Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

We can have a lot of money rolling in this place.

And that's another thing. I like the idea. We've got to start making some investments.

And that's why I'm saying, you know, the rollback doesn't really, if we turn around and help Curtis out, because we're spending our money on Curtis. You know what I mean? Not mad at you, Curtis. You're helping us. But, I mean, that million dollars. Yeah, so if you take that 2.5 and roll it over... You know, and then you turn around this. I mean, they projected to me that the tax would be over a million dollars a year. You know, we did that in Gretna. People didn't really get it, but now they're looking at how much tax money. You know what I mean? And I thought when we got them 250 houses coming that we were going to get, but now it looks like we're not going to get that much. You know, as Mr. Attorney, Mr. Administrator, y'all know the project. I'm talking about Rose. Rose, you're one of the main ones that crafted it. You know, when y'all sit down with these, I really need y'all to talk to them and see if we can clear that up and make that happen. Commissioner Holt and Commissioner Simmons.

Yes, thank you. On that particular project, before the sheriff called you guys, he called me, and I was in Gainesville, and I told him, one thing that you can almost always offer is 10 years tax-free. And that's the standard for recruitment of businesses. But one reason why I said that was because if the property, this is how they look at it in development, if the property was not paying that much anyway in taxes, you gain more in sales than you do in property tax. But what I wanted to say, that was just on that project, but... overlays when i was talking about doing overlays at the exchanges down us 9027 is for those properties and property owners that are not in the commercial they alone the commercial corridors but they're not certified as commercial for development You approach them and say, if you would allow us to do an overlay on your property, getting it certified as commercial. When that business person sitting in Connecticut look at it on the map, they see commercial, they're ready to go to work. That business owner has to be approached first.

We've laid out. We got laid out. I promise you.

Oh, no, no, no. I know about it. Like I said, the sheriff and I talk. We talk quite often. So I know what you're talking about. But what I'm saying, though, I'm saying these others, these others that are not in that. So the permitting process is the other one. The permitting process we need to streamline for those businesses. So that way they don't see it as difficult as everyone else for it to come through. If they can jump over there to Jackson or Madison or wherever and they can jump up across the Georgia line and they can get in the area, they don't have to fight with boards and commissioners.

No, we're going to get them this time.

Yeah, but I was just talking about in general. No, I wasn't talking about that business. But in general, we streamline that and then look at those certified sites. It'll be able to get it done. But thank you.

Ms. Simpkins.

Okay. Loving all the conversation, but I need to know what this budget, this proposed budget is due on August the 28th, correct? You're saying this tentative... Okay, so when are we meeting so that we will know on the 28th what this tentative, I think that's what we need to be deciding. When are we? Are we meeting Friday morning? What are we doing to make sure that this is done?

We can probably have the budget ready by Thursday if you need it ready. If you wanted to do Thursday, we could probably have it ready by Thursday.

You know, there's something to consider, too, as well, Mr. County Administrator. A reorganization. I think when the interim County Administrator at the time, Roosevelt, was here, he did a reorganization chart. Everybody did a reorganization chart, right? So maybe you bring a reorg chart, and then that could determine the direction of where we're going from that point. Because, you know, But again, I'm not getting your business. It's your business. I told myself, I prayed about that thing for two days straight. I said, I'm not getting your business no more. I'll let you do your job. But a reorg chart would be a sensational thing to do if that's something you want to do. And then that way then, because I hear you say you consolidate a lot of things, right? If you consolidate a lot of things, then now we know What's going on? How are we cutting? Based on that, because your reorder chart may be different. And so if that's something you want to do, I'm not telling you what to do, but that's something that almost every interim county administrator or county administrator came up with. They did a reorder chart, and then they give that plan. And that chart, we approve the budget based on that chart, not based on people. That's something to think about.

Yeah. By the way, on that too, if I may, you put the original and then you put the reorg section, so you just...

Yes, ma'am.

So that way we can see what we're losing.

Definitely, we'll see what we're losing, because at the end of the day, it's impossible for us to look and smile and think that we can survive with the same budget we got now. If that budget... We took out $5 million. Yeah, couldn't agree with you. Like Commissioner Holt said, all fairness, she said we weren't doing it by six, seven months ago. Um... Walco said they already did the cuts already. All the other, because small counties can get hit hard, unfortunately. We not like Tallahassee that have all these other bells and whistles, half set sales types and got the capital right there. Or we like Miami that got the tourists and Orlando tourist area. we're not afforded opportunity to be in that situation. So we got to play it as though it's gonna happen. Oh, yeah.

Okay, so let me make sure we're clear. So it would probably be helpful, probably a little bit more, Mr. Chairman, if we were to meet on Friday because each director is presenting with their plans for cutting their budget. Okay. Okay. So if we get that, if we can come and get Friday, I would have incorporated all that into your rollback budget, and I think it would be a better situation if we could meet on Friday rather than Thursday, if we can, if that would work for everybody.

And personally, I'm fine if we don't meet at all. It doesn't matter to me. As long as we see the reward chart and see how much we're cutting, I want to just make sure, if my job is to make sure that the budget, we don't go in red.

Oh, no, no, no. We're not going to do that. What I got from this board today was that, Ridge, I need you to be aggressive in terms of trying to get us where we need to be, and I have no problem with that. No, the state wants you to be aggressive.

I'm going to be aggressive. It ain't come from the board, unfortunately, all fairness. No problem. All fairness does not come from the board.

The resources that we're receiving is dictating what we need to do. That's right.

You know the bad thing about that is but it's also the good thing the people in the public they don't understand And I think that's what mr. Cunningham was saying they don't understand that this big thing about Cut the fat. That's what we're doing, cutting the fat. But we're cutting the liver, the lung, the fat, everything. Now, you tell me if I'm wrong here, you could cut the parks, the library, the senior program, and you still ain't even, you still ain't what?

Maybe three million. You don't have enough money.

So, and that's the kind of thing that people have to understand. You can cut all that and you still ain't getting to six million. No. You're only halfway there. And I think as people in Gadsden County, because we're so minute in the scheme of things for all these rural counties and St. Petersburg bearing all of us. There's that one city. They got more voters in that than we do. And that's why we'll go back to what Ms. Holt said about the rural county coalition. that we really need to be politicking those guys and saying, hey, we realize if you cut it, you may not make us whole, but this cut would be devastating. And when I tell people out there that all they hear is is we're gonna get $5 million put back in the pocket of people in Gadsden County. That's money they don't have to pay. They're not looking at how many people going home and the services that you won't have. But if they vote for it, it'll be our job to do it.

It's on point, too, as well. I think that, and I've been saying this since I've been on the Board of County Commissioners, we lose a lot of money because of small stuff, small things killing us, like administration costs. You're writing all these grants, right? And money leaving the county. When I came as commissioner, I said, I don't understand that. Because in education, when I was a school board member, and this is what I said then, I was saying every other year, it looked like I was on the school board. When you wrote a grant, that's what you're saying, you're bringing in staff. You're taking staff. Instead of paying administration costs, that's paying for employees. That's employees now working for the county now, though. Now all that money we spending out, millions and millions and millions of dollars is leaving because a contractor picking that money up and taking it outside instead of presenting it as a staff. And so we got to look at, because we would have been doing this 10 years ago or eight years ago, we probably have, our staff would not have to worry about losing the job, right? Because they're earning that grant. They still get all the benefits. They get all the bells and whistles, everything you can think of because of they not coming out of general. You was there. They not coming out of general revenue. Yeah, we put them in the grants. We put them in the grant. And so in that way, then people keep their job done. We got to be a little bit more creative, which means that whoever your director is, whoever your reorg is, whoever your director is, I've been saying this for years, they got to know how to write grants. So grants are going to keep their employees there. And they can't be a director and have somebody writing a grant for them, and that person writing a grant taking away $400,000 or $500,000 from the county. It's OK to have a grant to be a consultant, but not getting all the built, not on administration costs, administration fees should be coming back to the cap. That's just something to consider. And I've been saying that for years.

I think that's a timely conversation because Commerce was here just this past week. And that's what was discussed, how we haven't in the past been taking advantage of the fact that we could put personnel into those grants. That's it. So now we know. And I'd like to thank our new grant writer who engaged them. to find out, you know, hey, this is something that the county has not been doing, but now we will be doing it going forward.

And I promise you, everybody will probably have their jobs. We won't be focused on getting rid of employees because, but now the grants, that situation will be there. Hopefully we can do that this year. Yeah, we're going to start doing that immediately. Save some people some time. All right. Before I go to Commissioner Holt, let me just be respectful real quick and go to the other constitutional officers. If y'all want to speak, any other constitutional officers would like to speak? We have, if you want to speak, I just recognize you. Anyway, Ms. McGriff, tax collector, she's here. I just recognize her. I'm quite sure everybody just come to see what's going on with the county anyway right now. Then they'll go back and... Supervisor of the next election. All right, and Supervisor of the next election, Williams as well. Huh, what was the last one? Okay, Ms. Williams. Ponder.

Ponder?

All right, Supervisors of Election, Ms. Ponder as well, I want to recognize her as well. So I know they're just here. If y'all want to speak, y'all are more than welcome to come out and speak as well. If not, we can move forward. Commissioner Holt?

Yeah, I was about to say that, Mr. Attorney, there was some bill that was last year, and I can't remember which one it was, that they did not want you to contract outside the county with contractors. They didn't want to give preference to local contractors. and i don't remember what that bill is but i spoke against it because i said that the local contractors need to get paid so our individuals inside the county can get paid because we have families here that that i need to have income also so if we are writing grants i'm trying to figure out some way that we can say we're gonna let's say we get the money for the um Let's say the public safety facility, and they're going to build that, and we got these subcontractors. Can we put, do you know of anything we can have in place that says that a percentage can be subcontractors that are local?

So it's an interesting thing that you raised that point. I actually made contact with the procurement expert who I was going to engage to assist us in drafting language. This board previously passed an ordinance that allows me to engage outside counsel as long as the monetary amount is under $10,000. And so I've reached out and spoken preliminary to a procurement expert that I plan to bring on. uh to work on drafting specific language and the reason that i would bring a third party on is because that language is uh high litigation language which means that a comma in the wrong place gets you a lawsuit when it comes to that because of the recent legislation so i want to bring somebody on who's been successful in getting language approved that withstand litigation in other places and so i think i've already identified that person and so i'm hoping that that will be something that we will bring to you before the end of the fiscal year.

Would that be $10,000 per event?

No, the way that the ordinance you guys passed, I want to say you guys passed it a year ago and it's not in front of me. If any single contractor, so it's not like, you know, it doesn't allow me to have one lawyer and I just, you know, they bill me 10 bills for $10,000, it's $100,000. If any single attorney or entity firm reaches that threshold, And there's a requirement that I notify you of any expenditures. Even if it's a $2,000 expenditure related to a third party, I have an obligation to notify you of that expenditure to a third party attorney. I don't have to notify you for costs. Like when we get court reporters, that's just cost that the board has to pay always. But there's a requirement.

You don't have to notify us of costs if it goes up to a certain amount, just regular costs. What is that? I mean, looking at cutting, so.

No, I mean, so again, any cost that, I guess my practice is, again, any cost that, I'm pausing because I rarely incur costs on behalf of the county. I submit extremely economical bills. I think your staff will tell you that they're extremely reduced. But any cost that I incur, so I'm not, I haven't, I believe yet, in 15 months bill the county for any what lawyers call soft costs. The only bills in 15 months that the county has incurred from my office are hard costs, which means, for example, a cost that when we got a court reporter for a shade meeting, you know from being, the law requires you to get a court reporter. There's no way around that. Or if we got a survey for a lot that we fronted the costs on because there was a legal issue regarding a survey, those are hard dollar for dollar. There's not been any soft costs in 15 months that I have passed on to the county that there was a soft cost. I've eaten that soft cost as a business cost.

Right, I wasn't really expecting you to explain the whole thing, but I just want to know, if we're going to do contracts and we're looking at contracts with contractors out there, and we're looking at if we go to overages, so those are some areas where we may have to pay extra money for things that we did not see. So you're the person that's going to be doing the contracts, and if we're cutting back and we're in a contract and they say for things that are unforeseen in a contract for that contractor, then... we don't have the money to pay it, what do we do? Because if it's like $150,000 over or $50,000 over, they go into, I'm just saying in general, the way we do contracts. We may have to look at some of that.

Mr. Chair, I guess briefly I would say is that, for example, you guys have contracts that are pending right now. You think about Chattahoochee, you think about Havana Library. We've written guaranteed maximum prices in GMPs. If something comes up outside of that's not foreseeable in that GMP, I put language in each of those contracts that I've sent to all you guys that requires that the contractor renegotiate with the county the scope of work to keep it in the grant amount, which means that if something comes up, we'll reduce the scope approved by the state, so that won't come out of your general fund, and that language is built into the contracts themselves, so the contractors can't contest that, saying that they agreed on this scope of work. They have to work with your building department and county administrator to adjust the scope to stay within a grant on every project you have.

Right, they stay within a grant, but I wasn't questioning that part. I was just saying the quality of work. because if you don't get the money, then you reduce the quality of work. I was more interested in that. And that might just need to be something that's considered. And I was looking at the one project that we have today coming, and the same thing with that. But it's a matter of how the contracts are written. I looked at an attorney that wrote a contract, and we have a tendency to do this. The attorney writes a contract for them. For them, I'm saying for their employment. And they had errors in their contract. And I was like looking at that board, like how are they going to do a good job for you? And he has errors in his own contract. So we're going to look at how you do contracting. Then you might want to consider that. That says you're going to do this for... $1.2 million, you go over this much. After this, the cost is to you. But we don't want the quality of work reduced. That's what I'm saying. We want the same quality.

Your contracts, I'll be last thing I say, your contracts now require, so let's give an actual example. For example, Chattahoochee Library, that's a contractual job. Every time they submit a bill, we have to approve the quality of work. That's an inspection that has to come. There's a two-part inspection process. One, our people, which is your building official, has to approve it. And also CRA, your engineer of record, has to approve it. An invoice can't come to you for a single penny until they both approve that whatever is being invoiced has met the quality of work, including any change orders or unwritten approval. All I can tell this board is we put every protection in these contracts to ensure that you don't have contracts that, one, have substandard work, and two, allow contractors to receive more than what the grant allows because we understand that's going to come out of your general fund. And so every contract we're writing has strong language. I think the last contract, the lawyer and I went back and forth on 12 iterations of it to ensure that the county is protected and that your general fund is not compromised.

Okay, good job. Thank you.

All right. We got it?

We're going to have some numbers.

We have one. Okay, Commissioner Holt, then I'm going to let Commissioner, not Commissioner, Ms. Roe.

She's probably going to answer it, but I was just wondering. So we're going to see two budgets, what we would normally do, this, and then budget with the 1.2.

With the rollback rate you're gonna see you've got that budget You're going to get another budget at the rollback rate I do I do need some direction about What we're going to do with the sheriff's request because that's going to impact what we do with the rewrite of the budget They're asking for $859,912. We probably got to entertain that at the budget season.

I mean, this is me talking until we figure out what's going on. Because I gave 1.2. I mean, we gave 1.2 last year. And we just probably need to make sure that we got what we got first. That's a million dollars, right?

So you're directing me not to put that into this? I would like to say I would like to know what it's for. Back to what I was saying with the departments. You don't know. Three and a half percent COLA increase for all employees.

I'm saying, you know, if we talk to him.

Pardon me? I'm just saying if we talk to him. Hey, Sheriff, what's going on? Okay, you want to talk to the sheriff.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Those conversations.

Okay. That's me. So you want us to give him a 3% raise, is that?

In the budget he presented is a 3.5% COLA increase for all of the law enforcement corrections and court appointed officers. There's also about $240,000 in there for upgrades in IT. And there's additional, they want to have about 220,000 for body cameras. And there's about another, I don't know, 78,000 or 90,000 for they want to add another vehicle.

Mr. Chairman.

We need to take a look at the rollback. I need the rollback rate with that $1.2 million. That's what I want to see. Because if we're looking at cuts, then that's what we're, right now we're,

We're not looking at building that in.

We can't. Well, Mr. County Administrator, Interim County Administrator, yeah.

Yeah, based upon where we are fiscally and what we're looking to do, I don't see how we can be able to justify that. We're cutting and they're adding. We don't have any raise to give our people and the likelihood that we're going to lose some people. We wouldn't be in a position to do that.

Because I always ask for a raise for our employees, because I was talking to one of my, I can't say the boys, because I talk to them and they're my boys, but they... They're good guys. And I was talking the other day, a lot of guys work in public works. I said, man, you're gonna. So Sheriff took that out of my mouth. I was asked for five, six to raise for the staff and myself for special guys in public works. And so I guess that's a conversation that need to happen with everybody, huh? So, Commissioner Holt?

Yeah, I was about to say, excuse me, that's why I said we go ahead and have these discussions now. If there's something in that somewhere that the sheriff needs and has to have, we haven't talked to him. See, we have not gone through what these things are. If there's something that... Right now, at that much cut, I would suggest, my suggestion would be nobody gets a raise, see, because we want to save jobs. And then, too, when we show what the cuts are, what the cuts are, we don't see them. We're not going to see them between now and Friday to have that conversation in any of these departments. So what are you cutting? If I was a citizen out there and I was watching this today, I wouldn't know what you're cutting. And then how are you going to make sure that that service still gets to you or it's not coming? Just tell me something. But right here today, this is not telling us anything about that 1.2. Not a thing. It's not telling us a thing, and also everyone else has their $5 million cut, $6 million cut, $4 million cut budget already done.

We got to hurry up. Please make that happen, though. I know that's going to be drastic, and there's going to be a lot of headaches there, but unfortunately— And if you can't do it, it's too late. And at first, they put something in writing at first that each committee— small county would receive $20 million when they first proposed this. Fiscal restraints. You remember fiscal restraints counties will receive like $20 million. So everybody's like, okay, it sounds great, right? We can make it. That's something that the governor proposed, but then all of a sudden they shut that down. So now... They plan on cutting without giving anything. So it's going to be kind of difficult for everybody.

Commissioner. And we can close. I think I'm just kind of listening at some of the things that you listed with the Sheriff's Department, like with the body cams. I think that you talked about grants. That's where grants will be. That's something that we can... test our grant person or you know to see if it's something out there to be able to fund those type of things because I do understand that those are you know they're vital and they're important but we can kind of try to look at how we can fund those things through grants and find some funding and some other sources to assist them in that they also use their law enforcement supplement money for that as well because that is an allowable expense under that All right, but yeah, but I mean that, but if it is, it may be some funding out there, you know, for to purchase those. So, you know, just kind of looking to see if those options are out there.

So we're preparing the rollback budget, and you're going to keep this budget with you, and we're going to have both of them on Friday. Did I hear a time?

What time do y'all think is good for you guys? I know some of y'all like to go out and have a good time on Friday night, so I'm not sure. I think 4 o'clock is okay. I got church sometime on Friday.

I mean, before 4 o'clock. Yeah, could we do it maybe earlier? Could we do it earlier than in the day?

We can do it at 2 o'clock, whatever. Well, it all depends.

Let them go home.

That's why you got your employees here. Okay, so I save money that way. We do it during the daytime, but it's all depends on. What you said, Friday?

He said that was fine.

He said in the daytime was fine?

Yeah, he said Friday was fine. We can't vote anyway, but a majority opinion.

What time y'all going to do it? 10 o'clock in the morning or something?

What time they feel like?

Are y'all going to have time or do we need to do it a little bit?

Mr. Chairman, we're going to have questions about this. So the staff is here that way.

We're going to ask the questions and go ahead and put some numbers down and let's go.

And that way then we can stay for a longer period of time and worry about leaving.

they get to go home instead of sitting here with us on a friday three or four hours be up there four hours and figure it out prepared at nine o'clock with a rollback budget and you're going to keep this budget so you can see the differences oh we'll be here four in the morning i don't care you will not have time to build a five million dollar cut no no no it won't be in time so we well it's still y'all needs to honestly though it for the for the constituents we got to put that in and

We'll build that.

Well, we can, Mr. Chairman, be honest with you. That's the one that we really need to sit down and look at. That's the one I'm talking about. That's the one. That $5 million, that's scary to everybody. It's scary to everybody, yeah. I saw some correspondence from a small county coalition.

Yeah.

And they're completely worried about it.

Yeah. It's gonna be difficult, but I'm hoping, I'm praying and praying that every time we write a grant, from now on out, the money stay into Gadsden County. We incorporate it. I think the person you had in housing years ago, that you used to brag on years ago.

Yeah, they did all the writing.

That's why she had a big old staff.

Right, because she did all the writing, see.

And all the staff was there.

But she was a grant writer anyway. But I want to say this, too. If you can get... The people in to do this, and you're saying pulling them in and say you do different skills. I'm telling you what, some other people do, places do, they give you an incentive to do that. That way people are even at, employees, some of them are even home saying, you know what, if I write this and do that, I'll get a little bonus. And we've done that before.

I don't have no problem, because it's probably better paying that person who's working for you on staff.

They know what's coming across their desk.

Now they know now that I'm getting paid to do. He's like FAMU. So it'd be great. I don't care. As long as they can bring the money. This lady, they may bring in, what, $200 million in what color? Yeah, she was kidding. What did they budget? $200 million budget, all because the majority of the money would come from grants.

I think when you're saying grants, it's not just like the red grants. We're also, when we're building, like all these, we have over $20 million, but we're putting it all out. We have not, we didn't put any in for administrative, even though we have some of our staff working on it. We do not, we did not keep any of it. We've given it all out to the contractors.

All that money we're paying, I ain't call his name, that money could be coming out of the grant, right? Because he's the one who's going down there checking to make sure everything's straight. He won't have to get up in the middle of the night and figure things out while they're at home.

Ms. Reitinger, I bet you're going to say the same thing I'm going to say. I bet Ms. Reitinger and I are going to say the same thing, but go ahead. Many of those grants, you are not allowed to have administrative costs.

Many of those building grants.

Well, you might admit it, but I would like to figure out which one we can, though. But we found out this week that many of them that you can.

Okay, but if I may say this also, okay. Let me say this. On the grant side also, you're paying an administrative fee to the clerk. The clerk is going to say, I'm the administrator of that grant. That's why we ran into that before.

Hey, I appreciate the dialogue, y'all. Would we do adjournment meeting?

Let's go.