Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioners. Oops, let me pull that up. So we just have one presentation to go through. I'll try to talk slower than normal, but it's not a very long presentation and then we'll bring it forward to you guys for discussion. Make sure it's always checked.

Do we need to vote on Goodson?

Yes, we do. Thank you. I have a great a lot of support on this board to keep me in line. A motion being or for recognizing commissioner Goodson. So moved. So motion second. I allow Commissioner Goodson to call in. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimous. Commissioner Goodson, you are in. Thank you, sir. Jim.

Okay. So with the slides, so we're going to go over a few subjects, the board direction, charter cap language impacts, county comparisons, the finding a critical need process, some general fund critical needs for you to look at. We also did add in additional revenue options for you to look at and then questions and board discussion. See and I'm already talking too So at the March 19 workshop, the board directed staff to evaluate what steps would take to be required to reset the general fund millage to a rate that would generate revenues needed to address county's infrastructure and other critical needs. We're going to give you a little bit of background on the millage rate and some possible methods to look at on the critical needs.

And then we're going to as the Board instructed, we're going to show you steps or we're going to present the steps required to reset the general fund millage. So this chart you've seen a number of times. This is just a reminder for all. We have underneath our charter cap and you'll see the definition coming up. But underneath the charter cap, we're limited to CPI U or 3% whatever is less.

So as the taxable values which is the red line increases, you're going to see the military dropped which is the blue line. So there's examples we've had for the last seven excuse me, yes, this is the last seven fiscal years. And this is the chart we use to determine the CPI. Our CPI is the CPI U and it's the average of the twelve months previous. When you look at the chart, the blue line is the CPI that we've been using to increase the revenue.

So the the charter cap works, look at last year's revenue and you can increase by the CPI. So if you looked in 2015, our revenue increased by 0.12%. This coming fiscal year, which is all the way at the right, we'll be able to increase by 2.63%. The dash green line is the cap. We're not allowed to go above 3%. So those three fiscal years in 2021, 2022 and 2023 as you see the inflation rate was higher. So we were only allowed to go up to 3%. So the year that costs went up 8%, we only captured 3%. And then if you look this year's inflation rate, went through already through March is at 3.3. The producer price index is up at 4%.

I want to point that out because remember our 2.32.63% is a number from last year 2025, but applies to the budget that starts October '26 and runs through '27. So if we start facing 4% inflation as of now through next the end of next fiscal year, our next fiscal year we're only going up to 2.36%. So it's an always a lagging number because that's just the way it's set up in our charter and the way we have to do with CPU CPI. So it's just a reminder there, if gas prices don't go down and some of the other inflationary impacts, we won't be able to address them in the next fiscal year's budget.

I'm going to point out the same thing we talked about the other day just and I don't mean to interrupt Jim, Mr. Chair, but you know that CPI, so you can call that the inflation that government admits to, okay, at the federal level. But that's compounded, so it's a little misleading when you see the peak and it sort of goes down because each of those years is compounded from the prior one.

Yes. And I can't give you the perfect math because if you just do it based on the street percentage, we have to do new construction and some other things. But those three years that maxed at the 3%, we are able to capture about 9.27% increase when the overall inflation rate was like 1.17%. So we lost about 8% compounds year over the year. Once you lose it, you can't gain it back because you can never go above the 3%.

So the years those couple those three years have had an impact and I have a fear that we're going to see that later this calendar year and in the next fiscal year that we're not going to be able to keep up with the inflation. This goes back to the previous chart there is where our military has dropped by 27% since February 2019. And then you look at the bottom, those are our comparison counties we look at and put in our budget together that we have a lower military than everybody else. And then 2019 our military was 3.9%, so the other seven peer counties that we looked at peer PEER, only one had a lower millage rate even we did before it started really going down in 2019. But that gives you an idea of what other folks are looking at.

You only have two counties that have decreased over the last seven years. You have three counties that have excuse me, you've had three counties that have decreased the last seven years and then you only have three counties that have increased and then one, CLS kept their millage rate the same. And so I mean, when you keep the millage rate the same, if tax will values go up 8% that means you capture 8%. Taxable values go up here 8% and we have a cap of 2.6%, we only go up 2.6%. So it's just a reminder what we're facing compared to other counties.

There is the exact definition of the finding a critical need. What you really need to see is about in the middle where it talks about paragraph A and B, have to go to your charter to look that up. But if a super majority of the Board concurs in finding that such an excess is necessary because of emergency or critical need, that finding shall be set forth the ultimate facts upon which is based and shall be valid for the one excuse me, for one single budget year. In the packet, we also included and we'll talk about it again briefly, but we included the last two times the Board found critical need and the resolutions in there. If you read through it, one of them was quite detailed describing all the different critical needs.

If the Board went so far as that, that's the type of resolution we'd be presenting for you guys, let you decide what you want to do. But you got it when we if we declare critical needs, you have to be pretty well defined and you have to follow the charter. The date process for that is we're going through the February through March February through May is the budget workshops and getting board direction. Staff will be turning in their department budgets early May ish, believe like May 4 or something, somewhere in that neighborhood. That's where they put together then we sit down county managers, assistant county managers, budget office, go through all the requests.

We sit down with staff, each department will be presenting Memorial Day week and that June and then we start putting our heads together, start developing, we get the balanced budget and we put the budget message together for you. July 13 is the date we'll be sending a proposed budget. What we do is because July 21 is your tentative millage, July 13 is when we'd have the draft agenda out. So we'll have the proposed budget put together for you guys then. July 21, there's two major dates on here.

The first one is in green. On July 21, the Board sets the tentative millage. So if you all decided to go to critical needs or anything else, that is the millage, you set the millage then and you don't go lower than the millage you set on the tentative millage. I meant there is a process you can go above it, but it's not worth talking about because you have to send out new trim notices, but you have to set that millage rate at that meeting and it gives the property appraiser enough time to put together the trim notice and mail that out to all the property owners throughout the county. The second important date is in September and that's where the Board adopts the tentative and final millages after the first budget hearing.

If you don't adopt after the first budget hearing, you can't raise the millage rate at the final budget hearing. So those are important dates. So you basically can't go above in July 21 and you can't go above and after the September, first September meeting. I'll drink a water, hang on a second. So we laid out there's dates the we put the budget together, we talked about critical needs.

So the question is if you decide to do critical needs and had a resolution, when would you vote on and adopt the resolution? And I hate to say the answer is depends, but the two times we've done it, we've done it two different The first time we did it, adopted in September 1336 and in 2019 we adopted it July 23, which was the tentative millage. So just to let you know there's a couple of different ways and we follow whatever the Board would tell us whatever method the Board would like.

I have a quick question if I

may. Yes.

What makes the determination between July or September?

I have no idea. We kind of went back and looked and the board decided to do one in September and decided to do one in July.

It's just no rhyme

or Yes. Does

TRIM I'm sorry, Mr. Chair,

Yes. How's the TRIM process affect that? The TRIM if because critical needs if you declare critical needs, you're going to go above the charter cap. So the TRIM in July, you have to have set out the trim notice with the higher above the cap millage.

Right. So if the board were to head that direction because of trim notice, you have to get that to the property appraiser in July, so that she can send that out in August.

Yeah. For that there you go.

That's correct. And just to add to that, you could set that proposed millage in July at the higher rate and then adopt the critical need in September, I think, which is what was done in that first instance. So finding of critical need isn't really related to trim other than you have to set that higher millage rate in July.

And I should add that that works for any millage, just not general fund. If you to declare critical need on any millage, you got to make sure you meet the same timelines as we're showing off here. I keep saying general fund, but it would apply to any of the non voter approved millage rates. So we're just going go over some of the highlights of what could be critical needs and the impact. So these are the slides or the areas you heard from the last budget meeting where we went through and we had the pictures and all the definitions of all the different needs.

And so we have infrastructure, public safety, general countywide and we have some numbers up there. I mean they could be higher, they could be lower, but that was some of the items we could identify pretty quickly. There's about 47,000,000 we could up to that we can show you and have you decide whether that's a critical need or not. In red, I want to point out that the Avalorum, because this has come up Avalorum taxes do not fund the utilities or solid weight infrastructure operations. Those are funded through user fees and not included any finding of critical need or the military set.

So what we did as a staff, we went through and we call them options for lack of a better way. Mean, but these are just examples to show you of different ideas for critical needs. I'll go a little bit backwards. If you look at option three, option three if the military was 3.0486 that was from two fiscal years ago. If the Board decided to go reset the military to two years ago that would generate about about 22,000,000 almost $23,000,000 and an impact on a taxable value home of $200,000 would be about $36 And then down below you can see option three where it says $18.43 that's the increase per $100,000 of taxable value.

So if somebody had taxable value of $500,000 I didn't write the math down, I did it last night, the tax increase will be about $90 Option one is the if you go back three years to fiscal twenty twenty two-twenty twenty three rate, which is 3.2619, the impact to a $200,000 taxable value home would be 80 just under $80 that would generate about $39,000,000 Option two, we just put we pick something somewhere in the middle just so it just helps us with the math. If you want to look at an impact of $50 that generates we backed into that military to 3.11 and that would estimate about $28,000,000 So we just we have this slide just to show you, trying to give you some sample impacts, some sample amount of revenue that different millages could generate for everything. So I'll go back in this a little bit more detailed on some of the possible ways of critical needs. You've seen the slide, the information on the left you already saw before at the March 19 meeting. The $1,500,000 was restored for resurfacing.

On the right we asked public works to put together. Those are some of the projects if you declared a critical needs, those are some of the and if you cleared the critical need for public works, those are some of the projects that we start on immediately in fiscal year twenty twenty seven just to give you an idea what their needs are across the county and they're pretty much everywhere across the county itself. A little different information you haven't seen the jail, we talked about some of the capital for the jail, the doors, I keep calling the tents, but the sprung structures, the HVAC, coolers. And then below you can see this is the cost increase or the costs have been increasing, they include the jail operations and the facility CIP. The jail is pretty old.

I've been here thirty five years. It was old enough when I got here and we've added on since then. So we are facing some jail needs that will be coming up in the next handful of years. This is information that you've seen before. That's all the facility not all, that's facilities being maintained by public works of the facilities group.

But we talked about all this in March between the North area, the Central area and the South area. And I forget one of the briefings we got asked, the South area includes Viera. So you're pretty much when we say South, you're looking at Viera South, Central is between here and 528 and then North area is above 528. It's not a bad way to divide up the assets across the county aren't distributed evenly, but that comes pretty close to dividing each county in the thirds based on the assets. Same information that you saw last time about Parks and Recreation, this is just to let you know that we have needs coming up in the next few years.

Same thing, millage that will be the last one will be paid off, the debt millage we paid off this year, but we as the voters voted on 2000 and 2006. So you're looking at structures and parks and infrastructure that's been built twenty five years ago and those are just the ones with the referendum does include some of our older parks. So we do have a quite a bit of needs coming back and forth on parks that will be facing and adjusting to over the next handful of years again. IT, same slide, it's in there just to point out that we will have some yearly cost starting in '27 down below for storage and our systems and working on our networks. I mean there are small numbers compared to what you see in public works or the jail, but I want to point out IT is infrastructure.

We can't get anything done within our IT and they've been pretty good with us working on their budget, but we do have some needs coming up. I keep seeing the same thing, don't I folks. Sheriff Office, this is items that you hadn't seen at the last one, but Sheriff has the same issues, infrastructure equipment and operations. Infrastructure, there's lots on the jail equipment. They have I believe over 500 vehicles in their fleet.

I'm an old transit guy, so I know that's a lot of turnover every year, a lot of needs on their equipment. And in operation, we have a lot on the county jail. We have inmate food services, medical care, both of those as Commissioner Feltner pointed out, the CPI that they're admitting to. We've all been to the grocery store. I mean, I'd love my groceries only be at 2.6%.

I don't believe that number for groceries. And Medicare medical care, same thing that is not a 2.63% that's a much higher number. The Sheriff's Office are facing the same issues there as we are in our budget. Public safety, I'm going to kind of go counter clockwise on the slides, but at the upper left hand corner that's in the orange, Public what we want to point out is that the Board is public safety is the number one priority and we've been following through that the last handful of years. So public safety which includes share of fire rescue and the medical examiner, the share of the general fund has gone from a little over 53% to just under 60% in the last five or six years.

When you take a look on the fire rescue side, you could see and I'm not criticizing or anything like that, but I'll just point out there's the investment we made with our firefighters last year in 2025, their comp and benefits of $71,000,000 we're expecting this coming year $91,000,000 that's all part of their contract that they just received, we agreed to. And then when you look at the upper right hand corner, as they call it the blue side, the emergency medical transfer, their amount of funding went up over a little over $10,000,000 in the general fund. That the Board told us to focus on public safety and so that was the budget we balanced budget we delivered to you guys last year to showing what some of the impacts were. Talked briefly with the Sheriff with medical care, but don't forget we're an employer too. So we're facing the same pressures that we're getting on both health insurance and on the risk management.

Homeowners see it through their homeowners insurance. We see it through our property insurance, our workers' comp, auto liability, those regular insurance things that everyone faces. You can see that our balance forward or basically our money in the bank for employee benefits has dropped from $40,000,000 to about $23,000,000 And on the risk management side, dollars 20,000,000 down to $4,000,000 I explained at the last meeting that we're going to take a closer look at how we allocate the cost, how we come up with the cost, how we deal with everything. But I have this slide to point out to you that so let's just say we need to raise health insurance by 10%. Well, that 10%, that's 10% more on the fire rescue budget, that's 10% more on the sheriff's budget.

So we got I'm sorry, I didn't back it in the right way, but what we got to do is we got to keep that we got to stop the bleeding and employing balance forward. We got to start balancing out because eventually you're going to run out of money and you're to start putting the backs on the back of the department, but we're funding the departments with all our own money. So we got to pay this no matter what we put in their budget or they're being shore up the fund. That didn't explain.

Could I ask one technical question, Mr. Chair, a quick one? Okay. What happened with sovereign immunity this session or are they not done with that?

300 or 500 sovereign immunity went up and we're expecting Melissa at the the

the

both

Senate the senate and and House. The house.

It was not officially signed but not vetoed by the governor. So my understanding is it's gonna be law effective October 1. The limits are increasing to, I believe, three fifty per 350,000 per incident, 500,000 per event.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. And that will increase our premium on our risk management side. So we we

we are self insured up limits currently and then have access current access coverage as well. So our excess coverage costs will likely go up, but also our claim cost and that self insured portion is going to go up dramatically as well.

Thank you. So to be honest, Commissioner, I look a little bit better if I look at my notes. What the point I really want to make was employee benefits is and risk management, those funds affect all budgets, whether you're Board, Constitution Officers, General Fund, Enterprise Fund, special revenue funds, it affects across

the company. We

quick break? Take Okay.

Couple more slides. Okay. Sorry about that. So the bottom chart is the FRS rates. The blue is the regular and orange is special risk. Just pointing out as the FRS rates increase, increase our costs, 1% increase in FRS rate is the same thing as a 1% COLA increase. So we have to fund those. Those rates are set by the state. We added two different examples of other taxes because we talked about revenues. We talked about the public service tax and gas tax at the last workshop.

So what we did here is and it's not the perfect math, if the Board's interested we'd have to go more details, but basically what we did is we put on a sample tax bill of employees FPL bill, what their current bill was and then it did a 510% on the bill. Like I said, not perfect. We'll do better math if you're interested. But it gives you an idea of a 5% increase on a public service tax. The impact of this customer will be about $76 a year, a 10% increase would be somewhere in the $150 range.

And what those would do is generates between 16,000,000 and $33,000,000 So we just did this so you can what does $30,000,000 in property tax, what's the impact to a home owner, dollars 30,000,000 tax on a public service tax, what does that go to an average homeowner. So we brought that down as an example. And I will say it's not my bill, mine came in today during lunch, I was doing the math during our lunch break too with the same one. And then last but not least, we just have fuel taxes up there. We have the $09 tax and then the local option gas tax of $01 to $05 So we also if you look in the light blue there, consumer went through, we did 50 gallons a month.

I went through a few studies. It looks like the average monthly consumption per vehicle is about 48. I saw a couple of say 48 to 50 has dropped from 55. So I asked the budget office put together based on 50 gallons just for the easier math. But if you increase the gas tax by $06 that would be about $3 a month, about $36 annually and that's per vehicle.

So if there's more than one vehicle in the household, it would be higher. Would also affect all your lawn services, your delivery services, whatever else that may be using different fuel taxes. And then I point out that it generates about $9,000,000 but that would only take care of transportation critical needs, that would not take care of infrastructure critical needs. So we just want to because you both had you had discussions on both items at the last workshop. So we just want to show a couple of examples on that.

So after that you all indicated that you wanted to discuss it and so we're here for questions, whatever we can do to help. And then any directions that you want us to bring back at the July, what I call July tentative millage setting meeting. That's it. Thank you for your patience.

Okay. Commissioner Delaney.

Thank you. I had a question for either Jim or Melissa with the insurance. I had spoken with the school board because they're doing some different things with clinics and trying to do different things as far as, like, early treatment and that kind of thing, early detection of, you know, medical needs and whatnot. And they say that it's saving a lot of money for them, especially when it comes to pharmaceuticals and prescriptions. And so I didn't know if we'd looked into any of that or any different ideas or creative things that could bring savings.

Is the mic still on? Can you hear me? Okay.

And

very

we would be interested in joining them because obviously the more lives involved, the more leverage you have to negotiate better prices. So I definitely indicated we would definitely be interested. We're working. My understanding he had some meetings, I think, about a week ago. So I just need to follow-up and then bring that back to the benefits advisory committee. And then obviously, they make recommendations that we bring to the board.

Okay. And just from your initial conversations, do you think that that could be a possible direction we could go? Or are there other things out there that people are doing that that are bringing savings to the insurance? Sure.

So, right now, kind of the current status of the industry, there is a lot of push towards direct contracting with providers as opposed to going through negotiated rates with insurance companies. So we are definitely exploring options there and this is one piece of that. Cool.

Thank you.

You're welcome. I guess I'll kind of just throw out my thoughts for different things that are on my mind. One of them is the idea of bringing back the SORL plan that we have right now, not talking about the renewal, but the plan that we currently have with the dollars we already have and seeing is are there any infrastructure projects or land acquisition projects that we could implement through those funds that would still work within the soil plan that could help help in this because it's funds that have already been raised. And even if taxes do need to go up, this is, you know, maybe we could make them not have to go up quite so much if we make some different choices as far as the SORL plan goes. And then the other thing I was thinking about was employee salaries and the raises and the possibility of looking into a tiered situation rather than across the board.

I don't really know exactly how that would look, but I just figured it's something we could talk about. Those are just a couple of things, but I'll open up the floor to anybody else and I've probably got more, you know, thoughts going on, but I'll let other feedback come in as well.

Yes. Just a couple of things during your presentation there and since you still have that up about the gas, do we buy gas in advance or buying it today's price versus what's going to happen a month from now? Mean, you see things with even airlines who are in serious trouble because they sold a ticket at a certain price and then gas has gone up. So is how do we do it or how can we do it because we know we're going to use a certain amount of gas. I'm sorry that.

No, you're good. I'm sure it's today's prices. Kathy is nodding. I will tell you as a transit guy back, I can't remember when it went up. I had a spreadsheet, I budgeted $0.83 a gallon for diesel and I got to $1 and I was panicking. And at that point we're paying $5 a gallon for diesel. So there was quite especially independent transit agencies. It can work and oftentimes it also doesn't work that you do your futures contracts. Southwest Airlines was famous for doing it. They had a couple of years of savings, but when their contracts, future contracts came due, their prices went way up.

That is something to take a look at. But knowing the transit agencies, don't know of anybody that really came on ahead in that. Think features contracts are behind hundreds of thousands.

Our situation is certainly in the short term. I mean it's not a stretch of the imagination that gas costs will continue to go up in the short term and how to possibly mitigate that. And on the employee insurance, we're looking at, is it 15,000 a year to insure? Yes, it's thousand. The employer share of it is 15,000.

Those costs will only continue to go up. So I was thinking about what you're saying, Commissioner, with the clinics and such and I think the new model around here, it seems because of the Rockledge Hospital situation and Health First is building standalone ER because it doesn't make sense that everybody go to the big hospital ER when they have simple things. And so they can do triage there. If you need to go to a hospital, we'll go ahead and take you to the hospital. So I think there we will see a lot more clinics in the future. Was curious now are they doing an in house clinic, the school district or how does that work?

From what I understand, I think they have a con maybe a contract with some some smaller groups. Is that Melissa? Sure. Yeah. I think I think that it's it's more in house.

So the clinic model is basically setting up employee clinics, so it's only it's care that's only for employees of the organization, and it's intended to be primary care. And then, you know, if if more specialized care is needed, they can either have the capacity to do that with contracts with specialists or refer them out if they don't have the capacity.

And I think the idea is that if people are going to if there is a place in house in the buildings, then employees are more likely to go to the doctor early on before diseases and illnesses get to a more serious and expensive place.

That's definitely one piece of it. The other piece of it is it's usually you're negotiating the prices for that directly with the provider as opposed to going through negotiated rates with insurance companies. So you're not paying that overhead and all of that with with the insurance companies. So there's kind of multi level of benefits to it. Typically, the hurdles have been the upfront cost to establish, you know, brick and mortar clinics. You know, if there's a way to do it, which I think the school board is looking to do with kind of established groups that you're not having to build buildings or purchase buildings, that there could it could be more feasible

It'd be nice if we could share it with with them across the street. I mean, we have a lot of employees there here and Yeah. And they're across the street. It it's interesting too and commissioner Altman will remember this very well, the the doctor of the day, you know, in the legislature during session. They have a doctor of the day and and and when the doctor of the day wasn't there, travel or whatever, there were there were always a couple members who are also doctors, and so they became the doctor of the day, and I I certainly remember one time going in doc Renuart, I'm like, I got the crud. He's like, Z Pak, here you go. And just that fast, you know, I was off off the Walgreens and that didn't cost anybody any money. So for for the easy stuff like that. Okay. Very good.

On

page 15, parks and recreation, you it's unfunded infrastructure needs.

Does are those numbers is is that what's required if we went to the voter approved millage, or how much of that millage rate would we have to go to to fund those parks unfunded needs? What total 29,000? I mean, 29,000,000. I know, I know.

Yeah. Looking they're doing they're literally trying to figure out the math. So I mean Yeah.

Whether, you know, within those, you know, because each village represents a specific area, it kind of depends on where these projects are in terms of what village you would have to levies or raise the amounts

that we needed to keep So we haven't really evaluated what we would need to do for millage rate to if we were to meet that number, the 29,000,000.

And if you're interested to give us some time, not a whole lot of time, we can bring that back to you.

I think it would be good because I know we fell pretty far short of the voter approved millage when we did it last year, and I'd love to know what it would be. And then secondly, in the second half of that side, in the categories community nature, senior senior center, the three line items, and the approximate age of those facilities estimated replacement cost. So I'll use the first line, community nature, senior centers, eight sites. List those as twenty five to thirty plus years, the estimated replacement cost of 40,000,000. So, I mean, that's not very old, twenty five, thirty years.

You wouldn't have to do total replacement cost, would you? Would that be replacement cost or renovation? What does that number reflect?

Good afternoon, commissioners. We actually, when we were putting this slide together, we do ongoing upgrade and replacement or maintenance costs as part of our annual budgets. This was looking at as you get to 30 years of age on structures, you start losing major systems. So

we bottom,

sorry. Major systems. Yeah. And so as you start doing that, the trade off between the cost of repairing it versus replacing starts to blur. And so really what we were looking there projecting forward what the cost would be for replacement.

Total replacement? Total replacement? Tearing a building down and replacing it?

Yes, sir.

But what would be the need to do that? What's an example of that?

So an example would be maybe not even one of the facilities that we have and I don't have it with me right now, but we have facilities that are older than these that were built with referendum dollars. And some of those facilities that were built in, say, the seventies or eighties and are approach approaching 40 and 50 years of age, again, we're getting to the point where we're having to do multiple replacements of systems within the building. It's HVACs, it's ceilings, it's floors, potentially other structures within those buildings themselves. So when you start spending that amount of money, you start do start looking at do we start planning for replacement of an entire structure.

See, that just seems to be

pretty low. A twenty five year old structure and you're thinking about 12, what kind of structures are we building if they can't last twenty five years?

Well, you're also talking

never loses a lot

of credibility with me because

Okay. And and and commissioner or mister chair, this this is also part of an illustration because we when we voted, we voted for a debt millage and an operating millage and the debt millage was building the facilities. Well, the facilities once they need even before replacement, any repair, we're paying that out of the operating millage. And so if all of sudden you got to start replacing because you've got 1,000 different buildings and facilities, once you start replacing it, we don't have that debt millage anymore that we can use that funds. We have no ability to issue new debt to replace those buildings or approve those buildings, that's all going to come out of the operating funds.

So that's going to put new pressure that we haven't seen with parks ever because that those millages until 2000 didn't exist. So that means it's not a tomorrow issue, but this is an issue we're probably going to be facing over the next five or ten years and how do we do that.

I guess I'm having trouble. Let's just say a nature center. Yeah. That's twenty five, thirty years age and you put a estimated replacement cost.

That's the total replacement cost of a building of only twenty five years. I can understand if it was the air condition or the roof.

So again, the idea was we're trying to project out not maybe for next year. We were projecting out for the next five, ten years. And the other thing that we have to think about with the structures and the facilities through the parks and recreation department is the sheer number of people who are going through those facilities. People have pointed out to us, well, you know, why does it cost so much for a pavilion or a bathroom repair replacement when it cost me to get it done, you know, my friend did it at his house, put a billion in his backyard. That friend doesn't have thousands of people using that pavilion every year.

They don't have thousands of people going through a bathroom every year. They don't have the same ADA requirements, for example, that we do for those facilities. So this was really just trying to get a handle on, you know, when we project out what the replacement costs could be for those facilities as the years wear on. Yes.

Thank you. So what about like the foundation and the structure of the buildings? Is that something that's still sound in most of these buildings or are you saying that there's possibly foundation and structural issues? Again,

it depends. It's a projection.

Yeah.

So there is the potential to do footprints where you leave the footprint if those structures are salvageable.

So like gut it and

Could that be an option? Again, this was just a matter of an exercise, if you will, to project out costs. The other thing that you take into account as you look down the road is there are potentially some offsets. As technology improves, the roofs systems that we put in place years ago, if they're upgraded, they can last longer. Same thing with other things that we can do when we go in and potentially retrofit and do repairs.

They could extend the life of buildings further also. So it's all of those things, but again, this was just kind of an exercise to get at if we need to and if we look ten years down the road with these type of funding issues and as Jim pointed out, the fact that there are no referendum dollars left is coming out of basically operations having to do long term planning, very long term planning.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Thanks. Yes. Go ahead.

So this is Kim talking out loud why she's thinking. We have parks that we have to maintain, tear down buildings, rebuild buildings because we have all of these things that we have to pay for, ADA compliance toilets that can last through hundreds of thousands of people. How many you may not know this answer off the top of head. How many parks do we have that are actually in cities or towns?

You're right. I don't have that off the top of my head exactly. That's fine. But I do know there are quite a few. There are some such as up in this within the city of Titusville that there's actually as part of an agreement with the city, there is a interlocal in place that allows us to actually charge the special district fund against the city population to help fund repairs and maintenance and operations at those city parks.

What if we just gave those city parks to the cities and let them maintain it and and somehow say you always have to be a park. Right? You can't sell it or give it away. And again, this is Kim thinking out loud because then we don't have that ongoing maintenance and we can still be assured if if they wanted it, obviously.

I I would have to ask the county attorney's office to review the interlocal. Yeah. But my guess would be that if I was a city that's putting putting their tax basis, tax dollars into repair and maintenance

Mhmm.

They would want those tax dollars back. So they would remove themselves from that special district. So we would not actually potentially see any cost savings because they would want to have those dollars at their current residence. We're putting into that special district.

Aren't you also giving them a liability? I'm sorry? Aren't you also giving them liability with future expense? Sure.

But maybe sitters or towns would want their park to be the things that they want. If you have I'm just thinking of Melbourne Beach, which I know is not a great example, but it has a particular kind of community and and they may want

I don't disagree with the Yeah. Sort of the thought process, but my experience from the prior board tried some of that and they they weren't looking to take on an expense and I understand that they're they're dealing with same kinds of, you know, burdens that that we are

But they're not constrained by the cap like we are.

I I understand that too. I'll stop talking in one second. Something I was thinking about, commissioner Altman, when you're talking about, and I'm and I'm with you, you know, you don't have to level the whole building because you need a roof on it and what have you, but one of the things I think of right here in this district in the center part of the county is the Zoo Linear Trail. Okay? Completely outdoors and it won't be that long in the future before all surface will have to be recovered and I can't remember how long it is, it's over a mile or something.

And it's it will I I I it's hard to know what that expense will be in the future to resurface all of that with the new decking. And and that's one that doesn't have the benefit of a roof and indoors and out of the elements and and all of that. That being an example of one that's definitely not gonna make it to twenty five years before

It would plus we have probably miles of boardwalk.

Right. That's what I mean.

You know, not specific. A lot of

things that are outdoor. Yes. Playgrounds for example.

And especially over on the beach, I mean, you know, it it's, you know, I lived around the beach for a number of years, even plastic can rest over there. So if you have anything that's metal over on the beach, you're gonna have to replace it, you know,

so just commissioner for the Atkinson, for more information, we have three cities we maintain their parks, Titusville, Copeland, Rockledge. Copeland, Rockledge is with the special rec district four. That's what district four was back way back in the day. We just negotiated a new contract with Cocoa that we're pretty tough on Cocoa to make sure that, you know, above $5,000 costs. I mean, it took two years to get that contract done to make sure that this more of the burden was put on the cities.

Their contract, I believe Roxas expires in '31. I forget which tax we share with the city of Titusville, but we maintain with the city of Titusville the same way, so we collect the tax and spread that money out. We have given or returned or whatever the proper words, the number of parks, Palm Bay Regional, which is now known as Fred Poppy. That was just before I got up here and that was five years and with the agreement with the cities, we funded five years or gave them enough money for five years of transition. I know Palm Bay is now struggling with those parks that has come up.

This is just Jim giving you heads up. We had the I don't know the exact title was a gun range up in Titusville. That was one of the first ones we gave to the folks without a reverter clause. A lot of that because there was lead, don't want that back. But, you know, if we if we get the cities to work with us, you also want to be careful on the reverber clause because and I'm I'm not saying Palm Bay is doing this, but you give a part to Palm Bay, you know, after ten years, they may not be able to afford it and then they hand it back to us. Right. You know, and and that was in worse shape. Yeah. And that was a lot of negotiation with city of Titusville. If we handed the parks back to or with Coco, we handed the parks back to them.

They want to make sure they were properly maintained the way they were at the beginning. Same thing if somebody hands it back to us. It's not as easy, but yeah. I mean, it's something, but I think that's the gun range is the last time we've transferred any property to a park or a private group that we used to maintain. Yeah, without a Yeah. And it was the first I know of without a revert clause.

I'll just go back on community nature centers 25 this building here is 25 years old, relatively new buildings. Propose 25 years old. You wouldn't propose tearing this down, or let's look at the Melbourne Library. That's right. Thirty thirty five years old. You wouldn't even dream of tearing that down. So it just makes me question. I can understand if it's an open air boardwalk in the ocean or something like that, but I think we need a lot more analysis for those numbers to be valid

Yeah, and what we we're not coming to you right now saying is a the bottom part here is a critical need that we need to address this now. This is it's just a demonstration but yeah like this building is 35 years old and we've already, you know, we have in the bathrooms since over 1,000,000 or pushing a million dollars to do all the bathrooms So is the parks is going to be facing the same issue as they all age too.

And again, I will emphasize this was a projection. This was not saying just because they were 25 or 30 years old, they had to be replaced. Was Okay. They're 20 five or thirty, they're on our radar as ten years down the road, maybe longer, it's something we have to start planning for.

And this is from the last presentation because we talk about infrastructure and we all talk about roads and bridges, drainage, you know, infrastructures IT, we talk about buildings, but parks, he's got a he's got over a thousand buildings and facilities. We all forget about parks. They they spend a lot of time on rehab, building, repairing, you know, what I learned is parks are parks, parks is the ground and the facilities recreation is what the program she provides. So parks takes a lot of money to keep it up and maintain.

I have another question just in general. So looking at the and staff did a phenomenal job on this. This is a really concise, understandable, simple presentation. It really does capture what our needs are. So if we were to take a look at all these unfunded needs that we we need to fund to keep our present level of service, all the critical needs that we're talking about here in terms of county general fund infrastructure, public safety.

What what millage rate would we need to pass to fund what you have presented here? And I talked about the county jail, the historic courthouse, central and south area, infrastructure needs, the whole shooting caboodle. What would we be looking at in terms of a millage rate?

Well, I'm going to be both. You'd be looking at option one, you'd be looking at rolling and resetting the millage back to three years ago that the 03/2019 that would generate somewhere $39,800,000.

So option one you think would fund these needs?

It would get us it would get us there. If you look on the let me do this, I apologize. I have slides. So, you know, there's option one, but if you look at the previous slide, you know, that generates $39,000,000. We're showing there could be about $47,000,000 in critical needs, so that gets you close. Because what what this does is give you the funding for the next year and the year after because not everything would be able to be addressed all at once. This is a chance to work through some of the Okay.

Does that also include, I know you mentioned the firefighter contracts, but what if I the sheriff's contract was pretty substantial too from what I understand. So does that include those increases as well?

Yeah, that's part of his operations.

Over the three years Yeah. Or okay.

Yeah. I can't tell you exactly all of it, but yes, it will help cover that too. Okay.

Well, me that's a doable thing. I mean we're going basically back to the moves rate that we had not in the not too past future. And if indeed these needs are something that need to be funded, think that's not a big ask. So that'd be kind of where I'm coming from, the need to try to keep county services provided at the level that they are, including the parks. I would have additional questions on that those numbers.

I I know there's other issues out there that you don't mention that are needed. I was gonna bring just the point in particular.

I know if they haven't already spoken to you, they will be circles of care. They're having trouble staffing a 100% of their beds, and they're looking for a recurring number, a little bit over 1,000,000 a year, which would enable them to draw down around 1,200,000 in federal funds. We're leaving a lot of money on the table that we could draw down to match that. I certainly would be willing to take a look at how we can try to meet those treatment dollars. I'm not advocating anything, but I just bring it to everyone's awareness.

If you haven't already talked, they'll be coming to you. I know they've probably talked to staff, but that's kind of where then I I mentioned the staff that we at least have discussion of the service tax revenue stream that would have to be voted on by the voters, so it'd be something we couldn't raise, but we could definitely give the voters the option to vote on that, the public service tax. And some of that well, the nice thing about that, you do not have to go to the public service commission for a review of the ballot language, you put that on almost at any time as long as we met the the ballot language deadlines. And and I we could also use that to reduce some property taxes if we wanted to give some property tax relief. Virtually every I think virtually every city in the county already levies that fee and that would only bring bring us in to come to the level of the other cities and maybe provide some necessary property tax relief and at the same time help meet the back backlog.

It's pretty clear. We are extremely low tax state, a county. We're extremely low tax county and a lot of necessary improvements have been kind of kicked down the road, and and it's if we don't address them soon, it's gonna cost us a heck of a lot more money than it would if we continue to delay. So I'm I'm coming from a place of trying to meet these unfunded unfunded needs.

Mister chair?

Yes.

So I'm gonna pass out the same thing I passed out at the last budget meeting where I said I was gonna bring this back for discussion. So for anybody out there who's writing an article, I am not suggesting that we get rid of lifeguards or crossing guards. I'm not suggesting any of those things. I'm simply saying these are things that the county provides, the services that they provide that we're not required to. And it's you know, if we're talking about raising taxes here, we need to start, I think, looking where we could save money.

And this is not a happy list. It's not fun and nobody likes it, but I think I would like to discuss some of it. And we certainly won't get us the amount of money we need. I think we need to do a little bit of saving and a little bit of maybe bringing in more funds. I'm not sure. But when we have things I mean, can anybody tell me why why couldn't the school pay for their crossing guards? Guards? We already know that they're about to raise their

Let me Yeah. Let me let me speak to this because I've worked hard on crossing guards along with Matt Wallace, chief, and I'll you when I got here, I mean, Vera Elementary down there is like the Berlin Airlift happening every day, and I give them a lot of credit. They they make it work, and as you know, I'm working on a light down there and asking legislature just every which way we can to get that done. But it's been hard to get crossing guards paying them paying them. The idea that we'll have them if we don't pay them is it's just not not going to happen.

Now the question I'm going to ask because I'm going to I asked this question before too. How did that become a county function? I I think at one time it was schools. I believe it went to sheriff and then it and then it came to county. Okay? So I agree somehow they're connected schools and crossing guards, but it is our situation and it's part of our public safety department if you will. And I I wish that there was there was more revenue going toward that specifically, but I I gotta tell you that's the last thing that in the lifeguards that I'm I'm going to

And I'm not suggesting we get rid of lifeguards.

I just my own personal experience. I just want to say that. Yeah. Because because I've I've lived it.

But that's the thing is if we're not willing to cut anything, then we have to say out loud that we're willing to raise taxes or we just don't do anything and we let our capable county staff decide

I didn't that. Just just living that with our schools and that that is for now that's our responsibility.

But could it be the responsibility of us, the sheriff, and the schools? I don't know. I'm so I'm just I'm just throwing things out there for us to talk about

and think about. I I've I've gone as far let me let me just say this so so that you know, I've gone as far as can we have I mean, because I mean, when I was a kid in in Ohio, I mean, part of detention was you had to go out there and be a crossing guard. And so can we can we have, you know, high school juniors do it and the thing of it is, one, think they want to be paid, I asked about service learning hours because they all have to do that for bright futures. Yeah, the school board could probably get there with them, but I think we can't have someone under the age of 18, so even with our lifeguards who are often time, many of them high school students, they're always with, correct me if I'm wrong here, on the on the public safety side here, right Matt, they're always with a lieutenant lifeguard who's 18 and over, right? I think again, I'm

not saying that we're

not funding No. I'm just but even on just taking the crossing guards as an example. Does

Yes, that sound Those public safety functions 18 years older is really for liability sake and forward, so it's kind of where we draw the line.

Yes, sir. So it's we've really sort of peeled the onion on that one and it's extremely difficult. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I just want

to No. That's fine.

Say on that one issue right right here where there's seven school zones, we live it every day.

Since you brought up lifeguards, the other thing is I'm not saying that we don't fund them, I'm saying could the TDC do it?

Well, does. We're we're continuing continuing to shift the the cost because as as you know, Brevard's property owners paid 100% of the lifeguards and tourists paid 0% of the lifeguards, so even I petitioned the legislature to turn that around so we can use tourism tax to pay for the lifeguards. Expanding the services what for the area is is what made the bill go up, you know, sharply, right? And we were there with the prior board and so and I I don't I can't remember how much Peter's got in the budget for this year, we were just talking about well, there's Peter. Okay.

Good afternoon, commissioners. Yeah, we currently have 1,560,000 in this fiscal. And right now and going into next year, I'm I've got budgeted 1,600,000. None of that, by the way, is coming from the beach fund, which, you know, is always an option. Of course, that's a little concerning because that that fund has to go to paying army corps of engineer projects. So you don't wanna go dig too deep into that, but

we were just talk was it Friday that came up, we were talking And about so I I think in the probably the next few years we get there a 100% where 100% is and 0% paid by Brevard's residents, but I think you gotta get there in a couple of steps. So we've we've taken since the prior board, I mean, took a big half step and I think we got a few more steps to to get there the rest of the way to pay for. And you know, my motive in there was when we were impasse with firefighters because of trying to move cost out of their silo and so ocean rescue is part of fire rescue. So that was that was the and because we had the increasing coverage and and and those expense happening quickly.

I have a question Sir,

just one sorry, just one quick thing to add on and then I'll sit down, but yeah, in the next couple of years our hope is that we'll hit 30,000,000 in revenue, in which case we can ask for an extra penny of tax which would allow then 6,000,000 additional dollars, then we could, you know, conceivably cover a lot more of it at that point.

And so, right, that's that's in the in the law that before the county can go ask the voters, do you wanna tax the voters one more penny? You gotta get to 30,000,000 in collection and so with some new hotels coming and and and if the I mean, if tourism continues to happen, you know, the county the county may be looking at that in the next two years.

Is it 1.9 plus the 1.5?

That's the difference, I think, right? Matt?

Yeah. In the current fiscal year, the general fund is funding approximately 1,900,000 and then tourism is just over 1.5 as Peter stated. And

I think we just I don't know. I think we just raised lifeguard.

Right? Yes, sir. We did with some initiatives internal to the program. We we moved the starting salaries up to $20 to be competitive with the local areas and local counties. Go

ahead, commissioner Eckersson.

Thank you. So Jim, one of the other things I wanted to ask you about was the and I know that the $14,000,000 is not an accurate number completely. But can you tell me a little bit about the idea of eliminating funded vacant positions, what that looks like for you? I know we've talked about it a little bit.

I have an extension to that question if I may. And does that include public safety like fire rescue or any of the other ones that sometimes are not necessarily part of, what does that include this $14,000,000

That I don't know what includes the $14,000,000 that's Commissioner Atkinson's number. I'll get to the position, but he gave me a segue. I can tell you as county staff what we'll be looking for at the departments, we're going to be looking through their balance forward this year, what they have projected balance forward. They're vacant positions and their positions we're going to be looking at that. And then we've already in past years everybody that receives general fund got the budget 3%, this year we've already knocked on a 2.6%, but we'll be looking at all budget positions and when you said public safety, lifeguards are part of public safety, what they did is they came back with their funding is with vacant positions that's not being filled and putting that money towards the employees.

So that's a little bit different, but we're going to look at different positions and vacancies. And I'll say this out loud because then the other ones will hear me as a department director if you know I had vacant bus driver positions, other positions I knew I wasn't going to fill and I didn't have enough general fund to fund whatever I need for the budget, eliminated a position or two each year, whatever necessary for me to present a balanced budget as a County manager, that sort of stuff I'll be looking at as a County manager what can we do on that. Okay, thank you. So yeah, it's need to look everywhere and that's yeah, you guys won't see all that machinition going on, but that's what we'll be doing as staff.

And to say, I'm sorry, I'll just say on that, I think we all know that you have a position in the county manager's office that you held off in hiring. I mean, we're all cutting where necessary. So I mean, just as an example, right on the other side of this wall there was a position not filled.

I have a question. About I know we had Jim, we had talked briefly about vehicles and that that was something that you were going to be looking into possibly and then it'll come back to me. You go on that and it'll come back.

Budget office has developed a different method on how we're going to be reporting purchasing of vehicles replacement versus expansion. I go back to my lizard brain is transit and vehicles is, you know, said we're fun. If you get a new vehicle expansion and expansion, say you have 10 vehicles, you need a new vehicle for expansion and you should have 11. But if you're replacing two vehicles, you shouldn't have a fleet of 11 again. So we'll be looking at trying to compare those numbers.

As we go through the some of these are multi year things, we're going to be looking at balance forward where we are in projects, the vacant positions and what positions aren't being filled. The lower of the percentage and with vehicles, some of these are and what we're going do with health insurance and how we're going risk management, that's going be a multi year risk management thing is excuse me, risk management I was thinking as we go through. So I mean vehicles will be included in there because it's and I could tell you last year, even last year not everybody got their vehicle requests that they requested.

I remember the second part of my question. What about and this is going way into the minutiae and I know that. What about things like, know, of course I've brought up the stoves in the park buildings, some of the things like that that are we is there opening to not saying getting rid of what the vision is, but does it have to be the premier commercial blah blah blah? You know what I mean? Like does it have to be the $14,000 stove or can it be the $6,000 stove?

You know, and I know that's pennies compared in a billion dollar budget, but when you add all those pennies together through everywhere that could add up.

Yeah, mean you got to buy the equipment necessary to get the job done. I'm looking at the carpet, but we're kind of cheap to begin with. Mean we're careful on how we spend our money. Mean if a Toyota Corolla does the job we're not buying a Jaguar. Already so I mean the staff when they or departments when they present their capital equipment along with their CIP projects, they have to show and justify it to us. It's something we'll be keeping an eye on.

Could I say something about sort of piggyback on what you said there? I mean with our part, let's take the example of the stoves in our parks. I'd imagine that there are some parks where the pavilion, you're right, and you've got the attached kitchen there, it's used a lot. And know, Whatcom Parks got one where, I mean, they have events seemingly every weekend, but there might be some other places that don't. So, I mean, is that is that a way to split it? I imagine Ian, you probably look at something like that even though stove is is older in this certain facility, it doesn't get that much use and so therefore

So we also we do look at usage but we also look at sometimes the more expensive avenue is the better for longevity. So for some of those stoves that, you know, are 6 versus say fourteen, first thing is we budget 14. It doesn't mean we're paying 14 for those because

we You were budgeted at 25.

Again, I don't remember off the top of my head, but that just gives you an example that what we budget is not what we always pay for the item because we do look at getting quotes. We also look at piggybacking to see if we can get the best deal possible if there's another city or county across the state that's negotiated better rates. So we do try to maximize those savings but we do have to look at what the usage is. One of those stoves was for the Gibson Center where there's a school in place and so they're doing meals for school five days a week plus they're running activities on the weekends. But like you said, there are some that potentially don't and so we do take that into account.

If I could just give an example, like one of the things was the Tom Statham Building. It now has like commercial refrigerators and stuff in there. And so I don't know if that's totally necessary, you know, and so that's that's just, you know.

I don't I don't disagree with you in situations where you have a off-site caterer who's coming in to do whatever that may be, and that's a beautiful park in that facility and everything. But, you know, you're if you're doing a a wedding there or something, you have an off-site caterer come. I imagine that they make plans for, you know, cooking their food themselves and storing everything. So maybe some of

these

facilities don't necessarily need that because of that reason.

And again, sometimes we brought vehicles earlier. When we do vehicles and we look at those, we look at what peak need is. And so you have to purchase to whatever that peak need is because when you need it, you can't not have it. So it's same the with vehicles that potentially have higher clearance rates for eels if they have a washout and they need to get to something. It's it's those type of things that we have to plan for.

I wonder, especially with vehicles, is there for instance, I know like the clerk for instance, they kind of check out vehicles and turn them back in as needed. And so I wonder with some of the larger vehicles if that could possibly be an avenue where like the everyday could be a more economical vehicle, but then if they need to check out a larger vehicle for those things if that could be possible.

I'll say every time I drive one, I say I want a car. I don't want to drive a truck. So I imagine there are other people working for the county like that too. I have a question going back probably for Jill. On the estimated impact of resetting the general fund millage slide, so that we're clear not exceeding charter cap, we're at the final column there that you have charter cap FY 2627 estimate, right? Am I reading that right?

Correct. And that's based on very preliminary estimates. We won't receive the actual property values from the property appraiser until the June. So we were doing some preliminary estimates, but what you're seeing there is because of the charter cap that millage rate goes down based on estimating that property values will go up. So with a lower charter cap or with a lower millage rate, and again all these comparisons are based on just a $200,000 taxable value. That would be our estimated millage rate at the charter cap.

I won't be voting to exceed the charter cap this year. Okay. So we understand where we are as the staff is going to be working this summer to prepare a budget. And so I like that we've talked about it many many times in this in this building and they know that. So I'm just saying for the for the rest of you in this meeting so that we can prepare accordingly.

If I may?

With

that being said, could the conversation be opened back up about say the sorrel dollars because I know we had talked about funding and I know we didn't necessarily say it would be out of sorrel dollars, but doing something with flooding especially for North Brevard.

Listen, I think you have to. Right. Okay. So, and I said to you that I would work on things in up in north in the county and I'm going to make good on that. I think whether you're talking about wetland restoration type project that that also has the benefit of flood control, but with the primary focus on keeping that runoff out of the Indian River, I think that's how you get there I think you have to do some things.

Now this board, we had, you remember not very long ago, we had a settlement agreement on a Burt Harris case and we were able to work something out that that you know, I suggested some things and we all agreed where Sorrel could buy a piece of the property and Eels bought some property and all together we were able to get something done where they're going to get storm water retention, flood control do do to things that. Like that. And I don't even think it's a question really.

Okay. And so one of the things that was brought to me by a couple of residents in D1, Laura Lee and Vince Lamb, they had come to my office and there was a property up in Titusville that they were talking about that it's people have tried to rezone it over the years and it's never gotten support to get it rezoned. And part of the reason is because it's got massive amounts of wetlands there. And they showed me a presentation about the effects that that would have and possible benefits to keeping water from going heading to the lagoon. The other thing that I was thinking about was Fay Boulevard and some of the other places in Port St.

John. We have some broken drainage pipes and with steel plates on them. And so if we fix those draining drainage pipes that would also keep the water going to where it's supposed to be going rather than tunnel down the street to the lagoon.

Let me say something too on the EELS portion, I had talked with the EELS folks, you know, even

when I back when I

was a candidate and now as a commissioner aren't paying that much in tax and then they become an Eels property Right. As far as future tax rolls, that's less painful for the county. So you're talking about some property that maybe doesn't have a high value on it because it's problematic anyways. That's just as far as cannibalizing the tax roll that's less painful in the future.

Right.

Right.

And like off of Singleton, there's all that land there that is low quality wetlands. And so that is something that I mean, it would be astronomically expensive to develop, but could give benefit for protection. We've done the 100

acre hollow, so we voted on that a couple of times and that's going to be the, you know, the best yields property in my mind in this district because there just isn't much opportunity for that. And I think if you remember an earlier meeting when we when we first brought that before the board, I said I want to reserve the right to put storm water there if we need to because ironically it has four basins that was originally going to be a packing plant, you know, thirty five years ago and it never turned into that, but and we don't we don't have that kind of problem along Viera Boulevard, but if we did, I want to I mean that's the perfect place to to send storm water. So while that's an Eel's property, they if storm water goes there in the future, know, that's where you get two uses out of the same property. So I think there's I think you have to do that in the future. I think that's just being pragmatic.

And so if the votes aren't there to do what's needed to reset the millage, I used your guys' term, that could be a way to also get some infrastructure projects done. And so, you know, you can make all sides a little happier.

Again, don't think you have a choice in the future.

Yeah.

I think you have to.

And I guess I'll bring this up. I know it's an uncomfortable topic, but the employee salaries doing a tiered system, I don't know if anybody had considered doing something like that, but I know that we have some salaries that are, you know, 200,000 plus and, you know, not that we don't value value our employees, we certainly do, but when we're considering a resetting of the millage, it's hard to go to the voters and say that while also you know there are considerable raises that could happen when you go percentage wise.

Ma'am, Mr. Chair, I'm sorry sir, I hadn't been going through so I apologize. I'm busy reading the budget. I know it's less formal in the workshop too. It seems to me that probably the in my mind, the more fruitful thing to do is looking at the vacant positions, maybe have a tiered approach to that and that might actually net you more money. And so and I know it's a painful thing too when we're talking about covering positions and such,

able to

to to

And

do while. Jim's that. Living without Karen Condie. I'm sure he would like to have Karen Condie up there up here today, he's doing that. And so I think if you look at it that way in the vacant positions and we all agree that on the bottom half of those vacant positions, those are things we really do need. You really do need folks out there fixing things every day. But maybe we don't need as much and I'm speaking on behalf of the county manager here, but on you know from a board policy position and how we get through the budget, we may have to go in that direction.

Mr. Chair, I do want to talk briefly. I will say Commissioner Goodson is disconnecting. He has an appointment he has to make. So just to let you know. The races are, I guess you could tier, they're 3% or a dollar an hour. So everybody that cut off is somewhere around 60 some thousand dollars, everybody less than that will be making a dollar an hour. And you'll see I don't know how to define it in the budget message. I'm trying to figure the needle. My contract says I get the same thing as employees, so I will be cutting off raises at some point, so I don't get it. But I don't want to interfere with the medical examiners, assistant medical examiners, we still have

to figure that out, so. Is it possible we could take a break, maybe that's I have a couple of things.

I just wanted to I know with Goodson leaving, does that mean we need to end our meeting soon or we can continue?

No, you can continue. You're fine.

So again, back to our presentation, I think staff has done a really good job in highlighting what we call critical fund needs for our county infrastructure needs. The jail, serious problems. We have three tents that need to be re refurbished. Government center courthouse, I've toured that facility. It's in really bad shape, almost a public embarrassment.

Roads, drainage problems, we know that's a problem. Public safety, we don't need to mention fire. We all know that problem, but the sheriff operations, jail operations, disaster response. Then countywide, keeping the doors open in the county, health insurance, auto uninsureds rates, retirement requirements, and and so forth. That's a $47,000,000 hit.

We know that we can fund these critical needs with no problem with a millage rate of 3.2%, which takes us back to where we were, I think, what, a couple years ago, that millage rate is lower than virtually every other county of our comparable size in comparison. And in some cases, that millage rate is half half the rate, less than half the rate some of those some of those counties. So we can be fiscally responsible. We can we can really be watchdogs of the taxpayers' dollars. But but what is just as important is our need to fund the critical needs of our of our residents so we can provide the necessary services to have a county that's operating in a healthy way, which ultimately from an economic point of view is is even more important.

We lose that, we lose everything, but we can do that with a 3.2691 millage rate. That's option one. Seminole has 3.7, St. Lucie 4.2, Osceola over twice that, 6.7% Indian River, higher Pasco, over twice that at 7.4% Martin, over twice that at 6.5% Martin County, which has a high assessed value. It's probably more comparable to what we are than Osceola.

And then Lake at 5.3. So to me, the question is, are we being financially responsible? Yes. We are. We're keeping the millage rate in a manageable form that makes us competitive, still the lowest of any millage rate of any of those counties that are comparable size and nature. And we're meeting the critical needs. Just so it's clear, that's where I'm coming from. I know there's a lot of esoteric arguments about rollback and what have you, but I think the bigger question is what is being fiscally responsible what and what is providing the responsible revenue that we need to provide healthy county services. Ultimately, that's our our goal and responsibility. So that's where I'm coming from.

And I don't know who have the votes to do that, but I just want to make that infinitely clear.

Do any of those other counties have a charter cap? I mean, I'm not trying to be difficult, but I mean, that's that's what has has allowed that situation in in other counties where where they're much higher than we are. So it's something that I respect. The voters put it there, and I I knew that when I was I was seeking this office, and I do respect it.

Well, there is a provision to penetrate the caps that that and I think we're at that critical nature. I think,

obviously,

we still have a military substantially lower than those other counties, but but I think there's a reason that they put that ability to penetrate for those critical services.

May I ask her?

Yes. So

I think from my perspective, we have a cap that the voters voted on. We have a critical need, but I don't I don't feel like I'm hearing a lot of conversation about cutting costs. Costs. And that's that's hard for me to be comfortable going with option one, raising it as high as we can if I if I just don't feel like we're having a good conversation about cutting costs. And obviously, staff is still working on this, but that's where I am.

I'm I'm just not comfortable with asking the people for more money if I can't tell them, look, we've we've cut as much as as we can. In fact, we've cut things that have upset you or almost got there. So that's where I am. That's where my brain is at the moment.

And I don't differ. I think we need to find critical needs. That doesn't preclude our constant desire to cut where we can cut and doesn't cut to the bone. So I'm not saying that that's a bad thing. I'm just saying we've got to fund these critical needs. So that's where I'm coming from there.

Could some of these things go to the ballot as far as like infrastructure needs or whatever. So we have our infrastructure sales tax, we have the transportation sales tax. Isn't there one just for facilities? Can't remember,

That's I don't have a very good point and that's one of the reason I asked the staff to include the service tax because if we chose to maintain the millage below the cap, the charter does provide for us to ask the voters. We could put that on the ballot giving them a choice to to to see if they they wanted to fund those critical needs. And and the public has been very responsive to that. And that that would be an easy one to put on the ballot.

And the service tax, can that be spent on anything that just goes into the general fund?

Yeah, the public service tax would be considered general fund, so that could be used for any of those critical need purposes. Infrastructure, you were speaking of the infrastructure sales tax which we had discussed previously. Right. Which again would have to go through the APHAGA review and all of that. So believe we're past that period

to

revisit that until potentially 2028.

Was there another one though? I know that there's emergency services, hospital, there's there's like six or seven of them.

There is a transportation tax that's specific for transportation needs. Okay.

No, no, just as a technical question. Some of those are split with municipal governments, it's not all just goes goes to the county, right?

Yes, that's correct for the infrastructure sales tax. The charter charter transportation system surtax, that one I believe it would come to the county but then there could be interlocal agreements with the municipalities if I'm remembering that correctly. But the service tax one that one goes directly to the county? The public service tax would just be in the county and that would be in Unincorporated Brevard. I think someone earlier mentioned that all of the municipalities in Brevard County are already levying that. We're unique and that our charter states that for us to levy that tax it would have to go out to a ballot in a general election.

Okay. And commissioner if you give me a chance, do want to because I didn't explain fully, we're showing the example on electric bill, the cities also put it on the gas bills, some have around the water bill and I believe there's even a so you can put it on a kerosene too. But I mean, so the example we showed you is just the electric bill, but that the $33,000,000 is the total number.

What I like about that is those people that are driving electric cars and not paying fuels tax get have to pay their fair share, which being one of those I think that's a good thing.

I got 26,000 miles

a year. Yeah.

And I don't have it.

Yeah, think people like I should pay their fair share. Okay. Is there any other discussion that we have that staff have anything they wanted to close with?

Do we have public comments?

Yeah, I think we do.

Okay. Could we possibly take a three minute break?

Yes, absolutely. Okay. Let's take a five minute break.

I can go too. Oh, they do.

Lifeguards, and certainly that's going to need to be a part of our discussions when we look forward into the budget and critical funding critical needs. But our first card for public comment, unless there's any other questions or comments from the commission. Stell Bailey.

Stella Bailey, I was watching the previous budget meeting, and I don't feel that we have enough discussion on fraud, waste, and abuse. And just some ex examples of that is a $100,000 promotion raise for the county manager, 7 cal seven salaries over 200 k, 30 k promotion for assistant managers, and most importantly, because I'm dealing with this in my own neighborhood redoing sidewalks while we have silver plates all over most of Fayette Boulevard. I just don't think you've built a convincing argument to the public that we need to bust the cap. Now I do have two questions that I'd like answered after I'm finished. The first question is, the 3%, is that warranted for the assumption of salary?

And the second question on page 16, if you look up, what makes that a critical need under field upgrades and additions and lighting? And those are my two questions. And lastly, I do wanna say, commissioner Atkinson, I appreciate you doing the list and actually trying to find areas to cut waste. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

Next speaker, Sandra Sullivan.

Sandra Sullivan from Waves Action. So when you were talking about the CPI, it's currently 2.63, which is less than 3%. So maybe we shouldn't bust the cap, which is 3%. When you look at other counties, and this is in your own presentations that you've done on budget, the transportation tax, other counties, that's what they use. Most other counties have that, which means everybody's paying.

The tourists that come here are paying, the renters are paying, the people that own their property are paying, etcetera, etcetera. You talked about that you need to get some more money to circles of care. Why did you give opioid money to affordable housing when you knew you needed this? You've prepared a budget without looking at the impact of a vote that you're gonna be taking, which is the impact fee feasibility study. That was supposed to take nine months, and and we haven't seen anything about that.

There's no there's no showing that in this in this budget. So what impact will that have? So I'll promise to pay AWT. We're going to see rate increases. And so this is double taxation we're paying for twice.

I did a records request to Space Florida and got a copy of the draft agreement. It does not have any funding coming from Space Florida to pay the number that was mentioned as $130,000,000 that was needed to upgrade that plant for Space Florida in the December meeting that is not represented. So in addition to busting the cap, we're looking at higher water and sewage, which was updated also in 2022. I think it was 22% aggregated over the few years. We're looking at potential new service tax fee and increased gas tax.

If you're going to increase parks and rec, it should be to a referendum and not just busting the cap as you have done in past years. And we're looking at increased storm water assessment at another county commission, you haven't talked about that to address the flooding. And so when I look at SOARO, I look at it. It should be an infrastructure surtax as Florida statute two one two point zero five five. And we were we were made promises to match state funding for AWG and other things that hasn't been fulfilled.

I look at that as a storm water septic and sewer taxes what it should be for infrastructure, but it is not. And so in the end, the people are paying for the cost of development for all the growth that is happening in Brevard largely because we've kicked the can down the road for twenty five years on on impact fees. And then we didn't see organic conversation here at this table about cutting costs. It was brought up like just the conversation so we can say we did, but there was no real conversation. For example, we doubled the budget for the economic development council from about 700,000 to $1,400,000, and they did not deliver on results to get the funding for Space Florida.

So that's an easy one to cut right there. So that that about sums up what I wanted to say. So I'd like to see some serious cost cutting, and I would like to see not all the burden put on we, the people. Thank you.

Rick Effelsinger district one. I'm getting a little confused and it may because I'm new to this big budget. You guys have got a large outfit. You're talking about the general hey, what's right on the screen call? The general fund millage rate, but you're also talking about a lot of other people. You guys correct me if I'm wrong because I'm just trying to that have their own millage rate, not just the general fund. Right? It's got one. If we bust the cap on that, that's one thing. But don't we aggregate the millage when we decide whether we actually broke the cap? So we could bust the cap. Again, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know. We could bust the cap on the general fund but still come in under because the other guys held the line. Is that true?

That's question you can answer. Because a lot of this discussion, I think they have their own their own millage. Right? But you're talking about those guys busting the cap too, maybe, if we try to solve all these critical. Right? Because the doesn't the sheriff have a millage? No. Is that all he's paid for out of the general fund?

The

Oh, my time is kinda going.

The charter cap applies to each individual millage except for those voter approved millages. Where the aggregate comes into play is more of a trim requirement and that's where you're looking at how you advertise the final budget hearing. So the cap applies to each individual millage rate except for those voter approved millages which are primarily and we had discussed these last year and the board actually rolled up some of those voter approved parks and recreation millages. The fire control MSTU was also a voter approved millage. The law enforcement MSTU is not voter approved, so that one is subject to the cap. So

I guess I guess now my question is, so if you bust the cap on the general fund, we could be getting trim notices on a bunch of others that we're addressing for critical need. So how many trim notices do you think I'm gonna get?

You're only one trim notice and that you get one from notice and that includes everything.

Okay. So it might just not be a a rollover or going above on the general fund. I may see some of the MSTU, but I don't know. The the there's a big list of stuff that you guys hit me. I don't know what initially you guys, but, you know, that say John's water gets me too. But there are individual little things that are kind of, I guess, they're fenced funds door. They're they're targeted. The general fund, I don't know. It's it somehow supports those two. Right? But those guys, if they got critical needs, I would expect their millage rate to go up too if they're gonna try to cover. You know, I I think facilities is just about all general fund. That could be wrong too. Although and then some parks and rec. Does parks and rec get their own money for facilities, or does the general fund pay for some of that under facilities?

I'm I'm confused. So I I concern that we just talk about general fund, and we say, hey. This is, you know, this is the only one who's gonna bust a cap. But I hear things that are they're going across the board, you know, the the the jail. Is that general fund or does the sheriff pay for the jail? I don't know where that comes from. So I'm I'm scared and I'm not I'm not sure that I understand that we're not addressing some of these things that are gonna also bust the gap. Now I know that my last thing to kinda do is we talked to Kim brought up I I should've can commissioner Atkinson brought up. That's wonderful list. You guys kicked it. She brought it up. I'm glad she did. I I wanted to hear about that. But you can't make a decision here today. I understand that.

We're not voting on stuff. But as commissioner Goodson said, you can kind of vote to direct staff to complete some of those analysis on those cuts because by by some statements in here, was that not completely done by staff. So that 12 or $13,000,000 of unfilled billets, we don't know who who that impact. Katie Katie Major commissioner Delaney made a made a good point that we don't want to just say, hey, the fire department guys, guess what? You know, you're already understaffed. We just but we can't fill them, so we're pulling the money back. Do do it. Do it with with the guys you got now. We don't wanna do that. But if you've got parks and rec I'm gonna pick on them just as an example because I know they had some rollover a while back.

If you've got maintenance guys that you can't fill the billets for and they've been sitting on the books for three years, two years, and you've been getting by, we wanna claw the money back. Claw claw claw money back. Right? But but without direction to staff, you're already putting together a a a plan right here. Option one doesn't account for any of those things that may contribute. So I'm I'm concerned about that. Thank you.

Alright. That's our final card. Any other items before us? Any other discussions, questions? Alright. They stand the workshop being adjourned. Thank you.