Board of County Commissioners - Special Meeting

Good morning, everybody. We're going to get started right away with day three.

And Barry, turn it over to you. Okay, good morning, commissioners. First up will be all of our judicial partners. We'll start out with Chris putting up Title V and Article V and just quickly reviewing that. And first up will be our judiciary with Judge Crane.

All right, so Mr. Chair, good morning. Chris Rose, Office of Management and Budget.

Well, that's all right. We'll move on to the next. So after you get done with that, then we'll have our public defender, Sarah Muller.

We'll go right to him?

Go right to him. Public defender, yeah. We'll go right to Sarah.

Okay, so commissioners, you've all seen the Article 5 presentation before. Article 5 is neither a department nor an entity. It refers to Revision 7 of the state constitution, Article 5. And we've done this presentation every year. With your permission, I'm going to skip 21 of the 22 slides and do just slide five, which encapsulates everything that we need to see in this is it. I do want to point out a typo. It is the fiscal year 26 budget that we're presenting to you. So the current year budget, not the 25, and not the 27 yet. We're still putting those numbers together. So what we have is four different categories, required functions, local options with defined revenue streams, and court innovations and other local options, and then other court related. The bottom line on all this is there's $47.3 million worth of expenditures. There are $4.8 million of revenues that offset those expenditures for a total of $42.5, almost $42.6 million of general fund support to all of the different court functions that are out there. This harkens back to the Article 5 revision that happened in 1998, where the rough estimation of what was agreed upon at that time was the state would pay for people and operations, and the counties would pay for facilities and technology. Now, I'm painting much too broad a brush, but that's the essence of what the revision was, and that is what you see before you today. And with that, I'm done with 22 pages of PowerPoint.

I'm not seeing a whole lot of hands being raised, so we'll go on. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioners. Sarah, good morning.

Good morning, and thank you for having me. I don't usually get to go before the judge, so I'm going to seize this opportunity. We'll make it pretty short and sweet. It's pretty simple. I don't know. It's a 22-page PowerPoint. I can change into a couple minutes, but Chapter 29 covers most of the technology. The Public Defender's Office is funded in two primary respects. One is IT, and the other is our Mitigation, Advocacy, and Treatment team. I just want to thank the commissioners for their support with the Mitigation, Advocacy, and Treatment team. I do have a good story at the end that I'd like to share with the commission from Brittany, Julie Watson is here with me. She is our county budget director and she's just done an amazing job working with OMB and we really appreciate all the support from OMB. So our budget is basically a 2.2. There's not much fluctuation in our budget over the years. IT, when we do the replacement, does go up and down a little bit and we're working with BTS to sort of streamline that out so that it's not such a high and a low. The driving factors in our budget are down, so not only did we meet the flatline budget, we're under 205.50, and that's due to the refresh from last year. Stack is still a big factor in what we play in IT, and that's been going well. We've been working with our partners at the clerk's office and trying to reduce the manual input so that that can be automated. I'm going to have Brittany Alipour come up and tell you a great story from our jail diversion program.

Hello, good morning. My name is Brittany Alipour. I am with our mitigation advocacy and treatment program at the Public Defender's Office. I just wanted to also thank everyone for the support of the program. This year, so far in the 2026 fiscal year, we have been able to fund 7,418 nights in a residential or stabilization treatment center for clients. There isn't a week that goes by that we don't hear an update from the courts or within our program from a client saying that this opportunity has saved their life. A really quick feel-good story that is just a recent client that we see often with this is we had a client who was in the community really struggling with staying stabilized within the community with mental health. and substance use they picked up charges they were able to be referred to our program we were able to get them into an intensive inpatient treatment program they completed successfully went on to go into transitional housing we helped fund the initial stay they then fund themselves for about a year in that program and this particular client was able to go back to school he went to barber school obtained his license he reunified with his three children He is currently engaged to be married and buying a house with his fiance and he was able to early term on his probation So he is now a productive member of society and he thinks the program for that.

So we thank you So as you can see we have some wonderful people at the public defender's office in It's getting increasingly difficult to keep it, but we've got some really dedicated, wonderful people that keep it running. Our goal is obviously we represent indigent clients, but we really want to help them back into society and being productive members and keep them out of the jails. We'd like to catch them before. They come to jail, but if they end up there, then at least we want to make sure that they're not coming back and just a pickup and a release by the sheriff costing extra dollars in jail. So we'd like to see that money go towards treatment, rehabilitation, and getting them back out into society and keeping them out of jails. Take any questions if you have any.

How are you doing with your staffing and attorneys?

Not great. I think this is going to be probably one of the most challenging years the Public Defender's Office has. According to the budget word down, the state attorneys received some additional monies for their attorneys. We received substantially less. I think my attrition rate is currently about 24% and I expect that to increase. The problem that I'm really having is the mid-level attorneys. I can get some younger attorneys. They're looking for the experience, and then you have the people that are able to be supported by spouses or partners and are able to work at higher levels and stay in the field, but the mid-level attorneys can't make it, and they're falling off fast. Which is dangerous for the courts. I have one court in misdemeanor that is completely unstaffed. So if you are alleged victim in that case, court starts generally at 830. You're going to wait till a public defender, if that's who represents the defendant, can get to that courtroom because it's on rotation. We have a similar situation in felony. The habitual division is on rotation because they simply don't have enough people to adequately staff either of those divisions. And I expect to see more of that.

What's the entry level?

We pay $75,000 at entry level, and that's pretty competitive. The legislature gives us $50,000 per APD. I have 40 vacant positions right now. I had 30 a month ago. So they're dropping quick. When the news came out that the state attorneys were getting a $10,000 raise and we were getting a $3,500 raise, people start looking at the math on that and realize they can't make it. And so we're trying to... Mitigate as much as possible. The manual entry stack has been exponentially helpful, and I'd like to thank the clerk's office in BTS. They've done a really good job working with us trying to automate some of those processes so that we can, you know, effectually, you know, it's the same game anybody else plays. I have to reduce staff to increase salary for other staff members. So, you know, you have a dollar. Do you just split it four quarters or ten, ten cents? And so... What I'm finding is that the mid-level attorneys, I've got to figure out a way to give them some more money.

Yeah. Any questions for Sarah?

Just a shout out to Commissioner Shearer too, who came over to our office and we'd like to thank facilities for correcting our bathroom issue that we had for several years. Sometimes the culture in the office is really important and yeah, thank you so much. um apparently there somebody had put a mop head down the drain and looks like they tried to recover it with another mop head and so that had been an ongoing problem for years uh the commissioner came out said is anything going on i said you know it is what it is but we do have this bathroom problem and i'd just like to thank everyone who helped with that and getting that corrected. We try to at least make the culture at the office fun and positive and it's surprising how a usable bathroom uplifts spirits at the office. So thank you all for your time and your support. We really do appreciate it.

Thank you for being here this morning, Sarah. Appreciate it. Chief Judge in the house or nope, come on. Come on up, Bruce, State Attorney.

I have more bathroom stories to share with you. Good morning, everybody. I think Sean's probably caught up in traffic. There's really nothing I don't think about our budget request that's going to make you all raise your eyebrows. Basically, we had a meeting with Barry earlier in the year He asked us to keep our costs down because of the uncertainty that existed concerning the property tax reductions. We did that. Basically, our ask is about $976,490. It's under a million. We've done no life cycle replacement equipment at all. Just defrayed, put it off for another time, another day. And our driver of the costs right now are pretty much Axon and Stack. And I know they've explained Axon to you, but it's, yeah. Okay, Stack is a management system wherein our files now are all paper. They're in the process of being moved into digital form. And so we have stack three is being implemented, and BTS has been very helpful with us in getting that all programmed and synced in. And hopefully, knock on wood, real wood around here, that we will be able to have this functional before the end of the year and will be digitized. They already did it in PASCO, and you don't have paper. We do have a capital outlay of $16,000. The only one we did this year that we and that is for a scanner to digitize our files at the warehouse. As you know, you all pay for us to have a warehouse where we keep all our old files, and we're trying to move those now to digital form. Everything's going digital. But Axon is, everybody, I'm sure he's probably got a camera on right now.

He's got his camera.

And they're constantly filming when certain things are happening. And I'll give you an example. The 22nd of May, I'm sorry, May, 22nd of June, 22nd of last month, there was a police shooting up in Clearwater. It was in an area that it's unincorporated, Clearwater, so it was sheriff's office territory. A homeowner went out to her garage to take out her recycle stuff out to the street and set it out for the people to come pick it up. She was confronted by an individual in her garage who she did not know. He assaulted her, knocked her to the ground, tried to drag her back in the house. She was able to take one of the bottles that she was taking outside to do the recycle with and hit him with that in the leg and break free. And as a result, she ran next door. Got a neighbor, police came out. Two officers were at play primarily. Other officers entered, but the only two that were there. The person had gone in the house. The woman notified the officers that she had guns in the house. So when the two officers went into the house, they had a ballistic shield, one carrying it. and the other one accompanying him, and there were other people behind him, but because of the narrowness of the doorway, you couldn't really tell what was going on, and they figured that the whereabouts of this individual was in the garage. They opened the door up, and by the way, this guy had been on the job four hours. He was in training still, the guy that's the lead person, and there stands, and you see it just as plain as y'all are sitting here, and I'm looking at you. He's got that gun. He says F this, F that to the deputies, They opened up and shot him, killed him. I sent out a letter this morning to the sheriff's office justifying the shooting. So my point is, it was all captured on that. And it's kind of, as you watch it, you see them looking right there. And it's right, you know, from me to Barry. And the guy's standing there with a gun pointing it right at both those officers. And, you know, it's all captured on stack. So it's really... I mean, on Axon, and it's, there's no question about what happened. There's no, oh, so-and-so said this, or so-and-so said that. So that takes place in all our cases. Highway Patrol, they have seven cameras in their cars. So a DUI case, I mean, it's just a tremendous amount of this stuff that flows through us. And we have a 10-year contract with Axon, and it kept the cost down by doing it for 10 years, but we still incur costs every year licensing fees and stuff with STAC and with Axon. And that's one of the drivers, really, that you see in the budget that causes us problems.

On those films, how long do they keep that? You know, like...

It's their... Oh, it'll... When they come in at night, and I can't... They can probably... You can pay better than I can, but they put them into a bracket holster, and it downloads automatically, and it goes automatically to us by case number. So we can access all that kind of stuff. based on their police report. And you can see the accompanying stuff.

It's kept for however long.

I mean, it's real-time stuff. So it's not like this person said this, this person said that. You usually have your camera going, and then without question, what's going on? And that's just a perfect example of it on the police shooting. And they shot the guy, both of them, on another of their clips. So it was like 28 rounds fired, which is a lot. Given the circumstances, you can understand the fear factor that was involved by them. This kid with four hours on the job, he's in training.

It's not just for the records management on that side, but it's also for them to be able to process and look at this video rather than having to watch the whole video. They can scan and go to the key points and it saves their attorney's time, both there and the state's attorney and in the public defender's office.

Yes, Sarah's office has access to the information that we file in the case so that they have the same issue with Axon. If you didn't buy stock in Axon about two years ago, you missed the boat. I'm telling you. See? Told you. They're making a ton of money. And I know last night on the news they were talking about now their cameras will distinguish, analyze 61 different languages now. So the officers can talk to people in a different language. Other than that, there's really nothing about the budget, our request. We kind of kept everything down we could and shaved it back as much as we can.

How are you guys doing with staffing?

We're doing okay. I think I've got 10 or 11 people starting on this next class, which is down a little bit. It's always been a continuing problem because most of the lawyers run on a three-year cycle. We have a commitment. We ask that they stay for the three years. Some do stay longer. Others get farmed out to the different law firms. They're out like chickens sitting outside waiting for somebody to throw the corn out. When they see them hit the three-year mark, they give them a job and they put them in work. So we lose them when we start all over again and we train them. It's just a constant training process. And it's frustrating, it gets that way, but it's just the way it's been, nature of the beast. But we do have a lot of long-term lawyers that have been there too.

The struggles you have and you still stay positive and doing your thing for us. So thank you, appreciate everything you do. Any questions for State Attorney? Bruce, thank you. Okay. Appreciate your time.

Thank you all. Appreciate it.

Got a text in, but I haven't received a response. So if we can move on to Parks and Conservation. All right. Sounds good.

Good morning, guys. Welcome.

So good morning again, Mr. Chair. I have Diana Caro here. She is the budget analyst for the Parks and Conservation Resources Department. We have the director and deputy over here, so Paul and Spencer, welcome, thank you guys. And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Diana.

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, Commissioners. I'll be kicking off the budget presentation for the Parks and Conservation Resources Department, starting with the budget summary on page one. The department is supported primarily by the General Fund with the proposed fiscal year 27 budget of $24 million, and by the Tree Bank Fund with the proposed budget of $4.6 million. Moving on to page two, you'll find the efficiencies and cost saving measures, which outlines the steps the department has taken over the last few years to reduce costs wherever possible in order to absorb any necessary inflationary increases without increasing their budget. You'll see for fiscal year 27, the department's budget includes a total savings of 212,000. This is attributed partly to a personnel decrease of 67,000. The department was able to realize due to some recent staff retirements and the remaining 145,000 in savings are from operating efficiencies. The department identified where recurring reductions could be made without any known service level impacts, which are outlined in greater detail on the screen and in your packet. These savings build on efficiencies that were implemented in prior years, also outlined on the screen, totaling 399,000 in fiscal year 26 and 207,000 in fiscal year 25. Altogether, this represents a cumulative cost savings of 818,000 over the last three years. Moving on to page three, you'll find the budget drivers. Beginning with the general fund, fiscal year 27 revenues decreased by about 4% to 9.3 million, with a revenue recovery rate of 39%. This decrease is primarily due to continued recovery towards pre-hurricane levels. The general fund expenditure budget is decreasing by $581,000. This consists of a $67,000 decrease in personnel costs due to the projected FRS rate decreases and some retirements with no change in FTE count. a $402,000 decrease in operating costs, largely due to the completion of the one-time decision package in fiscal year 26 for sewer inspections, and a $112,000 decrease in capital outlay tied to a non-recurring planned vehicle purchase in fiscal year 26. In the tree bank fund, revenues from civil penalties are decreasing by 105,000 to 114,000 due to the changes the board approved in April to the ordinance amending chapters 138 and 166 of the land development code. The expenditure budget for this fund increases slightly by $3,000 to 297,000, which is designed to conservatively spend down what are healthy reserves, which are increasing by 742,000 to 4.3 million. Moving on to the decision packages, the department has one decision package, the elimination of the lifeguard program. If approved, this would further reduce the department's budget and provide recurring general fund savings of approximately $374,000. The department's current seasonal, which is a six month temporary lifeguard program, continues to face significant recruitment challenges, filling only 45% of the positions on average each season, which results in inconsistent beach coverage and increased risk associated with continuing operations under these conditions. This proposal retains the aquatics and safety program manager to support outreach and emergency operations. The county administrator has not made a recommendation at this time as further discussion is needed. And lastly, you'll see on the screen, there are no proposed changes to user fees in fiscal year 27. And with that, I'll turn it over to Paul and Spencer to present the remaining information.

Good morning, Commissioners. Paul Cozzi, Parks and Conservation Resources Director. Starting with the department context and considerations, we don't have any listed. Did wanna mention, though, that with our budget, Aging infrastructure is certainly an issue that we have to look at every year just because of the narrow margins of our budget. Most everything is operating expenses, so a failure of an asset can be very expensive, whether that's a restroom, pump station, things like that. As far as accomplishments, we did open Raymond Neary Park and Dansville Park this year. I got a little bit ahead of myself with High Point Park. The time that this package was put together, we expected High Point to open. It will be opening later this summer and did want to mention that High Point Park is not going to impact our operating budget. We have the tri-party agreement with the City of Largo and the school board and the City of Largo will be doing the operations and maintenance of that facility when it does open. We also developed our 2030 strategic plan to better align ourselves with the County strategic plan. The completion of the Whedon Island salt marsh is expected to improve water quality in the Tampa Bay area. Um, we also celebrate this year. We celebrate the 50th anniversary of heritage village. Uh, earlier this year, I know commissioner Scott and commissioner Eggers were at heritage village. for the historic designation of the Plant Sumner House and the House of Seven Gables. We continue to offer programs throughout this year commemorating not only the county's history, but the 250th birthday of our country. We're also continuing to launch new technology or upgraded technology solutions with the goal of increasing efficiency and reducing expenses. As far as our work plan, we are continuing with the acquisition, reaching out, searching out environmental lands as part of our penny for environmental lands fund. We are implementing a new reservation software solution And we are completing economic impact calculators for all regional parks. That's something that was designed by our state agency, Florida Recreation and Park Association. And we're performing assessments of our municipal utility services. We've looked at county provided services, and now we're looking at municipal utility services. so that we can plan for needed upgrades, replacements as they come on.

Paul, what was the total dollars we had for environmental lands for this penny, and how much is left?

We had $15 million. Right now we have roughly $6.8 million, I believe, is the number.

Left. I won't get into specifics beyond that.

Thank you.

Any questions for Paul? Yes, Commissioner Flowers.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On page 3 of 31 for the identified and removed five underutilized vehicles to reduce the vehicle replacement plan, are those vehicles put out on our list for persons to be able to bid and purchase and we can bring that money back in, or are they circulated out to another department?

We turn them into fleet, and then fleet makes the decision as to what happens, whether they go to auction or they're picked up by another department.

What vehicles were they?

Well, if there are vehicles, they're most likely light pickup trucks.

And remember, they have a lot more than just vehicles, so it could be vehicles, golf carts.

Golf carts, right, tractors.

Well, I just, because here it just says identified and removed five underutilized vehicles.

So that's separate from parks. I'm on the wrong page? No, no, no. It's part of it, but what I'm saying is the fleet department, we've asked fleet to really look at departmental usage of vehicles and get them and work with them to be more economical in the way they utilize vehicles. Maybe they share vehicles. So that's part of their effort to streamline our overall fleet operations.

Well, I'm not opposed to that. I'm just trying to figure out, because the dollar amount it says that it will reduce the budget is about $25,000. I'm just trying to figure out what vehicles, and if perhaps it would be more than if they're being auctioned, perhaps it will be more than the 25,000 for savings in your department. So that's why I was asking the question.

And certainly I can get you the exact vehicles. As far as turning them in, we get a reduction in the O&M cost, fuel cost. When they go to auction, that money doesn't come back to the department.

Go ahead, Chris. Talk about the sinking fund in fleet.

So we definitely have a sinking fund in fleet where any vehicle that we sell at auction goes back into that fund for purchasing and the other funds, the enterprise funds, are separate. What you're reading, Commissioner, at the top of page three is one of the savings that the Parks Department did in fiscal year 25. I'm sorry. So it's not a next year or current year thing. It is something they've already done to cause savings going forward.

Mm-hmm. Well, thank you, because I didn't see. Maybe I got my pages mixed up so that where it says it was 2025. There's a page break. I apologize, but that's why I asked the question.

Yes, ma'am. But it's a pertinent point, because we have two things going on there. They're trying to work with departments to... help them be more efficient reduce the number of vehicles and equipment and better share and pool and things like that we also have a fleet study that we're waiting on that may find other ways in which we can be more efficient with our fleet operations and then my other question or just a comment i guess we have had a very robust discussion about um lifeguards

I know that we have, and we want to make sure that our tourists are safe, our residents are safe. If something happens, that there's someone out there that can respond quickly, because we have seen where someone is in trouble, a person who's just observing it has gone out to try to rescue. They have lost their life, and perhaps they were able to save the person who was in distress. So, and we all admit because we know we have had problems recruiting, you know, we've tried different ways and teams don't ask for these jobs like how they used to back in the day when it was a coveted position to be a lifeguard. And it does say here that there's no recommendation. There'll be further conversation. I'll be very interested in that conversation because, you know, no one wants negative press in the paper, but we can't control riptides and things like that that occur. You know, things like that happen, but it's always good when you can have a lifeguard present. But I also understand the other side, which is if we have intermittent lifeguards, that's an issue because we've provided some information service, but not full service. So if you provide no service, then what does that cost? So I look forward to the additional conversation on that and see what we can do.

And commissioners, this is a big deal. We've talked about it for at least five years. It's an ongoing issue. 45% of the time you go out there, there's not a guard anyway. If you go south of Sand Key, you go down through Indian Rocks Beach, Madeira Beach, St. Pete Beach, there's no guards anywhere. You know, the municipalities could do that. They choose not to do that, and it becomes a cost issue. And now today it's a recruiting issue. So we have an issue. We cannot recruit for Fort DeSoto. That's even more difficult. And so we've got to do something. And so we've had these discussions. We're going to have more discussions. We're going to bring back a recommendation in August. But, you know, status quo isn't working. And so we need to think about that.

And I stand corrected. I flipped the page over and it clearly said fiscal year 2025. So I had already marked that as a question. So thank you so much for correcting me on that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Yeah, Commissioner Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good to see you both this morning. So on the lifeguards, it looks like we have 14 or 15 vacancies right now. That's huge.

That's correct.

Yeah, I mean. I could. You look at that, and it's almost like why bother, really. I mean, if we're having that much trouble filling them, it's really almost a why bother situation. So that's my comment on that. I mean, where are we on the master plan for the cultural park in that area, the old space where Creative Pinellas was and all that? Where does that situation stand?

Good morning, Commissioners. We are currently moving forward on the planning stages for utilizing the office space. Our historic museum manager for Heritage Village has already started working on with communications to develop some COMMUNITY INPUT ON THE GALLERY SPACE AND PUTTING IN DISPLAYS FOR THE GALLERY SPACE. SO THAT WILL BE OCCURRING THIS SUMMER. WE'RE WORKING WITH CPM TO IDENTIFY ISSUES OR ANYTHING THAT MIGHT BE GOING ON WITH THOSE BUILDINGS AND RESPONSIBILITIES FOR THOSE BUILDINGS AS WE MOVE FORWARD. AND THEN I BELIEVE WE HAVE AN OCTOBER WORKSHOP TO GIVE YOU A FULL UPDATE ON ALL THE STEPS THAT WE'RE TAKING THAT WE'VE ACCOMPLISHED AND THEN WHAT OUR PLANS ARE FOR THE FUTURE. WE'RE MOVING.

Commissioner Nowicki.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Paul. Great presentation and good team. Good job. Could you talk a little bit more about the swift mud in Sawgrass Lake Park if we were going to eliminate that and shift the ... What's the conversations there? What's our responsibility to actually do that?

The department manages, maintains several state-owned lands, swift mud or the Internal Improvement Trust Fund. We get a small measure from, for instance, when we look at Lake Sawgrass Park, we get about 2.5% of the operating budget back from SWIFTMUD. We spend a little over $400,000 a year to staff and maintain that facility. And we get a subsidy from SWIFTMUD of about $10,900, I think it is, is the max that we can request back for the maintenance and operations of that facility. We have, of course, Shell Key Preserve. Some of that is county-owned land. A big percentage of it, of the Shell Key itself, is state land. We have a management plan. We don't receive any funding assistance from the state to maintain that. We have acres and acres of Brooker Creek Preserve that are Also state properties, SWIFTMUD pays us up to $75,000 a year for reimbursables, deals mostly with invasive management or invasive plant removal, those types of things. So we spend a lot of money for property that we don't own. So that's really what the issue is.

It also includes Wheaton Island falls into that category. They have total of about $926,000 that are unreimbursable for things that we manage for state lands that are, that we do. So, I mean, but how can we get more money back or just not mean, or give them the keys? Yeah. You know, I mean, that's probably the discussion. If we need to have that come fall, then we'll have to have that. Okay, thank you.

Any other, yeah, Commissioner Shearer. Yes, thanks for coming in, Paul. Thank you for the presentation. I had a question for you on page, your numbers on page four. The visitors, total visitors seems to jump around a lot, 25 million in 24, 12 million in 25, but you're projecting a five million visitor decrease in 27 And then, of course, that translates into a $1.8 million decrease in revenues for visitors, users' fees. What would cause a $5 million decrease? I mean, $5 million visitor decrease like that.

Right, so we always, we look at past, you know, we're recovering from the hurricanes which deeply affected the FY25 numbers. We're still, working on things like the war veterans and fort de soto boat ramps until those are finished that's going to decrease attendance but what we forecast and what we see in reality We're usually under only because we're trying to be conservative in our numbers. But we look at long term, we're somewhere around 18, 19 million for annual visitation. So a lot of it is going to depend on how many rainy weekends there are at Fort DeSoto, Sand Key, Fred Howard Park. Those are the major drivers of attendance.

Okay. And Barry, or maybe somebody could tell me, the revenues that are generated from user fees, that goes to the general fund? All right. Thank you.

Any other questions? Yeah. Commissioner Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chair. What are the current, I think the only park we have an entrance fee for is Fort DeSoto, correct?

For an entrance fee, yes. We have facilities that have parking fees. And even Fort DeSoto was no longer, it is a parking fee. We use Park Mobile and Flow Bird. So we no longer have to staff anything.

So it's just the parking fee. Is our parking fee consistent in all of our parks the same fee?

Yes.

Okay. Do you know what that is?

$6 a day for our beach parks, $6 a day for our boat ramps.

Municipal parking lots are a little different because it's a combination of managed with the cities. Some of the cities set that and we get half the revenue.

Those are hourly.

They're probably more than $6 an hour. They're more than $6 a day. It's more like $4.50 an hour at them now.

Thanks. Any other questions? Paul, just a couple things. On the lifeguard, I'm assuming we are looking at other programs that have been successful or are successful and we just can't seem to match it? Or is it salaries? I'm assuming Clearwater still does their thing, so I was just trying to get a sense of the difficulty in comparison.

Clearwater is a year-round program, so they don't have the issues that we have. They're also public safety employees, makes a difference as well. The seasonal lifeguard issue is not a Pinellas County issue. It's a statewide issue. I don't know if it was Sarasota County or one of the counties south of us that they actually weren't going to be offering lifeguards except for one of their beach parks because they couldn't recruit lifeguards as well for the summer season.

Yeah.

Yeah, the inconsistency almost becomes more of a problem than...

Right. If you're expecting to go to the beach because you think there's going to be lifeguards, but we can't fill those slots, there won't be a lifeguard there.

And I think you have educational things out there on the beach as far as riptides and how to respond if you get caught.

Yes, we have our flags, and we also post when there's no lifeguard on duty that there's no lifeguard on duty.

But is there something out there on riptide how to... Yes. Okay. Just like I always bring up every year, trail functionality. I get more and more calls about the change that we did several years ago, sticking to the right. And it's been more because of increasing number of motorized, whether it's bikes or anything else. And so at some point I just like to have that kind of conversation and see how things are going. I know some areas it's just a disaster In some areas, it works really well. So the more crowded it is, the harder it is to do the switch that we've done. It's just becoming a problem with, again, people that are walking next to people that are flying by, and they're not always just going 15 or 20 anymore. There's a lot of those issues. So to me, that's still a problem. And I don't know how we're going to address it. And I really don't know kind of what the residents want. I mean, I'd love to get a survey and see, do you like to stick to the right mentality or do you like it so that you keep the faster folks to one side and the slower folks to the other? I hate to just have... 25 mile an hour bikes going down and somebody in a wheelchair trying to just walk their, you know, somebody side by side. So that's, to me, it's still an issue, but.

But Commissioner, you know, and you're going to address that. You asked us to look at this issue. WIT is, staff's going to be preparing a white paper regarding it. Talks about the limitations. Talks about, again, state mandating that you can't restrict these e-bikes and all of that. And then there is a statewide committee looking at this also. So there's a couple of things going on, but we're gonna look, and I know Commissioner Scott proposed some other ordinances that are out there. They're looking at those. And so they'll be bringing all those back to you for a discussion. To a meeting, to a workshop? To here, yes, for a workshop.

All right. And then my new favorite thing is a pool in the park for our dogs. And I'm still talking to Barry about it, still trying to break you down. Again, I certainly understood all that you guys have said about it. Like I said, I always wanted to find a path to making it happen and what it would look like as opposed to all the reasons we shouldn't do it because they've been doing it for 20 years. It's like all of a sudden, it's a no-go. I know that there are some residents who like it separate too, so there might be a path. So I'm just again saying, what's the path that would look like to making it doable? And a trial basis in the park and up there in East Lake. That's all I had. Mr.

Chair, would you be amenable to a splash pad for dogs instead of if they won't do a pool?

You know, I'm just listening to the residents who've been doing it for years, and they've got just a little pool, but a splash pad, I don't know, whatever.

That's a little less expensive. They have them both.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's talking a plastic pool that you buy at, you know, five below. I was talking about a real, you know, like a splash pad. Splash pads get into a whole other budget issue. I thought when he said pool, I thought he was.

No, these are just little plastic pools people bring, and they're on a platform with water. And then when they're done, they dump the water, and they go on. And there's some issues that they've brought up. It's not quite as simple as that, as simple as I wanted to make it. But nonetheless, you know, saying, hey, let's have a pass forward.

I was giving you a step up, a whole bunch of steps up. No, I wasn't going big. Go for a lazy river.

I was giving them a whole... Everybody's shaking in their boots right now. No, this is, this is, yes.

Okay, all right. And if I could give you all something to think about as far as your discussion on lifeguards go. On what? On lifeguards, when this comes up. Two different issues here, public safety versus liability. Once you put lifeguards on the beach, you have taken on a duty to your residents and a liability. If you don't have them there, you have zero liability. So again, very different, the public safety versus the liability issue.

And that gets to the point that they brought up. So they're expecting them to be there and they're not.

And if we're already having a hard time having them filled, if we have a program, we're taking on liability by establishing a lifeguard program. So, you know, again, the public safety and the liability are two very different, you know, issues here. But if we're having the problem and we're having budgetary issues, it might be a consideration for you all to consider. But Florida case law does support no lifeguard, no duty. Yeah.

We kind of know where the direction we're heading on that one, but anybody else? Okay. Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Commissioners.

So, Commissioners, construction and property management is on the way up. Judge Crane, I did reach him. He did not have this on his calendar, so we had a coordination snafu, but he is on his way. So hopefully he'll be here before we're done.

Welcome. Good morning.

So good morning, Mr. Chair. We do have Bill Greer and Christy Carpenter at the table over there, and we have Jasmine Preppity. This is her first presentation, so please welcome her. She is the budget analyst for construction and property management, and I'm going to give her just another minute to get settled, and we'll get underway.

Sounds good, and welcome. Good to have you here this morning.

All right, Jasmine, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, commissioners.

We'll get that real close so we can hear you.

Good morning, commissioners.

Good morning.

Thank you for the opportunity to present today. And I'll be presenting CPM starting with the department purpose on page one. You will also see a financial overview table for CPM where $46.5 million is requested in FY27. We'll review the budget drivers in more detail later on. Also on page one and directly underneath the budget table, there are some efficiencies and cost savings measures listed. For example, for FY27, CPM avoided $390,000 in contract costs by consolidating legacy contracts in order to streamline service delivery. And in FY26, CPM saved $5.5 million. by using roof renewal coating instead of outright roof replacements. This strategy elongates the lifespan of a roof by 15 years and can also be redone. Turning to page two, you'll find the budget drivers section. About a third of the way down the page, CPM is a general fund department whose FY27 request is 46.5 million and that's a $1 million reduction from FY26 adopted level. Overall personal services increases by 270,000 while the operating budget decreases 1.3 million. The $270,000 increase in personal services is because CPM is actively hiring, so their personal attrition lapse savings is lower than in FY26. Staffing levels remain flat at 115 FTE. For the operating expense decrease of 1.3 million, there are a couple three factors. The first one is a million dollar reduction of one-time funding for roofs, flooring, and other projects that was approved as part of an FY26 decision package. Additionally, there's a $602,000 reduction for recurring facilities projects. And the repairs and maintenance decreases that I've just mentioned are partially offset by a $366,000 increase to utilities based on current spending. CPM is strengthening project management and asset forecasting processes to identify capital outlay earlier and to properly budget it for the future. Now moving on to the decision packages at the bottom of page 2, there are three decision packages for FY27. The first package requests $274,000 for FDEP mandated soils and groundwater remediation. This would fund five new sites and these would be recurring or ongoing projects. The county administrator does not have a preliminary recommendation for this.

Well, actually, we've since met on this, and these are ongoing projects that we pretty much have to do. So it will be included in my budget recommendation.

Okay. The second, now shifting to the top of page three. The second decision package is lease requirements. CPM relies on leased properties to house the departments. Most leases have a automatic or annual inflationary increase that's built into the rental payments. And for FY27, that's about $405,000. The county administrator recommends funding this request. The third and final package is for janitorial requirements. CPM requests 2.1 million in recurring funds for a janitorial contract. The current contract expires at the end of FY26, so the amount that is being requested is based on preliminary information from proposals that have been received for the next contract. And the county administrator also recommends this decision package. That concludes the decision packages. So now we'll transition to summary of proposed changes to user fees, which is also on page three. There is a user fee charge for the rental of the gallery at Pinewood Cultural Park. CPM maintains the facility, but proposes to transfer the fee and the function to the parks department who can manage the rental within their existing fee structure. Also on page three, the CIP budget drivers. Yeah. Also on page three, the CIP budget drivers can be found. As part of the general fund, CIP budget drivers will be discussed at tomorrow's BIS meeting. And with that, I will turn it over to Director Bill Greer for more context on development of the budget.

Thank you, Jasmine. Good morning, Chairman, Commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to present CPM's FY27 budget. I did ask Chris beforehand if I could amend our BIS report to say that we are helping with retention of public defenders, and he said no. Good job, Christy. But if we can't do that, I just want you all to know we are supporting the puppies at Animal Services. So if that gets us any bonus points, I appreciate it. Glad to hear. Thank you. While CPM is still a relatively new department, we have made significant progress in the last 12 months since presenting our first budget to you last year. Our focus since formation has been introducing greater discipline, visibility and accountability in how we manage county assets and resources without repeating the bis document too much i'd like to just share three updates with you today one is an update on our progress and controls secondly what our continuing budget philosophy is and thirdly one item for strategic context for your consideration Regarding progress and controls over the past year, CPM's progress and emphasis has been on establishing stronger management controls, shifting CPM from a reactive response posture toward well-planned stewardship of county assets. Specifically, our service levels and customer satisfaction have greatly improved Through routine customer communication cycles and campaigns, we've increased frequency of engagement with all of our customers, which has improved relationships and trust with a continued focus on balancing service levels and establishing meaningful service standards, which gets after one of the mandates that Barry had for me. Project governance and project management reforms in this area remain a major focus for CPM. We conducted a project management assessment for our construction projects this year, and we're slowly evolving the development of a project management office to strengthen collective governance of projects and oversight processes, ultimately to gain more cost effectiveness. Cost avoidance commissioners. It was just a couple of months ago that we came to you for approval of the guaranteed maximum price for the North County Service Center. Just before your approval, we carefully conducted an in depth engineering review of the final design program. We did that in close coordination with the clerk, the property appraiser, and the tax collector and their staffs. Out of a review of $8.5 million in targeted program areas, together we collectively found $4 million in opportunities to avoid costs. without sacrificing capabilities intended by the build. CPM then negotiated another $2 million in savings in the final GMP. Through these examples and some other project management improvements, we've collectively avoided approximately $7.8 million in capital costs without sacrificing quality or function. Budget philosophy, a key principle guiding our budget is increasing visibility and trade-offs. We're improving budget transparency to better identify true growth requirements rather than absorbing needs invisibly within existing accounts. Whereas historically, new requirements were absorbed without clearly identifying what planned work or long-term investments we would risk making a unilateral decision of deferring. That malaise rarely eliminates costs, but shifts costs forward, increasing risk for the operation and financial surprises, which our goal is to reduce. We are fixing that and continue to build structured frameworks in CPM to differentiate those trade-offs. specifically in asset preservation versus enhancements or nice-to-haves. So it's really critical that we're prioritizing and distinguishing those differences. Finally, for strategic context, I'd like to share with you that we are advancing predictive capital planning through comprehensive facility condition assessments. With regard to shaping the next penny, CPM is going to be an important stakeholder at the table with better information for the county administrator for capital budget decisioning. CPM is making significant progress with a continued and predictive approach, exercising countywide facility asset and office space condition assessments. One of those areas will be assessing the 1 million square feet of lease space the county manages. As I shared last year, we continue to close the sizable gap of incomplete condition statuses for facility components. These ongoing assessments are arming us with forward leaning data that will directly inform capital budget needs for our facilities in a way Pinellas County has not done previously. Those assessments give us the best basis for understanding not only when the assets are approaching end of life, but more importantly, a timely estimate for administration so we're not inflating expected requirements against the limited budget. And lastly, when we should anticipate programming those funds with a higher level of confidence. Given the next penny is upon us, shaping that operational picture is going to be critical. The more we close this knowledge gap, the better we get discerning where and when and what capital will be needed in years in advance. In closing, my overall vision for our department is to continually provide you and our senior leadership with an increasingly accurate and actionable picture of facility conditions and standards, empowering more informed property management choices. for the county, especially as we approach the next penny. Our FY27 budget reflects an effort to balance fiscal restraint with responsible stewardship of 4 million square feet of buildings that we own and a million square feet of leased facilities. Our objective is not spending more, it is improving predictability. preserving asset value, and reducing reactive failures, while protecting service continuity for residents and employees as the place where they work. We recognize there remains significant work ahead, but I believe the team in CPM is moving toward a more disciplined, transparent, measurable, and sustainable operating model. I appreciate your consideration this morning, and Christie and I welcome your questions.

Well, that's great stuff. I like the budget philosophy, strategic context that you brought up. That's a breath of fresh air. Really appreciate that. You said 4 million square feet and 1 million square feet. What were those numbers for? I'm sorry. 4 million. That's what we own. 4 million is what we own.

That's correct. And 1 million is what we lease. What we lease. And some of that is owned also, but they're under leases. We did a review of those leases for you this year, too. So that was part of one of our in-depth audits.

With that $405,000 you're asking for, is that the escalator for the year?

Yes, that's the annual escalation. And it looked, right, $405,000. For a million square feet that we rent. Yes. Yes. That's just a standard in the lease. That's standard built into those leases.

And they did a review of all of our leases this year, and they actually worked with a consultant to help us kind of get a framework around how we manage leases. And if the rates are competitive with market? How do we review that? How do we review when they make a request? the entire process of managing leases.

Almost a year before they're up, we need to look at those properties so that they can do a little quick peek out there and see. You don't want to move for the sake of moving, but if somebody's taking advantage of you, then we need to...

find a new spot we're trying to position the information so that barry can can see where we may need to make some moves where there's some cost benefit adjustments but that has never before been done so it's new information which is helpful

Last question. Talk to me about this roof renewal thing. I mean, that was fascinating to hear about the extension of a roof for 15 years by coating versus replacing.

Well, I don't want to take credit for it. Christie's team has been instrumental in building new partnerships with our community vendors, and one of those vendors found a warrantied product that if applied, once we do core testing on the roofs and the roof qualifies, the manufacturer comes out, they certify the roof, the product is put on the roof, and we get a 15-year warranty on that roof, which saves 80% of the replacement cost.

That's good stuff.

I mean, it's been millions in savings in the capital budget. We have to pay for it out of operational, but we're getting a huge savings in the long run. Great job. I love that. That's good stuff.

Thank you. Any other questions?

Commissioners, before Bill leaves, I really want him to touch on the janitorial contract. This is a big deal, and it's a lot of cost. we you know i appreciate him and his team went through and looked at options and alternatives but we have a we have a problem with the current um agreement and to re-bid this they're looking at options so i just want him to touch on that what he can put out publicly regarding this process because that'll be part of the budget decisions we have to make come august and that one contract is for all of our yes sir yeah and we have they have a lot of complaints under their existing contract and there's a lot of reasons why i don't know how much he wants to go into detail but depending on the properties that we have right i mean forget how they're performing for a minute but we have different standards for each type of property that we own

Yes, and we're continuing to vary those. We're working with Barry to set service standards at levels based on facility type. Yes. Then they have to deliver, and that's a different story. Then they have to deliver. And the contract we're currently under was awarded just before I got here. It was kind of underway. It was a low bidder model. That low bidder model actually produced a bidder that was 50% of the value of all the average of the other bidders. There were 15 other bidders, and the average of their bids are winner. gave a price 50% of that value, we're getting we're getting what we paid for. And it's, it's been felt significantly with Christie staff has had to fill those gaps. So we're diverting labor. We're also dealing with a lot of complaints with our customers, which, you know, is is not a good look, you know, it's not always in the it's not always in the

specifications that we require or that they say they'll do. It's the character and ethics of the company performing to what they said they were going to do.

In the bid specifications, we've got to do a better job with this. We've got to look at what the company's paying, and the way in which they're structured with their employees, and there's a lot of things that go into that quality piece. And I just learned this through Bill's and Christy's analysis here. But that's a big part of the issue. The problem is we saved money. Well, now we've got to come up with money. And $2 million in this year, as you saw at the budget, you know, it's not the right time. But it's something that we're going to have to deal with.

to be aware of this bid because it's just it's not a normal escalation called escalation so the current annual number is how much for approximately two million two million increase and well he said the current contract and then the increase is two two million the increase is two million for a new contract and new that's correct and that's more in line with what we got

when we went out for bid last time. Yes, and what Barry touched on regarding how we do contracts, we completely re-engineered this to be a request for proposal with significant teeth for compliance and surveillance and accountability. So we now have a tool because of a better contract that is going to increase the probability that we're going to get very good service. But they went back and looked at

five different options, insourcing it, outsourcing it, a hybrid. They looked at different ways of managing this. So this still comes in best. And they've got other ideas of how to manage it going forward. But since it was just such a big number, I wanted him to touch on it while I was here.

And we'll be talking about this one July, August discussion.

This will be part of my budget recommendation in August, yeah.

Okay, any other questions?

Well, thank you all. Appreciate the approach. Appreciate that catch on the roof. That's great stuff. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you. Appreciate it.

All right. I think we have a chief judge here. Hey. Blame me. I don't know why the miscommunication, but we appreciate him dropping what he had and coming up.

No, thank you very much. Well, welcome Chief, Chief Judge. Good to see you. I think this is where I start by apologizing for not wearing a tie, so. I feel better already. Thank you. I feel better already. It's that whole court thing, that's how that works. But I appreciate the opportunity to be here once again. I just want to extend my thanks, my overall thanks to the board really for the support and everything that you've given the courts over the years and consistently give the courts. We have and we've had certainly extensive conversations with Barry and his team, and we understand the importance of being good stewards of the taxpayers' money. We have come in with our budget this year, which is actually a decrease of 3.9%, and as you can kind of see in this summary, and that is kind of across the board in various sundry subject matters that we handle. We've tried once again to be as flat as possible, and in this case, even a little bit having somewhat of a decrease. We are fortunate enough to have part of what we did in working with the county. And once again, I appreciate the close work we do with the county IT people and BTS. We've actually taken a position from BTS, moved that over to the court system where they will help us maintain our JAWS system. Our JAWS system is the judicial system application where we assign over 100,000 orders a year. We do that electronically, and as you can imagine, the efficiency that saves for the clerk and everyone involved. Reduce the amount of paperwork flow through any number of offices, through the state attorney's office, the public defender's office, the clerk's office by 100,000. You can imagine the The efficiency that adds to it. But this person will be able to come over, help us with JAWS, and also just help us with our CAP standards. And CAP standards is really the standards put forth by the Supreme Court several years ago. And basically it is an effort by the Supreme Court of Florida to move everybody forward with technology and recognizing that technology is kind of the future for all of us. So it's an important part of what we do. And this developer is really gonna be able to help us with that, help us react critically when need be. The court will now take over maintenance support for JAWS and be able to test the systems and be able to make sure that it continues to be secure and viable and have good efficacy as we move forward. So that has been a huge, I think, benefit and a really collaborative working agreement between the county. and, uh, and BTS and the, and the court system. And it really, I think shows that, uh, we understand our mission. We understand that we are here to serve the public, that we are here to serve the public in the most appropriate and efficient manner. And, uh, And I think that's a great requirement. As we move through, I can tell you, kind of as an aside, our programs, our teen court programs, our community outreach programs that we do, our juvenile alternatives, the things we do with our guardianship program to help those that are with the monitor and everything that we have. an opportunity to make sure that we're best serving those that are ill-equipped to serve themselves and those that are in a position in life where they need protection and they need the court to intervene. And this gives us the opportunity, once again, to do that. The juvenile behavior evaluation part of it is we, once again, this is part of our unified family court. The idea is we have one court handling a family's entire judicial involvement, if you will. And that is a critical part of what we do. It helps us direct families to appropriate resources to hopefully keep them out of the system and move them out and through the system. So we're doing I think a good job with regard to that as well. We have the support for, once again, drug court, our treatment courts, our mental health court. We are always looking to do better, to always increase our involvement there, to always try to do our best to move people from the county jail. We work really on almost a daily basis with the, or I should say we do work on a daily basis with with the sheriff's office to try to move people out of the jail, save some money for the taxpayers, move them into a program, get them into a diversion program. And at the end of the day, hopefully help those folks be reunified with their family or reconnect with their family to move forward in a productive way, to be reemployed and really do the things that are kind of expected of them, not only by the community as a whole, but by their family and by that very nuclear problem nuclear part of that family. And we're always looking to improve those programs. As many of you, I think, already know, I'm on the steering committee for all the treatment courts in the state of Florida. I've been fortunate enough to be appointed the chairperson of a committee that's reviewing all the best practices of all the treatment courts in the state of Florida. And that committee has elected state attorney, public defenders, the secretary of the department of children and family. I mean, it's a fairly robust committee. professionals from the field, a fairly robust committee. And once again, we're always trying to improve locally, but also statewide as well to help those folks in need. We are experiencing this. I'm sure everybody here, candidly, is experiencing with AI. We are experiencing a lot of pro se letters, filings. What used to be a three-page pro se request motion is now a 56-page AI-generated request or motion request. So it's taking up a lot of our time, our court counsel and our court people. We're certainly not going to be dismissive of those. We certainly understand the importance to let everybody have their opportunity to be heard in court, whether you're represented or not. But it really, the length of time, and I can tell you this is actually a statewide issue, the length of time it takes now, you know, the difference in reviewing what used to be a three-page document, and I'm sure the county attorney's office has seen it as well, is now, like I said, a 50-page document. We still have to go through it, and obviously the time constraints. But with the help of this board, you know, we're able to do our best with the staff that we have and maintaining that staff. to just put in the extra effort and go through all of those the best we can with the court as well. We're still maintaining our law library. There's discussions about where that's going to go, where that's going to be, and what that structure is going to look like once the move is made. But other than that, that's pretty much kind of where we are. I'm certainly open to answer any questions I can. And once again, I apologize for... the little miscommunication within my office and being a little late, tireless today, so. I appreciate that.

It's good to have you and switching your program around today to be here, so thank you for that. Yeah, you said something about the law library, and I sit on that board as the representative of this commission, but... seems to be some concerns with the group about and it's not like it's going over there the name of the library is going to move over there uh just more about the size of the the transition from what we have now to what's there so i i mean i'm sure you're hearing that a little bit from those folks as i do at our monthly meeting but i just want to make sure that those issues are being addressed

Well, I think they are. I think what we're recognizing, too, to some degree is kind of how the law is evolving. I mean, back in the day, you know, well, I guess I'll show how old I am. I used to go pull a book out, and then when I would find a case, I would go to We used to call it shepherds back in the old days. And I'd go to all these little, I see our county attorney smiling. You'd go find these little paper like books. I guess that's the best way to describe like little books to see if that's even a good case. And, you know, you had to have all these books and all these papers and everything just to see if you're citing a case that's current and not been overruled or whatever. And nowadays... It's right in front of you. It's right there. So really, the way in which people research, the way in which people go through their cases, whether you're a lawyer or a pro se person, is really quite different than it used to be. And I love the grandeur of the library. I love the look with all the books and everything. But the reality is, I think, and what we've done when we've talked about the design of it is we recognize kind of where we are now and candidly where we're going in the future. as far as legal research and how we can make that available to the public and still maintain their access to that, but also understanding the days are kind of gone where we're pulling books off shelves and that sort of thing.

Yeah, transition time. Well, I know they were concerned, and I know you're...

Understandably so. I really appreciate their... And, you know, anytime you make a change and you're reducing as much as we are, I certainly understand their concern. It's something that we've addressed, and it's really been... And Judge Freeman is on that committee, as you're well aware. He used to be Judge Jaraq, and now Judge Freeman. And we've had discussions there as well to kind of pass along that information. I know Blaine has actually met and been with those folks over there as well. So you're the county as well as the court system, I think, are doing our best to be responsive to those concerns. Okay.

Well, as long as the Chief Judge is happy with where we're going, I'm good. I just want to make sure that we're making those conversations. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Any questions for the Chief Judge?

Yes, ma'am.

Good morning. Good morning. Thank you so much for coming over today. Just to share, and I concur with all of your conversations regarding the library. I did share with staff when I had my one-on-one call You know, it's a special place for me with Attorney Fred G. Minnis and the bus statue that's out there and signifying why, as well as with the Fred G. Minnis Attorney Association. And so I did ask, you know, I would love to have that bus and that plaque. transported over to the new facility and placed on the grounds, and that shouldn't be too much of a hard time, but I do appreciate the continued conversation about what we would do and how we would treat it because it, you know, first of all, I really appreciated my colleagues in supporting the effort to do that because of the statuesque presence that he had in civil rights and the court cases that he fought and won. But just also to make sure that it remains a part of the history. So just sharing with you all that I share your same concerns. I share some of your same thoughts. Everything basically is moving to digital to look up. It's so quick and easy. And then I want to thank staff for hearing my concerns and requests and consideration as it relates to what we do to continue to honor that space.

Well, I think your point is very well taken. I mean, his contribution to our community is really measurable, and I think we, and it has never been a thought, I can tell you, at any point in time, during any discussion we've had with the county, internally within ourselves, that that would ever disappear, that that would that that is a critical part of what we need to maintain. And because it is a critical part of our community. And that is something that we need to continue to recognize. I mean, and literally continue to recognize every day the importance of his work. And I think certainly the library and the association with the library, all that needs to remain. All that needs to stay. And we are... I've never heard a conversation and never been part of a conversation where anybody even suggested anything but that. And everybody uniformly recognizes the importance of that. And, you know, we're going to continue to do that and be vigilant.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Good to see you again.

Commissioner, Blaine and I even met with the Bar Association a few weeks ago.

Thank you. Yeah. That's why I just wanted to publicly thank you all for, you know, having that conversation.

And that group that we meet every month has also stated that. I mean, that's got to be. And it can't be like an afterthought. It has to be properly set so that it looks like it's supposed to look and be the way it's supposed to be. Sure. But anyway, appreciate your comments. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you all.

Okay. Anything else for the Chief Judge? Well, thank you again for rearranging your schedule and being here. No problem whatsoever. It's good to see you.

I appreciate the fact that I'm okay without a tie, though. I like this. This is good. This is good. I feel a bit more. Of all things, I was very, very nervous about that. Normally, I have a throw-down tie. I hate to say it, but I'm looking for it. I'm like, where's my tie?

Last year, I think I texted you and said, where's the tie? That's right. You did. I did because, you know, courts, they always wear ties. That's right. Yeah.

But I thank you all, really. And, you know, you all know me, I think, well enough by now to know this is really sincere. I appreciate the work that you all do with us, and I appreciate the fact that you understand and appreciate kind of what the courts do, how they do it, and our... the importance of us working all together collaboratively to make sure we serve our citizens here in the best possible way. So I really appreciate that. So thank you all very much for that. Thank you for that comment. All right. And remember, I'm not hard to find. If any of you ever have a question, by all means, reach out and I'll be available.

Thank you. Appreciate you being here. All right. Safety and emergency services are up.

So good morning again, commissioners. We have John Androvick next to me. John's been here a couple times already. In fact, he is the budget analyst also for the chief judge, public defender, and state attorney, as well as safety and emergency services. We have Dave Hare, director, and Jody Sessler, let's see, division director of finance and administration over there. So with that, John, the floor is yours.

All right, good morning. We're gonna start on page three with the budget drivers. SCS is supported by four funds, the General Fund, Emergency Medical Services Fund, Intergovernmental Radio Communications Program Fund, and the Emergency Communications E911 System Fund. For the General Fund, the revenues are supported by the tower space leases rent, and it is increasing $3,000 to 140,000. For the expenditures, the overall general fund is decreasing $812,000 to 5.4 million. Personnel services is increasing almost 700,000 to 2.1 million, and this is due to reallocation of positions. Operating expenses are decreasing 171,000 to 2.9 million, and this is due to reductions in professional services and communication services. Capital outlay is increasing 38,000, to $355,000, and this is due to changes in the one-time capital items for FY27. On page four, we're going to Emergency Medical Services Fund. The Emergency Medical Services Fund is supported by the collection of ad valorem revenues and also the ambulance service fees. Revenues for ad valorem taxes are increasing $1.9 million to $104.8 million at the current millage rate of .08, I'm sorry, .8050. Revenues from the various ambulance service fees are increasing 2.4 million to approximately 106 million. Excluding reserves, the EMS budget is decreasing $567,000 to 220 million. If you include the reserves, the budget is increasing 24.8 million to $343 million. Operating expenses are decreasing 5 million to 110.6 million. Machinery and equipment is decreasing about 1.6 million to 1.2 million due to one-time purchases for the traffic preemption phase two that was in FY26. The aid to government agencies is increasing 6.1 million to 98.3 million, and this is due to increases in the first responders agency funding agreements. For the AMS reserves, it maintains a total reserves of $122 million, which is an increase of $25 million. According to the ordinance, the ordinance 11-52 states the reserve level should be at or above 25% of the expenditures. And they do have 25% expenditure, or 25% reserves in the forecasted years, fifth year out. For Intergovernmental Radio Communications Program Fund, on the bottom of page four, top of page five, Revenues are supported by the collection of moving violation surcharges and the general fund transfer. Revenues from the collection of the moving violation surcharges is decreasing 62,000 to 507,000 for the year. And the general fund transfer is decreasing by 306,000 to 423,000 for the year. The FY27 budget for the expenditures excluding reserves remains flat at approximately 1.1 million. If you include the reserves, it is decreasing $4,000 for FY27. For the emergency communications E911 system fund on the page five, it is supported by the state revenue sharing E911 fees, the E911 core service grant, and a transfer from the general fund. Revenues from the state revenue sharing fees increasing $122,000 to $5.2 million. And the transfer from the general fund is decreasing by $1.5 million to $11.9 million. The fund excluding the reserves is increasing $775,000 to approximately $20.2 million. If you include the reserves, the FY27 budget is increasing by approximately $1.37 million to $21.8 million. Operating expenses are decreasing by $14,000. Onto the decision packages on page five and six. There's four decision packages. The first one has been recommended by the county administrator, and this is for a contract for the Motorola system manager. It is general fund funded. It's $90,000 recurring. And the purpose of this request is to secure a dedicated Motorola system manager resources by contract to oversee and manage the Pinellas County Motorola radio system. The next three decision packages are not recommended by the county administrator. The first one is the replacement of the legacy computer aided dispatch, which is the CAD system. This is a split of a million dollars for the general funds. This is 250,000 and emergency medical services of 750,000. And then it goes on in future years as recurring costs. The next one is the R911 Creston digital media system replacement. This is in the emergency communications E911 fund of 172,900. This is for the backend of the audio visual displays that are used in the 911 center. And this is enhancing situational awareness and operations. The system is past its useful life and is no longer reliable or maintained. The third one is the county specialty team fleet replacement 10 year plan. This would be a general fund 584,700 for FY27. And it's currently specialized team fleet for hazmat and the technical rescue response with appropriate response vehicles and a standardized vehicle type and service life. So those last three are not being recommended by the county administrator. Onto page six with the user fees. SES is requesting an increase of 3.2% to 10 current user fees to keep pace with the rising medical costs. These have to deal with the basic life support, advanced life support, critical care transport, the millage per loaded mile, and the dedicated standby pay. And it coincides with the increased cost for the services provided. There's also two additional user fees that are recommended to be increased of 5.3% and 3.5%. And these have to do with the SunStar Ambulance Membership Program, and that's to keep the program actuarially sound. And then for more detail on the user fees, you can look at page 37 under attachment number seven. At this point, I will turn it over to Dave for his section.

Good morning, Commissioners.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today on behalf of Safety and Emergency Services. I appreciate being here to present our FY27 budget for your consideration. Before we begin, I want to provide a little bit of context to our budget. As many of you know, the department has a very complex budget, and we manage a wide range of operational areas, each with its own funding source and complexities. Because of this, our budget is multifaceted and requires careful consideration. And we have a scheduled work plan session for you that we're going to present in more detail, our operations, our funding sources, and how we do those things. But today, let me start with the EMS fund as far as context for FY27. The fund is primarily supported by the ad valorem tax and the ambulance transport fees that we collect. Despite reducing the EMS millage in FY22, 23, and 24, we're pleased to share that the EMS fund currently maintains a healthy reserve balance at approximately 57% of projected expenditures. This reserve level gives us the flexibility and stability, but that's just for the current state. Our ambulance fee revenue continues to provide and offset the cost of our contract with the ambulance provider. For the trend going forward, we're seeing a concerning trend in that the cost of the first responder agreements are growing faster than our ad valorem revenue. And as this trend continues, we expect reserves to gradually decline in the outer years. In connection with this, our fire departments have submitted 22 proposals aimed at improving the EMS system. These proposals totaled more than $15 million to that fund, and they were first presented to our data-driven focus group for analysis. Next, we went to the EMS Advisory Council for their review and presentation to them, and then after reviewing the data and considering our projected revenues, and receiving input from both the EMS Council and the Data Driven Focus Group staff approved a combined cost of $2.8 million of these proposals. And the EMS Council voted to approve that unanimously. Turning to our fire districts, most of the districts that provide fire protection to the unincorporated areas of Pinellas County also have healthy reserve balances. That's the good news, but like the EMS fund, we're seeing expenditures grow faster than the revenues. And if this trend continues, those reserve levels are going to be dropping also. We are recommending a minor millage increase for one of the districts. Finally, I want to highlight the progress that we've made in Regional 911. We've completed several upgrades, both technological and facility related. And we believe they're having a strong positive impact on the workplace environment and on morale with the employees. We completed an upgrade to one of our 911 call handling systems. and we improved our lighting systems to provide softer and more comfortable illumination for the employees. Believe it or not, that was one of our number one issues that we've been talking to the employees about over the last five years. We replaced every workstation in the 911 center to provide a more comfortable work environment for the employees. And soon we'll be completing a flooring project that will remove the 12-year-old carpeting and replace it with a tile that will make it a cleaner and more healthy environment. And we believe all of these projects are gonna have and are having already a positive impact on morale and operations as we support our employees. Commissioners, thank you again for your time and your continued support for safety and emergency services. And we look forward to working with you as we move through the budget process this year. We're happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you for your report. Appreciate you all being here. What about how you improve the ambiance for your workers? You didn't mention the dogs that you get over there and they get to go off and have the pets there too.

Sure, that's a healthy program and everybody looks forward to it. In fact, a lot of the visitors that we have to the building that aren't familiar with it, they see those signs and if they're there when the pet comes over, they do comment on how And it does have a positive effect. The employees do appreciate it.

Well, it's a high stress job for sure. Talk to me a little bit about the salaries that we're paying. Not what we're paying, but how it compares to other 911 telecommunicators in and around the area, including on the same floor. Just try to get an idea how we're competing, how we're doing.

Sure, I think if you look at our staff levels, I think it's representative of how we're competing. And we're maintaining our staff levels. And what we consider to be fully staffed, we have the natural attrition that goes with it. But I think that our salaries are maintaining and are being competitive. We can always do better. We've been working with Workforce Relations and and human resources on the salaries and where we are. But I think we look at our staffing levels and our retention levels and we're staying competitive.

Well, the attrition several years ago was horrible. So I think it's good to see that that's stabilized.

And commissioners, I think the leadership and the work environment is what has stabilized that. We did do about, I think about four years ago, a upgrade in pay, but that is still probably lagging a little behind. But again, we, you know, we're looking at our environment and what we currently are facing. We do have some decisions in the future. I think there's an area where we could do more. But I think the reason that they've stabilized is through the leadership over in our 911 center.

And then you mentioned, again, and we're going to have this conversation about the reserves that we have all over the place and, you know, the changes. And you mentioned some concerning trends and And why the, you know, but I think that's the kind of conversation we need to have. Why the reserves are the way they are. What's the inherent structural problem that we have with the, you know, with the fund.

And I think all the fire, I think all the fire agencies are facing this when you look at the D shift and the impact that the D shift's going to have on fire agencies throughout. You saw Pasco flip and went to a D shift and because they had to follow Tampa because they were losing all their firefighters to Tampa. But there's a lot of issues that go into that. That's some of the stuff that they're working on with the fire chiefs and looking at training, how do we do this? And in some ways, and Dave explained a lot of this to me in our private meetings, where it's not going to the D shift, but it's a modification of the way they do other operation to where it's not just traditional staffing models and kind of alternative staffing models. So I think all of them are reacting to that and finding out what works for them and their individual districts but it's gonna have an impact on staffing, which impacts their budget and what they live on. Right now, I think a lot of those issues about reserves, we need to wait till November and then kind of see where we're at from there because that also could have an impact

So we'll have more of the discussion about this whole de-shift concept. Is that coming our way?

I don't know that we have to have that. I think the agencies are having that. Some of the issues that we have are with we pay for seats out on the fire trucks, right? Well, it depends on what happens in November regarding the funding for that. So all of that combined is going to have an impact. The question is when do you have that conversation? before or after, you know, the referendum. Yeah. Okay.

Any questions? Yes, Chair. Yes, thank you, Chair. Thank you for coming in and all you do keeping us safe. You know, the 911, so much that you're doing. I just, real quickly, do you have a part-time program? Do you have a part-time program at 911 services or any of your programs where You know, people don't start full-time. They come in, they work part-time? No, they're just full-time staff. All of it. Okay, thank you.

Any other questions? Commissioner Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good to see you both. Thanks for being here. Remind me again, what are our reserves supposed to be at? Is it 25%? Yes, sir. It's 25%. And you said they're at what right now?

Right now they're at 57%. 57%. Yes.

All right. That reserve bucket, though. I thought that's what you said.

Well, and that reserve bucket is not just for emergency reserves. So we maintain the 25%, but then we also maintain for future growth and for future enhancements a little bit higher for emergency. But we maintain the 25%. We're at 57% right now.

And that's what, Commissioner, have that reserve conversation anyway. So at least we, because they're all throughout.

Right. Yeah, because I'm looking and there's various buckets of reserves here.

And that's the reason I kind of said, when do you want to kind of have that conversation? We could have it now, but it may change, you know, in the near future. So do we want to wait and kind of have the new landscape that we're living under about how do we adjust?

Well, I'd like to see the information. in July or August where we have all the funds and where they are. Maybe we don't change anything.

Okay. You'll have that and you'll also see kind of the outlays that he was talking about. You had $15 million. I understand.

Yeah, I understand. But also some of those have been large increases over the last couple of years. And I don't mean for you guys. I'm not talking about you guys. But just in different departments. So just trying to make sure I understand that we understand where the funds are and why they're there and

Well, and we've talked internally even about the way in which we look at the model of funding EMS seats. It's a model that's worked. It still works well, but it's also 20 years old, you know, and is it an opportunity? So we can kind of look at all this and make recommendations to you regarding, you know, improvements that we can make.

And my comments were more just in general about the reserve funds that we have, but certainly these as well. One other quick thing.

And then on the replacement of the CAD dispatch system, so is Hexagon dead? Yes. Okay. Any chance, how much money do we spend on that? Is there any chance we can recover any of that?

The sheriff, I think, is working on with Hexagon to resolve that, but we expect to have some, yes.

Any of those issues will likely be, address any replacement issues going forward with any settlements that come out of that. I can brief you one-on-one when we meet. All right. Thanks.

Anything else?

Okay. Thanks, Dave. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Jody, appreciate it. All right.

Once again, good morning, Commissioners. Chris Rose, Office of Management and Budget. We have the airport up. Mark and Yvette are coming to the table. Good partners, and we've had a lot of discussion with the airport this year. Next to me is Shane Kunze. BUDGET ANALYST, BOTH OPERATING AND CAPITAL BUDGET ANALYST FOR THE AIRPORT. WE'RE, AGAIN, DOING A LITTLE CROSS-TRAINING IN THE BUDGET OFFICE, AND SO HE'S GOING TO BE PRESENTING BOTH OF THOSE TODAY. SO WITH THAT, SHANE, THE FLOOR IS YOURS.

THANK YOU, CHRIS. GOOD MORNING AGAIN, COMMISSIONERS. THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME TODAY. AS CHRIS MENTIONED, WE ARE GOING TO TALK ABOUT AIRPORT. WE WILL GO OVER THE OPERATIONS IN CAPITAL FOR DOING TAMPA BAY THE EASY WAY. We'll start off at the bottom of page one with our efficiencies and cost savings. We'll focus on FY27, though FY26 and 25 is visible on page two. So for 27, the first three here primarily focus in on doing more things in-house, such as laser engraving, rebuilding lights, and also sign making. These were significant savings that the department was able to do in-house, but also provide efficiency as well by shortening essentially the gap between sending certain things out and having them delivered. For example, lights can be done within hours versus months. And then the final one is you'll be hearing about an installation of a perimeter fence. They were able to pay for this specifically with passenger facility charges versus other sources of revenue and user fees. Continuing on to page 2, towards the middle, we will look at our budget drivers. The St. Pete Clearwater International Airport is supported by a single fund, and that is the Airport Revenue and Operating Fund. Excluding reserves, this is increasing by $18.9 million, or 39.8%. And if we further exclude our CIP, Capital Improvement Program, the operating budget is increasing by $423,000. So the majority of that increase that you see is gonna be driven by the CIP plan that we'll discuss shortly. Revenue is increasing by $664,000. This is primarily driven by various CIP grants. Personnel services is decreasing by $23,000. You'll notice I mentioned a couple of increases and decreases that are happening within that major object. However, it's primarily driven by a one-time retirement expense that they don't have in FY27. And I will also mention that FTE remained flat at 66 in the current budget. operating expenses are increasing by $41,000. There's various changes going on here as well, primarily various contracts increasing and decreasing. While it does say it is increasing in the budget before you, we recently received information on our sheriff contract. So it's actually gonna be a little less than we expected. So I fully anticipate this major object will be a decrease instead of an increase the next time you see this budget. Capital outlay is increasing by 18.9 million. As I previously stated, this is primarily driven by the capital improvement program, but I would like to draw your attention to a $637,000 reduction in the operating capital. And that is due to less vehicle and equipment that is going to need to be replaced in the next fiscal year. And then finally, our reserves are decreasing by 5.5 million. This is to be expected with the CIP increasing. This is a natural drawdown of the reserves. And you can see a little bit more about that in the forecast and attachments in the back on page 59. Continuing on page two, draw your attention to a single decision package that the department has requested. This is supported by the county administrator and it requests a single FTE, a craft worker specifically. THIS HAS BEEN BAKED INTO THE FORECAST AND OUR CARRIER ALLEGIANT IS AWARE OF THE PLANNING OF THIS. AND MARK WILL DISCUSS THAT A LITTLE BIT MORE I'M SURE DURING QUESTIONS, BUT IN THAT FORECAST WE ACTUALLY HAVE A PLAN FOR FIVE FTE OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS. SO THIS IS THE FIRST ONE. I JUST WANT YOU TO BE AWARE THAT MORE WILL BE COMING IN FUTURE YEARS.

Welcome, Director. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good morning. Congratulations again on that. Thank you, Commissioner. How's your team doing? They're doing excellent. Good. Good to hear from you today. Welcome as well.

Thank you for highlighting that, Chair. If my boss gets to call out a typo, I will as well. Unfortunately, the document still sells him interim, which, Mark, is clearly our director, so that was a typo in our system. CONTINUING ON TO THE TOP OF PAGE THREE IS OUR SUMMARY OF PROPOSED CHANGES TO USER FEES. THE MAJORITY OF THESE CHANGES IN ATTACHMENT SEVEN PAGE 35 ARE ESSENTIALLY CPI TYPE INCREASES. HOWEVER, MORE IMPORTANTLY, YOU ARE GOING TO BE SEEING INCREASES VIA CONTRACT an agreement to the CFCs, the customer facility charges for rentals, and also our Allegiant airline fees. Those are not in the document today. They are currently going through negotiations and working on a final draft, and you will have the opportunity to vote on those in the future. And Mark will also be presenting that along with, I believe, Blaine as well at a future date. Continuing on, page three is our CIP drivers. The airport fund is currently forecasted to remain fiscally balanced through FY 31, and our beginning fund balance is increasing by 12.8 million into FY 27. By FY 31, we do anticipate a drawdown of those reserves down to 49.2 million. So again, that's that natural drawdown that we've been proposing as we do these major capital projects. The FY27 through FY32 CIP budget is currently budgeted at $228.3 million. This includes various continuing projects that you've heard before, such as construct a new air code taxi away K, the multi-level parking garage, new passenger terminal improvements, and the airco site preparation. We will also be discussing today two new projects, and that's the installation of an airport perimeter fence for phase two and the rehabilitation of runway four through 22. The FY27 budget is increasing by 18.5 million, and it includes many of those projects that I just mentioned, the construction of the new airco taxiway, the multi-level parking garage, the new passenger terminal, but it's also going to include our installation of phase two for the perimeter fence. FY27 does not include the new project of the rehabilitation of runway 422. While it's in the five-year plan, it will not appear until FY30. CIP decision packages. The first one up is the new passenger terminal improvements. This is essentially being updated to align with the previously discussed budgets, going back to the discussions in November and December. It's currently budgeted at $145.2 million. There is a scope change. Initially, there was a heavy emphasis on expansion. That emphasis has instead gone to what can we essentially rehabilitate and improve with existing structures and less on new. The next project is the airport parking garage, which is also being aligned to the previously discussed budget back in December, and that's $59.3 million. So they are staying below 60 million. This project has also, I shouldn't say changed in scope, but it's changed in the level of parking that we have. Initially, some of the earlier number of stalls you heard were about 1,500. They've gotten it up to about 2,400 now, and that includes both surface parking and garage parking. So 2,400 spots in that new garage. Air Pro site preparation. This one is actually decreasing by 9.4 million and it is going to stay at five. This one is essentially going to be used for future investments. Or I'm sorry, future and incentive for infrastructure investments. And then finally, the rim new taxiway in is decreasing by 1.5 million. This one is essentially nearing completion, and so that's just what they came under budget for. And all four of these decision packages were supported by our county administrator. Continuing on to the top of page four, the new projects that I previously mentioned, I'll give you a little bit more detail about those. The first one is the rehabilitation of runway 4-22. That goes from runway 4 to runway 1836. This is going to be budgeted at $20 million. And again, the expenditures will not happen until FY30 through FY31. So you won't see them in 27, but you will see them in that five-year plan. And then finally, the new project install airport perimeter fence phase two. This is budgeted at 1.5 million and will be completely paid for with passenger facility charges that the FAA has gone ahead and approved for usage. And with that, it concludes my portion. I'm going to pass it on to our new director.

Thank you, Shane. Good morning, Mr. Chair, Commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to share an update on our accomplishments and our upcoming work plan and several key performance measures. This fiscal year has been one of an exceptional progress. From October 2025 through February of 2026, as well as May of this year, we have set an all-time passenger record once again for our airport. In calendar year 2025, PAI served 2,794,235 passengers, and this year, celebrating 20 years of partnership with Allegiant Airlines. How many years? I'm sorry, I didn't- 20 to zero. This strong demand has been supported by additional new service to Huntsville, Alabama, Atlantic City, New Jersey, Trenton, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Columbia, Missouri, further expanding new nonstop travel options for our community. Today, PIE serves 65 nonstop destinations, and the recent announcement from Bermuda Air will increase that number to 67. Bermuda Air's new service brings highly sought after international leisure markets to PAI, broadening our international access and strengthening tourism and economic activity in Pinellas County. Financially, we continue to see strong performance. Overall concessions increased by 1.9%. Passenger facility charges grew by 19.1%. and customer facility charges rose by 8.9%. In addition, following a comprehensive review, we are adjusting user fees to align with compatible small hub airports, sustaining critical revenue streams that support continued capital investment and enabling us to fund one additional full-time employee. On the capital improvement side, we selected our design build team and awarded pre-construction services for the new parking garage. And I'm pleased to report that the design phase remains on schedule and on budget. We also reached the substantial completion of the Taxway November runway incursion mitigation project that was outlined by the FAA. and construction is underway on our new Airco Taxway Kilo project, and that will provide important connectivity to the future aeronautical development. It is also, I like to highlight several performance factors. Air carrier flights in compliance with noise abatement procedures remain at or above 90%. very happy to announce that on may 12th of this year we implemented a brand new south to north arrival procedure that was two years in the making that's going to start keeping flights aircrafts higher routes them over the gulf and supports a constant idle descent which makes the aircrafts quieter this always remains a priority for me as we work to be sensitive to our communities Additionally, our FAA safety inspection was completed with excellent scores in safety, procedural compliance, and operational practices. Once again, zero fines. Looking ahead, our work plan includes issuing a request for proposal for our on-airport rental car concessions, which bids opening this afternoon, and supporting passenger facility charge application number nine to the FAA, which will fund the final phase of the brand-new perimeter fence and a new aircraft rescue firefighting apparatus. Thank you for your continued support, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Again, thank you for the report. Any questions? Commissioner Flowers.

I know someone is very happy about your change as it relates to your South to North descent for the Plains. Not a question. Y'all know what I'm talking about. Not a question, but just a compliment. I really enjoy going over. I love the expansion things that are happening. Um, especially with the runways in the parking. Um, I did, uh, speak to Allegiant team members through zoom, um, about, um, their absorption of some country.

Yes, ma'am.

And the additional flights that they'll be bringing on board and the whole transition plan, because I just wanted to know how that was going to work. So I really appreciated them making time to share that with me and their commitment to remain a strong partner with you guys over there at PISO. Just want to say thank you so very much. The offices over there are very patient. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays are like a madhouse over there. There is absolutely no parking available. But just, you know, the time that they take to really be patient with people as they're working and the staff that are coming through that I have a chance to chat with when they're changing shifts and stuff. So I think we have a good little jewel over there and just really appreciative. of the work and congratulations again on you now being the airport director.

Thank you, Commissioner Fowers. I'll make sure that I pass that along. Thank you.

Cell phone lot's a little tight, but, you know, I mean, obviously it's very in demand right now, big time, so it'd be nice if it were a little bit bigger, but any other questions? Commissioner Peters.

This may not, and maybe I need clarification, and this is your FY25. You had budget reductions on your HVAC fragrance diffuser. Now, did you get rid of them, or did you just change it, or what did you do?

No, we got rid of it. It met all compliance measures and it's something that was, that you see in hotels and hospitality areas. You also see it, you smell that in hospitals and things like that. But we had a couple of guests and passengers that were sensitive with that type of an allergy where they were smelling it, I guess. So we just went on the, we just got rid of it until we can see something new.

Okay, okay. That's what I was wanting for, because the county has a fragrance-free policy. to begin with, if you didn't know. And because it is so life-threatening to so many people that having that system in the airport would frighten me that passengers could literally die from breathing in the air. Or if they have asthma, have real problems. So I'm glad to hear it's gone. I just wanted clarification on that. And I hope we don't bring it back. No, we will not.

Thank you. Commissioner.

Commissioner Nowicki. Thank you, Chair. Just one quick question. In the revenue, is there a specific account that has the parking revenue? Because I didn't see that as an individual line item. There's no one. I don't see it anyway. I don't know.

It's actually part of our concessionaires. All of our concessions are put together and that is a concession.

would we be able to break out what would be the revenue from the parking versus the revenue from the concessionaires inside the terminal?

Yes, we don't have that number too, but we can actually follow that up and break that out for you.

Okay, thank you. And then is there a scent that's going out in the airport, like a scent diffuser? Because I saw that as a reduction if you had to cut by like 3%. Are we still putting a scent out in the?

No. Yeah, Commissioner Peters just asked. No, we took it out completely and we are not bringing it back.

Okay, perfect.

Thanks. Thank you, Chair. No, I had one question, one comment. I mean, to go from 1,500 stalls to 2,400, that's huge. That's a great, I mean, we didn't increase our cost projections on that at all. We did not, no. So we actually reduced the cost of each parking spot from $40,000 to $25,000?

That is correct. Good job.

You must have hired the right design-build contractor, or you had some good ideas at night. Did you add a floor? I don't know.

It was. It was also thinking outside the box. It was also rearranging how the cars are actually being parked. And there had a lot of, I want to say, open space underneath the ramped areas. And we made them into revenue parking spots.

Well, great job on that. Thank you, Commissioner. On the terminal itself, when I toured the facilities with you, you were going to go from a perpendicular terminal to parallel. Is that still your plan?

We actually went from an expansion into a renovation. And yes, we're taking a look at it. We have an aging facility. It's been built since 1957. We're going to start to look at some of the inefficiencies that we currently have in our aging infrastructure and first take a look at them and modernize the areas and then we're taking a look at how we can start to elevate the terminal. And that area is what we want to do is elevate that into the western side above our baggage claim. And that will be a cornerstone. But we really need to take a look at what the overall new conceptual drawings of a new terminal could be. But right now, it's going to be strictly a renovation and a minor expansion.

Okay, thank you. When we were, did you have a question? I'm sorry. Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And congratulations again, Mark.

Thank you.

A couple quick questions. I know we had some challenges with the baggage conveyor system at one point. Have we resolved that? We have. Okay, so that's good. All right, cool. What's the timeline on the terminal upgrades?

I'll be coming to you in August to do a presentation and looking for a change order to go to start that progress.

And I think TPA is kind of taking the lead on eVTOLs, but do we have that in our thought process as we're looking to renovate and I see some runway rehabs coming up? down the line as well? Where's that kind of been?

So the Advanced Air Mobility is an initiative from the Florida Department of Transportation. And we attend all those meetings and we're attending all those updates from the manufacturers of the actual aircraft. So we're working with our fixed based operators because we feel that's exactly where they're going to be. So, yes, any type of improvements, we are continuing to work with our fixed space operators because you don't want to bring them into the terminal. So the other best thing is you want to bring them into where those types of business personnel or those passengers are going to be leaving from and then going to another nearby city. So Tampa International, they have a couple other general aviation airports. Right there in Spaceport. So that they have, that's where they're looking at. They're not bringing it into the actual Tampa International Airport, you know, terminal itself. So we're not either. And then, but we are continually to keep track and keep up to date with the Florida Department of Transportation air advancement ability.

Okay.

All right, cool. And then my last question is the, say something about Bermuda air.

We did, yes. Okay, talk about that a little bit. Sure. So Bermuda Air is going to be starting to fly out of St. Pete Clearwater International Airport December 20th. We have two nonstop flights. One of them is to Belize in Central America and the next one is Turks and Caicos. Okay. Reason I cannot take a whole bunch of credit, I have to give that to our air service development. He's been working with them for a few years. Why those two cities? Because it takes anywhere between five to nine hours to get to either one of those cities because you have to either connect to Miami, Houston, or Atlanta. Pai is going to bring those two cities 90 minutes to get to the Belize nonstop and 120 minutes nonstop from us to Turks and Caicos. So it's huge.

That's huge. No, that's great. Two international nonstop destinations. Awesome.

We're keeping the international safety international airport.

That's great. All right. Awesome.

Thank you. You're welcome. One question for you. We were traveling, and one of the questions that kept coming up was for the Tampa International to have a nonstop flight to, I think it was Ireland at the time. And there was discussion about the economic development impact of new nonstop flights. And there's a model apparently that's used for that. And I'd be just curious, because we keep adding these nonstop flights. We just say, well, we just added four new nonstop flights to someplace that Allegiant does. And it would be interesting just to see what that economic development impact. I don't know what the model looks like, and I'm sure it wouldn't be as impactful as an international flight, but it would be nice to see what those numbers are, because... what they continue to do. And you talk to people who use Allegiant, it's amazing context to places all over our country, to places you don't normally go to. I mean, Atlanta and National and those big airports. These are the small ones, the niche flights. I'm just curious what that might look like, that economic development model. So if you could maybe look into that. I certainly will. Yeah. All right. Any other questions? Commissioner Nowicki, go ahead.

Just want to say great job and nice haircut, Mark. I talked to him yesterday and he said, oh, I'm getting a haircut. Thank you, Commissioner.

Absolutely, absolutely. But before I leave, I just want to highlight that Allegiant's contract negotiations, we extended it three of the year. I am very happy to bring forward that I met with, in person, the CEO of Allegiant Airlines this past Friday, along with the regional manager. for Allegiant Airlines and we talked about the consolidation or the acquisition of Sun Country and Allegiant, but most of all we talked about the contract and I'm very happy to say that our contract negotiations have basically done a very positive handshake. They're looking into this and I should be putting that in contract review by the end of this month and then bringing it to you forward by August. And it's a very positive contract that's going to be investing further into the airport.

Beautiful. Great job. Keep our fingers crossed, right? Good job. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Appreciate you both being here today.

All right.

We're going to move on to solid waste. From the airport to solid waste. make those abrupt changes in perspective.

So from one enterprise fund to another, yes, Mr. Chair, we have James Lewis coming to the table with me. And this is another one of those cross trainings. James is doing both operating and capital for solid waste today. We have Paul Sacco, the director, and Cassie Hartman, the business and financial services manager, sitting over at the department table with us. And with that, James, the floor is yours.

Good morning, Commissioners. I'm going to cover both solid waste and Lilleman solid waste today. So we'll do solid waste first. I'm going to start at the top of page two for the solid waste packet. We have the efficiencies and cost-saving measures, and I'll just highlight a couple for FY27. So now that the procurement and transition of the waste-to-energy operators mostly complete, the department has been able to reduce some of their general consulting services, it's just fewer projects need to be done, and so they're seeing a reduction of 283,000 in that department. They've also just submitted a decision package, which we can talk about a little more in a few minutes, that's requesting the elimination of the Municipal Recycling Grant Program, and that would be a reduction of $407,000 net for FY27. Moving down to the bottom of page two, we have the budget drivers. In total, the FY27 budget excluding reserves and transfers to other funds increases $18.5 million to $132.9 million. That's entirely due to increases in the capital improvement plan. The operating budget's actually decreasing. Revenue for the solid waste department increases $7 million. And that's largely due right now to increases in their interest on investments. So last year we beefed that up to align with what we were seeing in actual revenue coming in. They've already exceeded what we budgeted in FY26 by about $3 million. So we are increasing FY27 to try and align with our expectations. That may go even higher. We just Friday had a really strong jobs report. interest rates are going to remain elevated most likely yields on the treasury are up so we should continue to see pretty good returns on their investments and securities especially with the size of fund balance that they have this revenue also does not include any increases to user fees so if those increases go forward then revenue would increase even more Reserves for the solid waste department increase $7 million to $492.6 million. And again, that would increase further if we see increases in revenue for user fees or for interest on those investments. All right, now moving to the top of page three. The revenue and operating fund decreases by $1.3 million to $81.3 million. personnel services decreases 312,000 and operating expenses decrease about 1.1 million dollars and that again is due to some of those reductions in general consulting services. The waste energy facility operator transition is mostly complete. There's also decreases in utilities for water and sewer as the The site continues to recover from Hurricanes Helene and Milton. There were increased expenses in that category. And also reductions in the artificial tire reef removal as that moves towards completion. Grants and aids right now remains flat at 500,000. Again, they have submitted a decision package that would repeal the program for municipal recycling grants. And operating capital outlay increases 128,000. We've got 225,000 budgeted for the replacement of three vehicles. The renewal and replacement fund budget increases for FY27 $19.8 million to 51.6. And that's due to mostly the expected progress of the extended maintenance plan. And that's a large set of rehabs and revitalizations at the waste to energy facility. So here at the middle of page three, we have the FY27 decision packages. And as I've mentioned a couple of times, the first one is the repeal of that municipal recycling grant program. That'd be a recurring $500,000 saved. The original purpose of the program was to help municipalities launch their curbside recycling programs. That purpose has mostly been met and so the department is requesting the elimination of that program and then would shift those funds to internal waste diversion programs. That brings me to the second decision package, which is a safety ad campaign. This is an example of how they would use those funds for waste diversion programs. This is regarding the proper disposal of rechargeable batteries. This would be $96,000 non-recurring, so just an FY27. STATEWIDE ACROSS THE COUNTRY THERE HAS BEEN A SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF FIRES IN GARBAGE TRUCKS IN WASTE COLLECTION. HILLSBORO COUNTY REPORTED 30 BATTERIES THAT WERE RELATED TO LITHIUM, 30 FIRES RELATED TO LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES OVER THE LAST THREE YEARS. WE DON'T HAVE AS CLEAR OF A PICTURE IN PINELLAS COUNTY JUST BECAUSE OF THE WAY THAT WASTE COLLECTION IS ORGANIZED. Hillsborough County launched a similar program in October of last year. And there was an article in the Tampa Bay Times back in May 22nd that highlighted this. And it used to take them six months to fill eight 55-gallon barrels full of lithium-ion batteries. And since they launched a similar program, they've filled 15 barrels. So almost a double increase in what they've been able to collect.

And this would be our portion of a regional campaign. So this is not just us.

All right, both those decision packages are recommended by the county administrator. And now we're at the top of page four, a summary of proposed changes to user fees. So as was presented to you by Director Sacco on April 30th at the work session, the department is requesting an increase to the municipal commercial and yard waste tipping fees going from $58.86 per ton to $63.57 per ton. It's an 8% increase, and this is the second year of a planned three-year increase that they have brought to you previously. The out-of-county surcharge would also increase in the same amount, and this would generate about $5 million in increased revenue for FY27. It's going to be coming to you as planned for the July 21st meeting as a resolution. They're also requesting an increase to the whole tires tipping fee from $180 to $210. And that's largely used as a deterrent. They're trying to keep up with what other counties are charging for that same service. And then we go on to the CIP budget drivers. So the six-year plan, FY27 through 32, When we look at the forecast, we put both the operating and capital funds together, we have a fund balance to begin FY27 of about $535 million. Now we forecast that fund balance to decrease about 20% through FY30 as they continue the completion of that extended maintenance plan, large rehabilitations at the waste to energy facility. And once that's completed, absent large projects or another extended maintenance plan that we don't have in the capital plan right now, the fund balance is expected to then increase back up to around 500 million by FY33. So the FY27 through 32 six-year plan decreases 37.9 million. And that's largely due to the deferment of the bulky waste processing facility and the organics processing facility. We've moved those from the six-year plan outside of beyond FY32. So they're still planned. They're just gonna come much later. For FY27, again, we increased 19.8 and that's due to the progress of that extended maintenance plan. There are eight capital decision packages. I highlighted one here for you. That's the solid waste onsite net metering project. That's an increase of $17 million to $26 million. And that's largely because the current plan includes a very rough preliminary estimate. It wasn't really based on any engineering. We do have some engineering estimates now. But the department has also, when they received those estimates, conducted a study and determined that there would be a return on investment after 24 years. So the decision package, all eight are recommended by the county administrator. There is one new project for solid waste this year, and that is the Waste to Energy Facility entrance sign revitalization. And so that's the sign that is out there in front of the Waste to Energy Facility. It's very old, and they want to partner with the new operator, FCC, of the Waste to Energy Facility, and... co-funding would be $175,000 from solid waste, $175,000 from the operator, and they would revitalize that sign. That concludes the solid waste presentation. I'll go ahead and turn it over to Director Sacco to discuss the context, accomplishments, and work plan.

Thank you, James. So just a little bit of context. I just want to reiterate back to April 30th work session, commitment to the county administrator that realizing that we're in this mode where we're requesting year over year increases to the solid waste tipping fee, pretty much to bridge the funding gap that's occurring since we've lost our power purchase agreement. specifically the capacity payment portion where we've lost revenues of 55%. The only way to offset that is to increase our fees. And as you saw in that presentation, we're still far below what the surrounding counties are. It really is an industry as a whole for counties that are operating waste energy facilities. So our commitment to the county administrator is to keep our pencil sharp, keep our costs as low as possible. We've been doing that, I think, a very good job of that going back to 2019. We've reduced 10 positions over that time where we weren't asked to reduce positions. We've done that through attrition. We've done that through reorganization and kind of just being smart about implementing our master plan and the strategic plan that couples together with that. So we're going to continue to do that. Moving on to... I would also say one of the largest things that we've accomplished in moving forward with that is really moving forward with a new waste energy operator, which is FCC Environmental. Can't say enough things good about them to date. They took over the facility in January. um they've climbed through the facility they've identified some issues that need to be addressed you know as james alluded to and some of the increases that we're seeing here as part of that transition but there are things that need to be done and there are things that we normally would not see until the facility was opened up you know for for some of these major outages and whatnot um we've extended the life of the facility through the through the program that occurred between 2016 and 2022. $240 million was invested in that facility to extend the life 20, 25 years. And the upkeep that's needed to make sure that that facility will last that long is the annual recurring extended maintenance programs and projects that we see, mostly in the area of steam flow with boilers, turbines, and things of that nature.

Paul? On the new operator that has a list of capital projects that they're recommending, I guess, to get caught up, is that the reason for the increase in reserves?

Not all of it. Some of it, but not all of it. Some of it are projects that we've identified even before the previous operator had left. As we move through, some of these things just shift around based on the timeframe and the inspection. We're usually shooting We call it a 521 program. We look at these projects that we think are coming due in five years. We put them in the plan and they fit nicely into the six year CIP program. Then as we get closer and we get maybe to two years out, we do another inspection of these systems. And if we feel like they're still in that, that mode to be replaced in that two years, we'll do that. But if they need to be pushed out, or if we find other things that are occurring within that five-year look, they get added in here. So some of it are things that we've identified, and some of it are things that were identified during the transition.

It's for specific projects that we're anticipating. Correct. That's the increase.

Yes, sir. All right.

Thank you. Go ahead.

And then the procurement associated with that, it's reported here. So we're expecting to see a reduction of $3.5 million a year over 10 years. So it's a $35 million savings just from the operator side of waste to energy. To even highlight this further for the kind of partner that we now have, with the recent turbine failure, They're stepped up, they're moving through and getting that turbine repaired and back to the site. They were entitled to a management fee associated with that of I think 13 or 14%. They rejected that. They said they didn't want that. We're in it together. That turbine coming online is big for both parties, and neither one of us are meeting our mission or our core function until that's happened. I mean, I think that's substantial. It's 13%, 14%.

What is that dollar amount, roughly?

That's probably over a $4 million to $6 million project, so whatever that equates to, it's a significant number. So that's the kind of partner that you've contracted with. The next thing under accomplishments is really the power brokering. I gave you that update in April. If the turbine didn't go out of service or wasn't removed from service in December, we would have exceeded our target by, I think, $1.5 million. So we continue to do well. I can tell you in this year, We had a banner month in February where the costs were just astronomical. And while we didn't receive that money right away because the turbines out, we didn't sell that power from an insurance, you know, reimbursable just for that month is probably 11 or 12 million dollars where the target for the whole year is about 15 so that's the kind of month we missed out on selling real time but again i believe it'll be an insurance reimbursable for for that month that we can reclaim so power broking still is the best option for us and as i mentioned we'll continue to watch that and for some reason natural gas just drops off you know the the surface and and and just dive bombs we'll move back to a power purchase agreement with Duke and we know that that's there as a backstop if we need to. We've also completed several capital projects. I think the largest one was a multi-year project where we're increasing the capacity of our industrial wastewater facility. That facility is necessary to process the leachate and the stormwater that's combined on site. Most facilities that have landfills, that's a major cost for them to dispose and remove from offsite. We're probably one of the few, if not the only facility that has waste energy and the landfill on the same site. So we're able to take this water, process it, clean it up, and that water is sent to the waste energy facility to be used for cooling either in the evaporative cooling towers or part of their boiler process. So we actually remove our water through evaporation and that that helps us tremendously as far as cost go if we had to just dump that down the sewer. To put that in comparison, we did have to dump a lot of water down the sewers post-storm because our water levels on site were so high and there was no way the water facility was designed for that kind of capacity. And I think we put, I don't know how many millions of gallons, I think it was like a $7 million cost. So you're probably looking at 600 million, I mean, it was a giant number that went down the storm sewer. So we don't have to do that with the water treatment facility and normal operations. So we increased our capacity by 30%. We also increased our availability by 90% because not only did it increase, it increased our redundancy for our clarifier side of that facility. Outside of the operational side, we're very big in professional development. We've done very well in the last year. We had 13% with, we don't have a large turnover, but those that have, we had a 13% internal promotion rate through our career ladder program. And, you know, we're proud of that. We spend a lot of time in developing our employees to make sure that we're able to incur promotions from within if people are, you know, leaving the organization through retirements and whatnot. The grant that we received from NOAA, it's not a huge grant. I think it's $2.5 million. We have a small, I think it's a It's a 10% matching associated with that to remove tires on two to three reefs that we've identified that we know where tires were put down there in the 70s. And we've done our survey for that. Incredible technology, side scan, sonar that goes down there and actually show where each of these tires are. on that reef in sections that you would see, like if you saw underwater excavations where they kind of do a grid pattern, that information was used to specifically go out with a scope of work. And we had 16 firms that actually bid on the project to remove the tires and bring them back to our facility. So that award has not been made yet. You'll probably see that I'm guessing in the next month or so, but that's where we are with that. So again, just kind of doing the right thing environmentally to make that happen. On the work plan side, we're working to revise our solid waste ordinance. We were gonna do that last year, but given the fact that we've removed the mandatory recycling component to that, we had to take a step back and kind of rework some of that. It's in a draft form as far as with me to be reviewed, but I expect that that would be coming back to you later this fiscal year, the beginning of the fiscal year for 27. And then we're also revising or refreshing our master plan. We had a master plan adopted in 2020. Everything that we do, we go back to that master plan on what we're going to do, whether it's costs for new projects, what we're gonna reinvest. We were just getting to the point where we were getting ready to spend some substantial capital projects with bulky waste. We were looking at organics at one point. And I just felt like it was time to take a step to maybe go back and just do a look and refresh, make sure there wasn't any environmental stressors that have changed or Were there any changes in technologies? What are we doing as far as our waste comp study? Taking that most recent data, looking at that before we come back and pull the trigger. That work should be done, that refresh should be done at the end of the fiscal year. And then when we have that, we'll be taking a look at where some of the next investments could be made, either in diversion or actual processing. So I know there's been discussion about a large fund balance. It is large, but we're gonna be spending it down in two areas. One, it's your stabilization fund to make up the offset of the 55% in revenue that we're gonna see over time. And then I expect you're gonna see a large amount spent in the CIP moving forward when we get out of this master plan. And some of these things that come out of the master plan are probably gonna be larger than we saw before. because with the impact to the landfill from the storms the impact of the landfill that we expect we're going to see with the turbine being out of business for for 11 months all that's putting pressure on the landfill life that's there for us to take a big stab at that i think we're going to have to be looking at something that's more process driven and not strictly just on the diversion side and whenever you're talking about process driven or new systems you're talking tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to make that happen. So the reserve is a good thing to have right now. And if for some reason we get to that point where there's still a large reserve, then we've had discussions that we need to talk with OMB and figure out how best to either curb the rates that we're charging or the increases that are you know, maybe coming in future years. But I think we're well positioned to at least have that discussion and not putting any more pressure, you know, on anybody else's, you know, plate from that standpoint for the customers that we we serve. So that's pretty much it from an accomplishments and work plan standpoint. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Like a busy year.

Always busy.

For sure. Trash never stops for Paul. Any questions? Just a little bit on that grant need that 500,000 that we know, I guess, is that an annual thing that we normally have? What is that program? Refresh me on that and

So the municipal recycling grant, as James alluded, was initially put into place to, as seed money, really to get the municipalities up and running with curbside recycling. That's been in place for probably 20 years. So everybody has their recycling programs up and running, and the amount of money that is actually divvied out, that 500,000 is divvied out by population to each municipality. Some of the smaller folks are not getting hardly anything, The larger folks like St. Pete, they're using that money for their yard waste diversion program. City of St. Pete, another larger token of that. It's just using that to pay for the recycling processing of the materials that they're picking up. It's not helping us divert anything anymore. those programs would stand in place whether we're giving $500,000 or not. So we wanna look at other diversion programs and we have brought two other alternatives back to the TMC and they didn't like them so we didn't bring them forward. But we still believe it's not a good spend of the county's money, not at this time or in the future, to just support programs that are going to be in place no matter where we give that money or not. So that's kind of where we are. And that's going to be coming to the board for a repeal resolution in July.

Okay. And then I'm assuming that the recycle market's still soft.

It's month to month based on the different materials. I mean, sometimes it's cardboard's really high. Sometimes it's plastic. Sometimes it's metal. Sometimes it's all three at once. Sometimes it's none. And that's... It's just the commodities.

Hard to plan in a MRF facility with something like the uncertainty of that.

Well, the MRFs are always going to be there as long as the recycling collection's in place. And we know that the cost of MRFs are probably $120 to $130 a ton. The cost for our facility is much less than that. But we can't have, and I think the recycling tonnage for the county as a whole is probably 60 to 65,000 tons. That may not sound like a lot when we're a million tons per year processor, but when you look at that, if just that material came to us, that'd be about a month's worth of capacity that we would lose, and we're at capacity. So all that material, we would do our best to incinerate recyclables, but it's going to push other materials into the landfill, which we just can't tolerate. I mean, that's just not what we're doing. So we're hosting a recycling workshop with the municipalities July 22nd. We're going to talk to them again about where they're at, what they think their problem areas are. We'll remind them what we do, why we do, and things that come out of that may... change some of the the scenery as we see it today in that market we'll know more as we come out we'll be happy to report out when when that occurs thank you appreciate that any other comments questions okay thank you appreciate it appreciate it thank you all for your continued support all right and i'm going to briefly go through the lehman solid waste msbu

I'm gonna start near the bottom of page one in that packet, the budget drivers. The FY27 budget increases $44,000 to 2.2 million. And that's due to the new contract that will be coming on in Q2 through Q4. Revenues decreased 399,000. That's due to FY26, that budget included an increase to the special assessment, but there was a delay in implementing that special assessment increase. So the FY27 budget does not right now include it, but it is in here as a proposed change to the user fees. So if that increase to the special assessment does go forward, then that decrease in revenue would go away. There would be a $414,000. It would essentially be a increase from where they are right now. So reserves, as is, decrease $618,000 down to zero. Again, if that increase to special assessment goes forward, that would change, that would be a much smaller decrease, say to end with about $380,000 in reserves for FY27. Now there near the middle of page two is the summary of proposed changes to user fees. Again, that's a proposed increase of special assessment from $240 to $288 per residential unit, about a 20% increase. Without that increase, they would need to make about $34,000 in cuts just to balance at zero for FY27. And with that, I'll give it back over to Director Sacco to discuss any context or accomplishments for the Luhman solid waste.

Yes, so again, small fund, but the board had previously seen the need where this was a distressed community with illegal dumping, and that's why this fund was initially set up. We run it bare bones. I mean, we barely have administrative fee associated with the costs. We track a little bit with what's happening with the collections, reconciliations around that, and actually evaluating the tax roll. That would again come back to you probably in the July timeframe. uh every year so that we can manage and and determine what the best rate is for the citizens you know a little bit of history with this this this this rate was held firm for a very very long time and direction before barry got here previously was to run as long as you could and not raise rates and and and go through the the reserve fund as hard as you can and we did that and when barry got here we had to adjust then we were in a position where we had to raise rates a what we would normally recommend going through solid waste. So last year and this year, we see this being a little bit of an increase as far as a percentage. Dollar increase, probably not so much. But the commitment going forward is we'll continue to evaluate this fund. We did a rate study specifically for this year again because we knew this year, last year we didn't have the new collection information that we do have today. We were going on a forecast that the rate study provider provided us based on what they saw throughout the state. And based on that forecast, we were provided with an opportunity to increase. We didn't increase last year. But we do need to increase this year because the fund just cannot withstand not having an increase to be whole to make the collections and the costs associated around that. The good news is that with the collection procurement, competitive procurement that was made, we saw a much lower rate come through. down to the tune of maybe 20 or $21 at the start, and then there would be CPI increases. So any increases that we would see going forward would be much more palatable based on fuel collection, CIP, and whatnot. So I think this recasting gets us back to where I think we would have a normal progression and a budget review of a fund that's much more to the appetite, I would hope, of the board certainly a county administrator and staff, and most importantly, our customers. So I feel pretty good about where we are with this last increase and the projections that we see going forward.

Any questions on the layman?

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you all again.

All right. I think we'll just dive right into the...

So we have a couple of items in addition to the agenda review. So we can, if you want to go keep plowing, we can go, right? Pleasure of the board. Or do you want to grab lunch and have a working lunch or something? It's up to you.

Working lunch. Okay. So what are you back here in 15?

Okay.

Let's start back around 1225, 1230. Okay, great.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Um, before the commissioners before the agenda brief, I have three items that I need to go over with you that are time sensitive. Um, that's the reason I've asked to be able to discuss these here today. So Courtney's passing out the first one and this has to do with House Bill 803 and this kind of went under our radar and it modifies permit fees. And if we wait till the July agenda, it would have a revenue impact over in Kevin shop. So I've asked him to come brief you on this. What we want to do is add this to the agenda at the meeting on Tuesday and have you make this modification. So again, I will turn it over to Kevin and ask him to go over the what this change would be.

Thank you, Barry, and good afternoon, Mr. Chair, Commissioners. As Barry represented, we're bringing forward a resolution that's required for us to be in compliance with House Bill 803. And just to give a one-minute context to House Bill 803, that's entitled Building Permits and Inspections. It was signed by Governor DeSantis on May 7th with an effective date of July 1st. This is a broad, encompassing bill that has many changes and updates to building permitting. Within this legislation, though, there are two specific provisions related to inspection fees and private provider fees that require us to make an update to our fee schedule to comply with this legislation. At a very high level, the legislation now requires both inspection fees and private provider fees to be based on the cost of services performed and not on what is often referred to as the valuation and the construction cost of a project. In the case of our fee schedule, we actually had the cost of an inspection. However, in looking at it for purposes of compliance, There was a little bit of inconsistency in some cases referencing a minimum of 100 versus 100. So there's a little bit of just housekeeping cleanup to address compliance on the inspection cost. On the private provider cost, the legislation states that there cannot be punitive administrative fees. Our fee schedule today includes a reference to a $200 administrative fee for private providers. We are striking that. The legislation also says that municipalities must reduce the fee by a minimum of 50% when associated with a private provider permit. We've looked at this. It says you can go greater than 50% reduction. We are doing that. We've looked at this and we're going to be reflecting a 40% cost of the fee applied to private provider, therefore reducing it by 60%. That in essence covers the two specific issues that will bring us into compliance with this legislation.

So those two changes will make it a revenue neutral for Kevin, for the purposes of Kevin's budget, okay, and the revenue that he'll receive off of that. But this would put us in compliance. And the reason we're bringing it forward as kind of an emergency is if we wait until July 9th or 21st, our next meeting, then he wouldn't be able to charge the administrative fee effective July 1st. That lost revenue would have a pretty significant, about $30,000 impact to his budget and when we really need to do this anyway. So that's the reason we're asking it to be done as an emergency and added to the agenda.

Commissioner, your microphone, please.

Your microphone.

She was saying, there you go.

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. It was so much going on, I could be wrong, because we were tracking so many different bills, especially unfunded mandates.

This one flew under the radar, and so we're asking that we make this amendment. If you're okay, you can add it to the agenda on Tuesday and act. If you're uncomfortable, then we'll wait until the 21st.

Go through that with me again on Tuesday. I don't want to take any more time today. Absolutely. Okay.

And I think they've passed it out. You can review that. If you have any questions, feel free to call Kevin between now and Tuesday. No, the action would be on Tuesday.

Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Kevin.

Okay. The second item that I have before we get into agenda review is another item that um we originally weren't taking a position on and that's because um bel air beach took uh wrote to the state and asked for the removal of their ecl their erosion control line within bel air beach well that in and of itself okay if municipality wants to do something they don't get beach nourishment so it really didn't impact us so we didn't have a problem with it what we've learned from the state is that they won't if they eliminate a, they won't eliminate a portion of an ECL. That ECL then goes all the way down, and I've asked them to pass this out, that goes all the way down from Bel Air Beach to Indian Rocks Beach, which would be our Sankey project. So it would impact future beach nourishments. So what we'd ask is that we take a position, not against Bel Air Beach, but that you cannot remove it where it impacts our beach nourishment projects. So again, this is new. We could discuss this on Tuesday, but this is a new thing. It has a significant impact, and we need to take a position on this and write to the state. And so what I would ask is that they authorize the chair to sign a letter, us opposing not what Bel Air Beach does, but anything that's outside Bel Air Beach that would impact future beach nourishments. Or Bel Air Shores, yes. But what they are asking will affect Well, no. Beller Shores did not ask to remove the entire ECL. They asked for it to be removed within that municipality. Well, they don't get beach nourishment, so it didn't impact us. But now that we've heard from the state that they won't just take a section that they would do the entire ECL, well, then that does impact us. That's the reason it's a change. I understand. So we're asking them... to not remove the ECL where it impacts our beach nourishment projects. That's what I was saying, but by definition, it goes back to a therapy. By definition, it impacts it. I just want to make sure I was following the loop, though. If you're okay, we can, again, ask for that direction on Tuesday. You can look at this. Call Kelly if you have questions. All right, sounds good. That's the second thing. And then the third item that I need to bring up to you, because this is also timely, is that effective next week, we were going to release the request for negotiation for the downtown campus. I want to postpone releasing that RFN pending the fall vote on the property tax referendum, because it would be a $25 million bond issue for the new campus. And if that passes, we're facing major cuts. So we could still make a decision to move forward with the project, But if we release this RFN, we're asking developers, as you heard, to spend potentially hundreds of thousand dollars coming up with proposals. And we don't want to ask them unless we're absolutely sure that we're going to move forward with the project. And so I'm just saying delay it to where we can have a more informed decision. There's no rush to do this. But I would hate for us to release something and ask the development community to engage and then have to pull back on that decision.

So are you implying that if this referendum passes, you would not want to move forward on this project?

I think we'd have to do a financial analysis. I mean, we're going to have to cut $184 million out of our general fund. And this would be at least an additional $25 million in bond payments.

So is the building that we're currently in one that's sustainable to stay in?

It is until we come up with another revenue source to pay for it. This is not the ideal situation. At some point, we will have future maintenance that we have to do on the other parts of these buildings. As we presented the business case back a couple of years ago, it was both an economic development, revitalization for Clearwater, and defer, not making, putting good money after bad. But at some point, with making the cuts that we would have to make under that, do we really want to move forward with building a new county building? We may choose that we want to still move forward, but I think we make that decision following the referendum versus before. That's my concern. And we're under design, so we can continue design. Design will occur through the remainder of this year. So we've already started design, we finished design, but then we make a decision together all at once.

I understand your concern, but I have real concern with maintaining staffing in that building. And I have real, real concerns. And one day, we're going to get hit with some real costs as a result of keeping people in that building.

So- I'm not saying- I agree with you, Commissioner.

I don't know that postponing this is The right decision. I think there's some. Staying where we are could have some real. Costs associated with staying there.

Here's here's my and Commissioner. I 100% agree with you. I still think we somehow have to figure this out in the future. Doing nothing isn't really an option, but. I would hate for us to break ground on construction of a new building when we're laying off. employees, shutting parks, cutting the sheriff's budget, cutting firefighters, and the things that we would have to do to comply with that referendum.

I have a question, Mr. Chair. I, too, am not really enthusiastic about postponing the RFN. And because I want to see what developers have in mind. But one thing that I do want to talk about, and I've talked about it real briefly, about our new building, our new complex, is how we can generate revenue from it. And I was thinking the other day, because I was talking to somebody and they said, well, you know, where are you going to eat when you're at the new place? And hopefully by then I'll have even more expanded budgetary or dietary options. And I was like, that's a good question because there's not a whole lot to eat around Omerton and 19. And with all of the hundreds of employees that are going to be there, and I went to the opening of Largo City Hall, and it's a very nice facility, they have a couple different commercial spaces that they rent out I mean, one of my favorites was a donut shop that they have there. But they also have, in addition to these few little food places that they have, excuse me, they have the ability for people to, I believe, rent space. Like commercial, like businesses and things like that. And I know we're not gonna be able to make all of our money back by doing stuff like that, but as we hear criticisms from some of our partners in the constitutional officer space, is there opportunity to look at what we have designed so far and go back to the drawing board a bit to figure out ways that if this does pass in November and we're gonna have to figure out how we're gonna try to make money as a county to, or make revenues and things that Commissioner Peters and other folks have talked about, ways to think outside the box to make money. to basically keep that space paying for itself month over month.

So the Largo City Hall is a very different location. It's kind of in their downtown. And so you have business opportunities that are generated outside of the Largo employees. in our space now, you do have commercial establishments in there, and they've struggled. Used to have a very nice restaurant just, you know, around the corner that struggled.

Cafe Ponce.

Yep, Cafe Ponce. And so, you know, we would hope that our employees would help that. But even here in downtown, you go over to, you know, just a couple blocks over, if you see 10 employees over there at lunchtime, you know, I mean, we've struggled with cafeterias almost anywhere. We struggled with it out of 49th Street. It takes a lot of activity to support the cost of building rented space. And in this location, it would really be driven by a lunchtime space, you know, except because the restaurants there, the other businesses in that area, you would think they would be supporting those restaurants and they've struggled. So I'm concerned about that particular idea. We can look at it. We are engaging all of our partners and you have basically one that wants bigger offices and things like that. And we're gonna continue to work with our partners Change is hard for some, okay? And we'll continue to work with them on the amount of space that's needed. But that's not unusual. I've been in county government now for 39 years, and I've renovated space, and any time you go to smaller space, it doesn't matter whether it's adequate space or not. But at $1,000 a square foot, I think you gotta be resourceful, and we've got to be conservative in what we build out. I don't look at space for growth. I look at technology for efficiency in the future and having fewer positions through attrition and through new technology and getting rid of where we have to transport paper files around and move into a more efficient age, that creates the opportunities for growth and not building out space that shouldn't be needed in the future if we're cognizant of our taxpayer dollars and find efficiencies in the way we do our operation. But we'll work through those things. And we are working through those. And so my proposal is we continue to work through those design issues. You know, and so we're not stopping anything. I'm just concerned about we were supposed to relief an RFN next week and we really haven't had any discussion about what that potential impact would be and if we want to make that decision. There's no magic date of releasing that now versus December. And so if we come together and we decide, you know, as Commissioner Peters, I have the same concerns. We need to do something, but I'd rather define. I mean, those are significant. We cannot get there. without everybody taking a hit in county government. And that's not a threat. I mean, it is what it is. I mean, it's $184 million. It's $22 million off of our EMS fund that funds firefighters. And so, we've got to look at those. I'm just saying, let's wait on releasing the RFN until we have a better financial picture. and we make a cognitive decision. I just don't want developers spending money and resources that we've recruited, and then we make a different decision in the future. We'd never get them back.

So does CBRE think that the property tax vote in November would cause developers to change their thinking if we did the RFN now?

No, I'm saying that if we, as a county government, after we get to the fall and that decision, we decide we can't move forward with this new building, yet we've taken proposals in, then the developers would have wasted their time. I'm saying we wait until a better day, a more informed day, to release the RFN. We postpone that. We send it out. in November, December, after we've looked at the impacts of the referendum and decide that, yeah, that's something we need to afford, and here's how we're gonna pay for it. And we're not there yet. And so I'm just hesitant to release the RFN with so much uncertainty.

I'm, Barry, you know, when we talked about this, I was a little bit concerned as well, but you know, these developers are gonna come forward because they feel like there's money to be made, right? I mean, period. And I understand what you're saying, but I mean, I hate to delay getting this input. I mean, this is us moving forward like it's like, Like the sheriff said yesterday, we got to move forward on this deal. I mean, because we can't, I mean, I can't wait and see what happens in November. Okay. I mean, I'm just, again, developers, they're in the risk business. Okay. You work with them. No, I don't, I mean, I don't work with them all the time, but I'm just, what I'm saying is, is that they know the lay of the land here. Now we find out when we put this out there and we get nobody. you know, putting a proposal in, we'll have a real quick sense that they're agreeing with what you're saying. They're concerned about it enough. But we need, we have a great need here.

If you're comfortable, I mean, this really is a board decision. I was just putting this out there because I'm concerned, right? The reality is if we release this RFN, that means regardless, we go forward. And that means that we will have to make the financial decisions, regardless of what happens in November, to move forward on that project. And that's okay.

What's the time frame on releasing?

Well, we were going to release it next week.

I'm talking about getting it back.

Well, it would come back in the fall or late summer. And then they go through the due diligence and all that stuff. And it would come back to you guys in the spring. Well, we give them, I think, 90 days. Yeah, so 90 days from tomorrow.

So if it goes out, say, July 1, July, August, September, they have to get it back to us?

Correct. And all I'm saying is if we're committed to going forward on the project regardless, that's fine. And then we go ahead and release the RFP, or RFN. That just means we're making a commitment because I think in fairness to the developers, then.

So based on the timeframe that you're talking about, you're saying what? You wanna wait till when? I would wait till release it in December.

So if it's not coming to us until spring, if we do it now, then it's not coming to us until maybe next spring, next year, which puts us back from 28 to 29, maybe 30 for completion. And here's the thing. If we move forward now, What we're doing is responsible opportunities for new growth in downtown Clearwater that will enhance our revenues that are, you know, they might be kept at 5%, but you're going to have a whole area with all this property that's going to be able to develop and generate enough revenue to help support this plan. So if you don't, you're not generating that revenue and you're not coming up with a new plan that's going to, you know, re-energize downtown Clearwater. that's really gonna do economic development and economic growth in downtown Clearwater if we hang onto this land. But by moving forward and being able to sell this land or whatever it is we're gonna do with this land, it leaves us the opportunity to generate true economic development and develop a community that's been waiting to develop for 30 years or 40 years, and that's gonna generate a whole lot of money. So if we don't do it, we don't generate that money. If we do do it, we can generate that money, but I don't think, I just don't, I don't think pushing this off to 2030 for completion is the thing to do.

I don't think we can do both at the same time. We can do the RFN process and then take a look at these financial numbers. over the next 30, 60 days, and pull the plug if we like say we can't do it. We can pull the plug. Back to, I wanted to comment on what Commissioner Latvala was talking about. We could ask CBRE, just to show an example of what it would look like if you added a floor to both buildings, there'd be additional cost, and if you rented it, what? Well, what I'm saying is, I'm just talking about, what I'm talking about is this making money off the development. I understand what you're saying. And then you rent those two spaces.

What does it look like from a... Well, it's... When we bring back the cost, you're going to have to be sitting down anyway, all right? You know... You know, and yeah, I got some people we can name it after. If you don't want to do the exercise on the question that was raised, that's fine. I will discuss that with them. We can present ideas. All I was trying to do is see if that's anything viable to the idea because I do. I mean, I've got, you know, three of you want to move forward. I'm 100% okay with that. I just think that for the commitment to the developers, if we're going to ask them to do it, we just make a commitment right here that regardless of what happens in November, we move forward on the project. I mean, I think that's just being fair. And to Commissioner Peters' point, we actually have in here a, what is it, a payment in lieu of taxes or something like that, that if we lose the referendum, they still have to pay us the full value of the taxes. So we actually have some protections built in, but still, it's just the optics of, you know, did you want to go forward when we're trying to cut $184 million out of the budget?

Chris Shearer has a question.

Okay. Well, I just wanted to say that I prefer to keep moving forward. We may get some proposals in from developers that have a phased takedown schedule anyway. We may not need to move our utility people into their own building on the campus right away. You know, maybe we can make it, but at least we'll have a plan. We can say, hey, we can keep these people, we can keep these offices here for three or four years, and that could be part of their proposal. You know, because we got, and then say with code enforcement, things like that. So I'd just like to keep moving forward, know what the development plan could look like, and then.

Okay, but I want to be clear. Just because we decide to move forward, what do you mean we can't pull the plug?

Well, I'm just, if we move forward and negotiate with a developer, I think it would just be bad form to pull back. Well, nobody has that intention. Well, I understand. But they're the one in the risk business, not us. Okay. I put it out there. I get a sense from you. You want to go forward? Commissioner Flowers.

Just to weigh in, I agree with what's being said, but I just also want to add, the longer that we wait, the greater the potential for cost to increase for our new construction. Yeah, no question about it. No question about it. Even if we need some additional funding, Who knows what the cost of things are going to be that far off. That's number one. Number two, this may be a real bad example, but I'm going to use it. If you all recall, there was an entire... And this is just a request for negotiations. So for an RFM, we can always go back and do that. And perhaps, I don't know legal, perhaps some language may be put in there that references... that the county has the option or the ability to renegotiate terms and agreements based on the state of Florida's property tax outcome or something like that. I mean, you could use whatever flourishing legal language, but I think that's putting them on notice within the proposal that there is the propensity for some adjusting, number two. Number three, Maybe a bad example, but I'm going to use it. If you all recall, there was an entire process in the city of St. Petersburg for redoing that Tropicana Field project. Mayor Dan Christman selected a developer and all of that stuff went forward. New mayor comes in, he kills the whole thing. And that company, the developer that had gotten the award had already started with... solidifying architectural design drawings and all of that stuff, spent close to $2 million, not only getting to that point, but once he was awarded, moving forward. So I'm saying I understand. I'm using it as an example to say I understand the risk, the negativity in the conversations, what that could or could not do with potential relationships with developers and all that stuff. But I do think that we should go ahead and continue on. And again, I'm not an attorney, but I would love to... see if there could be some way to formulate that within the RFM proposal. And I'm sure the developers, they're listening to us, they listen in, and they also see what's going on in Tallahassee. So they know. Yeah, they know. They absolutely know. But thank you, though, for trying to be forward-thinking and what is it that we need to consider? I ain't mean to say, I'm not saying you're not a forward thinker, but I'm just letting you know I appreciate you thinking about that and bringing it up as an option for us. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, Commissioner Nowicki.

Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I mean, maybe I, you know, Uh, many of you know, you know, I don't agree a lot of times with our administrator, but, uh, I guess this would be one that I actually would kind of agree with him on, uh, kinda, uh, I would agree with them on. I, um, you know, I, I mean, I, I talked to a lot of the, you know, proposals of, of folks in St. Pete, you know, three times and they spent hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars just to put proposals together. And each time it got smaller and smaller people putting in bids. And then how we're talking, saying, well, we could pull the plug on the project. And then some saying, we're moving forward with the project. If I was a developer and I'm watching this meeting, I'm saying, well, I have all the leverage to come in and offer a low price because if they're committed to doing the building, why do I need to pay such a high amount if they're committed to moving forward with it anyway? and to make even more money, because a developer only makes money by government losing money or not making as much. So, I mean, you know, I would be more cautious to move forward by saying, you know, we could pull the plug, even if developers submit, because they're just gonna take that factor into consideration that we can pull the plug after they submit their bids. And I understand the risk of everything, but, you know, I guess, you know, bury credit on this one. You know, I think to pause the breaks, because we're already behind schedule. I mean, I think we're already a year behind schedule already. So three months isn't going to make that big of a difference in the grand scheme of things. But I respect the will of the board and, you know, be a good team player.

Yeah. And I think a good point. I mean, we've already invested some dollars in buying the land. We've had a major, major investment there. And I suppose at the end of the day, and that's number one, it's a fact. Number two, we have to do something with these facilities, that's a fact. And I don't, that's why I was saying to point them out, I'm not committing to anything. All I'm committing to is the process of getting the RFNs out there and hearing what these ideas are. We can scrap them because we don't like any of the ideas. I mean, if we decide, I wanna make sure that we have that ability to do. That was to the leverage point. I don't want them to feel for a second that just because we're stuck, we have, we're not stuck. We can do whatever we choose to do based on the RFNs.

I don't think ... Maybe I'm wrong. Jewel, is that ... No, we absolutely have the ... You have the decision making. You're not obligated under any conditions. We're not playing with developers here. No, you're not. This has just happened to us. This is real intent. I was just cautious. That's the reason I brought it forward for a discussion. You do have the decision. I think, to your point, we have to do something. We know that putting more money into a 1960s building with a lot of underlying infrastructure issues is not money well spent. At the same time, we're facing major choices on programs that impact our residents if the referendum passes in the fall. So until we get through that process, it's just adding one more debt payment that we have to deal with. If you're comfortable going forward, we probably have to deal with it anyway. We'll move forward and we'll see what happens. And that's what I'm hearing.

I'm as anxious to hear about some of the creative thought processes these developers have on whether it's phasing, the different financial schemes, buying, leasing, the whole thing, and it'd be nice to get that out on the table to see. I suspect this is going to take some time, even more than we may think.

It's going to take time, and the comments were great because you're exactly right. This site will then generate property tax, new property taxes at full value. Commercial isn't affected by what's being presented. And so this will generate new AAV that will help financially. It's just we don't know what that is. you know, we're facing fall decisions. So if you're, I mean, I've heard clear direction. Are we doing this on Tuesday or are we doing this? If you give me the direction right now, I heard five people saying move forward, I'll move forward. Okay. And we're okay with that. I just thought I would bring it forward for this discussion.

Well, the decision was to move forward before. What we'd be doing now would be just. Would be reversing that decision, yes. I'd like to leave it like it is. All right. Do I get thumbs up on leaving it like it is? OK. We're learning like it is.

All right. On to the agenda review. There you go, Blaine. All right. So we got some presentations. We got a public hearing. This is a companion item to number six. This is taking a residential rule to institutional. It's basically keeping the current community assembly and making it come into compliance with our current code. Item five, the next item is the zoning for that case. Item seven is our annual action plan authorizing actions for community development block grant, home investment partnerships, and the emergency solutions grant. The funding amounts are listed within your packet. We got different reports all the way down through item number 24. Item 25 is award of bid to Duncan Applied Americas for boiler maintenance and repair. This is an as-needed contract, and we're seeing repairs are more frequent, so we're upping the amount a bit. That's five-year? It's a five-year contract. Their last contract period was $1 million. They've upped it to $1.3 million based upon the actual expenditures that they're seeing. Item 26, surplus equipment. Item 27 is a ranking of firms. Okay, this is for Eastlake Community Library expansion. And so this is the design for the Eastlake Community Library expansion, adding the second floor. Questions? Go ahead. Okay. Item 28's report. and file. Item 29, ranking of firms with WGI for the Crystal Beach drainage road improvements. This is a professional engineering contract. The companion item to this is item 47. That's for the construction, and we have a grant that pays for half the construction. Again, that's item 47. Item 30 is award of bid air mechanical for Star Center air handling units.

Chair, I have a question.

Would you have a question?

Okay, so you brought up, and I really kind of didn't want to bring this up, but you brought up us waiting on our project.

Yep.

Should we have that attitude with every project? Should we have that attitude with East Lake Library? Should we have that attitude with every, I mean, I feel that there's a difference, that there's a tax return on developing in downtown Clearwater. So I'm not so keen on waiting for lots of reasons. But we have the opportunity to generate significant revenue here. Right. But the library's gonna lose money. And how are they gonna pay for that? Is it gonna be a sustainable thing for them to pay for? So, as long as you brought that up, I think we're talking apples and oranges here because these are different, but it's the same cause which made you bring it up in the first place.

I looked around to see if there was any comments when I went over the- Well, I'm a little late in it, but I'm bringing it up because- Because that's exactly right. I mean, the library loses 44% of their funding. if the referendum passes. So how are they gonna sustain the expansion? I don't know the answer to that.

So it might be worth having a discussion on any of those kind of projects about pausing them. If there isn't, where there's a difference where if we sell this land and we generate economic development here, there's revenue. But on something like that, and then we're building that other shelter, which is really important to us, we need that step down shelter. But when you look at any of those projects, those we already have a contract on. That shelter we have a contract on, so we can't do that. But any new ones?

Yeah, they're already building that one. This one's just a design. So you could go forward with the design and make the decision on the construction later, or you could postpone the design. It's a very fair question. I do think it's different.

Oh, it's different. These are apples and oranges.

It is definitely apples and oranges, not the same thing.

And these buildings are functionally obsolete. Yeah. You can't invest more dollars in them. That's correct. Substantially, because it's just a money pit. Yes. The one out in East Lake is fine. It's a beautiful building. They've upgraded it. What they're looking to do is expand it.

Yes.

And I think it would be responsible to at least have that conversation.

I don't, between now and Tuesday, we'll reach out to Eastlake Library and have that conversation with them. And then we can have this discussion again on Tuesday. Yeah, and maybe to the fix it chair as well.

Okay.

And that's probably something we have to do with everyone, everyone that is looking, that's an MSTU or something like that, that's looking to do any kind of big project. I think there just might have to be a pause.

Okay.

At least a conversation of a pause. Not a pause, but a conversation about it.

Thanks. That's very legit. We'll do that. Okay. Tom, you got that? Okay. All right. Item 32 is rank of firms of four firms that provide professional engineering services for the airport. They're listed within your packet. It's done as an as needed for various projects at the airport. For the airport, no. They don't lose funding. Item 33 is first amendment at term extension with train. This is for our central energy plan. So it's ongoing maintenance. Obviously we won't need this if we move, when we move. Item 34, now these are cleanups. So we're selling off these little slivers of parcels of when we did the construction project or whatever. This first one is outlined in your packet. You can see the address. In the same way with item 35, it's a little small sliver, giving it to the adjacent property owner. And same thing for item 36 and 37. Kind of cleaning up all those parcels that we own. Um, item 38, it's a resolution for a substantial amendment for, um, the, uh, second allocation, the emergency solutions grant for unsheltered, um, sorry, and housing funds. So this is homeless prevention funds, um, where we're going to receive for $1.6 million. Item 39 is agreement. Um, this is for the coordinated access model. This is what we talked about in the work session, uh, to pay for, uh, bringing that in-house and us owning the technology platform. And this is the $1.3 million would actually create that to where we own the platform. But here we're going to use the opioid settlement funds to pay for that.

Got a question. So I brought this up to you before in different ways in which we can generate revenue. Since there was interest in other counties replicating it, is there any, if we own the platform, we came up with the concept of the program, is there any thought in licensing it or patenting it or something in which... We can look into it.

Because... We can look into that. I can tell you there's some case law that's pretty old about a property appraiser's office that developed a new system and all that. Public record, couldn't market it. They basically eviscerated the whole thing by virtue of all the sunshine and public records laws that we have. We can certainly look into it. Maybe there's some kind of trade secret issues that protect it, but it's been tried in the past and it was not successful. Doesn't mean it's not a reason to not look into it now, but I just wanna throw that out there as a possible roadblock.

Okay. You know, since it's a workshop, and I don't know if I threw this out before, I know I've thrown it out to you, but the Vancouver Airport invested in a, not really an accelerator, a think tank kind of thing, and so they invested in this got sponsors of it and put money in this. And then those people that were doing that innovative thinking are the ones that came up with the new passport system where you put your passport in a machine, it takes your pictures. saves a ton of money in airports and they own the license on that and almost every single airport in the world now that's international is using that system and they get royalties and money for that all the time and they have been able to grow their little incubator huge and they're coming up with things and generating money for that airport to really make them hands down one of the best airports in the world because they have this revenue and these innovative people that are coming up with things to make airports so much better. And I know this isn't one of those strategic planning workshops right now, but I really think we have the the Innovative Center down in South St. Pete, that this is something that, and I've been saying we have to come up, we have to be innovative and come up with things so we can generate revenue. And there's no reason why we can't do the exact same thing the airport did somehow I don't know how, but legally you gotta find out a way that we can do this in which we can generate and come up with innovative things for government that can save them money and yet we can generate revenue as a result of it. And there's gotta be a way, there's gotta be a way in which we can do it.

Commissioner, I mean you raise a good idea where you kind of put that outside of county government and put it into like a think tank that's probably a better way of doing that than kind of internal to government, but we'll look into it.

I really think that could be a real solution for us long term for revenue generating long term and government where you're not using taxes. And that's the kind of outside the box kind of thinking we have to start doing.

As long as it's a workshop, I hadn't brought it up yet, but You know, the county owns a substantial amount of real estate. I can think of 100 acres that's very underperforming and right down the middle of Pinellas County is out of the flood zone. You know, we could divide up and land lease into different types of parcels that right now we're using, you know, as far as I can tell too. We're not getting much rent out of the Star Center. We're not. We're undergoing a P3 on the Star Center. I know, but there's other pieces of property that could be used as well, so. There's 100 acres there, right?

Well, but we're going to be tearing down those buildings, and that's part of getting the private developers to develop that out at maximum occupancy. Well, that's coming up. Yeah, the idea is that you're exactly right. That land is laying there bare, but we have to decouple all the utilities first to work and individualize the meters.

Well, that's going to be a good one.

So we would build that out at max capacity under a P3.

We own a lot of real estate around town. We could start utilizing for revenues, I think.

Good. All right, item 40 is the Byrne Memorial Justice Grant Program. I divide those funds out. Item 41 is the city and county abatement funds. That's the priority list that we submit to the Department of Children and Families. item 42 is um the fiscal year 27 human services social action grant funds 1.7 million item 43 is the first amendment to the um oh this is with our home depot so it's a kind of an as needed contract for different things um this is bid out so it's upset limit of 1.3 million sure uh you said it was bid out We jumped on a bid. So we jumped on a Maricopa County bid. And so we utilize that. It's like a pricing. So you're bidding out the pricing and then you utilize that pricing for various services that you need or materials that you need throughout the year.

So the original amount was for 240.

Not approved by the board. Yeah. County administrator.

So they've expanded what? Approved by the county administrator for an annual expenditure of 240. So they tried it, it's worked well, and so now they want to utilize, they want to use it more, right?

So an increase of 1.3? Craig, you want to speak to it? But for the next four months or five, six months?

Yeah, December 31st.

Of this year? Yeah.

Well, that's when it's effective.

Yes, sir. It's effective at the end of this year, and Barry is correct. It's just increasing the contract capacity. It's been successful. Other departments utilize it, and so we've increased it to where those maintenance services can be taken advantage of.

So it was originally... set at 240 a year because they didn't know how much they would use and so they they and so when did they start it i'm sorry in 21 okay in 21. so so it's been effective so they want to utilize it more 25 26. and we've spent 240 each of those years uh yes that's correct And now we want to increase for five months, we want to increase it by 1.3 million?

It would be up to that amount, but that would be a maximum amount.

Well, that's a lot, isn't it?

Am I missing something here?

Yeah, is that a year it would be?

I left, yeah, I do understand the question.

I would need Bill to answer that.

That's okay.

We may need to wait until Tuesday and have Bill provide a better explanation. I don't want to guess.

It's just used on an as-needed basis. Let me check that. Give us a better answer before Tuesday. That's fine. Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you, Chair.

Item 44 is emergency watershed protection grant agreement. This is huge, obviously. This is for $29 million with the assistance of recovery from impacts. And this is all of our various creeks and banks throughout the county as a result of the hurricanes. 100% construction cost. And you can see the breakdown. Item 45 is a grant agreement with Federal Highway Administration for the Safe Streets. Grant awards $4.8 million with a county match of 1.2. Item 46 is a resilient Florida grant agreement for 98th to 100th way drainage improvements. $3.8 million with a 50% match.

Barry, can we go back to 45 just a second? I mean, it's a nice award, and we're putting $1.2 million in. It says for advanced technology, are we talking like the $0.09 stuff?

Yeah, all $0.09 stuff. Okay, so all ATMS stuff.

And preferred roadway treatments. What does that mean?

What is preferred roadway treatments? I saw I saw that I'm assuming that's what the safety Council. Yeah, I can't come up here.

I'll get verification, if I could, from Tom Washburn to be certain, but I think they go hand-in-hand. I think the preferred roadway treatments go hand-in-hand with the implementation of the ATMS.

I just wanted to know if it was paint or if it was actual technology that we really need.

It's absolutely technology, but I believe it includes striping and some of those other things, but I'll get it confirmed. We'll get you a good answer.

Thank you. Item 47 is the companion item to earlier for item 29, and this is the construction for the Crystal Beach drainage and roadway improvements. Item 48 is Commissioner Egger's item, the resolution supporting the honorary designation of County Road 1 to Sergeant Nicholas Flowers. Good to go. Item 49, second amendment to a cooperative funding agreement with SWFMA. The breakdown of the various funding pieces are within your packet. Item 50, sixth amendment to image trend. This is with safety and emergency services for the medical records management system. The fund comes from the EMS funds and prime. Item 51 is a third amendment to an agreement UF's Submergent Technologies for Grit Removal Services. And obviously this is out at utilities. 52 is a third amendment voice over IP. This is with BTS. 53 is issuance of 17 certificates of public convenience and necessity for non-wheelchair or non-medical wheelchair transport and stretcher van services, the breakdowns within your packet.

Just on number 50 and number 52, these look like we had contracts in place. And is the scope changing on both of these different contracts that are adjusting the, during the term, they're adjusting, is it just, Increase in scope?

It's the term ended, so you're doing a Sixth Amendment to continue that service.

Number 50 is the Sixth Amendment?

Yeah, it's the Sixth Amendment. So that term ended, and you're using that same vendor because you're married to them. I'd have to look down in the packet to see. I'm looking back at Matt if he knows whether it actually increased in cost other than normal inflationary costs.

This is only one year, a year and six months. That's why when it says Sixth Amendment, it's obviously just, it looks like it's finishing a term but adding more dollars.

Sixth Amendment is for an increase in the amount. You know, Matt?

It's not like another three years or five-year term.

Oh, I see. A revised total amount. Yeah. Yeah, a 4.7.

We can get you an answer on how much time it adds, but it does add 1.6 million to the 3.1 for a total of four points.

The question is, why is it increasing?

You got two of these, and then a number 52 is another one where we're, I guess we're just finding, I'm just asking if we're finding changes scope, or are we just getting more work than we originally anticipated, or in each of these cases, if we could find out, that would be great.

So this extends it from December 15, 2025 through November 14, 2027. So it extends it two years.

Okay. I mean, again, is that what it is? We're extending the contract?

Yes. Yes. It says the Sixth Amendment will increase $1.6 million and extend it to November 14, 2027. And the Fourth Amendment was extending it.

Could you just double check? Yeah, I will. Double check on 52 as well, please. Thank you. We will.

That'll be Tom. Tom will check on 52.

Yeah, because the year over year pricing and option year one and option year two is like a hundred and some odd thousand dollar increase in the pricing, it looks like.

The $100,000, I mean, that's the reason I was asking whether it was normal inflationary costs. Every one of those contracts go up. It could be. It could be. But we'll find out. But all those contracts go up, and once you use the technology, you're staying with it until you make a big change.

I'd like to understand it. Thank you.

Okay. We've got about half the agenda we've got to get back to you on, but we'll do it. We couldn't answer some of those. Well, they probably have all the answers, so. I didn't know. I mean, your staff, I mean, it's not here. No, no, thank you.

Under item number 54, this is a request to ratify litigation that we have filed regarding an animal that was seized by Animal Services. Under item number 55, there should be a folder going around. Chair, looks like you have it. It stopped here. That is a confidential settlement, so I just ask that each of you review. Each of you review that and initial it, and if you have any questions, talk to me outside of this meeting. And I am currently not planning any county attorney reports.

Under item 57, I have three items under county minister's report. We're going to give you a CWGDR update, okay, on where we're at. We're going to provide, as you requested, a towing update. We'll have discussion about towing, so we've added that to the agenda. And then I'll have to read a TEFRA statement for a future meeting. And so that'll be all done under the County Administrator's report. It's a TEFRA. What is it? Oh, let me see. Let me get the language. No, no, no, it's not a TIF. It's a TEFRA. I don't have the, I'm drawing a blank on tax equity. these these are these these housing these housing programs that we have and yeah so it's our housing funds and so what we what we'll do is it's not our housing funds it's i know and and okay and so remember we read those they come in and we don't have any obligations of the county but we're a facilitator and we have to approve them so and these are he said they're educational for these Well, you asked us to put it on. It's on the agenda, so you have the fees that are associated. You have a report from Doug that says here's what we have currently. Here's what we were considering before we got into the $250 administrative fee, and then here's what they're requesting. And then the only other thing that was brought up at the meeting was whether or not we do a fuel surcharge. So he has a recommendation to you on that if you wanted to impose that. The only difference, you could at this meeting, since it's advertised, you could change any of the fees that you want. If you decide you wanna do a surcharge, we have to put that on for the July meeting because we'd have to advertise it, because it's not currently a fee. Other than that, it's there for your consideration.

I had the opportunity to meet and I asked specifically the question about where there are no towing signs. You know how in the handicap place where they have the sign and down below it says minimum 250 fine? Do you know what I'm talking about? Okay, well under towing, I said I think we should to protect our residents. we should add minimum average towing charge of 450 or whatever it is so that our residents understand. Because when you see a towing sign, it's like, well, I don't know what that is. It's 125, 150 bucks maybe. They just walk away. But if you see it in blue and white, what the cost is, and they didn't seem to have an issue with that. So I'm just adding that to the, because we're concerned about what this is. We're concerned about what this is doing for the resident. The comment back was there'll still be people that don't care. And then the last item are just appointments.

Oh, we gotta do the 803 that Kevin talked about earlier also. I haven't added that to my agenda yet. Oh, and the Bel Air Beach, so you'll have to take a position, or Bel Air Shores. Which one?

We'll just send it to them. Okay.

Okay. And that concludes the agenda.

Yes, Commissioner Flowers. So, Jewel, I serve at the pleasure of our county commission on the Area Agency on Aging Board of Directors. They applied for social action funding and looks like they received. Do I need to recuse myself? I don't write the grants or anything of that nature, but I'm appointed by here to serve.

Well, let me take a look at that because oftentimes when you all get appointed to a board and it's part of like the charter or part of an ordinance or something. Sometimes that can ameliorate conflicts and things of the like, but let me take a look because I like to look at each one on a case-by-case basis.

Well, if you could, that way I'll know what to do on the 16th.

I'll talk with you afterwards, okay? Okay.

Anything else? All right, we'll see you Tuesday. Have a great weekend. Tomorrow. We got Friday.

See you on Tuesday.

Oh, I'll see you guys Tuesday.

I'm not leaving Stacey.