Board of County Commissioners - Special Meeting

Our esteemed chairman is preparing for his birthday on June 2, so he's not here. But the good news is we should be out before lunchtime. First item on our agenda is the Feather Sound Community Services District budget update.

Alright. Sure. Kevin's on his way up. So commissioners, you see we got all of our special districts on for today, and then we have a few staff items.

Alright. Is this on? Okay. Good morning. It's nice to be back and see you all again. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to be here. My name is Kevin Chambers, and I currently serve as the treasurer for the Feather Sound Community Services District. I don't have a presentation today, but I'm going going to just briefly go over some background and some notable updates and accomplishments that we've had over the past year. And then I'll get into our budget request for fiscal year twenty seven. As you know, the Feather Sound Community Services District is a is a special taxing district created by a vote of the residents of Feather Sound.

Our board is made up of seven appointed and volunteer members of the Feather Sound community. We meet regularly to discuss finances, community improvement projects, and to hear any community member comments. Since last year, we've welcomed one new member to our board as a result of a vacancy. I'm going to get into some note notable updates and accomplishments since last year now. In no particular order.

We unanimously approved the purchase and installation of a little library at the park and playground area that targets pre k through fifth grade readers. And this was actually a something that was brought to us by a community member. Her and her mom attended one of our meetings, had a plan, presented it to us, and and we voted. It was a a local middle school student, so we're really proud of that. We coordinated the cleaning, repair, and refurbishment of the outdoor drinking fountains at the park.

We include the improve the appearance of the entry wall area while bringing to plan a long term solution for erosion control. We executed the first phase of median landscaping renovations with future phases to follow. Repaired irrigation pipes and reset watering timers to align with the county's updated watering schedule. We had all the playground equipment in the Earl Maze Rec area pressure washed, and that's something we actually plan to do annually going forward now. It looks really nice.

Also, at the playground area, we've submitted an MSTU grant application to remulch the playground area. We have that rubber mulch there, and it lasts a long time. But for some reason, it sometimes I don't know what happens to it. It it disappears or or or something. And so it gets a little thin in areas, and so we have a a plan to to remulch and and bring that all up to a nice padded area for all the kids to run around in.

Another thing we did was we facilitate facilitated a presentation by the Pinellas County Engineering regarding the Roosevelt Creek watershed management plan and Channel 5 improvements. It provided residents a forum to discuss stormwater flooding concerns and storm surge effects. And we had a really great turnout from the community at that meeting, and I will say since that meeting, we've had a lot more community members join, whether it's to just listen to the meeting or ask questions or or something or anything like that. So I think that was a really positive positive thing we did. Finally, our request for fiscal year twenty seven is 331,500, which represents a small lift from fiscal year twenty twenty six.

This increase will allow us

to cover increased maintenance and utility costs while also being able to move forward with future community improvement projects.

I wanna thank you all again for the time today. I speak for the board when I say we're very appreciative of your support. I also wanna thank the OMB team and Audrey for their constant support as well and for making this a seamless budget process. We're very excited about the year ahead. Thank you.

Commissioner Peters? Yeah. So it looks like you've got a $90,000 surplus. Is that right?

In our reserves?

Is that what you have in your reserves? I'm just looking at the spreadsheet that we have in our packet. And so well, it says your ending balance is 147,000. But is that what's in your reserves then?

That's what's in the reserves.

That's what's in your reserves. And you're asking for more money this year or higher increase?

We're asking for an increase from last year. Correct.

So I I are you guys the highest Barry, is is Featherstone the highest MST the highest millage for

I don't know. I'd ask Chris to come up and opine on that. If you

I think you're doing a a great job. Just don't worry about that. I think doing a great job.

If you're looking at their budgets, their budget's going up about $7,000 from last year.

$7,000. Okay. So

Good afternoon or good morning, commissioners. Chris Rose, office of management and budget. And, yes, commissioner, that is the highest of the the millages amongst the special districts.

Okay. So I'm gonna ask you this just I I we at least I have never heard, and Feather Sound is my district. I've never heard any constituent complain about really anything ever. So they must be happy. And and anytime I drive through there, it's always beautiful. I So think you guys do a really, really great job. And I have not even heard from them on affordability where I've heard from everybody else about affordability. And so I guess my question is, if you you have a good reserve, and I understand why you wanna have a a pretty good reserve because you could easily, if something break

Mhmm.

I don't know. I know in the storms you all flooded and you have you recovered pretty well.

That's

How many how much of your reserves did you use after that flood?

I don't know off the top of my head. I know we did have a lot of extra cleanup that we did Yeah. That obviously was unbudgeted in the playground and parking around the whole community area. I I I can get back to you on on the answer to that.

Okay. So and the only reason I'm bringing up is as as we have to do our budget, we're trying to find room on where we can save money.

Mhmm.

And and if you all kind of did the same thing that we did, since you have the highest millage out of every unincorporated community that does this, I would question if you still have a $147,000 in reserves. We we use reserves in case something horrible happens and we need it. So what happened with Helene and your whole community flooded and you probably lost half your landscaping, you had a lot of debris that you had to pick up. So that happened and you still have your total budget was 300. So you still have 40% of reserves available after spending a lot of money.

So my question to you is, would you consider instead of asking for more, give your residents a little break and take a little less and on capital stuff, spend down some of your reserves because we only keep at the county our reserves at like 17%. What are we? 17%? So so I would ask if you would talk to your board Mhmm. Since we're not approving the budgets yet.

Sure.

If you would consider doing a little bit of a rollback this year. And if you do have a big capital, spend some of your reserves because, you know, you're telling your residents that their money is better off in your bank account than their bank account.

Right.

And so maybe what we could do is spend down some of that reserve. I don't think you need that much. Okay. And I think the hurricane just demonstrated that you don't need that much. So so maybe you could give your residents talk to your board, see if they would consider that. They probably would even if it's you know, the the difference to each household might seem minute, but

Right. Right.

Their electric bills going up, their water bills going up. And so if maybe we could take talk to them. Because it's their this is theirs. It's up to you guys. It's up to your community what you wanna do. But when I look at this, think, those reserves are really high. I would criticize a city for having reserves that high. And so that's what I would ask is that you take it back to your board and and ask them and really talk to your residents and say, look, I know the electric bill's going up. I know your property taxes are, you know, increasing and all this kind of stuff that maybe maybe just even if it's $5 a household, that's $5 less than what they're paying on their electric bill. You know what I mean?

So I I would ask you to go back to them and talk to them.

Sure. No. I appreciate I appreciate all that, and I I definitely will take it back to them. Thank you.

Thanks.

Yeah.

Any other questions, comments? Alright. Thank you very much.

Alright. Thanks.

Before we go to the next item, I wanted to, thank corporal Thornton, deputy McSweeney, and deputy Manley from the sheriff's office for being here. Thank you very much. Next on the agenda is the East Lake Recreation Services District budget update.

Good morning. Mark Sanders, director at Eastlake Recreation. My presentation this morning, hopefully, will be brief. So at the heart of every thriving community is a place where people can connect, play, and grow. Eastlake Recreation has not only served as a youth sports complex, but as a hub for health, wellness, and community engagement.

A little bit about our history. We were established in 2014 through ad valorem tax funding, and we're currently managed by Palm Harbor Community Services Agency. And prior to this formation, the organization operated as the East Lake Youth Sports Association. It's a privately funded association, all volunteer. And East Lake Youth Sports faced financial strain and rising operational expenses, and the need for higher participation fees became unsustainable.

In response, Elsa approached Pinellas County for support in reducing fees, addressing infrastructure challenges, and planning for future expansion. The county agreed and we were formed officially in October 2014. A little bit about our community. Encompasses 31.6 square miles and has a population of approximately 33,000. It's a growing community with many young families in need of recreational services and East Lake Recreation has the only field space in the area available for such needs.

Our mission statement is to provide high quality, inclusive, and safe athletic facilities that promote wellness, youth development, and sportsmanship. And our vision statement is to expand our primarily youth focused sports complex by adding additional fields, parking, and amenities to better serve the growing needs of the North Pinellas County residents. Here's most of our sports. We've been successful and just some of those successes are highlighted here for each of the main sports. And then baseball.

Our our 10 u, 11 u, 12 u, 14 u, and 16 u teams all did well. As you can see there, I won't go into all the details, but very successful on the some of the photos to the right of of the tournament championship teams. For soccer, our 2,011 girls team were national champions in the regional league. We had 13 senior girls that were offered college scholarships to play soccer and seven accepted those. And our top soccer program, which I have mentioned before at this meeting is for kids with special needs.

And that's been a successful and growing project. Our football and cheerleading, very proud of these guys. Our 2,005 Mighty Mike cheerleaders were Florida grand champions. Went on to nationals where they finished third. And probably the the very last thing on that highlight that I'm proud of is like 39 of our East Lake Eagle football and cheerleader participants were awarded as first or second team all American scholars for their success in the classroom.

Involvement, our facility gets used in the community as involved approximately, as I mentioned before, about 3,300 youth participate in organized sports at East Lake. Yearly estimate of our attendance to the facility is between two and three hundred thousand and our volunteer hours number well above an estimated 20,000 per year. We have met many accomplishments over the years. This past year, we put new roofs on our concession buildings and we upgraded our entry system for our gates and added call boxes, which has been very well receptive. We have many needs in projects.

As know, we're working on a Meadows expansion project. The restroom facility at the Meadows is a priority for us right now. We've moved from porta potties to a trailer. That's nicer, but the rent for the trailer is $3,000 a month. So we really need to do get a permanent building there at the Meadows.

We need a community building with office space and additional recreational offerings such as pickleball, tennis, and basketball courts. This area right here shows our it's an overview of our site plan for our expansion project at The Meadows. This area here is the existing area with this is our existing parking and our two soccer fields. Wish to expand, add three new fields, parking, and other amenities. And that would be inside this perimeter where I have the pointer going is the proposed trail that the county is is in the process of of building.

So our vision is to have The Meadows look something like this with the turf fields and concession and sand volleyball courts. Our short term strategic goals are to complete the engineering phase of the Meadows expansion project by December 2026. And we're in the process now of establishing a five zero one(three) nonprofit organization. And hopefully that will be done here in the next few weeks. And then thirdly, we want to launch three new revenue streams to support the Meadows expansion project by the end of fiscal year twenty twenty seven.

The ad valorem funding, which we very much appreciate. This funding is the financial backbone that keeps our programs running and our facilities open for the community. We're set at a point two five millage rate, which is just 25¢ for every thousand dollars of assessed property value. And as I mentioned before, these fund the day to day operations that serve approximately 3,300 youth and generate 2 to 300,000 facility visits annually. And without our ad valorem support participation fees would need to increase significantly putting programs out of reach for many families.

And our ad valorem funding covers essential costs, including maintenance, the fields, lighting, irrigation systems, facility upkeep and staffing, the infrastructure that makes safe quality recreation possible. Our funding, in addition to our funding from the county with our ad valorem dollars is to initiate a capital campaign to raise funds through major gifts, sponsorships, and community contributions. And we would leverage the newly established five zero one c three nonprofit organization to enhance funding capabilities and attract tax deductible donations. And three, we would launch a targeted social media campaign to build awareness, generate excitement, and engage the local community. Host fundraising events at the facility to bring community together and raise additional funds and apply for grants, financial aid and low interest loans to supplement fundraising efforts and secure long term financing.

In conclusion, we still have many unmet needs. It's an essential important asset to the community. We strive to improve the facilities to offer the best experience for users and visitors to our complex and actually keep up with the facilities in the surrounding counties. And it's essential that East Lake Recreation is able to expand and develop more fields in North Pinellas County. And with your continued support, we can improve and upgrade the complex to meet the growing needs of the residents of East Lake community.

And this next slide I have is little video of one of our events that it was actually the first year that we've done this. We ran a community event in collaboration with East Lake Community Library and headed out at the facilities in kind of a holiday feel. But it was to bring, you know, more more visibility to our facilities, show them what we have to offer. And not sure how to start the video on this.

Maybe they can start at the back.

Okay. Yeah. If you wouldn't mind starting the the video. Oh, there should be a tag on the bottom of that.

Just a fun event for the whole community, and it

showed what we have to offer and got more people involved in where we're at and what we're trying to do and handed out pamphlets about our fundraising events. So with that, I'd just like to say thank you for all the support that you've given us in the past, and we wish to continue to provide quality sports and recreational activities for our community. Are there any questions?

Commissioner Scott.

Thank you, mister chairman. Thank you for being here today. Appreciate the presentation. For the improvements that you're talking about, The Meadows, do you have adequate reserves to do that?

Not at this moment. Our reserves that we do have are fairly significant, but they are a drop in the bucket for what we need.

Okay. So you planning to try to raise private money for that? Or what's the

Yes. As I mentioned in the video, our our funding process, we're in the very early stages of that. As we get our five zero one c three involved, hopefully, we'll get some folks on there with the donors. We'll we'll have some and we will look for funding through private donations as well as loans. And so, yeah, we we've been talking about this for quite some time.

I remember when I visited a few years ago, you were talking about it. What what's do you have an estimated cost?

For the Meadows, it's about 10,000,000. That's three fields, a concession building, and yeah. That's ballpark, obviously. But No no pun intended. Yeah. Exactly. But we do really need restrooms out there. We're looking at right now some, you know, modular type units that they can just drop in there. But just for those units, what I've been looking at, they're about $250,000 just for that. That's not counting, you know, plumbing and Right. Running sewer lines and all that good stuff.

You said the rent on the temporary ones are 3,000 a month?

3,000 a month.

Wow. I'm in the wrong business.

Yeah. Crappy business, though. Pun intended. Any other questions? Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you. Thank you for your great work. Next, we have the Greater Seminole Sports District budget update.

Good morning. My name is Michael Powers. I'm the chairman of the Unincorporated Seminole Sports Association. I have with me, Steve Cecil. He's our interim executive director. I wanna thank you for the continued support. It's been very impactful to the community. Last year, we were really focused on the all the behind the scenes stuff. So many of the residents would ask, where's this money going to? What's happening?

And it was really building our our charter and our policies and getting understanding the the foundation of what what we have. This year, we were able to start impacting the facilities. So the the budget we had at the end of last year, our capital projects really didn't take place until the end of the year and more into the start of the the new year. So through the presentation, we'll share what what we actually accomplished this past year. As a reminder, the facilities that we oversee are the Warhawk Fields, SYAA, and also Cross Bayou.

At those locations, we have football, baseball, softball, soccer, and and cheerleading. Here's a breakdown of the registration numbers that we had by our program providers. We have a total of 3,334 total participants. I thought this slide was very important too. This really captures what the the tax the the the point two five millage does.

This took a big burden off our program providers and would allow them to give back to the community. So they were able to provide scholarships in total of 327 scholarships to lower income or those in needs based. They were 327, excuse me, for rec and 54 for competitive totaling a $150,000. We've also asked our program providers to give back to the community by providing training sessions or free clinics. So we were able to have 30 of those sessions by the program providers.

Also, there are discounts that the program providers provide for family discounts, signing up early early registration, and they also block out early registration for for the those that live within the unincorporated district. We wanted to break down and get an idea what kind of usage we're having at the complex. We had a total of 522, games that were played at the facilities, as far as competitive. And then we also had about 638, excuse me, competitive, and we have 522 rec. What is here, we're really seeing a balancing of those that are paying travel ball and for those that are are are playing recreational, which which is very positive.

We estimated we about had a 113,000 participants that come through the gate, and we were averaging about, you know, two and a half pupils per per per player on a team. As a reminder, we received a point two five millage. We're expecting our budget for 2027 to be $110,000,035,000 dollars, and we're anticipating about $18,000 from from field rentals from tournaments. Looking back at last year, we had a lot going on. We we had to really focus on prepping SYA for the closure of Cross Bayou.

Cross Bayou is in the early stages of of the major renovation. So we redid all the lower fields at SYA that there was three fields that were completed there. There was a T ball field and two major fields. We had to continue with all the the fence repair of fifty years. They're rusted and and falling over. And anytime we get a big wind gust, we lose a pole. So we're in the process of repairing that as as needed basis. We added outfield temporary fencing for the the lower fields. This will allow those fields to be used for soccer as well as for baseball. We're So able to pull up those the temporary fences and and and maximize the the the field spaces that we have as we go through this temporary consolidation.

Replaced all the dugouts at SYA that were damaged by the hurricane. We redid all the lower lighting at the lower fields as well as the rotary soccer field. We have all new LED lighting there as well as, at SYA, we had to replace many light bulbs on on the current fields that we that we have. We redid the infields of the senior field at SYA, came out with a planer, took six six inches of of clay and dirt out and and laid all new sod. They they look gorgeous.

We we we continued with all new grass on the lower field. We had to repair all the the dugouts that had been abandoned over the the past ten years because the lower fields weren't used. Those have been fixed. The backstops were replaced. We've added security cameras at SYA and and at the Warhawk Complex as well.

We had a major draining issue that that was impacting the residents that were lived adjacent to the to the complex where when we had the major storm, the water actually flooded into to their their properties. So we had to have a drainage that's dug the length of the the border to help with the the movement of the the storm water. We continue to clean up the buildings and get those ready. We installed ice machines at all three locations that that did not have ice machines for safety. Here's some additional pictures just to give you an idea of the extent of what we have done, some before and afters.

Here, I wanted to break out and and really capture the expenses. As you can see, we're really focused on s y a. That's where the the largest chunk of our our budget went to, and that was really getting it ready for the the closure of Cross Bayou. And that will be housing this year alone, football, baseball, and soccer. It's gonna be packed.

It'll be neat to see in the community. 2027 budget, we've got our operating expenses of 539,000, capital reserves of 84,500. We have our repairs at 98,000. We have the contingency reserve at $94.02 30. We have our general administration at a 140,000 and our utilities at a 124 for a total of 1,200,000.

Wanted to break out where that budget is so you can get an idea where we're spending our money. 50% of our budget alone just goes to the turf, getting the yards cut, as well as the clay maintenance. That is the biggest chunk of our our budget. The other chunk is is the capital improvements of of fixing what we have that is needing some TLC. Give you a one, three, and five year plan as we look forward.

You know, we're gonna continue with with with with the the maintenance and repairs of our current infrastructure. My eyes are not as good as as they used to be. We're neck this coming year, we're painting all the buildings at SYA. We we've had to get a new shed that is being installed at SYA to house all the equipment as they remove it from Cross Bayou. We're we're improve adding the sun shades and and needing to get the benches for for for the the the parents.

We've added backstop net netting to protect the houses that that border up to the facility. Improving water access. We don't have water currently at the lower fields, so we're gonna add some city water down down to the lower fields. Three years out, we have to remove artificial turf in the gold box at SYAA. We have to laser grade and level the fields at the Warhawk complex.

The concession stands, fire suppression system, we keep getting a little grace period from the health inspector, but we do need to address that in the coming years. We need additional shade and seating as well as we wanna clean up the the the boundary of the property that's adjacent to the the the county Trail. Long term, looking a little further out, we would like automated gates, updated parking. We need to redo the roofs on the concession stands. We need additional storage.

We need to continue with the lights and and and scoreboards. That that's our presentation. And, again, just wanna thank you for all the help and support that you continue to give us. Any questions?

Yeah. One quick question. Commissioner Scott. Thank you, mister chair. Thanks for being here, guys. So So since we've created this, I've I haven't really heard much of anything as far as community input, good, bad, or indifferent. So tell us, at the ground level, what what are you experiencing? What what are you seeing? Talk talk about the community sentiment out there with this.

We're just starting to get that positive feedback because, like I said, many were asking what's going on. They weren't seeing what what was being done. And a lot of that was getting the early stages of approval on the design and the build. So within the last month, what you're really seeing is the grass is growing. It's benefiting from all the the fertilization, the herbicide, all the care we've taken over the last twelve months. As soon as it started getting warm, everything is filling in. And so you're starting to see that impact immediately on the fields. You're also seeing just that we've cleaned up the facilities. There used to be debris or old equipment display. So it just it's cleaned up.

Everyone feels it's it's you're starting to see it to revitalize, and people are starting to see it. This year, I think you're gonna have the biggest impact with getting it painted and and just being used. They're gonna be full at all times. The big question is how do we handle the parking? How do we handle regulating the fields with the usage and making sure everybody has space?

That's a good problem to have. It is. It is. Great. Thank you.

Commissioner Peters?

Yeah. But it's still a problem. I know. I haven't gone out to personally look at them, but I I know you have a huge project ahead of you, and it looks like you're doing a really great job. So congratulations. I know some residents were really surprised to see that on their taxes when they saw it because not everybody knew. So I did hear from a couple people, but, you know, once I explained it, they were like, oh, okay. So so really great job. I'm gonna have to come out and walk them and

Please.

And see the difference because I you just had so many holes in those fields and kids were rolling their ankles and, you know, you're doing a great job. And I didn't say anything when Eastlake was up, but I saw Eastlake is doing sand volleyball. And I love that. That's an Olympic sport. It's an Olympic sport that's moving. We have tournaments in Florida where people are coming from all over to participate in sand volleyball. I don't think you have space for sand volleyball because I don't know where you'd put it on any of those three fields. You're so packed. But congratulations. I hope that is really doing well.

And I saw you only have three, you know, three spots, but, you know, I don't know that you could do a tournament, a real tournament with only three. But I think Pinellas County, that's a that's a niche that we have not. We have beaches. We could do sand volleyball anywhere. And I know some beach communities will bring in tournaments that are international and national tournaments. But the fact that you're getting kids involved in sand volleyball is very cool. Maybe we'll get an Olympian one day. That would be very cool. Thank you for that and thanks for the great work. Steve, I know you've been working on this forever and I just thank you for all that dedication that you've done.

So to that point, commissioner, I saw the other day, it was on ESPN, that it's actually a collegiate sport as well.

It is.

And one of the teams playing in this is like the national championship tournament was FSU, and there were five two person teams for each school. And because I got the same idea that you had that, you know, this would be perfect for Pinellas County to try to get because they had five, I guess you'd call it courts, like, set up together along this beach somewhere. But, yeah, it's definitely a growing sport.

Yeah. So my stepdaughter travels here to compete. She's traveled here twice, and she's come here to do clinics. And I don't know if those are big enough to do clinics, but she has traveled here with her teammates from Ohio to do clinics in Florida because she'd rather do them here than other places that they're offered. So it's very cool. So practices there? Great.

We wanna say thank you to all the county staff that has helped us through the way here. Audrey's been awesome as our county our community coordinator, and Chris Rose's staff, Veronica and Diana have been very instrumental to us. And, also, I just wanted to say you talked about people visiting. We do partner with Caleb Peterson and visit Saint Petersburg about teams that travel to our complexes as well.

Alright. Any other questions? Alright. Thank you all very much for being here. Thank you. Next, Palm Harbor Community Services District budget update.

Good morning, commissioners. Apparently, I have the reputation of being trouble. That's why the sheriff's here. My goal is to keep this pretty short for you. You guys have seen me present more than once or twice. But before I get started, I do wanna thank all of you for your partnerships. And, yes, mister Rose, your staff has been amazing this year because it's been an odd year for us to prepare our budgets and try to figure out what was coming down from the state level. So Chris has spent an exorbitant amount of time with us as well as his staff to prepare us for our budget. So I just wanna extend our thanks. So this is just an overlay of what our budget we expect it to look like.

And one of the things that a lot of people don't realize, we rely heavily on our ad valorem, but we also take our budget into our own hands to balance it with things like facility rentals and program fees. Without those two huge subsidiaries to our budget, we'd never balance. So when we say facility rentals, we're not just talking about buildings. We're talking about field space, baseball, softball. We do have sand volleyball too, just so you know, commissioner Peters Yes.

That we have at Palm Auburn have for years. So without those other miscellaneous revenue pieces, we would not be able to balance our budget. And this gives you a breakdown of where our money goes in our budget. And one of the things that's always eye opening for me as the director is we run six different facilities with buildings and fields and with 12 full time employees and myself. That's just crazy good when I think about our personnel line is only 43% of our budget.

So when we say we do a lot with a little, we really are. And, you know, from from running softball leagues to running senior programming indoors to wedding venues to we've had memorials to baptisms. We're doing it all. And we're double the size of most of the communities around us for 62,000 plus residents, and Dunedin and and Oldsmar and Safety Harbor and Tarpon are are smaller than us. So I'm very proud of the staff and the casual staff and part time staff that come in whenever the the call is needed.

And the partnerships that we've developed with the county and county staff is is unbelievable. And we wanna continue to be able to to heed that call. When we get a call that, hey, we need to do a presentation at Harbor Hall. Can We make sure staff gets over there and gets it set up for county staff to come in and do what they need. We know what happened in 2024. We don't need to relive that, but we heeded that call three times that season. And staff came in like I said, 12 full time employees. So staff and myself came in whenever Barry called me on the phone and said, hey, we need you, Erica. And we were there, and we went out in the community. And the only way that we can continue doing that is to have our ad valorem at point two five.

And it's it's like I said, we're we're spending it where we need to spend it, and we're being diligent and spending it wisely. And these are the facilities that you guys know we manage. Palm Field is a facility that is not county owned. I know the county owns a little bit of the parking area. We actually leased that from a neighboring church.

Was able to negotiate with the church this year to to sign a long term lease, which what that does for us, we've signed a twenty five year lease, which actually allows us to to get some grant funding, I'm hoping. That facility is about 40 years old. It was built by volunteers back in the day, but Helene and and Milton did a number on it. So we've actually got a bank of lights right now being held up with rope because they don't even make the parts to replace the lights anymore. So I've investigated some low interest rate funding and financing that we can replace the lights in the interim while I'm looking for grant money, and that financing through Musco Lighting, is who lights our other two complexes, there's no penalty to pay it early when I get some when I get some private funding and not if.

So we've already applied for a couple of grants. We're gonna continue looking through Foundation Search to try and improve that that facility. It has no irrigation, so the turf is kind of you mentioned holes, Commissioner Peters, at the Seminole Complex. It that would qualify holes in Palm Field as well. So we're going try and improve the whole complex, but the emergency is definitely the lighting because it's not safe anymore either physically or Lumens. So we're working on that right now. But the other complexes you guys are all familiar with under under your ownership, but we're very proud that we take pride as if they're our own facilities when we manage them for you. And then this is a a breakdown of some of the events that we do. I'm I'm not sure that we got them all in there. You guys are familiar with some of them.

We just hosted with a great partnership with your staff, Barry, our hurricane expo, and it was the largest one we've ever had. We had over 40 tables full of different, I call them vendors. They weren't vending. They were participants, but county staff showed up big with six or seven different departments there. What was amazing to me was we had over a thousand people show up from the community. It was a free event. It was funded by a 100% private dollars, so not one tax dollar was used to host that event. And the information was invaluable for our residents. It just shows that our community wants to be prepared and never ever ever caught off guard. And those are the kind of things that we need to continue to do as the community support in Palm Harbor and North County.

We're doing, like I said, everything from toddler programming to support groups for for the seniors to senior programming. We've added senior programming over the last three to five years, and we're pretty much out of space. While we wait for the new facility, we have used every nook and cranny possible to continue programming and not have to suspend any during construction. And finally, I know I said I was gonna try to be quick. I think I've done that.

Our future is bright, and we are doing big things with our small department. We're almost to our certificate of occupancy with the 2,500 square foot air conditioned space that we've added to Sunderman. I'm waiting. Engineering is supposed to get their final today, which means our CEO should come hopefully next week. I mentioned Palm Field and how we're gonna do some upgrades and refurbishments there. And, obviously, you're all very aware of the expanded community center. That space can't come soon enough. We have programming slated, I believe. Staff is hoping we get that CO next week because she's got programming in there as of June 1 in that 2,500 square foot. And every single room we're we're trying to figure out where we're gonna meet as a staff every other week in the summer.

It may be out at a picnic bench. We're not sure. But it's a great problem to have. When I started twenty three years ago, we just we didn't even have programming inside. We were just fields and and soccer and baseball. So we've grown. We're happy to have grown, and we couldn't have done it without you. But I stand before you to say that the point two five mil that that the voters voted for in 1985 has been put to great use, and we use every penny that we get and capitalize what we can to reinvest in the community like that 2,500 square foot building that we built with money that came from that ad valorem. It didn't come from penny. It came from the pennies we capitalize.

So thank you for listening to me babble on because I could go on and on. Any questions? Quit laughing at me, commissioner Scott. I see it. I appreciate it, but I see it.

Just wanna say thank you for everything you do. You do a great job. Yeah. Community love loves you guys, and you're you're doing wonderful things. Thanks.

Any questions or comment? Alright. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Eastlake Library Services District budget update.

Me first.

Oh, I'm sorry. We're still on Palm Harbor.

It's okay. I'll try to be quick as well. I'll thank you, Erica, and I'm happy to be up here with you today as long with Mark and Anne Marie, a lot of our our Fix It crew back there too. And thank you to the commissioners and Barry and BJ and Chris and your team, Kashira and and Veronica and everybody. I'm just gonna spend all my time thanking everybody.

Is that fine? Actually, I will extend one more thank you before I begin, which is not too long ago, we got our front doors and facade replaced. We were something we probably couldn't have afforded right away. The county stepped in and it was on the envelope of the building and saved us, you know, at least 20 or $30,000 out of reserves. And they are working, which is great because the old one we were nursing together with with refurbished parts for a long, long time.

So this is our anticipated budget for next fiscal year, including our request for a continuation of the support that we've gotten. The millage rate established twenty years ago and, of course, the Pinellas Public Library Cooperative. Those are the biggest buckets. We do what we can with our friends at the library who try to raise about $40,000 a year. And then whatever grants we can submit either through the MSTU or on our own.

And my excellent team translates that into facilities and collection services and programming for all ages. I am sad to say that we lost our founder earlier this year, Jeanette Malouf, and also her husband, Walde, who is a World War two Navy veteran. In this public forum, for the first time, I'd like to take just a very brief moment of silence to remember them. Jeanette Moglouf, above all, demonstrated the value of community volunteering, and we've tried to honor her legacy. As you could see, over a 100 volunteers in our building.

And that's not just to save money wherever we can, although that's very important. But it's also to provide meaningful avenues for engagement to the teens in our area, the adults, and, of course, our senior citizens. We tend to have more volunteer hours in our building annually than most other libraries in the county and beyond that. So it's not just efficient, it's also joyous. I will not read every bullet on this slide.

There's not enough coffee in the world that would keep you awake during all that. But as you could see, we do quite a lot, and we do so in coordination with myriad leaders and groups and organizations. Our parking lot on Nebraska Avenue, if you've driven by, it's often buzzing or full due to not only what our staff offer, but to what our community partners offer to individuals and families and businesses like the Chamber of Commerce in their monthly meeting there. Core library functions are really just one facet of community life supported in the building under our roof. This is the stuff that's in our building.

Books, of course, but so much more. You'll see pictured there one of two art alcoves that we have. We rotate monthly. That means at least 24 exhibitions a year, and that's not even including the the rotating exhibitions that our Palm Harbor Museum does in our community room. So last year, we initiated and supported multiple one hundred years of Palm Harbor events, in coordination with the Palm Harbor Main Street and the museum and parks and rec and a lot of the community organizations.

And that that effort was recognized in large part with an award from the Palm Harbor Chamber of Commerce naming us nonprofit business of the year. Very proud to win that. And this year, we have planned America two fifty events all the way through the end of the year through December, many of which have already been delivered. But any fans of commissioner Eggers and commissioner Scott should join us on June 3 for our next or second of of three that we're doing with the Palm Harbor Museum to celebrate the semi quincentennial. So that is where we are at and where we have been, but we always have to think about our future.

Ask what is next for Palm Harbor, what is next for the library. It's in our strategic plan and has been for several years before even before I came on board to create more indoor space in this very, very hot state to accommodate the crowds that we have. And so that's something that we're exploring and also to try and find new and innovative ways to evolve the institution that Jeanette Malouf established nearly fifty years ago. Thank you.

Pardon my interruption. Could you two introduce yourselves?

Don't believe you Oh.

Your name. I'm Matthew David. I'm the director of the Palm Harbor Library, and that is Erica Linford, the director of Palm Harbor Parks and Recreation.

Any questions? Thank

you, chair or co chair, vice chair Wattenwala. Just curiosity, how many personnel do you have that make up the 60% of your budget?

I believe we are currently at 25.

Okay. Thank you. Any other questions?

Alright. Thank you for being here.

Thank you very much, commissioners.

Alright. Next is the Eastlake Library Services district budget.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Ann Marie Nurnberger, and I am the new director of East Lake Library.

I know you're very used

to Lois being up here. She was a star ward in our community for many years, but she's happily enjoying retirement. She said to say hello to everyone. So good morning, commissioners and staff, and thank you for giving Eastlake Library the opportunity to present highlights of the past seven months as well as plans for our next budget year. As we look ahead, we are especially excited about FY 2027 as we begin the process of leveling up.

Our construction project is in full swing and we're excited to start that. However, before I talk more about that, I would like to begin with some memorable moments of FY '26. So East Lake Library is more than a place to check materials in and out and we are proving this every day in FY 2026. In a community without a senior center, community center, museum or art gallery, our library helps fill critical gaps by not only offering a wide range of print and digital resources, but also providing things such as rotating art displays, meaningful volunteer opportunities, a well used food pantry stocked by the community for the community, and a wide range of enriching free educational classes. In addition, the library serves as a location for important support services such as dementia and caregiver support programs and SHINE appointments that provide free Medicare enrollment and counseling assistance.

These services further strengthen the community connection, access to essential resources, and overall well-being. And in keeping with the mission of public libraries, all of these services are offered free of charge and are accessible to everyone in our community. Addition to regular programming, Eastlake Library is proud to create and host a wide range of special community events that cultivate strong relationships with our community partners. In FY 2026, Mark talked about it, we teamed up with Eastlake Rec for the first Deck the Rec community event. This highly successful partnership helped introduce new visitors to the library and recreation facilities and promoted our organizations throughout the community.

We also partnered with Eastlake Fire and Rescue, providing direct access to first responders in a familiar welcoming space. We worked with the Council of North County Neighborhoods to host community forums that connected local residents with public officials and in addition partnerships with groups such as the Rotary Club of Eastlake Sunrise. One initiative we're particularly proud of this past year is our youth volunteer program. Thanks to our engaged youth and incredible staff, Eastlake Community Library is celebrating the highest level of youth volunteer participation in its history. Students from local schools generously donate their time and passion to the library, earning community service hours while also helping shape what they want and need from their library.

They've even created and hosted special fundraising events to raise money to enhance the youth collections of our library and the facilities, demonstrating an inspiring level of leadership and commitment to our community. Lest we forget, as a public library, our core mission remains at the heart of everything we do, lending materials, providing engaging and educational programming, and ensuring access to technology for our community. These FY 2025 statistics tell a powerful story. Even as one of the smallest libraries in the county, Eastlake Library hosted over 500 programs in a single year, welcomed more than 70,000 visitors, provided over 140 items 140,000 items for circulation and helped more than 13,000 individuals access library services through an active library card. These numbers reflect both the dedication of our staff and the deep love and support the community has for its library.

Looking ahead, our revenue for FY 2027 is primarily driven by our ad valorem funding, which accounts for 71 of our total revenue. An additional 23% will come from funding received through PPLC, providing a critical source of support for ongoing library operations. Together, these funding streams form a stable foundation for our financial plan. On the expenditure side, personnel continues to be our largest cost, reflecting our investment in skilled staff to deliver high quality services to the community. And overall, our anticipated operating cost for FY 2027 is projected at 1,467,000 East Lake Library has a long history of being entrepreneurial and proactive in generating supplemental revenue to support our services.

However, this year we experienced a significant revenue loss that will have a direct impact on our operations. The U. S. Department of State eliminated our highly successful passport acceptance program, which had consistently served the community while generating more than $40,000 in annual revenue for our library. The loss of this program removes an important self sustaining revenue stream and increases our reliance on traditional funding sources.

To counteract these recent revenue losses and ensure continued fiscal responsibility, East Lake Library has implemented several budget efficiencies. Given that personnel represents our largest expenditure, we undertook a strategic restructuring of staff. This included the elimination of one full time benefit position and the adjustment of another position from full time to part time status. These proactive measures help align our expenses with available revenues while allowing us to sustain essential library services and operate responsibly. Another major highlight of FY 2026 worth noting and a key initiative that will carry into FY 2027 is our long anticipated expansion and renovation project.

After many years of careful planning and preparation, Eastlake Community Library is excited to move from vision to action. We've officially entered the design phase, marking a significant milestone for both the library and the community we serve. This project represents the beginning of a transformative journey, one that will reimagine our space to better meet evolving community needs. Residents and staff alike are energized and inspired as they see progress finally taking shape, knowing this investment will create a modern and welcoming library for generations to come. In support of this renovation expansion of East Lake Community Library, the library is actively assisting our library foundation, separate five zero one c three, with its capital campaign.

This effort is focused on raising private funds to supplement Pinellas County construction funding, helping to ensure the project's full vision can be realized. In closing, thank you for the opportunity to share an overview of our budget outlook, challenges, and progress. If you have any questions regarding our preliminary budget numbers or anticipated operational expenses, I do have those figures with me for '27. I would be happy to answer any questions or provide additional detail. We, at Eastlake, always appreciate your continued support and look forward to working with you together as we move forward.

Any questions? Alright. Thank you very much for being here.

Thank you, commissioners.

The Pinellas Public Library Co op budget update.

Good morning. My name is Cheryl Morales. I'm the director of the Pinellas Public Library Cooperative since 2014. Last year, we had some questions about the history of PPLC and why PPLC was created. PPLC was created in 1989 by the county commission after thirty years of community hearings and surveys and studies.

It came up on the ballot every ten years. In 1989, the, residents of unincorporated Pinellas County voted to tax themselves so that they could have access to all of the municipal and unincorporated libraries in Pinellas County. The second reason the PLC was formed was to fulfill a state requirement to have a single state aid granting agency in the county. Previous to PPLC, the state was working with the 14 different entities for state aid. Oh, actually, was 13 at the time because Eastlake wasn't a standalone library yet.

There are 14 member libraries with 25 different locations throughout the county. And in f y twenty five, two and a half million library visitors use the library. We have about half a million registered borrowers, six and a half thousand reciprocal borrowers from surrounding counties that maybe work in Pinellas County and use Pinellas County libraries. And we created a new online registration platform, and people are really jumping on to register online for a library card. And then they go into the library in person and get their actual card.

Countywide programs and activities, about a quarter of a million patrons attended programs in person, classes and events in libraries, and then also online classes and events. The online classes and events really started during COVID and has continued but dwindled a little bit because the need people are coming back into the libraries now in person. PPLC connects communities. The Talking Book Library serves over 5,000 blind and severely visually impaired Pinellas County residents through the Talking Book Library program. And the Deaf Literacy Center is an uncounted number of people that that use the facility due to different census constraints in asking people about their disabilities on the census form.

So we don't have a very good idea of how exactly how many deaf and hard of hearing individuals there are in the county. But we know that the Tampa Bay area has the largest deaf community in the entire state of Florida. Last year, deaf literacy center staff spent good bit of time responding to a community need when a deaf child drowned. So the deaf literacy staff have been partnering with community agencies throughout the county to educate deaf the deaf community on drowning prevention techniques.

Commissioner Nowicki.

Thank you, commissioner. On the last slide, I noticed the numbers were significantly down from twenty four and twenty three. Why why is that?

Oh, classes and events. That's that's participation in classes and events. I I can look into that and find out why. Some of it has to do with the Deaf Literacy Center uses primarily the Safety Harbor Library for their classes and events, and the Safety Harbor Library was under construction for quite a bit of of last two years, and they just opened up their new 2nd Floor and moved the deaf literacy center staff up to the 2nd Floor. There were there were some other obstacles too with community spaces post Helene and Milton as well.

Thank you, chair.

You're welcome. Thank you for the question. One of the biggest, connecting things that we do for the community is work with, museums and cultural organizations to make it so that anyone with a PPLC library card can go into one of the member libraries and borrow a free pass to use any one of the 20 museums and cultural institutions that you'll see on the next slide. In in FY twenty five, we had 16 partnering organizations, but currently we have over 20, and every month it grows. So these are our current partners where if you have, and I hope you all do, have a PPLC library card, you can go borrow a pass from the library and go to any one of these museums for free with your entire family.

It's up to five people. PPLC connects the county. So through the member libraries and through our community connections with organizations like the Juvenile Welfare Board, just to name one, we are connecting people all throughout the county with each other. In partnership with municipal member libraries, PPLC also has two library service centers. One is the Lehman Exchange, and that was a wonderful project when the county purchased that school and created the Lehman Exchange.

We were able to create a library service center there for that community. People in that Lehman area and from surrounding areas can go into the Lehman Exchange and get a library card, request items, have them delivered to the Lehman Exchange for pickup there, and then drop them back off there to be returned to the owning library. And we are working right now just at very infant stages of creating a similar but maybe accelerated library service center at the High Point neighborhood family center so that we see the need in unincorporated Pinellas County where the kind of information deserts were. And when I show you the map on the next slide, you'll see that when you look at all the libraries and their locations, that there were two big holes in Lehman and High Point. And our next dream is to work with the Ridgecrest area sorry, Ridgecrest area to do something similar in that, neighborhood.

I have, a copy of this map, a print copy in your folder that you can see at a much better scale than looking up at the, screen. But you could see the two blue bubbles and the lines in the areas that they lead to. So the the blue bubble on the, right side, towards the top is the location of the High Point neighborhood community center, and the blue bubble below that is the location of the Lehman Exchange. The orange areas are all the municipal areas of the county. The blue areas are unincorporated, not Palm Harbor, unincorporated, not East Lake.

Palm Harbor is in yellow. East Lake is in green. So we are looking at the blue areas of unincorporated Pinellas County when we talk about where the funding comes from to run PPLC and to administer funding to the member libraries that are serving the unincorporated residents of Pinellas County. And I'm so happy to be here. I wanna thank you all very much for all of your support and all of your challenging questions that over the past two years that have led us to this point.

And I also want to echo statements of my colleagues that went before me in thanking OMB staff. And I think that I can speak for everyone that talked this morning. When we say and I could say that we understand your your desire to lower the property taxes for the unincorporated Pinellas County residents. And, just to put that into a little bit of perspective, if you don't already have that in front of you, the average household in unincorporated, in the blue, Pinellas County, pays about $50 per household for PPLC support, and that is a great, great savings for them. So happy for your questions.

Commissioner Nowicki? Thank you, chair. Yeah. I appreciate you bringing up the $54 per an unincorporated household. But, like, when you actually look at the library cardholders of unincorporated residents, it's actually, like, closer to a $151 that they're paying per an unincorporated resident that has a library card. So even though the cost per household is less, the cost of the actual user of a cardholder that is an unincorporated resident is higher than if they were to get a library card directly through the program.

So correct that that is the existing cardholders and, but not the potential of all the cardholders. So, potentially, that number would be more like sorry. So the existing, number of unincorporated residents that have PPLC cards is 61,965, but the potential, people that do not have library cards is a 119. So with cards, 61,000 without cards, 119,000. And that's pretty much the trend throughout the state.

In communities that have libraries, who has a card, who uses a library, and who doesn't use a library. PPLC spent the last year, FY 2025 and into FY 2026, on a postcard campaign to bring awareness to new residents of unincorporated Pinellas County to the fact that they can go in and get a library card for free. This has not been done since 1990, since PPLC started operation, and it is the first year of a a long commitment to work and reach out directly to the members of unincorporated Pinellas County.

Yep. Thank you for that. I guess, potential I mean, you know, I I guess, I mean, with all of these MSTUs, there's potential for everything, but I guess we're not really talking about potential. And, I mean, you know, respectfully I mean, do you remember what the budget was in 2014 when you first took over?

I do.

What what was it?

The budget, the PPLC budget. PPLC, yes. It was about 5,000,000 from the county revenue, Probably closer to 4,000,000. And state aid was double what it is now. So there there's been a shift.

And, you know, a shift in in property values certainly has led to that. But if you wanna go back another ten years, it was 10,000,000. So in 2014, because of the recession that had been going on, it went down to about 5,000,000. But ten years before that, so in 2004, 2002, the, MSTU revenue to PPLC was 10,000,000, right back to where it is now. So we are back to twenty years ago funding at the current moment.

Only if the dollar was worth the same. Yeah. I mean, I just you know, I've talked about this last year and, you know, continue to echo it. You know, I think, you know, I fully support library access and regional cooperation, you know, but when you have nearly $8,000,000 being transferred to municipal libraries funded by taxes paid only by unincorporated residents, I think it's reasonable to periodically reevaluate whether the allocation model still reflects the original voter approved purpose. I mean, if you look at, like, Palm Harbor And East Lake Libraries, those residents don't have to pay this tax, but yet they're getting 20% of funding to those libraries come from, you know, the p this organization.

So, I mean, you have a a small portion of unincorporated residents that are subsidizing libraries and they don't use it. So I don't know if it's, you know, indicative of this board to, you know, look at taxes that we're essentially charging, but yet the unincorporated users aren't using the library. It's only about 13% unincorporated users use libraries throughout the county. But yet, a lot of the funding of these libraries is, you know, from unincorporated residents. So, I mean, I would like to see, you know, maybe, you know, something different happening because, I mean, the budgets are getting bigger, you know, staffs are getting bigger, and the burden is getting bigger on unincorporated residents.

So I would just like to see some relief, and I think, you know, this is an option where we can deliver some relief to unincorporated residents that don't use this service. And they could the ones that do use it could get a library card for a $100 versus paying a 151 in their taxes. So I know don't if anybody else has any thoughts, but that's what I

would like to see

happen. Any other questions? Alright. Thank you.

Thank you.

Alright. Hurricane update.

Morning, commissioners. Thank you for your time. Kathy Perkins, the director for emergency management. So you've probably heard a lot about El Nino discussions this year, and everybody's hoping that's gonna make for a lesser hurricane season. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but 1992 was also an El Nino season.

The first one out of the gate was hurricane Andrew late in the year, but a category five. So regardless of how many storms we get, I just wanna assure you that we are ready. The good thing that could come with El Nino is more rain in the fall and I know we all want more rain right now. So I do want to talk about some of the initiatives that we've been working on and so glad that Erica and Palm Harbor are here. So, obviously, the groundbreaking for their new community center that can be used both as a risk and a step down shelter.

Palm Harbor was an amazing partner in the 2024 season helping us open up several locations to be able to help our community members that were displaced after their homes were damaged and destroyed. We currently, have been blessed with, advocacy from representative Luna to get us some federal funding to be able to expand our shelter capacity at the Leelman Exchange. So we're looking at about $2,600,000 coming down from the federal government for that. We also have legislative asks up at the state level for additional monies for Lehman Exchange as well as $2,000,000 for generators to replace our aging generators at our special needs shelters. So very excited, for that, and thank you to Tristan for all your advocacy and work on helping us get that.

We are currently continuing to work with Pinellas County Schools for shuttering and hardening projects that's underway. We'll maintain 12,000 shelter spaces, with this mitigation work and add over 4,500 spaces. And as we saw in 2024, a lot of people came in with a lot of extra things and the county administrators said we really need to plan for having additional square footage for people. So right now we have about 33,000 capacity at 20 square feet. If we went to 30 square feet, we would still have capacity for over 26,000 people.

So I think we're still in good shape in terms of our shelters. We will be working very closely with the contractors that are doing the the mitigation work at schools. Some of the schools that have shutters on them that we're removing, they're gonna do a one for one replacement. So we don't end up with schools that don't have any protection on them during this season. We work very closely with economic development to host the One Pinellas meeting with our local businesses, and we're continuing to gain support from them as valuable partners, and how they can engage and work with us, even including a program that we're launching this year called Partners in Preparedness, We'll make more educational information available to them so they can help get their employees prepared.

They can also ask for speakers from us. And if we can engage them in volunteer roles, we certainly will. We've actually gone out and met with some partners like Valpak and, the greater distributor down in that same area. They have tremendous parking lots that we can use for staging areas. They have warehouse space that they, that we're looking to work with them on in case we need it during disasters.

We've also added eight additional disaster vendors, to procurement. So that way, if we need to utilize those services, they'll be available to us. Public Works has been working to update their debris collection and renewal contracts so that we'll be able to provide more services and more vendors, not only for the county but also for our municipal partners. We've been embarking in a lot of training. That's a lot of what we do this time of year.

In fiscal year twenty six, we had 29 different training opportunities, training over 600 people. We're actively training partners and county personnel for our county information center, shelter operations, EOC operations, volunteer reception centers. We're going out and doing special training for damage assessment now. And we're also implementing some additional damage assessment processes. One that will start with first responders.

That information will carry over to when we start doing the initial and preliminary damage assessments. And then eventually, that information will feed into if we need substantial damage determinations. And I know Kevin and Tom have been working very hard on implementing the Forerunner program, to be able to help with that as well. I do want to give a shout out to our amazing county employees. So we have just over 300 employees that have signed up to work to support shelters. We've trained over 70% of them. And we have almost three teams. So it's 10 people on a team. Three teams that have signed up to always activate. So these are the folks that want to come in.

They want to work in a shelter. And this is excellent for us, right? Because three of our main big shelters are not only pet friendly, but also general population. So thank you to all of those amazing county employees that have signed up for that. I just got word this morning that the city of Clearwater has identified 20 people. So we'll have two ten people teams from the city of Clearwater. Clearwater has also been a tremendous partner to us throughout the years. They made Ross Norton available to us, and then they also helped us identify other county, other locations that we could use for step down shelters in the 2024 season?

Well, she's going on commissioners. You know, that's a big deal. We, you know, we don't have a group of people that when your hurricane hits, we can break open and then people come. These are people that are they're not human services folks. They're they're out in public works.

They're in communication, and they're helping run shelters from all parts, all of our administrative staff. And they and they volunteer, some are told, but we we have to have our employees. The partnerships with, like, Clearwater stepping up and helping us is critical. And and we need all agencies to do that because I'm I'm glad to hear that's the first I've heard about dedicated teams because also having having experience running a shelter is a big it's a chaotic event. You know?

And so experience being in there and running that makes it go that much smoother. And people show up from the community. She talked about space. Okay. What happens if we we tell them not to bring except, you know, bare essentials and they show up with stuff? Well, then you've gotta deal with it. They're there. People with pets coming to not a pet friendly shelter, now you gotta deal with. I mean, those are the things that happen in real time, you don't have a lot of time to respond to. So it's good to hear the number of volunteers, but we need more. And so I'm just using this as a public service because we're gonna continue to bug our constitutionals, our cities to help us respond to the community need, and they all need to step up, because it's all part of our community.

Barry knows I never miss an opportunity when I'm in front of a partner to, look at their spaces, look at locations they have, ask for personnel. So are continuing to ask as as very successful. And kudos to animal services during the 2024 season. As Barry said, every single shelter became pet friendly whether it was advertised at or not. We just have so many pet lovers in our community, and it was a huge demand. And thank you to the school board as well. They have been tremendous partners. As you know, we use their sites as our risk shelters. They were able to accommodate animals throughout their schools. And then we are working very closely with them. About half of all of the personnel that come in to help staff shelters come from school board as well.

Well, the schools, you know, run all the infrastructure. They keep their maintenance staff there. They keep their food service staff there. You know, as I talk to my counterparts across the state, not everybody enjoys that same relationship. So we're very, very appreciative of Pinellas County Schools.

Yeah. And we're very excited. So this year, we're actually gonna be doing a joint exercise with all of their principals, vice principals and bringing in our shelter managers as well. I think, unfortunately, because we've had so many events, we've got some really strong bonds between our principals and our shelter managers. They wanna continue to work together. So it's just it's really been fabulous to see the growth and continuity of that program. The state has also been working very hard. So the state opened up a new emergency operation center in Tallahassee. I haven't seen it. I've seen pictures of it.

It's very state of the art, a lot of rooms. I think, right, they're gonna be growing into it over the years, unfortunately. And the other thing that they did is they opened up a new warehouse in the Arendelle area, which luckily for us is a lot closer than Orlando where they were staging a lot of things. And their warehouse is packed with so many different types of supplies and resources, and we continue to build out all of our resource management and working on prescripting missions for if we were to have a catastrophic event here. Behind the scenes, some of the things a lot of people don't see us doing.

So we've been working on our continuity of operations plan. The EOC and the EM offices are actually going under some construction starting next week. So we will be displaced for a short period of time. And we've been working very closely. Thank you to Public Works. The ERB location is our backup EOC. So we work very closely with BTS and Public Works to identify location. Can work making sure that we have the infrastructure in there for the CIC, for the media room, for the executive policy group, our our operations floor, and our planning section as well. So we're well positioned to have that up and running if we need it. And then the our contractor that's doing the construction, if we give them two days notice, they'll get us back into our main EOC.

So we've got everything in place for that. We've worked very hard in updating our mission board. So if you recall during the 2024 season, we processed over 4,200 missions for all of our municipal and other partners. And that's that's a lot to do. So we wanna make sure that everything that we have is aligned with what the state state board has as well so we can expedite those requests as we push them up to the state. We're working on a portal for donations and volunteers. So it'll make it more easy for the community to sign up for things and then also for the active agencies that are responding to disasters to be able to tap into those resources. For us to be able to identify what is needed, people in the community that have those resource will be able

to

then say, hey, we're over here, we've got what you need and we can help you out. We are working with real estate and we're creating a tracking board so we can more easily assess what is available across the county, what's in use, and what properties are suitable for what needs. As you know, we don't have a lot of tons of open space here in Pinellas County, so we're always looking for parking lots, open fields, whatever we can, whether it's for debris, staging areas, base camps, so many different needs that we had after the disaster. So we appreciate all of our partners coming in. We're working with Saint Pete College, Pinellas County Schools, any of our folks out there that own large areas or track of real estate.

So if you know of anybody, we'll be happy to bring them on board and have them be part of that conversation. In collaboration with the sheriff's office and safety and emergency services, we're working on some real time data dashboards that will help us with situational awareness and for decision making. We're consolidating key information points into an easy to use tool. And this will carry us everything through the development of the storm when we're monitoring all the forecast information from the National Hurricane Center and the Weather Service through evacuation impacts, what's happening, with the 911 calls, all of the response activities. And then we're also working with public works in the state to try to get additional weather and flood gauges in the county.

And that that way we'll be able to monitor those real time. So I'm very excited to see some of this technology. Some of it with the cameras that we're looking at, they're looking to implement some AI where we can start to if the cameras are seeing flooding on the roads, it can notify us. Right? So then we can start to talk about do we need to do modifications?

Do we have to have some sort of traffic control? And again, as we're looking at all these different points of data coming in, I think it will make our response even more effective. We're building out a municipal SharePoint site. You know, when it comes to disasters, there's a lot of information to be known, not just from the preparedness, the response, the recovery, the long term recovery, all the nuances with putting in for that PA money that Chris's office worked so hard on. So we want to help them to be better prepared.

Unfortunately, we see a lot of times there's turnover in the municipalities, and they lose the people that experienced the last event. So now you've got some people that may be coming from other states, maybe don't have that kind of experience. So we wanna help them to be better prepared and give them great tools that they can access. And we'll be hosting a city manager EOC open house in August. So we will again make appeals for them to support us with staffing, and locations.

And then finally, I just wanna let you know I've given each of you copy of our new 2026, hurricane guide. Very excited that this is out. The English one is currently online and in print. The Vietnamese and the Spanish versions will be coming out shortly. We've incorporated into this guide additional information on all the different types of hazards that people can experience here in Pinellas County, severe weather, tornadoes, droughts, you know, wildfires, the type of year that that the time of year that that's happening, and what are some of the actions that they can take to help you better prepared.

We've also included some tremendous insight from our local community members in terms of what were the lessons that they learned. What do they wish they had in place before hurricane season or before a storm? And I think that will really help other people. I think it will really resonate with other people in terms of helping them with their preparedness. The other thing that I've provided to each of you, every year we host a big hurricane preparedness event day. So this year we'll be in Clearwater, and I invite you to come out. That'll be on Saturday, May 30. Last year, our event was in Saint Petersburg. We had about 1,500 people come through in about a three hour time. Very excited to hear that Palm Harbor had a thousand people this past weekend.

We've got lots of events going on. We've been partnering with our municipalities and vendors for mitigation expos so community members can learn about what mitigation tools are out there available to help them safeguard their home. And it wouldn't be me if I wasn't up here to remind everybody, I want you to make your plan, know your risk, and I wanna make sure that you stay informed. So you can do that by signing up for Alert Pinellas or downloading our Ready Pinellas app. And as always, you can go to our main website disaster.pinellas.gov that will give you preparedness information on beautiful days like today, but we'll also give you real time information when we activate. So with that, I'll take any questions that you may have.

Any questions? Alright. Thank you very much for all you do for us and our residents. And, hopefully, we will

Don't see me again?

We do not see you this fall.

I always tell people I mean this in the nicest way, but I hope we don't have to see each other again. So but you'll see me for budget, but that'll hopefully be

it. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you

for opportunity to go on vacation somewhere.

Alright. I know. You heard that, Barry.

I can't hear you. No. No. Okay. She can go on vacation to Clearwater Beach, but no further. Okay. So Chris Chris is coming up, Commissioner. So this next one, you'd ask for a review of kind of an outline of the municipal taxing units and what other funding sources and stuff that they had. You asked those that is part of the fall studies. So Chris had prepared a background information for you. Again, it's for your use. You can discuss it during the BIS meetings or or at any other time that you want, but he'll just quickly cover that.

Thank you, mister administrator. Chris Rose, Office of Management and Budget. Good morning again, commissioners. So I have the PowerPoint presentation up. It's it's basically a skinny down version of a a larger report that that OMB has put together. And I wanna define municipal service taxing unit for just a moment. It's in chapter one twenty five of state statutes, and it really has three components to it. One is that it's geographically based. Two is that it's a service specific, and three is that it's property tax based. So I'm I'm greatly synthesizing, but that's that's what an MSTU, municipal service taxing unit does and what it's for.

So let's go to slide two, if I could. Thank you guys back there. Appreciate it. So, the purpose of the study was to, put together a comprehensive list, there we go, of all the funding provided to the MSTUs. And you'll also see both the county and the non county revenue sources for each MSTU, the expenses for those years, and an explanation of the historic ad valorem rates, millage rates that we've had in those for five years.

A lot of them go back further than that as you heard this morning. We did look at the same six MSTUs that that you saw this morning, so it's the same exact group. I just wanna say something. I know you all know this, but for the viewing public out there, the Palm Harbor Community Service Agency, fix a really consists of four entities with three separate MSTUs in it. So Palm Harbor itself has both library and rec.

That's why you saw Erica and Matthew up here together. And then East Lake Library and East Lake Rec each have their own separate MSTUs. So they both add up to point five, but one is two and a half point two five and point two five. But that's how fixer is is structured. Let's see. I seem to be having trouble with this. There we go. So a couple of key findings. The millage rates for the five years that we looked at did not change. We did go back further and look, and some of them went down during the great recession and then came back after that time.

Each ad valorem each MSTU's revenues has increased as the tax base has increased, and their budgets have increased similarly as that has occurred. Non county funding for each MSTU range from zero in in one case up to 40% in another case. Overall, the Public Library Services District, Cheryl, that you've heard earlier today got received $43,400,000 over the five years we looked at. They distributed 37.7 of that to local libraries inside of Pinellas County, only inside of Pinellas County, of course. And 85% of its total funding comes from from Pinellas County.

Fixa was very similar, except it does bring in a lot more of its its own separate revenue from the county. Within fix it, there's some highlights there that you can see. Palm Harbor Community Service, both the library and rec together bring in a fair amount of separate money other than the the ad valorem. And, Eastlake Library also brings in a lot. Eastlake rec, not so much.

Most of it's from the county there. Feather Sound, a 100% of it comes from the county over the same time period. And Greater Seminole, sports, new, so all of it came from the county. So the only recommendation that we have was go look for other funding from other places. Let's see if we can supplement, county funding in each of the districts.

Chris, you can send the entire report to the commission.

Yes, sir.

So you can have that background information.

Commissioner Nawicki. Thank you, commissioner Atbah. With in regards to fix, you know, when you're saying MSTU, the library has received or MST received 59.740.3% from non county funding. Does the 59.7% include the 20% the library received from the library cooperative of their budget?

The the other funding is part of that is from the cooperative. Yes. Yes, sir.

Okay. So that's not included in the county funding. So they're still getting a larger

Yes, sir.

Subsidy or taxpayer funded subsidy, if you will, tax. Yes, sir. That's kind of not really broken down. Part of that 40.3 non county funding is still tax.

You'll be able to see that in in the whole report. Okay.

There's a lot of detail behind the report that we can give you. But, yes, you're correct, sir.

Okay. Thank you.

Minister Scott.

Thank you, mister chairman. And thanks, Chris. Good to see you this morning. So it said on one of the slides that non accounting funding for each MSTU range from zero to 40% of total funding received. So that's could be state grants. It could be other it's not necessarily just private funding. Right? It could be just That's correct. Anything other than noncounting.

Yes. The cooperative has state funding come to coming to it. And so, yes, it could be any other source.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Alright.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, chair.

Gender review. Alright. So I got several different presentations, National Public Works Week, Code Enforcement, National Safe Boating Week, and Memorial Day Proclamation. Your different reports, I won't go through those. Your first real items, item number 15, clearing surplus and authorizing the sale of equipment.

The breakdown is within your packet. County attorney's report onto the regular agenda. On the regular agenda, first item up is project application federal aviation for Saint Pete Clearwater Airport. Again, this is ongoing money to get help them fund the terminal improvement project. Item 18, reimbursement payment to the Department of Treasury.

This is for the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. I briefed you all individually regarding this around funding that we'd have to return as a result of that, and that goes back to the cove that was the COVID money that I briefed individually. If you have questions, happy to answer. Item 19 is city County opioid abatement funding. Approval for submission to this is their budget for submission Department of Children and Families.

Commissioner Peters, I think could answer this. Same thing next, this is our opioid. This is advisor, their priority list recommendations for use of the funds. Item 21 is renewal behavioral health receiving system plan for our transportation to support the behavioral the mental health system required annually. This is for '26 to '29.

Item 22 is the Byrne Memorial Justice Grant. It's a renewal on an extensive signature authority for this is a funding we get each year. It's divided up based on formula and agreement with the local law enforcement agencies, including the sheriff. Item 23 is a resolution dedicating the county owned parcel of land at the intersection of North McMullenbooth and that drive as public right of way. This is getting rid of a sliver of property and putting it to the adjacent owner.

Item 24 is what commissioner Eggers has been talking about with honoring designation of County Road 1 as a Nick Nicholas Flowers Morrow Road. Item 25 is a resolution to submit the resources and ecosystem sustainability tourism blah blah blah grant for The US for the coast Gulf Coast restoration. Next is a tougher hearing for Housing Finance Authority, 17,000,000 for a project of for Saratoga apartments. Next one is a tougher hearing for Sky Isles apartments. And item 28 is resolution approving adjustments in the precinct lines.

And so I think that's over to the county attorney's office.

That's a statutorily required resolution when there are changes to district boundaries. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to advance to that. Is

that because of the congressional redistricting?

Yes, sir.

You've got litigation.

Yeah. Item 29, obviously, we're seeking your authority to initiate litigation in the reference case, the breach of contract case.

Well, the county administrator's report, provide a brief up budget update. Over onto your county commission, you got appointments to medical services, medical control board, appointments to the South Saint Pete CRA, and a commission business. I for me to keep going to public hearings. You got a YAC presentation. You got a re a zoning change from residential agriculture to rural residential 2.5 acres unincorporated Clearwater.

Split the lot into two, build a second home. Item 38, petition to vacate a portion of of this property. Staff recommends approval. 39, this is a one a budget transfer from a variety of different sources. And I'm looking oh, on here, Chris, is this also includes the supervisor of elections? Say again? It'll be next month? Okay. So this is a transfer realigning funds that they're kinda broke down within your packet. Happy to answer any specific questions.

We do have to do a 508,508 thousand dollar transfer to supervisor of elections for the mailings associated with the redrawn maps. That's what it cost. We we So like

we're getting a check-in the state?

I would not wait for that check. But, yes, we're that's that's what it cost for them to do their mailing and re notify of the changes. And so we'll have a transfer for June to reflect that. And that concludes the agenda.

I also wanted

to note that

when Eggers is not chairing the meetings, we don't have to order lunch. I think that is fairly important. But this week, a local member of the press told me that, or and basically, she was inquiring or they were inquiring to me that they made a public records request to Pinellas County and were told that it was over $500 for some emails. And it wasn't to the accounting commission, it was to specifically to a department. And I guess it was either BTS or the department was able to determine that it was gonna be a little over 400 emails.

And I would ask the department head about that, but they're not here. But one of the questions that I have in that, to me, that's kind of a First Amendment issue when we charge the press for public records that is a First Amendment thing because I think the press should be treated a little bit differently than regular citizens even when it's people we don't necessarily agree with. But also, if we are gonna charge them, how do we know exactly how many emails it is already? And one thing I was gonna do was and the only way I knew about this was this individual told me what the request was was offer my aid to help fulfill that request to bring the cost down since he's trained in how to fulfill those.

So these are they're governed by statutes. So, you know, we and we have a public records law. The issue is when you've got how broad the request is, and then we've gotta go through and sort to determine what is a public record piece or portions that have to be redacted. And, we have an ordinance that governs how we do that, how we apply that, and we got charges associated with that. So we Is there

a way when we

By the way, we get this a lot. I mean, we have people dedicated to fulfilling public records requests.

When we sort through them, is there a way for them to filter out duplicate emails? I'd have

to look more in detail, but I think they they do. I'm I would imagine they do. We also give them the, you know, the cheapest person. I'm not going through and doing that. They're charging, you know, the the usually administrative. So gotta be trained on what is it what what constitutes something that needs to be redacted and what doesn't. You know, you're getting things that have know, could have medical records, could have other information that has to be redacted. It just depends on the request. But we do have a policy on how we govern that, how we do that. It's not to keep them out, but it we also get probably I mean, we get a ton of public records request. Don can looks like he wants to speak on this.

Well, I I certainly can. The commissioner I'm sorry. The county administrator is correctly pointing out that it becomes a practical issue at some point, and I have no knowledge of the particular request you're talking about. But there are times when when there are requests that are so abstractly large

Yes.

That even even gathering the documents to be prepared to review them. And part of the process involves estimating. There is a a process by which they estimate what the cost of looking at these things are. Once the estimate is paid, then we go through the process of gathering, having staff in in consultant with our office from time to time depending on the need, but looking for exemptions and confidential information as the county administrators pointed out. And then the actual cost is is determined at that point.

The there's only one way to do it by estimating. If you go forward and you gather all the documents ahead of time, well, now they're gathered and that cost is sunk before you may or may not ever get paid for that. And and it's the same process from press to any anybody on the street. In fact, under the public records law, anyone can ask for this and and And

we get requests all the time, even from the press, that are very broad.

Okay? So I guess the best way would be to narrow the request.

And we ask them to do that. Can you narrow this? Okay. I mean, we we want we want them to have the information they want. Like, the more you can narrow it, then one, it's easier for us, but two, it lowers the cost. Okay.

And And commissioner, I would also wanna point out there is a threshold below which if it takes less than a certain amount of time, there's

no charge for

it. Yes. Right.

So so if it's simple, we just turn it around. Correct. But when it starts when it starts to become burdensome and practically that's

where also times where we say this is too broad. I mean, we get requests all the time that says, you know, all emails, you know, that are of a certain subject between, you know, 1990 and, you know, whatever. I mean, it's really come on. True. I mean, so we we do try to narrow that that focus because it involves a lot of step time.

Okay. Any other questions or comments?

For sure. Just under new new ideas, new business. Is that okay?

Yeah. We're past that.

Okay. I'm I'm teasing.

Data centers have been on my mind a lot. I'm convinced we don't want them. They're just gonna drive up our electric costs. They're gonna suck up our water. They use our a lot of our land. Job benefits are there are no job benefits out of it for our community. Commissioner Peters, I wanna thank you for bringing it up last week because I I have been thinking about it for quite some time. And if I remember the meeting, we were told we couldn't change our land use plan or our development codes because of SB one eighty. Okay. And we get in a lot of trouble for doing that or even proposing it.

But so I started thinking really hard, what else could we do? There's gotta be another way. And I started thinking, there's an Achilles' hills of water. Data centers need a lot of water. I mean, a a small data center can use up to 3,000,000 gallons a month. A large one can use 50 a a large data center can use a 150 gallons million gallons of water a month. And so I started thinking about water. That's our water. It's water for our hospitals and our for citizens and our community. We need it for emergency services.

Now we restrict water for all kinds of reasons for all kinds of people. We tell people what day they can water their yard, and we tell restaurants not to serve water at certain times when we're when we have restrictions out. So I believe that we can use water restrictions and ordinances to prevent data centers in Pinellas County, and we should try to do that. Senate Bill one eighty is silent on water use. So I don't believe it would be a violation of Senate Bill one eighty to start working on a new water restriction proposals to limit the amount of water, excessive water that can be used for a new business or a new new development, especially wouldn't wanna do it for apartments or a project where people are using water to live, but industrial uses.

So we we could refine it, and we could come up with a new ordinance on water use or a new impact fee that would be so substantial that nobody would wanna build a data center. But the point would be, even if they could get the development rights to build a new data center, we could always deny the water use. And then so they wouldn't do it. So that was just an idea I presented to to Don and Jeremy. And so I think it's worth pursuing trying to use water restrictions to prevent the data centers.

That's it? You wanna go first, Barry?

Well, commissioner Peters brought this up last time and we're in we're in the fact finding mode. So staff and I know commissioner Peters followed up, you know, with us where we at. And so we're looking at the the land use pieces of that, and we'll add water usage as another thing. There's a lot obviously, there's a lot of issues involved with, you know, we can certainly restrict the unincorporated going county wide and our municipal service agreements that we have on water and even with Tampa Bay water. You know, those are it it it'll get pretty complicated.

We have agreements with cities to deliver water, and so I'm not sure we have the same thing. But we'll look we'll look at all of it, and we'll bring back ideas and thoughts on what we can and can't do, and then you can have a robust discussion about what you wanna do. So,

uh-uh, it's okay, mister chair. Yeah. I've done some more research. I think we could definitely move forward if we have consensus to prohibit tax incentives and abatements. And I would like to at least move forward with that for sure.

What I found out and I talked to an expert and if you wanna talk to him, I'd be happy to connect you with this gentleman. And so he talked about what they're doing with energy and what they're doing with water. And so what they're doing with water now to use less is they're looping the water so they use less. So my worry would be if we put a limit on that, would that impact an inadvertently unintended consequence hurt a hospital? So I think we'd have to do a lot of homework on water.

I think it's a great idea. But that would be the only thing that would worry me is that if we did that on on that, it would be water. I know the power companies have to use water for the chillers. The waste management, our our own dump, has to use water for the chillers. So if we do a water thing, do we have a problem with those industries?

So I think it's something worth looking into. I think you're onto something that's creative. But what we're finding is that the data centers, because of the outrage of the water and the electricity, are coming up with new creative ways. And I assume the one that and I haven't talked to our staff about the one that's inquired, know, are they were they looking to go to Guinea Boulevard to use salt water? So were they looking to use bay water?

Now I know if they were gonna put it back in the bay, they'd have to cool the water before they could put it back in the bay just like the power companies do. So they're getting creative. So I think the other thing Jules staff is looking at is did the governor bill that he just signed saying that we can govern data centers, does that preempt Senate Bill one eighty? So they're looking into that to see if this new bill that says local government can manage and make decisions on data centers, does that now preempt Senate Bill one eighty? So we're looking into that.

And so I think there's gotta be I and we don't even know if everybody agrees to ban them. So that's another thing. I think we have to have that. Do we have consensus? So but I am 100% with you. I am. And I and if we have consensus, would like to definitely move forward and not do tax incentives and abatements. The big data centers have no jobs. But what I'm told from this expert is the smaller data centers with AI are now bringing in high paying jobs. So I I think we need to I we probably almost need an expert to come in and explain it to us.

We we've got a lot of research to do and and we certainly could could bring in other people. I mean, I know you like, you talked to Melissa with Duke and and, you know, and that Yeah. Differentiating the different types. We were even talking just right before the meeting, you know, and we we wanna make sure it doesn't impact, like, a university data center that they're using as part of their, you know, their their their their university needs. Mean, so we we really need to think through what type of data centers we have, what you're trying to go for, what you're talking about. We just it's it's too new. We we need more time to be able to do some of that research.

Okay. I mean, the Phillies are putting in a data center. Right?

Not at the size that you're talking

about. No. I know. Not about the size we're talking about. So so that's why I think I think this it would be worth a workshop and we could bring in the gentleman I spoke to.

K.

And by the end of our conversation, he agreed with me that Pinellas County is not a place for him. You know, given that we're an aquatic preserve, we're a designated aquatic preserve, We really don't have a lot of land for a large data center and and I'm really focused on large data centers more than smaller ones, but they they they throw off so much noise and there is not one neighborhood because there's I mean, we're an urban county. We are not we have no rural land.

Right.

You put a data center that puts out that kind of noise, that humming would make people go crazy. It's much worse and it's constant twenty four hours a day. It's not like it's only nine to five. It is twenty four hours a day that humming that would make people absolutely nuts. They typically have extremely high voltage lights. So there'd be, you know, the ambient light would be significantly higher. I mean, there's a lot of negative things about a big data center. So I never would wanna see a big data center. We don't have a lot of space for it unless the Sam's Club went out or the flea market sold or the dog track with all the wetland, I don't know.

They'd have to build up there.

Well, I mean, they can certainly build up and we're an evacuation, a large evacuation zone. So it just doesn't make sense for data centers to come here when we're a large evacuation center zone. So, but if they were looking at Candy Boulevard, they clearly were looking at building up. They clearly were looking at a Cat 5 kind of building and if that's what they're considering. And then what's the impact if they're gonna discharge that water into the bay? They would have to have the same rules that the power company does to cool that water before it goes in the bay because it'll have a negative impact on the environment. So so I think we have to look at

this

seriously and consider it. But at a minimum, I think we can stop the tax incentives.

Well, we'll and and I haven't even gotten with, you know, Cynthia yet on that. So, know, we'll pull this all together and you can send us any of the information that you've gathered, the research you've done. Commissioner Scheer brought up several things this morning. So we'll we'll kinda try to pull some of this together. And probably it'll be like July or August time. We got budget information sessions next month. So, you know, hang tight. We will make sure nothing comes through. If we do, we'll try to react accordingly. But in the meantime, we'll try to gather all this information and bring it back for you.

Because if somebody's interested, they're either gonna try and do it really fast.

We'll find out about that. Or or they We'll find out

about talk and then they'll decide not to. But

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. But

we'll I'll ask I'll ask Tom and Kevin was talking about him. We'll we'll we'll look into that particular one, but then we'll try to get all this information about water policies and and everything and bring it back for you.

Okay. Thanks.

Any other questions or comments?

Well, I did wanna thank Jewel's office. Ashley sent me a text when she heard the conversation about public records request and she just wanted to thank. I'm gonna make sure I get everybody she wanted to thank because she spends an awful lot of time on this. And I remember one time, commissioner, I don't know that you were here yet. We had somebody that had such a broad request and it was gonna take so much time.

And so we told him that the cost would be very exorbitant. And he's like, I don't care if it's thousands of dollars, I want it. And so they just don't you know, a lot of people, they don't care if it's gonna take three months of full time staff person to to get this. And so some people just don't care, but, she wanted to thank Don and Jewel and Amanda because they provide so much support to our offices on public records requests because it really does take an enormous amount of time and we certainly seem to be getting a lot more than we used to. When I first came here, was pretty rare. Now it's a regular occurrence. So thank you to all you guys. We appreciate it.

Try being a JWB board member. We get about one a one a week. So yeah. I think we've had, like, four or five.

And and you need to understand some of the departments. You've got I mean, out of public works, every think about every possible angle on, you know, every every engineering road. I mean, they they get inundated. And I'm just picking on one department. So there's a lot that that occurs down in the departments that are significant. So takes a lot of time.

Any other Commissioner Scott. Thank you, mister chair.

I'll be brief. At our last meeting, I, you know, brought up the thought again about looking into an e bike ordinance. And I was talking with Barry about it. And his suggestion was to see if there was consensus around the room to have staff kind of do some investigation on that and bring back a white paper on that. So just wanted to kinda get everybody's thoughts on that if we thought that was a reasonably good idea to

Yes. I thought we did that last time.

Okay. I just wanna I wanted to go Okay. I also last time. I'm sorry. I I also talked to Whit because they've done a lot of research on this and been leaders on that. He was agreeable, you know, to with that effort.

Okay. Cool.

Was there a bill on this and it just didn't pass?

There there was, but it wasn't really it basically kind of puts some speed limitations in and then set up a task force to do more research, which my understanding is that is the task force is, you know, hopefully gonna bring back something that will create some state legislative for for next session.

But Okay.

That's kinda where that's at.

Alright. Thanks.

So And then then lastly, I will be for next Tuesday, I will be in Fort Lauderdale with Saint B. Clearwater at a travel trade show, but I do intend to I have a link, so I intend to attend virtually.

Alright. That's it.

So does anybody know the year the Frisbee was invented? I won't tell you the year, but it was the year that Dave Eggers was born. So with that, I will see you all on Tuesday. We are adjourned.