Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

everybody this is as they say in baseball terms the dog days of summer meeting is the first meeting in August long way to go for us we got a lot of budget workshops this month and budget next month to approve also first day of school a lot of happy parents out there I know getting the kids back to school and giving themselves a little freedom but it's good to have everybody here who is here this morning and We'll get started with a invocation from Commissioner Nowicki and then the pledge from Commissioner Peters.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the blessings you have given us and for the opportunity to serve others. Grant us wisdom in our decisions, patience in our disagreements, and courage to always do what is right. Guide our words and actions today. Protect our community. Help us remember that leadership is a responsibility entrusted to us for the good of others. And may we always bring you honor in what you do to serve others who have placed their trust in us. In your name we pray, amen.

All right, just have a couple of comments. First, I wanted to thank Corporal Clyde Thornton, Deputy Mike Winnick, Deputy Kevin McSweeney, Deputy Jeff Atkinson for being here today. They're always here to take care of our residents and take care of all of us. Thank you again. We also have a few comment cards this morning. I know there's some interest in speaking to item 39, which is the budget. I am asking everybody who wanted to sign up for that to move forward their comment. We're gonna do it under citizens to be heard. So if you would make your way just to make sure you've got that change made so that you will be recognized at the right time. I do have a couple folks here still showing item 39. To the extent that we don't get a hold of the Zoom people in time, and they only get on at that time, I'll allow them to speak at that time. But otherwise, we're gonna try to move everybody up to citizens to be heard, all right? All right, have a couple of presentations today. All right. The first one is a real treat to have a senator and a representative from the state here this morning with us. And so they have a little gift for Pinellas County, but also just to say hello and to make a couple of comments if they choose. So I'll ask Senator Daryl Roussan and Representative Adam Anderson to come on up. And I'm not going to steal any of their thunder. I'll let them come up, introduce themselves.

Senator, good to see you, my friend.

Welcome to our chambers. Representative, good to see you as well. All right, the microphone is yours, guys.

Thank you, and good morning, everybody. It's a privilege to be here today to present this $4 million in state funding to Pinellas County for the hardening of two special needs shelters. I'm told that currently the registry of vulnerable adults and children is about 2,600 people. And these funds will go towards making sure that generators are available so that in the event of a power outage, they have a shelter that they can go to. One will be at Palm Harbor and one will be in Johns Hopkins. And with the way the budget is going, I'm so glad we get to make this presentation first. I'd like to call on the House sponsor, Representative Adam Anderson, to make a few comments.

Thank you, Senator, and good morning, everyone. I'm Adam Anderson. I have the privilege of representing the northern part of Pinellas County. And I think like most of you here, the aftermath of the events of Hurricane Milton and Helene are still pretty fresh in my mind. In the days after those storms, I personally spent some time in some of our county hurricane shelters and saw firsthand how they operate, how they function, and quickly realized that we definitely have a shortfall of ability to take care of special needs individuals. It's an area that's personally important to me. I know firsthand what it's like to take care of a medically fragile child, and I can tell you that an individual that has a special need or is on some sort of life-sustaining medical support They don't have a lot of options when the power goes out in their house. If they don't have somewhere to go with a relative that's outside of harm's way, truly their only option really is a hospital. And we can't clog up our hospitals with these individuals. So very proud to be here, to be able to work closely with Senator Roussan. We're thankful for the support of the rest of the legislature and thankful for the support of Governor DeSantis. approving this $4 million funding for these special needs shelters here in Pinellas County. So without further ado, I would like to, should we invite the rest of the commission up here to present this check for $4 million to Pinellas County?

Yeah, and we will go ahead and accept it, just so everybody's knowing.

But yeah, let's get up front.

Okay. Well, that was a treat. It's always good to have our elected folks from Tallahassee here with us and to, you know, sometimes wrangling some money for our area is never easy, but they always do a great job for Pinellas County. I really appreciate that, appreciate the use of those funds. They'll be, as you say, well used. Okay, we are going to move on to National Water Quality Month, and we have a few folks from Public Works, Jaysa Miley from Environmental Specialists, Alex Manos from Environmental Specialists III, and Lancey La Magna, Engineer III. From Utilities, come on up please as I say your names, let them in please. From Utilities, Kristen Perkins, Project Coordinator, Charles Toney, Water Quality Management Specialist II. I'm going to go ahead and read the proclamation. I have one for each of the departments. Water is our most valuable natural resource, and access to clean water is one of our most basic human rights. Maintaining and improving water quality is essential to protect public health, quality of life, Fisheries, wildlife, watersheds, and to ensure abundant opportunities for public recreation and economic development. And it is the responsibility of government and all citizens to provide and protect clean water for future generations. And the penny for Pinellas has funded major infrastructure improvements that protect our waterways by removing pollutants to keep our lakes, bays, and the gulf healthy. while also strengthening our drainage systems to safeguard residents from flooding. And August is National Water Quality Month in the United States with efforts to encourage public awareness, involvement, active participation in the protection and restoration of water resources. And Pinellas County encourages all citizens to seek opportunities to learn how they can capture, how they can participate in preserving water quality now and into the future. And now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners that August 2026 be recognized as National Water Quality Month. And just personally, being involved with Tampa Bay Water, which provides the water to Pinellas County, and all these fine folks that take it from there and deliver it to each of our residents, I wanted to thank you.

Thank you for the important work that you do.

It doesn't go lost on all of us, for sure. And I guess as long as we tap on and the water's there, we just think it magically appears. But thank you for your dedication and your commitment to our residents. With that, I'm going to give... I just want to say thank you to the board for this proclamation.

Thank you to the board for this proclamation. Water resources are a really important part of the region, as you said, and everybody knows. So we really appreciate this recognition of that, and thank you.

Thank you for the honor of being here today and for the proclamation. One thing that's interesting is We really have a feeling that we're doing things right here in Pinellas County when you've got other municipalities and counties around the state that come to us and ask us what we're doing with our water system, our wastewater system. So it just is a good feeling when you're working here for a lot of years and you've got other municipalities that are coming to you and asking what are you doing and why are you doing things right. Thank you.

Good morning.

Okay, I started the meeting just telling about the busy nature of August and September. As we all know, there is a referendum on the ballot in November. A lot of our budget discussion in the next month and then closing out in September has to do with the budget of 2027. which is not affected by anything that might happen in November, but certainly 28 and 29 are the first two effects of that, if that budget hearing should pass. My comment has been that regardless of, excuse me for that, I did not put it on buzz, and now somebody will call me later and not get through because I'll forget to turn it the other way, so I apologize for that. So I think it's really important that we listen to our residents, regardless of whether 50% or 60%, whatever, the message is clear that folks want us to be more careful with their money. And we have always tried to do that. We've tried to reflect what the residents want, but there's a new message coming and we're gonna have a lot of good dialogue this month. Trying to prepare for next year's budget, but also anticipating the message that comes to us in October or November. With that said, I know there's some folks that have wanna speak about one particular item, one of the items that we'll be looking at. We certainly have not had any discussion about it. This is a proposed budget from our county staff for discussion. And we will get into that discussion. But there's been no commitment, there's been no discussion here by the commission. So just so you all are aware of that as you go into your comments. And with that, I'm going to start with Lan Vaughn, which is a different item on fire rescue funding. Come on up, Lan. And then Rachel Kangas will be next.

Good morning, commissioners. Good morning, administration. And good morning, residents and constituents and other speakers. I want to start by saying to the commission, thank you for your commitment to Station 75 in Indian Rocks Beach. This new fire station is an investment in its meaning for our community and our residents and will benefit the improved level of emergency service and protection. Thank you for that. I wanted to speak today on behalf of a shared concern among our beach cities served in the Pinellas Suncoast Fire and Rescue District. These beach cities are Indian Rocks Beach, Indian Shores, Bel Air Beach, and Bel Air Shore. Each of our cities has put together a resolution supporting the full staffing of Rescue 27. We feel like Rescue 27 full staffing will allow our citizens the minimum standards that they need. Our community contributes significantly to the countywide EMS system already with over 50% of our tax base going to support the other needs in the county. All we simply ask is that our residents receive the same baseline emergency services they should be able to expect anywhere in Pinellas County. A minimum standard that has not been consistently met in our beach communities for the last several years. Fully staffing Rescue 27 would finally close this long standing service gap and provide our residents with the level of emergency protection they deserve. We appreciate the county's commitment to Station 75. That was an important step forward. Now we respectfully ask the commission to establish a clear path in the next budget cycle to fully staff Rescue 27 and complete what you've already started in providing our residents the best service and fire service possible. You've already taken the initial steps with Station 75, and we truly appreciate that commitment and respectfully ask for your help in providing the best service possible for our residents and constituents. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Rachel Kangas is up now, and then Nora Crafton will be next.

Morning, commissioners. I am a professional archaeologist. I've worked for the Florida Public Archaeology Network for over 10 years, and I'm also the president of the Central Gulf Coast Archaeological Society. But I do not represent either of these roles in my public comment. Instead, I'm commenting as a constituent who lives in St. Petersburg and who is passionate about the resources our county has to offer. When I moved to Pinellas County four years ago, I was struck by how much the county values its limited but incredible natural resources and the vast cultural spaces in the county. It has made me proud to be a resident. Wheaton Island Preserve is a lush natural treasure among the concrete jungle of Pinellas County and is one of precious few places we can go to enjoy the incredible cultural resources, habitats, and ecosystems of the Tampa Bay estuary. The staff at Wheaton Island work tirelessly to protect the resources at the preserve and to bring engaging programming to the public about everything from bugs to birds, from ferns to fish, from mangroves to vertical oyster gardens. The enthusiasm I encounter every time I talk with anyone who works or volunteers at Weiden Island keeps me coming back to learn more about this very special place. As an archaeologist, I can tell you that Weiden Island is an absolutely incredible place. People have called that land home for over 5,000 years. There was an airport, a movie studio, even a nightclub at Whedon Island at one point, all of which are interpreted in the museum and through the many public talks, hikes, and kayak tours at the site. There is active archaeology that's happening at the preserve that uncovers ancient evidence of daily life at the site. where students from USF, USF St. Pete, Eckerd College, and other institutions can come to learn how to do archaeology right here in Pinellas County. And the artifacts that they excavate offer the public an opportunity to be part of that archaeology. At least once a month, there's a public volunteer lab that is completely free, that people can come to and actually help to clean and identify artifacts from the site. As far as I know, it is the only place that people can do this, within at least 200 miles of here. Pinellas County's lease of the Wheaton Island Preserve tract adds a critical layer of protection for these amazing resources. Pinellas County citizens depend on the county lease, land management, and public facing programming at Wheaton for safe access and meaningful use of the Wheaton Island Preserve lands. The lease is more than just a long-term contract with the state. It is a social contract. the citizens of pinellas county and i urge you commissioners to not move forward with these budget cuts thank you thank you okay uh nora crafton and then kelly scissorick will be after that good morning

Hi, good morning. Never been here before, so thank you for your time. I'm speaking on the same issue. These preserves protect critical shorebird and sea turtle nesting habitat, provide habitat for threatened and endangered wildlife, and preserve thousands of years of indigenous history. Culture in Tampa Bay. These wild spaces belong to all of us, and right now, they need us to speak up for them. This is why the property tax amendment on the ballot would have such damaging impacts to our existing and proposed natural areas. Protection and restoration of the natural areas are often the first to go when it's faced with a budget deficit. These areas help with flood mitigation and are a natural line of defense during extreme weather, and they should be viewed as an instrumental part in our resilience plan for hurricanes. Chris, Brian, Vince, Dave, Chris, Kathleen, and Renee, I'm a resident of Pinellas County and a frequent user of our county park systems. Both Shell Key and Whedon Island are not only critical habitats for Pinellas Wildlife, but they are key pillars of ecotourism and industry that our county relies on. I oppose any consideration of removing funding from Shell Key, Whedon Island, or the rest of the county park system. yes budget constraints are real but we cannot mortgage the future of pinellas county for ourselves or for future generations and fail to fund our park system thank you thank you kelly all right caleb pratt and then john arthur

Morning.

Hi, my name is Caleb Platt. I live over in Sawgrass between, or sorry, I live over in St. Pete between Sawgrass Lake Park and Whedon Island. I'm an Eagle Scout from Troop 263, and I'm here in opposition of the proposed budget cuts within the fiscal year 2027 that would cut funding to Whedon Island Nature Preserve and Shell Key and divert that money to law enforcement pensions. Having grown up very closely entwined with the two of the four nature preserves on this peninsula, I can tell you that they are incredibly important for the well-being of the citizens and have them defunded would be an incredible mistake for a number of reasons, which I'd like to start off by saying. Leiden Island, when it became ran by the county, has done nothing but improve. I very, very rarely see any trash on the trails, on the boardwalks, in the mangroves. You know, the boardwalks are maintained. The wildlife is being respected. There are always people there. The boat launch is always full. I always, you know, when I come across people walking these parks, they always smile. People go to these parks, you know. And especially with such a small number of these parks, I mean, especially, I know we're not talking about Sawgrass and Boyd Hill specifically, but, you know, you can't go to Sawgrass as close to 275 as physically possible. You cannot go and be immersed in nature and any of these other parks aside from Wheaton Island. You cannot escape the noise from 275 at Sawgrass. You cannot escape the noise of 275 at Boyd Hill. It's just not possible. And I can also say, you know... I'm by no means saying, obviously, that law enforcement does not deserve the money from these pensions. They have earned these pensions, and I can say having a lot of family and friends in firefighters and police and military... that if they knew that this money that they're getting from these pensions was coming from people losing their jobs, they would not be happy with that. They would not want these things to go through. And I also say that being an Eagle Scout from the largest troop in this area, back in the day, we don't hit these numbers anymore. We used to go through Riviera Bay, which is right next to Wheaton Island and shares that Bay Area. We used to go through and pick up trash every year We don't have the numbers anymore to kind of pick up the proposed slack if people are not getting paid to run these volunteer programs and are not being paid to do the work of maintaining these parks. It's just not there. We don't have the numbers anymore.

Thank you. Caleb, thank you. And thank you for all the work. All the work you all did as scouts. I really appreciate all that. It's a great, great group. Okay, John Arthur. And then Mark, I think it's bowling.

Good morning, commissioners and everybody here. Thank you for giving me time to speak. I'm John Arthur. I've been a resident of Pinellas County and St. Petersburg since 2003. I also serve as the president. of the Alliance for Whedon Island Archaeological Research and Education, a nonprofit whose mission is to promote and facilitate long-term archaeological research, scientific exploration, and public education at the Whedon Island Preserve in the larger Tampa Bay region. With almost 20 years of engagement with the preserve and the cultural center, please allow me to elaborate on the uniqueness of Whedon Island for the county and the concerns I have if the proposed elimination of funding is passed by the county commissioners. The staff at the Wheaton Island Cultural Center provides an array of educational opportunities for the public throughout the year. These educational activities highlight the rich cultural and ecological aspects of the preserve. For example, the center's staff hosts students from the Lighthouse of Pinellas, whose mission is to advance the independence and quality of life or Pinellas County children who are blind or visibly impaired. The students come to the center to learn about the preserve's history and natural environment. If you defund the center and the preserve, you will reduce the quality of life for these Pinellas County residents and so many others who attend the year-long educational opportunities. Preserves rangers at the park provide safety for the public as they walk and paddle through the mangroves. As you know, Pinellas County is the most densely populated county in Florida, but the residents are fortunate that the county has maintained and enriched the preserve for public enjoyment. If you defund the preserve and the cultural center, you will lower the quality of life and make it less safe. for our Pinellas County residents. Currently, the county has been an excellent steward of the preserve's history, including the Whedon Island archaeological site and important historical markers scattered throughout the preserve. There are indigenous and early settler cemeteries located on the preserve. The archaeological sites include one of the best preserved in the county, If the county eliminates funding for the preserve and the cultural center, you will allow for the potential destruction of our county's history. Looting will begin at the site, destroying our American history from some of the earliest inhabitants of the land to the recent history when the county began to be developed. Besides looting, the county sheriff's office will also be spending valuable time addressing other safety issues. Vagrant camps will increase. Violent crimes will increase. By eliminating the funding for the preserve, there will be a strong ripple effect that will reduce the county's education, recreation, and cultural heritage. You did not initiate this proposed funding cut, and you can move to cancel this proposal. Please do not eliminate the funding for Wheaton Island Preserve and Cultural Center. Thank you.

Thank you, John. Appreciate it. Okay, Mark Bowling, and then Betsy McKenna.

Good morning, hi. I'm not Mark Bowling, I'm Kelly Siserk. I got shuffled out of the order a few seconds ago. I apologize. No problem, no problem. I live at 448 Harbor Drive South. I'm in the northern part of Indian Rocks Beach. I emailed all of you last week to request funding for a paramedic position. for PSFRD's rescue unit number 27. The county EMS saw our need for a rescue unit two years ago and they provided the truck and I'm grateful for that. But I want the paramedic too. My fire district is not able to run this transport capable unit 24 hours a day. I can't tell my husband what time of day to have his stroke. And I can't plan to wait until after spring break to have my heart attack. With my whopping 250 cholesterol score, that's something I think about. I also worry about a couple geographic challenges. Sunstar may encounter the Indian Rocks Bridge in the up position and take a delay on the wrong side of that bridge. Next, my intercoastal finger neighborhood extends a mile off of Gulf Boulevard. PSFRD is working with county EMS on staffing our new station 75 in the northern part of our district. That will really help us out in those hard to reach finger neighborhoods like mine. Now we need a transport to fix the other part of the problem. Time is tissue lost when it comes to strokes and heart attacks. We're getting a high rate of BLS ambulance responses that come to the beach for emergency calls. BLS is basic life support. I hope you will have our EMS staff verify the numbers for me because these basic life support units have an EMT aboard instead of a paramedic. A paramedic can give me IV heart meds or run an EKG on the way to the hospital. The EMTs don't have the training to handle those tasks. In this case, the only option is to borrow a fire district paramedic for my emergency to go to the hospital on what's called a ride-in. But now we are short a paramedic in our district for the next code red emergency. A dozen years ago, the BLS ambulances were only utilized for transporting stable patients from facility to facility, like a hospital to a nursing home. My opinion is that they are not suitable for code red emergency responses. I am asking that the county provides funding to staff our own transport capable rescue unit in Indian Rocks on the correct side of the drawbridge. Thank you.

Thank you, Kelly. Now, Mark Bowling here. Mark Bowling and then Betsy McKenna. Sorry about that, Kelly. Morning.

Morning. Thank you, commissioners, admin, and fellow citizens of Pinellas. I'm going to just speak real briefly. I'm currently serving as the vice chair of the commission for the Pinellas Suncoast Fire Rescue District. You know we brought a few speakers today to speak on behalf of of an additional rescue unit, so I think Hopefully we're serving that message we we want to continue to work very collaboratively With the Commission as we have and and you know we want to get this job done I just wanted to leave one thing and Kelly touched on it briefly I live on the barrier islands as do thousands of other people and if the worst day of my life comes and And I need a fire rescue for an emergency, medical emergency. I'm not sure how long that'll take. The drawbridge could be up. So I don't know how that would come or when that would come. And that really concerns me. So we're very passionate about this issue, as I think everyone in the room has quite already seen. So with that, we're not asking to solve this today. We're just simply asking you to let's keep working on it together. And I'm confident together that we can achieve this and accomplish this and finish it for our citizens of Pinellas County and the Barrier Islands. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mark. Betsy McKenna and then Frank Bankard.

Good morning. I'm Betsy McKenna. I'm chair of the fire, excuse me, of the Board of Fire Commissioners for the Pinellas Suncoast Fire and Rescue District. I'm here this morning first to say thank you. The county's commitment to fund Station 75 represents real progress for the residents we serve. And our board is grateful for it. We also understand the budget realities you face this year. and we respect the difficult choices this board has to make across the entire county. We're very familiar with that as we were underfunded for a number of years. As a special district, we were perhaps known for being special in the wrong ways. Now we are properly funded and we are trying to make up for the problems that that lack of funding caused. You're hearing this morning from elected officials and residents of our member communities. They're not here in opposition to anything. They're here because this matters to the people they represent and ask that we keep working on it together. Thank you for your time and for your continued partnership. We appreciate it.

Thank you, Betsy. Frank Bankard, followed by Michael Howard. Good morning.

Good morning, commissioners. My name is Frank Bankard. I'm an elected council member from Ballard Beach. I'm here because taxpayers deserve answers about publicly funded sand placed in Ballard Shores, a town that claims its beaches are private and uses law enforcement to keep the public off its beaches. My main concern today is why the county has chosen to go around my questions and evidence I've provided rather than answer them since 2025. Following Hurricane Adalia in 2023, Bella Shores documented serious beach erosion. The public record of Bella Shores Minutes, I provided notes that property owners were facing costs of approximately 25,000 or more per property for this work. Then Hurricane Aline occurred. The county and state then performed an emergency cleansing of the sand that washed into homes and streets at Morgan Park, eight blocks north of Bella Shores. I provided the county and you, commissioners, photographs, public records, and other documentation showing substantial quantities of that publicly funded sand placed directly in front of Beller Shore's residents. Beller Beach also adopted a resolution recognizing this and provided it to the DEP. Yet Beller Shore's position in its DEP appeal is that it never received publicly funded sand. In its appeal of last week, it so states in number 15, since the recording of the ECO on March 12, 1997, There has been no beach renourishment or restoration between R66 and R71 in the incorporated town. So the question is simple. Did publicly funded sand restore private beachfront properties in Beller Shores? And if so, what did that benefit cost the taxpayers? Public taxpayers deserve to know how much sand went there, what it cost, who paid for it, and what authorized public purpose it justified. But this is also an accountability issue. When I presented this evidence, which contradicts the position of Public Works Director Kelly Hammer Levy that Beller sure has never received public sand. She wrote to my city manager, we will not be corresponding with council member Bankard any further. I then went directly to Administrator Burton. Instead of answering my question, I was directed to go through our city manager for questions. Commissioners, that does not answer the question. Furthermore, our city charter provides job duties for our city manager, which already encompasses his day. and forwarding emails is not one of them. More importantly, Mr. Burton's reply is typical bureaucratic and avoid an answer to an elected official rather than directing the department head to provide the information. Commissioners, when evidence raises a legitimate question about public money, the answer should be answered, not a bypass. Cutting off elected officials asking the question does not make the question go away. You, the county commissioners, are the elected body overseeing the county government expansion and operation. This is an election year. People deserve to know where the money goes, follow the sand that I spoke about, and follow the record. If everything was proper, I accept it. If a mistake was made, admit it. But don't go around the questions. Answer them. Thank you.

Michael Howard. And then Martin Leventon.

Good morning, commissioners, and thank you for the privilege to testify in front of you. I'm the vice mayor of Michael Howard, and I go by Mike. I'm the vice mayor of Indian Shores, one of the townships of the four that are represented here today. I've had the privilege of serving the town for the last three years in several capacities, and I wanted to begin this by saying with a sincere thank you Thank you to the county's investment in Tiki Gardens and the property involved, as well as the commitment to the future of Station 26. It is something that our residents deeply appreciate. It's a commitment to our community, and we don't take it for granted. I'm not here to argue standards or statistics. I'll leave the numbers for somebody else. I want to make a simpler point. If I have a medical emergency in Largo, a rescue unit's rolling If I have that same medical emergency in St. Pete Beach, our rescue unit's rolling. And if it happens in Treasure Island, the same thing. I think it's reasonable, and I think most people would agree it's reasonable, that a resident of Indian Shores or a visitor who expects this kind of service when they come to our communities, and a visitor walking on our beach should be able to expect the same thing, the same kind of responses as they would get at the other beaches. What we're here for is not really asking for an upgrade or an enhancement. It's the same service that our neighbors up and down the county are receiving. The county has started the efforts with the station in Indian Rocks Beach and the proposed station 26 in Tiki Gardens. What we're asking for is let's finish the job. We're grateful for how far we've come and we trust that this board will see it through. We have four unanimous resolutions. It's not politics. It's four communities united in taking care of our residents. We would like and we would hope that we would get the same treatment as in the other communities. And thank you for your time this morning.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Okay, Martin Leventon, followed by David Ballard Geddes, Jr.

Good morning Commissioners particularly Commissioner eggers you're aware that bel-air sure who. residents of bel-air beach have access to their particular beach. petition the dp to remove the erosion control line they want to replace it with the mean high water line. Commissioner eggers you're aware of it, because you wrote a letter to dp supporting bel-air beach residents. and asking DEP to not remove the erosion control line. If they do, Bel Air Shore basically is going to own into the water. It's going to deny access to Bel Air Beach residents as well as the county when you folks do the re-nourishment project. So thank you, Commissioner Eggers, for writing the letter. However, Bel Air Shore has appealed to the DEP decision. The case is now going to an administrative law judge and therefore Pinellas County, it's really incumbent upon you folks to intervene in the case. We need a county attorney to participate so that we get some backing beyond DEP. The other thing that's interesting is that Pinellas County has the requisite data to provide to any of the coastal engineering firms to put together a map that would compare the mean high water line versus the erosion control line. I spoke to the county, I spoke to public works staff, I got some preliminary aerials, which are not 100% accurate, but based on those aerials, people up north in Bel Air Shore are gonna pick up anywhere from 100 to 150 feet of private dry sand. So they're basically stealing sand. They got it from the littoral drift, but as Councilman Bankard pointed out, you folks dump sand on their beaches. I live two blocks from there. I saw it. I looked at the pictures. They deny it, and you folks won't give us an answer. So I think that's something that you really have to look into. Up until now, okay, We have Joe Manzo who's an attorney. He's working pro bono Councilman Bankert has been writing letter after letter to you folks. And again, thank you for responding. But this case is going to go on for a while I'm going to hand you up a facsimile of a petition that we circulated among the Beller Beach residents That somebody would be kind enough to bring up to you basically These are all the people, there's almost 180 signatures of people that want to have access to that beach and have access to the beach over the last 50, 60, 70 years. So again, we need your support. We thank you for your support in the past, but again, we need the county to take some legal action and intervene in the case.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Martin. David Ballard Geddes, Jr., and then Matthew David.

Good morning, Commissioners. David Ballard Geddes, Jr. I live on Georgia Avenue in Palm Harbor. Four years ago, my father died. Six months after my father's funeral, I had still not received any correspondence from Attorney Freeborn in Dunedin regarding my father's last will and testament. Neither had I received a copy of my father's death certificate. And when I finally went to Freeborn's office, I was handed a forgery of my father's will. The signature on this will is a forgery as well. And when I called the police, I was the one under the threat of being arrested. I actually think that my mother unalived my father using a sedative, and she paid Freeborn to forge my father's will. To this day, I've heard nothing in regards to my father's life insurance policy either. My father trusted Freeborn and paid Freeborn handsomely to see that my father's affairs were handled according to my father's will, none of which was done. Attorney Freeborn and my mother both betrayed my father and have attempted to deceive me disinheriting me in their process. Three weeks ago, I went to Curlew Hills Cemetery to visit my father's gravesite, and I found that my mother's funeral had taken place. No one notified me of my mother's death. No obituary was posted anywhere. Downtown here at the county records department, I found no death certificate. Neither was my mother's will to be found on file here at the county. Attorney Freeborn is a fraud, and an investigation needs to take place before he sets fire to that old wooden shack that he calls a law firm in his attempt to burn all the evidence. This is not a civil matter. A criminal investigation needs to take place, and if Sheriff Qualitary is going to permit attorneys to behave criminalistically, then We have an investigation of a different posture and auspice to address. I will not let this issue rest. Be advised. Thank you for the record.

Matthew David and then Katie Taylor.

Good morning. Good morning. So my name is Matthew David. I am the Palm Harbor Library Director. And for those of you who don't know, this is Kathy Wass, the Palm Harbor Library Assistant Director and graduate of Pinellas Citizens University. So they say it takes a year to acclimate to a new job. For me, three years in, I feel like I was just getting going. But I have to say farewell. My wife is in a new job that will relocate us out of state very soon. I would follow her to the ends of the earth, but luckily we don't have to go any farther than Albany, New York. I want to express my gratitude for the chance to lead such an important organization in such a singular place. Palm Harbor, unincorporated North Pinellas County. Some say Pinellas County, but I prefer the Pi mostly as a tribute to the Keyline pie at jj gandhi is an alternate 19. It is a truly wonderful community, and it has been my honor to serve here. A year ago we had the library joined palm harbor main street association museum parks and recreation many others to celebrate 100 years of palm harbor. This commission issued a proclamation, which Commissioner Scott read for the centennial event at Harbor Hall. And I was blessed to join Commissioner Eggers for the proclamation reading at the library's celebration. In that proclamation, Palm Harbor is described as an uncut gem on its way to becoming a polished jewel. These words are resoundingly true. Thank you very much for that, commissioners. And speaking of thank yous, please bear with me. I'll get through it quickly. County admin and staff, BJ, Nancy. Hi, Nancy. Barry and Tom, Chris, Veronica, and Kashira. PPLC staff and fellow library directors, especially Phyllis Gorshi of Dunedin for guidance and counsel. Florida Library Association leadership and membership, especially Marina Morgan and Gabby Gomez, the FICSA board. the Library Advisory Council, our friends of the library, our foundation, my superb staff, and dedicated volunteers, and finally, my most excellent colleagues and fellow directors, Erica, Mark, Anne-Marie, and Lois. I am happy with what we've achieved, and I'm sad to leave.

Matthew, thank you. Thank you for your service to the community. I know you took it on right away and jumped right in. A team player with the other directors, always a good voice of reason with FICSA group, with the community, and even with us when we ask questions about the operations. And you handled it with dignity. Every step of the way, you've been a big asset to this and you stepped up with Main Streets. Main Streets is a program dedicated to making downtown Palm Harbor even more special than it is. Residents have started to join the effort but so have you so did Erica both of you from our two groups with recreation and with the library I'm gonna miss you I'm glad that you will chase your wife to all ends of the earth That's refreshing and it's nice to hear and I wish you and your wife and your family all the very best and hopefully I can stop by next Wednesday to say goodbye But just know from me I'll miss you, and I thank you for everything that you've done. A real class act. Appreciate it.

Thank you very much, Commissioner. Thank you.

Good to see you as well.

Sorry. The board did approve Kathy to take over my position on the Main Street board, as well as the organization committee. She'll continue to support that operation.

We'll keep seeing this young lady. Good. All right. Well, good to see both of you, and again, best wishes to you. Thank you very much, all of you. All right, Katie Taylor and then Greg Pound.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Katie Taylor. I live at 657 Haven Place, Toppin Springs, Florida. I came here about two years ago, and I asked the county commissioners, for two items to be looked at, and one of them was to open, to put a red light at the corner of Anclote and Alton 19 with a left turn light, which you did. I appreciate that happening. The second item I asked was for the county trail to be opened at the corner of Lime Street and Stafford Avenue in Tarpon Springs. At that point, I think I was directed back to Tarpon to the commissioners, because that was a county third way there from crossing Lime Street and Stafford Avenue. Well, since then, I have gone back to the city numerous times, and I've spoken with Caroline. Matter of fact, I came here about last year, I think it was, with Caroline Langford, who's a planning and zoning director on that tarpon, and a former city manager there. Charles Rudd, who's no longer with us, but Mr. Mark LaCour's city manager is back on board now. He was an excellent city manager. The third way at that street corner, from alternate 19, it'll take you all the way to new 19, and you can access the fire department, the city post office, different stores. But right at that trail, I'm being told by the city now that it's back on the county because the CRA funds, Caroline mentioned to me that that was a, what she called it, a place to be plan in the CRA budget. So now we got funds marked in the CRA budget for that corner. But who's responsible for that corner is what I'm being asked by the city of Tarpon. So I've been asked to get something from the county to say who's responsible for opening the trail What budget will that come out of? And has there been a safety committee or a safety study been done on that corner? I'm 71 years old. I lived in Tarpon all my life. I lived on Lime Street. At that corner, I don't even know of an armadillo being hit by the Seaboard Coastline when it ran through that trail. Now you have e-bikes and bicycles. So I don't know if there's really a problem with the safety study, but I wanted to ask the county, now I'm back to y'all, balls back in y'all court. If you have a committee that's studying that trail, I'd like to ask as a citizen to be a part of that committee for the county. And I asked the city of Tarpon Springs too, because Mr. LaCouris is asking for that to be done. He want correspondence to say who's responsible for the trail, what funds will that, whose budget will, We'll pay for that trail, which I know funds have been earmarked in that CRA plan for it. So that's what I'm asking.

Thank you, Katie. Appreciate your being here. I'm glad we took care of the first thing. And we'll have a gentleman over here meet you out there. Maybe he can chat with you just a little bit.

Staff will follow you out.

Who's going out? Okay. All right. OK, Greg Pound followed by Gary Lee. Excuse me, that's zoom on number 30. Go ahead Greg.

Greg Pound, Largo, Florida. We got a real erosion problem here that's worse than the beach. And I made this sign up so you can see this. It says, no sex before marriage, one man, one woman until death. This is not changing for the Muslims or the homosexuals, Yahweh. That's the word of the creator. He's not going to change his word for anyone. One man, one woman till death do you part. And you stay away from fornication. The number one sin, the Bible says, is destroying us. And this is what it says in Corinthians. It says, flee, in the Greek, that's for run from fornication. Every sin that a person does is without the body. But he that committed fornication sins against their own body. So when people commit this sin, it brings judgment. You know, when you read John Locke and also William Blackstone stuff, and they understood the law, like gravity is a law that you don't see. And when it comes to subject matter jurisdiction, when you give subject matter jurisdiction to these laws to act upon us, they bring a judgment because the Bible says the wages of sin is death. So 30 years ago, I started a ministry working with families, and I found in Pinellas County, That we have a big corrupt problem, it's called cooperative agreement contracts. Now, if I didn't get involved in this through the situation with my family, when are my children getting bit and then DCF coming in, filing all these false reports. Taking our children from us, putting them, seven of our children have been taken from us, put with people that molested them under the care of DCF and Pinellas County. And when I went up to Tallahassee and I've gone up there and I studied and I started reading these cooperative agreement contracts with the federal government for billions. Just for our families in Florida, it was $35 billion a year just to come in and destroy our families. If you look up the domestic violence fraud that the state of Florida was running, Google it and read it, folks. This is your families. These are families across the whole straight doctors. I mean, people from all walks, strata layer of our society have been destroyed because of one thing, the greed of money. And the goal is to destroy our families. If you destroy the families, you destroy the whole country. And that's where the corruption, that's where we have all our corruption, all our problems are being from one place. It's called the destruction of the American family. One man, one woman till death do you part. If you want to get divorced, the Bible says remain single or be reconciled. That's what the Bible, the word of God says. So I ran for sheriff against twice, ran against, do you know Robert Guattieri is Jim Coates' attorney? I ran against three attorneys from the Pinellas County at the last election, and I won that race. I was a shoo-in candidate by default of three attorneys that are still carrying cards that are attorneys to this day. And so we got an illegal sheriff, Robert Guattieri.

Okay, thank you. That's all I had for here. The one I was about to say was for item 30. I'm assuming they're not online yet.

Correct.

We have three others that we're going to zoom in. Did they, by chance, join early, or are they- I do have two, sir, that have joined. Okay, who do you have?

Stuart Rogel and Marge Lorand.

I have Marge Lorand, I have Blake Miller. And I have Keith.

I only have Stuart Rogel and Marge Lorand, Mr. Chair.

And who's the other one?

Stuart Rogel.

I don't even know if I have that one here. I can let you know if any of the others join. Well, we don't have number 30, that's later. Right. So we'll go ahead with Marge Lorand.

Okay, Marge Lorand, can you please raise your virtual hand in the Zoom application? We'll go ahead and unmute you. You have three minutes. Ms. Laurent, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, go ahead, please. You have three minutes. State your name and address.

Good morning, commissioners. My name is Marge Laurent, and I live in St. Pete Beach. I am here to voice my strong opposition to eliminating the fiscal year 2027 funding for the Wheaton Island Preserve and Cultural History Center and the Shell Key Preserve. Defunding these spaces is not a cost saving measure. It is an outright surrender of our 50 year lease back to the state. I recognize you face hard choices with the declining revenues and unfunded state mandates. This best budget draft proposes cutting 50 county positions. But there is a fundamental difference between freezing a staff position and defunding an ecosystem. Administrative budgets can be restored in a better fiscal year, but if we break this lease, that land is gone forever. Tallahassee will not give it back. Do not make an irreversible mistake to solve budget challenges. Expecting the state to assume responsibility of stewardship of these treasures is stunningly short-sighted. Tallahassee has proven it will not prioritize our local government and our local environment and our cultural institutions. Abdicating local control is a colossal mistake that robs the one million people who visit Weeden Island alone every year. We have a local obligation to protect our heritage. The Cultural History Center fills a vital gap in educating citizens on Pinellas County's indigenous history. Environmentally, losing local oversight directly endangers Shell Key's migratory bird habitat and rare the Florida Golden Aster. which relies on our specialized local monitoring to survive. These spaces are at the heart of our county, not lines on a spreadsheet to be balanced away. I urge this board to remove these cuts from the 2027 budget and permanently protect our stewardship of Weedon Island and Shell Key. Your constituents are counting on you to protect these resources for us. Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

Thank you. Appreciate your comments this morning. We have one more you said on zoom.

I do have another individual who just joined, Kathy Harrelson. However, I don't see that she preregistered. I can go ahead and call Stuart Vogel. Do Stuart Vogel, and then I'll address the other person in a minute. Okay. Yes, sir. Go ahead. Stuart Vogel, please go ahead and raise your virtual hand in Zoom, and we'll go ahead and unmute you. Hello, Stuart. Are you able to hear us?

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes. Please state your name and address. You have three minutes.

Good morning, commissioners. My name is Stuart Vogel, and I live in St. Petersburg, Florida. I'm here to ask you to keep Weedon Island Preserve and Shell Key Park under county management, as they have been for decades. Weedon Island is an abstraction to me. I've paddled the water trail, ridden my bike through the preserve, and hiked its trails. I've toured the museum and archaeological center with out-of-town guests. I've climbed the observation tower to take in the view of downtown St. Petersburg and beyond. and ducked into the visitor center for shelter on a hot day of biking. I've even helped an endangered gopher tortoise off the road and back into the safety of the dunes. That's a lot of different ways one preserve serves this community. And every one of them depends on it being staffed and maintained. The numbers here don't add up the proposed savings from Ween Island, Shell Key and the lifeguard cuts cost roughly 847,000 dollars. Against the 42Million dollar shortfall. That's about 2% of the gap. And has been mentioned before the county general fund has grown more than 94% since 2009. So, I'd ask you if the fund has grown that much, why is a decades old stewardship agreement on the chopping block? To solve 2% of a 1 year problem. This isn't a decision you can simply reverse next year. We didn't islands 50 year lease can lapse just by not funding it. No vote required. Once it's gone, there's no guarantees the state fills that gap. Lifeguards can be hired when the budget improves, but a lapse lease and unmonitored state significant archaeological site are a different category of loss. I'm asking you to direct staff to find replacement savings elsewhere and to pursue the state funding partnership. Representative Chaney has offered before this line is cut. Thank you very much for time today and for the hard work this budget season requires on all of you.

Thank you for your comments. Um, so just so I have it for sure, we have a zoom for item 30, which is registered. We have 2 others that. maybe didn't get the word that we wanted to move it up, so I'll allow them to speak later in the thing. And you said there's a person, Kathy Carlson, that just joined?

Yes, sir, there's a Kathy Carlson who has her hand raised.

Say that again?

She has her hand raised in the Zoom application.

Okay, let her on, please. Give her three minutes.

Kathy, when you get the option, please go ahead and unmute so we can hear you.

Okay, thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. I really just want to echo what some of what's been said about Whedon Island, the need to protect that and to keep that lease. I have to believe I, of course, support the full payment of the pensions for firefighters and police, which should certainly have been accounted for in the budget all along. but we can't lose control over this valuable land. I mean, the land, the water, the wildlife, but mostly it is a place for the public. The people who live here pay taxes to go. They have these wonderful little walking tours and webinars. The education is amazing for us, for our kids. We just don't have... green space in this county. We are the most built out, most dense county in Florida, and we need this for us. And I really believe for $847,000, you can find this money somewhere else. So please keep control over Whedon Island. Thank you.

Thank you, Kathy. Okay. So that's all we have for now. We have those other three later. Okay. All right. We are going to, and we'll have obviously comments during our budget sessions, whether either later today or during the month ahead. And so just so everybody, just to remind everybody, we have a lot of work to do. We're gonna be looking at a lot of different areas of our budget in preparation for next year, the following two years, which will be significant. Again, nothing has been decided. There is a state-run park. We have two state-run parks here that we are going to have some nice discussions with the state since they're doing so well up there about taking care, helping us take care of a park as we continue to search for funds to make sure that our budget meets the parameters that our residents are looking for. Okay, we're gonna jump into public hearings. We have two, item four, please, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Agenda item number four is case number CW2608. This is a proposed ordinance by the city of Clearwater to amend the countywide plan map from residential low medium, residential medium, residential high, retail and services, public, semi-public, and office to planned redevelopment district. regarding 461.2 acres, more or less, generally bounded by Sunset Point Road to the north, Kings Highway to the east, Palmetto Street, CSX Railway, Jones Street to the south, and North Osceola Avenue, North Fort Harrison Avenue, Clearwater Harbor to the west, within North Greenwood Community Redevelopment Area. The public hearing is properly advertised and an affidavit of filing has been received. An affidavit of publication, I'm sorry, has been received for filing. No correspondence has been received by the clerk in the matters probably before the board to be heard.

Thank you. Any comments, thoughts from the board? Approval. You have a motion to approve from Commissioner Shearer. Second. Second from Commissioner Scott. Yeah, you could go ahead and bring up the voting card, please. Motion carries unanimously. Item five.

Agenda item number five is case number CW2611. This is a proposed ordinance by the city of Clearwater to amend the countywide plan map from residential low medium to recreation open space regarding 3.4 acres more or less located at 1399 Pineapple Lane. The public hearing was properly advertised. An affidavit of publication has been received for filing. No correspondence has been received by the clerk and the matter is probably before the board to be heard.

Thank you. Again, what's the will of the board? Motion by Vice Chair Letvala. Second by Commissioner Shear. Any other comments or questions? Yes, Commissioner Letvala.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Since he's in the audience, I want to take a quick opportunity to mention an old friend of mine from the city. A few months ago, I had a city council meeting or city hearing in the background and I heard somebody that I knew a while back from my Tallahassee days and that is Mr. Young. And back in 2019, 2020 sessions, I served as the chair of the education, one of the education appropriations committee and my administration or administrative assistant who sat right beside me was a young man who was a college student named Adrian. And a great young man then. I believe his mother worked in the Florida House, worked in the legislature. Great, great guy. I knew he had a bright future. I'm glad he got out of Tallahassee as soon as he could. and came to the bright city of Clearwater. And I didn't know that he worked in the city of Clearwater. And that is Adrian Young, who is with us. I thought about bringing them forward and asking them all kinds of questions. I decided to not do that. But he was with me during some of the education days when Commissioner Flowers used to send me nice letters and notes and what great work we were doing in Tallahassee and that education was fully funded and we didn't need to send any more money to schools and whatnot. But thank you. Yeah, thank you for those comments.

And he did stand up and wave over there. Yeah, he's nice to have you here.

I'm very proud of you, Mr. Young.

Yeah. There you go. Thank you, Commissioner. Appreciate it. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Pull up the voting card, please. Motion carries unanimously. On to the consent item. Any comments, questions on the consent? Motion by Commissioner Peters, second by Commissioner Latvala. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. On to the regular agenda, and we'll start with item 18, I guess 18, 19, and 20 are all airport related.

Yeah, items 18, 19, and 20, as we talked about Thursday, we'd like to pull those items and have them on for the September 10th meeting. No action needed for that?

Okay, so we're going to pull 18, 19, and 20.

Okay, item 21. Item 21 is a demolition of vacant property.

Motion by Commissioner Peters and a second by Commissioner Scott. Any comments, questions? Bring up the card please, voting card.

Motion carries unanimously. Item 22. Item 22 is a countywide janitorial agreement. We discussed this as part of the budget. This is to provide janitorial services with two different companies for various countywide departments. This approval allows for the transition to the new company, but it is subject to final budget approval of you. So we recommend approval.

Somebody just briefly, I'm seeing it's four million a year, 338,000 a month. Do we have the square footage that we're cleaning? I don't want to get into all the specifications, but I just have a general ballpark on how many square feet we're cleaning for $338,000. Is that about four million square feet, Bill?

Approximately, yes. Yeah. Four million... About 4 million square feet of buildings that we have, but I'm not sure they're all under this contract, so I'd ask Bill to come up. We have a lot.

Good morning, Bill.

Good morning, sir. Bill Greer, Director for Construction and Property Management. We can get you a full laydown of the properties and level of service for the square footage because we do have varying levels of service, so we're happy to do that. The total generally is 4 million square feet that we're responsible for.

And through the process, comfort levels with this group are good?

The new, we're having three new vendors as opposed to one. So we will dramatically improve level of service. We'll also have redundancy in case we have an issue with one vendor. We're not strapped down to one. We have three to rely on. We've broken them up regionally and assigned them to different areas within the county, which makes the oversight better and easier for our staff employees.

And they all have the ability to pick up another third if needed?

Absolutely, yes. The intent was to create redundant capability so that we're not strapped in terms of reducing level of service because of a labor shortage.

Perfect, thank you, appreciate that. Yes, sir. Any other questions, comments? Okay, do I have a motion? Motion by Commissioner Flowers.

Second.

Second by Commissioner Scott. Bring up the voting cards. Voting card, please. One more. Motion carries unanimously.

Thank you, Bill. Item 23. Second amendment to an agreement with William Dakar. This is for Jail Secure Entry Center. This provides an expansion for the design scope over the east parking lot, signage and contingency.

Okay, any questions, comments? Need a motion? Motion by Commissioner Scott. Second by Commissioner Peters. Bring up the voting card, please.

Motion carries unanimously. Item 24. First Amendment for international sales for the Central Europe part for CBB. This adds a time extension until September 20th, 2027.

The extension for a reason, Barry? I mean, do we have a new extension Are we going out again? Brian's on his way up. I know this comes out of the marketing side.

Yeah, it says in here for a new contract, but I'll let him answer.

Yeah, Brian Locke, President and CEO of St. Pete Clearwater. What we're trying to do is align all of our contracted services to align with the fiscal year. This will do that.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Any other comments, questions? Okay, motion by Commissioner Scott. Second. Second by Commissioner Shear. Bring up the voting card, please. Thank you, Brian. One more. Motion carries unanimously. Item 25.

And this is the same thing with a different firm for UK, Ireland, and Scandinavia.

Motion by Commissioner Scott.

Second.

Second by Commissioner Shearer. Any questions? Bring up the voting card, please.

Motion carries unanimously. Item 26. This is the second amendment to the term extension with the Unite USA. This is our coordinated access model, so this extends the contract out to where we can do what we discussed, which is bring it internal. And this is also about moving and moving. Yeah, we have to set that up, but this allows the services to continue until we have, we complete that transition. Okay.

I have a motion by Commissioner Peters, second by Commissioner Flowers. Any other comments, questions? Bring up the card, please. Motion carries unanimously. Item 20. Thank you.

First amendment to licensing agreement with unincorporated Seminole Sports Association. This clarifies day-to-day managerial and operational duties with the county.

Motion by Commissioner Peters. Second by Commissioner Scott with a question.

Yeah, this is just really a question for Jewel. Jewel, are we covered on the liability side of this stuff?

I would want to take a quick look at this agreement to assure that, but we really should be. I mean, when we are working under these, there should be appropriate liability in there. I can take a quick read through that and answer it specifically, but these contracts have always been pretty firm as far as our dealings with our partners.

Okay. All right. Just want to make sure. Okay. Thanks. Okay. So I have a motion and a second. Any other questions? Bring up the voting card, please. Oh, did you have one?

I will tell you, I was out at their fields a couple weeks ago, and they're doing outstanding. I mean, they're really, really, really cleaning them up and doing exactly what they said they were going to do, and I'm really impressed with what they've done so quickly. Thank you for that.

And to answer the question, I do see an indemnification paragraph in here that would inert to the benefit of the county.

Okay, thank you very much. I just want to echo Commissioner Peters' comments as well. I was out there on that same day, and they've really done some great things.

A lot of great people, volunteer hours and work, so. Yeah, it's looking good. Dedicated folks, so thank you for those comments. Okay, have a motion and a second? Where were we?

We have a motion and a second, sir.

Yeah, we had that. Voting card, please.

That motion carries unanimously. Item 28. A grant agreement for Department of Environmental Protection for the Sankey segment of our beach program. As you can see, this is an additional $27 million of grant funds with $27 million county match. In total, we'll receive about $60 million of the $99 million project and grants.

Move approval. Second.

Motion and a second. Any questions? All right. Bring up the voting card, please, for item 28.

Motion carries unanimously. Item 29. It's a grant agreement with Southwest Florida Water Management District for the real-time flood forecasting project.

Motion by Commissioner Peters, second by Commissioner Flowers. Any other comments and questions? Bring up the voting card please for item 29.

Motion carries 6-0. Item 30. It's a hazard mitigation grant program agreement with Florida Department of Emergency Management for the design of McKay Creek, Opera Bowl Lake controls, supervisor controls, and data acquisition project.

Motion by Commissioner Peters. Second by Commissioner Scott. We did have a Zoom request for this. Do we have him online or not?

No, sir. Mr. Leagate has not joined.

Okay. We'll move on. Bring up the voting card for number 30.

Motion carries six to zero. Item 31. It's an agreement with city of Tarpon Springs to provide the funding to assist with the construction of the new fire station. So this covers the unincorporated proportion amount for that fire station. Okay. Thank you.

A motion needed. Motion from Commissioner Flowers. Second. Second from Commissioner Scott. Any questions or comments? And bring up the voting card for item 31. Still need a voting card.

I was waiting for Commissioner to return to his seat.

What's that?

I was waiting for your Vice Chair to return to his seat.

Thank you. I wasn't, but I'm glad you did. Item 30, that's 31. Yeah, thank you.

Need one more. Motion carries unanimously. Item 32. It's an agreement with Locality and Media. This is for learning management system services. This contract provides learning management system for safety and emergency services departments. Any questions or comments?

Motion by Commissioner Flowers, second by Commissioner Peters. Did you have a question? I do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Is this the incumbent provider? I'm asking Dave Hare to come up and answer that question.

Good morning. Dave Hare, Safety and Emergency Services. No, this is a new vendor. The incumbent was Vector Solutions, and this is a replacement to them. Okay, got it.

On the one-time fee of $42,000, is that an upfront fee that we have to pay in advance?

Yes, it's a one-time upfront fee, and then the recurring cost is locked in for that five-year period with a guarantee of only a 5% increase after that.

Just the reason I bring that up is PSTA had a situation, I don't know, maybe six months ago where we prepaid for some Microsoft licenses that they never delivered and they got stuck with the bill. So I just want to make sure that we're solid with the vendor and that we're not, we have a way to claw back if something bad happened.

We're very solid with the vendor. In fact, we have another agreement with them for a software product with 911 for our scheduling. So we have a history with them.

Okay, perfect.

Great.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Commissioner. We had a motion and a second. Any other comments, questions? Bring up the card, please. Motion carries unanimously. Number 33.

The third amendment with coastal waste and recycling for the Lowman Residential Collection and Disposal Services Program.

Any more questions? Move approval. Motion by Commissioner Scott. Second. Second by Commissioner Peters. Commissioner Flowers, question.

I just want to comment publicly because I made a couple of weeks ago I had received a phone call about the coastal truck missing some stops along the way and the residents had called in and they seem not to get a response. I called and was able to get someone in coastal. They returned the phone call and sent someone back out. So I believe that when you say something where a person or organization is not responding timely, you also say something when they correct their error or mistake. So I just wanted to publicly say I really appreciated them for responding to the call and not just following up to make sure that the residents were taken care of, but following up with actual individual homeowners that were impacted to make sure that they were satisfied. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Flowers. Bring up the card, please, for item 33. Motion carries unanimously on to item 34.

Item 34 is a job order contract. This is for change as to the Western Archer, TLC Diversified and Kaladesi construction. Utilities use these in a variety of different types of constructions around their plants and maintenance system repairs. You can see the amounts listed.

Any questions on that item? Motion by Commissioner Scott. Second from Commissioner Nowicki. Bring up the card please for item 34. Motion carries unanimously, item 35.

Item 35 is a new, it's one issuance and one renewal of certificates of public convenience for blue card transportation and western transportation.

Any questions on item 35? Do I have a motion?

Move approval.

Second. Motion by Commissioner Flowers. Second by Commissioner Peters. You can bring up the card for item 35.

Motion carries unanimously. Item 36. It's a first amendment for a term extension with Cigna Healthcare. This is for the county's dental benefits. Motion by Commissioner Peters.

Second. Second by Commissioner Scott. Any comments or questions? Bring up the card for item 36, please. One more. Motion carries unanimously. Item 37.

Under item 37, I'm not going to request that the board take action on this item today. I do not believe it to be necessary. I would like to announce that both of the defendants in this matter have rejected the arbitration decision and therefore this case will proceed to trial in October. We were scheduled for a shade meeting at 1 o'clock today. Notice was not properly posted, so we cannot proceed with that meeting today. I apologize for the inconvenience, but we are going to have to reschedule that meeting because we do need to get... Let me just say, in accordance with the statute, I am continuing to desire advice from the commission... and ask that we have a private meeting to discuss settlement negotiations or strategies related to litigation expenditures. That is one of the few times that we can meet in the shade or outside of the sunshine. I do continue to desire to get such advice from the seven of you in a meeting outside of the sunshine, so we will seek to reschedule that with all haste. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience, but we simply cannot proceed today.

So item 37 will be pulled. Are we talking about date certain?

We're going to need to get with your aides to find a date that we can get all of you together. Sooner is better because this litigation is actively progressing right now. So sooner would be better. I wanted to at least let you all know in this public setting before we started reaching out to your aides to try to reschedule a shade meeting.

But if not then, it will be at the next meeting. If not before...

If not before, we would likely see if we could post it after the next work session, just because that's a little sooner than your next meeting two weeks out. That would be the date that we would likely see. If we could get it sooner, we'll probably look for a date like that. Obviously, there's a lot of schedules that we need to coordinate, the seven of you, our outside counsel, and of course, your attorneys will be available whenever you need, but we do need to get things scheduled with outside counsel as well.

Okay. Yes, ma'am.

You said proceeding to trial, has the trial date been set yet?

I can confirm, but I believe it's October 5th is when the trial would commence. Okay. Because it would be a multiple day trial, should we get there. We do still want to meet with you all in private, though, to talk about possible settlement or just some of the strategies related to the expenditures.

All right, so this meeting, this item will be brought up later, and our shade meeting will be scheduled.

Correct, rescheduled. But I did want to let you all know that between when we spoke with many of you, well, all of you, and one-on-ones, the defendants have both rejected the arbitration, so this will proceed to trial short of there being a settlement. Okay.

Thank you. Anything under your report?

Yes. Under county attorney reports, we discussed last week the petition that has been filed by Bel Air Shores to attempt to vacate the erosion control line throughout the town. I am requesting authority from the board for the county to seek to intervene. in that action. It is right now with the Department of Environmental Protection. It would be a hearing in front of an administrative law judge, but we are requesting authority from the board to seek to intervene in that action and express the county's interest in maintaining our interests and being able to nourish the beach.

Commissioner Flowers.

So what they're doing would severely impact all of the work that has been done in bringing on board the Army Corps of Engineers. I'm asking a question. The Army Corps of Engineers and everything that we've done to try to get that whole strip on board with us. That's my that's my understanding.

That's my understanding, too, and I certainly can't speak to the operational aspects of things, but the erosion control line out there now is pretty long. It goes through a lot more towns than other than Bel Air Shore, and I think the real goal here is to maintain consistency because we do have longstanding actions out there. I know there's some debates about was there sand, is there not sand, but we also believe that this is just a bad precedent to set. So I think that we really do have an interest, certainly from the legal side, in joining to try to advocate that that not be taken in a piecemeal manner.

Okay. Thank you.

Kelly, go ahead. Yeah, that's kind of what I wanted to hear.

So Kelly Hammer, Levy Public Works Director. So the erosion control line is adopted as one entire line. In that area, it's not adopted as Bel Air Beach, Bel Air Shore, Indian Rocks, Indian Shores. It's one line, and it was approved by the trustees of the Board of the State of Florida many years ago as that one line. You can't. cut out pieces of it, it would negate the entire line, is what they're actually asking to do, which would impact the federal project completely. We cannot proceed with nourishment in the state of Florida without an erosion control line. It would impact the Clearwater portion of Sand Key, Bel Air Beach, Indian Rocks, and down. So it's very important that we keep that line intact. and this action would impact our project.

Okay. Any questions of Kelly while she's nearby? Or we could just make her go sit down and then ask her to come back up. No, Katie.

You need to get my steps in today, so it's okay.

All right, thank you, Kelly.

And we did, Mr. Chair, for anybody, the seven of you or anybody in the public that might be interested, we did post the order and the petition under agenda item number 38. So those documents are there.

Okay.

All right, so you need...

What I'm asking is authority for the county to seek to intervene in that action.

Need a motion, please. Second. Motion by Commissioner Peters, second by Commissioner Scott. Any other questions or comments? Bring up the voting card, please. Motion carries unanimously, and we are on to item 40. We'll skip right over Barry. No, I'm kidding. Let's go back to Barry. We're talking fiscal year budget presentation. No, no, not getting away with it. What's that?

Oh. Hey, Barry, why don't we do that?

Excuse me, guys. Thank you, Commissioner Peters, for bringing that up. Let's jump to number 40, which is the first amendment to the contract with VanScooy Associates for our federal government relations services. Barry, could you introduce that, please? Two-year, right?

Yeah, this is an amendment to the contract. This term extension is for 24 months.

Motion by Commissioner Peters. Second by Commissioner Scott. Are there any questions or comments? Sure. And do you have any, would you like to come forward or are you good? I've talked, yeah. He doesn't know if we're voting on him yet. I'm swerving around. Is there any questions? Commissioner Wiecki, you have a question?

Thank you, Chair. Not really a question. I guess I'm supportive of this. Harry reached out to me at the end of last week. Maybe just for the record, I think at the end of this two-year contract, I'm supportive of going it out for bid. Nothing against Harry, but it's been over 10 years at that point, and You know, we've done that with our Tallahassee lobbyist, and I think we've gotten a lot of great results, you know, from Johnson and Stewart last year, and we made a move there because it went out for bid. So we probably wouldn't have seen those same results that we've gotten if we didn't go out for bid on our Tallahassee lobbyist contract. So, you know, I'm in favor for this two years, but, you know, I'd really like to see it go out to bid at the end of this two-year extension.

Thank you, Commissioner Nowicki. I think that's kind of standard operating procedure. I think, in my opinion, he's done a great job, but I do think to revisit that during the next two-year term, I think probably makes some sense. Does anybody else have any comments or questions before we take a vote? All right. Bring up the card, please. One more, okay, that motion carries unanimously.

And we will, you can still stay for the entire budget part if you'd like.

Barry, go ahead with the budget presentation.

So if you'll pull up the budget presentation. So good morning, Commissioners. Barry Burton, County Administrator. Today is where we outline the County Administration's proposed budget to you. This is the first step in the budget process. We're going to go over a lot of different items today, but we've scheduled work sessions where we can get into those details at your pleasure, coming up here at the work sessions on the 20th and the 2nd of September. I believe it's the 2nd, that first week in August. I'm sorry, September. So ahead of the scheduled public hearings, we cover that here at the end. So the first is that we've you know, when we had the budget information sessions, we talked about a lot of different areas and we talked about the challenges facing this year's budget. Today, I present to you a budget that is structurally balanced, but it focuses on. essential services. It focuses on looking at fiscal discipline to not make short term decisions, but things that will occur in the next two or three years. As you'll see in the numbers, we still have many properties that are off the property tax rolls and other pressures that are impacting our ability to deliver the current services that we have. Again, we will talk about the board. We're presenting this today to where you can have more discussion on this, and we can continue to look for alternative ways of providing the services that are needed. For the second year in a row, the department's reporting to the commissioners have reduced their total general fund budgets. So last year we did that, and this year we did that again. And that is including the inflationary factors that are impacting all budgets. That includes salary increases for our employees, but yet they're still able to deliver a budget to you that is lower than the year before. But the general fund, the departments that report to you is a small portion of the overall general fund. So the budget as an overview is just over $5 billion. The general fund is 1.125 billion of that. The capital budget is just over a billion dollars. The general fund is growing at 1.2% over the FY26 adopted levels. To do this, though, we reduced 53.8 positions in all the different funds. So there was a hard look, and I really congratulate and thank our departments for stepping forward and proposing ideas and alternatives as a way to hold the line on our cost and be able to present a budget to you. That's here today 53 positions many of those are vacant Some positions are not we're currently working with employees to find like positions and vacancies Be able to realign that but not all positions to be able to will be able to accomplish that At the BIS meetings we presented a budget that a budget deficit that grew from about 18 million To more than 30 million dollars as a budget deficit as we were going into this year's budget This deficit is in large part due to unfunded mandates. Each and every year we see continuing pressures on our budget by the state passing legislation that increases the cost to our local property taxpayers. We also see things like a reduction in sales tax revenue by shifting. These may be the right things to do, but they impact our budget and they don't pay for those challenges that they present to us. And when they changed the sales tax on business rental, that cost us about $6.6 million, and I'll talk about that. But then in addition to that, we have all the other inflationary contract increases, salary increases for our employees. And a significant piece is health care increases. The sheriff's seeing that in his budget and we're seeing that in ours. So it continues to challenge us with the cost of, you know, just because we're a people based service and our employees have health care and we want to continue to provide that. That's one of the benefits that they have. But again, that cost continues to go up. The sheriff's budget originally requested a little over $26 million increase. And that's no new positions. That's to keep the lights on. That's deputy salaries. That is jail medical. That is health care cost increases and things like that. While our property tax revenue increased by $26.5 million. So the entire cost of the operation for him consumed all of the property tax. Now, we've worked with him and all the departments to present an alternative budget for you. But I want to talk about the unfunded mandates because we talk about that a lot in these work sessions. But it's highlighted in this year's budget. Listen, we work so well with our legislators. We had them in here earlier. They communicate with us. They work with us. But they're not the only ones in Tallahassee. And each year, there's legislation that pass that push costs down to our property taxpayers. It's not directly, but it does when they push those costs onto us. And these are a few examples. But this has occurred for years. And so we're calling it out because these are the challenges when people look and say, why can't you do more? These are things that we don't have a choice on. Our Medicaid payment, again, it's $14 million, but that increased over 5% from last year. State mandated requirement. $3.1 million for our juvenile justice payment, again, a 14.5% increase. Our pensions now, what is state mandated for our Florida retirement system, is over $94 million a year. Now, out of that, $73 million of that is for the sheriff. But the amazing part is, this year, they gave a cost of living adjustment for retirees. So each and every year now, the retirees, if you're in a public safety position, will get an automatic 3% cost of living adjustment. It may be the right thing to do, but if you're going to pass a legislation, pay for it. And they don't. They mandate that down to our property taxpayers, because we're mandated to make this That cost us $4.5 million just for the sheriff's cost of living adjustment into their pension system.

Barry, you had said this was $94 million at the beginning.

Overall.

But the increase is $4.8 million.

The increase for this year is $4.8 million. Or just the sheriff's portion is $4.5 million.

Okay, but the total is $4.8 million.

The total was 4.8, so 4.5 of the 4.8.

Well, you were throwing the millions around. I didn't want people to think that's what was going up this year. It's not the 94 million. That's the overall number.

That's how much we pay in total for our pensions.

And Barry, while I interrupted you, Commissioner Peters had a question. She was going to wait until after the slide, but do you have a question?

I was going to do my math again, but I believe this is over $200 million a year that when we start our budget, we have $200 million in unfunded mandates. And I think that our current delegation doesn't know this. And I would bet even the governor doesn't know this. this i so i think that tristan should i think we should draft a letter and let them know that just i mean they they passed the cost of living oh they don't when it comes down to it they don't know it was five million almost five million dollars to pinellas county and they supported it and all that kind of stuff but i guarantee you that i'll bet you our delegation had no idea what we were paying in that medicaid payment and the juvenile justice payment. And I bet they never put down on writing the actual cost, especially the increases every year. They don't know that. The cybersecurity was new. They gave that to us a couple years ago. But all of these are recurring.

They are recurring.

They're all recurring. So every year we have to just, the beginning of our budget, and I don't believe that they have any idea that how much that they have passed down to local government as they criticize our spending, although even when they did the doge on Pinellas County, they didn't find anything to report on waste. But this is something that I think needs to come to the forefront and highlighted about Tallahassee. They continue to do the unfunded mandates. They criticize how we're doing business, and I And I take exception to that, but I feel that they don't know about this. So I think that if nothing else, this slide should be put in a letter and sent to the legislature so that they know exactly every time they do this. I mean, I think there's more than this because I had a presentation on other things that we have to do and they're not the $2 million, right? It's one more person that we have to change our website quarterly. And then we have to do something that's monthly. And all these things that they make us do that we have to add to and add to and add to. So every year they're passing down unfunded mandates. And I don't think that they truly know. It would be interesting if FAC would put up the numbers for every county. If we're paying $200 million just to begin with. Just to start our budget, we have to start with $200 million for unfunded mandates. What are the other counties paying? And does the state legislature actually realize when they say we're spending like drunken sailors, but yet we have a 14.5% increase on juvenile justice payments, that they mandate we pay for? And I think that that conversation is never had. We don't really talk about... That kind of stuff. 5% on Medicaid. We don't talk about that. The 7.7% increase on the sheriff's F for us, but then add on another four and a half million to the COLA. We're not talking about that. And I think we need to start talking about that. I think Tallahassee wants to run local government, and I think that frightens me. The last thing that Pinellas County or any citizen should want is Tallahassee running local government. I think they would do a terrible job at it. And I really think that they should be aware and citizens should be aware because, you know, I watch the social media and what they're claiming. that local government is wasteful. But I think the citizens don't have, we don't talk about this. So they don't know that the state does these unfunded mandates. And many of our citizens don't even know that we help pay for the clerk of the court. They don't know that we help pay for, we noticed this when we were talking. The citizens had no idea that their tax dollars were helping pay for the clerk and supervisor of elections and the courts. And they just didn't realize it. And when we had that presentation in it was very eye-opening to the citizens there. And I think this is very eye-opening and people need to understand that the legislature has constantly given us unfunded mandates. We don't typically whine and complain about it, but given the attack that they're doing on local government, I think this should be brought out to light, brought out to attention, and I think a letter should go to the delegation showing them just at the beginning of our budget what we have to pay for because of them. They're not paying for it. And I want to get on my other soapbox, so we're not going to. But thank you. I do think a letter should be sent. with these highlights?

Well, I certainly think that discussion continues to, to be high, needs to be highlighted clearly. And we've even talked, we had a lot of people here talking about Whedon Island and, uh, it was a half a million, you know, whatever the number was. Yes. And again, to your point in itself, not significant. It is a state park that we are taking care of. We've elevated the maintenance of that park. We've elevated the capital structure of that park. And yet they provide an, virtually very little funding of their own for their own state park. So we've taken that on behalf of the state. We love that park. So people that are listening in and have talked to us, that's not a park that we're targeting to get rid of. What we're trying to do is move all the pieces around so that we can maximize what is due us. These unfunded mandates, they may be philosophically right. It's just important that people understand where all these monies go and because of the stress and pressures of this budget year and the anticipation of next year

um these things we just need to all be talking about it and where the where the dollars fall so um i did we both stopped you right in mid and mid slide uh so and you know and so we've tried to put the highlights on here and to commissioner peter's point it's certainly not everything and it occurs year after year bite after bite You know, the next item is, you know, $1.3 million for cybersecurity. Well, who can argue that? But again, it's another unfunded mandate. That million dollars comes from our property taxpayers. It makes it a challenge for us to meet all of our budgetary obligations. The year before, I didn't put it up there, the year before the state shifted the registration process or the certificate, yeah, the registration of the what? The local counts from a state function down to a county function where we had to add positions for Julie to be able to accomplish that task. So it's never ending. But the final thing on this unfunded mandate slide is the craziness of we were working with the school board because there's a portion, we have to pay the tax collector fees for school board levies. Well, there was one portion that we didn't have to pay. So what it Tallahassee do. They changed the law to where we have an additional $3 million this year that now we have to pay. That goes towards the tax collector fees. So to your point, Commissioner, it's ongoing, it's never-ending, but it makes it tougher for us to meet our residents' needs. We're going to talk about Wheaton Island. when we're trying to meet our mandated functions.

And I think Barry, I think the point being that these are costs that probably need to occur and we just need to point out where they're falling and where and who's picking those costs up just from an educational and transparency standpoint.

The decisions that they're making in Tallahassee have an impact on our local property. I understand.

Commissioner Scott has been waiting patiently. Go ahead, Commissioner. Yeah, just a quick comment. To add on to that, just congressional redistricting costs us a half a million dollars. I mean, we had to pay for the Supervisory Election for that. So that's just another unfunded mandate. So it's just like you said, bite by bite. It just continues to happen. And we just have to start finding creative ways to start pushing some of these things back on the stage.

And we've had the conversation before, you know, regardless of what happens in November, right? Whatever happens in November, the message will be we want smaller government, less costly. We understand that. This is a budget that we're talking about for 26 or 27 that has some to do with that, but that's a separate issue. These are things that are ongoing right now that we're dealing with with the current budget.

And when we add these costs up and also the reduction in the sales tax, that is $13 million just in this year's budget. Just new for this year. And there's other little ones.

So I have a correction. I misspoke on my math. Based on that- it appears that it's only $133 million, not the 200 that I thought. But I know there's more that you didn't include.

There's other items, yeah.

There are. There's more that you didn't include. But just what you have on that board is $133 million. So I just wanted to correct that because I misspoke. Mr.

Chair.

Go ahead. If I may. Commissioner Flowers.

Buried... Based on the legislation that passed where we needed to pay the increase for the pensions and whatnot, were we not also required this year to give the sheriff another $840,000 for this year?

It kicked in before October 1st, so we had to give them a proportionate amount when the payment was due. So it was like $800,000 short. So we had to transfer that amount to him. This is for next year's budget.

Okay. Okay. And then I do have a question. So for our Medicaid payments, I know that we have Medicaid, which is state Medicaid, but then there are other dollars that the state gets from the federal government to provide portions for Medicaid payments or Medicaid insurance, if you will. None of that, I'm asking the question, none of that is calculated into what we are required to take on.

This is just our portion that we have to provide.

Okay, I just wanted to make that clear because some individuals like Medicaid, separate from Medicare, there are other dollars that come down that the state gets and they have authority over. Sometimes those dollars have been refused. And so other municipal governments make up for that when there is a county need, when there is a need for residents that live within the county. I'm sorry. So, okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Go ahead, up chairman.

Commissioner Nowicki. Thank you. So going back to the FRS, the $94 million, I mean, is that a mandate or an external cost?

We must belong to the Florida retirement system.

So, I mean, if we're sending a letter to the state saying, hey, this is an unfunded mandate, I mean, our viewpoint would be we wouldn't want to pay for retirement for our employees?

No. The real issue that we're trying to point out in this slide is adding additional benefit okay, that is the 3% COLA, okay, and that then we have to pay for. That was an additional $4.5 million, an additional retirement benefit.

Right, I get that, but I guess, like, when we're talking, like, $137 million, I mean, we would still have to pay retirement and, you know, pension for our employees, or we'd have no employees working. Correct. No, no, no. So, I mean, that's a little kind of... Misleading, I would say.

I understand the point because you're right. We'd still have retirement costs. The point I was really trying to make on this slide is with all the challenges we have to meet our local demands today, we add an additional benefit. And that's the $4.5 million of that cost.

Yeah, I think it's just important to clarify we would still be paying for like a pension and retirement for employees. So that cost, whether it's FRS or if it was done in-house, we would still have that cost. Absolutely.

And that's why I wanted to separate out the $94 million that he was talking about, which is a base level cost. This was an additional service, which was providing COLA within the retirement. Instead of having a flat retirement, They now have a COLA in their retirement. So it's an additional benefit. We could argue all day long whether it's right or wrong. I may like it, but nonetheless, it's passed down to the individuals to continue adding. And so unfunded mandates generally happen towards the end. So when you're trying to plan your budget year out and we're trying to get a full rollback down here, they're just surprises sometimes that we have to adapt to. Sometimes they're really good ones. We still have to adapt to them. And so those are just being pointed out in terms of the difficulty of managing a budget and trying to accomplish what our residents are saying, which is really a no growth government. That's really what we're trying to do. These are the parameters that make it more difficult to get to. I think those are just comments. Again, we've always had good partnership with the state. That's never been an issue.

right now it's becoming a little bit more under the microscope and so i think that's what we're just trying to make sure we all understand those moving pieces and that's and that's really the point of the slide is to highlight the challenges going into the budget before we ever try to balance internal resources priority of service these are costs and you know to to to equate that to your point to the full rollback that was a little over 10 million dollars yet we had 12 million dollars 13 million dollars of of unfunded mandates or

revenue reductions just in this year's budget yeah and again that's just again how much the state should be taking on how much each of the counties should be taking on you know that's you know that's a whole different discussion i'm just saying we're looking at that incremental increase for this coming budget above that you know number so i think that to your point go ahead so the proposed general fund military is

We've proposed it to be the exact same as fiscal year 26 at 4.54 mills. This follows four years of millage rate reductions, four and five years. We're recommending keeping the transportation, the dedicated millages the same. As you know, when we started that program, what, five years ago, four or five years ago, we had over 1,100 miles of roads that are in D or F condition. Today, it's less than 200. We've made quite a dent, and we're coming up to the harder parts, which is like bridges and things like that, that cost but also take longer to prepare for. Our general fund reserves total $169 million, which is 2.1 mils, but I want to talk about this briefly. You know, we're currently, you're going to be seeing plans coming up here, I think, at the next work session on our new campus. Our new campus, as we've talked about, will require a bond issuance. That's going to require a payment. And so we'd like to start preparing for that payment rather than hitting it at one year of taking and gradually increasing that amount that we're setting aside. One, we can pay down the debt for that and not borrow as much, but we also have capacity in our budget to be able to make that payment. Part of our reserve, we'll talk about that more, will be to, as a planned reserve, to be able to make the bond payment come here in four years when that first payment will be due.

Commissioner Peters?

Yeah, I had a question. How many more years is on their transportation infrastructure?

Well, these are dedicated millages, so they continue until we take them off.

Oh, so it's in five years? It looks like it's five years. I just want to confirm. It says here five years. That's what we've done for five years. But I thought when we set that, we set that for a time frame.

We did not, no. And what we actually gave, you know, when we did it at the time, we said that we were going to be caught up in about... It was different between bridges and roads on how long before we got caught up. We actually gave her half of the amount from that. And so it was going to be like six and eight years. And Kelly will correct me here. But we gave her about half that amount. But what we've been able to do is the increased valuations have helped really draw down. And they've actually been able to do a lot more with that funding. So we're still behind, but we're getting there.

So that's what we were talking about. You were talking it's going to take that long to cut down, but you thought this was going to be forever?

Oh, we just, one, we wanted to try to bring down that. When we're actually there, then we'll have that conversation about what does it take to maintain that level of...

I mean, it's been great. Kelly did great. Our roads are in great condition, and our lawsuits have been cut in half as a result of the work that we've done. So that's a big savings, so I'm not knocking it.

I just thought we had a I thought we had a sunset on it And I so that was a misunderstanding on my I think we need to evaluate it each year and as we get to a point what does it take to sustain that level of Infrastructure going forward again. It's you know the bridges are longer But it's also you know drainage systems and things like that that we've that they've not been able to put adequate funding into for the years and

we'll continue to evaluate that each year yeah and barry i think that's going to tie into our penny discussion coming up next year as we plan for 28 because even though we spend over 50 of our penny on infrastructure it may need more so that we can relieve some of these millage rates that we're talking about. Again, those are all conversations together. And whether it's bridges or roads, and I know you don't like to hear this, but sometimes it's also pipes under the ground that is funded by our utility enterprise fund, but it still goes back to the residents and their utility bills. So there's lots of ways that we can just focus penny on infrastructure. and not ancillary things that are also important, but maybe not as important as infrastructure. Commissioner Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Barry, the three level of service millage rates we have for transportation, I believe this year amounted to $43 million. Do you know what that is proposed for next year?

Chris is saying $45 or $46.

I mean, that's a lot.

It is absolutely a lot.

When we only need like 10 and change for a full rollback, I mean, that's four full rollbacks, right?

It absolutely is a lot, but it's also a lot of infrastructure that was deferred for many, many years.

I mean, we're getting value for it. We're certainly not questioning the, you know.

The accomplishments with it and avoiding higher costs later, right? But you know, we get 90 to $100 million a year from the penny for county work, of which about half of it right now is going to infrastructure.

We've actually far exceeded the 50%.

Well, that's recently, but over the time it's not been far exceeding 50% the first five years. In any event, there's still money there in the penny if you want to dedicate more to infrastructure and relieve the pressure on our general fund. Millages right a discussion for another you know when we start well I think that kind of as we get into our legislative agenda for next year.

I know Loft has been a topic of discussion I'm sure and I'm sure it will be because if we can get that that certainly helps alleviate that it's gonna be on your tri-county meeting agenda coming up here next Friday This Friday, yeah, okay

Again, while we have you stopped, anything else before we- I just also want us to remember as well, I'm all for looking at how we can save residents money because they're hurting from all, there's pressure from all sides. So it's not just this part. But I also want just to remind everyone, we have just today alone approved maybe three or four change order requests because the costs for those specific projects increased Midstream in the projects, so I am finding and you all may as well, especially you commissioner share in the construction industry. That materials and supplies are running way above what is anticipated and when we're doing infrastructure, stormwater, sewer projects, those costs. are sometimes double what was presented when we initially funded them. So I just want us to think about that when we're looking at or discussing ways to try to save money or move things around because it's not their fault that the cost of materials and supplies increase as they're completing our projects that may take a year or two to complete, but we need to have the money to be able to pay to complete the projects. So just kind of throwing that out there. I'm fine with discussing it, but I just want us to keep that in mind.

So how we got here is a lot of sausage making. And I'm just going to hit some of the highlights for you. A lot of times, as you know, things are buried within the budget. You see departments continuously bringing in budgets that are flat. But there's a lot of decisions behind those. That are real decisions. They're real programs that impact people. And and so they're constantly prioritizing based upon the direction from the Commission on how do we deliver the highest and best services at the lowest cost for the Board of Commissioner departments. They they decreased their budgets by a combined $16.2 million. That included 34.8 general fund positions. We also asked the sheriff that since he's 50% of the budget, he's also got to help us with balancing the budget. He reduced a little over $7 million in 10 positions. And then the clerk had one position. BTS, we worked with them and they reduced five positions, a little over $3 million in human resources by two positions.

Barry, thank you. For the positions that are being decreased from the county commission, were those filled positions or vacant positions?

A combination of both.

So do you know what our total open positions would be going forward?

I don't have that off the top of my head.

We can get that for you. Or do you know how many? Well, yeah, how many?

We always have. I mean, I can tell you a number, and it's going to change by the end of the day because positions constantly change.

Well, just like how many, I guess, positions total, then that would leave filled or vacant?

I don't know the answer to that.

Yeah, okay. Well, if we could get that.

We can absolutely get the number of vacancies we have at any one time.

Thank you.

What we also did is we shifted Care About Me funding from general fund to the opioid abatement funds. We are recommending that we reduce the social action funding You put $1.7 million out for needed programs in the community, but those are with nonprofits. We have $667,000 of programs that are ongoing. In other words, this is like their second or third year of cycle, so they're existing programs. And you had about $1.1 million that would be new programs to address new needs. So as part of that, we're recommending you reduce the $1.7 million down to the ongoing programs and don't add any additional programming to that funding source. We're recommending that we look at the sexual assault survivor services for the general fund for the simple fact that this is required to be provided by the hospitals. So we're recommending funding up and get, but we're phasing this in, so we're giving them time to step forward and provide that gap funding to be able to continue those services. Again, it's required by the hospitals, and so we think they should bear that cost. Commissioner Peters.

So have the hospitals agreed to do this? Because that's not what I've heard.

We've sent them a letter saying that this was going to be our recommendation.

And have we heard back or not?

Not at this point.

Okay. That's interesting.

Well, nobody wants to take on additional cost, but when you're state mandated to do so, and we work very well with our hospitals, I would expect them to step forward for such a small thing that is a state mandated service.

Is this another state mandated thing that we've been funding for $181,000?

I guess so.

And I think the other part that goes with it that we've been paying is also state mandated.

Which one?

Well, I mean, there's more to that program.

Yes.

There's a lot more to that program than just what the hospitals are going to take over.

They've actually been losing funding, so.

So, yeah, because I think we're paying under a million for that. So, again, another unfunded mandate that isn't on your list.

It's a requirement for the hospitals to provide the service.

I know that's what state statute says. They just haven't done it, but thank you.

So, the next item, you know, which has obviously generated a lot of discussion and a lot of letters, which is Wheaton Island Preserve and Shell Key. Now, the 474,000 in little over seven positions that this would, if we turn this back over to the state, that's effective January 1st. So it would give us time for a transition. So that's only nine months of cost. But, you know, this is hard because this is something that our residents enjoy. It's actually a recommendation that we made a few years ago to actually open back up the visitor center. AND ADDITIONAL STAFFING FOR THAT. BUT WHEN WE'RE CONSTANTLY FACED WITH DECLINING REVENUE, ADDITIONAL STATE MANDATES, AND TO THE TUNE OF $13 MILLION, WE SAID WE GOT TO LOOK AT OUR CORE MANDATED SERVICES. WELL, THIS IS A STATE PRESERVE, NOT A COUNTY PRESERVE. IT'S DIFFERENT FROM BOOKER CREEK. WE OWN BOOKER CREEK, EXCEPT A SMALL PORTION. THIS IS A STATE LANCE. And so this is on for consideration. And there's a lot of discussion to go. But that's the reason we classified this differently than maybe a different county park or not. And then Commissioner Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to request that we take this off the list. and this is just my request, because I know we're in discussion, and that we ask for Tristan and Matthew Spohr and their whole team, as well as our lobbyists, that we ask them to begin the dialogue and conversation with our delegation to see if they would, if we will, number one, wanna put this on one of our lists of things as it relates to our platform for continued funding from the state. Because this, while it is true this is state property, it's kinda like when you start paying for something and you've maintained it all this time, You found a way to fund it and maintain it all this time. And now, even though we know everyone's in the budget crunch, now we want to no longer fund this because of what the state is doing. So I'm going to share publicly that I wanna keep the funding here. We can look at taking it from our general fund, but I would also like for conversations to be had with our delegation. Too bad that Representative Anderson and Senator Rouson had to leave so they could be here and have heard from the residents what they were saying. But that is my request, that we keep this in the budget. that we look at taking the funds from the general fund to be able to pay for this and that we have our lobbyist as well as working with Tristan and Matt to see what we can do to put this on our legislative platform for the state to actually pay the county to maintain this, the preserve.

So that's my request since we're- So again, this is just a simple recommendation. It doesn't set lightly for me or for the staff, nor did the 34 other positions that we were cutting throughout the rest of county government. I mean, we just highlighting this. But there are many others that are real people with real functions that we're reducing to be able to right-size our budget, to be able to meet all of our challenges that we're facing.

I think with the recent purchase of Gladys Ackworth Douglas property for 35 acres and the West Gloucester Preserve, a bunch of acres, the county stands ready to find opportunities to get more parkland and preserves for us, not get rid of. So I don't think the intention up here is the thought of staff or us is to get rid of that responsibility. It's how do we go about doing it and letting those folks up there realize they may not even know that they're giving us, what, 10,000, I don't know how much a year to manage that park. So we can have those discussions, to your point. I don't think there's an appetite. I know a lot of people are concerned about that, and, you know, that's fine. But I think the appetite is not there to get rid of parks. That's not what we've been doing. It's quite the opposite.

Now, the difference on, like, Gladys Douglas is the maintenance falls to the city, you know, and and up on West Klosterman, that being a preserve really didn't require additional daily maintenance.

What I'm talking about is philosophical position of this commission representing the residents of our county that want to make sure that we preserve our green space. That's what I was really talking about. So this is a particular opportunity to get money from the state for something that they own. Get that. Commissioner Scott, you had a comment.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, I absolutely agree that we want to, find every opportunity that we can to not only preserve our green space, but to expand it when we can. And we talked, I don't know, a few months ago about the horse trails there in Seminole, the 50 acres, that we want to make sure that that gets preserved forever as well, that that doesn't become development. Question I have on Wheaton Island, the visitor center out there, did we construct that or is that state? We did. So we've made significant capital investments. We have. Those in the boardwalks. Yeah, okay, so we've put a lot of money into that, and I agree with Renee that I would not wanna see us abandon that there. Now, if we can get some help from the state, I think we should absolutely do that. But two other items on this list here, the social action funding and the lifeguard, I think we need to rip the band-aids off on those and just be done with it. I mean, as far as the lifeguards are concerned, everybody has a problem with lifeguards.

You go to the city of Seminole, you go to the city of Clearwater, anybody that's got pools, they struggle to find lifeguards.

That's no different for us. So I think we've talked about that several times. I think it's just time for that situation to just go away. And on social action funding, just my opinion, I don't view that as a core function of government that we should be taking general fund property tax dollars and basically awarding it, giving it to not-for-profits to do what they want to do with it. If our residents are passionate about those not-for-profits, about their causes, they can donate to them directly. I don't think that really should be our function to do that. That's just my opinion on that. And right there, if we needed money for Wheaton Island, it's sitting and staring at us right there. So that's just my opinion.

Again, philosophical positions, and I don't necessarily disagree, but one of the things that irritates me about the state sometimes is that they rip the Band-Aid off, like you were talking about, and there's no time for incremental adjustments. To your point about social action funding, if we're going to do that, and I'm not saying that you're wrong on that request, I just want to be sensitive to these groups. that have budgets in place as well. This is one of the issues that I had last year's budget process. It was all about doing it now. And it's the very same thing that we complain about. I just want to make sure that we're sensitive to that. I think the proposal is to reduce significant amount because those are new requests versus... 1.1 is new programs that have not started, that would only start as a result of our funding.

And so the $667,000, our existing program, we approved. It would be down to about $1.1. No, it would be $667,000.

Oh, so the $1.1 is the new. No, the $1.1 was new. Okay. And so that conversation, obviously, we're going to have this month.

You can have that on the Wheaton Island. You do have some flexibility that we've talked about back in the amount of money we put aside for reserves for our new campus. So these are all. you know, part of this development process, and we'll take your direction on that.

Yeah, understand. Go ahead, Commissioner Peters. So, I agree with Renee with some caveats. Wheaton Island is a gem. I mean, it's a real, it's a gem. It's just the archaeology stuff that's there is incredible. The kayak trails are amazing. I mean, it's really a wonderful place, but What concerns me about this proposal is it only goes to January. And if the state were to fund it, their budget doesn't start until next July. And so kind of what you were saying, that cutting rip the bandaid right now, I really don't want to see Wheaton Island go away. But I would like to work with the state that if when their next budget starts on July 1, if they're going to step in and fund it, I would at a minimum want it to be funded through July 1, not January 1. And then hopefully the state would be willing to take on some of this and continue what's going on. And the state does a great job at Honeymoon Island. They do a great job at maintaining and taking care of Honeymoon Island. That's state owned, it's state maintained, and they do a really good job. So I'm not of the mindset that the state would do a terrible job. Would the state keep the visitor center open? I don't know, maybe, maybe not. But I think that's up for conversation and it gives one of our delegate, our delegation the opportunity to propose replacing the funding for this and keeping it active. So I wouldn't want to do it to January. I would like to see it stay open. If it's something, you know, if Amendment 3 doesn't go through, then maybe in July we'll know that and maybe our budget will look more better. And if the state isn't going to fund it, maybe we could keep it going a little longer. But I would propose to keep it going at least until the state budget of July 1 in case the state was willing to take it on.

We have some thoughts. We can bring back ideas and options for you to discuss at the next work session.

Okay.

And certainly Honeymoon Island, a very highly attended park, as this one is.

Yes.

They're both highly attended parks, and so they've responded at Honeymoon Island. I'm just guessing they didn't even know that they have... I'm not saying that there aren't people in staff that didn't know, but I'm saying some of the elected folks probably didn't even know that this was going on, which is normally their responsibility. Whether from a funding or operational. We could continue the operation if they want to fund it. That... That kind of conversation, I think, is healthy to have. But to your point, I want to protect that until we know.

We're putting it on for discussion. Obviously, more work to do. Same way with the county lifeguards. These are part-time positions. It's very, very hard to fill. Most of the time when you come to the park, you're going to get a no lifeguard on duty sign because we simply can't fill the positions. We've talked about it for years. We consolidated it down to Fort DeSoto and And Sankey, we're making a recommendation that we just eliminate the program at this point. Mr. Chair.

Yeah, Commissioner. Just speaking really quickly, for the social action funding piece, I support pulling back on the additional new requests of the $1.1 million. I do think that we have a place and we have a role when it comes to providing those quality of life services. We're talking about... Area agency on aging where it is critical and determines the difference between a senior staying in their home, which is more cost effective versus a senior having to go stay in a facility, which sometimes they can't afford between what Medicaid Medicare pays and then maybe what their family can pay. the wraparound services we've been able to provide to people for mental health services that keeps them balanced. The services that we provide to, um, even Casa, you know, with domestic abuse and domestic violence so that, you know, they're able to, um, help people create plans for safety so that they can get out of, um, some unattainable positions. So I, I, um, I really would like for us to consider keeping that $667,000 amount. Not anything new. I support that. But where we are right now, I think that's critical, especially in light of all that's going on. People who normally may not have certain issues or have to depend on certain organizations for help. they are, you know, and those organizations are there and they're able to kind of help them get through the rough patches. So that's why I want to continue to support that. I'm OK with the lifeguards, you know, the liability that we would have there if we provide sporadic lifeguards versus consistent and we don't have enough lifeguards to be consistent. So I'm OK with with removing that.

Just OK. Moving on. So we've we've also proposed we're going to make these reductions. We're going to reduce staff positions is also recommended. It's a small amount, but it's 220,000 for these MSTU grants. We provide those out to various nonprofit agencies and some of our other partners. So, again, that's part of our recommendation. Inside of the 34 positions, nine positions just in county administrations are internal services. So we really tried to, you know, take the lead and and work internally. to reduce down as many positions as possible in order to show the departments and lead by example. We're strengthening the requirements. This is a small item. It's not a small item, but it's kind of internal. It's these GLP-1 drugs. Everybody using them. But we're going to tighten up the requirement as more towards industry standards. That again. It's a very popular thing if you need it for diabetes and things like that it will continue to be provided But some of the GOP ones are ours is more liberal than industry standards We're going to tighten up the requirements.

That's estimated to save about a okay computer I had a couple I got a couple of questions That one in particular I have a problem with. We're not going to force or really strongly get people to take that medication, are we?

No, no, no, no, no. People don't want to pay for it. Right now people are using GLP-1s for weight loss when it's really targeted towards people with diabetes and certain conditions. And so we're going to what industry standards are for the evaluation of who needs it and who doesn't. We spend about $2 million a year on GLP-1 drugs now. this would be saving a portion of that just by tightening the requirements.

Okay, because nobody better tell me I got to take it.

No, no, no. We're not saying anybody needs to take it. And the people that need it for medical reasons certainly can provide that. Okay.

The other one is, so the MSTU, I kind of want to have more discussion on it. So unincorporated doesn't provide recreation and stuff like that. Right? And in Palm Harbor and East Lake, they're doing their own MSTU to raise money. So I kind of get that. They can plan, do a capital budget. But places like Tierra Verde, they don't have an MSTU to help them with recreation, to help them with their park. I mean, luckily they have a wonderful donor that's helping them with their park. So I have, you know, if it's somebody like Seminole Justice, Seminole has so much work to do, it's going to take them a long time to catch up but I mean like they have a backstop that's dangerous right now if it were to fall it could hurt people but but you know because they only just got started so they don't have reserves they don't have you know they got a long way to go but places like Tierra Verde or some of the little unincorporated pockets that don't have those MSDUs for recreation or MSDUs for libraries or whatever it is I almost think you almost have to leave like like Feather Sound doesn't I They have an MSTU, I take that back. So I think the only one that doesn't is Terra Verde, so.

Probably true.

I don't think I would be in favor of taking away the ability of Terra Verde to have something. When everybody else has something, they don't, I don't know what it looks like, I don't know what it sounds like, but I do have a little bit of a concern on that one. And yes. Since I had thyroid cancer, you can't get me to take GLP-1. That's even in the disclaimer. Cannot. Cannot.

Just for some clarification, that what they do have up north for our library and recreation services is a self-imposed millage.

Right.

Self-imposed. So the fact that you say they have something, they're paying for it. Others could do the same if they wanted to. What I'm a little concerned about is, downtown Palm Harbor, which is really the oldest downtown in Pinellas County, that has zero dedicated funds for that area. Now we're out on the streets talking to corporations about raising money to provide some foundation for work in downtown, whether it's just common area garbage services for one, There's nowhere to turn for funding. I remember talking about this 10 years ago about a small 10-year 50% CRA just to get some funding for infrastructure work in that area. And it didn't go anywhere and CRAs have since then become something that we have to really scrutinize carefully. But there is no dedicated funding for downtown. And so what the MSTU does provide are outlets for assistance for some of those infusions of money on areas where government normally steps forward. but in this case doesn't. So for different reasons, I would just be careful about that and how we phase that out. If we're gonna phase it out, let's think about that because again, to the point about tell me what we're gonna do for funding for downtown Palm Harbor instead of that, then I'll listen. I think we just have to be careful We continue to get people interested in more and we're not moving as fast as I would like to see it. So just something to think about as we have the overall discussion.

So again, we'll think about some ideas and we'll bring that back for the workshop. And then finally, you know, it shouldn't go unnoticed because when you're looking at how do we get there and which is, you know, kind of the start of the topic here. The 3% budget reduction scenarios, we used to call them stress tests, that were outlined in the BIS meetings. The departments almost across the board implemented those. So that's the way they did that. We had hard positions where we said, you've got to meet a flat budget, and a department's all people. We said, well, then we've got to reduce down by people. And so how are you going to figure that out, you know? And it was up to them to come up with the way in which they would get there. Those are hard decisions because those are people that are doing a good job. They're working hard. But there's no way to get there without looking hard at each department because they're so different. And so that is the way that we got to bring you a balanced budget here today. Some of our revenue targets, so you know we looked at all we also looked at our county parts We we have a flat fee for parking at six dollars a day that was increased a year ago from five dollars a day But the remaining haven't been looked at in 15 years So we're proposing that we go to three dollars and fifty cents an hour, which is consistent with most of the municipal parking When we then we have some adjustments in boat ramps and an annual pass fees We'll outline those and we'll go over those there with their within your packet We also changed to approve our cost recovery, so where we can charge off through special funds and things like that, we've tightened that up to, again, divert as much away from property taxpayers, you know, so we're less reliant upon property taxes. So the necessary policy shift is we've got to reassess with continued unfunded mandates, with a really flattening of our property taxes. Up 1.2%. Our property taxes, I mean, many are still off the tax rolls, and your valuations are pretty stagnant. Limited revenue, new growth. If you look at neighboring counties, how their budgets are surviving is because they have a lot of new growth. whether the cost of that new growth actually pays for the service is debatable, right? But they're still getting that new growth, full EAB coming on to the tax rolls. That's how they're balancing. We're limited. Unless you're going up, you know, there's not a lot of new going on. So we're reassessing our services to what is our core responsibility. We're considering whether other partners should carry more of that cost, as we've just talked about. And each time we bring up one, there'll be an argument against it. I get that. And we can have those discussions, and you can ultimately decide how you want to balance these competing demands. We're going to evaluate whether the results of our different programs are measurable. If we can't measure it, then we've got to determine whether it's something we need to continue. And we're going to review, you know, whether our services are sustainable. We've looked, and a lot of these are the result of fall studies began last year, but I ask that we continue to look. There's more that's coming. We talked about the healthcare for the homeless. An implementation on whatever we did would take a year to implement anyway, but that's coming for your discussion as soon as it's available. But as we think about the options and ideas that we have here today, what are the other things that you want us to study and look at and dig into, look to the state or other agencies to provide for next year to where we can begin those reviews in October and to where they're ready in spring, not coming up at the budget time. Again, as we talked about, we're continuing the transportation funding for our roads, bridges, drainage, and sidewalks. Our capital plan is really an asset management system, and we make targeted improvements and make decisions about capital plans based upon that analysis. Our beach nourishment is continuing, and we're continuing our enterprise projects. Within our workforce, we're proposing within this budget a 3% salary increase, which is very competitive compared to all of our municipalities. I think that's probably one of the lowest. That puts our general fund, the cost of that is $2.2 million for the general fund. All other funds, $4.2. The sheriff's amount. WHICH IS SIMILAR IS BAKED INTO HIS ORIGINAL REQUEST. WE'RE CONTINUING IMPLEMENTATION OF OUR WORKDAY ERP SYSTEM. THAT'S VERY IMPORTANT. A LOT OF THE REPORTS AND INFORMATION THAT YOU ASKED FOR AS PART OF THIS BUDGET PROCESS IS A MANUAL PROCESS. IT'S NOT AS SIMPLE AS PUSHING A BUTTON. THIS WILL GIVE US A LOT MORE HORSEPOWER FOR ANALYTICS AND TOOLS AS WE PLAN AND IMPLEMENT OUR BUDGET. AND THEN AGAIN, PLANNING FOR OUR NEW CAMPUS CONTINUES. And I think we have a presentation coming up here at the next work session on that. So the trim notices go out on the 17th. We have a budget workshop on August 20th, another budget workshop on September 3rd, and our first public hearing on September 10th, and budget adoption on September 24th. With that, that concludes my presentation. People, happy to answer any questions.

Mr. Scott, I'm going to come to you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Barry, how much in the increase in the general fund this year, how much of that is new growth versus just increase in overall value?

Yeah, I'm going to need to get back to you, Commissioner. I don't have that right now.

Okay. And then on reserves, Barry, I think on one of our one-on-ones, you said that we were adding, was it $5 million or something in reserves?

It's a little more than that, about $6 million. But, yeah, so that's going towards our – it's going to reserves, but I'd really like to pull that out and put it into the new campus fund because the amount is really towards a future bond payment. And so we're going to get here in four years, and we're going to have a bond payment that you don't have money to prepare, and you're going to be doing cutbacks for it. So I'd like to phase in that amount to where each year we'll put more towards capital, but we'll have capacity within our operating budget for that bond payment.

So if we shifted that $6 million over there, what percentage would our reserves stay at then?

It's right at the two months. It's right at two months, 16.89%, something like that. Which is below our policy, right? It's below our policy, but it meets the GFOA minimum standards. All right, thank you.

Again, that's what, yeah, minimum standards, but that is the number, 16.7, 16.9. We've chosen historically to have it higher, but yeah. Commissioner Peters, I'm sorry.

CRAs, we have to dig up and find money, whether it's now, this year, or next year. I've talked to you about the CRAs. I think maybe some CRAs ought to be reevaluated. I think maybe some of the boundary areas of CRAs can be reevaluated, where downtown St. Pete don't, I think they've met their purpose for the downtown section of St. Petersburg, that I think CRAs ought to be reevaluated. And that money that we're giving to cities ought to come back to the county. And I was hoping you were going to present something like that to us. You haven't. I know we have a contract, but we're looking at cutting a contract on Wheaton Island. So it's not about cutting contracts. We cut contracts all the time. So I think that that should have been put on the table. I think reevaluating some of the CRAs. I mean, some of these CRAs have been around since 1980s. since the 1980s, and if they haven't gotten what they needed to get fixed since the 1980s, that I think there needs to be re-evaluations. And I think if you want to keep some of those CRAs, I think we renegotiate them. We renegotiate the boundaries or we renegotiate something, but I think we're past due on the CRAs.

So, Commissioner, we did look at that recently, I think last week. Joel and Don and I had a conversation about that. And to the point, they entered into those agreements a long time ago, and it's not as easy to break those agreements. And so we can put that on for discussion. We can go through those. It requires us going through each and every one of them. There's a difference whether there's debt or not. But even with that, it's more of a legal question than it is a policy question that I defer to Joel.

So I understand the debt, and I talked with legal as well. it's not as complicated based on what they told me, then I think there's options that we could go back to the table and renegotiate. And I really think that we're past due on doing that. I know when we brought it up around 2018, 19, around 19, I think, we looked at them, made some changes, made some changes to our policy. I don't remember when it was, 19 or 20. But I think that maybe some renegotiations on contracts are, Something we should look at, and like I said, I have no problem breaking contracts. I know if there's debt, we can't. I understand that one. So Dunedin, we can't. There's debt, but I think there are some other ones that have been around since the 80s that we could look at and renegotiate or eliminate.

Well, again, one of the basis behind CRAs, one of the reasons for CRAs is to have financial monies for capital, which generally involves debt. So I don't know about all the others. You made the comment about Dunedin, which they do have debt, but others undoubtedly do. I remember having the discussion last year about looking out the next five years or so, 10 years, on the average age of our employees, which are about 54 years old, and how that changing demographic getting younger will potentially save some money. And having these CRAs expire at a natural level, start refunding those dollars that we, again, the base level dollars are still coming to us. It's the increased value since they started investing in their downtown. The idea was that they could do a better job investing on a tax base that will eventually reap rewards, not only for them, but for us when it comes back. That's the premise behind it. Now, again, that's the reason and the original thought process behind it. So I don't have any problem having a discussion. And I do think that we're being, you notice how I said, I'm not even talking about a CRA for downtown Paul Marbury. I only mentioned a small little baby one to help boost them 10 years ago or eight years ago. So I do think the conversation is a good one. And I think it sends a message that we're really not interested in a lot of new CRAs, except when they really meet that need. you know, blighted concept, and that would be scrutinized even then because just of the funding.

I think you made that message pretty clear recently. Yeah. But, you know, these CRAs, the ones that you're talking about that really have the value are old CRAs, and that's, you know, to Commissioner Peter's point, when we made the policy shift, that's because we used to give 95% of it, you know.

And 30 years.

And 30 years, you know, and they didn't have a review period to where you could claw them back after 50. I mean, so that was the changes we made. you know, back in 19, and the hard part was, you know, it's like with anything, it's smaller communities where they're just getting going on stuff, or maybe they're, you know, somewhere in between, and you've got these long-term ones, and so it's kind of, it was almost like a fairness issue, so we eased that in. The board has taken a harder stance on that for new ones coming in, but it's how do we deal with some of these legacy CRAs that really have the value in those. They do begin to fall off, but not till 2032. And so, you know, what do you do between now and then? And so we can certainly take a look at them. We have to look at them individually, and I have to get legal counsel involved, and I'd be happy to do that.

I would like to know what we can do, like presented to us, because like I said, the one in St. Pete is huge. Their downtown is booming. It's doing exceptionally well. Their assessments have gone up significantly. Yeah, there's still parts of the area of that CRA that I could see still need it, but that doesn't mean we can't redo a contract and redraw the boundaries. Clearwater's had theirs since 1980. Not a lot has happened. And at some point, if you haven't gotten anything to happen, then how long are you gonna let them continue? So I just think that is, I think Brian mentioned it was $24 million we give away. And I think it's something we need to seriously take a look at.

Two and a half full rollbacks.

Pardon me? That's two and a half full rollbacks, yeah. There you go. And to the point of, like you're saying, Commissioner, that if they're investing those dollars for a better return, but a lot of times it's not happening. And I think they all need to be scrutinized anyway. I think the new ones that we started have that midterm adjustment or midterm review, which makes them on notice.

They have a midterm review, and we classified them differently, 95, 75, and 50. 50, yeah. Yeah.

And 10 years. Correct. At the low end. So I think it gives, it was giving opportunity for different kinds of CRAs that fit better. Right. But even them, perhaps, we need to look at, so.

I'm saying.

Commissioner Sheard, did you? Yes, thank you very much, Chair. I just quickly, since we seem to be wrapping up here, I wanted to give my two cents on where we're on the budget. I read Chris Rose's memo on a full rollback, which would have quoted to $10.4 million, which I thought was very encouraging because I believe our budget, the state budget, and our city's budgets, they're replete with examples of redundant, duplicated services. We're spending money on programs that other people are spending money on, and I think we have several of those that we can eliminate. And so, matter of fact, if you remember last year, I proposed $26 million in cuts Very, very little, I think only a million of that was accepted and they're still valid right now. I intend to add some more to this for our discussions coming up. So I'm very encouraged that we can get to a full rollback. And for those of you who are opposed to Amendment 3, which please don't count me in that.

I'm sorry, say that again.

For those of you who are opposed to Amendment 3 and whether or not people are gonna vote on the caps, I would say to you, this is our last chance to show the people of Pinellas County that this commission can stop the growth of spending and government flat hold this year. We only have to come up with 10.4 million. If we want to save Weed Island, we need to come up with 10.9. And I believe that that's very achievable. And then going into November, you can say, hey, we stopped the growth of government completely. It's now zero, because every year this commission has nibbled away at the millage rate. So if we just get one more nibble at it, and we get it down a full rollback, which is only $10.4 million, we can say we stopped the growth of government. Anyway, I just wanted to remind you that because I came here to reduce taxes. I didn't come here to, I mean, that's one of the major reasons that I'm here, and I'd like to show the people we can do it. And so, yes, I want to save Wheaton Island for sure, but I really believe that if we work hard, we can come up with $10.9 million to have a full rollback and save Wheaton Island. That's kind of what my goal is for the next two weeks.

And I think some of the point that the staff has made, and I understand what you're saying. I've been asking for no growth government for a while as well. I think it's a healthy thing to do. The issue has been the incremental increases in some of those mandates that have made it more challenging, right? If we didn't have those, even last year, I remember Commissioner Scott bringing the whole concept of the full rollback being thwarted by some of the last minute increases that we had. So it makes it, Deeper and more difficult.

Last year a full rollback would have been $25 million. This year a full rollback is only $10.4 million. So we're really close.

I think we can challenge staff to look at that before we have our budget workshop, which is next week, and see what that looks like. See what it starts to look like. Because I mean, it has to be specific. Again, this year on these items, we need to be giving them some definitive direction and not just general. Sometimes it's just general, but sometimes it's very specific too. So we'll have that healthy conversation. When is it, Barry? When's the next one? The 20th. The 20th will be that first full workshop. Correct. And more to come. And more to come. Yeah. One of you guys.

You got lots of lights on.

Yeah. Am I seeing hands anywhere else?

Yeah. We got Renee.

Okay. Let's go to Commissioner Nowicki. I'm sorry. And then we'll go to Commissioner Peters. And then we'll go. All right.

Yeah, thank you, Chair. And thank you, Commissioner Scheer. I mean, I definitely echo a lot of your concerns. First off, you know, I've been responding to pretty much every single email that's been hundreds of emails on Wheaton Island and Shell Key. You know, both of those are within my district, District three. I don't take it personally, but, you know, I definitely want to preserve those and would love to go to the state you know, maybe they transfer ownership to us. You know, I'm not opposed to that either. So I definitely think we gotta do everything we can do to preserve all of our parks and all of our preserves. I'm gonna get in more in some of those details that you were mentioning, Chair, you know, for the 20th, But I think when we look at the budget presentation, it's a little misleading to say the budget only grew 1.2%. When you look at 2025 actual, what we actually spent, it grew by over 14%. So it's not really fair, I don't think, for the general public to say, oh, well, we only grew 1.2%, but compared to what we spent the previous year, it's actually a 14% growth. So budget to budget, sure, it's only a 1.2% growth, but budget to actual and that's really what matters is what we act what we're actually spending it's over 14 percent growth um and when we get into some of these you know we're talking a lot about positions i mean the county administration has grown 250 employees since 2016. and you look at the tax collector, the clerk, supervisor of elections, property appraiser, BTS, you factor all of those other constitutionals in, they've all reduced their size by 10 employees, net loss of 10 employees, all those other departments combined, but yet county administration has grown 250 filled positions since 2016. And so I'd like to see, you know, services the residents are getting for those extra 250 employees over the last 10 years now that have been filled, while yet other departments like BTS, the clerk, tax collector, property appraiser have all reduced or have remained flat in their employee count in that same period of time. And I hear nothing but great things of services for all of those constitutional officers. So I'm in favor of a full millage rollback. I'm also with Commissioner Scheer. Please don't lump me as a no for Amendment 3. You know, I'll be voting yes for Amendment 3. You obviously got to see the new language from our state attorney first once he comes out with it, or Attorney General. But I would be in favor of it. And also, the state has given us a lot of money too. I did ask staff to get us some numbers on what we've gotten from the state. I did ask last yesterday, but didn't quite get that. But I mean, just from like DEP and the last six years, I mean, it looks like we've gotten over $20 million. you know, if you include last year and then back to 2020, we've gotten over $20 million from the state and $43 million from the DEP. You know, so I mean, you know, the state, you know, has been a good partner. So I don't want that, you know, message to get lost, you know, by some of the other, you know, comments. I think the state's been a great part, been a great partner. So I'll save the rest of my specifics for the 20th. But, you know, I think administration is being tasked with you know coming with specifics on where we can eliminate and not mislead when we talk about 1.2 percent i'd like to see what it is compared to our actuals not our budgets and i've been saying that you know for over a year now in last year's budget so thank you yeah and sometimes just just as a side and i'm not going to get into the details because frankly the staff can give those to us sometimes we look for grants

We don't know we're gonna get them. They're not necessarily in a budget, and then we get grants. And so they become part of the actuals that you're talking about. And I'm not saying that's where all the, I'm not sure about this 250 new employees thing either. I'd like to, Barry, I'd like to hear more about the 250 employees. I didn't have any clue on that.

I would like to see those numbers also.

Yeah, so.

Yeah, well, I went to Human Resources and got it, so I'll be happy to share the data with all the commissioners. Jeff, if you're listening.

We'll have actuals. I will point that out very clearly.

Address that because my understanding has been since 08, 09 to where we are today has been very minimal growth. That number is significantly different. So I'm sure you'll address that.

I absolutely can.

But I do also want to understand that piece of where you have grants that are added to our expenses because they give us money which is great, but we expense it in the year that we have all of our other expenses and they get rolled in there. So it might be nice to know the pieces of our monies that are grant related on the expense side. They're correspondingly have a revenue side as well. But when people always look at the growth in government and costs, you sometimes don't take the revenue piece into account and the cost can go up because of the increased revenue offsetting it so i just just a piece to to understand a little bit answer a big deal and the sheriff is is almost solely the the cost increase and it's all people based you know and so we can we can absolutely show that again perspective on the 20th will be important so we can really dive into some of this um Vince, are you finished? Excuse me, Commissioner, are you finished?

Yes, sir. I happily yield back and leave comments for everybody else. Thank you. Commissioner Peters, thank you.

So just one comment. You know, I'm not saying I'm not supporting Amendment 3 at all. I'm not saying that at all. I don't believe the sky will fall if it passes. I think there will be difficult. extremely difficult decisions if it passes. But to your point, Commissioner Shear, $10 million is a rollback, but yet we got a $12 million unfunded mandate. Had we not gotten the unfunded mandate, we could have easily done a rollback. And it's just, I think that's the part of the discussion that doesn't get included when people look at our budget and the challenges we have and that we haven't been able to roll back farther because Perfect example would have been $10 million to roll it completely back, but we got a $12 million unfunded mandate. So that has to be part of the conversation because if you don't raise awareness, people don't know. They just don't know. So I just wanted to point that out, that it would have been really easy had we not gotten that COLA, particularly that's $5 million. It would have been much easier. Can we still do it? Sure. If we really want to. you know, bite that bullet and make it really hard this year, we certainly can do it. But I think you have to recognize that conversation. And yeah, we do, we got that ARPA money, we got in the HUD money, that all comes in and then you have to spend it. So that isn't just general government, but it is how your budget will fluctuate, and it looks on paper. You can say, oh, your budget went up so much, but they don't consider that that's pass-through money going back to the citizens, and so it looks like it got inflated, but yet the core function of government never changed, even though those numbers fluctuated. And so I think we have to, if you're going to get us data, that's the core function is where we've got to, You can't include the ARPA and the HUD because it's kind of a flow through. But yet we have to get staff to manage it. So we still have to pay people to manage it. And I think that you're gonna find that a lot of that became that fluctuating with those revenues coming in. But just that's all. Thank you. And thank you to staff and Chris Rose and all the departments. I know this wasn't easy and I know next year is gonna be harder. even if Amendment 3 didn't pass, they're going to pass laws that are going to make it more challenging. And I don't think it's a bad exercise to make government be... Nope. more conservative. I just don't think it's a bad exercise, so.

To your point, it's not a bad exercise and we can make smaller government. I just want it to be clear as we have these discussions where some of those tough decisions will have to be made next year. And so that folks don't, and I've said this before, so folks don't come back to us and say, you didn't tell us what it would look like. So we need to be ready to have conversations about what it might look like. That's all. And I think that's what we owe to our residents, despite the fact that they'll say that we're trying to scare them. And that couldn't be further from the truth around this table. But there's a point there. Commissioner Scott, you were up.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I agree with what Commissioner Scheer said. We're very, very close to a full rollback. I view this budget season as a dress rehearsal for next year. Because even if Amendment 3 doesn't pass, something's going to come back around. I mean, something else is going to come. So I'd rather not keep something in the budget this year that we're just going to have to take off the table again next year anyway. So that's kind of the way that I'm approaching this. And if Amendment 3 passes, I mean, the sky is not going to fall, the world is not going to end, and people are not going to die, right? We'll figure it out. Are they going to notice, will residents notice a difference in the service delivery and perhaps even what services are delivered? Probably, yeah, they probably will. But we will most certainly figure it out. But that's the approach that I'm having to all of our budgets, whether it's PSTA or for Pinellas or whatever. This is a dress rehearsal for next year, so we better just get ready for it. And I've got some specific items. I'm not gonna go through all of them today as I've been working through the budget, some questions and thoughts and areas that maybe perhaps we can save some money as well. And I think Sarah raised is a great idea. I'd love to look at that. Maybe there's a couple million bucks there, but having 12, 13 million unfunded mandates from the state just creates challenges all the way around.

But I'm sure we'll have a couple of robust discussions coming up. I do appreciate what you said about your other boards that you're on. We're working very hard at PSTA right now to find savings and eliminate routes that people are not using. Ford Pinellas has done a good job of coming through on budget reduction. The boards that you're sitting on, they look like a small number, but they're not. They add up fast when there's 15 of them. So your other committees that you're on, your boards, push them as well, because this is the good year.

I don't know how many unfunded mandates they have, but the challenges are a little more robust here. They are. But, you know, really, even if it doesn't pass, it's going to be over 50%, which means a lot of residents are still telling us They want it now. It's time. Regardless of whether we're forced to do it or not. There's still an appetite in Tallahassee for it anyway.

Commissioner Flowers, you were on the ... Nope. You're good?

Sorry. Anybody else before we wrap this up? Okay. That concludes my report. Thank you. All right. and we took care of harry's group already so we're going to jump into commission new business and we'll start with commissioner scott thank you mr chairman um i want to uh thank all of the residents that came out to speak tonight for today

and also that have been emailing us on their passion for Whedon Island. I mean, we had a good discussion about that here today, and I think it's very clear that all of us view Whedon Island as a gem and an asset of the county. and that we wanna make sure that that gets preserved going forward. But I just wanna thank everybody, all the residents for their engagement on that. Commissioner Scott, just one second, please.

I'm sorry to interrupt you. We had a couple of Zoom callers that I mentioned earlier that were gonna be on board to talk after the budget. And we found that they're not involved. I just wanted to make sure that they, anybody thought we didn't forget them, so. Excuse me for interrupting you.

No, no problem. No problem. Data centers, I can still continue to get quite a bit of engagement on data centers. So I just want to be clear to anybody that's watching and listening to that. There is no proposal for any data center in unincorporated Pinellas County. And forward Pinellas is looking at investigating what a framework might look like for land use and zoning. to make sure that something doesn't sneak in on us. And also I think that we've talked at least privately on some one-on-ones about investigating resource management if certain developments are gonna come in that are gonna use X power or X water that it requires a different level of review process. So I just wanna make sure that we don't forget about those discussions and that we continue to have that And we bring that forward. I also want to thank, well, this past week, I'm sure you all heard about the Waddles trial. So I want to thank Director Renner and her team for their professionalism throughout this last year, as that was a very high-profile case that came to conclusion. And I also want to thank the community-based advocates for their efforts on animal welfare, Elizabeth Olson, Jamie McKnight, and Connie Pavlik, for all of their education and outreach efforts. They've been tremendous. And because of their efforts, I know that animal welfare is a priority issue for thousands of our residents. And many more of our residents are engaged with the justice system by attending the court and advocating for animals who don't have a voice. Activity reports, our PSDA board meeting, I mentioned that we're all working towards trying to get a full roll back there. And I wanna thank my fellow commissioners, Nowicki, Peters, and Shearer that sit on that board with me for all of their hard efforts. I spoke at the Bel Air Rotary Club. Senator DeSigley and Kathleen Peters kind of passed each other on the way in and out, attended the Seminole Sports Association back-to-school event and bench dedication and got to see all the great work that they're doing over there in restoring those fields. And I've also had the opportunity to have a listening session in Tarpon Springs with Mayor Koulianos and Commissioner Banther, hosted North County office hours at the Palm Harbor Library, and held office hours in Tierra Verde at fire station number 21. And then finally, I attended a night out at the North Ward School over in Clearwater, which was a really, really well attended event. There was a couple hundred residents that showed up to go in and tour the school and give their input on what they like to see how that property gets redeveloped. So that is my report, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Chair. Just working on the budget. No new business to share with the board at this time.

Not the same. I have no new business either.

Thank you, Chair. On July the 22nd, I attended my PSTA board meeting. I enjoyed working on that board. I think we're making a lot of good choices and not. And we also talked a lot about the ferry that's coming, which is very exciting. The ferry's been purchased. It's on a ship. That ship is on a shipping ship, and it's being shipped to us right now. So that's pretty great. And we also talked about the buses and the routes that we don't need anymore. Fourth, I also attended PSTA meeting to work on our vision and mission statements with Commissioner Peters. Were you there, Commissioner? No, I can't remember. But anyway, we're working hard on a new mission statement, which I think will focus us, the PSTA, if we know what our mission is, we'll be more efficient in our choices and what services to provide. On the 22nd, I met with Mr. Stevens at the Tampa International Airport. We went over their plans for the future. We talked about coordination with PAI and also with Clearwater Executive Airport and how they want to roll out their evitals. The director's running a tight ship over there, so it was good to have time with him. I also got to talk to him about the new 727 route that's running from St. Pete to Tampa International, which I think is going to be a great thing because it's very expensive to park there. On the 29th, I was able to attend for the first time a Big C meeting. I was very excited to go to a Big C meeting because it's always on the same day as PSTA board meetings. I never get to go. But it was good to go. I got to go there with Commissioner Peters and Rector and Gaddis. And I got to visit with the Suncoast Fire Department while I was there. And it was just great. On the 30th of July, I did meet. But with Suncoast Fire Rescue, I met Chief Grimes over at their offices on Indian Rocks Beach. I heard a lot about what they had to say today. And so, you know, anyway, I appreciate them bringing me in, telling me what they do and how they do it. It was good to be there with them. And then on the 6th of August, we all got to talk about the pie renovations in St. Pete Clearwater, and I'm really excited about what I see going on out there. So anyway, and that, and reading this book has been my month. So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. A little bit of a busy season. The Florida Association of Counties continues to move forward with its governance and oversight committee that we have that's just kind of reviewing the policies that govern and operate the Florida Association of Counties and updating those. So we hold those meetings weekly. I'm very appreciative of that. This is not related to business, but I celebrated my grandbaby's one-year birthday, so she turned one years old at Chuck E. Cheese, needless to say. We had a party at Chuck E. Cheese, so I just had to give a shout-out to her. Huh? No, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Also... I would encourage, if you haven't had an opportunity to do so, to please go down and visit the Woods and African American Museum and their new exhibit. It's absolutely fabulous. So if you get a chance to go down and visit that, that would be great. I had a chance to, on yesterday, attend my Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council meeting. And as Commissioner Scott was saying, as it relates to data centers, that was a topic of conversation. We actually have a white paper now, which I'm going to be sharing with you guys through email. Because, of course, we have a number of member governments, some that are like Pasco County, more in some rural communities where the potential for a data center to come and be built on a massive size is huge. something that is doable for that area. So we did create a white paper and it's just gathering of all information, trying to separate fact from fiction on it. So I'll be more than happy to share that with y'all. We also had a panel presentation discussion yesterday from a representative from CAVTOR, which is out in Virginia. Loudoun County. And why they were important to me is because they've had a data center going all the way back to when it was AOL, if you can remember that far back. And I think now they have a total of six or seven. I'm not advocating for data centers, but I thought it was important to have someone communicate about how they had data centers operating way back then and the growth in the data centers within their communities now, and how they went from small scale to extremely large scale. So anyway, that was a really good presentation. I did ask her, I'm gonna talk to her a little bit more, and I hope to have her present at our back legislative conference to be able to give their perspective on that. We welcomed the city of Zephyr Hills. They are our 30th member to the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council. So Dr. Steven Spina is the council president there and he will be serving on the board, but they hadn't been a part of the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council for over 10 years. So I think it speaks volumes to individuals wanting to come and be a part of a regional approach to our growth and development within the state of Florida. We went through our budget process, just the draft budget. I did share with... As other county and city governments are sharing as well, we're not sure what's gonna happen with the amendment in November, but if something does happen, we will certainly be looking at the associations that we pay dues to, because that would be some low hanging fruit that I'm sure we'll be looking at. So the budget that we have created really addresses if we were not to have certain financial considerations. how would that program continue to operate? We also had a nice presentation from the Tampa Bay Estuary Program. So they continue to do a really good job here in our community, and I'm very thankful and grateful for what they do for all of us. Jack Mariano, commissioner in Pasco County, is now the chair of Frica, which is the Florida Regional Council Association. So we have a local person within our community in our back door that is now the chair of FRCA. So they'll be having a lot of information that comes to us. And we welcomed a new fellow. The University of South Florida has been a really good partner in having individuals in their graduate programs to see about partnering and coming to serve as a fellow with the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council. His name is Patrick DiCicco, and we want to welcome him on board. He's doing a really good job. We did have a presentation from Pinellas County government on green spaces and how to utilize green spaces more efficiently and effectively to help with the reduction of the utility, electricity that we use and other things. So it was a really good presentation. So I just wanna thank Pinellas County for always taking the lead or being the lead in a number of things. throughout the community. Area Agency on Aging, we did complete our strategic plan for the next couple of years. So I am hopeful that we will continue to be supported because it provides some very necessary services to our seniors, as well as a lot of our veterans. And oftentimes when those individuals see someone from Area Agency on Aging, Pinellas and Pascoe, That is the only visit or visit tour that they receive for that day. I've been invited to serve on a couple of panels. I'll be presenting with the National Organization for Women at their conference that will be held at the Hilton in downtown St. Pete. There's a meet and greet on Friday that starts at six. And then there's a panel that I will be moderating that on Saturday of this week that starts at 930. Also, I've been invited to serve on a panel with Dr. Byron Green. I'm sorry. And really it's talking about what's going on with the state legislature, of course, what's going on with the property tax amendment and any of the new laws that have been signed or bills that were signed into law that have already taken effect and how that affects our community. I'll be meeting with the president of the University of South Florida, President Moez. I'll be meeting with him on the 26th just to talk about relationship building. I know that USF does a phenomenal job when they are trying to predict any red tide occurrences, how bad those occurrences will be, how it will affect society. the industry that we have for the fishing industry here locally so i look forward to that and i'll certainly bring back additional information for those of you that share with me that you wanted to be appointed to a committee with the florida association of counties please note you should have already received your letter if not it's forthcoming that says congratulations and welcome to the committee so thank you all for those that um were able to serve i know some wanted to serve but time just does not allow but please know that even if you are not assigned to to a committee um if you come to the conference you certainly are welcome to talk about, communicate, and make any suggestions on any of the proposed legislative policies that come forth. In that same vein, if you desire to have something presented as a potential policy for consideration by the association, please draft that out and get that to us so that we can include it for the committee discussion and it can be included when we are presenting to the full body and we'll be voting on those items. And that is, oh, happy first day at school, Pinellas County School of Scholars. My grandson is a sophomore this year. He has a permit to drive. Everybody pray for him and get over out of the way. No, he drives pretty good. For all of our students that started back today, I went to Melrose Elementary this morning, and we welcomed the students and the parents, and we had about 15 volunteers from the community to come out. Melrose was noted as an A school, and Campbell Park is also noted as an A school, first time in Campbell Park history. to be noted as an A school. So we wanted to make sure they started out on the right foot. So continue to support our scholars, both elementary, middle, and high school, and become a mentor if you have the time. There are several students that are in need of that. You're welcome.

First, I would start by echoing Commissioner Scott's comment about Jennifer Renner and Elizabeth Olsen and the work they're doing on behalf of animal welfare. Essentially they hold different people accountable. I couldn't be more proud of Jennifer at Animal Services and Elizabeth Olsen has raised the standard across the region uh... as far as judges considering issues and in sentencing and all of that i thought the sentencing and the way the the judge responded to the uh... what was the name of the pig uh... waddles was just uh... reprehensible it is just at least stick with the law stick with uh... without the emotions we have a lot of people taking care of and looking out after our children that's not to be ever compared with with our animals but certainly the people they're stepping up and helping with animal welfare um are just uh amazing folks so thank you for bringing that up commissioner scott um we had a couple people here on the funding for the ems thing barry and i know that that whole system we have to take a look at. And I'm gonna just continue to encourage you to bring that forward for more and more discussion because from my perspective, that fund is losing money today and the reserves that we will continue to use up, it will be depleted in 2032, more or less. I'm not saying these are definitive numbers. But what I'm saying is that we have to look at this more holistically so that we have a healthy fund there. And maybe it's not giving a whole seat. Maybe it's only a half a seat. Maybe we start to take back some. We just have to make sure that that seat, that that fund is healthy. And so I know that you're gonna have some more of those conversations.

I am. I'm actually meeting with, I'm going to the fire chief's meeting, Matt and I, here at the end of this month, and we're going to have discussions directly with all the fire chiefs about how to approach this. We're going to be seeking their input, their ideas, as we look at this globally. This has been a discussion point each year for the last eight years, but that structure's 15, 20 years old, so it is time to look, and so we're going to be doing that.

Well, we're eight years closer to 2032, so we got to jump on that. I look forward to those conversations. I really wanted to commend the City of Dunedin for their Purple Heart Ceremony last Friday. It was one hour, they were in and out, done, but they introduced two new memorials there, one of them being a Gold Star Bench, and they just keep ramping up there, and they did a great job. I just really want to commend them. It's really a big deal to me, and I think several cities are doing it. There's an effort now to create a Purple Heart Park up in Palm Harbor. It's kind of taking some grassroots. We've got some work to do. Hopefully this time next year they'll be having their own Purple Heart Ceremony. But I know Father Swick and a couple of other members of our community are interested in taking a look at that. So we'll need to have that conversation later. I was invited to the Mayor's Council to participate. Mayor Rector asked me to join them and to have a permanent kind of spot there for the chairman and or designee, probably would be the vice chairman at this point. But I was able to go and have some conversations, some of which we had today, talking about the budget and that kind of thing. JWB gave their presentation. Kevin Hendrick was there. He's the superintendent of schools. Talked about the schools not being directly affected by these changes, these proposed changes. Nonetheless, there's a lot of indirect effects that are coming at the schools. And so it doesn't look as clean as possible. JWB would be affected considerably, and some of the funds that they provide to the school will be affected considerably, and there's others. But it was very enlightening. It was good to have the superintendent there, and I really enjoyed being there and being a part, listening to our mayors discuss being a part of this county and the things that go on. And then I'm gonna finish up with, as you know, we have all the constitutionals and all of us sit down to talk about the county attorney's review and the new county attorney that we recently appointed. And again, not getting into any of the details, but Don Kroll and I will be meeting on Friday. to further the discussion on that compensation package, make sure that we come to a mutual agreement understanding to bring to you. One of the things that came up in that conversation, and I just really wanted to get your all's take, so I know everybody's kind of ready to move on, but just real quickly, there was a sense from the group that we be more accountable to our residents by coming up with one number that reflected all of the elements of that package. So that when we give them a salary, sometimes it could be said, well, there's other things that are included that you're not giving. And so that was my charge to have that one number. After I left there and thinking about the second piece of that, which is comparing to other communities, because one of the things that people are doing now are comparing the county attorney's salary, and Barry's salary to other communities, and they all present it separately. So what I'm thinking of doing is providing the details in that representation to you all and to our residents with a total. So I just want to make sure that you all, I'm comfortable just bringing that back to you all, because I think we accomplished what the overall board wanted, which was transparency. But I think from a competitive comparative standpoint, I think we need both information to come here for approval and then presented to our residents. I'd hate for our residents to say that's the number that they're gonna compare to all the others when it may be a lot more than that and it's not in line. So I'm gonna bring both of those information. I'm assuming everybody here would be comfortable with me just bringing that here and not convening a larger meeting. I think we're accomplishing what the board wanted us to do, which was transparency of a total And yet, I think the descriptions of what we use to compare to others is important as well. So that's my intention, unless I hear something to the contrary, that's what I plan to do. I'll be bringing it here, probably the first meeting, maybe the next meeting, but for sure the first meeting in September.

I remember in that meeting we talked and they all felt it was fine if you did it, but since there were a couple that had concern about that price, are you going to be, whatever we might do, are you going to be checking in with those board members first?

No. No. They asked me to negotiate the deal and bring it here for approval. Okay. I mean, what was the comment from a county attorney about having a discussion with...

I discourage it. However... In theory, this is not going back to that committee to be discussed or for a vote. The County Attorney Oversight Committee. However, if you all have a discussion here and feel that you need their input, it could go back to that committee. So I really do discourage it. It seems that today it's not foreseeable that that would happen. So in theory, it could be fine. We could invite the constitutional officers to the county commission meeting at which you could discuss it and they could weigh in. But keep in mind that the contract between the administrator and the county attorney is with the county commission. It's not with the Oversight Committee. The County Commission is who funds these positions and the contract is with the County Commission. There is also a provision in your charter that states that the county attorney, although selected and reviewed, and I guess potentially terminated by the oversight committee, reports to the Board of County Commissioners. And I know that that was something that there was discussion about back in 2016, I won't go into, but just to give you all some comfort, it is perfectly appropriate for this body to undertake the contract. It's between county attorney and the Board of County Commissioners. and the charter does specifically say the county attorney reports to this board, not directly to the oversight committee. Again, that said, you can invite the constitutionals to whatever meeting that you would take this contract up and have them appear here. They could comment to you just like any other citizen could, and I'm sure you would give them great latitude with their comments.

To that end, them giving me input without any response? So you're not having a discussion, but a one-way transmittal of a thought or an opinion

A one-way communication is always allowed. And like I said, if this is definitely not going to go back to that committee for another vote, you can speak with them. I kind of feel a little bit of waffling, so I don't know if that would necessarily... Well, that's why I had the conversation today.

I wanted to make sure that the interpretation here is that it was really about transparency to make sure that our residents got the entire number. But I also think it's important that they see the elements of it because that's how all the county attorneys... information are being gathered by Wade Childers. When he goes and gets that, he gets all of that. So it's good to have the pieces, but also the total. And if you're okay with that, I'm gonna bring it back to you all for approval period. And I think the constitutionals have various ways to communicate with me. They can send a one way note, don't expect a response, or they can come to a meeting that we have that discussion, which will be the next meeting or the first meeting in September, okay?

You could always reach out to them and specifically advise them that it's going to be on whichever agenda it lands on. I would state that I know that Wade and his staff collected the information in the various pieces that make up the compensation package. That is also the way the Florida Association of County Attorneys collects that information and they do so every other year.

I think it's important that we show all the details and the total. Okay, I have nothing else. Sorry about that a little bit.

Can I add something on a different topic? Going back to the shade meeting, just so you all are aware, my assistant is reaching out already to each of your aides about rescheduling this potentially on the day of your next work session on August 20th. So please make sure you're taking a look at that and getting back to us so that we can work that out.

Okay. Anything else before we adjourn?

Mr. Chair, the resolution on item 41.

Hold on, hold on. Sorry. Go ahead, go ahead.

The joint resolution for item 41 needs to vote, please. For the Tri-County meeting?

The Tri-County meeting.

Oh, okay. That's what I was going to say. Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Is that what you had as well?

Mr. Chair.

Oh, so everybody. Yes, ma'am.

My apologies. Who was the seconder for that? Thank you.

Okay, everybody, thank you for trying to keep me straight. That's a difficult thing, but I appreciate everybody. All right, this meeting is adjourned.

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