Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

recording in progress

This meeting now is called to order. Please bow your head for a moment of silence. Amen. Amen. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all.

All right. All right.

Citizens requesting we have to do this on budget? Okay, this is a special meeting, right? This is a hearing, I bet. Okay. It's a hearing. It's OK. It's a hearing, public hearing, budget hearing. So the reality is that they can speak anyway, regardless. This is a public hearing.

Yes, sir. Wouldn't nobody hear? I mean, last year, the thing was full. Are we public? I mean, are we noticed correctly?

Yeah. Y'all put it in notice?

Yes. In time?

The notice went up.

Good job. I didn't see it this weekend when I looked at the meetings is why I asked. OK. Because I don't want us to be, Lord knows, I don't hear a lot of people complain, but they have a right. Yeah. So I just want to make sure Mr. Attorney see.

Yeah. Did we post everything?

It was done the way it should have been done, from what I understand.

OK. Good. All right. I guess everybody was at the game, I guess, huh?

Yeah.

No, this is not the final budget.

It's not the final.

It's not the final. Yeah. All right. So I think we'll just skip the citizen request we heard and go directly to the public hearing, because everybody will have opportunity to speak anyway. All right. First public hearing. So we'll go with, I start reading from the top, please? Not yet. Oh, yeah. So I'll move it to you, Ms. County Administrator, and your County Administrator.

OK, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And also, Mr. Chairman, it's indeed an opportunity to talk with you just briefly.

You might.

This is your attended budget hearing. You will get a presentation today on your, millage rate at 9.0 with the estimated projected budget shortfall of $1 million. You'll also get a presentation. The presentation will reflect a rollback rate of 8.553 millage rate rollback with a shortfall of a little better than $2 million. As you listen, I want you to keep in mind that the county's employment base has increased over the years. We took a look at it real close today, and over the years, it's constantly going up from 217 full-time employees in 2019 to 260 today. So we should keep that in mind as well as the fact that the population of the county has declined 1,343 persons. With that being said, I'll turn it over to our finance officer to get this presentation started.

All right.

Ms. Raynette?

Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Good evening. Okay. We're going to run through this. This is the tentative hearing. The tentative hearing was advertised on all of the tax bills, the date and time. And it also was advertised at 9.0 mills. So that's all I can present right now as far as the millage is concerned for this particular tentative hearing. I can review the 8.553 with you, but I can't do a presentation on that one. Because I have to follow what Department of Revenue says for this tentative hearing. So the tentative hearing, did I go the wrong way? OK. On 8-25, the board voted a preliminary millage rate of 9.0. You have three stages of millage rate. You have the preliminary rate, the tentative rate, and the final hearing rate. So this is the tentative rate today. You voted in the preliminary for 9.0. The tentative coming into this meeting is 9.0. And then you will be able to approve, vote, whatever today. And then there will be a final hearing where you will then again be able to approve, vote, whatever. So this presentation is based on the budget figures that are at 9.0 and its expected revenues and expenses. We have some stormy seas, as we've already continued to tell you multiple times. And that's ad valorem is the biggie, Medicare reductions, falling state revenues, rising costs. Millage, for those in the public who may not understand completely what millage is, a tax millage is the amount of property tax charged for every $1,000 of taxable value. For Gadsden County, one mill equals $2,594,408. Nine mills equals $23,349,675. A rollback rate is the rate that has been established that when we calculate it, it will allow us to collect approximately the same amount of property tax money as the year we did as last year, even if the property tax values change. So Senate Bill 4F changes how the counties have to calculate that millage rate. OK, we're going to go over the budget summary in some depth here.

Can you give us the 8.55? I see you give us the 23, 349, 675.

I'm sorry?

What will we take in on the rollback? You give us 23 mil for the nine.

Right, but I can go over that when we're done with the presentation here.

I forget it. OK.

Right now at the nine mills, if you look at your budget summary, you have the first column is general fund budgets. At the top part of that sheet are revenues, and the bottom part of that sheet are expenses. The revenues have to equal the expenses. so for general fund you have 34 million six hundred thousand six six ninety nine two hundred and ten thousand in revenues from uh general fund coming in from either taxes or intergovernmental or fund balance you also have $34,699,210 in expenditures. Note that the expenditures has an $18 million transfer. When your expenses do not meet your revenues, you have to come up with money to meet that. And that's what that $18 million is. If you go to the second column, you're talking about special revenue funds. Special revenue funds are typically your tax monies that are coming in. If you look at the top part of that, the revenues are coming in where it says total revenues under special revenue fund, you only have 16 million, about 16.5 coming in for special revenue fund in revenues. OK? So that $18 million that you saw over there under general fund is the $18 million you're going to need to cover to make sure that you have enough money to pay your bills. Because your bills are 33, 8, 70, 4, 6, 4, 86. If you look at the third column, that's your debt service funds. That's your payment of your bills. Those are commitments that we have for ambulances, for roads, for any type of public works kind of things, the ring power, the equipment, things like that, the communications, the ag center. Those are all your bills. Again, the top part has to equal the bottom part. So you've got $3,293,916 in the third column. In the last column, you have the trust fund. The only trust fund that we have is hospital endowment. And that is a set aside that we put in there every year to help build that fund up so that it can be used for hospital revenues later on. It is not controlled by the board. It is controlled by a trust that operates primarily out of Capital City Bank. So it's not like you can go in there and just choose how to spend it. It has to be voted on. I think the board is only one of about eight committee members that vote for that. But the bottom line here is that you have $72,513,612 in revenues, and you have $72,513,612 in expenses. Remember, top part of the sheet always has to equal the bottom part of the sheet. Going back to the... budget summary, if you look there and you see that $34,699,210 under general revenue, about halfway down the first column, if you go to this next sheet, you're going to see that very same number over here at the very top highlighted and surrounded by a green border. All of this list of revenues is a breakdown of all of the revenues that are going to come in during the year. to help build up the money you need to pay that $72 million at the end of the year. So each one of those revenues is there, and it's listed what amount we expect to see coming in. Court facilities at $268,000. Fire assessment at $2,050,000. County transportation at $6,356,000. Judicial at $173,000. I'm sorry, judicial, $395,000. Fines and forfeitures, $10,052,000. Almost all of that is in a transfer. Tourist development. I'm sorry, library funds $1,270,000, tourist development $351,000. That is a combination of the money we expect plus money they have pulled from their balance, their cash balance. Building inspections, 621. A lot of that comes from their fees and permits. Property appraisers, we have to pay that by statute. That comes from the general fund. It's almost $1.5 million. Tax collector's fund is just over $1 million. Again, has to be paid by us through the general fund. Tax collector, $1.261 million. Again, the same thing. Ordinance money, you've got $2.2 million coming in ordinance money. That's up a little bit this year. You have emergency services at $5.5 million. That's down a little bit this year. Part of that is because we're able to use some of the money from the opioid fund to buy a new ambulance instead of having to take it out of the general fund. Emergency preparedness, that's a grant. Big Bend Transit is a grant. E911, our grants. Boating fund, that's money that we put into a pot so that we can make sure we have the money to repair our boating ramps. We do have about $125,000 buildup in there, so we cut that back 10%. The bottom next probably six or seven are all your bills again, debt service for the hospital, for the ag center, for public works. That's part of your bond paving stuff. The EMS ambulances, that's about one, two, three, four, five, I think five or six bills combined for ambulances and the striker equipment. debt service for radio communications, and debt service for Ring Power. Ring Power, again, is year two of a three-year payout. So the $427,000 is more than what we started with last year. This sheet is comparing what you started with at your adopted budget at the beginning of October last year to what this tentative budget is presenting tonight. The difference of those two is $2.4 million. It's a 3.45% increase over last year's approved budget. These sheets are pretty lengthy. I tried to identify things on the side for you I'm not going to read all those things, but this sheet is your expenditure sheet This breaks out all of your expenditures by fund and under each fund are all of the departments if you look at general fund one fund has 43 45 some 43 or 45 departments underneath it and So in the first column after the department number, you're looking at what you had in place last year at the beginning of last year for general fund at $34,044,000. When you're looking at this budget at 9 mils, you have $34,699. The variance is $654,000 from last year to this year, from your adopted last year to this year's presentation, $650,000 in general fund increase. The next two, page seven and eight, And I think, is it eight? Seven and eight, yes. Page seven and eight are a breakout of all of your special revenues. Your court facilities fund is up about $59,000. Your fire assessment fund is up about $189,000. Your county transportation is up about $514,000, 515. Mosquito control, that's pretty flat. Your judicial budget is up about $90,000. That's mostly in IT implementation. Your forfeiture fund, which is your sheriff, is up $724,000. That's a little bit deceiving because it's up from what you adopted last year, but it's not up from what you amended last year. So the amendment you put in at the beginning of the year, October 21, changed that $9.3 million to the $10.052. So all you're doing is making that fund stable from what you adopted in October last year. That's the 724. They do have a request for 859,000, I believe it is. This does not include any increase for that 859,000. The libraries are down a little bit, 23,000. That's mostly from taking staff that's in the Quincy administration and using them for branch offices. And there was some cost savings in operations. Tourist development is pretty flat. You did remove one or two items in the marketing area. The building inspection is down about 43,000. They're going under a reorg, basically trying to readjust how their staffing is internally, just who does what kind of thing. So they're hoping to not have to fill a vacancy that they have by using the staff that they have. The next page is your property appraiser. Your property appraiser is at 1.493. That's 42,000. That's mostly personnel costs. That is a statutory obligation. Your supervisor of elections is at $29,000 increase. Again, statutory obligation. The tax collector fund, we talked about that last time. You had to collapse two different budgets into this one. So it looks high at $400,000 increase, but it's not because we were paying it last year out of two different budgets. So this collapses it. There is an increase of approximately $40,000. It is coming from personnel costs there. Your indigent ordinance fund is up a little bit. That's from projections. Your emergency management services is down. We talked about the ambulance. No net increase in your grant funds. Your boat improvement, we cut 10%. This reflects the same numbers that were on your revenue sheets. For every one of these funds, the expenditures have to equal the revenues. Keep in mind that every single year we will have increases because benefits will go up. Insurance, utilities, maintenance, and supply costs are going up, just like you have in your household. Every year, the cost of maintenance and repairs is going up, just like you have in your household. What this budget includes, there are approximately 279 positions within this budget. A position is not the same thing as an FTE. FTE is a full-time equivalent. You can have one employee work 2,080 hours. That employee is a full-time employee. That equals one FTE. But if you have an employee that only works 1,040 hours, that's half time, they are only a half FTE. So this is going to be the 260 FTE as a comparison for what the administrator laid out at the beginning of the meeting, comparing it to 2019 where we had 217 FTE. You have the only thing in this budget, the increases that we talked about near the bottom, insurance, property insurance, health insurance, workers comp, vehicle insurance, utilities, maintenance agreements, and contract terms that automatically go up. Those things increased in this budget. Any possible operational cuts that we could make, we worked with the department heads and we made all of those. Most of them came from promotions, contracts, uniforms, supplies, and travel. This budget is 3.5% higher than the budget in the fiscal year you adopted in October last year. This budget has a shortfall of approximately $1 million. This budget will increase if there are any additions for the sheriff's request for 26-27, if there are any additions for a contingency fund, if there are any additions through budget amendments that happen during the fiscal year, and or if all departments do not stay within their budget during the fiscal year. Can you hear my phone? I thought I had it off, I'm sorry. Okay. If the budget is rolled back to the 8.553, which you'd like me to go over when I'm finished with this, you will expect to see the potential revenue, as we've discussed before, of about 1,167,000 plus the loss of 122,000 that brings us, the rollback brings us less than what we got last year by that much money. Expect that there are going to be shortages. We have been having an annual shortage in public works of over a million dollars. You're going to have lost level of services in some programs and possible loss of programs depending on what the board decides. You potentially have the loss for continued falling state revenues. Right now, some of the programs are falling. The Public Works, the gas tax fell this year. And they're attributing that to the fact that the gas went up so high that people stopped buying as much gas as they were before. Your library revenues fell this year. So you've got several different departments where your revenues were expected when we built the budget last year. But this year near the end, we're seeing that they have not met the projection. you're gonna have that same million dollars that we were talking about in shortfall from the 9.0 budget. And you're gonna have, if you have any impact from any budget amendments, anticipated, projected, don't know, but right now the closest we can figure is at the rollback rate, you will have a $2.3 million fund balance or million dollar shortfall that would have to come from fund balance. This is just some options for the board to see if they wish to continue to discuss this at a later time, that's fine. But I've been asked multiple times by different commissioners on the possibilities of increasing revenues in order to help preserve what you have, the services that you have. Some of these things that could possibly increase revenues could be the contingency plan has a potential savings of $2.8 million. If you raise the gas tax $0.05, which has a citizen impact of about $30 a year and $0.01 per gallon is basically what it amounts to, you potentially could raise $2.5 million. You could use that money to offset the losses that you have for Public Works every year. And you could also use the other money.

Let me interject something real quick. I'm sorry. So it's on point, just for clarity. It does have an impact on citizens. It will have an impact on people who come across the interstate. So it's not all the citizens that's going to be impacted.

Yeah.

It's going to be people that are driving from Miami to California. Everybody. Yeah, I understand that. But if you listen to it, I'm just saying, let's be clear about it. Most people going to be paying for the gas tax are going to be people that are traveling. away from on interstate 10 and everything else. You see that? That's my second bullet there. But the first bullet says citizen impact, $30.

That's potential impact based on the studies that have been done. OK, got you. But the second bullet says most of the financial impact from raising the gas tax would be on those passing through or visiting the county. But you could use some of the money to improve your infrastructure and roads and roadways as well. So that might alleviate the need to borrow as much money under bonding. Law enforcement, multi-unit assessment. This is something that they are doing in our surrounding counties, where the Sheriff's Department instigates this. The approximate, the best we can figure, if it was put in at 1.6 mils, would be $75 per year. It has the potential of $3 million. Again, it's something to think about. It's not something that has been discussed or has been voted on. EMS assessment, the same kind of thing. These are just possibilities. of finding more revenue if costs cannot be reduced. Fire assessment, we talked about that at length in one of our budget meetings. Sales tax, again, that's a biggie. I can't even imagine what that's going to be at this point in time, because it would all depend on what you would do. Increased tourism taxes, the potential would be coming from outside tourism on visitors. So there would really not be any impact on the citizens themselves, because that's bed tax. But it could raise up to a half a million dollars. You're at two right now, and you can go to five mills there. OK. guess this is this is this is where i'll start to go over as uh commissioner wood asked i'll start to go over the my periscopes haven't come up yet okay they gotta come up first okay i did the right so sorry that happened to be on the powerpoint i couldn't change it And if you go back to your slide if you go back to slide or on your PowerPoint, and you look at the handout I just gave you, the difference in general fund at 8.553, rather than being 34,699,210, it would be, let me see if I can find it again. Thank you, David. Nope, not going to come up. Instead of being $34 million, 34,699, it would be 33 million, 382. That is with a contingency plan put in place. That's what would take that down, that amount of money. Your special revenue fund, your expenses would go from 33,800 to 32,058. So see, 33.8 is what at 9. For 8.553, it would go to 33.8. Your transfer, your interfund transfer, would go from 18 million to 16, about 16.9. The rest of the columns would stay the same. Your revenue would go from 72, or your budget, total budget would go from 72.5 down to 69.3. This budget would be 1.1% less than last year's total operating expenditures. Again, this budget does not have anything on the sheriff's increase or contingency built into it. If those are added, that would change this budget at even rollback. The other sheets that you have in front of you break down the revenue, which shows you that rather than going up 2.4, you've come down about 708,000. Again, these are expected revenues and expected expenditures. And the anticipated, the best figure that we can come up with would mean that you would be into your fund balance a little over $2 million at the end of the year at the 8.553. Questions? Or do you want?

What's the expected amount that we should have in the fund balance again?

Right now, we're looking at approximately $9 million. You're going to meet with the auditor in a week or so, and they're going to show you. There's about $11 million in the fund balance, but a lot of it is restricted. You have about $9 million that is not restricted. That $9 million is going to... be impacted by any closeouts we have this year. So if we have budgets over, like the Public Works budget, it's going to have to come from the fund balance if we can't balance it internally. So those kinds of things will impact that $9 million. I expect, by the time you get done with the closeout this year, that you will be going into next, this 26-27 budget year, with approximately $8.5 million in your fund balance. Did that answer your question?

It actually gave a little bit more detail than what I was looking for, but that's good. Thank you. Commissioner Woods.

Commissioner Woods. Everything that I hear you saying about the county and the struggles is the same thing I'm hearing from the people in the county. It's kind of one of them things, Payment bills, gas, $6 if you drive a diesel. Just regular gas is high. Insurance is high. Property tax is high. And so it's become this thing of the impending Amendment 3. Numbers still say it's going to pass. Because when you sit here and you tell people, We're going to put $5 to $7 million back into the pocket of taxpayers in Gaston County. That's a pretty easy sale to vote for. And I think Commissioner Holt has said several times, very good, that they got to understand that these things go away. Last night, I got in a conversation. Somebody called me. The EMS people need to make more. Hard to keep them. They're right. Hard to keep deputies. Hard to keep, you know, the fire department. The road and bridge, I think that as a commissioner, I had no idea how much people depend on their roads to be. And so in saying that, the $67 million that is impending. Now, I heard the governor in a meeting tell us that he was going to try to help rural counties. He said, try. He didn't say he was going to do it. And so that's kind of been my position of why I didn't want to keep increasing the budget. And I know that's not politically correct with some people and absolutely correct with others. So for us, it's... The citizens and everyone in here who's going to stand up here and say, you know, cut taxes, cut taxes, that means people lose their jobs. That means there's things we can't do. There comes this balance. I've heard you say that we're how many employees more than we were?

Approximately 43 FTE above what was in 2019 and 1,343 population drops since 2019.

And so what I will tell you is from an officer that started in 1987, I never got the calls that my kid won't go to school. I never got to call somebody down the road making noise. It's kind of one of the things that public service has changed, and people call you for everything. When I rode that ambulance, sir, I could not believe the thing that people took the ambulance for. I took somebody from all the way to Chattahoochee to Tallahassee, and they jumped out the back of the ambulance and said they didn't have a way to Tallahassee. And now they're sitting here. If I'm telling a lie, either one of you MS guys come up here. It is amazing. And so how many times in this county is there not an ambulance available? How many times is there a deputy not available? Nothing to the person who's working. They just got six ambulances, and they're all in Tallahassee. Now, nobody likes to stand up here and say that, but it's the balance that I'm trying to get people to understand. For me, I don't want to raise taxes at all. But also, when it comes to cutting to the bone, it can't be quickly. It has to be something that you walk through and do it right. And that's all I got to say about that.

All right. Anyone else? Ms. Holt? Yes.

Thank you. Ms. Raynick? Yes. On the rollback, looking at the same sheet that you have here, at the top, revenue, expenditures at the bottom? Yes. OK. So the total difference in those two, the rollback and the nine at 855. What's the difference in those two for revenue?

Well, off the top of my head, it looks like about $1.3 million. Mm-hmm. OK, yeah. I want to make sure my notes were correct.

That's what I had on my paper. OK. Eyeballing it without putting it in a calculator. Right, right. OK, then on, that's at eight, five. Five. OK, at nine, what's the difference? I'm sorry, I don't understand that. Sorry, I was just talking about the difference in the two. Because people are asking for the rollback rate. What's the difference in the two if at 9 for expenditures and at 8.5 for expenditures?

Are you just talking about general fund? Or are you talking about the entire budget?

Well, pretty much general fund.

OK. General fund would be approximately $1.3 million difference. And you would have less going out of your contingency fund, which was $18 million at the 9, but it's at almost $16.9 at the 8.553. OK. I think what it is, Mr. Administrator,

The confusion has a lot to do with the different funds we keep quoting. At 8.5, people want to know totally what's the difference in that and at 9.

Give them a total.

You'd be the difference in the total of seventy two five to sixty nine three, right?

Seventy two five and sixty nine three now see that that'll start to make more sense to them It's about three about two point four million two point five million dollars difference okay, and And that I'm trying to figure out. And I think it's just a little catch in there saying we got 40 more positions of people than we have in 2019. FTE. Well, FTE. But FTE is a number. What about people?

Right now, the closest we can figure on the salary projections for this year, people projections this year, and that does include about 35 from the supervisor of elections, tax collector, and the property appraiser. We do not have numbers on the sheriff's department because we don't handle that. We do not have numbers on the clerk's department. But with those numbers, there's about 35 of those are not BOCC members. But with those 35, it's close to 279.

Okay, so what we're saying there, because it's misleading to say we have more people working when services went up and responsibilities went up. in there. It's rather misleading because if you already are not going to fill positions that are vacant, I'm not talking to you, I'm just speaking in general, because we have to work through this. We only have, what, one more meeting. And that's it. So if we say we have this much responsibility, and we have this many employees, and we do that in 19, and we say we went up a certain amount in 20, then the services we're calculating, how did those services go up? Either they went up or they went down. The cost of those services either went up or went down. And that's what we have to look at. That's why I just asked Mr. James before the meeting, When we say we cut something in a department, I ask for the services that will be cut. That was my only question. I went down to each one of these, and I took the book home with me to make sure. I didn't want to meet outside of this room, because I wanted it discussed in this room. And that's really what we should be doing, because we're in, as the rest of the state of Florida is in, a horrible situation. so meeting outside this room will not get it uh there are people uh talking about what do they what are their responsibility if some of the cities go down inside the county normally the counties are ordered to pretty much take them over okay they don't have a lot of people with the state of florida that says we're going to come and take over they don't have a lot in fact they're talking about them but but shortfalls too with the state of florida so That's why I'm trying to do this, because that's why the room's not full. the notices on your tax bill. It's not on Facebook. It's not out here where they can come and sit in this audience and ask these questions. If they're already not getting the services, let's say they're partnering with the city, we're partnering with the city, even on animal control and fuel down the hill down here, excuse me, and stuff like that. If their budgets are cut, they can't afford the fuel down the hill. Right. So you got state troopers, everybody is getting gas from the tanks. And so we're not discussing those hard items. And, boy, that's why I asked for a skeleton budget. That's why we would discuss all these things. Okay, if we're going to have six deputies or at night or four deputies or two deputies, how's it going to be? Also, we have to look at, and I know the chairman mentioned before about bonding money, and you're saying, well, not you're saying, the suggested, not you're saying that. It's to raise either sales tax or MSTU or MSBU for some of them for the sheriff. That's also another tax. Any of those taxes is going to be hard, difficult for whoever's up here to lobby that, to get that due to the citizen. Because if they're already raising the gas prices up and they say, I got to go to Tallahassee every day to go to work. And it doesn't matter if I stop at Midway to get gas or not. I got to be able to afford to get to work. So the majority of that money may come. Well, it may not even come through tourism, because if the gas is high, they're not traveling anyway. So this is really a fix.

Can I address that a bit? I think that the county attorney did bring up the fact that between the city of Tallahassee, who has maximum gas tax, and the city of Quincy, or the Gadsden County, there is no difference in the price at the pump, or a penny. I think you said a penny at the price at the pump.

Yes. I didn't bring it with me this meeting, but I think it was about a penny and a half. in difference of average costs. And it pulled, I believe, seven stations, the seven highest, the seven lowest here.

Well, you know, when I look at that, I had someone ask me today about another item. And I said, compared to Leland County, I said, we can't do that. We're going to compare the counties our size that are around here in the Panhandle. I said, go to Jackson, Madison, somewhere around here. Tallahassee has a volume. 400,000 people, their volume, they're going to be able to produce at that millage rate. If our millage, we're getting X number for one meal, where they would get a lot more for one meal. Correct. So we're not going to get, even though you have the stations where the people are getting gas, there may be 100 people that are getting gas from that station, where we may not get 100 a week. But I'm just saying that those are numbers. And like I said, I'm a numbers person. But what I want to say, though, is this. We can't go back and say, at 19, we had this many employees, but we didn't have to provide that many services. We've got to say what we're doing today and what's the cost today. Because if the people say, I'm not getting paid over here, they're going to go to work somewhere else. And also, that's why I asked about offering them a package. So if we're going to let them go, then give them a retirement package or give them something, severance pay. a package. And then you don't have to worry about the insurance or any of that. But the contingency plan, that's hard to push taxes through. I was with Mr. Dick Shaw and all this. When we tried to push that tax through, that's a difficult tax. It's just difficult. Now, if you say sales tax, you may ease by, maybe. But as soon as it hits the news, it's going to be, I'm not paying another tax, or they won't vote for it. So I'm just trying to figure out how do we navigate that. But I think if we look at the services, and you say, if we cut, like in one category, $1.1 million, And we just tell the people, look, we're going to cut in this area. And Mr. Chairman, you mentioned this. I think in Waikato County, they put it out there and say, these are the cuts. What do you want? Those kinds of commissioners, they just laid it on the table. But here, we have people thinking, I'm not going to go to the rollback. And then I'm going to vote not to pay the property tax. And then you guys come up with the money. That's what they're going to be expecting you to do. And also, as you said, you're not going to be able to buy any more ambulances. So what are you going to do? You already got to replace the chassis as they go down. So I just really want that, what services do we cut? And it's not difficult, really, because if they see it listed either in the newspaper or on Facebook, they'll say, these are the programs we are not required to provide services for. And these are the ones that we are required by law. And when they see them, they'll understand that tax. They'll understand whether they should be at the rollback or not.

Some of that I think we addressed or I tried to address in the funding budget workshop where I did the Legos, where I showed you which ones were required and which ones ended up at what point you would be out of money. I think that I tried to address that at that, but I also think that Commissioner Wood tried to address it a few minutes ago about talking about the ambulances and the services the Sheriff's Department wasn't going to be able to provide as well. Services will definitely be impacted if revenues fall and costs continue to go up.

May I respond right quick, Mr. Chairman? Right, but see, we addressed it in this room. The public did not see it. You get my point. So when so-and-so had a heart attack and the ambulance didn't come, And you're already 30 miles from Tallahassee. And if you're up there at Georgia Line, you've got 15 minutes. They're going to be pumping you for 15 minutes. I've done it before also, Commissioner, in the back of that truck. You've got to have one person pumping, the other one driving, if they're cold on the road. And then you've got down to the lake, you've got the same problem. It's so far to health care. So that's what I'm saying. We're going to have summer youth programs. Children are going to be working. We're laying off the adults. How are the adults going to pay the house payment, the car payment, and we're paying the kids? It's just we've got to figure out what to cut.

Commissioner Woods.

So I think a lot of the unknowns are the problem for me on this. You know, they're saying if they do this, it's going to give, like Gadsden, a lot of people $200 to $800 worth of expendable money for the year. And, you know, I hear the non-Avalorium route. But when you look at the cheated houses, how many do we have that people already don't pay the tax? So you can tell the 85-year-old single living home grandmother you're going to pay $200, $300 a year for these taxes. She's just going to say add it to the bill until somebody decides to take the house from her. So that becomes another problem. The other thing I can tell you what's going to happen is the state, when they pass this thing, they're going to realize what they've done. And then they're going to mandate how you spend the money. Because the governor in the original plan had mandated what you could and could not cut. That's coming. Because I don't see them saying you can cut Sheriff EMS and fire. I don't see that happening. And so then it narrows us down really, really tight on what we're going to be able to cut. And so I don't think there's a good answer. And for me, I just can't see. Because the numbers, when you start talking about the cuts, you're talking about the 9.0. I mean, if we go back to 865, which puts us at the last year's number, you're not truly cutting. You're just not getting. And I think that's where it becomes a misunderstanding. And we can have this meeting as long as we want. I can tell you all now, I ain't voting for them now. And so we can beat this thing all day long or whatever.

That's just where I'm at. In all fairness for Commissioner Green, come up. Now, even though you're not cutting, like you said, you're just adding, but as you know, the price of everything else is going up. In Canada right now, they increasing everything, tear for everything, right? So which means that that 50% for iron, all that stuff like that. So the value of everything else is going to go up. So Commissioner Green.

No, you hit it right on the head. When he made that comment, I'm just like, well, at the end of the day, everything is increasing. And then if we decrease anything, you're seeing what the sheriff is asking for, for an increase. How are we going to even afford the increase or what we're already having to do if we go back? I just, in my opinion, I don't think that it is a smart move. I don't think it's a healthy move for the county overall. But I mean, the mind is already made up. That's just my one opinion, that we're already and are going to be in a situation if that tax does pass, which I'm not really seeing the same numbers. I mean, it's a possibility that it can pass. It's a possibility that it cannot pass. We don't know. And I do know that there is going to be some strong campaigning from people who are in opposition of it that we'll probably start seeing very soon statewide. But I just don't think that it is healthy based upon the numbers that we have and based upon the increases that are being asked. For us, if you're talking about $859,000 increase that the sheriff is asking for, and then one point some million that we won't get, that's just not a healthy, smart move. But that's my opinion.

Thank you. What is the percentage, if he increased by $897,000, what is... $859,000. Well, that was... $859,000.

What percentage of our budget, just to give him the increase...

What percentage of our budget?

Of now, we've got $70 million of our budget.

I would say a little over, OK, math major.

Let's say $8 million, $9 million.

I just want people to think about that real quick. If you increase that, but with a rollback, we'll lose $3 million. and you increase the sheriff budget, you lose $3 million. Increase the sheriff, so which means you're losing $4 million from the budget before you even get started. I mean, we're not talking about like the public works. Like public works, right? We got to cover them for about $1 million for over. Every time. This year, we had to pay an additional $1 million. So we'll just say we have to do it for public works. So now we're losing $1 million. $4 million plus $1 million of public works. Housing did some things. The EMS, always another $1 million or $2 million every year, no matter what happened, right? So you're losing $6 or $7 million off the RIP. And that's including that we're not going to increase. Like, for instance, the city of Quincy just Each part of Gadsden County can be worried a little bit because if you move EMS over at Walmart, right, over there on the other side, which means that there will be no services in this area here. If you're losing $6 million a year, which means that we cannot, like we did Midway, we built the EMS over at Midway because we had funds to do that, right? Once we moved in with the Walmart, everybody on the east side of Gadsden County will be penalized for it because you can't afford to build a building, plus put another EMS that you're going to have to pay $600,000 for every year. It was $400,000 then. That was about 15 years ago, 12 years ago. So now it's going to be about $600,000 to $700,000 a year just for employment alone, just for the employers. So it would be impossible to put an EMS over In Quincy, in this side, again, they can cover. Majority of people live on this side of town. And when you stop at, what, here? On back to Havana, that's where majority of people live. From where we're located now to Havana. In Midway, right? But if you put the EMS over there, this EMS over there, over to Pat Thomas, which be going to take almost 20-something minutes just to get to the same, about 30 minutes to get to the same Hebrew. Huh?

It's right down here at the fifth apartment now.

I know, but we're trying to move it.

Yeah, but I'm saying that it's not that far.

It's like three minutes. Where I'm coming from, no, it's more than three minutes to drive over there. I was just thinking about going to High Bridge. If you go to High Bridge, there's going to be a lot of still addition. I'm just saying, we're talking about three minutes of time. That's a lot of time. You got me? What I'm saying is that what we got now, though, we can build another EMS somewhere else right now and put a remote satellite EMS is where we at now because we have the money to do it. But if you ain't got less than $6 million every year coming in, it's going to be hard to build another satellite. I like building another satellite over in Chattahoochee. Come on. You know what I'm saying? In Concord, I like to build a satellite because that's where you save lives at. But if you ain't got no money, all you're doing is having a good conversation. I'm sorry.

So another thing to think about is if we add the $2.4 million at the nine meals, that means when this thing passes, you're not cutting $6 million anymore. You're cutting $8.4 million. $8.4 million. And so it's kind of like what I'm saying is a management thing when you say, Right now, Commissioner Grant, I'd take 50-50. And that would be really good, because everything I've heard is 64 to 74. And it may, the campaign, it may. But if you turn around and have to cut $8.2 million in one year, that is totally devastating. It's like, it will have to be done. But my point is this. This is why I, because I understand being a public employee all my life. I've been a public from the military to law enforcement to now county commissioner, school board. But that's why I'm saying I want to see us get as skinny as we can get. So if it happens... We won't be totally devastated. We'll be devastated, don't get me wrong. But if we keep adding, that's where we're going to be.

I can't wait until all the commissioners are done. I'm going to let everybody jump in after all the commissioners are finished. I'm telling you, once we're all finished and we're ready to make a vote, then we can put you in. I want to make sure it's taken.

I'm going to say this. Yes. I'm just going to say that. Mic on. I'm sorry.

I was going to say he may have some good ideas, maybe something we didn't consider. Okay. That's all I'm saying. Okay. All right, commissioners. Anyone else? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. We're just trying to keep it so that we all can get on the same page.

I think most of you know me. Clarence Tennell, right here in Quincy. All I hear is doom. That's all I hear. Mr. Woods.

Your address, sir? I'm sorry.

If you believe Ron DeSantis, I feel for you. He's not going to do anything to help Gadsden County.

Mr. Tennell, if you can give your address for the clerk, please. Oh, 722 West King Street. Thank you, sir.

Not going to do anything to help this county. Instead of cutting, have you ever heard of an austerity plan? budget where you don't forego raises, forego hiring, hiring freeze, all of these things to save money rather than cut. And from what I hear, taxes will only be generated from poor people. That's basically what we've got here. We've got to pay the taxes on our back, OK? And you've got businesses here in this county I know some of them, at least one of them, make a million dollars a day. What are they doing to help the people here? What are the businesses doing? I hear taxes on working people, but nothing on the people. Working people in this county and community, we support these people. They make their money off of us. Why can't they put something back into this community? And I think you should look at that. I may get shot on my way out, but that'll be OK. But like I said, namely, there's one down on Pat Thomas Parkway. I sit there and I watch. People go in and out of this place. They got to generate more than a million dollars a day in revenue. What do they do for this county and for this city? Down at I-10, those service stations down there and the hotels, what do they give to this community and this county? nothing except make money and take it and send it someplace else. And I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I'm just sick of it.

Before Commissioner Simpkins, you can check with the property appraisers. They can give you all the information. OK. Yeah, you go to the property.

Can I get an organizational chart to find out who's getting paid and how much and what? I think you're all public servants.

OK. Yeah, the private appraisal. Commissioner Simpkins.

Thank you. The one thing I do agree with you, Mr. Tennell, I do believe that the businesses need to contribute back to the community. And when we're taking a look at this budget and some of these apartments, we may have to We need to lean on the businesses giving back to the community. I still stand where I've stood for the last. few years as it relates to the millage rate. But I have a question because I keep hearing $2. some million that we're losing. Now, when I'm looking at this revenue summary for this year, it's $70 million. For the 25-26 budget year, we had $70,092,617. And if the If it goes to the rollback, it would be $69,384,000. Is that correct? Correct. So we're looking at a difference of, from what we're receiving this year, it would be a difference of $708,000.

That is in revenue, yes. But in that revenue that you're looking at, we have to come up with revenue for the other financial sources. And that revenue comes mostly from your fund balance.

OK. When you're saying, so the $708,000, is that the difference in the income that we receive now with that millage rate, with the millage rate that we're at right now?

The millage rate right now is 9.0. The budget that was built last year at $70,092,000. that was adopted has been amended several times throughout the year. It is now close to 72-9. So when you start looking at what the difference between what you're getting in this budget versus what the actual budget is this year, not what was adopted, but what was amended throughout the year, you're looking at a larger difference.

And when we look at that, okay, and I know that in this particular budget, we had a couple of bigger items that was not in that budget, and that was that cost for that equipment for public works, correct?

That went up $87,000. That was the only... You already had budgeted $339,000 for that payment, and it went up $87,000.

So what it sounds like is, and this is something that I've asked, as a board, we need to be looking at, just like we have to stay within our budgets at the house, Our departments need to stay within their budgets. So we as a board, we have to begin to take a look, not just doing budget season, but I don't know if we need to do it monthly or quarterly. We need to have the actuals coming in so that we can take a look at what is being spent versus what their particular budget is. When you give out, you give out. Now, there will be times where, of course, things happen in our homes. And we don't expect that you get a busted pipe or something happens that's unexpected. But I think that, as a board, we have to, on a regular basis, take a look to see where each department is. And we're just going to have to. I get it from the citizens. I'm sorry, not just the citizens in my district, but citizens in other districts asking about their millage rate, asking about the taxes. People understand with cuts, you get cuts where you save money in your pocket, but then there are some services that may be affected. That's what comes with it. It's a give and take. So I have to move with what's being requested on my end. And so with that being said, there's an understanding that with that comes some uncomfortable cuts.

Right.

So and, you know, that's just. That's where I stand. And we have to take a look at this particular, look at the budget. And we have to look at those things that are not necessarily mandated. And again, may have to reach out to the churches, to the businesses, to assist with funding some of those things that we may have to take a look at cutting.

Commissioner Hope?

Yes, thank you. The only thing I see wrong with this scenario is that citizens can't see what those cuts are. I get you. Because we cut, and with the leases on the equipment, then we turn around and bought some more equipment. So we went back and got some more equipment, but we cut the lease on the equipment. I think it was a low boy or one of them went down, and we voted on that. Everything went down. That's what I'm saying. So when it went down because we cut the lease, they went down. We had to go back and sign another lease, so we didn't solve anything by doing that. But what I was going to say is that the citizens still don't know what the cuts are. I mean, I can't really tell them all the cuts either. Because the cuts are in services. So we say we are not going to get another planter so that way we can look at allowing them to use their property, going from 10 acres to 5 acres for residential, for a home. That takes more than one person in planning. These are the revenue streams that we get. Building inspection, they pay. So planning, they generate money. These different departments generate money. And if we were building up those departments, then I could see it. We don't.

We just. It's on point. It's on point. So then it sounds like since we're saying that, which I don't understand, because I think as citizens, We get stuff out to the citizens that we want to get out to the citizens. So if we need to do a, do we need to do, do you all suggest that we do a, you all do a newsletter and just state, these are the things that are being cut. That's what you want? And put it on and have people to put it on Facebook? Then we can do that.

Listen. I mean, thank you.

I mean, I'm just, I mean, if you, I don't, for me, I'm standing on, and I have not, I have not wavered, have not wavered since I've been here, and I'm not going to waver on that. I am on, and I know you had the floor, I'm on the cutting of the millage rate. That hasn't changed for me. It's not going to change for me. Now, we can go through and you can take a look, whatever you have addressed. And as a matter of fact, it's public record anyway. So it's not that the public does not have access to it. This is public record. Am I correct?

Yes, ma'am. May I?

So they can't, so it's supposed to be, so if the public wants to see it, then they have access to it, correct?

Correct.

Okay. Okay, thank you.

I wasn't saying that they did not have access. Oh, okay. But they don't have access to this, you see, because we got this today. But what I'm saying, though, is this. I understand, but they're not going to go to that website. They're going to ask us in the street, just like they're doing here. But what I'm saying is this. If they have these departments, as I asked in June, if they have these things that we are not required to fund, and I'm really talking to you, Mr. Administrator. If they had that list, that we are not required to fund these, but over here in this column, we're required to fund these. Now, this book has some cuts in it. They go along with the services. People, when they look at this, they don't understand these numbers and why they're there. If you're in budget, you do. Are you an accounting major? Yeah, but not the regular people. So if we're going to say we're going to fund Big B in transit, if we're going to fund it, then are we going to be able to continue funding it if we have to pay that money out? and the people that are riding the buses going to Tallahassee to work, then they will say, hey, am I going to have to find another way to work? But I'm saying we're dealing with numbers, and we're not dealing with the people that those numbers apply to. That's all I'm asking. Give them a fair chance.

That's all. Before Commissioner Holt, I'm going to let Commissioner Woods, then I'll go, then Ms. Heraclias, someone else want to speak after that.

So Mr. Tennille, you're dead on. Your concern is mine. I don't know what the governor will do at all. I mean, we'd be $7 million and I get that non-advalorium, but a lot of our people can't pay it. You can send them a $300 bill to pay for all this stuff, and they're going to tell you add it up until you take what they got. You know what I mean? So it's just we're in a bad spot. Everybody's struggling. Gas is high. People call me frustrated all the time, almost like they want to fight me. You know, I mean, it's just really nobody wants to have a common sense conversation. You know, everything's over the top. Let me answer this, and this is the thing that's confusing the people when you say the $2-something million increase and that we're taking it away. That's not ours. We're $70 million right now, right? $70 million and $92,000. That's what we are right now, this year. And if we go, it'll go to $72.5. Is that the right numbers? So what number gets me to the $70,092,000 to where we don't go up or we don't go down? Mr. Now, I think about on point there that we're going to be here what we got. We got $20 in our pocket. We're going to have $20 next year. How do we spend that $20? What is that number? It's going to be a millage rate of about.

It would be a millage rate of around 8.7. 8.7. Would flat fund it without any other changes to the budget?

What does 8.7 give us?

I don't have that figure right now, but I would say it's going to give you $130,000 more than what you have there, so 69. It's going to get you up to close to $70 million.

OK, so 8.65.

Yeah, 8.65 is just shy of $70 million.

And 8.7 is just above it.

Just above it.

OK, so we can argue all night on numbers, because it's like, it's got to be a four to one right on the vote. Am I right, Ms. Lawyer? So if y'all want to save a lot of time, I'm at 865. So y'all can sit up here, Mr. Chair. Because it seems like I'm the one that is, you tell me 865 and we out the door.

I mean, whatever y'all want to go with. But I just want to say something real quick. I'm the chairman of the Value Adjustment Board. And I'm not just talking in general, just throwing things out there. I've been the chairman of the board for years, many years. There's a, we can't conflict the two between millage rate and value of a piece of property. The problem is not the millage. The millage has been increased probably one time in 20 or 30 years, one time. So when people talk about we gotta cut the millage rate, that's not the problem. It's not the Board of County Commission. I think since we never cut the millage since you've been here, Commissioner Simpkins, I think it happened probably about seven, eight years ago, 10 years ago. I'm not sure. One time, I think about a little small percentage at that time. Well, I mean, we increased it by a small percentage. It went from 8.9 something to 900. or 8 point something till 9-0, right? 8.959. But I'm not sure what the number is. But it was real, real small. It went to 9.0. That's the one time that, and I voted against it, but they still voted for it. It was 414, I think. But where I'm coming from here, If you look at your property value of your property, look at how your property looked four years ago or three years ago compared to how it is today, I tell you, we can drop almost down to zero. Your property's still going to be, you still got to pay a lot of money based on the value of your property. That's not the Board of the County Commission. And I've been saying this every year, during the same time every year. We focus. We could be bold and say, we're going to cut the minutes rate. We can cut the minutes rate by four or five. We can cut from 9.0 to three, if y'all want to. And again, next year, you're still going to be coming back next year mad, because it's still going to be high. Your value of property, three years ago, probably at $100,000. I mean, four years ago, probably $125,000, $30,000. Now the value of property, now probably at $300,000 or $400,000. So they charge you based on the value of your piece of property. And that's the elephant in the room. It's not the Board of County Commission. Or you put a stand out there on your piece of property. Now, they charge you $40,000 for that stand on your piece of property that you put out there. They increase the value of your piece of property. So that's not the Board of the County Commission. So that's the reason why I don't feel comfortable because of it's not like the county. If we keep it at 9.0, you're not increasing taxes. You're just keeping it as is. You're not increasing anything. But what's going to happen here? What's going to happen here? Unfortunately, the Board of County Commission led three to five years. Y'all don't mind me talking. I've been trying to hold off a little bit. And I'm not saying which side you want to go in. The Board led four or five years. We probably brought in five or six EMS trucks. Five or six. Which means that in the next three to five years, we ain't buying no more trucks. That's it. Yes, you can help one or two people out and be great. But your mama, my mama, who needed to have somebody rushed to the hospital last week, she won't have that assistance no more.

That's right.

That's my mama. That's not your mama. It's not politics right here. That's my mama. So she would never have the opportunity. But EMS was there within five, less than, what, 10 minutes? They was able to pick up and take to the hospital. But guess what, though? And every year, we kept on buying, what, three or four trucks, two or three trucks a year. We're talking about less than four or five years ago. Brand new trucks that meet the needs of someone who got COVID, everything else. Them trucks like $400,000 or $500,000 per truck. So now, yes, you can save $100 a year if that. But we are not increasing your property tax. Your property tax is at 9.0 right now. 9.0 right now. Your property tax last year was what? 9.0. The year before that, what? 9.0. The year before that, 9.0. So we're not increasing. But I guarantee you, we gave EMS last year $3 million last year increase. We gave the share department what? An increase, $1.1 or $1.2 million increase, the share department? They're asking for $860,000. Now they're asking for another $865,000 again this year. So if something happened to you in the outskirts of Gaston County, we just got to pray for you. Public Works. We got to increase by another million dollars in public works this year. How many people got to live on dirt roads or roads torn down or whatever going to happen? And I hate to get in this way. Unfortunately, I wouldn't have never got in this way. But when you see your mom adopt, that's reality. Commissioner Hanson? Who cares about how a person feel when you're talking about your mama at the time, right? That's reality. And that's the problem. We're not playing games with people. I said, Miss Hope, everybody got pissed off at me about 10, 12 years ago fighting for Midway. I said, I can't put a price on somebody's life. That's why we brought that EMS to Midway. And it kills me when I see somebody who can buy a whole town and want you to cut a few dollars. It really disturbs me. Commissioner Green, I'm sorry about that, bro.

No, no, no, no, no. You're fine. And I was just telling you I understand your reasoning. But however, we know the vote, the reality of it. You know the vote. And it is what it is. We can be up here another whole hour, and you're still going to have the same people voting the way that they already got their minds up to vote for this military. And I'm just stating. And so my question, and it was very on point when he asked, if we don't go stay at the nine, what does it take for us to at least have the budget balance to where it is? Or I think I heard 8.6 or 8.7. She said 8.7. 8.7. I'm thinking to be on the safe side, 8.8. But I just know that it's not going to be a 4-1 for the nine.

I'm not stressed out.

I just want you to know that.

So as we get, I understand everything you said. Yeah. And I get it. And for me, it comes down to, The old days, the old people. And that's what you got. We're going to have to figure it out. And if things get better. Now, I'll tell you one thing you said about it a while back that made sense, because I kept getting beat up about the mills, and watercolor doesn't pay this. But then when you said, well, you the same acre in Wakulla at seven mils pays this, and it's actually more than what we pay at nine mils. So they are. The other counties around us are not going to hurt as bad as we are. They're not. But I think, Mr. Snell, you're dead on. I don't know the government going to do nothing for us. And so here we are. This thing is coming like a train. And I get everything you guys have said, but the taxpayers are telling me the same thing. They're going, I ain't got it. I'll tell you one more time what got me is when a guy said, I bought my house 10 years ago. And with my insurance and property tax, he said, I'm almost going to have to give my house back. I work every day. He's a county employee.

It's our work every day. This is on point, Commissioner Wood, because people need to hear this. That's 10 years ago, right? That's because of the millage that we increased, which we didn't increase that one millage, I don't think, in 10 years, or because of the value of his property. So he need to see the who? He need to see the property appraiser. Trust me, who I'm listening to is here. You'll save a lot of money now. I see two coming every year. You'll save a lot of money if you're stepping right. Yeah, but at least you got a chance of going. But you got to go and see the property appraiser. If you see the property appraiser, the property appraiser will work out some things. That's the issue with that part. The millage still was about 9.0 10 years ago. like it is today, and everything went up almost, what, 2 and 1 half percent. And you're right. Last year, they came the same way. Some guy said that his house in Havana, somewhere in Havana, his house was at $135,000. Now it's at $375,000 now. That's not the millage rate. That's the value department. That's the underlying problem. I had to bring that up. I came from the state. Commissioner Woods. I'm going to let Commissioner Woods go, then Commissioner. And so we're going to have to cut back.

That's true, though. And at one time, we were at $3 million. We all got the email, I think, from the clerk. You know, $3 million we used to have in our balance. And they said we got $11,000. And so it becomes this thing of... The more we get, the more we spend it. And it's just got to be a time to where we, it's unfortunate. But I like it, man. I like it. I like it when I can call and they run, jump, and fix a road. When they run, do this, they do that. But as I've told people, that day's coming to an end. Growing up, I remember riding down that old road. You knew if there was a pothole, you was going to knock your dadgum car out of line if you hit it. Right. Woodbury Road. And so you knew that in your, and I just, I want the community to know that as I say this, there's some expectations that have to change. EMS, man, that is like a taxicab. And that ain't politically correct to say. They can't say that. But them folks, but I heard Commissioner Holt one time talk about when folks ain't got a doctor or a hospital, that's what they're going to do. And so I get everything, guys. And I just, I've had to control budgets, run budgets. And sometimes it comes to.

I'm going to ask you a question. I had to put it. You was the emergency management director, right? During Hurricane Michael. And Hurricane Michael didn't hit until October what? 8th or something, right? 8th or 10th. October 8th or 10th. So which means that any given day, we can have, we talking about, we live in Florida now. We all live in Florida. Any given day, you can have a hurricane here. And people talking about, OK, you got $7 million in your budget, have this. We went down. We were one of the only few counties that still had, was in blight. All the other small county was in the red. You're welcome. You remember that? Yeah, you're welcome.

No, no, don't thank him.

Don't thank him. So the border county commission, because we was able to keep. Yeah, that's right. You know, so the border county commission is because we was able to be, you know, we don't mind keeping money out of reserves because we understand that you're going to need the money for serious situations like Hurricane Michael. And so, but if you take that money out, Take $4 million out, I think that you're going to, if we have another Hurricane Michael, we're going to be in the red for a long period of time. And what happened with Hurricane, I forgot the name of the hurricane.

Santa came right after it.

You remember the one over there in Perry?

Mm-hmm.

The state or the federal government have yet to rescue Teller County as of today. I think they're still in the red.

Yeah. There are quite a few counties in red.

Still in red. So let the family come first. I'm sorry. Then Brother Derrick. Yes, it's OK. We don't need paper today. This is a budget workshop, so we going to.

It's special.

Yeah, it's special.

Yes, sir. It's a simple problem. Your name and your address, please. Oh, William Farr, 564 Middle Creek Road, Quincy. It's a matter of tax base. And we already heard that people are leaving the county and so tax doesn't get collected. We lose that. So what you need to do is attract people to the county. And how do you do that? Well, I know it's not a comfortable subject, but it's lowering the property tax. And at some point, The government, people are going to vote on it because they're mad. And yeah, there's going to be all kinds of controversy about it. But if it passes, like Commissioner Wood said, it's going to be tough because you're going to have to pull back. But if you had a broader tax base, more people in the county, that's going to raise your income level, which would take care of the that the shortfall and and how do you do that well you again you have to make things appealing like Commissioner Holt said you know people are going to Tallahassee going to Leon County well what is Leon County have they have lots of people that's how they collect a certain amount of tax they have a lot of people so one dollar with a million people there's a million dollars so you know again It's one of those simple issues of finance that if you can attract people into the county, make things lower cost or whatever it is, where people from Leon will start coming here, again you know they start picking up the the cost of what need to be expended and i'm not saying that there has to be that there isn't going to be cutbacks because there has to be cutbacks everybody cuts back you know i cut back there's some things i don't buy because you know i can't can't do it but You know, I save up for it, and that's what the fund balance is for. You know, when hurricane comes through, you got the fund balance. When there's an emergency, you have the fund balance. So it's not to, you know, give up the ship, but it's to start doing things wisely. I mean, we had a lot of prosperity in our country, and we got used to spending it We got used to saying, oh, let's get that, let's get this, you know, because we could get it. But now it's not that way. And so we have to move with the way things are. And I think that that means, yeah, cutbacks, but also try to attract people into our county. It's a good county. And I think we can do that. I got four seconds.

No, it's okay. It's on point what you said, too, as well. For the record, Leon County is at 9.064 millis rate. That's where Leon County is at right now, 9.064 millis rate. So they're much more than Gaston County right now. Yeah, appreciate you. All right, all right.

I think Commissioner Holt was...

Oh, that's her. Next. Then Ms. Derrick next. Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry.

Okay. Kathy Farr, 564 Middle Creek Road in Quincy. And there's still some confusion, I think, on your part on the millage rate. If we do not have the 8.553, it does say on the paper, if we have the 8.553 and no millage, Increases in the budget are made you'll have the same revenue, but if we have the nine Yes, people's property tax does go up not just because of how your property is rated Because it tells you right on your sheet that if you are the eight point five five here is your tax rate if it's the nine point Oh here is your tax rate and it's quite a bit higher no matter what your property is rated at or valued at and So it still is an increase to the taxpayer. And here's the thing you have to think of. This whole amendment coming up this fall would never have happened if people weren't sick and tired of constantly having their property tax increased, especially the elderly, because they're being kicked out of their homes because they can't afford the taxes. What is the point of owning a home if you never own it because your taxes keep going up? That is a huge thing. When you talk about a gas tax or a sale tax, At least that impacts everyone. It can also impact those traveling through a lot. But with a property tax, it only impacts property owners or homeowners. So that is not a fair tax to affect everyone. Those things have to be considered. And everybody has to watch their budget. Everyone has to. now i don't think gas prices are going to stay up they're not horrendous right now compared to other countries and other states like california it'll come down once the gulf settles because they're working around the whole gulf of hormuz they're putting underground transports in so that that doesn't clog up the middle east gulf so gas prices will end up going down so there's a lot of things but the most important thing is ems and ambulance is not the only thing in the county budget and we're older we live out in the middle of nowhere we know there's nobody coming for us and we're not worried about it We're not worried about it. We believe in God. He'll take care of us. If it's our time, it's our time. But bringing that up kind of makes it scary to people. There is so much more to a county budget than just EMS. Property taxes were supposed to be for public safety, EMS, ambulance, and schools. And that is it. So there's a lot of programs that don't need to be taxed.

In all fairness, I do agree with a few things that you said as well. Commissioner, Ms. Derek Lice.

Good evening. Oh, it's gone. It's the air. Derek Elias. I might just need to sit down. PO Box 2171, Quincy, Florida. And commissioners, every year, without fail, you all undertake this exercise. And it seems to me you make a production out of this exercise, but you know it's coming. Every year is coming, citizens are going to come up, and they're going to have an issue with it. So with that being said, I heard it said that cuts, cuts, cuts, and we better get ready for the cuts. If I follow the logic, if there are cuts, there's going to be a reduction in services. But if I also follow the logic, when there has been an exponential amount of money on top of when you get more money in from the government. It stands to reason that services would increase. Well, when you all have been on the fat side, I didn't see any more services. On the lean side, we say everybody's going to be hurting. So it's going to be a matter of living within the budget. I heard you all articulate, relative to the 43 additional positions, or whatever the number is, since 2018, FTE full-time equivalents versus people. Even if the positions are not filled, they are still funded. So you have money in there for those positions because otherwise you would not fund them. You wouldn't have them there unless you intended to fund them. The truth of the matter is that the amendment is not the issue for Gaston County right now. So even if this amendment was not on the ballot in November, you all will still be faced with what you are faced with right now. Are you going to keep the millage rate at where it is, or are you going to roll it back? It's real simple. The amendment has nothing to do with that. And you're still going to need X number of votes. whether it's that super majority or whatever the case may be, you're going to need that regardless. So when I heard you all say, well, you know, the citizens this and the citizens that, well, the citizens have already voted for you all, and we look to you all to be able to maneuver through this quandary. It's not going to be easy, it never is, but I don't want you all hinting upon the fact that that it's this amendment, this proposed amendment that's looming out there that's causing all of that. It certainly is not that. You will still have the same problems. Are you prepared to make cuts that typically you don't ever want to make anyway? You don't ever want to cut services. You don't ever want to cut people. I don't think it's necessarily a direct correlation that just because you cut people, you cut services. Because when you cut people, where I come from and where I work, people have to do more. They have to work more efficiently, and they have to be more effective at what they do. Thank you. Thank you, though. Appreciate that. All right. Well, Commissioner Holt.

Commissioner Holt.

Commissioner, were you before me, I think? I'm sorry? I think you were before me, right?

I don't know. I was listening to him. I didn't even look up. Right now, I'm still right at 9 until we can tell people what we're going to do. Because we have people that have already been cut, and we said don't cut anyone else until we can look at it. The positions, yeah, let's get real. I mean, if you're going to cut them, just let everyone know what we're cutting and why we're cutting it. That's all. That's where I am. And until we can do that, I can't vote for something. I mean, I'm right now at 8-8 or 8-9 if I was going to drop something. I don't want people to just die there because they're leaving the country. So I don't want that to happen. Now, but we'll tell you something. We've got to have approximately $3 million a month to run the county. And that doesn't include hurricanes. So that's without the cut in property taxes. And as I said, when I was chairman, when Hurricane Michael hit, when Governor Scott called and said, Commissioner, we will pay 25%, 75% of the cost to get the trees out the road so people could move. And that was right at $60 million, because the guys were standing right there that would do them. And I said, you can go ahead and say you're going to pay 100%, because we didn't have that much in reserve. You can put your hand down. But I'm still talking. See, and we have to realize that, and I'm going to say this, and I said I wasn't going to say it, but when that person got killed in that house, it was like everyone froze in that building. Because his wife was there with him, and it hit. You would think, well, maybe it would be better if it hit during the day, but it got dogged just like that. And the sheriff and everybody was running out there trying to go get them out of their house because they were going to be there all night. So we can say up here because it's safe that we don't want to pay, but we're going to have to pay. And also, we know politically there was one reason why over a million and some people were invited to the villages. We know that. They were invited to the villages. for a campaign. And they were promised tax cuts. And that's what they're doing now, is giving them the tax cuts. So let's just be honest about why it came up now. And we're going to get another governor. But that's true. So all that's neither here nor there, but let's just lay the cards on the table. We've got to be concerned about the people right here. We can't worry about the whole state of Florida, but we can worry about this little spot right here. And all I'm saying is, If we do this, we have considered everything that could possibly happen, because we have to look beyond today. Now, we can say 8 mil, 9 mil, 10 mil, whatever. But how do we look at it and you have less than 60 days if that passes? Do we have any cushion? What kind of cushion do we have? And so I think the people in the communities should be just as informed as we are. It's not that they voted for us. And we have to vote on this. We vote on it every year. Should have started back before. Get that cut budget, trim down budget, get a regular budget, and then put it to citizens, let them see it. But there was an election going on. So you had to do it when it's hard to do. It was difficult to do. Some people didn't want to cut while the election was going on. But now we're back to where we were. We got to do this. So I think, like I said, I'm at the upper eights and maybe nine. I'm right at nine. Until someone can say how everyone else is going to give their reaction to this. Because we got 8,000 and some seniors. What are those seniors not going to do if their ambulance can't come? And I know you don't want to talk about it, but if two ambulances are bagged up to TMH, then that's too short, because they can't leave unless they stabilize those patients. And TMH is going to say, sit right here until you get them stabilized. That's why you see the trucks bagged up. They're not bagged up there on a coffee break.

They will cut services.

Well, that's what I'm saying. But if you get a call and they're backed up over there, I'm not saying we would cut.

No, we're going to. If everything happened like this, and people got to realize the reality is here. It took me forever, almost a whole six months to get midway EMS to get over there, right?

Yeah, we got to do it.

But we went up until the end of budget so that they can put an EMS over there. It was like $306,000 a year at the time. So which means that when the money starts shortfalling, people are like, you're going to have to cut EMSs. I see some guys look like they worked for EMS back there now. A couple of years ago, you had a slew of guys that was saying that they was about to, They was leaving. A lot of guys left EMS because of the pay increase, right? Because EMS guys, salary-wise, they don't make as much money, everybody think that. And they make a lot of money. But they make money off of overtime and everything else. They make a lot more than most people. But salary-wise, it's not as comfortable as a lot of other people. So a lot of guys was leaving Gaston County EMS because of that. You're leaving experience, leaving from there. I understand. I do understand what people are talking about. But I don't care how good looking you are, how rich you are, how tall you are, short you are, whatever. When your heart stops, you need help. I don't care who you are. I'm talking to myself right now. I'm talking to myself. I don't care who you are. You can be the best looking thing in the world. You can be the richest thing in the world. You can be whatever. It happened to me. So I had to get on the LMS this year, I think, which means that I'm in pretty good shape. I could jog three or four miles without stopping. But it doesn't matter. Even with this gut I got, I still can jog. But it doesn't matter. When you need help, you need what? You need help. Yeah. So what we're going to do, I'm telling you, I'm forecasting this here. Are we looking now? We have to reduce EMS in Gaston County. Unfortunately, if everything passed through, yes. How many EMS we have in Gaston County now, though? Can we have somebody, EMS, talk real quick? I have a quick question. I'm not sure if y'all can answer this question. Yeah, can you come up real quick? And now, because that's, I was running off of, when I ran for county commission, it's a true story. Everybody in Havana heard the story a thousand times. I ran for economic development, I mean, economic development, economic development, economic development. But when my father-in-law almost died in my house during Christmas Eve, December 24th, I never forget, Miss Stokes was living at that time. And I can't, I had that conversation. I changed from economic development to infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. Because they said, we're going to have one EMS at that time on the east side of Gaston County. One. That was in Havana. Midway, they had an EMS. So if you get the one from Havana leave, which means that they had Quincy had to take care of Havana and Midway at the same time. So how many EMS? Where's the EMS locations in Gaston County now? We have... One location in Chattahoochee. OK. We have one that is in Havana. OK. We have one in Midway. Mm-hmm.

Then we have three that are stationed in Quincy.

Quincy. So if we, based on what we're looking now, we lose $6, $7 million in the next two or three years, there's going to be EMS going to have to be, you're going to have to cut down on, Because that's how much per station, how much it costs per station, though?

I would imagine it's about $550,000. $550,000. Yes, sir.

And they had a fit about 13 years ago when I was trying to get one in Midway for $306,000. So now it's up to almost a half a million, a little bit over half a million dollars now, right? So when you start cutting, that's not the utilities, right? That's just salary. They're not utilities. That's not buying a truck. That's not buying this. That's not refurbishing a truck. That's not all the other stuff, the pretty stuff. That's not buying equipment, all the other stuff, right? Yes, sir. They're just salary, $5,000. Yes, sir. So which means now that there's got to make a decision that should we cut the EMS in Quincy, in Chattahoochee, Midway or where? Havana. One of those little cakes is going to be cut. in the next two or three years. And a couple of years ago, about four or five years ago, they moved the EMS from Havana and moved it to Quincy in about three or four weeks because of the condition of Havana until we built another spot in Havana. I wish I could play around with somebody's life. This is somebody's life we're talking about. And I never supported increasing taxes, which I still don't believe in that. But I believe that we got to make sure that we take care of the people who need to be taken care of. I'm finished talking for today. Well, like you said, we can go and finish. I appreciate everything, my friend. Thank you. Thank you so much. Are we able to make a move?

Me.

I'm next. Yes, Commissioner Woods.

So Mr. Farr, what you say sounds really good about the businesses coming in. But every business I talk to wants a tax break. I'm just being honest. I mean, we get these large businesses, the first thing they do is they want to know how they get out from paying taxes. And that's how we get them. And it is tough. I mean, preacher, I'm going to talk that side. I had a preacher tell me that people just can't afford it anymore. And I said, so I guess y'all not paying tithes this month. And he started laughing because it's kind of one of the things that he knew where I was going. And so there is a cost to doing business. Yeah, it is. And I can tell you that everything that the chairman just said is accurate about EMS. If we go six, seven million, there will be a lot cut. People look at the programs, but you can add them up. And I think we don't do a good job. You can add up the library, the parks, the seniors. I mean, you can add up four or five different things, and it don't even get you to three million. And so it becomes this thing, six to seven million. And that's why I didn't want to add the 2.4, because if they cut us, then we're going eight million. And so... That tax is going to be brutal on us. And I get that about the property tax. I get that people don't want to pay it. But somewhere along the line, it's like the ties to the church. There's certain things that we're going to have to pay. There's certain things we're going to have to do. Because I remember when Eric's father-in-law and some other commissioners have had sick family members on the ambulance. And it's pretty tough when they're out there and that thing don't show up. And I've been there in calls waiting 30 minutes for an ambulance. No fault to the ambulance guy. I mean, it was all six of them in Tallahassee. How often does that happen, Chief? And so almost, and I say this as the person who's saying I don't want to increase, but every single day, and I don't think, maybe not every day, but every other day is somewhere a lot, all six ambulances are out. They're out. They're gone. And you look at my district and your district, that means from Tallahassee to Aspelagy is an hour and 15 minutes on an ambulance running an 85 mile an hour. Yeah. And so that's just getting to the call. Hopefully you call on Life Flight to meet you there if they're available, right? Are you calling Jackson County? How many times have we called Jackson County? Once a week, maybe?

Probably once every other week.

And so I'm trying to, because I am understanding my fellow commissioner's push. For the nine, I do. I understand. I'm not trying to say anything y'all were saying wrong. We're just having a difference of what we believe. But I don't want to confuse it with that we need to cut all property tax. Because that's the next move, guys, is they're talking about cutting it all. Because what happens? is uh businesses will get increased taxes their taxes are going to go up and so what that tax means and a republican friend of mine i said we blame the democrats for defunding police but that's exactly what we're doing in the state of florida right now we defunding the police in a different way we defund them because we're going to take away the revenue source It's catchy. And they have said that they're going to have some, but that governor is going to be gone, Mr. Taylor. They're going to be a new governor. And so that old one, he can't do nothing for it because he's gone too. You know what I mean? And so it's just not good the way this thing happened. Here we are, all these precautions that they were going to do and the conversations about rural counties. It didn't happen. And here we are standing on the barrel of a shotgun. Everybody's price is going up. Our price is going up. I call for service. I can't tell y'all what people call me for. People are dependent on the government. And you can't, and I'm telling you right now, because at the sheriff's office, they call you because Johnny won't go to school. They calling you because ain't nobody in the neighborhood on the private road got a box blade anymore. They want us to come down there and do it. Pothole in the road, they calling you. There's a limb over there going to keep, let me tell you this. And I'm going to go back, because you reminded me of it, Commissioner. I have people calling me after Michael, an hour, talking about Andy Griffin ain't on. How long is it gonna take before the power's on? And we got people in the house trying to get to him, Commissioner. You were standing there with me. And there's a thousand trees down between us and them, and people still calling us wanting to know when Andy Griffin coming on. How long before the power come on?

I mean, houses are gone.

and so i understand people go big government big government but daggone thing calling us for everything you know it's on point it's on point this is important but just on point what you're talking about the elephant in the room with small counties this is something everybody want to talk about in the room with small counties that nobody want to talk about, data centers. That's the elephant in the room. Because what's going to happen is that with a small county who can't afford it, who can't afford to sustain themselves, they're going to force small counties like Jefferson, like small counties, rural areas, to look at whatever they can do to survive. Unfortunately. I'm not supporting no doubt of something. But unfortunately, if you ain't got no money, you got to find the money. And A, you find the money, or you just die. That's what they had on the news this morning. Everybody saw it earlier this morning. The whole community just struggling. Y'all saw that? And they had to sell the land. The mayor had to do what he didn't feel like doing in order to survive. Because when you don't have the money, data centers is going to come. Right now, the president of the United States and Don, Donald, whatever his name is, who are leading Republicans right now, that's one of the top priorities is bringing data centers in the state of Florida. So if Donald wins, the president of the United States is still there. These small counties are going to be, I don't care how you look at it, the President of the United States said you got to push it. Donald said you got to push down the sentence. So you're going to have a lot of small counties going to have to submit to that, because they can't sustain themselves. It look good now, because we're feeling good. But when we lose money, we got to figure out how we can maneuver, like Commissioner Wood said. Commissioner Holt.

I had a question right quick. Okay, Ms. Raynette, okay, let's say if there are any changes made today or this week, any changes to this budget, what happens?

Tonight you have to vote on a tentative millage and a tentative budget. If after you vote on that, you say, now, before you come back to the final budget hearing, I want you to add xyz for the law enforcement. I want you to add xyz for this. Then I'm going to have to go back and start bouncing those budgets around and those totals around at whatever millage you say. Whatever you set tonight will be the millage rate that goes into the final.

OK, so you answered it in the last sentence. OK, so we say 8, 9. We have to stick with the 8.9 in the next period.

That's what you have to stick to. Now, it will change depending on what else you tell me. Say it's 8.9 that you go to, but I want to give the sheriff X amount of money. Your total budget is going to change from what it is today. Yeah, because it has to go up.

It doesn't have to go up. Okay, so we are... If we voted on 9 tonight, we would have to stay at 9.

If you vote on 9 tonight, you can still come down to the roll.

Yeah, because that's what I was going to say. We all still have a little bit of time. It wouldn't close that much. But you could reduce it down. Because we need to know what we're going to do with $800,000 and some thousand. We need to know before that last vote, that last budget meeting. I mean, special meeting. We need to know that. So I think everyone, when you consider what you're going to do, we vote tonight. Can we raise it? You cannot raise it after tonight. That's why I brought that up. If you voted for the rollback tonight, you cannot raise it. Right. You can't raise it. So then, listen to this. Then you're going to have to move something out to get the $800,000 in. Yes. And I still say, when I'm looking through this, I still say I can't see funding some of these things if we know that we're going to have to get some other things done. I mean, I like the summer youth program. I don't think we ought to have it until we know how this is going to work out. Because you can always include it back in under your millage. You can include it back. I think about this now. You have to be a budgetary. Miss, I was trying to be free. Right, right. No, no, no, no, no. You're good. You're good. I'm trying to be nice. Mr. Chairman, listen to what I'm saying, though. You can, and I'm not saying vote for it now, but I'm just bringing it up as an example. If you voted and kept it and got the sheriff's enough space in there to get the $800,000, you're going to have to cut something out.

But you know, they're always trying to stress me out. It's on point. It's on point. I could have said the dog program. When you touch some youth employment, they always stress me out for the last 10 years. We didn't want the dog catcher program then. They always want to throw the some youth employment out of the door. And they know that it touched me. I was nice the whole time. Yeah, you were. I was nice the whole time. But you know it ain't.

But Mr. Chairman, I just used that as an example.

But we should never use that because I'm trying to be nice.

The animal control. Then let's move that. OK, let's do your thing. No, look at the other guy that's all stirred up. Listen, but no, I'm just trying to look at how you're going to get it in there. If you say you're at Bear Bones tonight, then you're going to have to stay there. The next meeting, you can't go up at all. So how are you going to get the $800,000 in there? That should be a consideration tonight, because you will not have but one more meeting.

That's right. Anything you tell me tonight will dictate the final budget numbers coming into the final meeting on the 22nd. So if you say... cut this program, if you say reduce this program, if you say increase this program, all of those will have to be figured into the budget. Within that number. I need those details tonight to figure it in because on Friday there has to be an ad, a full ad in the Tallahassee Democrat in all our local papers that say exactly what that bottom line is going to be. It has to be done by Friday.

She look like Commissioner Simpson.

She messing with you tonight. It's got you flustered. Isn't this budget? This is at 8.5. You have a budget that's prepared at 8.5 currently with, let me not say cuts, with? You have an amended budget at 8.5. Is that what this is?

That's the budget you were given last week at 8.5 that involves the contingency plan. And it involves no contingency money, no reserve for contingency, and nothing for the sheriff. OK.

Okay. Do y'all want me to start?

I was going to say, may I say this? Those other taxes also have to be voted on. So if you're going to say do or sell, you still got to get that passed there. And then, so that's not in there. It's stated.

Many of those things that we presented in that PowerPoint tonight are done by the board, not for a referendum.

Right, but I'm just saying it's tough to get it, because we're going to be trying to get it in there after we already set the millage. No, you could do that after. I know, but I'm just saying. I understand what I'm saying. If they did any, and let's say it didn't pass, or it didn't generate the amount of money we needed in there, Under those plans. That's what I'm saying.

I'm just saying to consider mr. Chair. Yes, sir If I may just let the members of the board know pursuant to tap for statute 30 point 49 the sheriff has to submit to you guys a budget and the Commission has to either accept or adopt that budget or reject that budget and based if the Commission rejects that budget has to cite to the line items in which they're not adopting the budget once that happens I will work with the procurement office and the finance office to send a letter to the sheriff's office letting them know of our proposed cuts. Once we do that, that will trigger a 30-day window that the sheriff has to appeal to the general administration. The general administration commission is combined of the governor and his cabinet. Once that body makes a ruling, that body's ruling becomes binding on this body. And so to let you guys know, the proposed number we have is $861,513. And the sheriff's budget is comprised of three budgets. You guys do that, law enforcement, corrections, and court services. For the law enforcement budget, they're requesting a 3.5% COLA, cost of living adjustment. I note for record that your current budget doesn't have you giving a 3.5 COLA to your own people. But there's a request there, $262,000 in equipment. 130,000 in vehicles, 120,000 in IT. For the law enforcement budget, the proposed increase is $643,729. The corrections budget, it's a 3.5% COLA and $120,000 in IT costs, which the proposed number that I show is $197,816. For court services, it's a 3.5% COLA, which for a total of $19,968, those three figures add up to $861,513. Based on the budgets presented to this board now, in every variation that you have, the share remains level funded. What Mrs. Raynette clarified was that the level funding is not level to your prior year budget because early on, I believe in October of 25, we did a budget amendment to give what we intended to. And so when we say level funding, it's not level funding to the previous year budget. It's level funding to the previous year budget with that amendment in October of 2025. And so Once you guys make this vote, if it stays as is, my office will draft a letter outlining that with the procurement officer, that's who does it by the statute, outlining that the commission has level funded and cite to the reasons of level funding being that given the the rollback rate and the changes to the budget that the commission does not have the funds available under the county budget to authorize an additional $861,000 based on your adopting of one of the two budgets that you guys have just presented. We'll also explain in a letter that the proposed increase seeks to give increases to employees who I don't take a comment on whether or not they deserve it. But unfortunately, the funding isn't available, which is why you guys have not chosen to give COLA increases to your own staff. And so as a position, you just don't have the funds necessary to engage in that at this time. We'll also note that you guys have similarly rejected similar increases in regards to a purchase of new equipment or um six-figure increases for i.t services because you guys don't have the funds available at this time but based on the previous budget meeting that your office is willing to work with the sheriff's office and allow your grants people to work with the sheriff's office to obtain grants for i.t services if they exist which i believe was stayed at the last budget meeting that you guys, that was something you guys would look into, is possibly having your grant staff work to identify grants for IT. So that if there were improvements that needed to be made, that your grant staff could assist them in that. But at this point, you guys don't have the funds necessary to allocate. Based on your current budgets, that's what we would be forced to do under 30.49. Thank you. Interesting.

Commissioner Holt? Yes. You're right. I wanted to make sure that we had this process down pat. OK. Let's just say if you included the $800,000 and some thousand into the budget. I'm just saying if. It won't be included tonight in your total.

In your total, whatever the millage is, we've figured out over here, we've generated what the bottom nine total is without the sheriff in it. If you want the sheriff in it, I have to do that tomorrow or Right, I understand. Wednesday or Thursday. I've got to do it Wednesday or Thursday before we send the ad to the newspaper.

Right. Okay, let me ask my question. I understand you wouldn't have those numbers right now, but I'm just saying, if it was included in there, would there be enough padding between, if we stayed at nine, would there be enough padding in there, you think, to pick up just, mind if I say, a million dollars?

You still are going to have a budget shortfall without that at the nine. You still have a budget shortfall. Right. OK. So if you add any amount above that, it's going to be a larger shortfall.

Mm-hmm. So can I say something? Sure. So nine mil regardless is a budget shortfall.

Yes.

So really, we lose the money regardless.

Yeah.

So there's a budget shortfall. So we're losing regardless how we are. It's not like we're increasing. The most time you increase a meal, it's just to satisfy those things. If we stay the same, it's a budget shortfall. A million-dollar shortfall at nine meals. I just want people to hear that part. It just touches me.

That's because of the increases that are naturally occurring that we don't have any control over.

Right. And so, Mr. Chairman, so if we just go ahead and do the nine, if we read tonight, and then we see what those numbers look like. We have until you advertise, until it's advertised. So we would have to meet on the 22nd. Until Thursday. Until Thursday. Right. But see, I just want to make sure that we are, because we can't stumble, because we're too close to October 1. We can't stumble. So I think we need to know everything by this week. I would, I'll vote right now, leave it at nine, and then look at the numbers, and you get a chance to reduce it.

Second. That's my motion. You know, the only reason why I would support that commission, because what happened, Hurricane Michael, and anything can happen between now and October, because that's what happened in October. We don't even know what's going to happen. And I will go, because we already, regardless, if you keep it at nine, you still lose a million dollars. So what we're saying, we're OK with losing a million dollars. We'll just keep it at nine. Instead of going up, we'll keep it the same. So I will support that, too, as well. So we got a motion and a second. Excuse me. What?

We need to follow that agenda item. Oh, that's right. My bad. We need to follow that agenda item.

My bad. All right, here we go. All right. Here we go here. Make sure I find the other part.

Clarity. Yes. If it's not that 401, does it automatically go back to? Take another motion.

So we, Mr. Chair? Yes. The board has to pass a tentative budget and has to pass a tentative millage rate. It's a constitutional duty. And so to the extent the board doesn't have a full-run majority, then the board has for The statute technically says that if you're going to stay at 110% under the millage rate, then you're allowed to do it at 4-1. If you want to go 110% above the previous millage rate, then you have to have a 5-0, OK, is the technical language of the statute. If this board does not get a 4-1 supermajority under HB3F or the floor statute 200-065, I believe, then Another motion has to be made, and the board has to keep making motions. That's what I was asking. OK. Thank you.

That's why I asked if y'all want me to go first.

Let's go with it. So we got a motion and a second. I'm trying to figure. Yeah, I got it. I'm trying to make sure we think this is it here. I think this is it. Yeah, she gave him another page here. He's right here. OK. No, I can see it. I can see it. Yeah, I got it. Oh, he's right here? No, he's narrow. Right here. Oh, right here. OK, got you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. No matter how high it goes, we all going to support whatever we support, so. All right. Adopt the tentative fiscal year, adopt the tentative fiscal year 2026-2027, countywide millage rate of 9.8%. And then, oh, she told me right here. OK, start here. OK, for fiscal year 2025-2026, the tentative gassing counter operating millage rate being proposed is 9.0 mil. The calculated rollback millage rate, the property tax rate, that generates the same amount of property tax revenue as last year is 8.5530 mills. which is 0.4400 mils lower than the current rate of 9.000 mils. The current year proposed rate of 9.000 mils is a percentage change of the rollback rate, open parenthesis, 8.5530 mils, close parenthesis, is 5.23% more. Option number one, adopt the tentative fiscal year 2026-2027 countywide millage rate of 9.000. And so she made the motion.

It is a percentage increase of 3.45 from last year's budget.

And I said that. OK. Oh, 3.45. OK. OK. All right. Now, the proposed operating budget expenditures. OK. We have a motion and a second. Clarity.

My understanding was the 855 actually was less than last year's budget. So as you're reading that, that's not accurate. Because I want people to know that the 855, the numbers that I'm getting, is that that is actually less

It's less, yes.

So you're reading that as an official document, but it's not accurate. And so the rollback, if we said 8553, then according to finance, you would be several hundred thousand dollars below what we were. We'd actually be cutting.

The motion needs to state.

But I just read exactly what's on this sheet right here. 9.0 million. I'm not trying to be difficult. I just don't want us to be telling folks that. Do we need to change it or what?

You need to do this. Read this.

That's what I was going to do. And then read this.

Don't read this. No, let's take a recess, Mr. Chair.

Oh, yes.

Let's take a recess. It'll be difficult. I just want us to get it right.

Take a recess for two minutes. Two minutes, recess. I'm sorry about that, guys. I'm not. All right, cool. Recess for two minutes.

Well, we are not here to hear you.

We'll give you that one.

Let's go.

Thank you. Thank you. I didn't know what you might be doing. Thank you. We got all that. Thank you.

If you did 8.7, it'll bring it up to.

Parrot, like a parrot. Bird. Yeah, that's good. They got really good birds. Oh, yeah, it does.

Hey, it's not that long.

We are reconvene, reconvene.

All right, we reconvene. Here we go. Our key. Wow. What's that? OK, first of all, I will. Don't shut him up.

Hey, don't believe me?

All right. That'll be a good excuse.

I didn't hear the vote. I don't know.

You can go home. I didn't vote for that.

Prostate problems. Can we withdraw our previous motion? Y'all don't mind? Second. OK, great. So I'm just reading this over again. All in favor sign to withdraw. Anyone oppose? OK, cool. All right, 5-0 vote for that deal to withdraw. All right, for fiscal year. For fiscal year 2025-2026, the tentative Gaston County operating millage rate being proposed is 9.000 mills. The calculated rollback.

Excuse me. That should be 2627.

Another mistake. OK. I'm sorry about that. I'm glad we withdraw a motion. OK. All right, but it's OK. Here we go. For fiscal year 2026, 2027, the tentative Gadsden County operating millage rate is being proposed is 9.000 mills. The calculated road rollback millage rate, the property tax rate that generates the same amount of property tax revenue as last year is 8.5530 mils, which is .4400 mils lower than the current rate of 9.000 mills. The current year proposed rate of 9.000 mills is a percentage change of the rollback rate, 8.5530 mills is 5.23% more. Now, Adopt the tentative fiscal year 2026-2027 countywide millage rate of 9.000. And the proposal's operating budget expenditure of Gadsden County Board of County Commissioners are $3. 4% or 5% more than last year total operating expenditure. Now, do we have a motion?

I move approval for the nine mills for 26, 27 year. Do we have a second?

Second. Well, a motion to approve with a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone oppose? No. All right. It's failed for not having a super majority vote. All right, so now.

Which one?

Now we have the second one here. OK, we need to entertain another motion. Entertain another motion?

Go ahead, Commissioner. I make a motion for the 8.75. Is that? 8.75? Is that one? 8.7 was discussed. 8.8 was discussed. 8.9 was discussed.

So 8.7 puts us right at last year's budget. It gives you $70,879,208. So we're very close. Close.

Mr. Chair, if you could get a second to the motion or have it die for lack of a second. Okay, do we have a second?

I will second it.

Question.

I have a comment. Motion to second. Question by Commissioner Holt.

Yes. Would that include the $869,000 by the sheriff? No. No. Okay. No. No.

That change will be made after you decide what the tentative rate is tonight. And we cannot go up if we don't have it.

We can't go up. Question. I know it's a question. The nine doesn't include that either, correct? Correct.

All right. Mr. Chair? Yes. I can just make it clear for the record. And we understand that the Sheriff's Office had some issues with IT, which I explained to the board. But these budgets were built without that initial increase because the board received the proposed budget Two weeks? Two weeks ago. Whereas under 3049, it was supposed to receive on June 1. And so we didn't build these budgets without the $861,000 increase in any kind of measure. When these budgets were being built in June, the board didn't have that data to build it into the budget. So the sheriff didn't present it to the board? No. My understanding is that the information was produced two weeks ago with that increase in it. So when you guys started getting binders, you couldn't put them in there because we didn't have it.

OK. It'll be in by June. OK. All righty. So we have a motion to second. All in favor sign? Aye. Anyone oppose? No. Well, three, two, vote. We'll be at 8. Believe it or not, this is how it works. We don't want to be at 11 o'clock, so we're OK with this. We're halfway there. All right, do we have another motion on the floor? Well, you know. Discussion. Discussion or? You know, I'm always trying to do what's right, so I don't mind meeting y'all in the middle. How about that? Somebody said 9.0. Somebody said 8.75. What is it, 8.75? 8.75. Let me calculate that real quick and see what I can get. Y'all told me to use my calculator.

Someone's calculating. Well, actually, the 8.75 was in the middle between rollback

Well, I guess, you know, I support them both. Yeah. So I guess I'm going to figure out how. I support the 8.752 as well. So I'm just saying where we at. So we all can pray together. Let's turn it. How does it end, Pascoe, if we can't? We got until 11 o'clock.

Yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, there's a constitutional duty for this board to pass a motion tonight.

Yeah, hold on. They waiting on my motion now. Y'all something else. 0.90. Y'all told me you were going to calculate it. Divided by 2. How about 8.8? What about 8.8? Well, you're right. It's 8.8.8.875. OK, I'll vote. That'd be it. Y'all want to do that? We don't have a choice, yeah. 8.875.

OK, that's your motion. I'll second it.

It's not between two motions. I voted for both.

OK, is that your motion?

That's my motion. I'll second it. 8.875. OK. That way then we met between the gap. OK, we have a motion for 8.875. And we got a set. You said about 8.9. What was that? No, we want an 8.8, but we want it just like our ratings did.

Hold on, hold on. She was saying something. What were you saying?

Well, here's the thing, Mr. Chairman. Mind you, it's still not the fix. I know what you got to make your numbers, but we still have that last...

But hear me out, though. Well, they said 8.553. Right. You got me? I got you. I'm just trying to be consistent. Instead of making it a little higher, I'm trying to make it higher. Because I want to save the taxpayer dollars. So I'm not trying to go higher. I want to make it 8.875. And Commissioner Hope, what she said?

I was just trying to see why they were going for the 8.8.

8.9? Mr. Chair, I believe that they just had, they were trying to do the math now because once you pass the millage rate, they're going to have to create a corresponding budget number for your second motion. So they were trying to get a whole number so they could round to a decimal. But again, I think if the board, they'll have to do the math to whatever the board wants.

They can do that. 8.875. OK, we have 8.875. I made the motion. It's seconded by Commissioner Hope. All in favor sign. Aye. Anyone opposed? No. Hold on.

You were saying, Commissioner Green was just saying something.

Oh, I didn't say nothing. Oh, OK. OK, did we vote? Or what we did with that? No.

Yes.

OK, we have a 3-2? Is it 3-2? All right, so at some point, I voted on all three motions, including myself. So hopefully, we can throw another motion out there. Hopefully, I can be able to vote with that, too, as well. Unless somebody would make another motion that's close to that. Let me ask you something. 8.88.

Let me ask you something. Commissioners, if we keep it at 9, you can always reduce it on the next meeting. We have to vote that time. We have to on the 22nd. That'll give them some time to look at the numbers.

The thing is that you always can put your, honestly, if you said, if you decided to go with 8.5, Whatever I said, just in 8.875, you still can go to your constituents and say you cut taxes. You really cutting taxes, no matter what happened, anything below, really, if you keep 9.0, you're still cutting taxes because you lost, you lose a million dollars at 9.0. Keep saying, lose a million dollars. So if you lose, if people realize, even with this 8.875, 8.75, that's probably about $2 million of your money right there. From the $1 million plus that, you're losing probably another extra $1.3 or $4 million. So that's $2.3 million. You're going to lose with 8.875. That's a smaller percentage. You're losing a lot of money.

And to be very honest with you, services costs are going to go up anyway.

Everything's going up, according to what Canada said. Oh, yeah. They're going to travel.

All right. So what are we going to do, commissioners? We've got to do something.

Well, I actually thought I was, because I was rolled back. And when somebody said 8-7-5, it was in the middle. And so I've been looking at myself for being. And so, I mean, that's to me. I mean, we're in the middle of rollback in the nine. I mean, so I thought that was because we still got to cut a lot of money. Yes. It don't matter how, because guys, this thing is more likely than not going to pass, and we're going to have to deal with at least $6 million, I think is the latest number I've kind of gotten, that we're going to deal with a $6 million cut.

I'm just going to throw out another motion, and we can see if it rolls. I mean, the 875 died. 8.75, just going to make a motion for 8.8.

Can I say something real quick, Commissioner? OK, I second with that. I will second that just for a quick conversation. People don't realize that every year, you got to have two, three people. If we go 8.57 today, next year, if you have two, people want to do a rollback. They're going to do a rollback of 8.57, so which means it's going to be like 8.0 next time, right?

Your rollback rate changes every year based on what you bring in. But it's been around the 8.5, 8.6 range. Right.

So next year, it will be around about 8.0, 8.3?

No, I don't think it'll go that. It depends on what you bring in. It depends on what you bring in versus the property values of the new year. So if your property values go up, you still may have a high rollback rate because you It inflated. The numbers inflated it.

But rollback normally be less than what we have.

Less than usually, yes. Less than usually, right.

So you got to have at least four out of five to approve it. So every year, you could be cutting taxes every year.

If you don't have four out of five, it goes down. I'm not taxes.

Cutting revenue every year, right?

Right. Revenue would go down.

Yeah. Revenue would go down from what you can use for the county. So in three years, you'll be probably less than. OK, cool. Let's go. Y'all ready?

OK. And the 8.8, so that if we need to come down, or if we decide to come down on the 22nd, it is what it is if we're rolling back.

OK, so we got an 8.8? Yes. And we can dance this. I'm pretty strong in my feelings on it.

We know.

And so I'm not trying to. It just. Yeah. And I don't want y'all to think I'm totally disagreeing with y'all. I mean, I get every point you made. I really do.

I'm just trying. I just vote on it. Whatever y'all put out there, I be voting.

What was your motion?

It was 8.8.

OK, got a motion. Let's go ahead and address it.

8.8. And I second it, so all in favor sign. Aye. Anyone opposed?

That's it right there.

I vote 8.8. So now we got, hold on, before we go, y'all, we got one more to go.

All right, here we go.

Now, adopt the... You've got to have a new number.

You have to read that statement again, because the percentage increase will be different.

OK. So now we got to read the statement here.

You can read the option statement. Adopt the budget at 8.8.

What's the new percentage increase?

The new percent increase is 1.49. OK, 1.49? Yes.

Oh, 1.49. I'm sorry, 1.49. All right, so we'll adopt. OK, so. 8.8 there. 8.8, right?

8.8.

Good job. So we'll adopt the tentative fiscal year 2026-2027 countywide millage rate of 8.8. And the change in the total operating expenditure from last year is 1.49.

That's what we said?

Now we make the motion again. Second. Well, we have a motion and a second. All in favor sign. Aye. Anyone oppose? All right, great. So now we adopt the tentative fiscal year 2026-2027 countywide budget of 71,139,378 dollars. 71,139,378 dollars and zero cents. Now can we have a motion on the floor for that? $71,139,378. Well, motion is second. All in favor sign. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. Motion passed. All right, Rob. What's in the bag?

Just a comment, Mr. Chair. Board direction, huh? Just one comment before we go. Yes, sir. I think it's September 8 at 8.45. The board actually worked through something. Yeah, I'm very proud of us. I mean, we didn't agree. I mean, I'm a rollback guy, and y'all were nine, and we figured out a way to come to a good answer. So I want to thank all of you for that. Thank you. I told you this is one of the best boards in America.

But, but, but, but, but.

Yes, ma'am.

You still have to tell me what it is you want me to change between now and Thursday.

Change like what? Hold on a second. Hold on a second. We can't, we can't.

Unfortunately, I think that under, you're in a strict agenda here, and your agenda has terminated. And so I think that based on your agenda here, that once you have voted on the millage rate in the budget, that based on the agenda, what you have here in front of me, item two is now over. And so there is no room for comment on this agenda. So you must adjourn. Meeting adjourned. Meeting adjourned. Good job.

Because we'll be here for another hour and a half, y'all. Recording stopped.