we continue to have unfunded mandates as we continue to have preemptions as we continually to struggle all of departments constitutionals as well as yourself and I agree you're you're working very hard to keep your costs down we all are I just think that it uh that we're all need to work together on the um on on making sure that the uh that the people understand the full story of of the sales tax commissioner lockart I'm trying to move us along because we got a lot of ground to cover SP another question can happen there you go very symbiotic so could the technology be that the clerk is is requesting us to contribute to on top of the article the $2 and then the one 190 what have you all of the money how how how much of those technology costs could be paid for legally by the penny Tim May uh know more about this than I but it has to be structure related um go ahead I think there is potential for the infrastructure tax to pay for capital software yes so rather than out of additional money out of the general fund we could help supplement what the clerk is requesting for out of uh Penny sales tax dollars we would have to look very closely but I think there is potential to fund capital software all right thank you very much anything else thank you all very much for being here today I know we had some spirited convers and no ill will meant just good business inquiries and understand where we at and where we need to be thank you all very much does anybody need a break before the property appraiser comes up I think I heard yes I think the prop appraiser probably wants us to take a break before the property congratulations on being real oh you as well what you like to let's take a uh it's 11:26 let's try to take a 10-minute Max I 10-minute break [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] a for [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] people to to go make sure they're doing the right thing in our community so we've got to get him up here and out as quick as we can okay get everybody out of here all right Mr Mr David Johnson our property appraiser good afternoon sir or good morning well thankfully it's still morning and uh glad to be here with you uh I'll try to get us back on track here um real quick there was a discussion a minute ago about how big the clerks warehouses that we lease it is about 30,000 square fet of space so thank you David clean that up from the as always you're very last discussion thank you I'm glad to be useful at some level um but again thank thank you all very much for the opportunity and again as you know we work very close with your team and Mr Jack's uh you know it's a wonderful relationship he was just telling me that we're like 99.9% accurate on most stuff so that's that's great so that's great working relationship so let's go quickly through my budget um as you know my budget and the tax collector's budgets are approved by the Department of Revenue uh my budget is due June 1st uh to the department and I'll certainly let the collector talk for himself self but his is due August 1st um and the reason behind this the little bit of history behind this is to make sure that the both the property appraiser and the tax collector have the adequate resources necessary to do the job that is prescribed by the Constitution and outline AG nauseum and the statutes okay so um but the timeline is timeline is this the June 1st it's due July 15th that we send a copy to you and to the department at the same time July 15th the uh Department of Revenue will make some tenative uh approvals if there's any questions um and saying you know unless we hear from the board of County Commissioners uh everything looks good uh by August the 15th they have finaled the uh budget uh moving forward so our budget assumptions for this year um again the budget is not that exciting and and that's good uh in a lot of cases it shouldn't be uh relatively stable uh for what we do uh in the property appraisers office um we're estimating the budget will increase by about 3.7% and uh it's based on these assumptions a 4% salary increase which again um kind of duve tailes into what you have done for your uh employees 4% is what's in your current budget um so that's what that looks like the 3% Insurance increases increased in F FRS rates of course which are set by the state and we've kept our uh FTE at 48 so the chairman will receive three letters uh from my office once the budget is finally approved uh proportioning out how much of each of the funds that you control as the BCC funds my budget so obviously the biggest chunk of that comes from the County's general fund of 6 it's about $6.6 million the fire fund funds are budget about a million and the transportation fund is about uh to $28,000 and again this is again all outlined the statutes and that's why those are the three funds you control and the three uh reason you get three letters um we've talked about this before if you do the math you're not going to get up to the total budget because a very very very small percentage is paid by the St John's Water Management District like less than 1% uh this is just the U the the letter that gets submitted to the Department of Revenue and I put this in there just so that you know that we do have a level of oversight and it's just not David saying well let's just do this you know um there's schedules and lots of documentation that has to go along with that budget to justify what we've got going on uh we submitted the budget on the 28th of May and again this kind of gives you an idea about the schedules that have to go along with the budget with all the justification um salary schedule one Personnel Services you can see how that all Lays out and then any kind of justification that we need to do worksheets and again this is Do's professional staff in Tallahassee looking at all 67 property appraisers and all 67 Tax Collectors making sure we have what we need to be doing to to do the job that we're required to do um this is hard to see sorry to say but um this is um the schedule that actually goes up you guys also get a copy of this and breaks down between Personnel Services Capital outlay uh Etc and how much those each individual funds moved up and down from year to year organizational chart pretty traditional um we're you know basically broken up the biggest portion of the office is in the appraisal Department obviously that's what we do uh but all the support services around that and again this all has to be submitted to do also so that they know what the organization looks like and making sure that we have the proper resources my favorite slide um are property prer budget per capita uh the Statewide median to run an office is about $29 um per parcel if you will um it ranges anything from $10.4 per parcel to about $83 per parcel we'll talk about tixie County some other day um God love them they don't have a lot of value and you know it's it is but um so where we end up is about $15.33 per parcel we're the sixth lowest in the state out 67 counties but we're the 13th largest county in the state by population you can see how we compare to our neighbors um Lake County comes in a little bit less than we do um lots of things going on there with as far as their a lot of their technology and stuff is in back funded uh through the county and so uh it's coming out with another fund but anyway I think we compare very favorably uh with our neighbors especially fuchia County at $26 um we always love L green lines and red lines here in the county this is a green line in a in a blue line um and what this works out to be is this shows to the value increases since 2010 um compared to our FTE and you can see there's a huge Delta between those two um we've been very fortunate to be able to deliver a high level service we think at a very uh competitive cost and I will tell you in full disclosure some old counties that a different life cycle than some of our surrounding uh counties um I remember when I started working in the office in the 80s and the 9s we had this huge wrap up ramp up of growth a lot of new construction a lot of houses um and that requires a lot of Staffing especially 30 40 years ago we're at a different life cycle now uh we're kind of in a maintaining mode we're in the we're in the Redevelopment mode higher densities um and I will say I like this a lot better um so I mean to give you some point of comparison uh we added about just about 1100 houses to the tax roll for this year in s County my neighbor in ALA County added over 6,000 okay so that gives you in Lake County our neighbor to the west about 5,000 so that's just where we are but the the good thing is you need to be able to Pivot as an organization and react to those changes and I think we've done that fairly effectively this gives you an idea about what has happened to the taxable values over the last couple of years you can see uh as Mr Jack uh projected out um about an 8% growth this year that's down certainly from uh 23 and 22 um but you know that's that's a good still number and um you know we're projecting out six and 7% uh moving forward and if you look again at the our history as a county um it's it's that's a pretty reasonable conclusion um in fact we are finalizing the T preliminary tax rooll today and you'll be getting the final uh preliminary numbers uh in the next whoops yeah in the next week or so uh website we're very proud of this website again transparency has been kind of a theme today uh we we love the website it gets over 50,000 individual hits a week um and lots of things and one of the things that does not get a lot of hits is our quarterly budget reports that we do publish online it's done very in very efficiently uh there is no additional real cost to that other than we just loaded in there I wish more people would pay attention to it or but you know I think we had like something hits last year on it and most of it's probably me just make sure is it still working you know um but it's out there and U again we try to be as transparent as we possibly can for the public because we think that's very important and uh with that I have available for questions thank you very much as usual your cander and directness and brevity is much appreciated I will go to the board any inquiries from the board congratulations on being reelected well thank thank you very much same to you congratulations Mr Lockard anything I'll just say thank you for uh the collaborative way that you always work with us and our team and thank you for 3.6% very good you're welcome Mr dor David thank you very much for your hard work as well as your staff because I know it takes a staff absolutely great team you and your staff and your team's done a phenomenal job as always yeah I'm very blessed so thank you for that and also congratulations thank you very much appreciate Mr her congratulations It's a Wonderful budget it's wonderful work that you all do and go Hatters thank you very much exactly very good thank you very much we appreciate very much you being here and again congratulations very good thank you very much and enjoy the rest of your day and hopefully you'll get a lunch we'll try hopefully we do great all right we move on to the tax collector Mr croll welcome sir and our apologies of maybe not being able to get you on with your day sooner than you otherwise would have liked to but please proceed yeah then we're back when now we're into afternoon so that's about to be out afternoon so I'll try to make mine very short also um quickly uh starting here is what we do for our budget um just just like David said um very similar you know with our budgets except a couple differ on the dates but but um the the the statutes require that we submit our budget to the to the Department of Revenue and our budget is due August 1st so we're not finished with our we haven't actually even started on our budget yet we're still wai to usually get that done in July and then that's when we're ready to submit um so we review they'll review the budget and do the the changes any changes that they would deem that were you know excessive or anything would be determined by the Department of Revenue I lost a page there okay let's get to the next one so our budget timetable um you know August 1 obviously the budget is due to the department and we also turn it over to you the board of County Commissioners um by September 15th the tenative budget approval is due back to the tax collector with notice to the to the board accounting commission um the 15th to the 30th any additional information that needs to be uh this is going to be done to the to the department and then by September 30th the fiscal year closes and this is our deadline for submitting any budget amendments and then by October 1st our budget becomes operational now it's a Florida statute 218 and each County officer who receives expenses or compensation in fees commissions or any other enumeration they keep the record shall keep the record of all the fees commissions and for the county officer and shall make an annual report to the board of County Commissioners within 30 1 days um so basically we you know obviously I I don't I don't need to ask for any money we don't we're our M office is the only one that doesn't ever have to have to ask for money on a budget we actually have what we have call the excess fees at the end of what we don't spend um I know you already know all this but I'm just kind of putting it out there for the record so now going to be like I said pretty short here but I want to go through our unused Revenue history which kind of gives an idea because I don't have an exact number and I never will for this time of the year it's always just uh you know we we know where we kind of are and we're kind of always running on the same the same kind of numbers um unless there was some kind of major expense that I would notify you of if I said I needed to buy another building again like I did in the first year then I would of course this is where I'd be explaining it um but looking at the total um expenses we look at um in 19 when I first got elected between 19 and 20 which that actually wasn't my budget it was done before I was there but that when we had a bud our expenses of of like 11 million and then of course we had a little bit little bit higher but also still an 11 million then the following year the 2122 it was a our expenses were a lot lower because and we had just bought that building in 2021 so um our expenses went down and we had we were very short staffed so we had a lot of ex had the the lower expenses mostly because we were so short staffed and then back when I got the hiring back up we by 22 23 our expenses went up so typically we're looking at 11 11 million in the $1 million range is where our our total expenses are and of course the revenue changes based so somewhat on how many driver's licenses and such that we're doing and registrations but that's that comes in but that's that doesn't make us a lot of money where we really get the revenue is from the how much the tax collection goes up so based on um you know based on the the re unused Revenue distributed over the past years it was what 3 million we had 3 million in 28 uh 2 million in 79 the year that I had bought the building um four 4.4 million was in the following year because that was once again we had uh lower lower uh Staffing and then we were back to 3 million so normal average you know we're kind of going at a let me catch this up here uh we're average revenue from 2019 to 23 we're at like 14 million for the revenue um average expenses about 10 million almost 11 million each time and then the UN used revenue between those dates is like 3.1 million now that's going on what we've had recently over the years but this year um we had a huge increase on from on the David side because of the property values so this is very hard to no one will be able to read that but this basically is just the breakdown of all of our expenses as they come in and our and our income as it comes in and if you break down to the I went down a couple more and I'll get to the to the meat of it here so right as of April of when when we had done this report our our last quarter um we looking at having an additional $2 million of excess additional of what we had from last year so we'd be looking at possibility the four and a half to5 million range is what we're anticipating this year because we don't have any big expenses now between now and then you know between the end of our fiscal year but we will have we do have some expenses that we'll try to get through we're implement the new tax program that's going to be taking effect in March because I was saddled with the old ta the tax program that came with the office when I was in there in contract and we had to keep the taxes rolling so that was very expensive and we we finally eliminating that moving forward but um other than that you know no major purchases no no major employment of you know hiring anything like that we're kind of just kind of moving along as we are so I'm I'm anticipating an additional $2 million on top of the three that we normally have we're close to three great great thank you very much Mr Cole we appreciate your brevity in your presentation I will start at this end and go to the other end commissioner her I appreciate the additional $2 million so everyone usually does yeah yeah great great work and uh we know there was a lot of doing and undoing to get to this point and we congratulate you on that congratulations on your re-election I'll be to it how about that Jr congratul rations well done thank you and your staff I'm sure the citizens I know the citizens appreciate it and well done thank you very much um while you certainly don't ask for money from us we know from your predecessor that you could still cost us quite a bit of money so we appreciate the expenses we appreciate you uh doing the work that you're doing very much and uh congratulations all it's a pleasure working with you yeah thank you congratulations to you certainly a breath of fresh air of uh a professional operation now over there that is is so well needed for this community so thank you very much and again congratulations on your reelection thank you very much thank you very much all right we're ready for the sheriff all right he really had nowhere to go but up didn't he he's got 15 minutes right this morning well maybe 16 16 minutes well I think I can still say good morning right technically yeah uh uh you know everybody uh Chief Lisa Spriggs and then our uh Finance director Mary hope and in the interest of brevity I'm going to try to do something that I've never done before uh I take Clues from uh my County Commissioners and many of you have independently said hey let's try to move it along along right but we do have 53 53 slides that are part of this presentation deck that we will make uh publicly available on our website each of you have that and I think as a precursor to this presentation I think we have 10 or 12 hours of independent meetings with each of you and and uh Darren and County staff as well so what I'll do is I'll speak about the budget first talk about the high level like an executive summary of what the budget uh includes and then provide an opportunity to answer any questions great thank you it's a uh 6% increase uh overall to our budget on our trans midle sheet I have at least the eight years that I have been Sheriff to look at what our ask has been in compared to the tax increase of the county I think when you look at that we have always gone in lower than what any growth of avalor or County taxes are uh we don't do that um as as a general practice or procedure it's just important to us to be proportionate to whatever growth the county is experiencing as well it's not the the the mathematical equation that we use when we do asks at all our overall budget consists of nearly $70 million of responsibilities that you charge us to do on behalf of the county again $175 million budget all in with grants and and other Revenue V is probably 193 million but about 70 million of that is again responsibility particularly 63 million of that is running the correction of facility on the County's behalf and we're grateful to always have been able to do that it's collaborative it's great chemistry and I think that we all agree that during somebody's incarceration is a time to kind of fix whatever's broken the uh the overwhelming majority of our budget is Personnel uh 83% of our budget is people uh 1430 or so employees within the agency and that is the big uh big lift that we have that increases 5% uh the 5% includes uh a 2% adjustment to the base starting pay of our members to include Deputy sheriffs uh that moves us to $53,000 for starting pay which is in the middle market value of seminal County criminal justice and policing agencies there uh it also includes a 5% adjustment across the board for all employees who are not yet topped out and an increase of 6% to the top out pay um of of the people who are currently at that Max pay level within their pay grade uh again totaling 2% adjustment to the base 2% adjustment for compression 5% across the board in in plain uh uh language that's 7% for people who are not yet topped out a 6% increase to the top of the pay scale and again it puts us right right in the middle of seal County policing agencies and consistent uh to what we've done there's only four additional FTE that are being requested uh during this budget cycle and I'd like just to take a couple of moments to explain those um well before I do that the the capital uh is an increase same increase that that you're seeing as well 25% or so increase in the cost of vehicles inflation uh and then a lot of that is is the the cost of Technology particularly cloud storage when it comes to techn Technology Solutions uh again same on your side as well uh the four positions that we have uh two of them are to support our our Sheriff's Office police and cabinet and I'll spend a moment talking about that in a moment the other two positions are actually converting contractual uh uh it positions we we call them Information Technology positions that have been contracted out as temp employees uh we're going to actually bring them on a fulltime so two additional positions there there'll be a cost savings when we no longer have to contract those Services out and it's a good opportunity for us to actually give somebody a trial run to see if they're a good fifth through the organization they have the skill set before we make that formal offer of employment uh two positions are there the other two positions our two deputy sheriff positions to support our uh Sheriff's Office uh police academy uh and and uh like to spend again a little bit of time talking about this because uh it's come up uh time and time again and there there's some questions about it uh for the record we have a fabulous wonderful working relationship with some State College uh the people over there are our friends uh we promote their Academy we promote Advanced Training we send our Deputy sheriffs to their Advanced training schools we think that they do uh a a good job we're making uh this move because there are uh benefits that extend beyond fiscal benefits of training our own folks uh Once Upon a Time acmis across the State of Florida would find people who had an interest in criminal justice and try to pave a path to make them more marketable and considerable uh for employment meaning that they would go through an academy before they ever ended up at our office uh for an interview that has most exclusively changed uh the people who we send to the academy now is is indeed we send them to the academy they become members of the SEO County Sheriff's Office we send them then to the academy to get certified and they come back and we hire them and then we put them through field training that's when we start to orientate them into the ways that we do business we feel that that running our own Academy can help indoctrinate people from the onset uh to do policing Services the way that the seminal County Sheriff's Office does that to make sure that all documentation it is through our unique documentation system that our folks in it create and and they they start to use our terminology particularly radio codes and signals because uh to many surprise that one of the top two disqualifiers for somebody that goes through the four Monon long field training process is they they have a difficult time learning our software packages and they have a lot of difficulty uh communicating the way that police officers and deputy sheriff's communicate so this would be us all Incorporated in our academy uh we believe that we can save nearly $1,000 po per candidate uh by running them through our own practice and procedure and we feel that we can eliminate anywhere from four to 6 weeks of the field training process and orientating uh as as a part of that so this is something that we have started now for the past 6 or seven months uh FDLE has come in and looked at our facilities uh looked at our partnership with someo State College and has given us an initial uh blessing it is not unique to sumal County there are many counties that are actually moving down this path as well and and again that is um it's going to take about six or I'm sorry five positions in order to do that uh the top three positions have been positions that have been repurposed we had retirement of two lieutenants and what we did was we took those lieutenants commands and then combined them with other middle level management positions within the organization and ultimately made those positions obsolete uh gave other lieutenants more responsibility we also took a a support position from our department of corrections and converted that for a total of three positions to help support the five positions needed to run the academy the additional ask is for the two additional FTE uh the majority of the cost for those will be offset with the cost Savings of 11,000 per per recruit and and the cost saving of not having to put somebody through the four to six weeks onset of field trending so that's that's a big part of what this request is uh here um again we we have each slide that breaks down our number of people our our positions our our organizational breakdown that's those 50 plus slides that go from division to division to section to section uh our general philosophy uh has been and and will always be uh to try to each and every year modernize our roles see what positions that have become obsolete see if we can use technology to replace those positions or to repurpose positions which which brings me to the last point that we've done uh all of you have been incredibly uh and vocally and actively involved with the work that we've done with addressing mental health and and substance uh use disorder and for that our team is incredibly grateful you have you have used your voice and your positions to help support that uh uh Darren gray has been just a a phenomenal County Manager I'm grateful for your your advocacy and your service and and your partnership quite frankly and uh the the conversations and partnership with Advent Health have been now shifted from us uh to the county manager and his staff he's taking the lead on uh any conversations moving forward uh we knew that there was money set aside with the arpa that you were kind enough to provide the $9 million to get us up and going uh we over overstepped our position initially on that and I've apologized for that and kind of backed that out a little bit and uh talked to the county manager so he and his team are taking the lead with us as partners in that space I think when we looked at the the as a qualifying County the settlement money that was there uh of course there is no guarantee there's still concerns the bakum seed I think that the conversation now is a conversation cented around sustainability which was what many of the Commissioners uh had asked for and I think it's a it's an incredibly important topic in conversation quite frankly one that we had not had before you asked the question so I think that that's kind of where it's at now uh part of our request is counting on continued funding from the opioid settlement money to support our score team that's the wraparound Services uh broadly we are experiencing a great success in seino County when other areas are not experiencing similar success uh three points that I want to place there's about a 30% reduction in overdoses and poisonings in SEO County about a 30% reduction that's pretty significant the volume of number is still a large volume but 30% reduction of anything is is a pretty good Benchmark that what we're doing is working uh two uh there's about a 22% reduction in fatalities um you know I think that that uh the reduction of fatalities is a combination of things is we're getting people access uh through our partnership with Advent health of medical based treatment therapy combined with cognitive behavioral therapy as well as greater access to the life-saving drug noxin uh we've seen a shift in public safety uh professionals both fire and police uh doing about 25% less deployments of noxin when there's about a 25% increase in everyday average citizens actually deploying the life-saving drug so so with that that's kind of a highlevel overview of an executive summary of what our ask is it's an overall uh 6% ask and I I I've broken it down to those things we can go through the slides if you like or I can try to answer questions whatever your preference is Chairman sure thank thank you very much sherff for your willingness to to expedite this and you are correct we've seen the slides your staff has been very gracious I know in my office have spent a great deal of time and and kept us updated including the latest update uh this past week from Miss Spriggs um congratulations on your re-election number one you um number two I really am thrilled about this Academy idea from the standpoint of we all know unfortunately what young men and women are seeing in in the news media and have for those reasons often chosen not to go down a path of of Public Safety um and I think with you and your own Academy working with seminol State uh I think we do have a way to to have a paradigm shift in getting those recruits acclimated so we don't have them go through a training then all of a sudden they just say well you know what I'm going to go be a carpenter instead uh or I'm going to go be an attorney or whatever the case might be um so I applaud you for for taking that on and building those efficiencies as as well as being able to have those efficiencies and FASTT tracking the whole process I think that's uh a great attribute so with that again thank you very much I will start at the far end with commissioner Constantine we'll come back this way this time okay thank you very much and Sheriff again congratulations to you and your all your staff and congratulations on being reelected uh I asked Sheriff sprigs to break down into silos the um the academy and I did receive that and I think she did send it to all the other Commissioners so um I just wanted to and then subsequent to that I had a conversation with um the president of seino State College which I'm all of us you know work with very well also and it seems that some of the concerns have been smoothed over since our first conversation the I guess the question I would have here is in the direct Academy costs there is like an Academy upstart cost of 225,000 but the budget impact indicates that it's only 25,000 and I was just wondering where the difference comes from in that I I I could start at the top and then Lisa can kind of dig in I I think the calculations that she worked in Were Real Cost uh on both sides what it would actually cost if we were not supplementing and benefiting from the $1,000 savings per per member um and and then some of the some of the cost I don't know if it was calculated in the the uh cost of eliminating some of the initial weeks of of field training that that goes along with getting somebody uh orientated it's not really not even training it's orientated to the organization and all that goes on but I'll I'll defer to Lisa who who prepared those numbers yeah so specific to the direct costs that were startup the $200,000 difference is related to Vehicles so we would be purchasing new vehicles but we would also be able to retain some of the vehicles on our replacement schedule so budgetary impact um we would have already been buying new vehicles to begin with so it doesn't we would just not sell uh the vehicles needed to run the Academy if that makes sense and and and chief I I under thank you for that cuz that was the only one you asked for full cost regardless of budget impact absolutely and I appreciate and that's what I'm saying I could understand the redirection of the uh the positions I got the Total Staffing and the supplies which are you know there the the ROI reflecting the shorter period of time in um in their use the reduction per student cost I got all that but the the academy upstart you there wasn't any specifics in there so I just wanted to make sure that I understood that and um I I want to because I did want the fellow Commissioners did did you send it to them okay good all right thank you very much send it to me one more time okay and that's it thank you commissioner lockart it's entirely possible that it's sitting in my my inbox down at the bottom I don't I don't recall having having seen that um thank you Sheriff as always for the great work that you do I I know um you've got a lot of responsibility with your entire team and and it's it's you and I and I'm not saying this to be a negative in any way shape or form but you make up such a huge portion of our budget uh not for any other reason other then it is probably one of the most important things that County government funds is safety between you and and our fire and EMS and our Emergency Management I mean that's pretty much why that's the primary focus for us being here so I don't begrudge you uh taking that portion of of the budget um it just will seem odd that we have spent so much time this morning talking about the smallest parts of our budget and yet we are and yet I don't feel compelled to um um to dissect as much what it is that you're doing here um the the Academy of course is something new that you're endeavoring on I I congratulate you for taking those steps um I I do feel that as a trustee at seminal State I should uh comment um and say that the college is fully committed to making sure that the uh programs that we are offering our community not just seal County but surrounding agencies who utilize our Academy are are top notot and and we are committed to making sure that we continue to provide and and further provide um the customer service oriented delivery of instruction that we know our agencies need and so I I will personally make that commitment to you and the other agencies moving forward thank thank you so much commissioner and uh and again I'm I'm grateful for that relationship with sual state and quite frankly the Commissioners this is this is probably one of the the the most important things that we do at the Sheriff's Office each and every year and uh to make sure that we're putting the safety of the Citizens First is so incredibly important and and uh to the point of the college I mean they've got wonderful programs that are out there my my son is a student at se State College and uh we still plan to hire uh additional people from the the academy that is being run by Seal State College I I think i' I've said it before and I haven't said it uh during this pre presentation but we're experiencing about five times the turnover rate as what we did 20 years ago and and I think that um as we continue to incentivize people from across the country to relocate to the great free state of Florida uh more and more people are going to be picking up their policing professions here just a quick follow up on that I I part of this three-legged stool that I feel like I'm sitting on as a a commissioner and and a trustee and and of course helping to support the sheriff with his budget is that we have uh the assets of the um firing range and the um driving range driving track that we have a a lease agreement with the college and I it is probably time for us to uh modernize that agreement and so I'll be looking forward to the county manager team working with the college and and all of the agencies who utilize that team making that those facilities making sure that the agreement really reflects what it is that the needs are today um I've had some detailed conversations with the sheriff and some of his team members as well as Dr Loren and and some of our team members and it just seems like you know we're we're trying very hard to live by the the black and white words of that agreement but some of it just doesn't make sense anymore so as a part of this change uh this implementation of this new Academy that might be the perfect opportunity for us to to look at that commissioner delari thank you Mr chairman first of all Sheriff thank you for being here and thank you for the uh budget that you're presenting but more importantly thanking you and your staff for all your hard work that you do day in and day out day after day to keeping this County where it is from a safety standpoint uh you are the chief law enforcement agency of this uh officer of the county and uh that's a big burden so thank you for all that I want to thank your staff for their hard work and yes we're not going deep into your budget right here but I can assure the public that I have met with you personally and Miss Spriggs for two and a half hours to go for your budget and we went over every L item so thank you for making those making the time for me and uh explaining the budget in great detail for me uh I think as we move forward I see nothing but great things as we move forward uh with the sheriff's department I also would Echo the sentiments that fellow board members are made by the academy that you're starting I think it's very important uh to get more and more officers out on the street and try to train them most effectively and uh quickly as possible so thank you for your leadership with that when it comes to mental health and uh opioids uh you're recognized not just locally but regionally and nationally so thank you for that as well and uh Mr chairman I have no other comments thank you thank you much commissioner her thank you chairman Sheriff thank you for everything that you do um I'll I'll just start by saying I I too did meet with you and chief Spriggs and went through the budget in detail so no need to further develop that discussion today I appreciate the fact that the your package is always put together so clearly and so thoroughly that they're really is not a lot of room for questions and that's fabulous and then when there are questions I actually get the answer to the specific question that I asked so I appreciate you and your team for the work that gets done to do that with regard to um opioids I would just uh voice my desire to make sure that we are as focused on prevention as we are on recovery and and we're certainly working on that through County staff um and with regard to the academy the the offer and the commitment that was made and and that echoed what uh commissioner lockart said was certainly echoed by Dr Loren is that whatever learnings that you have through your own Academy get brought back for Best Practices to the academy that supports the other agencies that keep our citizens safe um I think I think we can rise all right rise the tide for all all of the boats and I think there's a great opport Unity here I'm a big fan of competition and while we're not competing because we're government but uh you may learn some things and be able to share things that they don't have the ability to view from their P perspective in the universe so I appreciate you I appreciate your team and chief Spriggs I'll get your title right um we appreciate you and your team certainly Mary we we all love you not we're you know not that we don't love the rest of you that didn't come out right I'll pass it back to the chair well in wrapping up on behalf of all the citizens of of simol County thank you uh for your watchful eye over the men and women in law enforcement under your command uh and their watchful eye on our community we we often forget to thank each and every one of you for some of the quality life we enjoy here in SEO County because of the collaboration we had with our law enforcement Partners as well as your oversight and way of managing uh police in a community I think speaks volume so thank you on behalf of all the citizens and we hope you have a wonderful rest of your day well uh thank you all I'm sorry well I I found it it's in the it's in the paper copy so thank you no need to email it it's right here I I I I say it a lot uh when I'm speaking and uh this is a good opportunity for me just to kind of end on this is nothing that we we do would be capable without your support collaboration you are truly people who support Public Safety in our community uh you've not only said that uh with your mouth you've you've done that with your actions and if the public knew the amount of hours that you spent on the phone with me and our team plugged in on incredibly important issues to those people making the calls everything from code enforcement to crimes and and the work that you have uh created here in suo county is indeed nationally recognized with trying to get people to help uh to recover uh the the the political Capital to create new laws to hold drug dealers accountable and I think that um that we're just getting started and I I'm thankful that the county manager to continue to allow us to play a a significant role in that process and thankful for all of you for your for your leadership of our County so thank you amen thank you you have a good day okay I'm going to go to staff real quick have we had any movement or response from the supervisor of elections attending either today or at some different time I'm checking I emailed him right away and no I they acknowledged my email um this morning about I'd look at another day but they have not uh about what time was the acknowledgement um that was at 9:00 a.m. this morning they thanked me for uh acknowledging their email basically thanks so much all they said thanks so much um and then I replied after about I asked them about tomorrow as well as next Tuesday if that if they were available so I have not received I just want to make sure that we reached out okay anything else before we take a quick 30 minute break all right we'll recess until 1:00 we'll see yall shortly 35 minutes 35 minutes [Music]