Board of County Commissioners - Special Meeting

Morning.

I wanted to thank communications and everybody who was here last night, and especially our vice chair for chairing the meeting. Good job last night. I thought that was really good, and got a lot of good feedback from our residents. Thank you communications for stepping up and doing that yesterday and being at the ready this morning. So alright. We've got solid waste, care about me, office of human rights. We're gonna move the Clearwater parcel disposition update to Tuesday.

Correct.

And then we'll have the agenda briefing after that. So let's get started with the solid waste department.

Here comes Hello

there, mister Sacco. Good morning.

Morning, commissioners. Paul Sacco, the director of Solid Waste Department. With me this morning is Cassie Hartman. She's our manager of business and financial services.

Lift that up to your lift this up closer to you if you don't mind. It's just I'm not picking you up.

Sorry about that.

There you go.

So today, we're gonna be providing updates on the power brokering sales for power generated by the waste energy facility, give you an update on the fiscal year 2027 tip fee recommendation as well as the Lalman MSBU solid waste collection rate recommendation. So first up with power brokering. Power brokering began in 01/01/2025. That began after the expiration of our power purchase agreement in December 2024. Any power that is not brokered on the open market is actually what we say dumped to the local utility, which is either Duke Energy or the Seminole Electric Cooperative.

Rainbow Energy is our power broker. And the way that they are paid is they get 10% of any revenue that's generated on the open market, but it has to be the revenue that's generated above the power that we would dump to Duke. So they're motivated to sell power at a rate that's greater than what we can just sell to Duke as an as available rate. Apex Power is our power consultant. They help us with reconciliations with invoices that are coming from Rainbow Energy and the hourly charges that are coming every month associated with that.

And they also help us identify possible other power purchase agreement or power purchase opportunities with other utilities in the state or even outside the state. So this chart shows the existing markets and rates. This chart was shared with you last year as well. You can see the green line at the top that represents the power sale market and what is being brokered on the open market, the green line there. So as you can see through twenty twenty eight, it still shows that power brokering remains the best option for us to generate the maximum amount of revenue for power that's generated.

In 2028, that begins to shift a little bit. You see a breakeven. And then in the out years, it appears that Duke's has available rates, which may either be just selling our power to Duke outright or maybe entering into a power purchase agreement at that point in time may be the best opportunity. So staff will continue to monitor and we'll assess and we'll react and bring recommendations back to the Board as we get into the out years. But we always have that backstop of a power purchase agreement with Duke if we feel like we need that.

What Paul, what what what's creating that that spike in '20? I'm sorry. Maybe I missed that.

No. Usually, every utility has different operating components for demand and what they generate. And then they also have their plans. They they issue their ten year plans every year that talk about how much solar they're gonna do. They can have plants that are expiring. So in this case, I don't know specifically what's happening inside of Duke, but usually plants are expiring and they're generating different capacities. Or with a spike like that where they're saying they wanna pay more for power, they may be in a in a dip where they don't have enough power available and they may have to buy more. So they may be predicting well, that's what I think is being forecasted here.

And what drives that is the open market

Okay. For

Thank you.

And everything here that you see is all driven on the natural gas market. So what I understand, and I know enough to be a patriarch, is in the natural gas market, for every dollar of natural gas per therm that increases results in about $5 per megawatt that we can generate and put on the open market for retail. So natural gas prices have been suppressed for a very long time and they continue to be. We're not seeing much change in that over the next ten years when I was talking to the power consultant. So unless there's changes that are happening within the utilities that we can are connected to or operate with shifts like that, it may or may not drive what we see on open market as far as what we can sell.

But this is the best that we know at this point in time. So just a little comparison for what was forecasted last year and what the actuals that we received. So we were forecasting four eighty megawatt hours to be generated at the waste energy facility. That's based on the tons that we believe that are coming in, the processing rates in which we experience with the facility, taking into account the scheduled outages that need to take place. So four eighty is kind of our baseline.

Last year, we achieved a little less than three forty. And almost all of that was attributed to a vibration that we had in our turbine generator number one. And then turbine generator number one was actually removed for service for the entire month of December for a major overhaul. So we weren't able to achieve the $480,000 that we were hoping to achieve. Now moving down to the dollars per megawatt, this would be net now.

After we were selling our power in the open market and we paid Rainbow, we paid for our transmission to get the power outside of the Duke territory, we were forecasting $27 a megawatt. We actually achieved something greater than almost $37 a megawatt. So it was a good year as far as a rate goes. When you look at the forecasts with the net revenue that we were looking at, at $12,900,000 we came in at 12,800,000 and that was really because of that difference and the increase of the actual revenues that we're able to achieve for that higher rate. If turbine generator was available like it was supposed to be through the vibration in the event, we're looking at something we're going to be on the path to achieve something more in line of about $18,000,000 So to me, this validates that power brokering is still the best option for us, and we'll continue along that path.

And all that just goes back into our capital fund for

It goes back into the solid waste reserve that we'll use for operation capital and whatnot. Yeah. Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Do have a question?

I just Commissioner Scherer? That that the 12,000,000, it goes back into reserves for Yeah. The power plant?

It's it's a Every year. It goes into the solid waste reserves. So they're an enterprise fund. So whatever they spend and and run over revenue, it falls within one bucket. You you can't spend it outside of that use.

Too bad. Yeah.

I I I saw I just wanted to clarify. Every year,

13,000,000 just goes into reserves and we don't

Well, no. No. No.

They I mean, it's it's used for their long term and they have post closure requirements and everything. So they have very large reserves that they have to have for the landfill, etcetera, and stuff, and the replacement of the plant and everything like that. But I just wanted to remind the board, it is an enterprise fund, and so it is restricted in the use of the funds.

It was a discussion about the reserves, though I think even though we know it's Right. You know, targeted for that, you would be interesting to to have a feel for what that Yeah.

Can do that.

Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Okay.

I just had as long as we're doing questions on this. Rainbow, do you have to have a license to be a broker for power?

That's a good question. I don't I don't know that. I I would have to find that out. I know there's not many in The in in, you know, domestically in The US. It's usually a a talent that comes from that industry, but I I don't know that. I I I've I'd have to find that out, sir.

One other question real quick. If we chose to go direct to Duke sometime, would that require a broker? No. So the 10% would we wouldn't have to pay 10% direct to

Duke. Correct.

That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Go ahead, Paul.

Okay. That's a good segue actually into the the next part when we're looking at the the tip fee recommendation for 2027. So I just wanna take a minute just as a review. As I mentioned, the thirty year power purchase agreement with Duke Energy expired in December 2024. That was a thirty year agreement that was heavily benefited Pinellas County.

I don't think at the time when it was generated a lot was known about waste energy. I mean, I can say that for sure. We were one of the first out of the gate, Pinellas was, and then others kind of followed. But it was so heavily slanted towards us that the last year of payments that we received from that power purchase agreement for capacity payment alone, I think, was in excess of 50,000,000 or $60,000,000 So when that agreement expired, that represented about 55% of the revenue that was coming into the solid waste fund for operations and whatnot. And as Barry said, since we are an enterprise fund, 55% is a giant hole for us to bridge.

So power brokering, as you can see, we're on target to generate maybe about $18,000,000 on power sales alone. The standard power purchase agreement that we were being offered by Duke was somewhere in the neighborhood of 12. So we went from a very high lucrative power purchase agreement almost to the floor. And we're just trying to gain back a little bit more for maximizing the power of the $18,000,000 The other major source of revenue coming into the fund is the tipping fees. And our tipping fees really were not raised for twenty five years.

We didn't start increasing the tipping fees until 2019. The department spent several years trying to renegotiate the power purchase with Duke Energy and wasn't able to do that. So realizing that the standard offer was not going be the only thing we needed to do, we knew we were coming up to a cliff in 2024. So we put a strategy together looking at the rate studies and coming back to the Board. And at that time, the Board adopted the strategy that we would start increasing tipping fees at a steady rate over a long period of time instead of waiting until we got to 2024 and doing a gigantic stair step increase and then other continued increase on top of that.

So from 2019 to date, the increases have been around 6%, 6.5%. Last year, the Board adopted a three year over year increase beginning in 2026 at 8% for 8%, 2026, 2027 and 2028. Percent. The recommendation stands as you'll go through or we go through the slides today at that 8%. But I just wanted the Board to kind of understand the background and the history is the trajectory that we're on.

We need to continue to increase tipping fees because our operating expenses are higher than what we would see with the revenues coming in. And the operating expenses aren't just solid waste department. The operating expenses is the processing fees that we receive for putting trash through the waste energy facility, the fees that we need to landfill those things that are not going through the waste energy facility. They're two of the biggest contracts that the county owns and together they're probably 40,000,045 million dollars a year to operate those two contracts. So you're going see our breakeven point if we continue to operate or continue to increase our fees is around 2,038.

And I'll talk a little bit more as we get there, but that's a little bit of the background on where we are. So while it looks great that we're receiving these revenues for power, that's only a portion of what's needed to make the fund whole as far as operating year over year. We're actually going to be taking money out of reserves to bridge that gap until we reach that break even point. So that's the plan. That's the trajectory that we're on right now as a department. I'm just going So

into the that increase are not just the Duke Energy contract that expired. No. That was the one that we were concerned about clearly. But even to this year's, it looks like we hit what we were getting from them anyway. I mean, this past year.

Well, just just for what they would have offered for a

for a

standard offer. When you look at where we were, we were at 50 or 60,000,000.

Oh, you're talking about the oh, yeah. The old contract.

Yeah. So we're looking to bridge that $40,000,000 in revenue over time. And the only way to do that is increase our tipping fees because it's the only other place we can go unless there's some market or radical change in the market where we're getting, you know, a lot more money for our our electric power, which we don't see because gas isn't really moving or doing anything.

So that that intersection point that you're talking about, we're gonna see that win. When are we gonna You're

gonna I'm gonna get that.

In a few slides. But commissioners, I wanted I wanted just to, you know, kind of back up just so you have the history on that. We tried for years to renegotiate the Duke contract. And they really had no incentive to renegotiate because it's a closed system. I can't buy power outside of that.

And we can't even take the power that we use or that we generate and send it over to operate our wastewater treatment systems. They can only use it on that site on the way the regulatory structure works. So they were willing to negotiate until they were successful in Tallahassee. And once they were successful in Tallahassee, then there was no more negotiation because they didn't need us. So just so you understand that they have a closed system, and you and you cannot operate outside of that. That's the reason we've had to kind of restructure this, and that's all occurred in the last five, six years.

We send them power when we want to and turn it

Well, that's the brokering that he's doing. Okay? And because we we we proposed a lot of different options, but they weren't interested because they have a they have a closed system. You know, we went through that for years. And we met with their senior executives from North Carolina and and and everyone trying to find a a solution on this.

So unless we have a power purchase agreement and there's even in the power purchase agreement, what you sell your power at varies because they treat us as a utility. So they're buying and selling power and treating us like they would buy and sell power from any other utility, which is really low. Then they turn around and sell it at a retail rate that's really high. So we don't get that benefit. We're never allowed to sell our power retail on the market. We can only sell to other utilities. So we can always dump our power to Duke because they're in, you know, they're our local utility. We're connected to them. If we want to send our power out of state, we have to send it through Duke Energy's, you know, region or their zone. We have to pay them for the use of their transmission.

So we may sell our power at $40 a megawatt hour, but we usually have to pay them $8 a megawatt hour as a fee to get the power out of state. So it's just the way that they have it set. Like Barry said, it's a closed system. We're fortunate enough that we only have to go through one utility to get outside of Florida. People in South Florida have to go through two at least to get out.

So it puts pressure on what we can sell outside. And if for some reason, you know, the sale is not attractive enough because of the transmission, then we end up selling the money to or selling our power to Duke anyway. So with that, as I mentioned, the board approved a three year over year increase of 8% for fiscal years '26 through '28. The annual rate study was performed by Reftellus, and it was actually presented to the Solid Waste Technical Management Committee, your advisory committee, and that was brought back for your review. Each year, the rate study considers operating revenues as well as expenditures, the capital improvement plan, any planned operational changes.

They look at industry indices as well as landfill closure and long term maintenance for a closed landfill. All those components have to be considered. And a lot of those components remain in our reserve because some of them are things that have to happen in the future. And we need time to build the reserves up to make sure there's money there when these things actually are required to be asked to be performed. So the key changes since last year that we're bringing forward, our municipal waste volumes that are coming to our facility remain high.

They're almost 15% to 20% month over month what we've seen before the storms in 2024. And we expect that we're going to continue to see those increases because people now are just getting permits and they're starting to do their construction. We're seeing a lot of construction material as well as materials that are being pulled actually from the inside of your houses. So why it's not defined storm debris like you would see right after the storm, it is storm debris in a sense that it's delayed because people are still doing construction. And we're seeing those volumes.

We have a new waste energy operator that took over the facility in January 1. Their processing rate the processing rate of the old facility operator was $40 a ton that was being put through the facility. The new rate came back at $34.25 I think is the rate. We were budgeting or forecasting at $32 so we didn't get as low. So while we did achieve a $5 plus increase, it was still a couple of dollars more than what we were hoping for as we were going through negotiations.

The solid waste reserve investment income was a little bit higher than we were forecasting last year. Again, things that we don't have any control over with that. No significant changes in our capital costs that were predicted last year. And some of these key changes actually lowered our out year rate increases in the thirty year plan and actually pulled forward the breakeven point to fiscal year 'thirty eight. When we first got on the trajectory of doing these increases, that breakeven point, I think, was at fiscal year forty or fiscal year forty one.

So we are making a little bit of gain with that. And I think we're benefiting from additional monies coming in with the additional volumes that we weren't really prepared to. But the other things kind of remain the same from what we saw last

year. So

this goes and actually will show you where our breakeven point is. You can see that 2,038 are where the lines kind of reduced down. So the dark green represents the funds coming from our tipping fees. The light green is funds that would come from other revenues. Other revenues are your electricity sales, metal recovery revenue and also the interest income that we would see on our reserves.

And then the orange represents the amount that's actually being pulled from the solid waste reserves to bridge the gap between our operating revenues and expenditures until we get out to that breakeven point. I just wanted to pause there and make sure you understood and you're good with that. Okay. Next up is the key assumptions for capital. So you can see these are all over the map.

I'm proud of our team. I'm proud of the previous operator of the waste energy facility as well as the new operator coming in. We're looking at almost $480,000,000 of proposed CIP projects over the next CIP period, which is 36 to 37. Most of that is with waste energy. And you say that's a lot of money. It is a lot of money. But when you look at, you know, the mission to reduce what's going to the landfill, because we'll never get another landfill, Waste energy reduces that waste by 90%. There's no other technology. There's no other process. There's no other silver bullet that's going to do that other than waste energy.

The board has invested two forty million dollars to refurbish that facility from 2016 to 2022 to bring it and extend that life another twenty, twenty five years. This money is for things that are just going to happen in the plant during that period of time where you're going to have tube leaks, known total room work and other systems and components in that system that are planned. So this is all planned work that we think we're going to be doing over that period. You know, in the out years we may be looking at a bulky waste facility where we would actually shred large materials that come into the facility that don't fit into the waste energy facility. Right now all those materials are being landfilled like boats, couches, mattresses, things like that.

We're hoping that we'll be able to divert some of the materials that are going to waste energy to make room for these shredded materials that would be able to come in at a later date. We're in the process of refreshing our thirty year master plan that was adopted in 2020. And before we get into these major spend elements, we want to make sure that we're still doing the right thing. The environment hasn't changed. Technology hasn't changed.

But you're talking about generational type investments. We just want to make sure we're on solid ground before we come back to you and recommend pulling the trigger on some of these projects. The enhanced metals recovery project, that's a $20,000,000 project. That's something we would put on the back end of the facility, and this is actually a payback. I've talked about this to the Board before.

We know that we're actually burning gold in the backyard. There are fines in the materials for the non forest metals that we have piloted and have demonstrated that we're putting about 1,500,000 to $2,000,000 of fines that we cannot get out through the regular metals extraction of waste energy, and they're just being buried with the ash in the landfill. So by putting this enhanced metals recovery system at the back end, dollars 2,000,000, dollars 2,500,000 a year in recovery, We have the new operator sees that. They want to contribute 50% of that $20,000,000 because they see that this is going to be a revenue generator for them because we actually split the revenues of the metals that are recovered from the facility. This would be a joint venture between us and the operator.

Think the rest of that speaks for itself. The only other thing that I would say is the bars in the out years that look like a steady stream. That is Reftellus plugging in capital costs that are kind of our average over legacy spends and then putting an annual escalator on that. We come back to you every year with an update, so you're going to see these bars kind of move. But we needed to plug in a capital number for the thirty years to make sure that we're getting a good number to come back and recommend a rate, you know, when we're looking at the fund over a long period of time. So questions on anything with the capital?

Again, we're building the reserves. Looks like up in 2728. That's what the increased tipping fees help us get there. Yes. And then, of course, we're spending it down too and then yeah.

And, you know, we have reserves now that are helping us with that. So we're not having to borrow. We're not anything like that. We do have reserves to make this happen, And we're fortunate enough that we have the reserves to bridge the gap to support, you know, the the the strategy of increasing those fees over a long period of time.

Are these the reserves that we sometimes use for interdepartmental Yes.

Capital loans? That's correct. So and we'll come back and have a a specific conversation about their reserve levels. But they do have, like, post closure requirements, so they have to have they have to set aside a certain amount for things like that. But we can outline that. I also wanted just to highlight, you saw in this first chart a rate stabilization fund. So when we originally looked and we were losing the Duke amount, we took one time money, so it was a planned expenditure. That way, you didn't see spikes in the increases. We would have had to increase it a lot over so that was a planned drawdown of that one time money to be able to get us out to that point where we're going to break even and stuff. So it was all of those things.

But this is the fund that if we, rather than go to a bank and borrow money, we could borrow money from here. Like if we had a hurricane or something like that that we couldn't cover through our own reserves, we could take a loan out, pay it back with interest because this is an enterprise fund. But that's how we would do an interfund loan. And we've done that. We did that before I got here. You did that with some capital projects in anticipation of the penny. After the penny had passed in 2017, I think you did a loan, either that or or the previous It the previous one. Yeah. And so you took a loan out, advancing some capital projects until the penny started coming in, then you paid it back. So so it is it is a good stabilization fund for us.

Commissioner Scheer? What's in the fund and who manages it? Say again? What what dollar amount is in the fund and who manages it?

I I don't know that off the top of my head. Paul might

We're we're over 400,000,000 in the fund, and the clerk of the court actually manages all the funds as far as where monies go for for interest and and whatnot. Okay.

But we'll we'll we'll come back and show you because what we'd have to show you is what we're required to have versus what we have and the drawdowns and things like that. We'll we'll prepare a a presentation and have that discussion. Okay. Thanks.

Okay. Go ahead.

Okay. So just finding a recommendation coming again from this year's study. So, you know, as mentioned, minimal changes since last year. Therefore, the recommendation is for the board to adopt and remain remain the course with the 8% for FY 2027. That FY 2027 increase you can see there represents a $4.71 increase per ton that's coming across the scales at the facility.

So we estimate that a single family home in Pinellas generates about one ton of waste per year. So that would be $4.71 annually. The increase they would see is about $0.39 per month. Now, you have the municipalities that are doing the collections and transports and all that. The disposal is part of their components of what they're charging the public.

We don't really control that other than what we see in Loma where we actually do the franchise collection. But that really is the input impact from a disposal standpoint from the facility, that would be the impact per year at that new rate of $63.57 And then the next chart is kind of put this in perspective when you're looking at tipping fees across the state. So you'll see those with waste energy facilities are denoted on top of the bars. You can see the existing fee for Pinellas County in the first light blue bar, the new proposed tipping fee rate for Pinellas County in the second blue bar. The state average is, you know, what, 82 almost 80 yeah, a little over $82 a ton.

So you see Pinellas remains below the average. We've always been below the average. And then you can see how the other waste energy facility municipalities stack up. And Lea County, Palm Beach County, in addition to tip fees, they also charge a non ad valorem assessment for collection and disposal that goes into the the component that you see there, you know, on the bar chart.

Yeah. So always being below the the the the average is probably because of that rate we had that Correct. We're we're lagging. Now we're we're catching up. In a few years, we'll probably be more towards the norm, the mean.

I don't I don't know, commissioner, because I think everybody's moving at the same time. You know? I I think we've we've had the benefit of of that, and I think we'll get to remain near the back of the pack. I'm not saying we won't increase. We will. But I think everybody's moving up because we've seen this shift over the last six years almost the same as ours. I mean, the cost of business out there, whether you're a waste energy, landfill, the price of doing business in this industry is the same for all. So wherever you are on the chart, you're just gonna kinda move up with whatever that is.

You're saying our increase is 8% is more than just and I think I mentioned a second ago, more than just the

Well, I think the 8% for this year is a little bit more than what we've had in the past. I think we're going to see that dip. I don't think we'll be at 8% again. I think we're going to be probably more in the 6% when we go through these studies, you know, maybe in 'twenty eight or 'twenty nine. I don't know exactly what the others are seeing, but I believe it's about the same. I think it's in that six to 8% bar is is my understanding.

I'm understanding that, you know, those solid waste rates in cities are significantly increasing.

Yep.

Becoming it all it all flows through. It's not just the tipping fees, but

Correct. I mean, we're looking at labor, your transportation, you know, the collection, you know, with the fuel prices going up. I mean, all those are components to what's being charged to the citizen for collection at their at their home. So that's it on the on the tipping fee update. I don't know if there's any more questions with that.

Before I transition into bringing Cassie up to talk about the Lehman, I do want to let you you know, I'll give you a little bit of background here as well. We were here last year and we were recommending a a a two year increase, for '26 and '27, between my department, solid waste, and OMB. We had some administrative confusion as far as the timing and getting this as a public hearing item and getting it right for before the September 15 deadline to enact this as a non ad valorem assessment. That actually worked in our benefit in a sense that we were going out for a new collection contract for the Lohman franchised area. And that rate that we received back is much less than what was forecasted.

So the fund was able to survive for 2026. But in 2027, we are going to need some type of increase because there's great pressure because we didn't increase in 2026. So we've run almost to the bottom of the barrel as far as available funds. But like I said, it's now based on what I believe is a firm collection contract rate that we know where last year we didn't know. And we promised we were going to come back and maybe adjust based on what we found.

So the delay worked in our favor, but I do apologize on behalf of us and OMB for any confusion that may have may have caused. But Cassie's gonna come up and run through what's comprised with those two increases for both '27 and '28 that's gonna be recommended to you.

Paul? Yes. Question.

Another question. I just wanna thank you again for going to Mainlands. Mainlands, if you don't know, is a very large community in Pinellas Park. And they were getting frustrated because we had some issues that and we had to put more stuff in the landfill than we normally do. And so they were getting a lot of trash dumped in their yard from the birds. And so when it was the largest turnout I've seen at Mainland's ever. From the people coming to talk to Paul, they were not happy when they walked in. But when they left, they weren't happy, but they weren't as upset. So I wanna thank you for keeping a calm head and and and helping them understand and just it it you did a really great job. So thank you.

I appreciate that. Thank you, commissioner. So with that, I'm gonna have Cassie come on up.

Good morning, commissioners.

Good morning.

So this morning, Cassie Hartman from Solid Waste, as Paul mentioned. I'm gonna be talking to the Lehman MSBU Solid Waste Collection Disposal Fund. As you see pictured here is a map representing the collection area of the Lehman franchise. It's West Of 275, a little East of 58th Street North, starting at about 40th Avenue North going up to about primarily 62nd Avenue. The colors represent the collection zones we took this map from the current collection vendor.

The fund was put together in an effort to minimize the illegal dumping a while ago. It's managed completely within itself. That's why the pressures of the expenditures in the fund that we are experiencing are really important to make sure that we're staying on top of what those increases are. As as we mentioned in 2023, the fund had added pressure because not only did the cost of inflation go up, but also we had an increase in participation in the fund. We had two large mobile home parks join and it increased the number of units that were participating at an expedited rate.

In order to save the fund in that sense, the solid waste operating fund acted as the bank and loaned $300,000 to the fund to be able to continue operations. We then adopted the $24 increase for $24 and $25 We made the recommendation to do the increase for $48 in $26 as that didn't happen as Paul mentioned. We're recommending the same thing for $27 and $28 The contract originally for the collection was we were forecasting $54 to $102 per unit increase for the year. It came in an additional only $20 per year per unit. The rate study was completed by Raftelis this year.

We're good there. And that shows where we are today. 26, is at $20.68. The bottom visual that you're looking at is the bid that came in for Waste Management, who is the selected vendor. And the new rate will be at $22.25 And then there will be 5% escalation increases to the contract year over year.

The current annual assessment is $240 with the proposal of $48 that'll take it to $288 per year for '27 and then for 03/30 it'll be $3.36 and 28 After those two years when we get the fund back stabilized in '29, we'd be able to do increases that are more stable and in alignment with the collection contract where we saw that 5% increase year over year. Because the assessment increase did not go into place for FY '26, the fund does have a little bit of opportunity where we have to do some administrative things to make sure that we don't run out of cash flow, specifically the loan payback that we talked about previously. In FY '26, we plan to pay back $30,000 towards that. This year we'll need to drop that to about $10,000 $11,000 to make sure that we have cash flow going into the new fiscal year. So, that is one change that we'll need to make.

So this just shows we are still making that recommendation. We delete it by a year. There were no increases to the FY '26 assessment. '27 and '28, again, we're recommending that $48 increase, which is the same recommendation as last year. And then post FY '29, we'll reevaluate and we should be able to keep the increases just very small and in alignment again with the collection contract. And that's all I have. Do you have any questions?

So these rates include that assessment? That assessment per unit?

Yeah. The assessment is currently $240 per year.

Right.

And then the increases, it would be $288 per year.

And this gets the fund healthy. If you remember, we got we had a change in contractors a couple years ago that put the fund negative, so that's the reason they had to do an interfund loan to it. Again, this area is treated as a special assessment. And and so we phased that in, but we also now have a new vendor that dropped their cost down. So it's a combination of all those, and this gets us out to where the fund gets aligned out post 2028.

So the rates that you're showing us are that covers what? Correct?

Yes. Yes.

Gets to

where the the franchise fee, which is what this is, it's a franchise area where everybody's using one vendor. You know, unlike other unincorporated areas now, it's it's right there and it's on your tax bill. And and so this is this gets that fund back in alignment.

So because the assessment didn't go into play in '26, the fund is at risk of running out of cash. So the increases that you see here for '27 and '28, although the contract proposal came in much less than we anticipated, it worked in a benefit for us not having done the assessment in '26. So it's the same recommendation for the next two years to stabilize the fund. And then once the reserves are built back up, we'll be able to just keep the increases in alignment with the contract, the collection contract.

Not need the assessments?

The assessment was it is the way the fund takes money in is by assessment. That is the only way the revenue comes in is by assessment.

Yes. I gotcha. Okay. Covers the franchise fee.

Yes. Commissioner Nowicki. Thank you, chair. Thank you for the update. What's the reserve add or percentage of the budget? I mean, is there any reserve numbers you have?

I don't have it showcased here. However, the forecasted projection the ending reserve balance is projected to end at $392,000 this year and it's projected in '27 if no assessment increase is made to end in the negative.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Anybody else? Just you have

a Thank you. The assessment itself, is it assessed to individual parcels or property? I don't understand.

Yes. It's done by the parcels. There are communities like mobile home parks where they enter in as a community, but it is by resident and it's it's applied to the tax bill.

And and it says a flat fee or is it based on their is it military or

The way a way a franchise let me just cover that real quick. The way a franchise thing would work is you you could do this in any part of unincorporated where you take and say, okay, in this zone, we're gonna we're gonna do it. We're gonna create this as a franchise. Now that it's gonna go on their assessment, and you can do it as a bill. And that way, you have one single provider, not everybody individually going out and getting a a a contract. And and so you you have that in a lot of homeowners associations. You have that in a lot of mobile home parks things like that. They've done this for Lowman, and this was done years ago. I forget which one

you Yeah. It was a long time ago. It is a non ad valorem assessment, so it has nothing to do with any of the the millage or anything like It is a non ad valorem assessment. It's one time per year on the tax bill.

The assessment for is the assessment for a For

your garbage collection.

One bedroom apartment the same as a three bedroom house?

In an apartment, that's a commercial. So these are residential only.

But how how is it done? Is it based on the size of the home or anything?

It's just Nope. It's just one yep. One person, one unit. Mhmm.

Okay. And that was done again years ago. Mhmm. I don't know when.

Yes. Commissioner Niewicke.

Thank you, chair. And so you said we entered into a new contract with the new franchisee for the trash pickup?

Yeah. Periodically, we bid it out. And we when we bid it out, then we get people bidding on it, then that becomes the new rate that we use.

So that happened recently.

So county sanitation was our prior prior prior collector collection vendor. Coastal bought out County Sanitation. So it's currently Coastal. The contract was due to expire at the end of December this year of 2026. We did the RFP early in an effort to make sure we could get these rates nailed down ahead of budget.

You just bid it.

We just did it. You should see the contract come through very soon. So that that bid was the evaluation was completed. So the contract is in process of being executed now.

Okay. But then we increase our tip fees at the plant where they take the trash. Now, they're gonna come back in a few years and increase, but they need to charge because we're increasing our rates and then we're gonna have to go back and increase more again. Right? I mean

So the contract here, it has

They have they have

Yeah. This contract right here, if you look at the bottom of the visual, it'll it has the rates built out for the next five years of the contract, which is a 5% escalator. They are aware that our rates increase and we do pay more because of the disposal and that's an evaluation that we'll do when we do the rate studies with the 5% increases from 29%. But I strongly believe that we'll be able to keep closer in line with the 5%, maybe 6% just because of administrative stuff. You know, we have we paid the tax collector to collect the money on the tax bill, so there's a 2% on any revenues we take in. So, of course, we have to take into account for those items when we're looking at the assessment.

And we got a great tax collector.

We do.

Thank you. Mhmm.

Anything else? Any other questions? Nope. Alright. Thank you. All

things solid waste for today. Whenever you're ready.

We're ready.

You're ready? Okay. Next item up is care care about me update. And so Karen's on, has a presentation for you.

Good morning. Good morning, commissioners. Alright. So this morning, I'm gonna talk to you about our care about me update, and I'm gonna walk you through three areas. So program updates, marketing updates, and then future planning.

So just a reminder, the care about me program was first initiated by KPMG who came in to provide recommendations for our system of care in Pinellas County specific to mental health, substance use, and addiction services. The care about me pilot is the first of its kind in the state. This was launched May 2024, almost exactly two years ago today. The hours of operation for the CAM, Monday through Friday, 8AM to 10PM, Saturdays, 10AM to 6PM, and it provides a multichannel access for residents to call, text, chat, or go online and request services on their own. This program also allows a strong referral pipeline from community partners.

So if we have residents that are working with community service providers, they can call with the resident that they're working with, or they can submit an online referral to connect that resident to a behavioral health service. Our current vendor is Unite Us. The annual budget is right around $1,400,000 per year, and that agreement runs through September 30 with renewal options available. The provider network that we are working with, we currently have 24 different behavioral health organizations with 66 programs, And on average per week, we have 250 appointment slots available for residents. So this is a slide you've seen before in the in the updates that have been sent in, and this really just provides an overview of of who we've served and how well the program has served residents.

So to date, we've served right around 2,800 residents. Of those, around 1,300 have agreed to have an appointment booked on their behalf. So just a reminder, the CAM does the assessment and books the appointment with the provider. So it really takes that lift off the resident having to look for appointments on their own. Our appointment attendance has increased over the last few months.

So we were typically right around 38%. So of the appointments scheduled, right around 38% of those residents would attend their appointment. And over the last few months, we've increased that to right around forty nine percent are in are attending their appointments. The average call time is right around twenty minutes. So you make the call, you speak to a clinician, they collect demographic information, they do various assessments to really make sure that they can match you with the most appropriate service. They book the appointment, they send you reminders. That entire interaction is twenty minutes. So it's it's really efficient right now. Appointment availability is right around zero to seven days. So if someone wants an appointment today, if someone wants an appointment tomorrow, they can more than likely get in.

The average time that residents are choosing to have an appointment is right around twelve days. So they're making the appointment, you know, to match their life. You know, life gets in the way of things, and right around twelve days is when they're selecting that appointment. On average, it takes about 3.5 contacts per resident, so sometimes we're calling them back. So if you request a service at midnight, let's say you submit the referral in, the specialist come in the next morning, and it may take a few times to contact you, and then that also includes those reminder calls of your upcoming appointment.

We have about a twenty six percent no show rate. So that really is someone has had an appointment booked for them, and they just do not show up for their appointment. And that remaining, I'll say, 25% from appointments attended and no shows are patients who book the appointment and then call and later decline or reschedule. So, you know, we're right at you know, and I would say that's that's better than typical kind of nonprofit behavioral health work. You're usually seeing greater than a 30% show rate no show rate.

So now I would like to move into the marketing. So the marketing for Care Bot Me really has two parts. So we have a small part within the current vendor, And that really was focused, I would say, kind of more on the typical social service, human service marketing strategies. So tabling events, submitting flyers, in person engagement, working with referral sources, but it really wasn't the splash. And so last year, I'll move into the next slide.

Last year, the board approved the use of human services contracting with BKN Creative, and we we did that through our opioid settlement miscellaneous funds. And so a part of those funds can be used for prevention, marketing, warm handoff programs, which which this this program qualifies for. So BKN is a human center they developed a human centered storytelling marketing campaign that builds trust, visibility, and sustained engagement for Pinellas residents. It is a hyper local marketing strategy, multichannel, creative content really designed to reduce stigma and to ask residents to like a call to action to make those appointments. The goal was to ensure CAM was not only visible, but it was a trusted remembered resource specific to Pennell's residents.

That annual contract was 600,000. That contract ends September of this year. Sorry for the typo. It's September 30. And, again, that was funded through opioid settlement miscellaneous funds.

And now I'd like to walk you through what that firm has done since August of last year. So the first place that this really is this is the website. So this is where all marketing goes back to. So QR codes will link back to the website, flyers, online ads, everything really brings you back to this place. And this is where residents can request services on their own.

Providers can sign up to be a CAM provider, and you can learn more about that. This last year, we had over 30,000 visits to the website. And since that marketing firm took place, we've had 28,000 new visits to the website. So we are really seeing an impact as far as traffic. We've had 2,600 returning users, and on average, people stay on the website for about thirty seconds.

We've also worked really hard to make sure that this searches come up. So it's the know, and I'm gonna get this wrong because I am not a marketing person. Local search engine optimization. So the goal is that if you search mental health services near me or mental health services Largo, this work kind of creating these sub pages helps bring Care About Me to the top. And in some of the testing that we've done, Care About Me is usually around 10 to 15 in those searches that come up.

And the goal, of course, with that it would with this continued work, we would be in the top five or number one. So the firm has spent a lot with social media, and we've really tried to make sure that, again, we're reinforcing that this is really only for Pinellas residents because this was a Pinellas investment. And so social media ads showcase areas in Pinellas County. So you can see that the pier is there. The beach is often showcased, and and we're moving into kind of this call to action in social media.

So the the firm continues to evolve their strategy. And so you can see on that third picture, it says overthinking everything, let's talk. So it's really trying to generate that call to action and normalizing what some behavioral health symptoms may feel like. With the organic and paid social media, we have generated a 134 calls from those ads, over a half a million impressions, about a 180,000 link clicks, and that has reached right around 2,300 residents. The firm also conducted influencer campaigns.

So they found social media influencers with high numbers of Pinellas followers, and they purchased their time to go on and speak about behavioral health, mental health, addiction to their viewers. And that has generated 29,000 views, 1,200 interactions, and that's where people are clicking and liking ads and and following. And that has reached 18,000 residents for those influencers. And now we can move on to the splash, which we talked about at the board session where this original contract was approved. So the firm initiated a contract with iHeartRadio and, had social media ads and radio ads on the beat, ninety three three FLZ and Roomba.

And those ads have generated right around 2,000,000 impressions and around 2,000 social ad clicks. So people are clicking to learn more about care about me. Next are our billboards. And I have a slide in a few slides that will show you kind of where those locations are. But several billboards, both static and digital, have been placed throughout the county. And the messaging, I would say, continues to evolve. So the top right, this the be yourself, that was where the strategy really started. So kind of empowering residents, be yourself. You are strong. You are worth it.

Kind of reinforcing, you know, just empowering residents to reach out and ask for help. The next strategy, which actually was very popular on social media and also the billboard, was strong moms ask for support too. So this was really geared towards postpartum moms who may be isolated and caring for a newborn and may need help. So we got a lot of clicks on those ads as well on social media. The bottom two are the newer strategy, and this really, again, is that call to action.

And so it says, I know you say I'm fine, but if you're not, careaboutme.org. And so it's really kind of normalizing again what some people may be thinking all the time. Like, I'm fine. I'm fine. But maybe you're not fine, and and maybe this can resonate with you to click and reach out for services.

The next billboard is this one on the right where it says, if you've been saying I should talk to someone, this is your sign. And I will say this billboard has moved the firm into kind of that next the guerrilla marketing concept where signs are being placed throughout Pinellas County in various ways with that very message. So kind of normalizing, this is your sign to make that call to to reach out for behavioral health services. The billboards throughout Pinellas County have reached 40,000,000 impressions, and that's data that is driven by, the organization that publishes those billboards. The marketing firm also, wrapped buses, that went up and down US 19, bus shelters, and then we tested out the bus benches.

And we sunsetted that campaign because, as you can see, there was a QR code, and we did not get as many clicks as was anticipated. So part of marketing is kind of testing different strategies and seeing if it was successful. But the buses are still ongoing, and the bus shelters are also up as well throughout the county. And this just denotes where the billboards are placed. So we have three two permanent billboards, three static billboards, and then rotating billboards throughout.

And, again, that has demonstrated over 40,000,000 impressions. And so this is the newest initiative. This is called with love from CAM. And the goal here is, I would say, a guerilla marketing tactic where someone goes out into community and hands someone this note. And and I'm gonna show a video just kind of about the impact.

Hand someone a note that really reassures them and provides them with comfort about they mean something. And if you need help, this is where to get it. This, I would say, is probably the most successful social media strategy that the firm has had. And I want to say the two weeks that this ad was running, they gained almost 400 followers on social media. And and there's another version that just was posted, and they've gained, I wanna say, 50 in twenty four hours.

And so I'm gonna play this video. Alright. So lastly, for our marketing, part of the strategy was to also build community awareness. And so on May 30, the BCAM firm is hosting a community wellness event. This is at the England Brothers Park.

We have Jed from the Joe Show as the emcee. We have a mental health panel that is gonna be facilitated by Wendy Ryan with ABC Action News. On that panel, we have commissioner Kathleen Peters who will be speaking about the importance of mental health, substance use, and addiction. We have representatives from NAMI. We have a behavioral health provider.

We have a CAM specialist, and we also have a representative from the Pinellas County Schools, which really has been such a great resource for us and is a is a big champion of the CAM. The wellness community wellness event will have family friendly activities, community connections, really, again, a call to action. And I believe we're also gonna have Pinellas County Animal Services there because we all know that animals, you know, are part of wellness as well. So now I'm gonna walk you through both, I would say, peaks and valleys of the CAM pilot. So we'll start with successes.

Since the CAM has been initiated and since the marketing, I'm sorry, has been initiated, we have seen a 27% increase in volume. So that investment of marketing and getting the word out really has demonstrated some improved results with volume. The CAM is a trusted resource with various community stakeholders, such as schools and primary care offices. The closed loop process really has proven to be successful. So we often meet with partners such as the school system almost weekly to find out is the CAM meeting your needs, is it helping with youth.

And we always hear that that closed loop process really has made a difference. So historically, you would connect someone to services and you really would never know if they connected. This CAM program provides that closed loop. So the referral source knows, yes, this person was connected. Yes, they went to their appointment, and that didn't exist before.

The CAM also expanded provider networks. So historic or pre CAM, when we did a lot of community outreach, what we would consistently hear, there are two places to go in Pinellas County to receive those services, kind of those larger community mental health centers. The work that this program has done is really expanded that provider network. So now we have 24 different providers that residents can choose from, which has provided, again, that greater accessibility of behavioral health services. We've already talked about appointment appointment attendance, but it has improved, again, from that 38% to 49% with attendance.

And we recently received statewide attention on this pilot. So over the last year, I worked with a few representatives who wanted to take the Pinellas model and expand it into three counties in in in Florida. And so I went up to Tallahassee and testified, and we were really hopeful that it was gonna work. It did not move, but what I continue to hear is that those efforts are continuing because of the work that Pinellas County really has spearheaded with this program. And with any pilot, you have challenges.

So I'm gonna talk a little bit about the challenges that we've experienced. I would say, you know, right off the bat, if we had a time machine and I could go back and make some different changes, I probably would say that our hypotheses about the phone lines being overwhelmed and too much volume based on that need, we paused on really that marketing blast. I think in hindsight, we really should have done that from the beginning. We didn't see the volumes that were really early recommended by the consultant. And so that was, you know, more a year and a year to a year and a half in.

We've also had some challenges with the current vendor. So when this was procured, we had one vendor that responded that was Unite Us. And their platform wasn't built for So we adapted its use for CAM and working with technology sometimes that is challenging. So right now, we have what we call a stacked technology program. So we have one system for the phones.

We have one system for the closed loop process. We have assessments that are outside the platform. We have the scheduling widget, which is outside the platform. So, you know, lesson learned, you know, and and if there were more options, I think our goal really would would be to have one platform that could do all of those things. We've we've tested that in our contract monitoring, and it takes about 20 steps for the staff to go from point a to to the end.

And if volumes were where we hope they will be, I think that that's gonna cause greater delays in residents receiving services and may also impact some of the CAM specialist turnover because they would probably lose job satisfaction and going back and forth between several different technology options. We've also had pretty significant turnover in their leadership overseeing the CAM from that vendor. So not the staff that are taking care of the residents. It's really that kind of administration level that's overseeing the program. And so we have had that vendor on a perform a contractual performance improvement plan for over a year working on both of those things.

We've also had some slow adoption from non contracted providers. So if if they're not contracted with the county, they are not contractually required to be part of the CAM. And so often this takes negotiation with vendors about why this is important and why it's meeting the residents' needs and why it's helpful for our community. And so we've had some slow adopters, as far as the providers who are willing to enter into this. Stigma also plays a really big role in, accessing this type of service.

And so again, kind of back to that marketing campaign, I think going back and realizing that this takes more than tabling events. This really takes people understanding that behavioral health care is health care and accessing it should be no different than going to your primary health physician and overthinking things as normal and questioning maybe if you're drinking too much as normal. Like, those things are normal, and then they're experienced by a lot of people in community. So kind of, again, going back, reinforcing those messages from the beginning, I think, would have really been helpful. Based on volume, this all this is a this is a high cost, which I know we've talked about before in other meetings.

It's it's high cost for the volume, and it's even higher when you look at that appointment attendance, which I know we've talked about before at these meetings. One area too that's also been a challenge, so we work very closely with the Juvenile Welfare Board, and and working with the CAM is part of those contracts. So if you receive funding from the Juvenile Welfare Board, you are required to provide appointments with the CAM. But that's not the case for the state. And so I think we have some opportunity here that if the CAM were to continue, that maybe there's some legislative action that could be taken that if you receive state funding, you are required to cooperate and, provide appointments through the CAM.

We've worked with our managing entity on this, so Central Florida Behavioral Health Network. And what we consistently hear is that they are unable to infuse contractual language into their state contracts without legislative action. And so I think that's an opportunity for us in the future. So now I'm gonna walk you through a few options for future planning for the CAM. So option one, we could renew the contract with our existing vendor.

I will say that we have worked very closely with this vendor to try to right size the scope, right size the budget, and the vendor's best and final offer is a savings of around a $155,000. They did make some adjustments as far as their per license fee. So right now, part of our contract is built on a per license fee for users. And one of the negotiations that they have provided is that they would allow for unlimited licenses for all K through 12 schools. And there are a lot of schools, and there are a lot of social workers and guidance counselors, so that is an overall savings.

I do think we had hoped to get them a little bit closer to what we would like to see as far as kind of right sizing budget. That also reduces the CAM specialist by two staff, and it completely changes their marketing initiatives from a local entity to a statewide entity that will only do digital marketing. Option two is we could initiate a new procurement to see if there are other vendors that are willing to get into this space. This was four years ago when we did the original procurement, and again we had one vendor at the time. Our staff are ready, so we've already written the scope because we wanted to make sure that if that was a decision for today that we would be ready to take action.

So the scope is ready. We could release that within the next month, and I've worked with the purchasing team to make sure that they are kind of poised and ready if this was the action. Our target, of course, would be that we could be live October 1 if we have the right vendors that propose a program. But it's possible we may have to have some overlap just to make sure that there are no breaks in service. So it's it's possible our go live date would be around January.

So we would have overlap with the current vendor. One challenge here, just to note, is that what we are asking for with this is a behavioral health specialty. So clinicians that do that work and have skill in that work and a platform. And so that was really the challenge when we did the initial procurement is that doesn't really exist. You either are usually a tech firm or you're a provider, and finding that blend of a organization that can do both has been challenging.

Option three is that we could transition the CAM into a Pinellas County service. So we could hire staff to do the work, and we could use our new human services case management system that we are still implementing now. And that was an ARPA funded program. So to build what we're looking for with the CAM, I met with that firm just to get an estimate of of what could it be, also making sure that it's not another stacked technology kind of situation. And what they have stated is that to get the CAM up and running, it would be a one time implementation cost right around $1,100,000.

One thing that I think is important to note, that is the implementation cost. And so in year two, once we're implemented, the licensing costs are $30,000. And so we would be looking at, I would say, around $700,000 on a go forward basis for this program to continue in Pinellas County. And lastly, depending on the decisions of today, we do have a renewal option available with the current marketing firm and in the opioid settlement miscellaneous fund, that's kind of that third fund that we have available with opioid settlement. We have around 440,000 remaining.

And so we could renew that contract to keep the momentum with marketing using those funds and not general fund. Thank you.

Okay. Mister Luttgart. Thank you, mister chair. Karen, I just wanted to publicly commend the job that you're doing with CAM. And I think I've told you before that this has caught the attention of influential folks in Tallahassee, and you are to be commended for that. Are there providers in Pinellas County who do not participate in CAM? Yes. Okay. Is Suncoast one of them?

No. Suncoast finally was, I would say, one of those in that slow adopter category, but they are on board.

So they're finally on board?

They're finally on board.

Okay. Is Directions participating?

They are not.

Okay. And I have some issues with that. So for the folks that are not participating, is there a way that the county I don't know if punish is the right word, but basically hold that against them when they're trying to seek funding for other things? Because if they're not gonna help our residents in this area, can we we remind them that, you know, we may not cooperate with them when they want funding elsewhere?

Well, mean, and

I don't know if that's like a legal thing that we could do, but Well, we we always have

you always have the option when you're Yeah. Just choosing to contract or provide funding for someone. Right. So you always have that option. And let's go back because you hit on this. You know, I already text, you know, Tristan to say this let's make this a legislative issue because getting the the state support on that our legislators were very supportive when we were trying to get this and not getting cooperation from the state entities, because we actually issued an RFP out to try to get them to the table to work with Karen when they were talking about options and ideas. So I think taking that up as a legislative issue and looking at other providers that we provide funding for, I think, is an absolutely reasonable thing to look at. So

are there providers that are not participating in CAM that are receiving county funding elsewhere?

No. No. Right now, this is in our behavioral health contracts. It is a requirement to receive funding from human services that you cooperate with the CAM. And JWB also has that in their contracts.

Okay. So that that's helpful then. Alrighty. Thank you, commissioner chair. Commissioner Flowers?

Thank you, mister chair. First off, great presentation. A lot of information. I was taking notes in between. I really appreciate the utilization of the marketing realm, even utilizing influencers, making sure that there's that those infomercials, are geared towards focusing on the service provision so that if they have any other things that they are influencing on behalf of, it doesn't rub up against what what we are and degradate our mission and vision in this realm.

I'm really impressed with the numbers. I know before we were very slow on our some of our marketing efforts. But I know a large part of that, when we first started, it was the testing system, you know, for us to do the testing. And that took quite a bit of time. I know I was one of the people like, what's going on?

Why is it taking so long to kinda get this, get this moving? For the number of persons who don't follow through on appointments, I think it was, like, 25%. That's not extremely high when you're talking about persons who are seeking services in the areas that we're providing through the CAM system. But maybe going forward, if you could break that out. So I know you gave us a verbal x number of individuals who may have switched their appointments, you know, or whatnot, canceled because of the times in work or whatever.

But if we could kinda switch that out or expand it so that we can truly see who how many people are booking appointments, but absolutely not following through on those appointments. I know they're getting follow-up calls. Hey. You missed your appointment. Would you like to reschedule? But I'd like to see those numbers because I think for me, that'll have a difference. That'll make a difference for me. I would hate to see us bring this internally. You are hiring staff and you're paying about the price that you would. But for areas of specialty, I think it needs to stay where it is.

I would hope that it stays where it is because of that anonymity kind of piece that the residents get when they're going to see persons from organizations who have this skill set and that's what they do. So I've that's why I would not like to see it brought inside internally. Even though over the long haul, it may save us a few dollars, I would still like to do what's best for the clients. Mhmm. The last thing, I I agree with what you're saying, commissioner LaVala, on that.

I was gonna say, but it's already being done where you could for persons who are applying for our funds, they get 10 points if they, are currently, a part of the CAM system. And I know they do that. When I served on the school board, persons got, I think it was 10 to 15 points if they had already done business with Pinellas County Schools or whatever, and that that really separated people who were willing partners versus doing it because you got a, you know, partner. So I like that idea. The last part is I really appreciate the strong relationship with our hospitals.

I know we had them come in initially at the very beginning of this, and we saw what hospitals were on board. I love to maybe hear from them if we could invite them in. It doesn't have to be all the time, you know, but maybe periodically just to kinda hear from them how it's working on their end because sometimes things get mixed in the wash when you have a social worker working at a hospital, and they're pulled in so many different directions. But they're trying to make sure that they're integrating all of the resources that persons have just where we are, you know, with their numbers. So I'd love to see a follow-up on that.

Other than that, those are all of my my comments. And, again, I think that we're moving in the right direction. Anytime you have anything new, especially when you're talking about services that we're providing here, it does take a moment to have people become vested in you, to become invested, and to really see this as a resource and build it in as a part of their script, if you will, when they're talking to clients. It takes a moment. So, I'm I'm pretty pleased.

I know there were concerns about whether or not we were actually where we were with advertising. I sent Barry. I was home, and the commercial came on the television. I in the living room, and I started videoing it on my phone. And then I sent it to Barry, and I said, we're on TV. So I've begun to really pay attention and to see that, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that has has seen those commercials. So thank you so much for hearing what the concerns were of the commission responding adequately and making your presentation to show what some potential options are. Thank you. Thanks.

Yeah. I I think the the whole part about building awareness for our residents has failed. I think the last piece of the with love from Cam starts to get to more that top down kind of messaging. But I've been to so many different groups, and there was a stretch of a couple of weeks where I was in front of about four or five groups, including retirement home. You know, nobody's ever heard of them.

Nobody's ever heard of chem churches I've talked to. They have no idea what I'm talking about. So the message is not getting to the grassroots. And again, I to me, I I understand the the the macro at marketing and then the the the the digital marketing. If you don't know what it is, it's not like buying a product off a shelf at a grocery store.

You know you have a need. So it's really difficult for people to grasp what what it is. And and so I think the awareness thing is the problem. You know, I certainly understood the slow start with it because we were concerned the other way, knowing that there's a real need, but the connection between that and providing the service is just oceans apart. So I'm not again, I'm I'm you know, and again, it does take time. It doesn't happen overnight. I understand that as well. So some of that macro marketing is good. But it really needs to be more grassroots. I mean, you know, there's 20 churches, 24 churches in Dunedin.

They have a group that meets all the they get together once a month or once every two months or something. They that's a meeting they should go to. And those pastors would love it. And I just talked to a couple of them in town. It's no no big deal.

We we all we also, you know, know our our favorite group that we all talk to every year, the fast folks, which sometimes irritating is an understatement. But their their point to with their members, they don't know them. They they don't know of that service. So I don't know where the connection where that connection is falling or failing on the marketing side. I'd also like to get a little better understanding on the demographics of the users because I see a lot of things directed at the schools, which I'm glad.

I think that's great. One suicide in our, you know, with our kids is just way too many. And there's a lot of issues for kids that are today, like, you know, be able to I don't know that they're connected yet, but maybe they're connecting on being able to find a place that's that they can that they can have some anonymity. But there's a bunch of seniors that are lonely. You can do the the ride around on our our feeding the the program that delivers food to the Meals on Wheels group.

Isolated people, depression, a loneliness. I I don't you know, adults, know, how do we touch base with those folks? You talk you talked about the moms going through postpartum. But there's just a lot of niche areas that I don't know that we're touching. I I am totally I know that there's a need for this. I'm not I'm not going down that road. My my sense would be to at least go back out and see what's going on now versus five years ago when we first started doing this and there was one vendor.

Mhmm.

There might be 10 vendors now that have more broad based experience that bring the the shortfalls that we have. That's kind of the way I'm leaning. I you know, again, we go out and we find out that it's $2,000,000, maybe the in in somehow the in house piece. But I do share commissioner Flowers concerns about, you know, it's a government group, an independent group doing it. There's a there's something with that too. So just some comments that I had and so, you know, maybe you can respond to it.

Sure. So I I routinely, I would say, meet with FAST and have worked with them on, you know, distributing flyers and hearing their input and and hearing feedback from them. I do think that I still think kind of both tracks are needed. And I've been very clear with the current vendor that, you know, I'm not in agreement with the statewide strategy. My recommendation is this continued parallel process of that grassroots work, tabling events, working with providers, educating staff.

You know, there's a lot of turnover in the social service kind of case management field. Staying with them, educating the staff that are working with the populations is really important. So, you know, one thing we could consider is with the current marketing firm, we also could say we want a grassroots approach as well as the continued online strategy. They are wonderful, and and they've they've indicated that they can get into that space. That really was with the current vendor. So, you know, with shifts with contracts, if we renew with BKN, I feel very confident that would be something that they would also be willing to do while they're working on kind of that social media, billboard awareness, brand splashing marketing strategy.

A little more expensive. I'm sure that the grassroots, obviously, is more timely and more cumbersome, but I do think it's the right way to do it. And I don't disagree that there's some of that general marketing's important too. You make the connections more than once, but having that handoff is a big deal. And I'm not saying to every single resident, but I'm talking about those points of those points that are out there, those points of light. You talk to the churches, you talk to, you know, retirement homes.

Okay. Know,

whatever the groups that are out there. I think the the programs that we have in our communities that are where where our own staff goes to them. There's no reason that we don't have a table

Mhmm.

With them at the table.

Agree.

And so anyway. Alright. That's all I had.

And if I can respond also, you know, to commissioner Flowers and your point as well, you know, when you look at the marketing, we've been very intentional to not have it look like Pinellas County government because we don't want anyone thinking, you know, like Pinellas County Government is providing behavioral health care. So that is just something to consider with that third option is that would shift because it would become, you know, a government program versus a vendor.

Yeah. So about your comment about churches, I'm surprised because FAST is so active and they've got so many churches engaged in FAST. But it's just whether or not that pastor or that minister sure, I love this, I know about it, but the forefront of his mind is not promoting something else. The forefront of their mind is their liturgy and other stuff. So I don't know why we're not penetrating more with the churches because we should be.

Based on fasts and their action and their call to action, surprises me you feel churches aren't getting connected. And with seniors, first off, when you work with someone with addiction, it takes typically seven times in seven attempts on rehab before they get successful. And with stigma associated with behavioral health, that, I mean, if we're getting them in three and a half touches, that's impressive. Because typically with this particular issue, coupled with the stigma, it normally takes more than three. So if we're getting them in three and a half, that's better than average because average is seven.

And and the other thing with seniors, which I agree and they're very isolated and but then you got not only do we have the stigma issue, but we have a generational issue because a lot of our seniors are from a generation of, you know, family business. And if someone's got mental illness, it's a lot of times they don't admit that there's mental illness, but you don't talk about family business outside of the family, right? And so there's barriers that come with generations. My generation was you never talk about family business outside of the family. And if you got a problem, we don't talk about that outside of the family.

And so there's there's a lot of barriers that, you know, this is a this is a tough issue to break through many many barriers. And I think this marketing finally is getting us there. I I I agree with you. We should have done the marketing sooner. We should not have been so conservative on that. I you know, and and scared. I think we should have welcomed that overflow if it would have come. But I agree with commissioner Flowers on number three. I don't think that belongs in the and, well, evidently, Barry has something to add that's really good.

Well, I

mean, one of the issues that we're here because we're struggling, I mean, I I heard the board and and your preferences to have an outside organization and see what's out there. The concern I have is when we when we built this platform, we were kinda we were linked to that firm that owned the platform. And so I just passed Karen a note that said, can't you know, could we build out because now we have a human services system. Could we use build out our platform, but then hire a vendor, but they operate under the platform that we own? That way if we wanna switch vendors or stuff in the future, provide more flexibility.

She said she said maybe. So my next comment was gonna be, can we not make the decision on those options yet? Because I don't think we've had enough time to even flesh it out in my mind. I'm not comfortable making a county program staff. Our our platform, I'm very comfortable with and and contracting out. So I don't know that I'm prepared to give you a recommendation on which option today. On the marketing, I'm prepared to say yes. I think we should move forward on the marketing. It's still opiate money, right? And so it's 200,000 less than it was before, but it's not general fund, it's not ad valorem taxes.

So I think on the marketing, I'm a yes on the marketing. But I I don't know that we're ready for a decision on what to do because I think Barry's idea may be the best one yet. And what would be the timing for us to use ours? How long would that take? And so I think if we did something like that, we're we're not ready for that decision yet. So that's just my thought.

So the the firm that we're currently working with right now to implement our system through ARPA indicated that they believe they could be ready by January, fully, you know, ready to go. Partially, maybe by 10/01, which we could probably work with. The current agreement with Unite Us is is slated to end 09/30. And so I just if we're gonna go out to procurement, we could we could we could put out probably several different versions. We could try to procure both, see what occurs. We could also procure just the clinical component and see who responds. It's just really casting a net to see

I'm not saying throw this down the road a month. I'm saying, can we wait till Tuesday? Do you know what I'm saying? Can you get her a little bit of that information and

You have you have time. I just threw Karen a curveball, obviously, I usually don't do that. But, you know, I was listening to the board's preference around having that outside of you, which makes a lot of sense. My concern is, you know, we we we can really reduce our cost, utilize on our platform and not and not be beholden to a vendor.

Right. Love that. So if we could see if that's possible and then bring it back to us Tuesday or bring us back to us next week. I'm not saying I'm not ready and I need a month. I'm just saying I need a day or two, a couple days and I think that to me that's the most ideal option which wasn't even on here. So I think just not not I don't mean down the road. I'm just saying soon make that decision. I don't want to see it go away. That's the one thing I will not that wasn't an option. Get rid of it.

There was talk about getting rid of it. I think if you get rid of it, you have a huge impact on ERs. We'll have a huge negative impact in the jails. And am not in favor of getting rid of it at all. And we saw a huge increase in less than one year of marketing.

And I think if we continue that marketing effort, it's going to be more of a household name, it'll be more common. I spoke at an event yesterday morning, way too early in the morning, And nearly every a lot of principals were there. A lot of principals were there from middle school and high school. And I mentioned the cam and they were not and even the students that were in there were nodding their heads. So the schools and the students know.

And and and now what what we're doing is by allowing this in the school, is so critically important, because now you're making generational change. Right? We now are letting middle school and high school kids know it's okay to talk about it. It's okay to understand if you feel not right. And so to get generational change is not going to happen overnight, but I can tell you to get some generational change in the senior population is it's not it's gonna be really difficult. And it's unfortunate, but it's gonna be difficult because of some of those barriers. But but I do not wanna see this go away. That to me is not an option. That's not shouldn't even be on the table.

Yeah. Let me just follow-up real quickly and then we'll come to you, Commissioner Scheer. I totally agree. I mean, I think the the fertile ground, so to speak, for the intergenerational group is our kids and, you know, the high schoolers and and even middle schoolers perhaps. But again, I don't think that keeps us from being a little bit more grassroots. So if we go to that marketing, and I agree, I think you need both tracks if it's gonna be effective. So if we have the 400, whatever it is from opioid, that's that's one thing. But I mean, I don't want us to do a program that, like you said, is a statewide.

Mhmm.

That that doesn't that that's not doing it. However, back to the comment that was made about seniors and being more difficult. And I'm not saying it isn't. You know, as commissioner at Valla would say, the older we get, the more difficult we are to to make changes. He's referring to me, I mean.

But I but I do think there is I I don't think that should stop the effort. I don't think that should keep us out of out of the homes because our our retirement homes. I'm telling you, I had a group of about 40 people, 50 people. And I was talking about this program, and I had four or five that said, we haven't heard of it. And it doesn't mean that they're gonna rush to to get involved, but if they have they have all kinds of activities there.

They have all kinds of ways to introduce services that might be available. And even if it's one or two or three, what our what our what our vets have gone through, they've got the VA, but some don't use the VA. Mhmm. And they want, again, anonymity from that organization. So I just think it doesn't mean that that's gonna be the high success area, but it doesn't mean we don't keep trying. And I know that's what, I don't commissioner Peters wasn't saying that either. But so I I think we're all kind of on board with that. I just make sure that our marketing touches base with all of that and that our grassroots efforts touches base with that too.

Sure.

So that we can, you know, it's real hands on.

I could, you know, explore. So what I had listed up there was the 440,000 that we have in the opioid miscellaneous fund. We also have the city county fund, which is, you know, it's not part of that, you know, regional fund. So that is decision making within this board. So I can reach back out to the marketing firm to find out what would it look like to continue this kind of massive digital, you know, splash that they're also executing, but then also say, what could you do for that kind of grassroots work? You know, maybe it's hiring an additional person to go out there and do that work that, you know, those connections just to see. So there you know, my ask would not be of general fund. I would look to explore how can we use maybe the second pot of opioid settlement funds for this.

Especially as we're trying to get this thing successful. Commissioner Scheer?

Yes. Thank you, chair. I I have got quite a few things. But first, I wanna Karen, on the the marketing, you said it was 600,000. That's that was what we approved last time?

Yes.

Is there anything left?

I'd have to get the year to date. We're still working with them through 09/30, so I believe there is still funding left through the contract.

And then you were that that's gonna be gone, and then you're thinking maybe with another marketing campaign for 440,000?

A renewal. Sure. With that with that firm for the 441 or more if we wanna have them explore a grassroots campaign as well.

That would come from ARPA. Is that what you said?

No. It would come from opioid settlement. So we have three funding allocations through opioid settlement. One is the regional, which that's part of the opioid abatement funding board that helps make those funding decisions. Then we have a city county allocation, which is, you know, facilitated and approved by this board. Then we had an opioid miscellaneous fund, which doesn't have the same requirements that those two other allocations have.

Is that is that what's funding the $1,381,381,000 for this budget, or is that coming out of a

That's coming out of general fund. K.

That I just needed to have that. So I I just wanted to say, I had a little marketing experience, and I'm for me, the problem is, like commissioner Edgar said, nobody knows this program's out there. And I think it's a branding failure because I believe people would take advantage of it if they knew of it. And I just I wasn't around when this was created, but for me, care about me, it it's it doesn't say anything. You know?

Why why I don't know why it doesn't say help for you. This is our program, help for you. Billboard would say desperate for help, help for you. Free counseling for addiction, mental health. But make it simple. These billboards that they've created are so abstract. I'm not even sure what they're selling. And are the services that they can get connected with, are they free to to people?

They are not.

They are not. So but they you can get them connected. So

Right. You you get connected based on your insurance. So they they match you to your insurance. So it depends

I'll be more specific with the ads. I I just I'm not crazy about the name. I don't think it's too late for a rebranding. If you wanna spend more money on marketing, I'm all for it because I think that the system would work. But I just we we need a new marketing program to get people to understand what it is because these billboards don't really tell me what it is we're trying to do.

We're trying to get people connected with the services they need. Care about me doesn't do it for me, but if you could if the advertising gurus can come up with a way to get people to understand, we're gonna get you connected with the help you need because you you're desperate for it right now, then I think it could work. But those are my thoughts. I'm just

And and to your point, I'm guessing I'm guessing that the connection with the schools has been very not targeted on issues that the kids face. Right? So, I mean, if it's as successful as I am hearing, if people are having issues with bullying, if people are having issues with stress and and and that kind they're it's very specific. And these kids are picking up on it. I I I don't disagree with your comment about that general that general marketing.

It's almost like towards the end, some of that stuff towards the end was even was much I think getting better as it complements a grassroots effort. But before that, it was like such a like, I'm not even feel good for something. I wasn't even sure what it was for. And if residents are trying to even know that we have such a service in this county, I mean, it probably wasn't making a connection either. I don't know. Did you have anything else? I'm sorry. I I was saying

Maybe we should consider a new marketing firm with new ideas on how to get the message out before we spend more money. Just what I was thinking.

Kinda going out for re rebinning. And have them

pitch us on part marketing program, maybe in rebranding of the name, maybe here's the ads we'd like to put together, you know. You know? Commissioner Nowicki.

Thank you, chair. You know, hats off to you, Karen. You know, I'm a St. Pete guy and I see things on the pier posted to lampposts. I've seen the billboards.

I've seen a lot of the marketing over the last few months really gear up. And I guess it shows in the appointments because it looks like last year at this time, there was only 740 appointments scheduled. But this time, this year, it's 1,358 appointments. So you definitely see more appointments scheduled, which is good. Though I'm a little hesitant on, like, a potential, like, penalizing provider for not working with or, like, mandating that somebody works with this program just because it's my understanding that there's a duplicate service that was I you know, I'm kinda new to this and learning on the fly, but Pinellas Wellness Connection, which started in 2022, and and maybe I could have a one on one or something or a conversation about that, that is a group of providers that does the same exact my understanding, same exact thing as as can.

And so and our appointment attended rate is forty nine percent, so, you know, we're scheduling appointments and providers are making themselves available, but then these people don't show up. That's services and time that they've allocated to see somebody, and then they're not showing up from an appointment we scheduled, but then we're going to say, hey, if you don't work with us and get a 50% appointment show rate, we're gonna penalize you for not working with us. So I just don't necessarily know if that's fair and happy to have more discussion on it, but I think the marketing has been really good and has seen an increase in appointments. I would just like to know more about the Pinellas Wellness Connection and those providers. Is there a duplicated service from the nonprofit side?

But I support the marketing, and I'm happy to, you know, continue, you know, doing that because I I think there's good results from that. So I

can happily meet with you to talk about the difference. The Wellness Connection is a group of about five to six providers, kind of those local community nonprofit providers. It does not include private providers. It is about five, and they do not schedule appointments. So you can refer to them. They have a line, and they will call you back and schedule you with one of those providers. But it is not a booking service, and it does not have the same number of providers. And they do not do a clinical assessment with the resident on the phone prior to matching them with the appointment.

I'm gonna follow-up. Did you have something? Yeah. Oh, go ahead.

So I think because see, I've seen a huge shift in the marketing in not even a year. So I don't think the marketing is bad. And I wouldn't want to throw that away and start all over. That means we would have wasted $600,000 I think since we've seen a tick up on appointments that we keep steady on the course and go. I don't think there's anything wrong with the name.

And the obscurity of the slogan is what makes people curious. So I I don't I don't know that that's an issue. And I think because we didn't do any marketing before really to speak of, we're doing marketing now. We've seen a big tick up. I think it's gonna take if you keep changing your brand, you're never gonna have branding. Right? So I think we I don't agree with changing the branding. I think we work on branding, but I don't think we change the name and change all that. And I know we talked about another phone number and all that kind of stuff. And I I, you know, maybe, I don't know.

But I'm not the expert. My knowledge of marketing is very small. So I I don't think I wanna disrupt. I don't I I really wanna see this through and see if we can really make it work. The not show up rate is actually a good number compared to typical. So even in the wellness center, if they have someone call and make an appointment, they probably have a higher no show rate. So it's just this is a different this isn't like regular business. This is so different when you're talking about people that suffer from mental illness or addiction. And and a lot of times, it's not even mental illness. It's a very different Mental illness is very different than mental health.

And a lot of people don't even know that. It's not like this is a huge They're not in crisis. This is not for crisis. We have a crisis system. So someone who's in crisis is we're getting 911 or they're going to a Bay Correct facility. That's a whole different system. This is not that. So people that are dire, they're going if it's dire, they're going typically to a Baker Act. This is for people who are are just not feeling right. This is an emergency kind of stuff.

It's not that. This is very different. And this is a very complex issue to even begin to try to understand. And, you know, it took me many years and a lot of tours and a lot of interviews with a lot of judges and a lot of sheriffs and a lot of people in mental illness to to even scratch the surface on understanding it. So so this is just a different animal. Business. It's just very different. The other question I did have is commissioner Flowers mentioned hospitals. Which hospitals are partnering with us?

So we currently have for the Penelas Matters program, we have staff in North we have a vendor and staff in Northside Hospital and Bayfront. And they once they meet with someone in the hospital and they're ready to activate for treatment

Now is this Pinellas Matters or different than Pinellas Matters?

This Pinellas Matters. So those staff use the CAM. And so before, they would just link to what services they knew. So when someone is ready to discharge from the hospital from that program, they call the CAM, they do an assessment, a substance use assessment, and then link them. And we have a warm handoff to detox. So someone can go right from the hospital into detox.

We really haven't talked about Pinellas Manor and I want to talk to you about Pinellas Manor because I don't understand what the holdup is at Largo, but we can talk about that on the side. Because our goal is to have that in every hospital in three years and it doesn't we seem to have hit a I wanna learn about what the snag is and why we're not moving forward. So I was just curious. So so BayCare is not a partner in the CAM?

Not yet.

No, not no.

And That's that's why I had to come off of Northside Hospital's Board of Trust

Right. I had to come off of Largo for of the same

the interaction there. Yeah.

I had to come off Largo for the same reason. So so so we have Orlando, they're partnering. HCA is partnering. Advent is there's only one do we have an Advent here? One

We have one Advent in North County, and we meet with them for the health program. So they're aware of it, we haven't operationalized.

Nothing else matters. I got it.

But she has had meetings. You've had meetings with, like, just recently with BayCare.

We meet with them quarterly to talk about updates. Yes.

Okay. So and they were on the list for aren't weren't they after Largo at Saint Anthony's?

Yes. Okay. For Pinellas Matters.

For Pinellas Matters. Okay. And I I don't wanna mix them up, but I just when she had mentioned hospitals, was like, are they And then and then Pinellas matters. Yes. I get why they're connected. Okay. Thank you.

Commissioner, just a question because, you know, obviously, respect your your background in this. The the option one and two were, you know, it was not about bringing it in. It was really about keeping with who we have versus going out to see if there's anybody else that not only provides a different perspective. Are you saying you wanna stick to the microphone? Excuse me. Thank you. Did you say you wanted to stick with number one?

No. What I I liked Barry's option that's not on here.

Right. Which would be number two, but using our platform. Correct.

Yes. Yeah.

You're going out, seeing who would

be I would ask for Karen to look at that and see if that's a good option. And and it and it could Committed to something.

It could be that Unite Us would rebid anyways. Yeah. Right?

Yeah.

So so I really like that. I like, first off, I don't like the stacked because there there were there were a lot of drawbacks and as we grow, we could, know, you mentioned some of the things that would be unintended consequences and negative outcomes. I like that. And so I like that. I don't like the stack. So I wasn't crazy about one because of the stack. I'm not at all liking number three.

Yeah.

And and I don't know if we go out if we're gonna find that seamless but if we have something already in house that we can build on that to me as well.

We'll always have that kind of

Yeah. Stable. So I I think we need the that information and make that decision later. But I know you need a decision on marketing or consensus and I think we stay the course on marketing. Regardless

of what group we end up with

We can move forward on that.

We're going to, and again, I just think, again, we're marketing experts here, but I know what I like when I see it. And and that this early stuff was just I I I'm not even sure it it helped with awareness, frankly. It's I'm just talking about the pure marketing side. The later stuff was actually a little I liked it. It was better. It seemed more to the point about what it is we're talking about.

Yeah. I too am not a marketing expert, as you know. Like, social services really is it. But I will tell you the firm we're working with, they are very willing to pivot. So we meet with them weekly. We can give them feedback. I would almost guarantee they're watching this to kind of hear this feedback. So I do think that, you know, we can evolve if if if the goal from this board is to stay with that firm and renew that contract and and ask for different outcomes and and different strategies.

So my thought I'm sorry.

Oh, just real quick. We we we've had the program for several years, but to your point, the marketing really has only been this last year. Before Not

even a year.

It was it was virtually nonexistent. Yeah. And so the reason people didn't know is because we didn't do a good job with that period. Regardless of the reasons. So the marketing piece is kind of really a rebranding. The CAM, the Care About Me, is a rebranding that has just really started. And you said not even a year into it. But also, you did bring some internal resources to even look at what the firm was doing. Maybe talk quickly about that, Steve.

I'm sorry.

So we I

wanted did

to go on the money real quick. So, and I understand the nursing, mean, I think you really hit a good spot on that, I really do. So the question would be, I would have thought the first year start up getting going, gearing up would be more expensive than the second year. So I don't know how different it is to go from 600,000 to 4 or whatever it was. You so since we didn't get into Largo, I'm assuming we didn't spend the money we planned on spending on that opiate money to get Pinellas Matters moving.

So if you feel and that would be up for you and your negotiations. If you feel that more grassroots in getting in that generation of of population, we could we could move forward on the 400. And if they need more because we feel we're not hitting that target, we could always use some of that Pinellas Matters money that's still opiate money, still not taxpayer money, still opiate money. And we can use that to enhance if you don't feel we're hitting that target audience.

Again, see the marketing program.

So there is an option to beef that up if we have to. But at this point, it was 400 whatever the number was. And I'm good with that unless because when you gear up, that's when you cost more money. Right? And so it should, to go on, it shouldn't have to be the same amount. But I don't know if you wanna gear up another

That's what she was kind of saying too. That that they were looking at that program. It it may not be to your point.

Yeah. So I again, I can meet with the current marketing vendor, so BKN, to look at what could you do with both that parallel process. So removing the line item with unite us for marketing, and then talk to BKN about what does it look like. Is it more because you're going to be doing the continuous kind of splash, the continuous digital strategy and grassroots? The 441 remaining was just what's left in that opioid miscellaneous fund.

So if, you know, if it's more, I could come back and say it would be this amount out of the city county fund, which really, as you stated, was set aside for the Pinellas Matters program. And I wanna say we have about and I could be off by about about 20,000,000 in the city county fund for opioid, abatement activities. You go. So it would not be an ask of general fund. Yeah.

I think that would be great. So what what what's your thought on that going out to market and seeing what's out there from a bid standpoint? You know?

For the program? I think it's I think actually option four, which I'll call it very, you know, best I think that's a very smart option. You know? I think I think it's really important platform, that we're not reliant on a vendor and their kind of technology struggles. We have worked very closely with BTS on our current implementation.

And what I consistently hear from Brian at BTS is the system that we've implemented is extremely powerful. And so there's there's really a confidence level that we will be able to accomplish what we need to with the CAM with implementing it in that system. It's just a million dollar implementation. So I I feel like if we're asking for a clinical provider to run the kind of CAM operations, I think we will absolutely get a lot more than just one run response. I think asking for the combination has proven difficult.

And if if her if what she if the figures that she used to bring it internal is consistent with what an external agency would pay to be able to run something like that, well, then we would we would recoup the upfront cost within a couple of years.

Correct.

So it'd be a it'd be a very cost effective decision. Yeah.

It's a good idea. Any other questions before we move on?

No. I just like to say I I like the Barry alternative myself.

We're gonna call it the Barry alternative?

I think so. Yeah. Good.

It I'll to bid as the Barry alternative.

And I I do I'd rather call it the Karen alternative. No. I'm kidding.

I would continue the marketing. I just wanted to like to see a little more focus on what problem somebody might have and why they should call. That's all. Yeah.

Are you you got some?

I have some direction.

Some thoughts and directions. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you

very much.

Great work. Very great work. Thanks. Okay. Moving on to number three, Office of Human Rights program review.

Alright. So you guys went up. So, commissioner, so last year, you asked us to look at the Office of Human Rights and really look at the what they did and whether the program was needed, either in part or in whole. So as we began looking at this, it got really complicated really quick. Because they do a lot of things that in other places, it's decentralized.

So they do things for our grants over in transportation and over in different departments. And that other in a different county, they may have a person down in that department doing it. So getting an apples to apples comparison was very difficult. So I put Tom and Blaine to kind of shepherd kind of this review process, but we really needed data collection. We needed to be able to dig in and break down their programs to where we can provide you an apples to apples as you make a decision regarding going forward with this program.

So we employed local government solutions to help us with that data collection piece. And so I'm going to turn it over to Tom and Alan to let them kind of present to you the findings and kind of get your feedback on where you know, this is this is the data dump. This is the information. At the end, we'd like to know where do you wanna go with this. So with that, I'll turn it over to Tom.

Thank you, Barry. Commissioner, Tom Armonte, assistant county administrator. As Barry mentioned, this is one of the studies that you asked for the staff to conduct a review. This has been a staff led process, as Barry mentioned, Blaine, Chris Rose. And also in the crowd is the director of the office of Human Right, Bettina Barron, and she was instrumental in in how we completed this report.

A copy of that report was sent to you. It was also provided to the Office of Human Rights Board. Alan will walk you through the presentation. It's a brief presentation, and, we will make available to answer any questions. But the report that you've received really went through the detail of the department, so you can be informed as you make decisions through the budget process. So with that, Alan?

Morning, honorable chair, commission, mister county administrator. My name is Alan Rosen. I'm the CEO of Local Government Solutions, and I'm honored to be here with you today. Thank you so much for having me. So I'll be with you for about fifteen minutes and then we'll open it up for questions. We're gonna walk through basically a high level overview of the report. Obviously, it's a pretty in-depth report. And we'll cover kind of the highlights. So what we're gonna kind of talk about today, we'll walk through the project goals, some limited recommendations, an overview of the department, how it runs, funding comparison, program overview, and then any questions. We also have some addendum material in here.

We're not gonna go over those slides, but they're there for your information if you wanna go through some of those. So just to kind of reiterate what this project was and what it was not, our goals were to clarify purpose, authority, and the customers for each of the programs, determining the staff and staffing, budget, and performance, identify any of our overlap from internal and external organizations, and compare to peer agencies. Also, assess the risk of reorganization reduction or elimination. Specifically, it was not a recommendation driven project. And therefore, as you read through the report, you'll see there's not a lot of recommendations in there.

It's more about giving you the information you need to make a policy decision. That being said, as you do go through these things, sometimes things jump out to you. So there were four limited recommendations that we did have, including increasing, you know, cost recovery efforts, evaluating cost recovery from different organizations, like federal government from when you do grant administration, and evaluating cost recovery from constitutional officers as well, and exploring additional revenue from the wage theft program. The other one is to just continue monitoring federal guidance and state guidance. As you know, it changes all the time.

And just as you would with any other program, just monitoring what's out there so that you're making sure that you're keeping up with the requirements. And also to let you know that, the organ the administration is already they're already aware of these and they're already working on these things. So for context on governance, OHR is not structured like a typical department. It does not answer directly to Barry. It answers to the Human Rights Board, which you see here and, includes representatives from across the county.

So it's a more decentralized governance structure. And the office is relatively small, covering all the programs that they have with about 10 full time equivalent positions. What we did was we tried to combine the programs into an understandable framework and we we group them into 10 programs across five different categories. And you see them here across starting from the left to the right, the federal partnership programs, disability access, title six discrimination work, grant compliance, and local regulatory compliance. So the main thought of these is, you know, it's they they serve internal customers, they serve external customers, some of them serve both.

And it's really a very diverse portfolio and these staff serve this broad portfolio of programs. Looking at the budget, the five year trends, looking from f y twenty actual to f y twenty five actual, the budget increased by about 17%, which actually follows in line with CPI over that time, inflationary pressures. And also with the budget press the budget proposal for f y twenty seven that we saw from the department, it actually includes a decrease of $89,000 from f y twenty six budget amount. So the trend is not specifically upward mobile. And also looking at the revenues, you can see they're kind of volatile.

That's because they're based on federal reimbursement timelines and program activity. So sometimes their timeline doesn't hit you. You know, you look at f y twenty five, it goes down a lot. But it's just the the processing timeline for the federal government to get those monies back to you. So we wanted to do a comparison of peer organizations and these were chosen based on demographic information above and below your county just to kind of get a general idea of where you sit in the middle of those.

The top five you can see those are required programs. So as you can see all the counties do those because they're required. The ones below there's a little bit more variability because they're not specifically required programs. They're more local decision on what you want to do. So for example, not all organizations have something similar to councils for persons with disabilities.

Some agencies do not have a federal partnership for something like, FIBA or FAP. Even if they don't, sometimes they have local programs that aren't partnerships, so they don't get funding from the federal government, but they do something local. And that's where you see some of those notes there. And then in addition, you also see some variability in refueling assistance and wage theft as well. And alright. Moving on to another comparison. We wanted to look and see, do other agencies fund these in a different way than you do? And the answer is basically no. Most of these, especially the required programs, are required kind of like unfunded mandates and funding comes from the general fund or indirect cost recovery for grant compliance, that sort of thing. So there were no surprises there.

So in looking at these programs, we kind of split them into two camps. So we're gonna look at the required programs here first. And when we talk about required programs, what we mean is they're either required by federal or state law or the cost of eliminating those programs would be so onerous it may not make sense to eliminate those. So for an example, it's EEOP reporting. The DOJ that's related to the DOJ grants that you get.

You get about 3,200,000 a year in DOJ grants. It typically they require reporting on EE EEOP type programs that you provide. They are not currently requiring that reporting, but it's still incumbent on the county to collect and keep that data. You don't necessarily have to do that, but if you don't, you would be at risk of losing $3,200,000 a year in in funding. And when you see expenditures and FTEs on the right, that's based on f y '26 budgeted amounts.

And it reflects the department's understanding of where they spend their time. So where you see something like point eight FTEs for ADA coordinator and that type of work, that's not one person. It's a number of people spread over. That that work spread over a number of people, but it takes about the equivalent of 80% of one person's time during the year, if that makes sense. Looking at the locally authorized programs, these are those other five programs.

Again, it's a mix of both internal and external customers. And the biggest thing here is there's this is where you see a lot of variation with the peer counties as well. Right? Because they're not required programs. The only programs here that have any sort of revenue generally are FIPA and FHAP. And as you can see, they don't pay for the entire cost of those programs. And that reimbursement is based on the casework and program participation. So the the remaining everything else is really supported by the general fund. And one example we highlighted earlier, actually I forgot to mention it, was the wage theft program. Wage theft, they do currently recover costs for things like postage.

But one of the things that we saw was in the way it's worded in the organization is you can try to get back money for administrative costs. So one of our questions was what does that really mean? And and the department's working right now with the county attorney to determine is there more cost recovery that can be done to help support that program. So, we're gonna spend a majority of our time on this. This is a very detailed slide here with a lot of in-depth information.

We kind of want to go over the main point here is what happens to your customers basically if you decide you don't want to do these programs. Obviously these aren't all your programs. What we wanted to focus here on was programs that have somewhat of an overlap. They might be provided by the federal or state government. For most of them, wage theft and recovery is not that, is not the case there. But what would happen if the county decided they did not wanna provide these services anymore? We'll start with with FIPA, the Fair Employment Practices Agency. Basically, this is the the county's local partner for

the

EEOC. Agencies, people that work in agencies in the county, they have an issue with their employer on discrimination, they can come to the local level instead of going to the state and the federal level. The biggest difference here between what you provide and what is provided at the state and local level is that you help provide services to those people that work in really small agencies. So small organizations that have between five and fifteen employees or five and fourteen employees, they can come to your office and help get those services. And those services are basically focusing on mediation with those organizations to try to come to a conclusion or moving on to allowing them the right to sue in court if they feel like they were discriminated against.

And the biggest issue if you didn't do this was reduce access for certain employees because the federal government will not provide those services for those really small agencies. It's only you that does that. And also increased timelines and increased cost to get to that determination of right to sue. Moving down one to fair housing employment. This is the county's local partnership with HUD to investigate housing discrimination issues and complaints and working towards resolution for those.

Primary services are individuals who have fewer resources, limited housing options. Cases would shift to state or federal agencies if the county didn't do it. And while those services still exist, the county OHR is able to meet those timelines, a hundred day timeline target with 70% of the time, whereas currently state and federal government agencies, they're only able to meet that 30% of the time. So it takes them a lot longer to get to that point. As you know, if you've worked in housing or homelessness, every day counts when you're in that situation.

And so being able to provide that services faster really helps out the people that live in the in the county that are going through these issues. Moving down to refueling assistance. This is a program that, basically received complaints, from Pinellas County residents. I don't think that there has been any cases over the last year either at the state or local level. So, basically what it is is it requires if somebody with disability needs some assistance in refueling, they can honk their horn or do something else and get somebody's assistance to come help them pump gas.

The state and the federal government do have laws. Interestingly enough, the way the state law is written, it actually doesn't apply to any gas station in Florida because it's only for gas stations that are full service only. And what state the told me is there actually are no full service only stations in Florida. That may or may not be the case. That's what they told me.

But still there's federal law that requires signage and people to assist if there's more than one person working. The other difference with the county is you have the ability for code enforcement and fines to get compliance. That does not exist at the other two levels. And so if somebody wanted a resolution, it may be longer timelines if they had to rely on the state or federal government. Maybe more burdensome process, cost a lot of money.

And the goal here is actually not if I read the law correctly and I'm not an attorney, it seems like the goal in this area is compliance, not damages. Right? So somebody suing those agencies can't get damages, only compliance. Moving on to harassment and training. This is more of an internal program for your staff.

So it supports county workforce and basically provides harassment prevention training to employees and internal investigations of complaints. They basically help work with early resolution before cases escalate and they're able to solve cases in about 58 based on the information we got from the department. If this program were eliminated, the county staff would have to rely on external organizations like the EEOC and then go into court to get resolution if they feel like they were discriminated against or harassed. This generally goes to the right to sue pathway. If the county did not wanna provide this program anymore, the county staff would be faced with longer timelines to resolution.

And the biggest thing is, you know, increased legal exposure to the county because without having that outlet here, they would have to go somewhere else and the next outlet is that direction. Oh, sorry. I got click happy there for a second. So the last one is the wage theft program. This is a program that allows people who feel like their wages have been unlawfully withheld from them or not provided, allows them a way to negotiate, mediate that process, and and get their money back.

They file complaints directly with the county. The county targets about a ninety day resolution timeline. And if the program were eliminated, these people would have to go through civil courts, federal processes. What we understood is that a lot of times these are for lower wage workers, your service workers. And a lot of times the attorneys that they would turn to wouldn't necessarily take the cases because the threshold for them making any money for these cases is so low they might not take them on.

So if eliminating the program it would eliminate that accessible efficient path to resolution, higher barriers to filing claims, longer timelines, and access to justice in cases that just wouldn't be pursued at all. So wrapping up and stepping up, stepping back looking at this slide. Basically these are locally authorized programs. You're, you're balancing cost savings against access and timeliness and local control of services. In many cases, the services won't disappear. They would shift to slower, less accessible external systems, except in the case of wage theft, which would not be provided. That's what I've got for you today, and we're happy to take questions.

Okay. Questions, commissioner Flowers.

I have some questions, but first, just a couple of com comments. Thank you very much for the time that you all, took to communicate with our peer organizations, of course, outside of Pinellas County. I think some of us are aware of those organizations and have been communicating with them when it first came up that there was a question about the origin of the office of of human rights and its, services. I also wanna thank all of the, office for human rights staff. This has been very concerning for them because, like anyone else, when, you're not sure, if the department's gonna be around or not, that brings about a lot of angst.

However, all of them have stayed on board and have continued to do their jobs with the level of excellence that goes above and beyond. So I also want to publicly thank them and acknowledge them for that. I think the report speaks for itself. I did request that the board of trustees, any members that could possibly attend, if they could do so. We have here present with us today, doctor Ricardo Davis, who serves on the board.

We have letters, and comments that I believe everybody should have received through a email from Mike Twitty, who is at a conference, and from Kim Burke, both acknowledging the thoroughness of this review, but also acknowledging what it appears that the review states, and they fully support the continuation of the office, for the services that they provide. We also have in the audience council member Deborah Fick Sanders from the city of Saint Petersburg who I appointed as my appointment to the disability commission, and that committee talks about the things that may be potentially barriers for persons with disabilities and how to work to overcome that. As a matter of fact, I know last year we talked a lot about the mats that we provide so that persons who are in wheelchairs and whatnot can get down to the beaches. And so I wanna thank her as well for her presence and for anyone that may be listening. I I've always supported this office.

I know one of the comments that was made that some preferred the change of name, which this didn't really address and shouldn't have. I just want to go on record, for saying that some of the names that have been suggested just don't work, especially for the letter that we just received from representative Bernie Jops asking for all of this information related to diversity, equity, and and inclusion and whether or not we have those names, highlighted in our program or office titles. So, the names that were suggested at our board of trustee meeting, I said then doesn't work, wasn't gonna work because if the governor signed the bill opposing DEI or the inference of that, if he signed that, we certainly will be out of compliance. He signed it last week so, we cannot use any of the names that have been suggested. I guess, what I want to say or would like to say is that the services that we provide help residents throughout Pinellas County irrespective of who you are.

If you are a resident of this county and you have the issue where you've not been paid fairly, this department handles that. If you are someone who's been challenged with housing, this is a department that can help with that or that does help with that. If you are having some concerns related to disabilities, this is a department that can help with that and can help feather out whether or not it is a justified, claim that's being made or unjustified. I don't have a problem with, seeking, avenues by which we could maybe increase cost recovery. I think it's always a good thing to look at, you know, if we're providing this service for the entire county, can we get support from the other municipalities because we are providing a countywide service.

So I don't have a problem with that. The only area I'm I'm a little antsy about and would need to look legally, with our attorneys is for the wage theft ordinance because we are on behalf of that employee seeking recoupment for either not being paid for overtime or not being paid adequate, excuse me, adequately for the hours worked or being completely gypped on the payment for services for work that has already been performed. So I wouldn't want to charge the resident because we're trying to help them get something back that they're due from another entity. Whether or not we could place some type of penalty for payment from the employer. I don't know.

That's why I said that's something we would have to look at legally to see what mechanisms could be in place to even do that. But I don't have a problem looking at that because I believe if you do an honest day's work, you should get an honest day's pay for that work. And if you are an employer who's not doing that, then that's a bigger issue for me that we could take up in another vein. For the peer groups that you weren't able to get responses back for, you don't have to state them now. I would love to know who those were.

We could talk about that later, because I just like to reach out. It could be you know, everybody's busy right now because of all that's going on both on the federal level and the state level. But I would like to know who they were and just, you know, follow-up with the communication to see if there is something else that maybe we need to talk about or consider that they're going through that we aren't. So you can share that with me at another time or or email that to me. I made a couple of notes, particularly in the area of FHAP.

I'm gonna say it like that. The Florida housing component piece. Just noting that even dissolving that program would not be at the complete discretion of the board of county commissions because that does affect about 20% of the funding or service provisions that we have throughout the county. So it would be I think it would be somewhat detrimental to even talk about disbanding that service. And even when you're talking about rolling some of these components into other departments, you still have to have funding that follows rolling that into other departments.

So you're not saving money because you've gotta have a body that does that work, And they have to be paid accordingly, and then we still have to go through the processes. Our current certification, for a FHAP goes through to 2029. So after that, you know, it's called what do you do. For the EEOC office, there's a the closest and and I could be wrong, so please correct me. The closest EEOC office is over in Hillsborough County.

Hillsborough County funds their EEOC office. I'm not quite sure that they're gonna be willing to take on casework of Pinellas County residents when they don't receive funding from Pinellas County residents to provide that service. And just how far down the line would our residents be. And now we're asking our residents to traverse to a whole another county to get help when they should be able to get that support and assistance from here locally. So, I don't wanna take up everybody's time on that.

I made some other little notes, but overall, I'm I'm pleased with the the report. I'm grateful that when you all had questions, you asked for clarity so that you could provide clarity on that because the constructs of this program are not singular. They have many tentacles that flow into a number of different areas. And even when I was appointed to that committee, I had to learn how all of it work, how all of the machinations work. The last thing I'll say is you may have communicated with the, constitutional officers.

I'm not sure, but I did see the piece in here where it was perhaps charged them for the service. I don't know how that's gonna go over with, our constitutionals. Of course, I could not communicate with them about this. That is something that, you know, they had a chance to read, and and I'll make sure it's on our agenda for the next board meeting, for discussion. But, like everyone else, you know, we're all tightening our belts.

And while they are constitutionals, they still provide services under the larger umbrella of Pinellas County government. So I'm not quite sure how that will be take. But, again, wanna thank you for the work that you did and the time. Wanna thank you for, again, communicating with staff and getting a better understanding and even drawing out how a percentage of their time is not necessarily geared to just one program. It's metered out over several different programs, which in my opinion would make it even more difficult if you talk about infusing these services into other departments within the county because those pieces will still need to be metered out for time.

So thank you, mister chair, for allowing me to say that. I may have some additional comments as I hear from my colleagues, but just wanna say again to each one of you as well, thank you for, taking this up and having the conversation, a broader conversation. And for those of you that did meet with Bettina and or staff, thank you for doing that. Thank you for providing some little nuggets of refreshments to them. I got calls from staff.

They were super excited, and they thought that that was very refreshing to provide that. So I wanna thank you for that as well. I'm talking about commissioner Peters. But for all of you that met with Bettina, and staff and had questions and conversations, I wanna thank you for that. Hopefully, it broadened your knowledge base of just what all this office does.

Thank you, commissioner Flowers. Any other thoughts around the table? Yep. I I'm not I'm not forcing it. I'm just

asking while we're here. Commissioner Latvalla. Thank you, mister chair. As I've said before, the office of human rights performs, you know, activities that I think are important to to our residents. If they if that office did not do those, we would have to find somebody that did because I certainly would not support getting rid of those services.

And so that's first and foremost. And then the other thing that I wanted to add about the name change, you know, I'm kind of indifferent about that. If we change the name, that's fine. I don't really necessarily have any ideas to what we would change the name to. I would be open to to suggestions.

You. Commissioner Scheer? Yes. Thank you, chair. Barry, I appreciate you and I appreciate you bringing us the report in. I think it's very important that every once in a while we evaluate departments and see what they're doing and make sure that we need to fund them. And that's what my tech that's what my voters asked me to do, and so I'm glad that we've done this. And it was, you know, six months of evaluation. I appreciate it. I When I originally looked at the department, I saw a lot of overlapping jurisdictions and expenses.

I still do, but I'm not gonna argue with Ken Burke and Mike Twitty. How am I gonna do that? Seriously though, I do see the grant reporting and compliance and I do not wanna get rid of the wage theft. I talk to people about that. It's very important because we have a lot of small businesses out there And so it does happen.

So I do think that those two departments or those two services could be provided underneath consumer affairs in a different department within the within under the various administration. But if nobody has any interest in eliminating the duplicated efforts between the federal and the state and our Department of Human Rights, then that'll be that. So but I'm glad we did the exercise because it's good to tell the people that put us in office that we're looking at everything we can to save them money on their tax bill. So thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Peters.

So I

wanna echo that. And thank you, Renee. You did a very thorough job about how wonderful they are and how important they are. But I wanna thank commissioner Scheer for the exercise because I learned stuff I didn't even know about. I think they have an outstanding team.

I know they were exhausted. I know it was a lot of work to do this, but I think it was a great exercise that really educated us on how value each and every person in that department is. And so, I just wanna thank you for all your hard work because we don't really hear the outcomes of their great work. And so we don't really get to celebrate those outcomes of their great work because we don't really get reports about it. So although it was exhausting and I'm sure challenging for you to do this exercise, the value is great and I think at least my appreciation for you is much, much greater and it just excites me that we have a team of people that are really looking out for our citizens.

Many are our most vulnerable citizens and the timeliness on how you get your work done compared to if they would have gone to the state or the federal, you know, government to do it. So I'm really proud of our team. I support you and I am so grateful to you and I applaud you for all the great work you do. And again, Chris, the commissioner Scherer, had you not we had you not presented this, you know, it was really a great exercise. So thank you.

I learned a lot about the department myself. Yeah. And so I'm glad I

did. And I've been here longer than you, so I should've known more. So it was just I

second that.

Yeah. I

you know, I learned so much and I just should've known about it sooner, and so I just love that we did this.

Well, they do a lot of great work, and I learned that myself. Thanks. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Nawicki. Thank you, chair, and and and thank you for the presentation. One quick question. The 5% that you're donating, do you have the nonprofits picked out locally?

I I don't. I usually wait till everything's over and done with to figure out what the you know, my total cost is and and get that net amount and then, know, we go out. Like, we've done organizations like that collect money for cancer survivors that don't have a lot of money. We've done Horses with the Mission and some other counties that do work with disabled people on horses or people that have trauma on horses. So we try to pick something that's, you know, good for the community and and something that matches what our mission is as an organization as well.

Awesome. Yeah. I guess Local Government Solutions donates 5% of their contracts to local five zero one c threes in the area. So just saw that and thought that was good. But back to Office of Human Rights, I appreciate all of the research and analysis. And one thing that I came across, you know, is this office administers chapter 70 of Pinellas County ordinances, And within that, I think there may

be a

subtle contradiction in our ordinances with federal law where Pinellas County has gender identity absent of what you are biologically assigned or biologically born with is a protected class in chapter 70 of Pinellas County code ordinance, but yet federal law, I don't think, protects gender identity anymore. So I don't know if there's a desire for this board to get in align with federal law, but I would I would like to see an alignment with federal law. So

Yeah.

You all have the ability to exceed federal regulations, and I I don't know the genesis of whether that may have been why we have the ordinance, but we can certainly review that if that is the will of the board.

Yeah. I think it's a good idea to review, but again, it's not making a decision. We're gonna discuss that here. Yeah. I I'm I was, you know, I I kinda echo what commissioner Peter said. You know, I've been here a while and a little embarrassed that I didn't know everything that goes on in the group. Patina was great. We had a great meeting. I really enjoyed that conversation. And it just kind of reaffirmed, you know, the importance in general.

You kinda cut into the specifics again, and I think that that's that's helpful. Miss Jessica Anduhar last night talked about businesses getting more courage by doing something in Downtown Clearwater. So it makes them feel energized and empowered to do their work. And so I think our residents need to have similar confidence that they have a group here that protects them. You know, we have other groups that do the same.

Some other things, there might be some overlap, but I don't see a whole lot of that. And I I think it helps our residents knowing that they have a, you know, a fighting a champion, if you will, for for effort. So I'm I'm glad this I'm glad that the effort again to echo the commissioner Scheer for bringing it up. I think it's important that we do that. I do think the the the department that that, I guess, was a little concerned, if you will, about the process.

Again, I think at the end of it, they can be reenergized, if you will, about we know more about it, and that's a good thing. We know the work that they do, and that's a good thing. I mean, it's all empowering. It doesn't mean that the process is not painful sometimes you have to experience with. But, again, I I think that's what we're supposed to be doing for our residents is making sure that we're doing things well and using money well and all of that. So, anyway, thank you for your for your staff's going along with everything and hanging in there. We have a you know, it's a good thing. So, Barry, did you have a comment?

Yeah. Just, you know, we we try to do reviews of departments every few years and that's a that is a very good thing. This one kinda falls outside of that because they have they're kind of a separate entity. And so we didn't do that type of review. But if you looked in the report, there's several opportunities that we hadn't really thought of to tap into grant funding, charging administrative fees, and things like that that they provide for, like, you know, over in Kelly's shop where it is a grant.

Never nobody ever wants to charge the administrative cost off to a grant because they want the grant to do that, but we make sure that we capture administrative costs. So there's areas that we'll dig into more coming into budget, and Chris Rhodes is gonna make sure we capture all those costs. If we can modify our wage ordinance to where a business that was withholding wages and add a fee onto that, not to take from the resident, absolutely, because they're the ones that cause that. Mhmm. So there's opportunities here to provide efficiencies and to recapture some more funding within the office. So if nothing else, those are great opportunities that we're going to follow-up on as a result of this discussion.

You made a comment about funding opportunities. General fund is involved quite a bit here. Oh, yeah. Obviously. That's part of the millage part that goes to all residents in the county.

That's correct.

Okay. Mhmm. I mean, I I yeah. I was sitting there thinking that, you know, gosh, the city should be doing that. But at at the end of the day, what they do is they charge and it would go right to the residents and they'd be paying additional. Now, maybe, I don't know. Well, there's

different pieces. There's housing pieces. Like St. Pete used to have a housing program. They formed that over to us. There's some opportunities maybe for partnerships. We'd have to follow-up on that to see if there's interest. But definitely in some of these areas around ADA type things like that and where we get grants, there's opportunities there. Think I like that. So we'll dig into the report in detail, and we'll report back during the budget about what we were able to come up with.

Yeah. I like that better than hitting the cities again and then it and they hit the residents again. So, you know, that's not what we do. Yeah.

And and that would be difficult.

Yeah. Yeah. That's not what I'm interested in either. Okay. Commissioners, thank you for your thoughts. Commissioner Flowers, your extended comments were well received. Thank you very much for that and all of you for going through the process. Good stuff. It's 12:10. They're supposed to have some food here. Putting it out right now. So we can jump into the I can jump. Our, you know, review of our meeting, our agenda, and then grab some grab some bite bite to eat after that. Okay. After we've adjourned. So that's okay with everybody? That's

what we're gonna do right now.

That's all we're gonna do. Because we're skipping the the the parcel. We're gonna have that discussion on Tuesday.

It's pretty short agenda, so I should be able to go

through it pretty quick. Okay. Okay. Go ahead, Barry.

Alright. Item one. So we have a presentation on Emergency Medical Services Professional of the Year awards. And then we have Proclamation. And then we have recognizing Kathy Perkins as receiving the Chad Reed Emergency Manager of the Year Award. Yep. So we've held off on that, but, you know, this was a good opportunity and well well well deserved. Going up to our public hearings, this is the CRA. You said you had didn't have any problem with the Largo CRA. Just to put it within the activity center, this is not the funding piece. This is just recognizing that. Correct, Tom?

Correct. It's gonna include a lot of our goals here. Yeah.

So this is just designating that as the activity again and allow allowing them the density doesn't address the funding issues that you addressed.

Number five.

Correct. Well, both of them is aligning it into the activity center. Gives them the countywide map amendment, doesn't address the funding piece. Item 11 is a ranking of firms. This we went out for a third party for risk management services for workers' comp. So this is a bid that we received for that week. And if you recall a couple years ago, we we do a joint bid. We outsource this, and I brought the sheriff in when we did that to provide more timely and and response for our workers' compensation. Item twelve's award of bid to Conan Graham for Madonna Boulevard Bridge, 14,200,000. Item 13 is the First Amendment.

This is this is a as you well know, this is a utility work on Whitney Road at Wolford Intersection. So they have some additional unforseen conflicts with the utility work, and so this is an increase due to that. Item 14 is a joint planning agreement with US Geological Survey. This is for they construct data gathering systems throughout the county, monitors flood stages, rainfall, etcetera, and stuff. Item 15 is ranking of firms.

Five firms. This is for professional engineering services for utilities. The five firms are listed. They use them on an as needed basis for their various capital projects. Under the regular agenda, item 16 is a revised hazard mitigation app grant application program with Florida Department of Emergency Management. These are for the traffic control cabinets to mitigate storm impacts. So revised grant funding for 9,500,000 with local match of 3,000,000. Item 17 is a resolution declaring one county parcel surplus on Dan's Lake up in Hillsborough County and authorizing a conveyance to Hillsborough County.

So why are we giving it away?

I I knew you're gonna ask that, and Jeremy's on his way up because I don't remember.

Good morning. Jeremy Weld, director of utilities. So this is a one acre parcel in Hillsborough County that's leftover from the well fields that we used to operate up in North County. We had a well that was required through swift mud that we had to pump water out of the ground to augment wetlands. So when we were pumping our drinking water wells, we were dewatering wetlands in Hillsborough County.

So SwiftMud required us to pump water just to hydrate wetlands. When we sold our production wells to Tampa Bay Water, we still maintained a permit to wet to hydrate the wetlands. So there's a one acre parcel in Hillsborough County inside their will their well field e lap area, their environmental lands area, that we still own the permit, the land, the maintenance cost, and now the taxes because we lost our tax battle with the Florida Supreme Court. So we're actually shedding cost by giving the property away to Hillsborough County.

Why not give it to Tampa Bay Water?

They didn't want it.

Okay. Are are you giving them land or are they accepting

They are accepting the the land, the well, and the permit conditions to rehydrate the

Taking the assignment. Yes. Because that's the big thing. Right?

And there's another parcel, very similar, also in Hillsborough County in the same area that Tampa Bay Water is taking. They're exact same conditions.

Right. And then we lose the tax burden.

It's a tax burden and and the maintenance cost of the well and the pipes. So during the hurricanes, we actually had one of the pipes break, and we actually sent Pinellas County utilities crews into Hillsborough County and shut down the Hillsborough County right of way to fix our pipe and their county and cause residential and other problems. So just cleaner to not own assets in someone else's county that we don't need.

They're looking at they're looking at Pasco's, but parcels and stuff.

But Yes. That's decision yet.

Correct. We are not doing anything in Pasco County yet. We're still evaluating what's the right plan for that whole property.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay.

Under item number 18, we're asking authority to file litigation in the referenced case. This would be against a contractor that damaged a waterline. So we're seeking to recover those damages. It looks like the confidential memo was made around the table that has staff's recommendation in a proposed settlement. And I'm currently not anticipating any county attorney reports.

County administrator's report will discuss the we're gonna get a all the information from last night. We're gonna get that to you by tomorrow, and then we'll have a discussion regarding direction for the downtown campus on Tuesday at our county minister's report.

Yeah. And you had something else that you're bringing back on Tuesday too that from our conversation today.

You were gonna bring that up, I thought? You can?

No. No. No. No. No. I'll talk about that in a second. No.

I'm talking

about this about the care about me. It was something else that I thought you were No. Just Nope. That. Okay.

We will we will do care about me, but I gotta talk to Karen about a timeline for to get that information.

Okay.

Alright.

Real quick. Again, we always thank our officers, corporal Thornton, deputy Winick, and deputy McSweeney. Thank you for being here as usual. We had six of you here last night with that raucous group, which was, you know, it's always better to be safe than sorry, but they were great. It was good to have them here and they were all very respectful as we had a great chair for the meeting last night. You know, that young whippersnapper. That young whippersnapper. What's that?

Y'all were worrying about nothing. Me and

my people. So thank you for that. Also, know Barry went around and talked to you each a little bit about the memorial naming on County Road 1. Thank you for listening to that. There was just some additional information that staff gave me. I needed to talk to a couple of the Gold Star mothers, including the one that is involved with her son. Felt very comfortable and confident with what I found out, but I wanted to make sure that you all were aware of it as well. So having said that, we will move forward.

Okay. On that, I'm sorry. Thought you're gonna adjourn.

No, no, I was gonna, having said that, we'll we'll move on that on May 19 at the meeting. Great. Commissioner.

Thank you. So I wanted to bring up data centers and and I've got some thoughts on it. I would like to I think data centers, you know, they take up an enormous amount of water, enormous amount of energy, which typically gets passed on to the consumers. And I'd like to talk about maybe options. Like, maybe we could ban them and I understand there's one that's considering on moving in.

I have put in an inquiry to see if we have any small ones already. We'll be looking to Jewel to see if it's even possible if we're allowed to ban them. But what Brevard County did this this week, if we can't ban them, I'd like you to consider another option. And that would be to rep replicate what Pinellas County is doing. So they are But Brevard is just past this.

Replicate with

Replicate here in Brevard's in Pinellas County.

Okay.

So what they're doing is they're not banning them because there are currently a 100 small ones in Florida. So they're not banning the hype. I'd wanna ban those big hyper ones for sure. But they are making sure that the county will ban any tax breaks through economic development for AI data centers or data centers. So they would no longer be allowed for tax ad valorem tax exemptions.

And I think that's a good policy. I think the amount of, I mean, now we're in such a drought that we can't afford to be using water for cooling these data centers. Don't know enough about the small ones and how much water they're using on the small ones. But I certainly wouldn't want a giant one, these hyper ones that are coming in to come in. They are not job producers.

So they take up enormous amount of space, enormous amount of energy, enormous amount of water, and they're not job producers. And so I don't think that they should be getting any kind of tax benefits or abatements since they're not real job producers. And so that's what Brevard County is. They're banning any ability for a data center to get tax exemption or abatement. And I think that at the very minimum, I would like to take the same action here and protect our constituents from having to have higher energy costs and that usage of water when water is so precious here right now and often.

I mean, this isn't the first time we've had severe drought. Tampa Bay water does have plans for new water resources, but I think we need to do a better job at conservation and ordinance like this would then protect that water conservation and keep the affordability for the citizens down because data centers are only gonna make it less affordable based on electric bills and water usage. So I'd I'd really like this commission to consider and if Jules team would be willing to take a look at their ordinance or if you guys are interested in a ban if by law we're allowed to for consideration. So I'd love to have thoughts on that.

Commissioner Flowers?

Thank thank you for bringing this forward. I've been tracking the issues and concerns regarding the larger data centers in other states and how it is currently affecting not only their environment, but also documented health issues and concerns of persons that live in close proximity even as far as three miles out and increase numbers of various forms of cancers, increase issues and concerns with youth as it relates to some of their medical concerns because we know that those growth years are really critical for our young people. I support, I would love to have a a dialogue and discussion about it. Certainly, I support what you're saying as it relates to legally. Do we have the ability to do any of this at the very least following another county's direction that thus far has not met with a legal challenge against what they're doing.

We do have some smaller data centers, and, of course, that's visible by the expansion of T Mobile and some other technology companies that have those, which is how they're able to provide five g and increase their Internet, speed and accessibility. But I'm glad you brought this forward, and I certainly support what your requests are as it relates to looking legally at how we can make it happen.

So we already have somebody interested in putting one on Gandy Boulevard.

Oh my. So

I I think it's something if it's something that this commission is gonna entertain, I think it's something we'd have to expedite. Yeah.

I I support what you're saying and just wanted to throw Thank you. My 2¢ in.

Well, when I visited the NACO when I went to NACO, it was a major issue Oh, yeah. Virginia, and and they are sucking power and they are depleting water sources. So Yeah. I I agree we should we should try to add their type of use specifically to our land development ordinances.

So are you thinking about limiting it or banning it?

Limit I I think getting not allowing certain uses. Okay. To deplete our our sources, water. And for you all that are on Tempe Water, you need to be thinking about that too because

Yeah.

They're gonna be going out East Hillsboro and that's the water we need here. Mhmm. They use a lot of water.

They did suggest that I bring this up at the Multi Tri County. Yeah. Yeah.

I I don't think we want them here. They're gonna just drive up our power costs and they're gonna eat up all our water.

Yeah. And I'd be interested in finding out, like, what we can do with those that are here already versus the one any that might be coming from now on. We

can certainly take a look. We're gonna have greater control over the ones that may locate an unincorporated county, obviously. But commissioner Peters warned me she was gonna bring this up. I got some information from Tristan as to the bills that were, you know, adopted during the legislature. So we just need to really take a look at the state law that's been come out recently and just some of the other landscape. The economic development tax break, I think, is something that we could probably easily bring back via ordinance. But we'll just wanna take a look at the whole package, given some of the new laws and just the emerging issues.