Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Amen. Thank you. Thank you. Amen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ Thank you. piano plays softly

A minute or two before we start. So act like this is Commissioner Lockhart's fault that we're starting a little late, but it's not. It is not. We're stalling because the Veteran of the Month is not here. And by all means, by all means, we should wait for the Veteran of the Month. So I hear that he was five minutes out, right? That was two or three minutes ago. So I will call the meeting to order. And we're going to go maybe a little bit slowly today, which is really hard for this Jersey girl. Just let me tell you, talking that slow is not an easy thing. Welcome to the Tuesday, September 15th, 2026 Board of County Commission meeting. Where else would you rather be on a sunny afternoon like today? And for our invocation and Pledge of Allegiance, we have our own Kurt Slavkovsky from St. Peter's Episcopal Church. If you would please come up to the podium and lead us in prayer and pledge.

Thank you, Sarah.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Please join me in prayer. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Dear Father in heaven, we give thanks and praise to you for the life and blessings you have given us. It is by your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, that we are a redeemed people and by faith in him have the hope and promise of eternal life with you. Please give wisdom to our county commissioners and staff as they work hard to be fiscally conservative, but also balance out the needs and services of the people of Seminole County during this budget process. We ask that your protective hand be upon all who risk their lives for the protection and safety of others, especially our beloved firefighters, our beloved police officers, our deputies, and military. Help us to have grateful hearts for the freedom that we have in this great country and the natural beauty that surrounds us here in Seminole County. We ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Well, thank you all. We're going to reverse the order of our proclamations this morning and we're going to go to Commissioner Lockhart to read the proclamation proclaiming September 17th through the 23rd, 2026. as Constitution Week in Seminole County, Florida.

Thank you, Commissioner. Absolutely. It is my privilege to move the following proclamation of the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners for claiming September 17th through 23rd, 2026 as Constitution Week in Seminole County. whereas it is the privilege and duty of the American people to commemorate the 239th anniversary of the drafting of the Constitution of the United States, which remains the supreme law of our nation and the guiding framework for our democratic principles, rights, and freedoms. and whereas the annual celebration of Constitution Week was initiated by the Daughters of the American Revolution, who in 1955 petitioned the United States Congress to establish September 17th through 23rd as a time dedicated to honoring and reflecting upon this foundational document. And whereas Congress adopted this resolution and it became federal law when signed on August 2nd, 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower with Public Law 915 ensuring the annual issuance of a presidential proclamation recognizing Constitution Week. And whereas September 17th, Constitution Day, marks the actual date in 1787 when the delegates of the Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution in Philadelphia and Constitution Day serves as a national reminder of the enduring significance of civic education, constitutional literacy, and the responsibilities of citizenship. And whereas it is fitting and proper to accord official recognition to this historic document, its commemorative anniversary, and the patriotic celebrations that honor its legacy and continuing impact on the lives of all Americans, now therefore be it proclaimed that we, the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County, Florida, proudly express our respect and appreciation for the Constitution of the United States, and do hereby proclaim the week of September 17th through 23rd, 2026, as Constitution Week in Seminole County, Florida, adopted this 15th day of September 2026. Second.

We have a motion and four seconds. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Hearing none opposed, it passes unanimously. And I think we have folks that are here to accept this award from the Sally Harrison chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. including Dawn Garand, honorary regent, and other members. And I'm going to say, commissioners, if you join me on the floor for pictures, that would be fantastic. And I don't know if you ladies have noticed, but the media is here to cover this event.

Amen. Thank you.

I am the Regent of the Sally Harrison Chapter. Chairman, Commissioners, and distinguished guests, we want to thank you for recognizing Constitution Day through this proclamation. On behalf of the Sally Harrison Chapter, National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution, I'm honored to accept this. Constitution Day commemorates the signing of the United States Constitution on September 17, 1787, and provides an opportunity for all Americans to reflect on the freedoms and responsibilities it guarantees. As members of the DAR, we are committed to historic preservation, education and patriotism. We are grateful to the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners for joining us in recognizing the importance of our nation's founding document and encouraging civic engagement throughout the community. Thank you for your support and for helping us celebrate Constitution Day. I would also like to invite everyone here on Thursday for the ringing of the bells at the Clock Tower in Sanford. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for helping us celebrate our country. All right. We're going to move to agenda item number one. This is going to be read by Commissioner Constantine. This is a proclamation proclaiming First Sergeant Irvin Simpson, United States Marine Corps, as Seminole County September Veteran of the Month. Commissioner Constantine.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And it's all wholly appropriate in the week of the 9-11. catastrophe disaster horrific event that we honor those servicemen and women that have done so much to protect our freedoms and therefore i am honored to move the proclamation of the seminole county board of county commissioners recognizing the united states marine corps first sergeant Irvin Simpson for his outstanding service to the United States and Seminole County. Whereas the brave men and women of our Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Space Force demonstrate a resolute spirit and unmatched selflessness, reminding us there are few things more American than giving ourselves to make a difference in the lives of others. And whereas throughout our country's history, generations of service members have answered the call to leave their families, their jobs, and put their futures and even their lives on the line to valiantly defend our nation. And whereas for many service members, the sacrifices ended in permanent injury or death, yet their spirit remains in a continued preservation of our freedoms and the promise of our liberty. And whereas there are more than 25,000 living veterans in Seminole County who served our nation in times of peace and war, throughout their service they've kept America strong. And whereas First Sergeant Simpson was born and raised in Seminole County, Florida, and followed his older brother's example by serving in the United States Marine Corps from 1984 until his retirement in 2008. He began his career in administration before being selected in 1986 for the prestigious all-marine boxing team, and in 1987 was chosen to compete at the Olympic trials training camp. Throughout his distinguished service, he completed assignments in Okinawa, Japan, and at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., consistently exemplifying professionalism, dedication, and honor. Whereas during his military service, First Sergeant Simpson deployed to Iraq, where he earned the combat action ribbon. He completed drill sergeant school and devoted himself to training and mentoring the next generation of Marines, taking special care to support recruits who struggled to adapt to military life. Through disciplined guidance and steadfast encouragement, he helped shape them into confident, capable Marines, reflecting his commitment to duty and to the development of others. And whereas following his retirement from the United States Marine Corps, First Sergeant Simpson returned to Seminole County and continued his longstanding commitment to service, He has provided impact leadership as president of the East Altamont Community Association and as a member of the Seminole County Community Service Block Grant Advisory Board and through his work with the Sheriff's Comm Committee. In addition, he coordinates a youth mentorship program, consistently exemplifying the values of selfless service, integrity, and duty. Whereas First Sergeant Simpson has brought great credit and distinction upon himself, the United States of America the United States Marine Corps, and Seminole County. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County, Florida, express our gratitude, admiration, and respect for First Sergeant Simpson for his outstanding service to the United States Marine Corps. Be it further proclaimed that this proclamation be presented to First Sergeant Irvin Simpson, along with the sincere congratulations and recognition of Seminole County's Veteran of the Month. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. Congratulations. Thank you for your service. If you would, please join us for pictures front and center.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Friends, this is not why I do what I do. I have a passion for giving back and continue to give and continue to serve. And none of what I do is to get a plaque or somebody to pat me on the back or shake my hand. I do this because this is what I love to do. This is who I am. This is no put on. This is no makeup. This is who Irvin Simpson is. And I appreciate the fact that you guys recognize my hard work. And I won't forget this. I promise you. And I'm going to continue to serve. Thank you, guys. Thank you, everybody, for coming. Thank you so much. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. I see the only guy that I will only say this for. He looks better than me. This is the only man I ever said in public he looks better than me. When Sheriff Lima comes to see me, my heart steals. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Thank you for your service, and thank you for having a positive attitude 100% of the time. We appreciate you more than you know. All right, Commissioners, we have a little bit of furniture moving going on, but we have a consent agenda before this gets set up. So let's move on to the consent agenda. I'll ask if County Manager, is there any additions or deletions?

Thank you, Chairman and Commissioners. No changes to the agenda.

All right, Commissioners?

Nothing.

I've got nothing to pull.

Nothing? Are there any public comments? No, ma'am.

Madam Chair, I'd like to make a motion to approve consent agenda items number 3 through 13.

Second.

We have a motion and a second to approve items 3 through 13. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. I think we're going to need just a minute or two. to move on to our work session. County Manager, do you have anything you'd like to say before we start, or would you like to wait a minute or two?

If we could just wait a minute and two, we'll be ready to go. I would be happy to. Or we could just talk about the weather.

We could talk about the weather, but...

Go ahead and pull my presentation up. I think we're ready. Are we ready? Are we ready? We're ready.

It appears as though we're ready. We really didn't want to run the risk of dismissing this group to have you come back. So not that we don't trust us to take a 20-minute break when we give for a 10-minute break, but we wanted to keep this moving. So, County Manager, please kick us off.

Thank you, Chairman and Commissioners. Good afternoon. This is the second part of our discussion on the potential service impacts of Amendment 3. As you all are aware, at our August the 25th work session, you heard from our Parks and Recreation Department, our Public Works Department, Environmental Services, and Community Services about the potential funding reductions and what that could mean for services that they provide to our community. Today, we are going to turn our attention to public safety. You will hear from Sheriff Lima, Chief Kinley, and Alan Harris on the potential impacts to the Sheriff's Office, fire rescue, emergency management, emergency telecommunications, and animal services. Tim Jecks, our Office of Management and Budget Director, will then close with the discussion of the unfunded state mandates. Before we begin, I want to put today's discussion in perspective. Of our $562 million in revenues within our property tax supported funds, approximately 72% currently supports public safety. Another 5% supports unfunded mandates, and another 3% supports constitutional offices. The estimated Amendment 3 impact is another 21%, or $119 million. As this slide illustrates, those obligations and the projected revenue loss together exceed the revenues currently available in these funds. And I always like to quote you, Chairman, when you say the math just doesn't work. That is why today's discussion about public safety is so important. I want to thank Sheriff Lima for participating in this planning exercise. As I have mentioned at our last work session, I brought our department directors, division managers together and asked them to take a hard look at their operations and identify what a permanent 20% reduction in funding, available funding, could mean for staffing, programs, and services. The sheriff and his team went through the same exercise, and I appreciate them for taking on a very difficult task and meeting the challenge head on. With that, Chairman and Commissioners, I'd like to turn it over to Sheriff Lima.

Welcome, Sheriff Lima.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, good afternoon, Chairman, Commissioners, County Manager, and staff. First, I want to thank all of you for the opportunity to be here today, and probably more importantly, the partnership that continues to exist between this board, county leadership, and the Seminole County Sheriff's Office. We've worked through many different challenging issues together, and I appreciate your continued willingness to collaborate, share information, and look ahead to the needs of our community. I also want to specifically thank County Manager Darren Gray for keeping our team and me informed about the county's position, the work being done to educate the community, and the planning underway as we look forward to what really could be a different fiscal environment for us all. It's also important to recognize just how much of our property tax revenue actually supports public safety. Approximately 72 cents of every county property tax dollar funds law enforcement corrections, fire rescue, emergency medical services, and 911. That's important context as we consider what reduction to this size could mean across Seminole County. I also understand why this conversation is actually taking place. Families throughout Florida are paying more for groceries, gas, insurance, utilities, housing, and many of the basic necessities of everyday life. People are feeling those increases, and they're looking for relief wherever they can find it. We all understand that. My responsibility today is not to debate whether or not people actually need relief. It's to make sure that everyone clearly understands what this particular change would mean for public safety so our community can make informed decisions about what may follow. As requested by this board, our team has evaluated what a 20% reduction in the Sheriff's Office operating budget would actually mean. And I want to walk you through the results of that exercise this afternoon. As Sheriff, Florida law requires me to submit a proposed budget and certify under oath that the expenditures are reasonable and necessary for the proper and efficient running of the office. That responsibility does not change because we're conducting this exercise or because the fiscal environment may change. While our responsibility today is to illustrate what a 20% reduction would actually require, I also have an obligation to tell you that I do not believe a budget reduced by that much would remain reasonable and sufficient for this office. Simply put, it would not. For the Sheriff's Office, a 20% reduction represents approximately $41 million in annual operating revenue. As you know, our operating budget depends almost exclusively on funding appropriated by this county commission, and I think that there's an important distinction in Amendment 3 that needs to be clearly understood. The amendment specifically excludes school district taxes from the increased homestead exemption. In other words, the revenue that funds our schools is treated differently and is not subject to this reduction. There's no similar protection for public safety. And let me be very, very clear about this, because there is a false narrative that is out there suggesting that Amendment 3 offers protections for public safety. It does not. There is no public safety exemption in Amendment 3. There is no carve-out that protects law enforcement, corrections, fire rescue, emergency medical services, or the other public safety functions that our community depends on each and every day. Amendment 3 does not guarantee a minimum level of funding for any of those services. And while the amendment identifies public safety as one of the purposes for which remaining property tax revenue may be used, that's not the same as protecting or exempting public safety funding. It does not shield these services from reduction, and there's no state funding in Tallahassee waiting to replace those local dollars should there be a significant loss of revenue. That distinction is incredibly important. A reduction of approximately $41 million would compromise public safety in Seminole County. Our team has examined what that impact would look like. We are constantly looking for ways to operate more efficiently and responsibly manage the resources that are entrusted to us. This is what we do, but a reduction of this size would require us to go significantly further than that. Before eliminating occupied positions, we would make difficult reductions throughout the organization. We would freeze hiring. We would eliminate vacant positions that are not necessarily to meet mandatory responsibilities. We would rely on normal attrition whenever possible. We would consolidate functions, reduce operating expenses, delay replacement of vehicles, equipment, and technology. Travel, training, professional development, salary adjustments, and other forms of operational support would also have to be significantly reduced. Those reductions may not immediately appear to affect public safety, but over time, they carry real consequences. Reliable vehicles and equipment, current technology, and meaningful training and professional development help our members perform their jobs safely and effectively. Deferring those investments is not automatically result in unsafe conditions, but it can reduce the safeguards, preparedness, and capabilities that support deputy safety in an increasing complex environment. And we would have to begin making difficult decisions about services and capabilities that expand beyond our most basic statutory responsibilities. These are all the things that we offer. When you look at these programs, there's a difference between law enforcement and policing. Law enforcement is responding when a crime actually occurs, investigating that crime, apprehending an offender, and carrying out the responsibilities that are acquired of us by law. But modern policing goes well beyond that. It is prevention, intervention, community engagement, supporting our seniors and vulnerable population, working with young people and families, addressing people who are in crisis, and building relationships before someone ever has a reason to call 911. I have always believed that the most significant thing that we can do about crime is to prevent it from occurring in the first place. Preventing a crime means that there's no victim to recover from it, no family that are dealing with its consequences and no need for the criminal justice system to respond after the harm has already been done. For more than 30 years, one of the fundamental philosophies of our organization has been that crime is often a symptom of another problem. If we can address the underlying conditions that lead to criminal behavior in the first place, we can prevent victimization, preserve quality of life, reduce crime, and reduce the fiscal impact that is placed on our community. The challenge is that many programs that allow us to prevent crime and address those underlying conditions are not mandated services. We still have a legal obligation to respond to calls, operate the correctional facility, provide court security, and perform our statutory responsibilities. That doesn't change. Proactive efforts designed to prevent those calls do not have the same statutory protections. Budget reductions of this magnitude would significantly weaken crime prevention, early intervention, community engagement, and other proactive initiatives that contribute to our quality of life and record low crime rates. Training would be limited to what is required to maintain mandatory certifications. And there's an important difference between certification and professional training. Certification is the minimum legal requirement to actually perform the job. Professional development prepares our members for emerging threats, modern policing tactics, new technology, sound leadership, and a constant changing demands of this profession. Even after taking all of those steps, we would still be far short of a $41 million reduction. Approximately 85% of our budget, as you know, is personnel. And after exhausting all of the other available reductions, reaching 20% would still require eliminating approximately 300 positions, including those currently occupied. Losing that many people would place our community below critical and at critical operating levels, no doubt. It would fundamentally change our organizational structure and the service that we can provide. Specialized units would have to be reduced, combined, or completely eliminated. And some programs would end in its entirety. We would have less capacity for proactive services and investigative follow-up. Response time for lower priority calls would likely increase and fewer members would be available to perform the work that is currently handled throughout our organization. We would also have to end our active participation in federal, state, and regional task forces that we're currently on. At a time where complex criminal activity increasingly cross jurisdictional boundaries, our ability to confront those threats depends on resources and partnership beyond our county. Those partnerships help us investigate drugs, human trafficking, violent offenders, financial crimes, cyber crimes, terrorism, and other criminal activities while providing intelligence, expertise, technology, and resources that no individual local agency could reasonably duplicate on its own. There's another layer to that concern. These partnerships are not one-way relationships. Many of the capabilities that we rely on today are built around personnel and resources contributed by our municipal police departments and other partnering agencies. Here locally, members of Seminole County Police Departments participate alongside us on SWAT, aviation, special operations, auto theft, financial crimes, domestic security and intelligence, and the City and County Investigative Bureau, our multi-agency drug enforcement components. If Amendment 3 should pass and those agencies face significant budget reductions on their own, it is very likely that some of those shared resources would be pulled back to their home agencies or eliminated entirely. And at the same time, the Sheriff's Office could be losing members and reducing specialized capabilities. We could also lose personnel and resources that our partners currently devote to joint operations. That would further reduce the collective public safety capacity throughout Seminole County. There are responsibilities that we simply cannot eliminate. We must continue answering 911 or emergency calls, operate the correctional facility, provide court security, and meeting constitutional and statutory responsibilities, including minimum staffing requirement and enforcement, corrections, court operations, But those requirements represent the bare minimum level of service, not the full public safety service our community has today. That means positions, units, and programs without legally required staffing would absorb many of the deepest cuts. Once those capabilities are lost, they cannot simply be turned back on. Rebuilding specialized units, restoring partnerships, recruiting and training new members, and recovering years of experience and institutional knowledge would take a significant amount of time and resources. Our mission of reducing crime and the fear of crime throughout Seminole County would not change. But our ability to carry out that mission at the level that our community has come to expect would be significantly compromised. This is another reality that we must also face. Our workload does not decline simply because our funding does. Crimes will still occur. People will still call 911. Individuals will still be arrested and booked into the correctional facility. Courts are going to remain in operation. Natural disasters, major investigations, critical incidents, and other unplanned emergencies will continue to require our members, overtime, and resources. We cannot responsibly reach a number that's on paper while leaving us without the capacity to respond to those unavoidable responsibilities and unexpected events. The Sheriff's Office would not experience these pressures in isolation. You've already had conversations about many of the same difficult decisions. And if services such as public works, roads, behavioral health, and code enforcement are reduced, the underlying problems do not disappear. In many cases, they eventually become calls to dispatch or 911 and requests for law enforcement to actually respond. We also have seven municipalities in Seminole County East, which is owned police departments. Reduction in municipal police services could increase requests for assistance from the sheriff's office. And if a municipality were unable or unwilling to provide services, the responsibility with public safety would fall to the sheriff to handle. We therefore have to prepare for the real possibility of having fewer members and resources while asked to take on more responsibility because of reduction somewhere else. That is why coordination between our office, this board, county leadership, and our other government partners is so very important. We have to understand not only what services could be reduced, but where that work would go and who ultimately would respond when somebody needs help. There will also likely be questions about whether other projects or investments could simply be redirected to public safety. Not all county funding is interchangeable. Some funding is restricted or designated for specific purposes, and one-time funding cannot replace a recurring loss of approximately $41 million every year. I appreciate that this board has included us in this conversation, asked us to evaluate the potential impacts, and allowed us to provide an honest assessment of what it would mean for our members and the people that we collectively serve. I've also kept the members of the Sheriff's Office informed as well. They know Amendment 3 has not been voted on, has not passed, and no final budget decisions have been made. The reductions that I've described today are not occurring today. They know that. But what I've presented is our best and most responsible assessment of what a 20% reduction would mean for the Seminole County Sheriff's Office and our people. If we ultimately face a loss of recurring revenue, reductions will be required with real consequences for people, programs, and public safety services. My commitment is that we will continue to be responsible stewards of the research and resources that are entrusted to us and evaluate what we can do differently. We will also continue working alongside this board and county leadership to make responsible decisions that protect the public safety services our public expects and our community relies on. Again, thank you for your continued partnership, your collaboration, your commitment to Seminole County, and all of the resources that make us incredibly special. With that, I will yield for any questions or feedback.

Thank you very much, Sheriff. I would just like to say on behalf of all of us and the citizens of this community how much we appreciate you, how much we appreciate your partnership. We do realize this was a difficult task. It was a difficult task for our CEO as well. We are doing this like a business. If a business sees a downturn in an economy and they think it's coming a couple years from now, then they better be prepared for it. And so we will be prepared no matter what the voters do. We also realize this is a statewide referendum. And so while our constituency is very involved and very engaged and very educated, this will go by way of the entire state. So we had our best foot forward is to be exceptionally prepared so that it can have the least impact. So I do appreciate you. I would also say I have one slight comment that may appear to be a disagreement, but I think you'll agree with me after I say this. And that is that while technically this referendum holds the school districts harmless in the sense that they are not buckled up under this and the taxes associated with them on an ad valorem basis will be consistent, They are impacted, because when our budget is hit and your budget is hit, things are going to trickle back to them that we currently fund and you currently fund. And so to think that the schools and our children in this community are held harmless is to be very short-sighted. And I think you technically said it accurately, but we need to be thinking two steps ahead. And so we know we're sitting here with our school leadership partners, are here listening to this discussion so that we can also be lockstep with the school district. They are the single greatest economic engine, and I always extend that to Seminole State as well in this community, and ultimately there will be impact there as well. With that, I'll turn to my commissioners for any further comment. Commissioner Constantine.

Thank you very much. And Sheriff, thank you for being so articulate in presenting your concerns. And Madam Chair, you're absolutely right. Things like our own security guards and safety guards, police would have to be reevaluated as to whether we could do that. And losing 300 Patrolman officers just is incredible to think of. For those people that have come to me and said, well, I don't use parks and I don't use libraries, therefore I shouldn't have to pay for them. Everybody needs protection, public safety. So the question is that when you're dealing with this, and the folks that have thought this is panacea, Can you accurately or just give some sort of idea? You get that 9-9-9-1-1 call and you're losing I think about a fifth of your entire department. What is that going to do in the time to address or to answer that call?

Well, thank you for the question, and I do agree 100%. We have a wonderful school board, great leaders that are working there, and the indirect effects across the board would be experienced. One of the greatest responsibilities of government is to protect people. You cannot reduce the numbers of public safety professional organizations like the sheriff's office. by 300 people, not even taking into consideration what our neighboring jurisdictions would have to reduce on their own. So you're talking potentially thousands of public safety professionals in Seminole County alone that would no longer be on the job. It would allow us minimal opportunity to do all of the prevention work Calls into 911 are likely going to be delayed if they're not life-threatening emergency situations, and it would definitely, without question, have effect on the quality of life. Now, I know people will label me as fear-mongering. He's saying all of these things, and you cannot reduce by $41 million and 300 people without a realistic expectation that some services are going to be compromised. That is not politics. That is simple math. And, again, we would bend to the will of the people whatever their desire is. That is what we take our oath to do. We would prioritize emergency calls based upon imminent threat to human life and property. But all of those other things that we would do that would prevent crime, would be at jeopardy. And I think that that not only is it important from a public safety perspective, but from a fiscal perspective as well. The most expensive part of the criminal justice process is dealing with incarceration and recidivism and all of these things. So the prevention programs, although not mandated by law, are incredibly important to quality of life and preserving our peace and safety. So it would be devastating. Simply put, it is the biggest threat to the office of sheriff that we've ever experienced. Thank you.

I'm just going to let us sit on that for a minute. The biggest threat.

Ever.

Ever. Commissioner Zimbauer.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Not so much for the sheriff, but sheriff, of course. Thank you very much for your continued collaboration going through this exercise. I know that there are some municipalities and counties in the state that are just sort of waiting to see what happens and then try to figure out what they're going to do and where they go from there, which is not the best planning tool that I would say. But this is more for the wordsmithers that are here with their cameras today and the general public, which is we find ourselves in a raw reality in this county which is for at least the last five years we've collaborated with all of our constitutionals all of our departments and this board has demanded that costs be cut And that's where our seminal moments came from, that we continue to bring efficiencies to bear upon the budgets for the last five years. And we've done that to the benefit of our taxpayers. There is no question there's relief needed for the people, including ourselves. And as we work our way through this, it sincerely is our job to make sure that our public is properly informed. But the reality is this government has not started out as a fat, overweight, over-gorging tax revenue entity because the five of us here have mandated those efficiencies come to bear upon all those departments. And that's how we arrived at where we're at. That's why there was not an ad valorem increase for Almost 20 years. But here we are. And so the reality is this is something that I will argue is probably going to impact Seminole County because of our demand to be so efficient leading up to this, perhaps much more than it will other counties around the state, notwithstanding some of the smaller ones. But thank you, Sheriff. We appreciate it very much. Thank you.

Commissioner Delary.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Sheriff, thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your guidance and wisdom when it comes to law enforcement. I also want to thank your staff, both the men and women of the Sheriff's Department. They do an exceptional job, and you definitely set the bar, and the bar is high. Over the years that you've been sheriff, as well as before, every time we've gotten a budget report or budget presented to us, the Sheriff's Department always talked about the level of crime going down. Can we talk about that up until now a little bit?

Yeah, so, you know, the most significant thing that we can do about crime is to prevent it from occurring in the first place. And I think that over the past, really, two decades, starting with Sheriff Don Esslinger and his team, continuing on with our team over the past decade, have really seen a great investment in partnerships. Partnerships with our Seminole County public schools, investments in our prevention programs that don't automatically yield the results on that day. But the state of Florida talks about the state being at an all-time low crime rate and 60-year lows, they call it. Seminole County has even a lower crime rate than that. It's about half or one of the lowest crime rates in the entire Central Florida contiguous area. Now, some people may make the argument to say, well, if you've got a low crime rate, why do you need a budget? Why does your budget have to grow if things are going well? And the fact of the matter is, it's a horrifying fact, but criminologists suggest that a fraction of a crime that occurs in our community is actually ever reported to law enforcement. And those that are doubtful of that for one moment can think about tonight in Seminole County, the amount of women that will be victim to domestic violence and be fearful of stepping up or making a report. Or the amount of people that will get behind the wheel of a vehicle tonight over the legal limit of intoxication, but yet never be stopped and never be detected. Or the amount of children, more than 4,000 in Seminole County alone, that are investigated for abuse, neglect, or abandonment. and how many of those victims are pre-verbal that cannot talk about their victimization. What I worry is significant cuts like this only allows policing professionals to become law enforcement officers to respond directly to a report after it occurred invest whatever resources we have to apprehend the offender, which, for the record, we will still do, and I suspect do well. But all of those things that prevent crime, that offer resources, and all of these things that are the fundamental aspects of policing, are in absolute jeopardy from this. So again, I think the proof is in the pudding. You look at our low crime rate, the quality of life of Seminole County residents. There are not too many Seminole County residents that would want to trade places with that many people that are outside of this county. And there's a reason for that. You're a big part of it, having a good, solid, effective board of county commissioners, having a well-run county staff, having great schools. We have everything moving properly in our direction. And that's why I have such a strong opinion about this, because I've worked at this organization for more than 34 years. I've seen the progress that we've made over the years. And the last thing that I want to do is to have our community go back. Crime rate has a direct correlation to other fiscal things that occur within our community, property values and other types of things.

Sheriff, so you talked about a number of things here. It's not just a sheriff's budget. It's also the issue about working and collaborating with other organizations. That's what I'm taking away from this, as well as the prevention of crime before it actually exists. That's the biggest danger that we're going to be facing.

No doubt you've got emergency management, EMS services, fire rescue services. And I think the greatest number that you presented, I don't know that everyone saw it or was maybe not paying attention, but 72 cents out of every dollar is already going to public safety. So you could, although legally you can't do it, you could eliminate every single dollar that you generate through Avalorum revenue. and still be required to cut into public safety you could completely abolish every other area that's right and still not have enough to cut into public safety and i think that what worries me and i think our community is strongly behind our public safety professionals i think our community largely supports our police our fire our ems our military and i don't think anything's changed with that But I think that there's this false narrative that policing and fire and EMS and emergency management are exempt from any restricted resources that are coming through. And I think that through my presentation, and I'm sure that many will watch it back, you can see clearly it is not.

Thank you very much for your leadership and your words.

Thank you, Commissioner Lockhart.

I'll echo the thanks for the partnership and to the men and women of your organization. The fact that this exercise occurred and that you were able to come back here to us publicly I think is a testimony of the relationships that we do have with one another because conversations like this take trust. This is a very difficult time for our community, and there are a lot of different thoughts and feelings about what may be happening next. And I think the most important thing that we can do is continue to have open dialogue and be transparent and honest with our community. And I agree with you. I think there are some who are viewing these honest conversations as fear-mongering, and that's very unfortunate. But I appreciate you, and I appreciate everyone who's been a part of this operation.

Thank you. The last thing I'll say, if I can before I go, for those that define my narrative as fear-mongering, which there'll be some. I mean, it's inevitable. That's okay. The last thing that I would ever want to do is to communicate a message last week internally to the members that I have the privilege to lead that if this should pass, 300 people would have to be laid off. as a leader of any organization, communicating to your team and their family members that that may be a reality and not wanting them to see it first during this meeting or through media coverage or anything else was probably one of the most internal, difficult things that any leader could ever experience. And trust me, if that were not the case, I would have voided that communication at all cost. That's what's at stake here. In addition to cutting everything else, you're talking about 300 additional people. I don't even know who would want to be in policing with no budget, no merit increases, no training, old vehicles. I don't even know how you would recruit for that. But even if you could, the demands would only increase as other people experiencing the tightening of the belt would turn to us ultimately to get those services answered. Pothole in the middle of the road. Roads department is cut back by 20 or 30%. That's a call to 911. Sheriff's deputy out there, it's unsafe. There's trees that have not been maintained. You can no longer see the traffic control device. It presents a risk because you can't see the stop sign. Guess who's out there? The sheriff's office, and we're grabbing chainsaws. We're doing something like that. Again, I appreciate all of your leadership. I know you to be fiscal conservatives. I think that you're great partners, and we stand at the ready to continue collaborating and working together in anything that we can possibly do. Information to our citizens is incredibly important, and I've got great faith and confidence that once properly informed, our citizens will make the right decision, whatever that decision may be on this.

Thank you, Sheriff. I will close this out by saying that I, too, have great faith in our citizens. I have less faith in the rest of the state, quite honestly. There are a lot of factors here. One of the things that we've said a few times up here is that this has been an exercise, and I would tell you that I look at that very differently. The best businesses in the country don't do exercises. They do pre-planning. So this is pre-planning for if this passes, and it may not. But the need is still there for a reduction in the overall cost to the homeowners in this state. And so something will pass. And I do hope that something does pass, potentially not this, but something that does adjust the cost of living for the citizens in the state of Florida. And there are a lot of factors that go into that. Property taxes is just one of them. But we need to be prepared for whatever comes our way. And so the work that's been done here is just that, its work in pre-planning for the future for this county. And I hope that other counties in the state and cities in our district specifically are doing that as well. We will be better prepared to handle this with the best possible outcome to our citizens, which also means the best possible outcome for our employees. One final thought that I'll give you on a very personal level. When I look out at this audience, and I am one of us, you are one of us, most of us have moved from other areas of the country or the state. And a lot of us did that because those communities were not as strong as this one. And I would hate to see us lose ground and potentially see an exodus from our county or our state because we have become just like other states in this country that are not run quite as well. And so I hope that we are all as prepared as we can be to have the best possible outcome, and I hope that the voters get it right. Thank you, Sheriff. I'll turn it back to Darren. I think we're bringing up our next speaker.

Yes, thank you, Chairman and Commissioners. Our next department, I'll invite Chief Kinley from our Fire Department. And they have made a special request at the table so they can sit at the table.

Everybody's got a seat at the table in this county.

Good afternoon. For the record, Matt Kinley, Fire Chief, Selma County Fire Department.

And for the record, I'm Timothy Jex, Director with the Office of Management and Budget. A portion of our property taxes are allocated into a separate county fire fund. All activities in the fire fund are dedicated to fire rescue, EMS, and public safety services. The department has 580 full-time positions, which make up 77% of their total expenditure budget. The total budget is $147 million, and a 23% reduction to revenues would equate to approximately $33.8 million. This percentage is higher than other departments because the fire department relies more heavily on property tax revenues.

Tim, if you could pull that mic closer. Sure. Thank you.

Speak right into it. They had it turned way up.

The $147 million budget makes up approximately 26% of our property tax revenues.

So, as you all know, Summit County Fire Department, very well recognized nationally, all hazards fire department. Some of the services that we provide is not only fire response, but ambulance, EMS, transport, preventions, plans, reviews. Also run the fire side of the communication center in 911, along with one of our newer programs in the last couple of years, community paramedicine and community outreach programs. So Sheriff Lima did an absolutely fantastic job of describing the impacts to public safety, being very close brothers and sisters in law enforcement, fire department a little bit different in the service that we provide. But first thing I would like to talk about, because see this out as a narrative, of why the costs have increased. So if you look at this graphic over to the left, we have the CPI increase since 2019 to 2026. This is 29%. Then you start to look at all of our costs. So much like someone in their home, we have vehicles that we need to buy, maintenance we need to do, supplies that we need to purchase. And I have just an example of how those costs have increased over those years. A tower truck, the truck that's got the ladder on the top so we can get the tall buildings, has increased 138%. It's went from just over $1 million to $2.2 million. A stretcher in our ambulances that we use to transport a patient has increased 125%. Fuel, over 100%. A fire truck, 74%. Radios, nearly 100%. Our structural ensemble, our bunker gear, jackets, and pants have increased 68%. All the way down to the mop handle that we need to mop the station has increased 130%. We've experienced those same cost increases over that period of time that isn't quite in line with what CPI is. Historically, investments that we've made since 2019, just want to do a little bit of history here to set everybody's understanding of where this has all come from. So in 2017, this board saw fit to increase the millage rate. We were just coming out of the economic downturn, the Great Recession, where in 2008 there was a doubling of the property homestead along with the downturn. We had a lot of issues. Fire trucks, ambulances breaking down in the middle of calls with patients in the back of an ambulance on fires. A lot of challenges. Since then, the Board asked that we make a commitment to improving our infrastructure with vehicles and stations, and that's what we focused on. We've had station expansions. We rebuilt a new Station 11 in Altamont with a great partnership with the City of Altamont, a new fire station, Station 39, out in the Heathrow area. We've cycled through our entire fleet. We have one of the best fleets that you have in Central Florida, if not Florida, if not the country. Very reliable units. We've added a tanker to our tanker response, understanding out in the rural area there aren't fire hydrants. We have to be able to bring water to suppress those fires. We've added a swing shift within the emergency communications center so that period of time in the middle of the day when we get the most calls, we have two more personnel to answer those 911 calls. We've invested in high water vehicles as we saw the need during recent hurricanes where this entire county flooded. We are soon to put into service a blocking vehicle to protect our firefighters so that we're not using the $2 million tower truck to block to make sure that our people don't get hit. Along with community parent medicine and every accreditation that you can think of. So in the fire service, there's a core of accreditations that you can receive. The best, in my opinion, is ISO 1. ISO 1 has the possibility of affecting people's homeowners insurance. The lower your number, the more insurance companies, not all of them, some of them, utilize to come up with what your rate is. I know one of the best stories I had was with a gentleman who may be in the back of the audience here at one point in time. He is.

He's back there.

How that affected his insurance positively. We're also fire accredited through CFAI. We have CAS accreditation on the EMS side of the house. And we've recently, the comm center became ACE accredited. We are one of two county size departments in the country that has all of those accreditations. So if Amendment 3 passes, and yes, Commissioner Zimbauer, this is out in your area. We don't just rescue people. We do rescue everything. We have a large animal rescue team and this particular horse here. But my emu's okay, right? He's not loose. Oh, I'll let Alan take care of that. If it gets stuck, we'll come out and get it out. So if Amendment 3 passes... I like to use this as an example. The government, specifically county government, doesn't produce anything. We provide services. And we provide services with people. We have to have the people to provide those. So we need to protect our people. We need to ensure that we can keep our staffing at where it needs to be for as long as we possibly can to protect the service. We'll do that by deferring needed renovations, defer new stations, defer public safety projects to preserve those reserves. Our strategy, delaying those capital projects. We have an upcoming budget, and currently in budget, new Station 23. Mr. Horvath, I know, is here. It started off at old Station 23, which we're currently in. We'll defer new Station 42. We have two major renovations scheduled for Station 36 in the Lake Mary Heathrow area and renovation at Station 24 in Winter Springs. Dire need of a roof at 36 and the House of Doors, which is Station 24, has needed this renovation for a very long time. We'll be deferring window replacements, driveway repairs, restroom renovations, security enhancements. As you know, we've had firefighters have their vehicles broken into by a ring of people that were going throughout all the counties. And over the next approximately five years, we will be implementing a hiring freeze, which will equate to 20 to 24 people a year that we would lose by attrition, and we wouldn't fill those positions. I initially was going to use this slide for a different explanation. But during this transition, and this is looking at the 28-29 budget, you'll see on the outside, the black is our personnel services. That's the pay and benefits of our people. As you see, the red, which would be the loss in revenue, is already touching into that. You also have the operations. and all the other things that come into it. On the inside, the light green is our ad valorem taxes. The dark green is our other revenues. And we do get a decent amount of revenue from our EMS transport, usually around $12.5 million. What I want to point out is the blue, the internal charge. So the fire department is very good running fires, running EMS, running hazard operations. We're not so good at fleet, facilities, IT, legal, finance, risk management, all the other things that this county provides services to the fire department internally. We have to pay for that. Every department within this county is public safety. They're all part of us. We can't do our job without them. Looking at next year, come October 1, we're going to go through our public hearings for our budget. A budget will get approved. I assume that we will still be moving forward with our capital projects. If that is the case, we won't do anything until November 4. We will pause all of it until we know how the voters decide what they want their level of service to be. Assuming that Amendment 3 passes on November 3rd, this is our proposed plan. So through fiscal year 27, we will take all of our capital money and put it into reserves. We will utilize that to maintain our level of service for as long as we can. In that first year, the major loss will be the fourth off of some of our apparatus. As you remember, we added 30 personnel to put on our busiest trucks. So that our response times, and when you talk response times, it's not about just the first unit getting on scene. It's about the effective firefighting force. That's NFPA. That's what ISO looks at. It's not just the first unit. And we needed to get the right amount of people on scene in the right amount of time. And that was going to give us our biggest bang for the buck. We will slowly, through attrition, lose the fourth off of those trucks. This will begin to affect our response times. It will also begin to affect our ISO impact. Is that going to happen immediately? No. They look at us every three years, but we will be looking at the previous three years, and that becomes in jeopardy. I just want to point this out when it comes to fires. And yes, they are hotter today than they were 40 years ago because of all the petroleum that is in our homes. A fire doubles in size every minute. The faster we get there, the faster we can put it out, the more property is saved. So the second year. So this will be the first year that we actually have the impact of approximately $19.2 million. This side, we will continue to lose our people by attrition. We will completely lose the fourth off of the remaining couple of apparatus. We will take our peak load rescue units out of service. These are the trucks that we have in place during the busiest times of our day to ensure that we are getting transport units on scene in the appropriate amount of time. What happens with that? We're still going to get our fire trucks there. We're still going to begin to provide aid. But now it takes longer for the unit that is going to transport the person to the hospital. That is where the definitive care happens. There's a lot of amazing things that our paramedics can do on a scene. We are a mobile ER. But that definitive treatment to stop the bleeding is at a hospital. Just as a reminder, when it comes to strokes, on average, nearly 2 million neurons are lost every minute. That's a lot. Your brain is dying. A brain ages approximately 3.6 years for every minute of damage that is happening to it. In cardiac arrest, zero to four minutes, brain damage isn't happening yet. Four to six minutes, heart muscle begins to die. Brain damage begins to happen. Six to 10 minutes, it starts to become irreversible. And at 10 minutes, you have irreversible damage. Heart attacks, STEMIs, one of the things we are great at is identifying when somebody is having a heart attack and getting them to the right hospital. You've got 90 minutes. That is the goal. From the time that we know that they're having a heart attack to the time that they're having definitive treatment where somebody is opening up those blocked arteries, whether mechanically or by chemicals, 90 minutes is what you've got. Every second between symptoms and the onset of treatment can mean the difference between life and death. So the third year, which would be the second year of the cut, $33.2 million. And this is the third year and beyond. Community paramedicine has to go away. One of the best. Programs has been put into place in this county in my tenure It's reduced call load. It's increased quality of life. It's reduced readmission into the hospitals. They're receiving that benefit But we have to look at the core services Administrative positions that includes chief chief officers and training We would be unstaffing our tankers We have those tankers staffed so that we can get the water into the rural areas. We would have to eliminate that. We're looking down the road, a 60% reduction in our ambulances. That equates to eight units. Reserves become at a minimum. And in the end, we lose 175 positions. 175. So just to put that into perspective, that's 30% of our workforce. We have 580. We run shifts in the field. So we have three shifts, A, B, and C shift. Any one of those shifts is 153 people. This is more than one entire shift of our organization. So fire protection has a measurable economic value. It protects lives, protects homes and businesses, reduces community risk, supports economic resilience, and protects infrastructure residents have invested in. We found a study that was done in Ohio that shows how fire protection has a measurable economic value. This isn't something that's been studied a lot. This particular person happens to be in the real estate world and found this area in Ohio. That some of the areas, they have levies up there, kind of what ours is, where they have to renew every so often. And he looked at those that did and those that didn't. And the findings that he found is that the sale price of a property fell 6.7% after a fire levy was not renewed. Measurable increases. The larger the funds cut, the larger the effect. The study also found that 18.8% funding reduction reduced property sale values by 11.6%. This is not a forecast for Seminole County. This is just an actual measurable study that was done. We're not saying that that's what will happen here, but it should be looked at. We're looking at a 23% reduction in fire funding. The fire department does more than just respond. And yes, Commissioner Herr, I know you recognize this picture. This is out in your area when we had a tornado touchdown. The fire department responded with specialty vehicles such as a front-end loader and immediately made access into this neighborhood and were able to provide aid. We were actually called from the state not too long after that asking what we needed to begin to mitigate the problem. We told them, it's done. We have the equipment, we have the expertise, we have the people to provide that level of service to this community when it actually matters. Not just handing out the helmets to the kids, not just showing up at a birthday party to say hello, but when a tornado touches their ground, we're there. We'd also do inspections, plans review, smoke alarms, public education, again, all hazards fire department, fire, EMS, ambulance transport, rescue, hazmat, wildland, disaster, recovery through property protection, and community resilience. So the question before us. It's not just simply how much does fire rescue cost. What is the value of that protection, that investment to the community? Seminole County has invested heavily in a premier all-hazards fire department. If that investment is reduced, we should consider not only the budgetary savings, but also the potential consequences to service, property, risk, and the long-term value to the community. A 23% reduction in the fire funding is just a budget number. It can mean fewer emergency units available when somebody calls 911. When the closest unit is already committed, the next crew has to come from further away. In a fire, those extra minutes mean more damage. In a medical emergency, those seconds, minutes, can mean the difference of life and death. At the end of the day, we're not just measuring the budget sheet. We're looking at how quickly the community wants firefighters and paramedics to arrive to the scene and solve their problem. Thank you.

Thank you. I think for purposes of today's discussion, because this is a future planning operation, I won't go into my diatribe about how using reserves to fund operations is never on my list of things to do. And you knew that was coming. But that model is unsustainable. And I realize that you worked yourself through that model to the point where now the reserve is gone and now we're at the deepest cuts. So I would just suggest to those that are listening that I would doubt that that glide path would be like this using the reserves. I think it would be more like this because the reserves can't be replaced at the point that you hit the bottom. So those cuts would probably happen sooner front-loaded in reality. I'll also weigh in and say that all of those accreditations that you get that we do have some folks in the community that think are frivolous, I will just walk you through from an insurance person's perspective what that does for our community. It does two things. If you're with an insurance company that does do a rate reduction because of those accreditations and any one of them could get it, ISO is the one that gets the most attention. That's one thing. That's the smaller piece of it. The bigger piece of it is that it creates a competitive marketplace where more players are willing to come into this market to sell us property insurance because we have an infrastructure that supports and protects the homes in this community. And that is more important. Competition drives better pricing. So this is bigger than that one discount. And in essence, we would be thinking about walking away from it. I would also say that to any of the hospital systems that are out there listening to this, and I do hope you are, that community medicine program helps the people that are in the community medicine program. They get to stay in their home. They get to be cared for. But it's also taking burden off of our hospital systems for uninsured patients, et cetera, which drives a whole different cost component in this community. And when we pull that back, and I would suggest that's probably getting pulled back in the first year, those costs will start going right into those hospital systems again. There's no avoiding it. So I think the unintended consequences, I think Sheriff Lima laid them out very well. You did as well. But I'm just going to point out from an insurance perspective, both on health insurance and property insurance, this will have an impact on both. So with that, I'll turn it over to the commissioners. Would you like me to – oh, you're pointing over here. Commissioner Zimbauer.

Thank you, and thank you, Chief, for putting this together in the manner you did and giving us the first year, second year, third year.

Mm-hmm.

The reality is this, what I'm hearing, which I think all of us know and a good portion of our community understands, this really is about a quality of life issue. And what's not here is the narrative in the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth year. This community, because of the quality of life, is what drives property values, which is what drives the ad valorem. There's a 3% cap, statutory cap, As what I'm seeing occur with our public safety, and the realtors have decided that they think this is all a great idea because it generates sales with homes. But I will tell you in the fifth, sixth, and seventh year, if the quality of life continues, then the housing values continue to drop. Nobody's talking about the financial impacts in the fifth, sixth, seventh year, if and as property values drop and ad valorem drops further, the impacts to public safety. And I think that's what we really got to keep our eye on the ball of is where this takes us in the next 10 years, if this is approved and if it stays status quo. Again, the citizens need a break. I don't know that this is the right answer. I don't know this is the fairest answer. When I look at, by example, what the governor has just done, between now and the end of the year, the Second Amendment tax giveaway, and annually, that's about $1.3 billion in all the tax holidays for sales tax. And look, I'm a Second Amendment guy. I'm all about getting your firearms and ammo with no tax. But the reality is what we've never talked about is that impact here locally? And hopefully Tim's considered that, what those tax holidays cost us here locally with our actual dollars being taken in in sales tax revenue that is impacting us because of the sale tax holidays. But my point being is this should be a larger discussion at a state level as to what really is the relief mechanism to give our citizens relief. I think we all agree we need it, we'd like to have it. That said, if you look at the rankings, Florida is the 32nd least expensive state for cost of living out of 50. There are certainly places you could live cheaper. If that's what you want, there's wide open spaces out in Wyoming where you can't see another person for 100 miles. If you need help, you're on your own. You're not going to call 911 if you do. Three days later, somebody on horseback in law enforcement might show up from the Bureau of Land Management. But the reality is it's not prime time for this. And we're going through this exercise, as we should, to plan those impacts and what it will be. But there's so many other things that I think we're not contemplating, which is that quality of life, how that impacts property value in that fifth, sixth, seventh year, and what that revenue looks like, and then what's that impact going to be to all of our divisions, including public safety, and how we work our way up out of that. statewide twenty nine fiscally constrained counties already and once this passes i think the estimates somewhere around thirty seven thirty six or thirty seven counties will then be fiscally constrained uh... so i think we've got a look a little longer term than three years i think that's a good start uh... and i appreciate y'all doing that but i think as a quality of life becomes impacted that becomes a bigger conversation. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yes, so let's look at this from the other perspective as well. I think Commissioner Zinbauer is spot on that a potential impact to this is that property values go down. Let's play it through in the opposite, since we're doing planning and exercises around the future. We're already the 32nd cheapest state. This probably drops us considerably, which is great. which is gonna do what? Drive demand. What happens when demand goes up?

Supply is supply.

We're either building more homes where we need more services to marry to demand or more than likely demand outpaces supply and prices go up even more. And so it is an interesting conundrum that it's going to do probably one or the other. And in either case, I don't think it will have the outcome that we thought it would. Commissioner Constantine.

But then eventually, people will come here and realize there's no services. And they'll say, I've got to get out of here. And then property values will drop like a stone. And we will be left with the devastation. sheriff i share chief thank you very much it was a great presentation unfortunately it was one night none of us want to hear but it's the truth and um as a former fire chief said to me in another location a long time ago it's drastic and and the fact of the matter is is that Commissioner Zimbauer said this isn't the right time. He's absolutely right. If you really, really want change in budget and tax, there's a budget and tax commission required by law in the state of Florida next year. And that will be something that will be analyzed, will be figured out what happens 10 years down the road, will be put before the voters. This was a political move that wasn't analyzed properly. And anybody that thinks otherwise is fooling themselves.

Any other comments, Commissioner?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Chief, thank you for your presentation. Thank you, staff. Can you talk a little bit about mutual aid and first response?

How would that be affected to the surrounding counties and cities? So I would assume that the other municipalities are going to be affected the same. And much like the sheriff, we have other organizations that we provide automatic aid to, and they provide automatic aid to us. I couldn't tell you what their losses are going to be. I would assume that they would be similar. And it just is going to increase response times across the entire county.

So you're saying response time Not just across the county across the region could potentially go down be affected.

I can't imagine how any fire department would be able to Sustain the same level of service with that big of a funding cut What would happen to our fire training facility as well? I think that would be up to you all. I can tell you that there was not going to be much training happening because we won't have the units to be able to cover the area to do that. Again.

So just expound on that for a minute, Chief, but I mean to cut you off. So when a unit goes to train, another unit has to cover them, correct? Yes. So what happens if you don't have the coverage? We don't train. Okay. I just want to be clear. That's where I was going. Okay. Thank you very much.

Mr. Zinbauer.

Could you go to slide 10 real quick? Just for a point. That was the cost of increase in cost of apparatus. Could you send that up to the CFO's office? to make sure they're fully informed I mean the point being is we've talked about cost of living increases we've talked about cost of goods and services and we've been told what should be going on from a fifth grade level. And the reality is when you look at certain aspects, this is the increase in cost. It's not following the CPI. in any way, shape, or form. The cost of these items have gone up for many reasons. The cost of the products being assembled, the cost of liability insurance, the cost of certification of this type of equipment, all continues to go up. That does not follow the annual CPI. And that's another thing we've got to be concerned a bit about as we plan moving forward. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Yes, Commissioner Lockhart.

I want to go back to the, I think it was the first or second slide, talking about the revenue source, talking about the capital, deferring capital. Because I think in a lot of our, well, that wasn't it then, was it? I don't know which slide was it. Delay, okay. So I think one of the things that is unique about your budget, and Tim, certainly correct me if I'm wrong in this, is that your capital is unrestricted in the sense that it comes from property tax revenue. Is that correct?

It does come from the FIRE fund, which is property tax revenue.

Right. So when we talk about the FIRE MSTU, that is property taxes, essentially, it's a separate ad valorem fund, separate from the general fund millage, right? I think... as in other conversations that have been had when we have said, listen, delaying capital projects that are from the penny sales tax or other capital revenue sources, and we say, well, that won't help us in this scenario to delay those capital projects. The reason why this is different and would, although there are philosophical reasons for why you wouldn't want to do that. I was talking about reserves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he's saying he's going to take that money from delaying those capital projects and put them into reserves. That was the statement that was made.

Right.

And the reason you can do that and to shift that into operating is because of the revenue source being flexible. The other types of projects that we have planned that are capital projects don't come from flexible revenue sources like property taxes. So I just want to make sure that when we have the conversation that is so unique to FIRE that as the public is hearing this, that that solution does not apply to any other part of this budget.

Correct. We're moving around our funding source and our little piece of the ice cube tray. We're staying within our cube.

And good point. I'm glad you brought that up, Commissioner. And the Chief said, as he can be flexible and move stuff around, but it could only be spent on fire activities. So we can pay people, we can pay projects, we can put money into fire reserves. We cannot take those fire property tax dollars and pay a sheriff's deputy with it. That's a good point.

This is a very complex budget, a very complex operation, and we know that there will be sound bites taken from these discussions, and so we just want to make sure that we're being really clear about the uniqueness of what you're talking about.

Chair, and I know I should be quiet sometimes. I really attempt to. But back to Commissioner Zimbauer's point, if you could put that slide, the increased cost. I've heard folks from the state say, why don't they just go back to their 2019 budget? Right. That is why. That's right.

Yeah.

The private sector sets the cost of goods and services to us. We have to publicly bid everything we purchase. Would we love to go back to 2019? Absolutely. But the cost is outpacing the revenue that we get in.

And the ironic part about that cost increase to the private sector reality is too much government involvement causing to drive the costs up.

Well, and the price of steel and the price of labor and all this stuff. Correct. Yeah. Commissioner DeLaurie.

Thank you, Madam Chair. County Manager, I know at some point your staff is going to talk about unfunded mandates. It's coming up. I'm not going to get into it, but the increase of unfunded mandates keep on going up, so we can go back there if they were to either reduce or change what they require of us.

Yes, and we'll show that to you.

And we can actually ask them to do that, and we can actually cut our budget just like they do. Correct.

Madam Chair.

I think Commissioner Lockhart actually has her hand up.

Actually, Commissioner Constantine, I wanted to tag team onto something that you talked about with the Taxation Budget Committee Commission. It's every 20 years. For historical purposes, 20 years ago would have been 2007. That's when then Mark's speaker, Marco Rubio, speaker of the Florida House at the time, went to great lengths to attempt property tax reform in this state. And I remember having a lot of conversations with Senator Simmons and others who were in the legislature at that time. There has been an acknowledgment and understanding that the state of Florida's property tax scheme is inequitable right there the structure of it just has created significant inequities for people who have owned their homes for a long time versus those who have bought it recently and so because those property taxes actually pay for services you are paying either less or more for the same service as your next door neighbor is that fair no does that need to be fixed absolutely It's been attempted. Really smart people, and I would put now Secretary Marco Rubio in that category with that team of people attempted to do that. It took a lot of very good conversations, very deeply data-driven, researched conversations, and they came up short at that time. I think this, to Commissioner Constantine's point, That's the reason why we have this coming up next year. It's the opportunity for another group of really intelligent folks who want what's best for this state and for our communities to come together and talk about how to fix the inequities. Let's do it the right way. Let's make sure that we're doing it without the sacrificial lambs that will be very much an unintended consequence of what's currently being proposed. Um, they say history repeats itself and there is nothing new under the sun, I believe is what scripture says. And so I think it's important that we remember that we are right where we were 20 years ago having the same conversations.

Commissioner, I was in the Senate at the time, and I can tell you it was of labor that we tried. And at the same time that we had the terrible recession that happened. And so all of that combined was just very difficult times. But I just wanted to remind people, those numbers up there, are numbers from the private industries. And nobody's talking about that. Many, many, many businesses rely on the services that government provides and buying and selling of goods and services that happen. And that will also have not a trickling effect, a flood of loss of revenue for private industry that will resonate throughout the budget. The fact that we have this tax and budget commission coming up, that's why we set it up. to do it every 20 years, to look at the right thing. And what you said, Commissioner Lockhart, is correct. All of us have said this, but the people that are going to benefit by this are the people like us. Right now, because of Save Our Homes, my home is increasing in value a lot more than 3% a year. So I'm paying less than what I should. And I acknowledge that. And it's wrong. And we have inequities. But it's not inequities where the people that have lived here a long time are devastated by the costs. It's that the people that haven't been able to afford a house that are the ones that can't buy into it because they can't afford it because the people like us have been getting a 3% save our homes. And therefore, over the years, 10 years, we're basically reduced what we should be paying by 20%, 30%, 40%. And so when they talk about affordability, this is the antithesis of affordability. opposite of affordability this is going to make it more difficult for children and grandchildren to be able to buy homes because they can't afford it because we're getting the benefit of it and i say we are i mean everyone that has homestead in this state and everyone that has save our homes in our state are paying less than they should

All right, with that, I will turn it back over to the council.

Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Chief. Appreciate that. Our next presentation is going to be on emergency management, and I'll invite Mr. Alan Harris up to the table.

And if we think we don't like police and fire, wait until it's worried about the animals.

And hurricanes.

And hurricanes.

Good afternoon. Sorry. Good afternoon. For the record, Alan Harris, Director of Emergency Management. Behind me, I have the four division managers for emergency management. Chris Stronko from Animal Services, Dina Walker from 911 and Addressing, Stephen Lerner from Emergency Management Division, and Tommy Olivares from our Emergency Telecommunications.

So our final public safety budget is for emergency management and animal control. The department has 72 full-time positions, which make up 54% of their expenditure budget. The total budget is $10 million. A 20% reduction equates to $2 million. Their $10 million budget is approximately 2% of our property tax revenues.

So in emergency management, I know I don't have to tell you all, we touch just about every agency. So when we talk about activities, we're not just talking about emergency management, law enforcement, fire rescue. We're talking about all types of agencies. Our service portfolio includes an interoperable, of course, network. We manage all of the towers for our 800 megahertz system, which is used by fire trucks, police officer vehicles, deputy vehicles, government trucks, city and county. airport, Seminole State College security officers, school bus drivers, every type of entity that provides communication in Seminole County through a radio network is provided by us. We are fully interoperable. So even before Stoneman Douglas in 2018, September the 11th in 2001, Columbine back in the 1980s, I'm sorry, 1999, We had an interoperable network. So you can hop into a school bus, a fire engine, a police car, and it is the same system countywide. A lot of counties don't have that. And that will be a jeopardy if this passes. We are responsible for all of the cabling in all of our infrastructure. So all the cables that run to your computers here, everything in this building, the courthouse, the jail, All the tower sites, every location where there is a cable run to a device that is providing information to that particular device, we do that. We address for the county, all unincorporated areas, as well as the cities of Longwood and Lake Mary. and we provide 9-1-1 service for all of the cities and county in a consolidated 9-1-1 center we also have a backup 9-1-1 center so if something ever happens to that 9-1 center which has happened in the past bomb threats tornado threats hurricanes of course infrastructure issues we have gone failed over to the backup 9-1 center and immediately provide that service to our 500 plus thousand residents and guests that are here in the Seminole County area. We provide all hazards emergency planning. So while we haven't had hurricanes in a couple years, and I've used the H word, I'm sorry, Steven. hoping to jinx ourselves. We don't use that word during the season. But we provide response to all types of other things. Just last week, we responded to a building that was condemned because of some issues there structurally. We respond to flooding events. We respond to wildfires. tornado last year. All different types of hazards we respond to, but we also plan for all of those as well. As AI is making its approach, we are having a cyber security tabletop exercise in just a month to discuss what that would look like if AI or cyber threat caused a disruption in our 911 system or somewhere in our information technology system, whether it be a city, county, the sheriff's office, etc. We are one of two counties in the entire country to be accredited with no finding whatsoever. That's unheard of. There's us and one community out in Nevada, and that's it. Every time the accreditation agency has come here, we have had a perfect score. That is at jeopardy if this passes. Of course, we respond to all types of emergencies. We're recovering still from multiple events, unmet needs. We still have four hurricanes that are still open. Matthew, Irma, Ian, and Milton are still open. 10 years later, they're still open. We have heard a direction from our leadership at the federal government. Local governments, you need to do more. FEMA may be doing less. Well, how can we do more if we receive less funding? That doesn't make any sense. We do mitigation and resiliency efforts community countywide that can be buyouts, elevations, stormwater systems, road construction, bridge improvements, all types of things related to mitigation. Of course, we run an animal control dispatch as part of our public safety which touches every city. We run it for every city as well as the county. We have eight officers and they run over 1,400 calls a month. That's very efficient. but we would not have those types of officers, and we'll talk about that in just a second. We run an animal shelter operation, and I'm very proud since 2016, since I've taken over in 2016, we have been a no-kill shelter. And that's not from a lot of work. The county manager, deputy county manager and I have had multiple conversations late in the evening, on the weekends, hey, we're at 151% capacity, these are the things we wanna do to remain a no-kill shelter, and we have. We've been a no-kill shelter, which is amazing. And of course, we provide veterinary and medical services for all the animals in our care. All right, so very similar to the chief, we looked at three different – well, we looked at the three years, 2027, 2028, and then ongoing types of activities, identified what things that we would reduce in those. These are not obviously anything that we want to do. There's nothing the sheriff mentioned that he wants to do. Nothing that the fire department or the fire chief wants to do, but these are things where we're able to find cost savings, things that we can do to reduce that. There we go. So the first thing we would eliminate is wave technology. This allows our first response leaders to speak on portable and mobile radios using their cellular phone device. So I can use my smartphone device as a portable radio so I could speak to Persons that are in the field, the sheriff, the chief of deputies, the sitting in the back of the room, doesn't matter who it is, but one of the leaders can speak to that incident commander and provide critical information. Even if they're off duty, even if it's the weekend, even if they're at Walt Disney World, they can use the portable radio system, communicate with the units that are on scene. It has been incredibly valuable at criminal activities and critical hazmat incidents and things like that. we're looking at the elimination of mock alert. So what mock alert is, it's the alerting system for our fire service. So this allows dispatchers to continue emergency medical dispatch while Cyber, artificial intelligence, if you will, is dispatching the fire engines and communicating what the call is to those fire engines. So if you've been in the fire station and this automated voice comes on, why that's taking place is that a dispatcher has typed that in while taking the information, providing critical emergency medical dispatch information to save someone's life over the phone, at least sustain them until the paramedics can get there, simultaneously, units are already deployed. Without this, that means that the dispatcher would pause, deploy the units, go back to the call. We did that decades ago. We don't want to go back to something like that. We would reduce the maintenance contract for our radio system provider. We currently have a technician that knows our system, knows our technology, knows our servers, and can instantly do repairs if necessary. Eliminating this maintenance contract would mean that we would need to call the service provider and then have them deploy someone, whatever that technician is from the closest location that that available technician is. It could be Tampa. It could be Fort Lauderdale, and so our system could be in jeopardy for the hour, hour and a half until the individual arrives. Again, putting school buses, police officers, fire engines, things like that in jeopardy as our technology is on pause. We would look to eliminate and reduce the 9-1 Center backup. This could be a major problem. If we don't have a backup 9-1 Center and our 9-1 Center goes down for any reason, then the failover would be to Orange County. Orange County 911 already is inundated. They're already maxed out, bringing on a population of, again, 500 plus with guests, potentially calling 911 and hitting Orange County 911 network and expecting them to answer the calls and deploy units because they would have to call back up here so we could respond. That's a serious delay in activity and emergency response. We would look at an emergency management reducing the outreach and preparedness activities. Preparedness is key. The sheriff really illustrated the best way. If we can get people to prepare in advance, it's less burden on the community as a whole as they are more prepared for emergencies and disasters. We would look at eliminating or decreasing mitigation and resiliency programs. We provide mitigation and resiliency programs to cities. We provide support to community partners, allied agencies. So we would look at reducing that because there would be reduced staff to actually manage those types of programs. Another consequence of this is that we rely on lots of different departments to do activities. So emergency sheltering, parks and leisure staff, librarians. If we have less public works people to do sandbags, less parks and recreation to open up shelters. We're talking about schools being shelters for much, much longer because we will not have recovery shelters. So these are things that we will look at is how we would continue that. That could be a cost to us, not a benefit. That could be a cost because we may have to hire temporary staffing. So that's actually a cost to us instead of a reduction. So we wanted to put that in to be fully transparent. At animal services, we would look at eliminating the trap, neuter, vaccinate program. This is for community cats, to control community cats in the county. We would look at reduction of stray hold time. This would, of course, eliminate or reduce the potential for us being a no-kill shelter. So if an animal right now is held for five days, we would look to go back to three days, which is the statutory requirement. If the family does not pick up the animal in three days, we would either attempt to adopt it or we would humanely euthanize the animal at that point. We would look at the elimination of dead wildlife on the road, basically tell people to push the animal to the side. We would see a reduction, obviously, in animal control officers, which means they couldn't respond to those non-emergency calls, very much like the sheriff mentioned. Those critical calls we're still going to respond to, bites, those types of things. But the dead wildlife on the road is more of a nuisance, so we just push it to the side. We wouldn't pick those up anymore. We look at reduction of community vaccine clinics and special events. So we do a vaccine clinic once a month. It is incredibly popular. People come get their rabies shots. We provide microchips for animals. It helps to get animals back to their owners when they're lost. We would look at the reduction of that program actually in the first year, and then you'll see in 2028 the elimination of the program in 2028. And then we provide a lot of service that some counties don't provide. And that is if a raccoon comes into your house or other type of animal, we come and help you. Even if there's an emu in Geneva walking around, we will respond to it, and we have responded to that emu multiple times, but we respond to those things. We would look at reducing that because of the reductions in the officer. We would just let FWC respond to that if they wish, and a lot of times they won't respond to those types of things.

So Commissioner Zimbauer is on his own with his horse and his lasso?

Yeah, I'll tell you what.

Emu's in trouble.

I get scared about some of my constituents, what they might do to him.

I wanted to see if, okay, so I went over some of these other ones with our sheriff's office, specifically Chief Deputy Purcell in the back of the room, and I want to thank him for his partnership. The next two are quite scary. The first one is we would see a cost savings with this. and that is the reduction of our radio and phone retention timelines. Right now we hold recordings for one year. We would look to reduce the data down to the required 30 days. So sometimes court cases, investigations don't even start up for 30 to 31 days, 32 days, the recordings would then be gone. This will have a huge effect on the sheriff's office, the state attorney's office, the public defender. This is not something that we want to do, but this is a place where we could see, we saw some savings that we, again, math, not what we want to do. Also a savings in the personnel accountability system. So what this is is all of our portable radios are mapped. So if a deputy or a firefighter is out on a search and rescue and somehow they get injured, we can triangulate where they are and we know exactly where they are and we can send rescue immediately to their location. We would eliminate, look at eliminating this service as well out of our maintenance contract for our radio system. We would also look at the elimination of our contract for the uninterrupted power supply. We run, again, all the cabling, so that's also the uninterrupted power supply for all of our buildings. This is at the tower sites. That's at this building, the courthouse, as well as the public safety building. It's a pretty considerable savings. The problem, of course, is if we don't keep those systems maintained very well, it could be – a delay before a generator conks on, which means in a courtroom or something like that, you could lose some valuable data. If it's a tower site, we're talking about a tower shutting down and then going through the process of repowering back up, and you know if you've turned your computer on, it takes a little while for it to power back up. In meanwhile, there may be a critical wildfire call or a crime taking place where that tower was the life-saving for that deputy or that firefighter. We would look at increasing permitting and addressing timelines simply because of staff reductions and reducing what would the service we provide now to the municipalities. Now, it could be that the cities would, more cities would come to us looking for help. And then we've, the county manager, deputy county manager and myself have talked about what that would look like and there would have to be further discussions of how we would even do that if that was the request because they're looking at the same type of issue. We would also look at reduction of our warehouse because we rent our warehouse right now. This is where all of our disaster supplies are, our special needs, medical cots, all the things that are required, which Tim's gonna mention in just a minute, all the mandatory things that we're required to have. as well as the things that are just necessary for hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, whenever we open up an emergency shelter, all of the different services that are provided there. When there's extreme heat, the activities that we provide there. When there's extreme cold, the emergency shelters that we open because homeless shelter is completely maxed out. We would look at a reduction of that warehouse and where those supplies would be located. We would have to try to identify that or we would have to redistribute them out to other folks and hope that they can come to our aid when we need them. We would look at reducing our recovery programs. So some of the unmet needs right now, if an individual is physically constrained or there's challenges, they have special needs, we provide a lot of unmet needs services to them. Rebuilding wheelchair ramps, things like that, that we would look to reduce that because we wouldn't have the staff to coordinate and manage all of those activities. And then, of course, just county-wide reduction of response with, as I mentioned before, the staffing. If the staffing level is down, it's hard to manage all those things. With animal services, we'd look at eliminating our community outreach adoption program. So anything, right now, we're everywhere, and we try to adopt animals, and that's why we've been at no-kill shelters. Every special event, we're there adopting animals. We wouldn't have the staff to do that anymore, so we would look to eliminate that. We would look to eliminate foster care programs. So right now when we have neonatal kittens, animals that need a little special care to make them adoptable, we wouldn't have the staff to manage those programs. So we would look at a reduction or potential elimination of the foster care program in the Seminole County area. Again, the elimination of the no-kill shelter activities because we would reduce the animal care staff that are inside of the animal shelter. It takes obviously a lot of time to clean, to feed, to water, to do all the things, medical services, all the things to keep those animals healthy, safe, and adoptable. And we just wouldn't have the staff to do that anymore. We would look at eliminating animal control dispatch to daytime hours only, and only critical, critical calls would be at night, and then we would just handle things during daytime hours. End of life services is something that we provide as a service to our community and we get a lot of incredible comments, thank yous and things like that. We allow, of course, the family to say their goodbyes to the animal. We humanely euthanize the animal and we provide their ashes back to them. so that they can put them in an urn or whatever. I can't tell you how many times I've been over there and people thanking us and crying. I mean, it's very difficult to lose a loved one, four-legged loved one, if you will. And we provide that service, but we would look at eliminating that service as that is a considerable cost that we take on. And then reduction of our volunteer programs and enrichment programs. So right now when a dog is right there on the threshold, we don't humanely euthanize. We work with the dog to see if we can make them adoptable. And a lot of times we can make them adoptable and we adopt those animals out. We would look to eliminate the enrichment program because we wouldn't have the staff to do that. So our ongoing, obviously, delays in equipment replacement for emergency telecommunication, older portable radios, older mobile radios in vehicles, older equipment out in the field. We wouldn't be able to keep up with the change in the technology. So our servers out in the tower sites, things like that, they'd just be older, very similar to the fire trucks we were talking about in the ambulances. We wouldn't be able to change it over as quickly. reducing the redundancy in our radio network and there's the potential that we would lose interoperability. So if we don't have the staff to keep up with that as people change radios, people change radio systems around us, we can quickly manage that today. Just before the school year, we had a wish by the school board to bring on four new radio channels for elementary, middle, for security and safety, and we did that in less than a week. We had them up, running programs, and even law enforcement fire rescue had it in their radio system on their trucks. We wouldn't be able to do that without staffing to make that fully interoperable. Our E911 addressing, we would again look at reduction in permitting and addressing timelines. It would take just longer to address things. New development, redevelopment, all of those types of things. And then no or very limited back up 911 services. Again, delays in preparedness and response activities. We simply wouldn't be able to replace the preparedness equipment that we have for emergency shelters, for points of distribution, for sandbag locations, for disaster recovery centers, all the things that we do to respond to hurricanes and prepare for hurricanes. Obviously, a reduction in our mitigation and resiliency activities to make us more resilient to emergencies, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and a reduction, obviously, in the response staff. We would be much, much more reliant on the state of Florida for mutual aid. And right now, we really send out people. We send to help other counties. It's very rare that we request teams to come into Seminole County. We would be requesting a lot more teams to come into Seminole County. We would look at reduction of animal control response. We would have less officers to do that. Our most critical calls, we'd still respond. Other calls, we'd get to it as soon as we could. Again, elimination of the no-kill shelter status is a big hit. It's going to hurt us all emotionally. And then limited, if any, community-wide activities. Sorry to bring this to you. We wrestled with it for a long, long time. I don't even know how many meetings we had. But that's my presentation. So thank you.

Thank you very much, Alan. Very well done to your entire team. We appreciate everything you do. It occurs to me that really every one of these discussions has been about the impact to life itself. whether it's our officers or our firefighters or the citizens that are impacted by those situations that they're saving them from or the animals that are in our care. So we should all speak to our legislatures about that. So I'll turn that over to any commissioners that have any questions.

I do want to talk a little bit about back to the partnership with the school board and for staffing of shelters. That is a partnership that is, I think, working really well to have our teams work with their teams and the schools. The food that is provided for the folks at those shelters is generated in the kitchens at the school district. How will that reimbursement process work for the school board? Will it stay the same for those meals and those resources, or will that have to change?

So it's a great question. So it depends on the emergency. So we've never had to open up a school for a non-federally declared disaster, but if it was a stronger tornado. We are in a strong El Nino season, which is why there have been no tropical events, but you are in a few months going to hear me talk about winter storms and tornadoes. Some of the worst tornado outbreaks ever were during high El Nino seasons. 1998 being one of those, which was devastating here in the Seminole County, Osceola, Orange County, but specifically here in the Midway area, there were considerable death and injury because of that. So we would look to open up an emergency shelter in a school during those types of things. That is not reimbursable by the federal government unless it is a very, very large tornado, and those typically are not. So in that case, they would look, I'm sure, to us in the partnership. So we would have to figure out what that would look like. For the federally declared disasters, they request reimbursement, but there's going to be a longer time in getting out of the schools. There are three major questions that we get after a hurricane, right? When is my debris going to be picked up? When is the power coming back on? And when is school going to be reopened? Well, we have... parks and leisure services and librarians and things like that that are ready to start opening up emergency shelters so we can get the folks out of the schools, get them back to operation, and we move them to other locations. So if we don't have the staff to do that, to manage all those shelters, they remain in the schools. Sorry. The superintendent is not looking favorably at me right now.

I know.

But that's going to happen in every county.

Yeah, thank you for answering that because I think it goes to the... Unintended consequences. Yeah, the unintended consequences that, you know, folks through no fault of their own just are not aware of the interconnectedness of how all of these organizations work together and how the funding works and how one hand relies on the other to get the next step done. And there will be a tremendous impact there for sure. Thank you. Thank you. For your entire team. Commissioner Delary. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Alan, thank you and your staff. Always do a phenomenal job. A couple quick questions. I know that you did some great work with the radios with the school system. I'm assuming we didn't charge them, correct? Of course not. I would not even assume that. But I would think in the future something like that could potentially have to happen. Potentially. But also we talked about emergency management and storms with all the cleanup. A lot of times all the cost for that is paid for out of our reserves, who's going to pick that up?

That's a good point. So we would still be required to- I understand that.

But if the money is not there, it's more for Tim, where would you be going to get that money?

That's a tough question. Right now, we use general fund reserves to pay for stores.

I understand that. But if there's no general fund reserves, where would you-

There would have to be some reserves by state statute required.

I understand that, but we have to also be able to operate by state statute?

Yes. There is no answer for that. We could go, as Mr. Harris had indicated, the federal government has already told us that they're decreasing their reimbursement to the states and to the communities.

So potentially we have to borrow the money?

That could be an option, yes. There's a couple options that we'd have to look at.

Or the debris just sits there longer.

I understand. I'm just throwing it out there. I'm just trying to understand it.

Yes.

Thank you.

Or residents are stuck taking care of their own debris. Correct.

Or maybe people with big front-end loaders will volunteer.

Thank you. Madam Chair.

Yes, sir.

Something Alan said, it's just sparked a remembrance that I don't think that the public clearly understands. And Commissioner Lockhart touched on it a little bit with the school board and other divisions in the county is it never dawned on me until whichever hurricane it was when i was the chair of the county that people who are working in different departments no longer work in those departments doing those jobs they're assigned an emergency management responsibility to do that work on behalf of the citizens far different than the job they were hired to do so when it comes to layoffs like with the sheriff's point and i know i mean the reality is that's what will happen here at the county there will be ultimately layoffs very much like the great recession where do you get those bodies and people to fill in those gaps that are answering the phones or helping with sandbags or whatever they're doing that they normally aren't doing during a time of emergency and then it just goes back to the services that the citizens have come to expect as you know You do the sandbags. Now when the hurricanes are coming, we're getting calls going, how soon are the sandbags going to be available? Those kinds of things may be an issue. So good point. Thank you.

Yep. Thank you. Any further comment? Thank you very much, Alan, Tim, the entire team.

And then, Chairman, just one last thing, presentation. We will have Mr. Jax just do a quick update on the unfunded mandates portion. I know a lot of you have inquired about it. We've done a lot of research with it, and Mr. Jax will just go over each one of them and then show you how much they have increased over the last year. Ten years. Ten years.

Thank you, Darren. Yes, at the last work session, the Board requested a history on unfunded mandates. Unfunded mandates are public services defined by state law, which require local governments to expend funds in a statutorily dictated way. This is a list of the unfunded mandates paid from county property taxes. Florida Statute 409 authorizes the state of Florida to charge counties an annual contribution to cover the required portion of federal Medicaid costs. Florida Statute 406 states that counties must provide funds from their general fund to support district medical examiners. Florida Statute 154 specifies that public health services must be funded via local funds and authorizes counties to levy property taxes to support public health services. This includes costs in our facilities department to maintain their buildings. Florida Statute 154 also states that counties are legally mandated to cover the cost of treating certified indigent residents. Florida Statute 292 requires counties employ a veteran services officer and fund their salary, office space, supplies and other necessary expenses. Florida Statute 29.008 requires that counties fund communication facilities and infrastructure costs for circuit and county courts. Florida Statute 951 states that counties are required to provide for operation and maintenance of a county detention facility. Florida Statute 985 states that counties are required to pay the full cost of detention care for juveniles prior to final court disposition unless it is a fiscally constrained county in which the state may cover these costs. Florida Statute 365 requires counties to fund the infrastructure and operating costs for the 911 Emergency Communication Service. Florida Statute 252 requires counties to establish and maintain a local emergency management agency. The Florida Springs and Aquifer Protection Act requires local governments to monitor and maintain water quality based on state standards. And Florida Statute 121 mandates that counties contribute the employer portion of FRS funding based on rates set by the state. The total cost of these unfunded mandates to our property tax funds are $144 million in fiscal 27. This expense has grown from $63 million in 2017. This is a cost increase of 129% compared to CPI inflation, which has grown 38% over this period. And that concludes my presentation.

So again, these are costs that the state We have to do these, and they provide no funding for it.

I think I know what you're going to say, but Commissioner Zimbauer?

It's not a lost meet. If you do the math between 2019 and 2027, that's just about the number we were accused of overspending. So I want to send that to Tallahassee, too. So... He's out campaigning. Did we, and I know this is not a property tax question, the sales tax holiday impacts to the county, which are funds that would typically come into us that could be used for some things that property tax is paying for,

Do we have any idea what that number is? I don't have an exact number. Obviously, if there's 36 days, that would be 10% of the sales taxes over the year. So every day has a cost, and we would have to go back and pull the exact estimated number based on the days.

If we could, if it's not too big of a journey to go upon, I would like to have that number. We can estimate that. Again, I'm not against these tax holidays. I'm not against giving sales tax breaks to parents back to school. I'm not against the Second Amendment. If you want to buy guns and ammo and not pay sales tax, that's all fine and good, too, or for any other reason. But the reality is there is an impact to this county when that occurs. We're not part of the decision-making process that makes that decision. We don't get to take the credit for it. Yeah, that's exactly right. But we do take the brunt of any offset cost. And I think that's something we should know what that amount is. We can get that. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

All right. Thank you. Any other comments? I believe it is time for public comment. I'm just going to say that Darren's openly laughing at the fact that I recalled to do public comment, and I'll just own that. Do we have any public comment requests?

Yes, ma'am. One speaker, Mr. John Horvath.

And if there are others, please turn in your yellow form now. Mr. Horvath, please come on up.

You couldn't have fallen asleep.

You are not the only one that has feet that are asleep. Mine are freezing.

Good afternoon, Commissioners, Madam Chairman. John Horograph, 1004 Bradford Drive, Winter Park, Florida. And I've said before, that's the Winter Park address when I live in Seminole County. And also, Commission Chairman, I'm an 80-year-old native Seminole Countian, so I've been here my whole life, so I've seen how the county changed. My family was in the grower business. Freeze of 81 put us out. And you know where all the growers went after that and all the agriculture went. So been around for a while. And as the fire chief said, and the sheriff and Allen Harris, you heard all the, work they do together even though they're different departments animal services and the sheriff and the fire department and nothing was mentioned about the water especially with the ios thing because the water system is important for the fire department but i am concerned about these cuts because Save Our Homes doesn't save your homes. It costs you. I'll give you an example. I've been in my house since 74. I had a neighbor. They died two years ago. Their house from 76, it was sold. And I can imagine what the Save Our Homes went for the new owners, what the prior owners were paying to what they're paying now. And I'm sure it more than doubled. And these are inequities that have developed over the years with these property taxes. And that's where the problem is. Save our homes, this one, that one. I'm sure all of you are more aware of it. Your staff's more aware of it. And does it solve anything? I mean, you know, when I paid for my house, back in 74 was 39.5 i had to re-roof the house and do electrical and i put that much money back in the new world electrical so you know it costs go up and swing to the fire department station 23 when before the county assumed responsibility for fire protection i was seminal golden law and i was a member of the board there and the volunteer firemen it was just the two bays there so where the firefighters lived that was added on when the county took over so you can imagine how old that building is and inadequate based on today's needs with male and female firefighters. There's no way you could have that in that fire station. And the bays aren't that good. Their new truck, I drove by there the other day and looked like it could barely fit in the doors. And we don't want to hear damage to a new million dollar fire truck. But I'm concerned about this amendment. And I don't think it's going to solve any problem. Like Commissioner Constantine said, we need a comprehensive review because the original homestead started in 1934 and about then, and what was the population of Florida? Less than a million. Now it's 23 million. The county, Seminole County is at a half a million. So we got to keep, make change that's good for everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We appreciate you.

Thank you, John.

Next speaker, Leslie Grubel.

Leslie Grubel, 1841 Misty Morn Place, Longwood, Florida. First of all, it was quite amazing to hear the public safety reports today. Very damaging. I think the picture that the fire department showed was of my neighborhood during the tornado. So I recognize those streets. And I remember who came out. It was the county. The county came out and opened those streets. They cleared out the mess. They looked out for the safety of the community. They put up the stop signs that were blown over. They replaced the lighting that was just damaged. And the police department was around later on to protect our homes because a lot of them were damaged so badly. Thank you to the county. And was it my state legislator or my state senator who came down? No, it was Chairman Herr at the entrance to our subdivision checking on us. This is a huge overreach by the state. This should not be, first of all, an amendment. If you want to make laws, legislate. Do not make an amendment on something so massively damaging to the counties, particularly in the Panhandle, who are rural and cannot even begin to afford these kinds of cuts. They will have no money. So for those of us who are wondering what to do on this amendment, we need to vote this amendment down. It is a very bad choice for the state and an extremely bad choice for our county. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there other public comment requests? No, ma'am. All right. We do have one that I'm going to ask Commissioner Lockhart to read. It was a statement that was submitted.

So this was submitted by the Seminole County Professional Firefighters to be read into the public record as a part of today's meeting. Regarding public comment regarding public safety service level impacts from Amendment 3, Fiscal Year 27, Budget Work Session, BOCC Meeting, September 15, 2026. Madam Chair and Commissioners, as President of our Firefighters Union, I understand why the proposed tax relief amendment on the upcoming ballot is appealing. Everyone wants to keep more of their hard-earned money, but I urge everyone to consider what those tax dollars provide for our community. In our county, property tax revenue funds our fire department. Our community cannot afford the service level impacts that Amendment 3 would bring. I have great respect for your commitment to fiscal responsibility and responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars. Our millage rate has never been excessive. Rather, it reflects a rate, in my opinion, that could have been adjusted incrementally in prior years to better keep pace with the community's growth. Fiscal responsibility is an important strength, but it should not prevent necessary investment in essential services. This amendment would reduce revenue and could put critical fire and emergency resources at risk. We already face significant recruitment and retention challenges, while continued growth requires additional stations and resources to maintain appropriate response times. Many existing stations built in the 1970s and 1980s also require modernization, remodeling, or expansion. These are not optional expenses. They are essential investments in the safety and protection of our growing community deserves. The real question is whether the tax relief proposed by this amendment is worth the potential impact on essential services our community relies on. Citizens should be educated of improvements our fire department requires to provide the level of service that is necessary of an agency accredited by the Commission of Fire Accreditation International and an ISO 1 rated department. I encourage everyone to look beyond the immediate savings and consider the long-term consequences. This is a budget cut that will force us to be understaffed and without the resources we need. Any reduction in revenue will make it impossible to meet the needs of our growing community. If, however, this amendment does pass, I urge you to immediately implement a fire service fee and or reevaluate the millage rate to make sure the fire protection for our community is not reduced and continues to meet the future needs of our county. Respectfully, John DeVita, President. Thank you for doing that, Commissioner Lockhart.

All right. Hearing no more further comment, I think we, public comment, we'll close public comment. I think we are at the county attorney's report. I have no report today, Chairman. Awesome. County manager's report.

I think you've heard enough from us today, so no report, Madam Chairman.

We were all thanking you, but thank you for saying it. I do believe we have a board appointment. Commissioner Constantine, item 15, I believe this is yours.

Yes, it is. And it is for the Port Authority. And it is a gentleman that I'm very proud to bring forward. His name is, and I'm trying to.

Kayvon Ribari.

Very good. And, you know, I just want to say one thing about this before we do it, and I don't want to spend a lot of time, but somebody has been calling and sending information, questioning, you know, the selection of this person, not knowing this person. And I just want to read a few things. Regarding Mr. Ribardi, Commissioner Constantine was impressed by his qualifications and experience. He has an extensive board leadership experience. as Chairman of the Board and Audit Committee Chair at Reliance Trust Company of Georgia, as well as serving the Board of Directors at Argent Institute Trust. He also brings valuable maritime community leadership experience through his volunteer service with the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary since 2022, including roles as Flotilla Commander, air crew, vessel examiner, and instructor. We believe his background makes him highly qualified to serve on the Seminole County Port Authority.

And I believe this is for a term of it's replacing Harry Ellis, who resigned from the board. This term is from 1-1 of 25 through 12-31 of 20.

Madam Chair, if that's a motion, I'll second it.

Yes, it is.

We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. District Commissioner reports, Commissioner Constantine.

Thank you very much and I'm going to apologize because being first, you sometimes say things that other people were going to say, but I would just go through this rather quickly. On August 31st, the Seminole County Library things launch. I believe that Commissioner Lockhart and Deloria and I were there and it has gotten a great deal of press and excitement for the things, the various things that people have donated that you can now withdraw from the library at no cost and look for other opportunities. Actually, we would love other people to donate different things that would be useful for people to look at whether they want to start backpacking or birdwatching or anything else that suits their fancy. Also, I want to give a shout out to Guy Cunha, who spoke at September 2nd at the Greater Orlando Fourth Additional Leadership Summit. Good job, Guy. Also, at the museum on September 10th, You know, all of us, especially Commissioner Zimbauer, you know, where he actually moved them from his district. But, you know, we've all worked together trying to raise money. Certainly the... The Historical Society and the Commission did. Most impressively, Don Epps. But the fact of the matter is that it was inspiring, that buggy event. you know exhibit and I think that the people of Seminole County and beyond will really enjoy that opportunity to go in and see I saw a couple from the 1700s just amazing it was just a beautiful thing so congratulations to everybody and especially the family and I'll let Commissioner Zimbauer go into a little bit more of that I'm sure The local government, I want to thank Chris, Patton, and everybody, both Sanford and Seminole County, on a tremendous 9-11 Patriots Day at Veterans Park. Commissioner Hurd did a great job, and Commissioner Lockhart was also there, and that was a wonderful event, and I really enjoyed it. This past Saturday in Altamont Springs at Crane's Roost, we had the Tunnel to Towers 5K run. Thousands of people, many public safety officers, police, fire from around the region were there, and it was, again, another awe-inspiring event. And this past Saturday, the Sharing Center had their 40th anniversary for sharing the light gala. Thank you to Commissioner Zimbauer. I will not be able to go to the Regional Planning Council tomorrow when you're having a replacement. Thank you for doing that. We did want to say also the Boys and Girls Club of Central Florida will have a great gala at the Greek Cathedral, the Holy Trinity Greek Cathedral next Friday. A couple of things I did want to say in addition at Calno. We did have a meeting in which we were the hosts, Seminole County. Guy did a presentation on the indoor complex and tourism update. And the representatives in the cities and others were very, very excited and impressed. And also there was a discussion, a brief discussion about what some of the cities were going to do and how they were going to get out the potential knowledge and education of Amendment 3. Also, they did compliment our communications team and Chris Patton for the website that's on Amendment 3. So I thought you'd all like to know that. And then I wanted to say today is the start of Hispanic Heritage Month, as well as the National IT Professionals Day. But I have one other good piece of news at the meeting that we had in early September, I'm sorry, in late August for the Florida Trust. As you all know, it's the banking arm of the local governments, which again, you can imagine the impact of that will be on Amendment 3. But we last year decided at the board that we wanted to have an rfp on our banking services both daily as well as long term and remember this is a 2.5 billion dollar portfolio that the florida trust has and Good news, the Bank of New York in Lake Mary was the bank that we chose. I made the motion, and so $2.5 billion of money is going to be coming into that bank in the very near future, right here in Lake Mary. So with that, that's the end of my report.

I hope security is good.

I don't think it's that kind of bank. Commissioner Lockhart, you're up.

I was honored to attend an East Altamont community meeting held at the New Bethel AME Church on Marker Street a couple of weeks ago. This was not a county community event. It was the actual community association invited me to come and hear some of their thoughts and share some of the updates of things that are going on, particularly related to the Rosenwald Community Building. And so that was a great opportunity to answer some questions in a smaller setting. The county will be hosting a community meeting at Lyman High School on September 30th. which is a Wednesday at 6 o'clock. So far, I'm right. I don't have the notes here for that, so I'm doing it from memory. But really important, I want to thank our community information team and Tricia and everybody else who's been a part of putting this together. As you all know, this is a big, big endeavor. first and maybe only community center that this county will build to that degree. And so having everyone in that community feel that they are informed and have access to updated information is important and our team has done a great job of doing that. I attended the Addition Financial Foundation's community giving celebration, which was held down at the at UCF, at the Addition Financial Arena. Yeah, imagine that. And Christina Lehman, who used to work for the school district, is now the head of their foundation, community foundation. And it was the most wonderful event Commissioner Hurd was also in attendance. It wasn't just honoring nonprofits and giving them a check. It was actually pulling together for a networking opportunity to hear about all of the incredible nonprofit organizations in our community and what they do and how they support one another. And I think it's the only event of its kind in our region. And so shout out to Christina and the great work that they're doing. And to all of the nonprofits who did receive considerable sums of money. We're going to be looking more and more, I believe, to philanthropic giving in this community as... tying this back to the conversation about Amendment 3, there are a lot of things that local governments do to support nonprofits that I think we'll have to look very closely at. And we'll be looking to our nonprofits and other support to fill those gaps. I do want to talk about the upcoming LINCS board meeting on Thursday. And I'm I will ask the county manager to forward to you the document that I just received yesterday afternoon at 4 o'clock. It is the union contract for links. It was not actually a part of the backup of the agenda. There were four bulleted items that were the synopsis of what this union contract represents. The item itself says that there is no negative fiscal impact to LINCS, which cannot be possible. The only thing that we can assume is that they've already budgeted for the increase and therefore they don't see it as negative. But one of the bulleted items is a 5% increase to the top tier of the bargaining units. I'm going to ask our team to do a deep dive into the contract now that we have the red line version, which I requested, which I don't know if any of the other links board members have it or requested it. I received it because I asked for it specifically, because I will not vote on a union contract without having read it. and the fact that it is on our Thursday agenda is very troubling to me. So I wish I could tell you what was in it so I could get your feedback, so I could go there with the confidence of representing this entire board. So any input that you have on that, I would be happy to take.

My input would be, based on what my observations have been which are probably a lot of things that need some close scrutiny.

Mr. DeLaurie.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Based on the fact that they may have told you that it is neutral to the budget, I'm assuming that from last fiscal year to this fiscal year, it would be neutral. As long as those are the cases, I'd be okay with it. If there's any increase from last year to this year, I would have an issue with it. Just FYI. And I know you know that, but...

I don't know enough to have any input on it, but I would say that nobody's budget from last fiscal year to this fiscal year has not changed. I understand that. I think neutral to the budget means neutral to the budget for this fiscal year that you're ratifying the contract for. I think there would inherently be an increase in there. At least there was for us. Maybe there wasn't for others. Maybe that holds conversation. But absent of more detail, I can't comment.

Well, I got it.

Anything else? Is there any other staff, any comments that you'd like to share about that?

And as Commissioner Lockhart said, we just received that. So I'll forward that to the board members today. So you'll receive that. I know Ms. Elori, our public works director, is looking at it now. She's going through there. So as we go through there and see anything that we believe that should be addressed or that Commissioner Lockhart needs to be made aware of, I know you're going through it as well. We'll make the board aware of it as well, too.

For context, when the budget came before me at the medical examiner committee meeting, there was an increase of 5% for the medical examiner staff as well. And my position on that was that I voted no because I knew that the I don't feel comfortable, and I will take different direction from this board if you feel differently, but I do not feel comfortable voting to give a larger increase to other agencies' employees than what we are doing for our own employees. That was a position that I took when faced with the idea that these organizations exist because we fund them, and if If we are going to give their employees a greater increase than we can provide for our own, I feel that that's inappropriate. So I had voted against it. I don't know if that is the same tact or thought process that you would like me to take with Lynx.

I'm fine with that as long as they're not out of market. right now as far as where their compensation is at. I don't know enough about what studies may or may not have been done or whether they were outside the norms for their job description. I'm confident in leaving it up to your discretion, working with their staff, our staff, whatever. Fine. I would agree with Commissioner Zimbaugh.

Well, and I would as well, and I can't necessarily determine that an increased 5% to the overall brackets doesn't necessarily mean it's 5% across the board, so I can't correlate that. We don't have enough information, so I don't know that the overall increase is above what our team would, but the philosophy makes sense to me.

Okay, thank you very much. Oh, today is National Double Cheeseburger Day.

Perfect.

Not just a regular burger, but a double cheeseburger. So I will be having one of those this evening. All right, Commissioner Dilawri.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Friday, September the 4th, I was at Seminole High School, and they had game day for their football, and I believe our tourism group did a phenomenal job. Their presentation and their videoing that they did on YouTube was phenomenal. Looking at it, I watched it actually twice. I was extremely impressed on many different levels. The commentating that was done, the announcing was done, and the presentation, the whole format was astronomical. And I think that if we haven't gotten the link I think the county manager needs to send each one of us the link because it was quite a, I shouldn't say amazing, but I was very impressed. I was very impressed with the performance. I was very impressed with the whole show. It was quite amazing to see it. And the one thing I did learn was that they had one commercial from Uppsala Grocery. If you get a chance, you got to go there.

You do. It's amazing.

Because the food was astronomical.

Not priced. It was great. It was great.

It was great. I don't think it was overpriced at all. Okay, good. I mean, the taste was phenomenal. And I don't remember how many years he said he was in business, but it's definitely double digits. And he's definitely a community person. And between them and the two announcers that we had on game day, congratulations to Seminole High School for winning that game. They were the underdog. And very well done. And then on Thursday, August the 27th, Metro Plan, we had a roundtable discussion on e-mobility. And it was quite informative. We had agencies from all of Central Florida, which was Osceola, Seminole, and Orange County, as well as some of the cities, as well as a couple of the hospitals. And it was very informative, and we're going to take that to the next level to try to get our staff, associated staff involved to figure out what we should be doing and presenting to the state. There was also a couple of agencies from other parts of the state that are also involved, that they called in and was giving us as much information as well. So I'll keep you informed as that. We're hoping that we can present to the state to try to get something to be done with e-scooters and e-bicycles. And I'll keep you informed.

All right.

End of my report.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Commissioner Zinbauer.

Thank you, Madam Chair. First, I want to recognize an employee. My office received a phone call from a Sunland Estates resident who wanted us to know and publicly thank Derek Graves, the team leader for Roads and Stormwater. The resident said his team showed up, did a great job laying some new curb to help with a runoff problem that they were having in the neighborhood. He stated our employees were very polite, professional, cleaned up everything, and the resident appreciated how quickly they completed the job. Good work. Attendant of the ribbon cutting at Overlook Park, Commissioner Herr, great speech. Appreciate you opening that there in my district, very much so. Huge asset, probably underutilized for a lot of people that don't realize that park actually exists over there off of Orange Drive in Winter Springs area. Also, the ribbon cutting for the Bill Nygren buggy collection, yay, finally happened. You know, after... Eight years of being here myself and pushing that project forward with the help of my fellow commissioners. And I've got to tell you, thank you to staff. You really, if you haven't had an opportunity, Commissioner Constantine was there. I'm not sure if anybody else made it yet. But what a great job staff did with the building, 302 building, when you walk in. If you were ever in that building previously, it's not even the same building anymore, but it really has that museum theme setting to it with great graphics and other things that lead you through the map of that museum with Mr. Dygren's buggies. What a great asset for the county and future generations to ultimately enjoy. It is, by the way, now the largest buggy collection in the state of Florida. that's in one location and under one central ownership. Great job. I know a lot of people were instrumental in getting that done, and I appreciate each and every one of you. Some of you were inconvenienced because you had to move out of 302 and find and relocate. But at the end of the day, it ended up being a great job. So thank you all very much. Of course, multiple events on celebrating 9-11. Attended the Sharing Center Gala, the Ruby Gala on September 12th. And, of course, the Gratitude Luncheon for Rescue Outreach is September 17th, 1130 at the Rink at Northland Church. And the Boys and Girls Couple Center Florida Be Great Gala is this Friday, September 18th, at Holy Trinity Reception Center. Also, the... October 1st, President's Own Marine Band will be at Dr. Phillips Center on October 19th. If you want tickets, you get a reply by October 1st. If you want to see the Marine Band at Dr. Phillips Center on the 19th. I've got a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity CEO build that is coming along quite well, which will be on October 5th for anybody that wishes to participate in that. Also, great news for our four-legged friends, our furry friends. The Girl Scouts are going to be selling, alongside their cookies, dog treats. Amen. how cool is that cool or what i mean i'm like i'll take a case of those but uh so you know just just know that when the girl scouts are selling their cookies if you want to treat your four-legged friend buy them some treats um i think they're gonna call them puffin patches or patch puffs or patch pals or something um it's like a blueberry flavored little muffin thing that uh Hey, my dogs eat anything. They're not hung up on flavor.

My dogs don't eat $6 a box dog treats.

Right on.

Drawing the line at that.

Exactly.

Money will be spent on Thin Mints.

Amen. I've had a lot of interaction and a lot of inquiries from constituents regarding Amendment 3. So I think this is good dialogue that we've been having. I continue to tell them all the same thing, which is get yourself informed because some of them are in cities, so they need to know and understand what the city is going to possibly be impacted. And I've told them my position is I don't think this is the right vehicle, but the citizens deserve a right to determine how they're going to be taxed, but they also should be informed before they make that decision. And I think there's much more work that needs to be done. So I'm sure each and every one of us are getting those phone calls. And, you know, I always urge them to watch our presentations either live or online and also get a hold of their city that they may live in and understand that. So outside of that, everything else I think is okay in District 2.

All right. Thank you. 9-14, I attended the BNY. Coincidence that we're talking about them twice today. Analyst graduation, so Bank of New York analyst graduation event. They asked me to speak about public service and executive leadership in a business. It was very interesting. So about 100 or so graduates, most of which will end up staying here in Lake Mary at the Lake Mary office. It's a two-year program. They're bringing in the next class within the next two or three months. So it's a great financial engine for our community. In order to get selected for that program, you pretty much have to be top of the food chain and you're graduating college classes, etc. So it's really doing everything that they said they would do here in this community. I did attend the core, so we did a proclamation for them, the foundation gala, and it was an amazing success. 15-year celebration for that organization, the work they're doing in this community with people that are Dealing with paralysis is amazing. There was actually a woman there that walked at this event with arm crutches that came into that organization not walking, and she did a little dancing, too. It's pretty amazing. Yes, the Gratitude in Action luncheon is this Thursday, the 17th. I will be there. I think a lot of you are getting dragged with me, so that's awesome. The addition financial thing, I'm going to jump on, not repeat anything you said, but add to it that what they do is create with their winners a cohort class of the non-profits that then get access to all sorts of free training, master class level training, so that they can become even better than they were before. And then they keep them together as an alumni group to share and do good things for each other. It really is an amazing From ground up, she built that program. Amazing work. So pretty cool. And a shout out to the CEO, Kevin Miller, who supports that work within that organization. On 9-4, a little bit of a different take. I did do the final mile ceremony with our veteran services group. I had a very different vision of what the final mile ceremony was. This is for the unclaimed remains of people that served in the military that passed in our community in Seminole County. I envisioned that I would be out there alone because they have no family, and I was not. I was out there with about 250. It was the biggest funeral I've been to in a very long time, although my Italian relatives up north could rival it. It was all of the American legions and the veterans associations, and they were on their bikes. It was really one of the coolest things I've done as an elected official. All put together by our veteran services team. We're state mandated to have one person. We have a team that does that work. I did, I believe, I shared with you the canvassing board audit, but I did want to tell you that the canvassing board closed out for the primary election. We did, this year was the first time that we've done a 100% audit on the vote. It was a 100% electronic audit, and it was a 99.72% accuracy rate on a 100% audit of the vote. So a huge congratulations to Supervisor of Elections Amy Pennock for the outstanding results that they achieved in her first election in that role. And I think I shared that document with you all so you could see what we transmitted to the state. And yes, the 9-11 Patriot Day anniversary remembrance was really well done. It is great that we get to coordinate such great events with the city of Sanford. They do a great job at it. I could not lower the microphone for those of you that were laughing at me that stood on tippy toes the entire time I was talking. Otherwise, the microphone would have been right here. So I might need to adjust that the next time. And that concludes my report as well. I think we have one final step here. Do we have any requests for public comment for items not related to the agenda?

There was one written comment that's being passed around, but no others.

Awesome. Jay has it.

We'll pass it down the dais.

It was just, I can paraphrase a young lady, or I believe it was a young lady, who was missing or sad about the demise of Red Hot and Blue Boom and wished to see if the cities, counties, city, county, and private business could find some way to do it.

Well, I wish all the luck in the world to the city of Altamont for determining the outcome of Red Hot and Boom. A lot of us have talked to him about that, yes. All right. I think that concludes our meeting. Without any further ado, we'll adjourn, and we will be back here in approximately... An hour. I'm sorry, recess, and we will be back here in one hour and three minutes, 5.30. Recessed until 5.30.

music music

And gentlemen, if we could please be seated.

All right, well, happy September.

It is 5.30 and I'm going to call the meeting back to order. Welcome to the first public hearing of the tentative millage rates and budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2027. Before we begin, we would like to remind everyone here that the Board of County Commissioners does not have control over the tax levies or budgets of the school board, the water management district, the property appraiser, the tax collector, or any of the seven cities in Seminole County. If you do have questions about your property valuations, they should be addressed to Our property appraiser, David Johnson, who has graciously joined us here this evening to be of service to the public. With that, county manager.

Thank you, Chairman, and good evening Commissioners and members of the public. As the Chairman stated, we are here for the first of two public hearings on the fiscal year 2026-27 budget required by Florida statute. The purpose of tonight's meeting is to present the tentative budget for all funds and proposed millage rates for the countywide district, the fire MSTU, and the road MSTU. This public hearing was advertised through the notice of proposed property taxes mailed to each property owner in August. The millage rates and budgets considered for the tentative adoption tonight are the result of six budget work sessions with the Board of County Commissioners this year. The county's budget process has always been a conservative one, focused on doing more with less. Each year, county management works closely with the board to carefully evaluate our resources, identify efficiencies, and prioritize the services and infrastructure our residents and businesses rely on. A few of the budget highlights. The proposed budget maintains the countywide fire and roads millage rates at their current levels. As a result of our efficiency efforts, this budget includes a net reduction of five full-time positions. These are primarily vacant positions within the Public Works Department, resulting in a savings to our roads fund. Most importantly, this budget fully funds our current levels of service including public safety, transportation and infrastructure, parks and recreation and other core county services. Regarding our financial strength and looking ahead, the budget before you tonight is balanced and reflects the conservative financial approach that has helped keep Seminole County financially sound. During our first three budget work sessions, we focused on developing the fiscal year 2026-27 budget before you tonight. Our last three work sessions expanded that discussions to begin analyzing the potential impacts of Amendment 3 on future county budgets and services. While Amendment 3 will not directly impact fiscal year 2026-27 proposed budget, we believe it is important to begin those conversations sooner rather than later. Each commissioner has received a detailed statement of the necessary adjustments, which is included in this document. Finally, I want to thank Mr. Jax and the entire Office of Management and Budget team for their tremendous amount of work that goes into developing budgets and guiding us through this process. I also want to thank, I always say, all of you folks in the back are department directors and your financial teams. I know it's been a trying and tough year, so I appreciate all the collaboration from each of our departments as well. With that, Chairman, I'd like to turn it over to Tim to walk us through the tentative millage rates and budget.

Thank you very much. Mr. Jets.

Thank you, Darren. I'm Timothy Jets with the Office of Management and Budget. In accordance with Florida statute truth and millage requirements, this is the first of two public hearings to adopt the fiscal year 27 millage rates and budget. The tentative budget is balanced with revenues and expenditures totaling $1.27 billion. This includes adjustment reductions of $13,405,476 from the proposed budget delivered to the board in June. Primary revenue adjustments include a $1 million increase in ad valorem revenues based on final taxable value calculations from the property appraiser, a $1 million reduction in infrastructure sales tax revenues based on Florida Department of Revenue projections, a $3.9 million increase in health insurance premium revenues based on 2027 final health insurance rates, a $5.1 million reduction in interfund transfers, including a reduction to our mass transit fund and a reduction to the water and sewer capital fund. We have $2 million in new grant agreements, a $1 million increase in special revenue estimates, and a $15.9 million decrease in beginning fund balance estimates. There's a detailed report with all public hearing adjustments included in the public hearing document. Moving to expenditures, we also have reductions of $13.4 million. This includes a $3.2 million increase in unfunded mandates shown on the top left-hand corner, $1.9 million to the sheriff's office related to FRS special risk contributions set by the state. There is an associated increase of $1.2 million in the fire department. And finally, we have an increase of $71,000 for the cost of the software used to run our emergency operations center. We've been notified that the state will no longer pay for this mandated system. Other adjustments include a $700,000 reduction to links, a $1.4 million reduction for SunRail, and a $900,000 reduction to the supervisor of elections that was discussed at the board work session in June. There's a $2.9 million increase in health insurance claims budget based on actuarial projections. $14 million added to three existing infrastructure sales tax projects, and a $5.1 million reduction in our fund transfers. Also, $2 million in new grant agreements, $32 million reduction in reserves, and a $250,000 reduction to the sheriff's transfer for the suspension of the flock camera network. I will now present the tentative millage rates. The first column shows the FY26 adopted rates. The second column shows the rollback rate, which would generate the same amount of ad valorem tax revenues as the current year, excluding new construction. The next column shows the FY27 tentative millage rates. And the final column shows the percentage of the tentative millage rates over the rollback rate. The FY27 rates are the same as the current rates for all district. The increase over the rollback rate will be used to meet state mandated obligations, maintain public safety services, and offset cost increases for transportation. The general countywide millage of 5.3751 mills is 4.18% above the rollback rate of 5.1595 mills. The fire rescue MSTU millage of 2.7649 mills is 4.06% above the rollback rate of 2.6569 mills. And the unincorporated road MSTU millage of 0.1107 mills is 4.24% above the rollback rate of 0.1062 mills. The tentative aggregate millage rate for all BCC taxing districts is 7.3620 mills, which is 4.01% over the current aggregate rollback rate of 7.0781 mills. That concludes my presentation of the tentative millage rates and budget.

Thank you very much. That takes us to public comments. Kate, I am going to ask you to read the public comments rules.

Floor law provides that members of the public shall be given a reasonable opportunity to be heard on propositions before the Board of County Commissioners, except when the Board is acting on emergency or ministerial matters or conducting a meeting exempt from the requirements of the Sunshine Law. Individuals shall be permitted three minutes each for public comment or six minutes when the individual is an official representative of a formal association or group. The Chairman may modify the maximum time for public comment at her sole discretion when appropriate. Chairman?

Thank you very much. How many public comments do we have? We have six. All right. Let's call up the first two.

Gabriella Mangel and Gwen Guthrie.

Please come on up. And it's this microphone. State your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes.

I do not feel comfortable stating my address where this is being live streamed online, so I will not be doing that.

Do you live in Seminole County, ma'am?

Yes, I'm an Oviedo resident, and I'm happy to say that.

Okay, thank you.

If you could pass those down, please. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Gabriella Mangle. I'm a Seminole County and a veto resident. Tonight's tentative budget reduces the transfer to the sheriff's office by $250,000 for the suspension of the flock camera network. I appreciate that reduction, but a suspension is not a contract termination, a permanent ban, or a guarantee that automated license plate readers will not return under flock or another vendor. The public deserves clear answers. Does this reduction mean the FLOC contract will not continue after this next fiscal year? Has it been terminated or merely suspended? If legislation promoted by the sheriff's office passes next spring, could the sheriff move money within his more than $204 million budget to purchase new ALPRs without another public discussion? Florida law gives sheriffs substantial authority to transfer funds within their approved budget That makes a permanent, publicly adopted policy more important than a single $250,000 reduction. I've also been told by a commissioner that she learned about flock from Sheriff Lemma while insisting that an ALPR is not a camera and only reads and records license plate numbers. That description is so materially incorrect that it raises serious concerns about whether officials are being given the necessary information to make informed decisions about this technology. The devices photograph vehicles. The system records the time, location, and direction of travel and can make vehicle characteristics searchable. Flock's own representative answered questions at Oviedo's work session about the capabilities that went well beyond the limited system some officials apparently believed they had approved. That meeting exposed a serious failure of informed oversight. What officials thought they purchased was materially different from the system residents later learned had been deployed. Public records reportedly show that Seminole County Sheriff's Office personnel conducted five flock searches associated with a May Day rally or protest, entering protest as the reason. The rally consisted of people standing on a public sidewalk exercising First Amendment rights. Even if the vehicles were the search inputs, the purpose was associated with people engaged in protected political activity. That is precisely how a vehicle surveillance system becomes a means of monitoring people. I also want to address a troubling contradiction in how privacy is discussed. When our sheriff's son was charged with crimes, the sheriff said that the legal process would proceed as it would for anyone, but then also said that it would be handled as a personal family matter.

His son's photograph... Ma'am, is this on the agenda? I am talking about... We're not going to talk about the sheriff's family in this forum.

I am literally just saying I understand his wanting for privacy as a parent, and we as citizens should be given that same respect for privacy. Then keep going past that. That was the end of that. Thank you. So I understand why any parent values family privacy, and as I said, it should be extended to every resident and every Seminole County family, including the residents suspected of no crimes whose vehicle locations and movements were photographed and placed in a searchable database and shared across the country.

I think your time is up. Thank you.

Next speaker. Hello. My name is Gwen Guthrie and I live at Willis Circle.

Awesome.

If you would just give me one minute. Sure. Could you please call the next two speakers so they could line up? Thank you.

Leslie Grubel and Eric Fiedler. Thank you so much. Go ahead. Sure. No problem. My name is Gwen Guthrie. I live at Willis Circle and I am a Seminole County resident. Good evening. I've read and heard arguments from people who support flock and ALPR cameras and maybe they have a point. Flat cameras can help law enforcement find people suspected of committing crimes. They can locate stolen vehicles and identify vehicles associated with people who have outstating warrants. And if they help law enforcement gather evidence against people who break the law, why wouldn't we want to use them? In fact, maybe we aren't thinking big enough. why limit this technology to stolen cars and violent criminals the flock system deployed in our county records where vehicles travel that data could potentially be useful for investigations of other suspected wrongdoing fraud election related offenses residency violations Imagine, purely hypothetically, that someone claimed to live in an address that they didn't actually live at so that they could vote in a particular district or maintain eligibility for a position requiring residency within certain boundaries. Wouldn't flock data be useful then? Imagine the cameras repeatedly showing that person's vehicle, spending its nights in one city, while official records say the person lives somewhere else. After all, if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about, right? That's the argument people make. Suddenly, that argument feels a little different. Because when people defend mass surveillance, they almost always imagine the surveillance being pointed at someone else, the car thief, the kidnapper, the dangerous stranger. They don't imagine someone searching their movements. Flock doesn't know whether a license plate belongs to a violent criminal, an ordinary resident, a political activist, or an elected official. And that principle applies equally to everyone, whether you're a resident, a commissioner, or even an off-duty police officer. It simply collects the data. And that's why I'm not here tonight to support Flock cameras. Surveillance powers created for people we fear today can be turned on any of us tomorrow. So don't ask whether you're comfortable with flock tracking criminals. Ask whether you're comfortable with flock tracking you. The sheriff has stated that the cameras have been deactivated and the removal is underway. But removing them doesn't address how they got here or prevent them from coming back. So I'm asking this board to do two things. Revoke the right-of-way authorization and prohibit future ALPR installations. And ask how a surveillance network capable of tracking residents' movements was deployed without meaningful public discussion, especially before approving an even larger budget for the agency that deployed it. The cameras may be coming down. Let's make sure that they stay down. Thank you.

Thank you.

Leslie Grubel, 1841 Misty Morn Place, Longwood, Florida. I wanted to come today and speak about the budget workshops that came up to the budget that we are looking at today, and particularly to recommend those of us who are residents be sure to go onto the Board of County Commissioners' websites and review the budget workshops and what they are speaking about in regard to how the impact of Amendment 3 would be upon our budget. In reviewing some of the information that was given out at these particular meetings, there was a service impact overview of Roche Bridges Traffic Engineering and Mass Transit Department. Excuse me. There would be less frequent roadside ditch and culvert cleaning, less frequent retention pond and canal maintenance. Pothole repair response times would be extended from 24 to 48 hours to one week or longer. Double the time between roadside mowing cycles, eliminating supplemental in-house mowing. Mowing performed only when conditions present a public safety risk. Reduce curb and gutter repairs. Eliminate street sweeping. Limit tree trimming and removal to public safety risks. Reduce annual roadway stripping by half. Limit guardrail and handrail repairs to public safety risks. Limit sidewalk repairs. Reduce traffic signal maintenance and reduce traffic signal retiming. Reduce street lighting. Impact limit lighting to critical locations and or reduce operating hours of existing street lights. Prioritize sign replacement based on public safety risk. Onward, they talked about reducing library services, which would include reducing operating hours, staffing shift, reduced days of operation, reduced access to library resources, reduced public computers, printing, and Wi-Fi, reduced meeting and educational spaces, fewer library materials being available. Sports, recreation, parks and trails, reduced facility availability, reduced access or operating hours at parks and facilities, reduced maintenance of parks and trails, reduced trails, roadway, medians, and county properties. Furthermore, under extension services, there would be a reduced reduction in consumer and family health services, health and wellness education, school programs, youth services, 4H, FFA, financial literacy programs, reduced horticultural and sustainable agriculture. We would lose the ability to have our water testing, the biological studies that are done on our water that let us know when we shouldn't be swimming in a particular lake. This is a tragic example of state overreach. Amendment 3 is not something we want for our county. Thank you very much.

Next speaker, if you would come up, and if you would call the next two, Ms. Drager.

Bill Hyde and John Horvath.

Thank you very much. Sir, name and address for the record.

Good evening, commissioners, county staff. My name is Eric Fiedler. I've lived in Seminole County for 11 years and have worked in commercial property since 2014. I just brought, like whenever we see these nice presentations, it's kind of easy to get inundated with graphs and statistics and lingo that the ordinary citizen may not know. So I brought something that's tangible, and it's just my trim notices for a handful of properties here in Seminole County. So I have two properties here. State Road 434, one is increasing. The proposed increase is 13.5%. One is almost 12%. I have one in County and Big Tree Park. The increase is just a little over 13% year over year. One off of Highway 1792 in Longwood increases over 11%. And I have one in Castleberry. Castleberry increased their moat rate a little bit, but it's almost 20% increase year over year. And there's a misconception with commercial property, probably other properties too, that if the property taxes increase, that maybe the landlord will cover it or absorb it. And while we can absorb a little bit of it, all of our tenants are small businesses here in Seminole County. And they have triple net leases. That means if property expenses go up, they're the ones who, at the end of the day, pay that increase. And I have an increase of $5,000 here on this property. That's going to go straight to our Seminole County businesses. And I know that from a couple dozen tenants that we have, their revenues, their profits are not going up 10% year after year. And this is after you guys approved and increased the mojo rate last year. We increased our mojo rate 10% on top of what the assessments went up. So we've been on this crazy streak of values going up. And it's becoming very untenable. which is why our state is stepping in and proposing Amendment 3 to put a cap on this. For commercial properties, I believe it would be a 5% cap down from a 10% cap. And it's because of local governments like this that can't rein in spending, can't keep control of constitutionals, of whatever your discretionary budget is that's beyond the constitutionals. And it's going to be very detrimental to a county. It is now. So all I would ask is that you guys would consider how we can tighten this up, how we can look at reducing taxes, how we can cut out the pork, the special projects, the high-tech professional sports complexes, the things that are not going to help the everyday person buy groceries or support their business.

Thank you. Mr. Hyde? Hi.

Good evening. My name is Bill Hyde. I live at 2379 Audley Street in Rovito. I follow the budget process. You guys know I go to most all the meetings. I've been really, really good. I've been really, really quiet. And I was really going to be quiet all day today. But I heard some comments that kind of bothered me more than a little bit. and it was regarding Save Our Homes. I heard a lot of negative comments, and it was almost bashing Save Our Homes, and that really bothers me. I was around in those days, and I know that Commissioner Constantine was in the House, and I was sitting on a dais like this one, not this one, obviously, back in those days, and... Property taxes had gotten really, really, really problematic. I had a very good friend of ours who was a widow, and she lived on the New River in Fort Lauderdale. You all know where that is and what the homes are like there. She lost her home because taxes kept going up. Well, thankfully... We got Save Our Homes. Save Our Homes was designed to protect older folks on fixed incomes. It's to protect those of us who have lived in our homes for many, many years from spiraling taxes that would make it impossible for us to continue to live in our houses and have limited and fixed incomes. You know, I'm not talking about the taxes. I'm just hoping that going forward, we can use a little less animosity towards to save our homes. It's there for a reason. It's there to protect some folks who are longtime homeowners. We're not the enemy. We paid our taxes year after year. I have never even been late. In fact, I pay my taxes the day it comes out, and a lot of us folks do. So going forward, I would just appreciate a little less bashing of the Save Our Homes folks. You know, we're your friends, we're your neighbors, and we've been here longer than most of you all except for maybe one up there.

You know, Madam Chair, and I'm going to go through very briefly.

Commissioner Constantine, I'm going to go through all of the public comments, and then if you'd like to have a word. But this is not a discussion, typically, and I'm going to keep it to that this evening. Come on up, John.

Good evening, commissioners. John Horvath, 1004 Bradford Drive, Winter Park, Florida. As you heard, the problem is we've had so many changes to the homestead exemption, save our homes, which I agree with Bill, but you get somebody paying more than somebody else. Is that fair? I know I'm retired. I'm on a tight budget, but We have to have equipment to take care of the streets, the fire department. They're talking about not buying trucks in a couple of years if the SAVE, this new amendment passes, and we're gonna have old trucks that won't respond to your house fire or your needs. Our medical services that we expect now won't be available in a couple of years. Tallahassee seems to be on a vengeance of dumping on the cities and the county and the school board and not telling you that you're running your property right. And I listened to Mr. Jacks talk about unfunded mandates and what was the amount, it's unbelievable what unfunded mandates are and you're supposed to take care of that with the money you're already working on and you don't have the money because it's tied up in other projects. And anything that's spent here, just like you heard the man with the commercial properties, know what's what's fair you got to be fair to everybody whether you have a house commercial or whatever and taxes have always been a bugaboo in this in this state and we got to look at it as a means to how you're going to solve it without creating a problem and tallahassee and i don't know commissioner constantine agreement lately tallahassee seems to be mad at the cities and counties and schools because they don't know how to spend their money when they're told by Tallahassee, you've got to do this and that, and you don't have the funds to do it. So we need to – I've been following this budget for years, and we've always had tight budgets in this county. Former county commissioners had passed on things years ago, and this commission is having to look at them now because we need them. The cost has gone up tremendously, so it's been a tough road to hoe, and we need something to get it squared away where taxes are fair to everybody, whether you own commercial property, you own a house, you're 80 years old or 60 years old, you can afford to have your house or your business. So I know we run tight budgets. I've been following these budgets for years, and They're getting crazy in some ways, just like prices at the grocery store or anywhere else. And I've cut buying stuff at the grocery store because I just don't want to pay for it and everything. So I know you run tight budgets, and you'll do it continuously now. And thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Hello, Brant.

Is that it? Yes, ma'am. All right. So, Commissioner Constantine, if you'll give me just a chairman's privilege for a minute. I do think, Mr. Hyde, our comments taken out of context were, I think that was a really good level setting for us. reference for re-looking at the tax was in reference to allowing the commission to do it because they're set up to do it they'll do it with a data-based analysis as opposed to the way this was done and so it's about listen i don't know that there's any place in the world where taxes are fair that's just not how taxes work but we do know that when you study them with data that with a group of very smart people that are pulled together to do that over a length of time, that that probably has a better outcome than what we're seeing today. So I think that was a very small comment in that broader context. We do appreciate the public comments tonight. Commissioners, I am looking for four separate motions.

I move to adopt the fiscal year 26-27 countywide millage rates as presented. Second.

We have a first and a second. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? None opposed. It passes unanimously.

Madam Chair, I move to approve the fiscal year 2026-2027 fire MSTU millage rate as presented.

Second. We have a first and a second. Any further comments? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously.

Make a motion to adopt the fiscal year 26-22 Rhodes MSTU millage rate as presented.

Second.

We have a first and a second. Any further comments? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously.

Madam Chair, I move aggregate millage for all BCC taxing districts of 7.3620 mils is 4.01% above the aggregate. Rollback rate of 7.0781 mils.

Is that correct?

No. What did I say?

I think we're looking for a motion on the budget.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'll move adopted 26-27 tentative budget as presented.

Thank you very much. Is there a second to that one?

Second.

Any further discussion?

I'll be ahead.

Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. I do want to share with you that the second final public hearing to adopt the county millage and budget will be scheduled for Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026 at 5.30, right here in the BCC chambers. And before I adjourn this meeting, I would like to extend my sincere thank you to Darren, because you thanked everybody else earlier, but to Darren and Kate, to the executive leadership team, and certainly to Mr. Jecks for pulling this all together. There's no detail that we ask you for that you cannot deliver to us. And for that, we are grateful. And to every other department that's pulled budget numbers together, all of the constitutionals, and to all of the departments independently for doing everything that you can to be as efficient as you possibly can. With that, meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.