Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

So moved. Second. I just have one question on there. Go ahead. On the permission to enter private property repair driveway, what repairs are we doing on that driveway?

Washout on the county property or private property?

I understand. Okay. I know other state agencies like Water Management and stuff like that. If you do work without a permit, they assess a fine of basically double the permit price sometimes. I think there should be something in that paperwork to address that.

I'll make a motion that we remove the tree. I went down and looked at the tree. The tree is in bad shape, and we're going to be spending a bunch of money on this bank restoration. Unfortunately, the tree needs to go.

We had limited information on our backup material. I mean, basically, I had no idea what we were reporting. So I did talk to the county manager, Gloucester County, yesterday. And I talked to the engineering public works director, Gloucester County. They are way behind on fixing potholes. They're facing people trying to sue them in lawsuits because of the potholes. I don't know how they got this far behind or what led up to this being such an emergency. But I started the phone call with David Krause. I said, you know, I see we're supposed to have some kind of agreement with them, but where's th

that's what I fix to tell you when I talked to public works director yesterday he would love to have somebody over there this weekend but he also said there's so many potholes that we're having to do he said they done 1,800 potholes last week enough to drop in the bucket of what they had to do so he said he said one day not patching potholes over the next two weeks if we had to build at the next meeting Wouldn't affect him that much. So it's why he just told me yesterday. So he would love. Well, I won't pay. He kind of want his county attorney to try to get it out faster, but he was kind of dr

Well, that's up to the board. I'll just say it.

public works director dr county also told me yesterday that they reached out to about six other municipalities and have not received any response from any of the other at all in one of most city of gamesville well if you i mean i understand kevin worked for this county all the time in and out i understand he knows how the situation goes he just wants to make sure we know that he knew it

and that we, it's not going to cost our county a dime for us to go help that county. Am I saying that right?

what i mean it'll only be on saturdays yeah but i mean like this saturday if you redo your motion that's what you know laura you just told us about rejoicing the promotion that we i need to read this too i haven't made a motion yeah there's no emotional oh there's no emotional okay i understand okay so would you make a motion I need to make a motion. As long as we have time to read this before we vote on the resolution or whatever it is that does not cost us any money whatsoever and that we can help them over this coming Saturday.

And that's exactly what I brought up to the public works director there. Why not call Anderson-Columbia and get a crew and pay Anderson-Columbia or somebody to come over there and pay? I mean, that would be the logical way, I would think, to do it.

Just to clarify what Commissioner Phillips said, they're not asking us for one Saturday. They're asking us for Saturday. Every Saturday, we can get somebody over there to help them. So between now and the next meeting, it would be two Saturdays if our crew. Now, again, Mr. Kirby said it's voluntary. He said we don't know if we'll have a crew every Saturday once we go over there. They do have a crew now that has volunteered, from my understanding, that will go this Saturday and patch potholes. The director of La Cholla County told me yesterday they work four 10-hour days, 40 hours a week, but t

Well, he also told me that they passed a one cent sales tax over in Lottaway County. to fix the roads and it's bringing in about 12 million dollars a year to fix the roads so they've got money they sound like they don't have manpower but there again if you've got the money to do it i don't know how you wouldn't contract it out somebody to come fix these potholes you know just the way this is being done i don't understand it one thing i don't have a problem helping them if they need help but if they have money And I know there's contractors out there that will tax these potholes. Why are we, an

I want my place, and I'll put what I said, and we'll wait until the next meeting and resolve this, but we can After we've had time to read all this over and find out whether they want to hire somebody on the street or whether they want to try to help out with our people.

Well, I mean, we just voted on those four contractors that weren't doing these roads right here in Plumlee County. I mean, four or five. There's contractors up here saying that I would rather see private contractors over there doing it than us wearing our county equipment out and stuff over there in Luxembourg County. I mean, even if it funds us everything, you still got wear and tear on vehicles, equipment, everything else, you know. And wear and tear on people.

right right i agree i agree i was looking at as you know our employees

They will pay the $300 fee for a dog. I gotcha.

Chairman, because i don't i'm not i'm through voting on stuff that i don't have time to look at and read i mean for some reason we've made a habit of bringing this stuff to the meeting and handing it out at meetings and then staff asking us to vote on stuff that we've had two minutes to look at three minutes look at i'm not comfortable doing that and i'm all about helping the city We don't want to do this for two weeks and put this on their next agenda to approve this contract. I'm all for that. But other than that, I would have to vote.

And, again, I'm not trying to blame anybody. I know what we're trying to do here. But, again...

You get into this like you're talking about the whole world. or bigger. If you happen to get into the middle of this with a person's morning hold, is there any adjustment

they were building those houses out on Baskin-Norris in a Lodge-Way County. They would probably be looking at, I haven't been over there in a little while, but somewhere around $7,000 more for the permit for each house. It would impact the cost of the permit and review. And then some counties, now they're doing, Lodge-Way County does an environmental impact, so you have to pay for it. It is cheaper to build in Columbia County, which compared to even Gilchrist County. I mean, we're a couple thousand dollars cheaper in Gilchrist County. Again, some of that is impact fee. A lot of that's impact f

Chairman, I'll make a motion. We approve Resolution No. 2026R-54. Okay, got a motion?

Commissioner, I brought it to the county manager's attention that the drug-free workplace policy was not being followed. I think this is an attempt to bring the drug-free workplace policy into a line with the way they were doing it, according to the way they thought it should be done. in retrospect of what it said on the paper. Now, I think they way overcomplicated this. I mean, that's my opinion. Accidents should be accidents, no matter how it's done. I mean, there shouldn't be restrictions on how bad the accident is or who's affected by the accident or who had the accident. And that, if you

And the tipping point I was given was $1,000 worth of damage to the vehicle. Well, $1,000 worth of damage, their $1,000 worth of damage only applied to parts to replace on the vehicle, not repairs or labor, what was being done on the vehicle. so many repairs and labor was being done in-house, that was not accountable for the cost of repairing the vehicle. So I'm just saying, I think this is an attempt to redo the drug-free workplace policy to fit their definition of how they want it to be done. And I don't believe there was anything wrong with the way it was written already. And it was... a lo

Well, and one of the issues was all accidents had to be reported to their immediate supervisor. That was not being followed. So, you know, there was issues and this wasn't being followed. I questioned it. This is an attempt to fix it.

I think, reading this, David, I think you're going to have employees saying, I don't, I don't, this don't apply to me because I didn't do this, do this, do this, do this. You know, I think the more plainer you can keep the language, the more it's going to benefit the county in trying to enforce the policy. I mean, like I say, I'm not a lawyer, but I think you would need a lawyer to interpret whether or not this man has to do a drug test or not.

I mean, that's – But also, if you look at one part of it, it says all employees who perform safety-sensitive functions. So part of it exists employees that are not doing safety-sensitive functions.

So why do we have to complicate it up so much? Why can't we just simplify it to say what it says? I mean, you've got five or six pages here. I know a lot of it is definitions, but, you know, I think for the average employee, the simpler you can make it read, the better they're going to understand it. And I can tell you, this is not written very simple to understand. The way we had it before, it was one paragraph for accidents. Now you've got five pages for accidents.

What if it is your supervisor? Excuse me? What if it is your supervisor? Let's not follow into this. So let me ask you a question. So my business is a drug free one. My insurance company, when I signed up to be a drug-free workplace, they give me a policy. This is your drug-free workplace policy. This is what you have to do to get this reduction in insurance. I got a reduction in insurance for being a drug-free workplace. They give me a drug-free policy. We have insurance with FACT, right? FACT doesn't have a drug-free workplace policy that they give you. that we require for this insurance.

Why don't we just adopt whatever the drug-free workplace policy is for bank? That would be the simplest way to do it. Then you don't have individuals that work in the county adding their little touches to it.

I just think the way it's broke up into all these different phases with all these different terms, you could try to use one term against the other. So what about this? It's too broad. It could be simplified down to a couple of paragraphs. I mean, that's my drug-free workplace policy I got from my insurance company, which is less than half a page. Mm-hmm.

That's who we should be trying to make happy is our insurance company because we have a claim. That's who we're going to have the claim with.

Well, if they provide us a drug-free workplace policy, obviously they would agree with it. I just think we're trying to overcomplicate this.

make a motion they bring back a different policy or give us more time to look at this one because i would like to compare it to facts policy i'd like to i'll be honest with you i don't really see a whole lot of what's wrong with their current policy but that's just my opinion i think this is way over complicated and i think it leaves too much interpretation for supervisors to to make it decide whether or not they need to do a work, if it's an accident that qualifies for a drug test or not.

Commissioner Parnell, my thought is, just like the policy says now, if you have an accident, you take a drug test. An accident is an accident. If you back into a light pole, you hit a deer, whatever, that's an accident.

i'll do that so so my motion would be that we amend this to say that any accident you have no matter what severity that accident is you take a drug test so if mr chair if i ask for clarity so what i'm hearing is that not satisfied with what's been presented today so

cleanest way honestly procedurally is just to say that you okay I make a motion we don't accept this drug-free workplace policy and they bring one back a lot more clear and a lot shorter just a basic drug-free workplace policy and that's your amendment oh hopefully the one from fact that's your amendment that's my amendment so mr. Parnell you need to second that if you agree so we'll bring it back with the corrections on

Shorter and more black and white for you. Hopefully the one from FAC.

We don't, but I would like to see it and compare it.

It's a drug-free workplace. So why should you mind taking a drug test? It don't cost you anything. You drive down there, you give a blood test, you do a blood test for a drug test, and you're done.

That's what I'm saying. Don't cost the employee nothing.

Well, they can bring it back and do that.

Question. I mean, I haven't read all of this, but I'm on a rotation as a truck driver. I'm on rotation. I get called periodically. I seem like I'm the only one in my company that gets it, but it seems that way. So if you're a drug-free place, Why couldn't you put everybody on rotation? How can you do that?

I don't know that. The drug-free workplace program states if you have CDL license, you're on a rotation. So even the county CDL drivers are on a rotation. When they're called, they're called. But the rest of the employees are not on a rotation. But now, I understand what you're saying. Why can't they be?

Well, I mean, if you had everybody on rotation, you've got a road-free program right there because anybody could be caught.

But your insurance is still going to require if they have an accident and have a drug test.

I make a motion we approve contract year 2026-27 with the Columbia County Health Department.

Okay. I make a motion. We approve the Florida Sports Foundation event grant agreement for $3,000.

Oh, you made a motion? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'll make a motion to approve. David. sign grants resolution 2026 r-56 2026 r-56 i'll make the motion we approve the resolution okay got a motion with that i thank you very much open public comments uh uh

That's what you're saying. I have about 110 more miles of dirt road than I have paved roads, and I get about five calls a week for that same thing. I've got roads all over my district like that.

Yes, sir. Mr. Todd, we did pass that at that time, but what happened was Tallahassee said you cannot raise your permit fees for so many years after a hurricane. So we had to retract it. So now we're looking at it again because that time frame has almost elapsed. So yeah, we did pass it at that time, but we had to rescind it because of that rolling in Tallahassee.

clerk you got anything you got any questions don't leave here with a question i just want to emphasize on the uh 250th anniversary they've got a couple of trucks down in front of the courthouse down there that has a lot of history in them and if anybody gets a chance go check them out and everybody have a lovely week