Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good morning. We wanted to give everybody a little extra time and we know that it is the last week of July, which means we have a lot of our peers vacationing this week and getting ready for back to school, which will be happening in just a couple of weeks. If you haven't already, please make sure that you sign in. If you want to speak at the end of the agenda, we'll take your speaker cards. And other than that, we will go ahead and get started with a call to order and some introductions. I'm Lee McElroy. I am the Director of Prevention Services with Eckerd Connects.

Cynthia Ramos, Director of Nursing and Department of Health. Good morning, Dr. Chana Spear, Director of Public Schools.

Gene Bandish, Brevard County Courts.

Abby Anderson, Department of Juvenile Justice. Lisa Bradley, Brevard Community Corrections.

Juanita Jackson, Director for Housing and Human Services.

Anita Black, Housing and Human Services.

Jessica Cogsley, National Center. Jessica Miles, National Center. Davine Vincent, Family Partnerships, Special Florida. Mackenzie Gillespie. Sarah Sloan from our Homeless Coalition.

Tyler Smith, intern for Bar County. Intern for what? The County Attorney's Office.

Wonderful, well done. Allison Fierce with Hacker Connect.

All right, Stanley.

Go, Stan.

Oh, and again. Stanley Brandt, out there. George Mardolz, Recovery Connections. Melissa Brandt, Recovery Connections. Cheryl Bellow. Ms. Cheryl Bellow, SACS. Monica Van Deventer, SACS. Katherine Parker, National Center for International Medicine.

Mark Andrews with Housing and Human Services.

Thank you. Good morning. All right. We are going to go ahead and move to the approval for the meeting minutes from May 18th. I believe that there were copies at the table at the back of the room. Were there any changes that needed to be made to those minutes? Okay. If no changes, can I get a motion to approve? So moved second, all those in favor, any opposed? Okay. We will approve the meeting minutes for may the 18th. Next item on the agenda is the committee discussion. This is also attached and included today. So we have the tip and the opioid misuse abatement advisory committee resolutions.

Does everybody have, you're good.

Okay. We'll open for any questions or discussions.

And I'll go ahead and do an introduction, if that's okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning. Juanita Jackson, again, Housing and Human Services. And so as I discussed at the last meeting, we did a county manager's office. We brought forward at the July 7, 2026, Brevard County Board of County Commissioner meeting, and it was approved. The agenda was approved with the attached resolutions. And so for the tip resolution, it removed the seats that were added to tip for the county to be a qualified county and for the opioid program. And so those seats were removed from tip and the subcommittees were also removed from tip. So basically everything connected to opioids was removed from tip. And so now the TIP Committee is back to being the TIP Committee only. And so that resolution still stands until December 31st, 2027. So there were no changes with that. And then with the opioid, what was created is now the opioid misuse abatement advisory committee. And so that has now been established. The approval has happened through risk management and County attorney. And so the resolution isn't signed yet by the chair, but it will be signed. And so that committee is now with opioids is just one committee. So instead of having the two separate committees, the review committee and the recommendation committee, which just made things a little complicated, it's just one committee that will do everything. And now that committee will meet separately and we'll have quarterly meetings. And so we're gonna get that ramped up and started. So those qualified seats that were in the TIP Committee are now moved over to the Opioid Committee. So those seats will be a representative from City of Melbourne, City of Palm Bay, Space Coast League of Cities, a representative from Brevard County, representative from Brevard County Sheriff's Department, and then four at-large seats, which will be chosen from citizens who represent the community involvement with opioids, having some type of connection with that. And so if you desire to serve on this committee, those seats and everything will be uploaded to the Granicus, yes, the Granicus system, which is the Brevard County Board of County Commissioners. That's where all of our advisory boards are in the Granicus system. and basically the opioid committee is going to look now like all the other advisory committees that brevard county have if you wish to again to fill one of those seats you just fill in the application and grant a kiss you can find that on the county's website if we receive more than four applications then the decision will be made by the board of county commissioners and so what happens is our department will bring forth an agenda i will bring it to the board the board will vote and then decide who sits in those seats those seats will be a two-year term right those seats will be a two-year term The qualified seats, those members that's not a two-year term, they sit in those seats until the organization that appointed them decides to appoint someone else. And I think that covers everything just as a synopsis in a nutshell. So if there's any discussion or questions.

Just think for the audience that they should know that obviously there was discussion in the early stages of addressing the issue of the opioid group and then the child welfare group, right? And so for my colleagues in child welfare, what we do know and what we wanted to protect was the fact that even though there's a little bit somewhat county restructuring on what team is responsible for what, because mental health substance abuse and domestic violence are the three reasons why lead agencies are going to be around for a while, it was very evident that the communication across these councils and alliances and whatnot are going to be very intentional about sharing information and staying connected. So if the community thinks, oh man, this is kind of like jockeying for position in this county, no, not really. That's more about the accountability of the charge of each individual entity. And we respected that and wanted to support that. But nevertheless, I don't think that how we communicate and how we share information relative to what families are struggling with in our community will remain intact. I believe that people, when they were talking about this, are very intentional to commit to that goal. That's all.

Yes, the communication was still, you know, because Housing and Human Services will still man the TIP, you know, so there will be updates on that. The communication will still flow. And it was a great partnership having opioids as part of TIP and getting it started and laying that foundation. But now that we have a few years in, it just makes sense to separate it so there's not an overlap in opioids, you know, like we discussed before. I won't rehash that. And then the subcommittee that was put together for us to have those discussions to come to this decision was really good, and we had good open discussions, those two meetings that we were together. And so I think now things will just flow easier with the separation. And then the opioid committee could get those updates and everything that they've been wanting, and it won't take over the TIP meeting and make the TIP meeting longer. So I just think the separation will benefit. So was there any other discussion questions that anyone may have?

I just want to thank you and your staff for the work that went into this. I know that it took a lot of effort and, you know, things don't happen overnight. And so I just want to thank all of you that took the time to, you know, hear the discussions that were happening and to see the shift and to see that to its completion. I thank you.

Thank you. We appreciate it.

Any other discussions? I have one follow-up question. With the changing of the membership, do we need to at some point select a new co-chair? Our previous co-chair was our representative from the city of Melbourne. Can we just put that on the agenda for the next meeting?

Typically we have improved attendance for that meeting.

Okay.

We will get that done. They will, um, Anita and Phoebe will add that to the agenda for next meeting. And it's like you say, the probably better attendance then because it's not summer vacation.

Yeah. Thank you. All right. We are going to go ahead and move into our committee updates. And I just want to thank those that said that come forward for these committees for as many years as I have attended the TIP meeting. You know, the information that shared this is what we do take back to our teams. And this is where we do create collaboration and partnership to strengthen across different sectors and across different agencies. So having these updates continue, I think, is a vital opportunity for that work to continue to grow stronger. On that note, we're going to start with the family strengthening and infant mental health update.

Thank you. I'll be quick.

We're very pleased and excited to announce that

Heather Gibb and Sirian Maconico have graciously agreed to serve as co-chairs for the Family Strengthening and Infant Mental Health Subcommittee, so thank you to them. I also just want to highlight Healthy Families is hosting a period of Purple Crying training, introductory training that will be on August 7th. There are flyers at the back of the room and McKinsey, I can't see her but she's here. If you have additional questions, feel free to ask her about that. And then just one other, save the date. November 6th will be Healthy Start's annual maternal and child health workshop. The focus this year is on maternal mental health and infant safety. That will be November 6th at 9 a.m. here in Vieira at the Health Department's building. And that is all I have.

Do you by chance know much about the Healthy Family's funds that are being cut and what the impact might be? I'm sorry, I don't mean to cut you off.

No, it's OK. We have not gotten a great deal of detail from the state. Department of Children and Families, I guess, was aware that the cut was coming. And I think they are looking to replace the dollars with sort of billable or reimbursable funds. Unfortunately, you can't spin up a billing system immediately when dollars go away. So we know it's a $3.1 million cut across the state. We don't know how it's going to be applied, whether that will be a, you know, across the board even split or if, you know, will there are sites that are poor performing or, you know, are some of the sites that might have like a Children's Services Council or something going to be able to shoulder some of that cut. So we're still waiting to hear the details. But I can share it with you, Phil, as soon as we find out. Thank you.

In the spirit of transparency, because the lead agencies over child welfare, we didn't get the model funding, funding model approved this year. So we have to wait another year and And we're already saying that there are shortcomings financially. They reach out to us, healthy families, to me. And I wanted to have a little bit more insight as to what can I respond with. I would imagine they're going to be looking at us to see if they can lend funds to create more or continue programming. That's going to be a tough task. But I'm going to do what I can to see – what we can do creatively because they are a significant player in what we call that continuum pipeline of families that we don't really want to come into the formal system. We want to help them when at an earlier stage, you know, but thank you for sharing that.

Sure. Okay. Our next committee update will be the child abuse prevention task force.

Good morning, everyone. There's a few updates for us as well. So the Executive Committee for Captive, we did recently finish updating the captive bylaws, and we will be presenting that to our general committee members on the August 20th meeting. Our meeting is on August 20th at 9 a.m. If you are interested in attending or would like to, please let me know, and I'll be sure that you have the link forwarded. It is a reoccurring meeting, so it happens every third Thursday of the month at 9 o'clock. And also with this fiscal year, I did mention, I think last time, that we are making attempts to have captive be more present in the community outside of the month of April. So the executive team, we are working to try to build some more connections and collaboration in the community so that we can have more engagement efforts, not only in the month of April. And part of that also is going to be including assessing how we can have our general captive members also be a little bit more hands on. and not have different activities or responsibilities just fall solely on the executive team members. But that is the only update for me.

Thank you. Up next is Uplift.

Hello. So I know this section is titled Committee Updates, and we're not really a committee of tips, so I don't know if that needs to be changed. I think several are probably not. So I don't know if that needs to be changed to something else to align with what this update is about. And I'm not sure if we'll remain on this section, too, after you make your changes, but I wanted to bring that up. Any suggestions? NONE. I HAVE NONE. NO. BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, YOU JUST DID A KIND OF RESTRUCTURING AND THEN YOU HAVE THE RESOLUTION TO GO OVER AS WELL. SO THAT'S JUST FOR TIP TO DECIDE HOW THEY WANT TO HANDLE IT. I KNOW WHY IT SAYS COMMITTEE UPDATES BECAUSE HISTORICALLY THAT'S WHAT IT WAS. AND I THINK FAMILY STRENGTHENING AND INFANT MENTAL HEALTH STILL OPERATES AS A TRUE SUBCOMMITTEE OF TIP. YEAH, I THINK THAT ONE IS DEFINITELY IN LINE WITH WHAT IT SAYS HERE. AND THE REST, I'M NOT EXACTLY SURE. I THINK MORE AGENCY REPORTS. And so we don't really have an update. I will say we did enjoy presenting with Valerie Holmes Family Partnerships of Central Florida last week as part of DCF Central Regional Collaboration. A particular section was on vaping and how do we address teen vaping, but also an interesting meeting because it also tied in there a large focus on the homelessness issue and how that intersected with substance misuse and where the shift is happening now governmentally with trying to approach substance misuse through the homelessness issue as well, so there's a lot of moving pieces going together, but of course prevention fits in everywhere, as we always say. Families that need support with treatment and mental health services, obviously there's children involved, prevention services have to be very strong, be it substance misuse prevention, be it homelessness prevention, But as we focused on substance misuse prevention, it was great to just talk about the three initiatives that we utilized for that. Our three-pronged approach across Osceola, Brevard, and Seminole with I Choose Me, Better Without It, and Move Into Light. And so, as I explained at that meeting as well, I Choose Me is more focused on general audiences, younger kids, maybe up to ages 11, and their families and general community members. the Better Without It initiative, which is spearheaded by Central Florida Cares, which I'm a partner with, along with CTS Agency, is focused more on Gen Z and Gen Alpha. You'll see the messaging be very targeted towards them through social media and through other activities in the community. And then Move Into Light is for families that have already experienced a substance misuse crisis, or kids that are already deeply involved in using substances in one way or the other, or they've had issues. And so that one is more of a stigma reduction uh... approach you know we know it exists there how do we let them know they can step out of the darkness into the light and discuss those issues and get support and help from all the providers that exist here so that's a high-level overview of how we approach that so you'll see different ads going out throughout the central florida area you'll see different programs uh... we had a great uh... program activity that we did in osceola county on june thirtieth uh... with a former mba player and we've done that here in brevard as well before So we're going to keep engaging all sectors as well as all segments of the family and community to make sure that that continues to happen. If you want more information about any one of those initiatives, please let me know. We created a really good group of resources with our Titusville grant that we had through their opiate sediment dollars. It's kind of a new resource pamphlet for resources in the north region of the county because they always feel a little under-resourced with things. But we've also created a recovery booklet. We've given it to Parish. We've given it to, I think Recovery Connections received it as well. And Space Coast Health Centers as well. And it really is a good walkthrough that you can do with clients. And patients, we've given it to the emergency department, I believe, as well, as I mentioned with Parish, so that when they're trying to get resources to people that are leaving because they've come in or being discharged from a substance use-related issue, there's kind of like a pathway or a guidance to them getting more services and more help to plug into the system. So I am creating a more general version of that that's not just North Brevard-centric. THAT WE CAN PROVIDE TO THE MEMBERS OF TIP AND GET OUT TO OTHER MEMBERS, NOT JUST FOR THEIR USE, BUT ALSO SUGGESTIONS ON WHAT CAN BE INCLUDED IN THERE AS WELL. IT'S A LITTLE MORE FOCUSED THAN THE YELLOW CARD IS. IT'S GOT, BECAUSE IT WAS FOR NORTH BROVARD, BUT FOR OUR VERSION THAT I'LL BE HANDING OUT, MAYBE WE'LL HAVE MORE NATIONAL OR STATEWIDE RESOURCES BECAUSE SOMETIMES IT CAN BE OVERWHELMING FOR PEOPLE TO TRY TO FIND WHO TO CALL FOR THE RIGHT THING. AND THAT IS IT FOR OUR UPDATE.

Thank you. Next, I have the Brevard Homeless Coalition.

Good morning.

And thank you. So as most of you know, the Brevard Homeless Coalition serves as the lead agency for homeless services in Brevard. As the lead agency, we also serve as a collaborative applicant for federal and state funding. So we are actually in the process now of writing our federal application to housing and urban development. There were some hiccups. It was initially released in the beginning of this year. Then there was a lawsuit and it was pulled back. We are now able to apply for funds nationally, that's happening. So we're really excited and happy to finally be able to move forward with that. That's a great thing for our community. So we are thick in the middle of writing that collaborative application, doing the review and ranking process for the local applications that we received. We submit that in August, the end of August, the 26th. We'll know probably sometime in December about the federal funding that we receive for the community. So that's my update, that's what we're doing right now. As a reminder, we have our third quarterly membership meeting on August 5th. This meeting is going to serve as a agency resource fair. So it's an opportunity for our agencies, organizations, people working in the homelessness space, those who are vulnerable to homelessness, to come together to learn more about each other, Build better referral pathways for clients. In general, just to be able to connect. They don't really get to do that a whole lot. So we'll be holding that August 5th, 9.30 to 11.30 at the Frank T. Forrester Recreation Center in Rockledge. If you're interested, let me know. And I will send you an RSVP link or go to our website to do that. And that is what I have for you this morning. Wonderful. Any questions? I have one question.

Sure. And it might just be that I do not know. I know that we do a lot of cold weather shelters with the heat indexes that we're facing.

And I'm just thinking about school returning.

And we often are working with families that are sleeping in their cars or outside. Do we reach a point where we open up shelters due to high heat issues?

We would love to do that. Right now, we don't have any heat shelters. So we had the threshold for cold night shelters, but nothing for heat-related shelters. We would love to explore that. Steps is here. They have their living room. So I know that's a 23-hour-a-day place where people can go. So that could provide a little bit of relief. The libraries provide relief. That would certainly be a goal for us to try to have those heat advisory shelters. We would love that.

Thank you. We don't talk much about that. We don't.

Other states do. And it can be as simple as we've seen that you have those little misting centers at some libraries, public building, public facilities open up. And so it's a place where they'll have water. maybe a couple of chairs to sit in, and then misting, cooling, you know, mist going. So it can be something as simple as that, just to get a little bit of relief from the heat. That's something we definitely need to think more about.

I do. Have you, going back to your other topic, have you sent out solicitation for letters of support for the grant?

We're working on those now. If we haven't sent one to you, we will be sending one to you. Looking forward to it. Most likely. So, yeah, please be on the lookout for that. And with this, you know, the federal applications always wait, wait, wait, and then hurry, hurry, hurry. So, yeah, we all know how that goes. So it is something that typically once we reach out to you, it is a critically fast turnaround. And we apologize for that. It's just sort of the nature of that beast.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Family Partnership of Central Florida.

So we've had quite a few facilities in this county over the last few years. And again, in alignment with anticipated funding that has stalled, we had took it upon ourselves this past year to consolidate. We had a facility on Commerce Drive, in Rockledge, and we had already transitioned. That's predominantly an administrative location. We've consolidated into the Rio Mar Drive location, which was predominantly case management and adoptions, and we're now going to be bringing our Palm Bay on Minton Road operations up. So we'll be centralizing. It's a twofold thing. I'll be totally open with you guys and let you know that, yeah, finance will drive things like that. But, you know, post-COVID, I've been highly, my staff know this, I've been highly sensitive about an organization that grew from about 150 employees to about 260 employees, 460 employees today. And I wanted to bring back, you know, it's family in our name, family partnerships. And, you know, it was fragmentation as many organizations have experienced. And so part of that is the bringing back of the workforce, if you will. I don't know if others are experiencing that, that transition since COVID or not. But it's a mixed bag. You know, some people really enjoyed the remote access and stuff like that. I think that's fine. I've instituted a more flexible way of doing that within our organization that people will always have that opportunity to work at home, at least a percentage. But I'd like to see particularly leadership and mid-level management across divisions, communicating, talking, and letting the workforce know that you still really belong to an organization. an independent and so we did that this year so probably by the end of the summer we will have one location in Rockledge that will encompass all of the case management of the county and our adoptions program and then a few other sundry of things but and administration will be there we also have locations of administration in Maitland as well because you guys know we have circuits 9 and 18 under our belt now that's all I wanted to share today

Thank you. Next up is CareerSource Brevard Flagler Volusia. I don't think they have anyone. Okay. Domestic Violence Task Force. And Florida Department of Children and Families. I know she couldn't attend today. Okay. Department of Juvenile Justice.

Good afternoon. I'm filling in for Chief Fuller, who his... taking on a new chapter of his career, and I believe with family partners.

Yes, non-poaching, non-poaching member. We're blessed to have him join us.

Yes, so we're going to still be working together. Yeah, absolutely. So I will be sitting in until a new chief is decided. Really, we're just continuing our efforts in Brevard County with the pre-arrest delinquency citation program. That's really our drive here in Brevard. Since the last JAAC advisory meeting, I have had some law enforcement reach out to me to get specifics so they could do training with their teams. So I was really excited about that to get the message to the patrol team so they know what their options are. So we're going to continue our efforts on that front.

You'll be acting in the interim role, is that what you're saying?

Correct. I'm the assistant chief, and I'm, as of last Friday, acting chief.

Well, congratulations on that. Thank you. And please, you know, reach out to me. Our agencies do work together on a lot of our consumers. So I want you to know that you're welcome to call me anytime, honestly.

Thank you. Thank you so much. National Center for Innovation and Excellence.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Ruby Washington with the National Center for Innovation and Excellence, and we do have some data to report for year two, quarter three of our grant through SAMHSA, which is the Brevard Behavioral Health Expansion Grant. We have 113 people during this quarter that received system of care coordination or case management. We had 78 individuals that were referred to mental health or related services. Four for diagnostic and evaluation services. 9 for outpatient. We had 2 for 24-hour mental health crisis emergency services, 36 for intensive home-based services, 20 for respite, and 7 for therapeutic foster care. We had 72%, 182 out of 252 that received their system of care core services during the quarter, and 89% that received system of care supportive services. We had nine wraparound practitioners that participated in high fidelity wraparound certification training, and 90 care coordination participated in wraparound principles and values training. We also have our wraparound, the World Conference coming up next year at Margaritaville, if anyone is interested.

Just say Margarita, and they're going to be there.

So if anyone's interested, you can let Katherine, any of us know. Yes, keyword Margaritaville. Thank you.

I did see that announcement and shared it with my team in another area that does wraparound. They are excited.

Any questions?

And our Brevard County Sheriff's Office.

The working in the yard got me going. It's a long weekend. My wife put me to work. There's really no report on behalf of the Brevard County Sheriff's Office. I just want to say thank you very much for all the extremely difficult work. It looks like there was challenging efforts put into this. One recommendation that was done about maybe the committee updates maybe fall in line with something similar to the county commission member reports or something like that, just a suggestion, because that's stealing from somebody that already has something in process. So as for poaching, it's not very nice. We get poached a lot, I will tell you. I'm not pointing at anybody here, but... And really, I'll just finish this up on behalf of the Bavard County Sheriff's Office. Opioid use, misuse, abuse, however you want to claim it, occupies a giant majority of our time and our efforts. I can't thank you all enough for everything that you do, but there isn't a point in our positions, either in enforcement or or investigations or at the jail where it's not impacting us on not only a daily basis, but an hourly to moment basis. So again, thank you all very much for what you do.

Can I ask you, given a relatively rapid rate of growth in the county, when you think about your personal experience in law enforcement, the population growth relative to those under the influence, is the trend a parallel incline or does it appear to be any kind of impact that- you guys are feeling just out on the streets and stuff?

We're impacting just about every capacity imaginable. From your first interaction, you're trying to establish what is the reason for our service call. And a lot of times it has some sort of misuse or abuse reasoning behind it. It may not be drug related, but there's some sort of abuse usually associated. The biggest impact we have is dealing with an individual, whether it's alcohol or drug use at the initial impact. Do they need to be transported? Then when we get them to the jail, the number of individuals that have abuse issues, it's very costly, it's very time-consuming trying to identify, separate, and address those issues before they can be actually dealt with before release. So it's kind of hard to imagine a society right now that it doesn't impact in every capacity, which we'd all love to see, but I will say that it's very difficult because It's so costly, not just financially, and we're all feeling that pinch, but just how to address an individual in the facility because it may not be mental health. It may be drug-related and mental health. It may be drug-related alcohol and mental health. And then you add the criminal component on top of that as well. So you're trying to identify who needs to be in here and who doesn't. who needs help and who doesn't. And it is time consuming to address as population goes up, the number of interactions with citizens involving some sort of law enforcement capacity is increasing. I mean, our population, a lot of what we did here in Brevard County, we still think of this as 1980 and 1990. Our population has exploded since then. Our budgets have not. You can read the paper. You can watch the news. Brevard County is the one and only county that's treated in a capacity with a charter cap revenue where our revenues do not increase. We are not a business. All of us here in governmental agencies, we do not provide or create a widget here. and sell the widget and make money and then use the money to run an operation. And a lot of people don't really understand that. We provide services, very important services to our community. And when your revenue for the entire county is driven by the CPI, which is below 3%, or 3%, at at max it makes it very difficult for the group that sits up there every other tuesday to make decisions for an entire county because what is going to be cut or what's going to be operated is it law enforcement is fire rescue is it public transit is it solid waste i mean i could keep going on it road and bridge parks and rec libraries what cuts And we're usually the first ones that start feeling that pinch. And then on the backside of that, you have a community, a community that is coming from everywhere. It's a mesh of people from up north, out west, south, born here, raised here. And the opiate addiction issue has impacted everyone at one time. It is a nuclear explosion, that perfect storm where I don't think any of us in this room right now or any of us in society isn't being impacted on a daily basis in some way from this terrible issue.

You know, as you were asking about having a report for you to bring back, if you have internal – meaning summaries of any kind that you'd like to share with me, I'd be more than happy to take that in-house because your world is our world in so many ways, you know? And we have expanded, you know, where years ago, child welfare agencies were like, 85% about dependency. We're probably a 60-40 with diversion and prevention efforts. Like what the National Center does and what we do really is trying to be smarter and wiser going upstream. And for folks that are going into your facilities or for those whom you're dealing with out in the community that may not come into your facilities, we probably need to be talking more. And I'm going to leave you my card before you leave. And maybe if you have strategic planning meetings with leadership, that maybe I should be at that table with you. No, not maybe. I should be at that table with you. And talk about, you know, if we don't know your angst, because we're focused on ours, you know, like every state agency does, I wonder if we are working more harmoniously if we're actually helping each other out. So thank you for sharing that.

It's a great idea, and a lot of people, this room doesn't, but there's a lot of people in society that don't see the 30,000-foot view and the overall impacts. You may be, and I'll use this example, you may be a female who's pregnant, who's arrested for something, but you come into the jail and you have an addiction. You're getting ready to have a child. There's a lot of medical impacts, a lot of medical costs. The health care just for inmates alone as related to this issue is overwhelming to really understand and comprehend. Um, the, whether you're a juvenile or an adult, a lot of the crimes are driven by abuse or misuse. Um, we do a lot of enforcement. A lot of people want to hear, okay, you're the sheriff's office and they look at it as an enforcement issue and it's not just an enforcement issue. And Yes, we could talk. I could give stories. I mean, we did a search warrant the other day where just making entry into a residence, an individual was spending the entire time of trying to flush a kilo of fentanyl down the toilet. Again, you don't think of all the different things that that impacts. A kilo of fentanyl into the water system, which doesn't filtrate, and when it's recycled... I mean, all the different things you can imagine about how this drug, people flushing unwanted, unused medications down the toilet into our water systems, throwing it away where it's found, burglaries into houses for it. It's just this force multiplier on this type of drug that most people just don't think about. They think about us as an enforcement angle, but It's not always an enforcement. The crime you may have committed had absolutely nothing to do with a misuse or use. But when you get into our facility, you do have a misuse or use. You're going through detox. It's very costly, very impacting. And most people just don't think about it. And then if we flush you out, and when I mean flush you out, we're putting you back into society because you've either received a bond or you've satisfied your criminal issues. you're right back into the same boat again. And usually it's one of each or multiple parts of this group that have to continue to deal with that individual or family or whatever you want. It just keeps multiplying. There's really no happy ending to this so far. I'm waiting for it. You know, we come to these meetings and we look for that happy ending, but I think every time we come here, we realize it's magnifying, it's multiplying, it's impactful, and I just wish everybody could look at it through the same eyes that you all have, too. So thank you all very much. Thank you.

I have a question. With the What is BCSO doing, or law enforcement in general, with the THC cards? They're out of control. And every single place you go, I mean, even when you're in traffic, the smoke is billowing in your car. You can go to Walmart. Everybody stinks like it. You can go to the doctor's office. You smell it. You're just walking on the street. You smell it. It's like everywhere you go, you smell it. You can't drink and drive. And everybody says, well, I have a THC card. Well, you can't smoke and drive. And it's like, to me, it's crazy out of control because everybody wants to say, well, I have a medical marijuana. Well, you know, there's advertisements on the radio every day, two for $2.99. Anybody can get a medical marijuana card that wants one.

Well, it's not just smoking and driving. You're asking an individual who is very opinionated about this. I took my wife to Las Vegas recently for vacation. You couldn't go anywhere without a cloud of purple haze in your face. And it's offensive. It's abusive. But taking that out of it. In society right now, you're absolutely right. And it's not just smoking. It's edibles, which are extremely harmful. People don't understand that. The marijuana of, I hate dating myself, but when I started in this job in the mid-80s, And, you know, you can smell unburnt marijuana or fresh marijuana. I mean, I could do it, and I worked lots of cases. And what America grew back then was one one-hundredth of the quality or the level of THC that is sold now. It's almost like a pure extract that you're getting. There's a lot of issues, a lot of hospital issues. If you go to the emergency room now, you'd be shocked. You guys wouldn't be, but a lot of people would be shocked how many people there are for an overuse of an extract, which is either by drink or by synthetic gummy or something like that that they're doing. They're marketing it for as a family-friendly use versus a medical, but all under the guise of it's a medical need. But let's just flip this. Now we all have employees who can go to a non-doctor to get a certificate, a card, to go purchase and use. And if that's what we want in our workforce is people that are concentrating and using and abusing. And it goes way beyond that. It's not just people in our workforce. At the jail, big concern now because some of the court rulings that have come out and individual claims, I need this for my whatever disorder I have is going to demand that results in lawsuits. So lawsuits cost lots of time, energy, and money. I mean, we get sued for just about everything every single day, so we're used to it. But all of our workforces are going to start to experience it. JDC is going to see people coming in, using, and abusing. And it's not just opiates. It's THC is a big thing. And we sit in different spots in different locations, and I'm not here to criticize those who do or don't. What I'm saying is, I think when the courts rule and we have to react to that, it's not as easy as just simply okay. We either have to walk through it, stand next to it, or deal with people who are being impacted by it on a daily basis.

I mean, even like if you go in the hospital and a nurse or a medical professional has a THC card. Well, they think they can just use it or whatever because I need it medically. Well, I don't want that. It's 70% to 80-something percent higher potency than from the 70s. The emergency rooms are packed full of psychosis and all kinds of... THC-related illnesses, irritable bowel, all this stuff, all these uncontrollable things. And then alcohol is legal, but you can't sit there and swig a bottle while you're at work. I mean, these people are all impaired. They're driving impaired. They're working impaired. And I think it's out of control how many people have it. AND WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT THAT? BECAUSE, I MEAN, WHEN YOU'RE EVEN SITTING IN TRAFFIC, I'M LIKE, GEEZ, YOU KNOW, IT'S LIKE THE CLOUD HITS YOU WHILE YOU'RE DRIVING IN TRAFFIC. BUT WHEN THEY'RE PULLED OVER, When they have the medical marijuana card, is it just, oh, you have a medical marijuana card, okay, go on your way? Or do you arrest them for, like, a DUI? Or how does that work?

Well, if you have the medical marijuana card, then you're permitted to have it. Or there's also hemp. You know, there's different... levels and different stuff if you don't have a card there's still criminal violations for but it's very low level it's marijuana is almost dealt with as you know possession of alcohol you know by being open container it's it's just a it's a misdemeanor it's treated that way and i think that's impacted our minds i i'll tell you one of the biggest things when they asked me i i ran the drug unit and the countywide drug task force. I was assigned to DEF. I've been working with drugs and narcotics my entire career, and I've seen things go up and down. But one of the big impacts that we noticed with pharmaceuticals in the beginning was if I were to say, and I'm looking right at you, but if I were to say to anybody in this room, hey, my son is addicted to heroin, you would go, oh, my God, I'm I am so sorry. That's terrible. If I was to say my son has a pharmaceutical issue, you go, oh, okay. It's a different level. We look at heroin use or morphine use as that's bad. And if you have pharmaceutical, it's not as ugly of a word, but it's actually more dangerous in some senses as the old morphine and heroin addiction issues that we dealt with. Marijuana is treated the same way. I have a lot of people that will say, hey... Again, we were out of town and we were at a concert and the people next to us were doing edibles and they were telling us about it. They were explaining it. I was learning all kinds of stuff about it. But how you have to minimize the amount, you have to recognize what is too much and what is not, how it can impact you. how they had gone to the hospital. And I'm thinking, is this the world we're in now where you go and you're buying candy that has drugs in it that's being sold to children? Not sold to children, but that's what it's being marketed to. So I know I've gone way overboard on my personal opinions about how things go. But as law enforcement, we are impacted on everything. It is on traffic stops. We had to retrain. We had to. Our dogs are no longer used, our canine dogs. What location you're at, because, again, it's not against the law now for most people. I can't search your car based off a dog hit for marijuana because marijuana is allowed with a marijuana card. So we had to get all new dogs that were not trained to smell and sniff for marijuana. I mean, again, a lot of the things that most people don't think about, but that's very impacting when you're talking about an $8,000 or $10,000 dog, and we have 20 dogs that were trained to do that.

But not everybody has a card.

No, not everybody does, but the simple fact is you may or may not. And if the dog, say you did have a card, but you had a kilo of cocaine in your car and the dog sniffed, how do I tell the dog sniffed on the cocaine or the marijuana? And since marijuana is treated differently, I mean, these different, the different world that we're in today is different. It's kind of hard to imagine, but I think the biggest impact we're going to have to look at is workforce, and in our capacity is the jail. In the jail, you'll have a lot of people that say, listen, I need my drugs for whatever issue that I've been diagnosed with. Wow. It's a world that I don't think any of us ever thought we'd be exploring or discussing in a public discussion point here. But we're in it, and we've got to deal with it and do with it the best we can.

I just came back from a week in Tennessee, and for me to notice that I don't smell it, That's big. You know, I'm like, you know, I go, we're outside here walking the streets and everything in downtown on Broadway where there's millions of people. And I said, you know what? I didn't smell it once. I go, but when we go out, you know, I just go in the Walmart parking lot. The guy in front of me is killing me, you know, and it's like. It's crazy. I mean, I know you can't get them for possession, but driving under the influence of it, I mean, that's just the same as driving under alcohol.

And we do. And all law enforcement does. And, you know, have this new training, new education, keep up to the different things, the impacts that we have to observe. address, but no, it's like you're absolutely correct. It is everywhere. THC is going to be an issue of the future as well, so we'll have to worry about it.

I'm sorry to tie you guys up with a bunch of... Well, I for one want to say thank you for not having anything to report today. That's so valuable. We should probably get CEUs today. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you. No wonder that is so cool.

And I will tell you, this is the hot topic at our conferences where we have sessions on substance use, substance use prevention trends, what's being advertised to our youth. This is one of the hottest topics. It's being talked about. We have uh, ER staff coming in to speak, to share, uh, their view. We have, um, officers from different States that have been in this already for 10 years coming to share. So the discussions are happening. Um, I was talking to another member earlier about the power of showing these products and what they look like so that we can educate our community to know what is in the hands of their child or what they're about to purchase that they think is safe. So thank you for bringing the topic up.

Well, one thing I wanted to add on that, in drug court, what we're seeing is we don't allow it in drug court, you know, a medical card. But when they do use, you know, they're testing positive for meth, fentanyl, all the benzos, and they're like, I don't use that. I don't use that. I just smoke weed or whatever. But they don't realize all the stuff that's in it because they're like, no, it can't be possible, you know. And then they say, for the people in, like, in Veterans Treatment Court, we do allow it. and they'll say, oh, well, it's too expensive to buy from the government store, from the state store, so we buy street weed, and it's full of all this stuff, and it's, they're, I mean, if you, if, and it's not safe, you know, like, some parents will say, oh, well, I'm glad it's marijuana and not whatever, but they don't realize all the addictive stuff that's in it and the high concentrations of fentanyl and meth and everything that's put in there, so... all these people that are buying it off the street is full of that stuff because they want you addicted.

Yes. Great, great discussion. Thank you all for that. That is the end of our committee updates on the agenda. We do not have a listed unfinished business or new business. So unless there is another topic, I was going to move into public comments. Okay. Our first one is for Elizabeth Fears. She is going to tell us about the updated yellow card.

Hello. This will be really short and brief. I know we talked about the yellow card at the last meeting, which is the substance misuse and mental health resource card, and it was being updated. And we finally have it updated, printed, and ready to be dispensed, and I put a lot back there on the table. I will not be sad if I turn around and there's none left for me to carry home with me, so please go ahead and take a stack if you would want. It'll kind of save you time from having to pick up more later, but I did leave my business card, too, next to them, so if anybody needs extra or needs more or you know an agency that needs some, my email's on the business card. They can reach out to me, phone call or and I can arrange a time for them to come and pick them up. Thank you, Elizabeth.

And our next speaker card is from Melissa Brandt.

Good morning.

I just wanted to say as outreach for Recovery Connections, as we all know September is Recovery Month, National Recovery Month. So we are having a rally for recovery at Topgolf. However, it is not, of course, in Brevard County yet, but this will be in Lake Mary. It is for all of our Recovery Connections. It's a fundraiser and it's a really good time. I went last year. So I put the paperwork on the back if anyone would be interested in attending or know a sponsor, but everything there is on the back table. And then also I wanted to announce that I am the incoming director for Brevard Recovery Fest. starting in January of 27. And basically, this year's Recovery Fest is going to be a good time. It'll be at the Melbourne Auditorium. And it is a family fun day. Everything is free. It's 10 to 2 on the 12th. So if you know an agency or your own agency, you want a booth at the event, you can go on therecoveryfest.org. sign up for a booth. We're doing really well. We'd like to keep going and have a few more come and attend, but we usually draw about 1,000 to 1,200 people at the fest, and it's just a good day. So I just wanted to announce that as well. So thank you very much. Thank you.

Okay, that was our last speaker card. So if I have a motion, we will consider adjournment.

Okay, one second.

All right. All in favor? Aye. Okay. We will see you guys again on September 28th.

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