Board of County Commissioners - Special Meeting

Thank you. Thank you for watching.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

welcome to our August 20th workshop we've got a few items but more discussion than there are items for sure so we'll go ahead and get started with our new campus update we have e-bikes report and the budget discussion and then agenda briefing so We'll start with the new campus update. Barry? Okay. Good morning, commissioners. Go on.

You guys can start heading on up. So I'm going to introduce our HOK team and specifically Jonathan Ray that's going to kick this off. You know, we had a conversation back, you know, several months ago. We got a lot of feedback from both you. Also took this to the appointing authorities and constitutional officers to get their feedback. and so they've tried to come up with some design ideas and so what they're looking for is more feedback so we can narrow this down as we kind of shape the outside envelope then they can finalize the details on what goes inside and how those layouts occur and that changes based upon the design that you select so for today they're going to go over some different ideas if you want to get your feedback and I'll share with you kind of the appointing authorities thoughts for your consideration as we continue to try to get to a final design for the new campus.

And before we get started, I saw one of the deputies letting you in, so I want to recognize the deputies now, because if I don't, I'll end up forgetting. So Sergeant Campbell, Deputy Mike Winnick, and Deputy Jeff Atkinson are here this morning. Thank you for being here and for taking care of us, as always. The floor is yours.

All right, I appreciate that. Great summation, Barry. Exactly as Barry mentioned, we are looking for some input on designs we're presenting today. We took the feedback that we got from you last time, very much appreciated, and have advanced those thoughts and ideas into some additional designs. So my name is Jonathan Ray, Senior Principal with HOK. With me, I have Christine Bishop Johnson, our firm-wide leader in civic and justice. And then we've added to the team Peter Glasson. He is our regional design principal, and he'll talk about the design in more detail.

Sounds good. Well, welcome. Welcome to the team.

Thank you.

Thanks, Jonathan, and a pleasure to be here. Really excited to share some development on the architecture and the planning of the project. So just quickly, the agenda for us today. We're gonna hit meeting objectives really quick, and then we're gonna hop right into the design options, option one and two, and a set of sub-options that look at the architectural character. And then we'll wrap up by just having open discussion on what we've looked at today. So the objectives, we really wanna focus on the architectural character, specifically the top of the building and how it all comes together, the materiality, its setting and the site. We're gonna look at two options for the lobby and entry location in relation to the Civic Plaza and the courtyard. And we also have two co-joining landscape site approaches or site plans that go with those lobby layouts and the approach to the architecture. So we're hopping right into the design concepts here. As I mentioned, we have two lobby options. The first option, option one, is a centered lobby that's on the north side of the court's wing of the building. It's centered on the main civic courtyard. And option two is on the eastern side of that courtyard, nestled between the admin wing and the court's wing of the project. We're gonna look at a suite of sub options for both of those planning configurations. Those go from 1A to 1D and 2A to 2D. And these really look at architectural refinement and character and detail of the buildings and how they kind of really come together, relate to the site, integrate into the campus and have a level of detail and thoughtfulness in the architecture. As we look at these options, we often think about the setting and the scale of the building. It's a civic building, it needs to have the right posture. So this idea of civic scale and proportion is incredibly important to us. This idea of verticality and a portico and an entrance into the building is very important. There's also an idea of layered symmetry as we think about the positioning of the building and the top of the building. The idea of the entry and an axial entry and off axis entrance is also an important part of the dialogue today as we think about the two planning options for the lobbies. As we get into the detail of the project, we're also talking about the character. So we want to understand its texture, scale. The idea of shadow and relief and detail is also very important, coupled with its materiality. So we want adoring, long-lasting materials. We're using precast, warm metals and wood, as well as local materials, maybe for some of the landscape elements to tie it all together and make it fit in with Pinellas. Okay, we're going to hop right into the option one configurations here. So the first option that we're looking at here, again, this is the center lobby configuration. We're standing in the Civic Plaza, the Civic Courtyard here, looking at the north side of the project. We've got strong vertical forms outside of the lobby here, round columns. And what we've really done since the last time you all have seen the project, we've looked at the kind of the ornament, the detail, the architecture, character, and style of the building, and really how that resolves itself over the colonnade and the cornice and at the top of the building. In this particular option, we've added additional vertical fluting on the top floors of the building to kind of accentuate the detail. We set back that cornice again to kind of give a little bit more definition to the top. and really overall give it that next level of character and definition as it kind of sits in the site here. It's a strong figure. It has a rich detail to it. It's also warm, welcoming, and inviting as well. And the following options we build on this, so this is the stepped option for 1A. This is 1B, which we're calling the vertical crown. A lot of the same elements carry over into this. We've just accentuated the top of the building by adding a kind of metal panel crown around the top that would kind of wrap the typical penthouse area. We've also added that ornament to the top of the cornice over the colonnade. In this particular option, we have square columns as opposed to round. Those are fluted to, again, accentuate the sense of verticality and scale and magnitude of this important entry and lobby for the building. Moving to option 1C, again, a lot of the same characteristics fold over into this option. We're adding a little bit more definition by stepping the top of the building and adding a sloped roof. So this is 1C, we've added a sloped roof to the top here, and again, a little bit more definition at the top of that sloped roof by another parapet and cornice. Okay, option 1D, again, these are centered lobby options. 1D is a slight deviation from the first three options, and what we've looked to do here really is lighten up the top of the building. We've added window wall or curtain wall to the top floor, which is the primary quartz floor of the project to allow for a little bit more transparency. and we've also accentuated the horizontal nature of that by having overhangs on both the top cornice and the top of the lobby roof over the colonnade and so that kind of bridges out into the site it's a little bit more distinct and strong creating a crown over that top floor of the building here so this is 1d and we're calling this the halo option So zooming out and looking at the plan here, as I mentioned earlier, this is the center lobby configuration. So what you're seeing here is the typical kind of blocking diagram of the ground floor plan. You can see the position of the lobby, again, centered on the court's wing of the building. It's an ample kind of space lobby. It kind of steps out into the Civic Plaza and courtyard. It has space for screening and security. It has space for gathering and waiting as you enter the building, and then direct connection to kind of the service desks on the first floor. And then directly adjacent to that, there's a secondary kind of lobby that gives you connection to the new commission space, as well as connection to the vertical circulation core and elevators. Looking at that space in 3D here, you'll see that's a triple height space. Again, plenty of room for waiting and gathering if you're meeting a colleague here or you're waiting to kind of meet somebody and go into the spaces inside the building. Directly in the center of the view here is the screening area. So you'll come into the building through the doors, you'll enter a screening area, you'll queue up, and then you'll be screened into the building. Beyond that, there's a nice strong formal wall that kind of defines the space and an information desk that would be associated with that. And then directly behind that are the main service desks that a large majority of the public will be using on a day-to-day basis. Again, triple height space, it's got the right amplitude and magnitude to it to really feel civic and really as a new front door to the community and to the campus and to the county. Looking at that in plan, we've also been refining the landscape and site plans. This particular option is a little bit more formal. We're trying to blend some formality with also the opportunity for casual use for day-to-day kind of county users and employees. And so what we've done here is we've made a big move and we've justified most of the public and outdoor space for the community on the east side of this courtyard. And that's really to maximize the direct connection from outside of the door uh to use that space we have pavilions shaded areas natural landscapes and then we've justified the drop-off to the west side of the site directly adjacent to the parking that helps from a security standpoint and it just maximizes the most usable space for the community and the county users okay so that was option one the grouping of option one sub options and I'm going to move into option two now like the previous option we're going to go through four options here and so the first one is again we're starting with a corner Lobby here so you can see that on the left side of the image and it's kind of nestled or in the corner there right between the courts uh wing of the building and the admin wing of the building and this is the stepped option so again we're adding that kind of vertical fluting on the upper floors a little bit more detail and articulation of the cornice of both the canopy roof over the colonnade and at the top of the building On option 2B, which we're calling vertical crown, again, we're adding that kind of next level of detail at the top of the building. So there's a vertical metal panel element that happens at the roof level to accentuate the top. And then for the canopy over the colonnade, we've made that out of metal panel, again, to just add a little bit of definition and kind of break up the materiality and add a little bit more richness over the lobby there. And again, in this option, we're showing square columns instead of round, and those are fluted vertically, again, to accentuate the verticality and the prominence of this lobby. Looking at option 2C here, this is the sloped roof configuration, so very similar to the option one version of this. What we've done is we've stepped back the upper cornice here, we've added a little bit more layering and definition, and then we've coupled that with a sloped roof configuration, and that would be a metal sloped roof, and it would match kind of the cornice line and the cornice material of the roof over the lobby. And lastly, option 2D. So similar to, again, the option one configuration, what we've done is we've freed up the facade on the fourth floor of the building. We've made that curtain wall and window wall. We accentuated the horizontal of the roof at that level while also still grounding the building in a solid precast material. So it does have both lightness and solidity in the option here. Looking at this in plan, again, a very highly efficient ground floor plan. In this case, we're taking that lobby. We're taking off the central access, but we're situating it between the two major programs, the administrative portion of the building and the court's portion of the building. And then that lobby is directly connected to the secondary lobby outside of the chamber space and directly adjacent to the vertical elevators that bring you up in the building. Stepping inside of that space here, and I'll just point out for a second, the view that we look at on the next slide is right here in this corner. So looking at that in three dimensions and understanding the space, you're beyond screening at this point. You're in kind of the corner of the lobby here. You're looking to that secondary space here. Directly in front of you or in front of the camera view is the connection to the elevators that bring you up vertically in the building. But again, we feel like This lobby steps out into the Plaza in the courtyard. It'll give you ample connection to that outdoor space and great connectivity to all the programs across the whole project. For landscape on this option, very similar party, but different aesthetic or kind of formal approach. So this is much more naturalistic and flowing in its approach. But again, we're trying to maximize the amount of usable space by justifying the outdoor space on the east side of the plaza here, natural landscapes, pavilions with shade, and then a more curvilinear drop off configuration on the west side of the site, more closely associated with the parking garage and the drop-off configuration on that side. Okay, so we'll open up for discussion. Hopefully that was clear. If you have any comments or questions, please let me know. I can hop back and forth on any side.

Yeah, well, I think we'll have some comments and questions for sure. Appreciate the presentation. Really well done and I'm sure we'll each have different sets of criteria to consider and look at and we'll get to commissioners in just a second. You know lot more modern versus less modern standing the test of time versus not standing the test of time. Cost you know the incremental costs for each of those options might be something that at least be considered at this point. Option one and two on the. It's interesting from the outside, it's one thing, and the inside, it almost makes it feel different. So it kind of, for me, but I will open it up for the commission first. Commissioner Flowers.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. I appreciate you taking into account the comments that we provided at our last meeting. I really, can you go back to, I believe it was 2C? I like that. because it utilizes less glass. Glass is expensive. My question is the glass, is it the kind where you can't see inside but you can see outside? I'm only thinking about security reasons because the courthouse takes up this function as well as would that be us over here to the left where you can see a building like sideways? And when I say us, I mean commission offices.

Yes, it's on this side.

Okay, that's okay. So I just would want the glass to be that non reflective where you can't see inside, but you could see outside only for safety reasons because then you could really see the movement of people throughout the facility. But I like the slant of that roof. I don't like the way you have that metal ribbon going across kind of looked like something just was plopped there. So I don't like that. Um, can you go to the one after this? Now I like that roof, but again, that's just additional glass, a lot of glass, which increases the cost of the project. I think I love the landscaping that you have there. And I know what we talked about when it comes to parking so that we can have ingress and egress into, um, Into the building from as it relates to the judges that will be going in and then where we will be going in versus where we will be parking for the columns. I would prefer square columns round columns. Give me more of a Roman Gothic kind of thing. Huh? Oh, will they ask?

It gives me... We were just thinking about, we probably should send out around ballots with explanations because I love your descriptions, but we're going to get seven of those. But go ahead, I want to hear them. We're taking notes. No, no, no, that's fine.

So I prefer the square. versus the round for all the way around because if it were only the judicial building then yeah i would go with the round um but i like the design and again thank you so much for listening to our comments and concerns and reflecting those here so um Did you like option one or two on the outside? I like option two. Okay, in the corner. Yeah, I like option two. I really like the glass. I like the building slope here because it's four floors. But just worried about the increased cost when you have another level of glass. So I would go with the slanted roof.

Thank you for your comments. Great comments on the glass and the transparency versus kind of opacity. That's something that we could study across all four options.

Thank you. Barry, you had a comment? Just to add, because I think we'll have the same questions from each commissioner. So two things. First, the first two options are really cost neutral. They cost about the same. The option 1 and 2C is about $4 million more, and 2D is about $8 million more, kind of to the point. Well, again, you're talking about you're talking a very large project. So, you know, it needs to stand 40 years, 50 years. But but I just wanted so you have so you have the understanding of the cost. That's kind of how that works. The other thing I was going to say is we had the same discussion and the same, you know, 10 people with 10 different thoughts at the appointing authorities meeting. They liked the grand entrance of the center, but they thought it was more practical to have it between the two buildings. And then they liked one or A or D as kind of an overall from the appointing authorities, just for frame of reference for your discussion. Not that we care what they think. At that point, I'm done. I said I would share with you their thoughts, but I'm done.

All right. So we'll go to other commissioners. From a more modern versus less modern and standing the test of time, YOUR COMMENT ON THAT REAL QUICK?

YEAH, I THINK ALL OF THESE ARE GROUNDED IN CLASSICAL CIVIC PRINCIPLES, RIGHT? YOU SAW THAT KIND OF IN THE SETUP SLIDE, SO I THINK THEY CAN ALL STAND THE TEST OF TIME. OKAY. THEY ALL HAVE THAT KIND OF ENDURING SCALE, THEIR POSITIONING ON THE SITE. THEY WILL ALL WORK FROM THAT PERSPECTIVE. I'm of the mind that you want to honor the past, but look to the future a little bit. And I think that's kind of up for you all to really think about which one of these balances that the most or kind of hits what you're looking for. But I think they all work really well. I'm favorable to the D options, but we have to understand there's cost constraints here too.

Yeah, so I ran this by several different younger people, and that was the same thing. It was more about D than the rest of them. And I was like, of course, I was at one or two, more of the standard. Not two, but I didn't like two too much, but more standard. But they're all kind of standing the test of time, to your point. maybe fours or Ds a little bit more, maybe a little bit more flair or modern. But you feel comfortable they all will stand the test of time.

Yeah, and I think the A options are also very strong. There's a simplicity to them. There's not too much over embellishment. And so it's maybe the bookends there that are kind of, to me, feel the strongest for my position.

But again, that's just... No, I understand. It's personal preference. Okay. Brian, did you raise your hand? I didn't know if you raised your hand. Okay, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I really appreciate you bringing back some great options. I think any one of these options is far superior than the previous options that we were, that to me looked like something out of the Hunger Games. So all of these are way, way better. I like that grand entrance of option one, but for just efficiency, option two just makes a lot more sense to me. And I'm right where you're at. It's either 2A or 2D. You know, I mean, the simplicity of 2A is just, it just does what it has to do. 2D is just very, it's just very classy to me. So that's kind of where I'm at on them. But any one of these, I would take any one of these over what we had previously. So, Commissioner Latvala.

Which one overall is the cheapest option?

Yeah, it's really 1A, 2A, 2B, or 1B and 2B. Yeah, my vote is for whichever one is the cheapest.

I don't care how it looks. At least he's embracing his non-architectural taste. Commissioner Shearer, did you have?

Yes, thank you, Chair. First of all, wow, great job. I really appreciate the work because this is vastly superior to what we saw before. Second, I prefer the option one. The cost is good, but I think it's a cleaner look than the option two, which is... You haven't presented an elevation for the other building, and I'm worried about the conflict between the entryway and the second building, and obscure that elevation. I think you could get a cleaner look on the second building and the elevation if we go with the central entrance for option one. So I'm leaning toward option one. I haven't decided if I like 1A or 1C better, but either one of those would be great, I think. So that's kind of where I am.

You're leaning for the middle piece instead of the corner.

Right. The one in the corner for the second option, option two, if you put it in the corner, I don't know. I can't visualize what the other building would look like with that out there, and we don't have an option to look at, but I think it would be a cleaner option.

I'm sure they can provide us with that at some point. Yes. Okay. If we, if we come down to that kind of rustling between one and the corner of the middle, we will develop those extra. Yeah.

And I'm just assuming that we're going to eliminate the colony that was on the backside of the facing the, uh, Olmerton road.

So we won't have that expense, right? Yeah. Yep, there will be some articulation there, so it kind of matches. It's a prominent facade, but it's not going to be a full colonnade.

Right, I like the focus that it's on the interior where people come, and so I like that. Anyway, I like option one. I really like the 1A. 1C is nice as well, but I don't care for the center, the option two. That's where I am. Thank you. The center being the corner, the one in the corner.

Yeah, I got you. Gotcha. Okay. I just want to make sure. Option one, two, and one, that's the location of the exterior piece, and option one or two on the design styles. I want to make sure I'm clear. Yeah. Did you have anything, Commissioner Nowicki or Commissioner Peters? Go ahead, Commissioner Nowicki.

Thank you, Chair. Yes, much better designs. I think we're all really grateful and appreciative of that. I mean, just over like the life cycle, I mean, 1C kind of, or I guess 1C and 2C, I mean, obviously is a pitched roof, right? I mean, is that metal on top? Yeah, it'd be a metal standing seam roof. And do any of the other roofs metal or? No. So, I mean, in terms of like a life cycle of like cost savings, I mean, you're going to have to appraise a flat roof, I mean, on what, a 30-year, maybe? Maybe you could get 30 years on a flat roof versus a metal roof. I mean, it would last us forever, you know, in theory. I mean, so is there any cost savings in terms of, you know, those? Life cycle cost? Yeah.

I think that's something we could look at on that.

we don't have that information at the moment we know the initial kind of upfront cost difference but not a life cycle yeah i mean i think that would be important like when we're making you know that determination if you know one c or two c cost four million dollars more now because maybe it's a metal roof you know versus you know a majority flat roof but you know when we have to redo a whole flat roof in 30 years it would be 40 million dollars then i mean versus maybe you just have to replace a smaller part of a flat roof on one C or two C may only cost $10 million. So I don't, I think that's important for us to consider, for me to consider at least before making a decision. I could go either way with the center or to the side entrance. The center is much more prominent and I think would stand the test of time a little bit better. That would be what I would be more leaning towards are options one. And then is this the actual, in the designs, is this actual the mill working that, you know, we've finalized or, like, you know, weigh signage? I mean, I haven't seen any of that. So, I mean, are we not at the mill working and weigh signage?

Not yet. We wanted to get through this conversation, and then we're really excited to layer in those other things.

Okay, yeah, I'm definitely looking forward, you know, because I think that will definitely make or break, you know, what's going to be the real details is really going to drive this.

yeah home but uh yeah i mean i would just like to see i don't know if we can get that information of the life cycle cost on these yeah in the types of materials a lot of times they use that rubber membrane membrane on the top and they have a long life cycle and they're easy to maintain but it'd be nice to know that that that breakout yeah to know what what it looks like thank you um thank you commissioner commissioner peters

So I like the center entryway because when you look at your plan diagram, on the center entryway, there's plenty of room in that lobby area that there's not really a bottleneck. But when you look at the plan for the corner entryway, To me, it just feels like they're all going through that security and then you've got a bottleneck right there. To me, I see a bottleneck there and I don't see room for expansion. And on the times that we have a whole lot of people that attend, they're all going to bottleneck outside that chamber anyways. And so to me, I think having that center entryway allows for a whole lot more space, less bottlenecking, less crammed right and better flow through because if people are congregating in and around the chamber, then you don't have good flow. So to me, the corner to me just doesn't work because of potential bottlenecks and poor flow. So the center to me makes more sense on, when the rubber hits the road, how does the flow work? How does the bottleneck work? I mean, it's a pretty big lobby. Maybe it's not a big deal, but you have everything going right next to that chamber. Everybody coming in is right next to the chamber and we have days that that chamber is full and overflowing and I just think that that sometimes isn't going to work so And I like I do like the center entrance better I know it makes it easier for us to get to the chamber and everybody else when it's in the corner, but I think the center entryway facilitates less chance of bottlenecks so as far as ABC, so I like the one because of the center entrance. And I'm kind of with Vince on the one in C. I like the sloped roof. I know flat roofs don't always leak, but I feel like they leak more often than non-sloped roofs. And that's really important to me. So... I don't mind if it's all glass or not. I think the halo is gorgeous, but I would be fine with 1A or 1C.

And that C is going to have a flat roof as well. I'm looking.

You're going to have the slope, but you're also going to have a flat roof. Yep. And one of the things that I think we talked about in the development of the C option is, is that actually an enclosed roof?

is it more ornament would it also additionally have a flat roof underneath it um i think in the costing we're still working through that i get nervous when you have different types of roofs connecting and those little connection spots become problems but you know um what the heck do i know are we getting any input yeah commissioners i what i was asking um robert was

You've got on 1C, what type of a roof structure is that? Because it may be, he was saying it may be a flat roof anyway, and you've got a decorative. So I was asking for clarification because it's pertinent to your question. So that was what I was asking Robert about in the background.

Robert Shaw, working with CBRE as a consultant. Good morning. So we haven't obviously designed that sloped roof, but what I anticipate it would be a flat roof underneath with a rain screen that creates that sloped roof. We still have to have a penthouse up there with mechanical equipment, so there will be a box underneath that. But I don't think we're getting away from a flat roof scenario on any of those options. I don't think we're going to have a full sloped roof. Obviously, it still has to be designed. More decorative than it is. Yep. They call them rain screens.

Okay.

I mean, the nice part about it is it does provide some sun protection against the flat roof underneath, so it does help increase the life of your roof, but I don't think we're getting away from flat roofs.

Were you finished? I am. Okay. Did you have a comment?

Yeah, thank you, Chair. So in terms of that, for like the rain screen, I mean, would it catch the water and then run off? Or we're just not there yet in terms of, and then, I mean, I guess, and then you brought up another thing, like the mechanicals, if all of these are flat roofs, we're putting the mechanicals on top. i mean are they all going to be exposed so like you drive up to the building you see big you know 50 ton ac unit you know they'll be inset and i think the mechanical footprint is minimal on this particular wing of the building there'll still be some equipment up there um so Yeah, because I would hate to be driving up the road and then you see an AC unit on top as you're pulling into the building. We're definitely going to avoid that. Okay.

No, it's a good question, but I'm looking at an architect with a design up there that doesn't show those ugly mechanical stuff, so I'm assuming you've taken care of that.

Yes.

All right. They won't show the mechanicals on those. I don't assume he gets us in trouble sometimes. So yeah, I appreciate that comment. And I'll just add in a couple thoughts. So just a question. On the outside of either option one or two, do we have coverage out there for people if we have overflow from the elements?

Yes. So we actually have a lower canopy that connects from the parking garage to the main lobbies. And then outside of the lobby, the actual frontage, there's an overhang. And I think that's at least 15 feet, 10 feet deep. So you have plenty of coverage in the event of a storm or you're waiting to queue if there's a ton of people coming in on a particular day. There is space.

And there's not that much difference in the distance from the parking to either one, maybe a little further in the corner.

Yeah, the two options are slightly further, but they're both fully covered from parking to the front door.

And so since I'm kind of an engineer, not by trade, but just by upbringing, I always look for, you know... so i look at the outside landscaping but i kind of like that the second design is that only going to be with the corner one that can work with both options okay so that's not in stone either way okay all right i didn't hear many comments on that um but i kind of like the little different different look to it yeah i'm i kind of lean towards one uh on the architectural designs kind of pretty simple, pretty straightforward, less costly. I was being pulled in directions for D, the halo, and then I asked somebody the question about costs, and I said seven or eight million dollars. This could be an expensive project. I know the percentage of the total cost isn't that much, but as I look to value engineer, I would I would probably get rid of that right away, so I don't want to go down that path and even though I like it and I think it's probably the most modern one and you know. But since I didn't hear the young people screaming and you know the Commission here is screaming for number four. I feel like we've, you know, covered the.

The young vote every dollar counts, so yeah, I want to make sure we're making the right.

Yeah, no, I kind of like I kind of like the you know I was looking outside. I like that middle. It looks better to me, but when you get inside, the inside seems more practical on two. I don't have a good enough feel for the flow inside. Maybe we could just have a brief look at the two interior. Then just get a sense of that because I heard from Barry from the the people that we actually do care what they think. I was teasing earlier. They kind of lean towards that too from a practical standpoint. Not all of them, I'm sure, but that was kind of the messaging. Okay.

yeah okay all right all right so maybe you could talk to that flow a little bit things that commissioner peters brought up i thought was so good yeah and i think that's right the the one options have a little bit better civic postures i would describe it with the better what civic posture the way they position in the site there it's more clear right okay on the inside what i would say between both options they are both highly functional and they both work really well i think there's just a director connection more direct connection in this option between the main lobby and the service desks and the public counters, right? So you have plenty of connection directly off that lobby to those spaces. And then there is a little bit of a journey or a path before you get to the administrative part of the project is what I would say. And that's probably why people are thinking this option might feel slightly maybe disconnected, right? But that space actually can be used, you know, because it's going to help filter people into the rest of the project, give space to curing.

which side of the buildings, the court side or the administrative side, is hurting for design space and do either of these options affect the space that's available for, like, are we taking more space away from the courts than we should by option one, and so we should move to option two? Or, you know, just one last question.

Functionally, we can make either option one or option two work. Neither side is hurting for space except for potentially on the court's second floor that we are looking to resolve pushing some things, pulling some things in different directions to other floors. We've got all stakeholders placed within this, and we can make either side work. To some of the other comments that were coming up between the center entry and the corner entry, In the center entry, you're filtering through. Peter mentioned you kind of have alternate pathways. The majority of the people coming to the building on a daily basis outside of things for meetings such as this will be for those service counters. And having that kind of front and center, get them in through the security queuing and get them out, this is a very convenient option. We can make the wayfinding just as clear with that corner entry. For the bottleneck that was suggested at the corner, what we have, that big yellow zone.

Could you switch to that real quick?

I'm not sure we can generate the side-by-side while we're live here. That's too good of a question.

Commissioner, before she gets going, what you'll see in both of these, which is a significant upgrade from original, is we've increased the space for the circulation. It's much more open to address the concerns, Commissioner Peters-Ray.

What's the width of that area that's coming through there? Are we talking...

twenty thirty forty feet that you know where they come around after they've checked through where that arrow yeah i think we're in the twenty to twenty five feet for this option for that range uh... right now we also are showing in this diagram an expanded chamber space so a room that is accounting for kind of a worst case scenario when you have A VERY HIGH NUMBER OF PUBLIC COMING IN TO VIEW. SO WE HAVE IN THAT YELLOW BLOCK THAT SAYS COMMISSION CHAMBER, DIFFERENT FROM HERE, YOU HAVE A SOUND LOCK SO YOU'RE FILTERING PEOPLE THROUGH. YOU ALSO HAVE ADDITIONAL PREFUNCTION AREA IN THAT BRIGHTER YELLOW SPACE OFF OF THE LOBBY SO THAT WILL HAVE ADDITIONAL SEATING AND BE THERE FOR OVERFLOW. So there's other spaces that are associated with those lighter blocks that will help with the bottlenecks and provide additional seating and overflow on large volume days.

So those arrows that are pointing down mean people can spill right into the court side. And that little area over there is about between these two posts. So that's- It's actually-

probably larger than that.

So is there a cost difference between the two? Because now you're saying you got more sound, you got more seating, you got more, you got more, more, more, more. And on the other side, it just doesn't sound like you need all the more, more, more. So is there a big cost difference between the two?

Between option one and option two? Yeah.

We think option two will be a little less expensive because it's only two sides of an exterior versus the three. Mike, please.

He was saying option two would be slightly less expensive because of the front entry point. You're only having two sides of a front entry where that lobby pops out on option two versus you have three faces of glazing popping out on option one. From a programmatic function, option one and option two, they're going to be level set from a square footage requirement. There's no additional programmatic space that's happening between option one and option two.

And the connection between that option two and the administrative building, no issues on connection and leaks and all that kind of stuff?

No.

There you go. Thanks, Matt. Oh, so Commissioner Nowicki asks and they deliver, see? All right, so we're just talking more room for seating in option two?

No, there's additional room in the chamber for seating in options one and option two.

So commissioners, just to give you some scale, I was actually meeting with them earlier this morning and you're talking a chamber that can hold 200 people significantly more than what we have today, right? And so we'll be able to have our work session and then our formal up on the diets meetings right in that same room. We're also looking at the location of training rooms and jury assembly that can, that could also have a connection for that one time where we have a tides meeting or something where you have a lot more people that's directly connected to the commission chamber for overflow. Um, so they're looking at different options around how do they, how do they program the space?

I was thinking more on the other side where you showed pictures of people kind of sitting in the lobby area. No difference. Doesn't look like that much difference in either one.

Not significant difference. And what we'll be looking at as we make a decision on moving forward on option one and option two is right-sizing the space between the two buildings. If option one is selected, you have more of that outside seating area that happens... And then on option two, you have more of that seating area that's happening out front of the commission chambers. So right-sizing how that approach works.

Okay. So I have a question. Yeah. So that's a couple times a month with the commission chamber. The rest of the time they're coming in and they're going someplace else. And in the corner option, do they have to walk significantly farther? First, you have to walk to the information desk to find out where you're going. And then, so now you're walking farther. So you're making the day-to-day people that come every day... walk more farther you know we're talking about that commission chamber is only four days a month but for the other 26 days or 27 days a month it's the rest of the lobby that's really being used and so for convenience for the people walking in is it more convenient for them to walk in the center and have the information desk directly in front of them and then they have less direction to walk to elevators or to where they have to go versus the convenience of the four days a month.

That's why I was asking about those arrows pointing down and option two over there, those three little arrows. People can go directly from checking in straight down. So it doesn't, you don't have to go all the way over to that hallway.

And when she says program space, the service desk is really a lot of the clerk of court functions, you know, where they're taking in money and things like that. Just so you have from a programming standpoint, that's what a lot of that is. But this commission chamber is also used by a lot of different organizations. So. Port Pinellas, you have a lot of different groups that do use it.

okay well chair i just oh sorry just for the record i like option one and i i like option the outside option yes i like option one the best i think it's functional i i just think it's the best way to go and from a elevation standpoint all the way around uh 1a or 1c i'd be happy with either one of those But if there's any chance that the mechanical equipment could be viewed from the ground, I would go with option 1C, which would obscure that we won't have to look at any mechanical equipment. I don't know what kind of, if that's where I am, so.

All right. So you said option on the exterior piece. You said option one.

I love option one. Okay. And the elevations in particular, I'd be happy with 1A or 1C, but if the mechanical equipment that's sitting on the roof can be visible from the ground, then we should go with option one. which would completely obscure that.

And since we've gotten some rough, just to finish the picture at this point, since we've had a $8 million cost versus nothing on the architectural scheme, option one and two, you said option two might be a tad less expensive. Do we have a sense of, like are we talking half a million or 250,000, you know? I know we're asking things you haven't done yet, but I'm calling on your years of experience.

I think the correct answer is yes, it's cheaper. I don't think it moves the needle enough that you're going to recognize it, but I think it is cheaper.

But we're not talking about the same needle as we were outside, which is $8 million, $4 million.

No, you're talking about curtain wall glass, right?

And instead of three sides, you have two. And a lot shorter.

Right. And the overhang is more connected to the center knuckle of the building, so there should be some economy there, too. But we're not moving the needle enough. way far left or way far right on cost by choosing either option. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, Commissioner Nowicki.

Thank you, Chair. Just one more question, I guess, on the site plans of option one and option two for the drop off. If putting it option two in the corner, I mean, obviously the site plans aren't to scale and there's no numbers on there. Would it be a little bit further? Like if someone gets dropped off in a wheelchair on site plan two in the corner for them to go from the drop off to the entrance versus like site option one in the center, it seems like it's a little bit shorter.

on the site plan yeah I think those can both be set to an equal distance and we're looking to optimize that for standoff that's needed from a security standpoint but we could equalize that if that's a concern that option two for a site plan seems a little bit too far away there's some room to move it a little bit further closer to the building

Yeah, I would, I would just be, you know, to echo commissioner sheer, uh, you know, points, you know, I'd be in, in favor of the, the center. Um, you know, I think it's just universally done. Um, you know, I don't see like a corner entrance, I think in terms of way finding and just, you know, the everyday person coming up to the building, they're looking for a center entrance and it would be less signage, maybe a little less walkway. Cause it looked like there's a walkway from the garage, which is next to the building instead of far away. which makes sense so it looks like there's a cover you know from the garage so maybe a little less overhang you would need if it's in the center versus to the corner so maybe a little cost saving there a little less of an overhang um so yeah i mean i would be in favor of option one so

And you're on 1A on the outside? And the same comment about 1A, 1C? Yeah, I mean, I think... The air conditioning unit thing?

Yeah, I mean, I think the mechanicals are important. I mean, you know, if there is a way to look at, you know, a metal roof, you know, besides a rain screen, I mean, I know we haven't got into that, but, you know, you know, long-term that would be a lot better in terms of maintenance and cycle. So I just don't know if we're at that but uh well you know but yeah so i would be in favor of 1a um you know obviously there still needs a little more detail done it's not you know complete complete um but uh if there's a way to trim the the cost down a little bit on 1c maybe make the glass windows at the very top just maybe little corners

versus maybe it says so long gated um it could cheapen it a little bit um yeah we didn't give you that option okay so you're throwing a lot of curveballs at this argument you know i appreciate your comment thank you sir yeah and i'm going to vote for uh commissioner vala now because um he obviously wants the you know i'm kidding uh cheap cheap so that's option two in the corner right yeah yeah I just want to make sure I had an option one a on the outside I kind of I I always hate to always agree with Commissioner Shear, but I kind of agree. I'm teasing you, Commissioner Shear. I kind of like option one on the outside. I have full confidence in the architect standing before me that we won't see any air conditioning stuff. I would like to understand the different roof structures for another day that we can look at in terms of the materials. And on the outside, I'm going to go back to the number 1A. I just kind of... I would like to step outside my comfort zone and pick 1D, but at $8 million, I have a different discomfort. So I'm going back to 1, so I'm gonna go with the 1A on the outside. So at this point, we have three 1As. So we'll continue to get feedback. Commissioner Scott? He was... I preferred...

To me, option two seems just the most efficient option to do. So I was between 2A and 2D. That's kind of where I was at. On the outside? Right.

1A or 1B? No, 2A or 2D. He was two. Yeah. I heard one, one. Hold on, hold on. That's why it was confusing between ones and twos because on the one or two, we're just looking at the outside piece. And right now I've heard two ones and two twos. No? No. I think you've heard four ones. I'm not talking about the outside piece. You like the corner or do you like the middle? Corner. Okay, so that's two. Two. So we have one. I thought somebody else had the corner.

Renee.

Renee. Okay. We haven't gotten to Renee yet. I want to get back. Yeah. Okay. So you're the corner. But of the four that we've talked to already, that we've talked about, I think he was two and you're two. Right? And we have two ones at this point. Just raise your hand if you like the corner. And Vince Nowicki is a one. Raise your hand. So we have three left to hear conversations. He has a two, you have a three. You have three twos, okay? We have three twos and four ones. There you go.

Okay, we got one. Okay, so we're going with one. And now we just need one or C, A or C. We had three twos.

Oh, we have three twos, okay.

Three twos and four ones. So we're going with the centerpiece on the outside.

We need Daryl in for the.

Stop it. Well, four ones is four. All right. And so let's then we're going to talk about the architectural designs. All right. I'm hearing right now so far. What is your choice? And I'll know where we are. On the outside designs, the design.

A, B, C, or D. From an aesthetic standpoint, I like D the best, but that also depends on whether you can see the mechanical stuff or not. If you can see the mechanical stuff, then I would probably go with probably C to hide that. Yeah. but I think D looks the most classic.

So your preference is D? My preference is D. Yeah. Okay.

If I could, I'd just clarify that on none of the options will you be able to see the mechanical. Mechanical on both wings will be in a mechanical penthouse that's enclosed, so you won't be able to see it as you're approaching the building. Okay.

But if it's enclosed on the roof? It's enclosed on the roof, and you just didn't show us where to be enclosed?

No, it is. It's on these designs. It's enclosed as part of these designs. Like, for example, it's most obviously seen on option B and option C, that the mechanical would be enclosed within those vertical pieces. On the other two options, it's more centered on the roof, and from the pure perspective of it, you're not going to be able to see it from this particular view. But it again will be enclosed and look like part of the building Commissioner flowers

So I'm not a contractor person. So forgive me if this is not a good question. Is there any reason why there could not be a enclosed mechanical room that is off to the side or behind rather than on top of the building? Because once you start construction, you can underground cables and, and you know, your have back system inflows and things like that.

Right, from a sound standpoint, obviously sound in courtrooms is very sensitive, something that we need to very much keep in top of mind. Putting the mechanical systems on the roof and having shafts come down and deliver the air, you don't have vibrations, sound from those mechanical units intruding into the courtroom spaces.

The only reason I ask too is because sometimes when handbag systems start leaking, and you may not catch the leak, and then they kind of trundle down, and you look up, and your ceiling is popcorning. So anyway, but you guys, you know.

Yeah, so just with this little detour we're on as we're trying to get this other thing voted on.

the air conditioning system is this a chiller system that'll be off on the ground somewhere else and it sends chilled water to our our towers and then it comes it cascades basically downward right you have it exactly right yeah there'll be a central energy plant on the site you have a significant amount of square footage here that's the most efficient way to air condition that space over the long term and it also will allow you to utilize the the unused portion of the site right now for future buildings where you'll be able to connect to that same central energy.

That chiller going to be on the north, northwest corner, kind of up the unused area, north of the parking garage. All right, so right now I'm hearing one, I'm talking about the outside now. I'm hearing a D and three A's. So let's go to, you said A. You said A and C is what you said. Yeah, he said A and I said A. And you said A, and he said C. What's your preference, Commissioner Peters?

So I want to know the difference of the cost from A to C. C is four million more, correct, Mary? Four million more, D is eight million more, and A and B are the same. I mean, I like A and C. I like A and C. Those are the ones I like. So if you're going to figure it out that way, that's what I like is A and C. And quite frankly, I like C the best.

Yeah, I know. Commissioner Flowers, what did you settle on?

Cost-wise, I'll go with C. I really like... You said C? Yes, sir. Okay. Yes, sir. All right. I really like the halo, but I'm just concerned about the cost. Yeah.

It's not on, please forgive me.

When they did share that the cost was more, C is $4 million more, but I like C better than, I don't like the thing that they have going across it. It looks kind of ugly.

Commissioner Scott? You can move mine over to 1A. I mean, I don't think, I like the look of D. I don't think it's worth $8 million though. And 1A is perfectly functional. It gets the job done and it looks good. So just move me to 1A. Okay.

So right now I've got five on 1A and one on C. I'm missing a vote, but sounds like.

Did you put me on 1A?

Yes, I did. Yes, I did. You got all the cheapest. You got, you know, you got you in the corner.

Since my C has defected, I'll move over to 1A. All right.

I think we seem to have, 1A is the architectural style.

Yeah.

And on a four to three vote, The outside piece is centered, not in the corner. And you'll be building the one out in the middle so that we don't get too expensive. Okay.

All right. That's what we needed, commissioners, because this is real important because now they can really start working on the interiors and the commission chambers and all the other functional space. This is important to move this project to keep it on our timeline.

So I think the one thing you did here is there was a lot of interest in D. So if the eight million went to one million, then we'd probably have more. But as it stands, you've got your marching orders.

Thank you so much for the feedback. Do we have a total cost of the building yet? Not yet.

A guesstimate, a guesstimate, a guesstimate. We're still working on that. We're still working with like they're meeting with Ken Burke here today at noon. And so we're getting there, but we're not there yet. 400 500 600 oh gosh don't give me a heart attack no uh no we're not there but we're you know obviously we had a a price early on but that was a couple years ago that was just an you know an estimate they're getting into this design when they have this now they've got the footprint of the building so they can get into cost estimating and that's next step

And that cost estimating will be building cost and then FF&E costs separately? Correct.

Okay. Okay. So we'll have all of that. But we first had to get what the envelope looks like. And we've added square footage. You've heard Ken's concerns. They've addressed almost all those. But that added square footage to the building. And so now we're trying to bring this home to where we can get you a good cost estimate.

Well, this multi-talented commission is going from architectural designs to e-bikes now. So we thank you for your time. Thank you so much. And we're going to go deal with vehicles now. So appreciate it. Thank you all. Great presentation today and much, much improved. So thank you.

Good morning, commissioners. I'm Tristan Summer, the intergovernmental liaison with Pinellas County. And we do have Whit Blanton and Kyle Simpson with Ford Pinellas. Whit's going to stay over here in case we need to phone a friend, but Kyle's going to take the report itself. But to lay the foundation, I WORKED WITH FORD PINELLAS TO COORDINATE AN EBIKE WORK GROUP TO FINALIZE THE WHITE PAPER THAT I SENT YOU THAT KYLE DRAFTED, IDENTIFY CERTAIN FINDINGS AND ALSO PROVIDE POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS OR GOALS THAT THE WORK GROUP WANTED TO WORK THROUGH THAT WE WILL NEED FURTHER DIRECTION ON FROM THE BOARD. BUT WITH THAT BEING SAID, I WILL TURN IT OVER TO KYLE SO HE CAN GET INTO THE REPORT ITSELF.

THANK YOU. GOOD MORNING. KYLE SIMPSON WITH FORD PINELLAS. um so today i'm going to talk to you about the existing definitions and regulations that exist within florida and kind of within the e-bike industry and then get into that work group that tristan touched on on the responsibilities and membership of it and then the white paper that came out of that and some recommended policy findings that they debated and developed recommendations on thank you So in Florida, Florida statutes prescribe e-bike operators all of the same rights, privileges, and duties of a bicycle operator. So they're not required to have a license, not required to register device or carry insurance on it. The statute says you may not modify an e-bike to go faster than it was designed to go. And the e-bike must comply with requirements that have been adopted by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission. And so this is what e-bikes are imported under. And the legislature gave local governments the ability to require e-bike operators to possess a government-issued photo ID. You can adopt minimum age requirements to operate an e-bike on public property. You can restrict use of e-bikes in specific facilities like sidewalks or trails or beaches. And then you can also adopt maximum speed limits for e-bikes either. Got a question by Commissioner.

So is this the Florida law that the governor vetoed? So this is not law?

This is law. The government.

or sorry what the governor vetoed is outside of this okay so this exists currently so we can adopt a maximum speed of 15 on sidewalks we have i think 20 on the trails um is that right that's the current speed that's this current speed limit but we could we have the authority to change when we first built the trails there was no motorized vehicles allowed on the trails obviously the state change that over time and almost all motorized, except golf carts and cars at this point, are allowed on the trail, correct?

It's my understanding that electric devices like e-bikes are allowed currently on the trail.

Okay, that's what I want to make sure. And right now at 20 miles an hour?

Yes.

and we're still traveling on Paul Causey's design of everybody stay on the right side here and yeah. So now we have the e-bikes at 20 and probably higher with the people in a wheelchair side by side. Just wanted to make that point again because I just don't like it. Go ahead.

And so e-bikes fall under this class system. This class system was established under the Consumer Product Safety Commission. So class one is a pedal assist only, so that means the motor only activates when someone's actively moving the pedals, and that motor assists a rider up to 20 miles an hour. Class two, same thing, it'll assist a person pedaling up to 20 miles an hour, but it also has a throttle, so they don't necessarily have to be pedaling. And then class three is pedal assist only, so it does not have a throttle, but the motor will assist up to 28 miles an hour. Within Florida statute, so existing, this was not related to what the governor vetoed, there's also personal assistive mobility devices. Those kind of cover things like the one wheels and the hoverboard things and kind of the new thing, devices we've seen out that are electric. And so they have a speed limit of up to 20 miles an hour, or I should say less than 20 miles an hour per Florida statute. And then we talk a lot kind of in the industry now about e-motos. That's not a defined term in statute, but it's kind of what the industry has come to define as the kind of electric dirt bikes and things that are sold as electric bicycles but have a speed that is higher than what e-bikes allow or a motor that is more than 750 watts. So Florida law currently says an e-bike motor has to be 750 watts or less, have pedals that actually operate, two or three wheels, so this allows for electric tricycles. And then you have to have a sticker on the frame of the bicycle that says what the maximum motor wattage is and the maximum assist speed that the device has.

So the maximum 750 watts is allowed on up to 750 is allowed on our trails. Yes. It's allowed in our parks. But if you get these motor bikes that you're talking about, and again, I'm looking at buying an e-bike. So these are the classifications that I would look at. Yes. But the things that you're talking about and some of the commotion that we've heard from are a different bike that you just recently described. It's more than 750 watts. It's faster than 28 miles an hour. It is not allowed in our parks. It's not allowed on our trails.

So yeah, there's different interpretations, and this is kind of an issue that we'll get into through this presentation. Some of our law enforcement agencies have begun to interpret those devices as unregistered motor vehicles. They're somewhat of a gray area in statute, and so that's something that could be improved upon in the future.

Well, that just cleared that up like mud. I mean, that to me is a real problem. I mean, that's what's elevating all of this is this piece of conversation that's gray. So I think that's where we need to, well, we'll go through the presentation and let's get back to that point because really that's our problem here. If we can keep them off the trails and keep them out of the parks, keep them on the streets, again we're talking about mostly our kids so i'm not i'm not void of that concept either but sometimes somehow the parents system the parental system with those have to come into play so it'll be interesting as we go through this conversation so go ahead yes

So to get into some of those trends and conditions, so this People for Bikes is a industry group of the bike industry. And so these are electric bicycle sales at bicycle shops in the United States from 2017 through 2023. And so it's been growing rapidly. And then when we get at kind of the that looks at data from bicycle shops. So someone went into their local bike shop in Pinellas County, 99% of the time, they're gonna get a legal e-bike. But in 2024, we saw, or they found that basically the same number of vehicles were bought online in a direct to consumer model. And prepping for this, I Googled electric bicycle, went on popular electronics, online shopping,

sites and those a lot of those devices were outside of the legal you know requirement Commissioner Scott has a question yes thank you mr. chairman so Kyle this is for the entire country not yes state of that's correct I assume that I just wanted to confirm that thanks

So looking at the crash side of things, it's something that we hear a lot of at Ford Pinellas. And there are some challenges that we face with our existing data on this. So there's not a e-bike or e-scooter vehicle involved checkbox on the standard statewide crash report form. So we've been relying on agencies, some agencies in the county have began In the written narrative section of that, they'll check, say, bicycle, and then write out that it was an e-bike. So in 2023, we as an agency began reading through the written narrative of any crash report that involved someone identified as a pedestrian or bicyclist to see if there was additional information. And so that other motorized category that includes someone that was on something that was electric assist. So it could be a scooter, one wheel electric bicycle, things like that. And so this is fatal crashes that occurred in Pinellas County. This year through almost the end of July, we're looking better, but we have seen the trend go in the wrong direction. Just real quickly.

And again, what we've talked about is all these the e-bike concept. And I look at that and you've got motorcycles. Obviously, they're licensed and only can be on the road. Correct. So this area that we're talking about that I just mentioned, that gray area is kind of in between the e-bikes and the motorcycles, because those those. can go anywhere they can go on the streets they can go on the sidewalks well that's what we're going to talk about and they can go in the parks they can go on the trails that's been the that's been the contentious area that little group of bikes yeah okay i just keep going

So in February of this year, the Tampa Bay Times looked into this as well, and they looked at it from an autopsy report standpoint. And so they found that in five years, basically 2020 through 2025, there were 18 fatalities with e-bike riders in Pinellas County, six in Hillsborough, three in Pasco. Most of the crashes involved a motor vehicle, still, so it showed that we weren't necessarily, there wasn't a huge amount that we weren't capturing, and that most in Pinellas and Pasco were men over 60 who were not wearing a helmet at the time of the incident.

That's because we didn't wear helmets when we were kids, so yeah, idiots we are.

So getting into the work group that was formed, it included members from local governments in the county, so St. Pete, Clearwater, and Dunedin, for Pinellas, obviously. Pinellas County had multiple departments involved, and then we also had representatives from the St. Petersburg Police Department, as well as the Sheriff's Office, and industry members from the shared fleets in St. Petersburg, so from Lime and Spin. And they developed the, kind of worked on the white paper that was sent out to you. And the main components of that looked at the existing conditions that we've kind of touched on a bit. Also looking at the benefits of e-bikes, because there are a lot of benefits to these, but there are obviously challenges as well. And they looked at how do you address some of those challenges while trying to preserve the positives that come from them. And so we'll touch on that. They looked at existing and proposed regulations, both within Pinellas County. There are a few jurisdictions that have existing regulations. And especially after the governor's veto of the statewide legislation in June, a lot more counties and local governments in Florida are moving forward with legislation of their own. And so then we get to the potential policy options that you all could consider. uh... so first off they thought uh... building upon our existing uh... education enforcement efforts uh... specifically targeting those devices and you've been talking about commissioners with the non-compliant ones though they're outside of what is legally an e-bike uh... and focusing on reckless behavior uh... and we've seen so some avenues to to do that uh... Certain cities and states throughout the country have kind of written stern requests, if you will, to online retailers saying, please stop selling these non-compliant devices. And they've had success with that. We also continually work with our local partners from Fort Pinellas and the local jurisdictions. We have the Pinellas Trail Security Task Force, which incorporates every law enforcement jurisdiction that interacts with the Pinellas Trail in the county. and they have done coordinated education and enforcement days for a few years now. So there's the opportunity to continue that and potentially expand it. The city of St. Pete with St. Pete Police, they're actually looking at speed limits from a different angle. So they have a speed limit sign. Sometimes there's challenges with saying Johnny was riding their bicycle at 16 instead of 10. So they're going to approach writing a ticket for failure to follow a traffic control device versus a specific speeding ticket. And the traffic control device is the speed limit sign. And so they're gonna see how that works through the courts and if it sticks or not. and then continuing to work with the schools and our law enforcement agencies. Yes.

Hey, turn on your speed. Sorry.

My understanding has always been that because the Pinellas Trail is not a road that they can't law enforcement cannot write a speeding ticket because it's not actually a public roadway. So they're going to try failure to follow a traffic control device. That's correct.

I think there's different from that's a topic that's come up at the trail security task force a lot, and there's different interpretations from different agencies in the county on that. And so this is a avenue that they're pursuing.

So if you're 21 versus 20, you didn't follow the traffic control device, but it's not a speeding ticket.

Well, so there I believe their first starting with the waterfront trail system in the city, so not necessarily the panelist trail itself, but they installed the sign additional signage citing statute. Earlier this month, and so it's so they're going to test it there and then see how that works. OK, got it, thank you.

Go ahead, Commissioner Flowers.

I'm not sure if you guys recall, I brought and distributed little pamphlets that we received from the school safety transportation committee that I serve on where the sheriff's office provided us with a presentation because a lot of parents were buying their children the e-bikes to get to school if they didn't have a driver's license yet or whatever. And the concern and issue was some of the bikes were moving faster than what the law allows that they could ride and whatnot so the sheriff did say that what they're doing is basically stopping the person and having them reach out to the parent and having a parent come pick up the bike and the scholar so hopefully some of that will put some things in line when people are utilizing. And I really think some individuals, because even in the room in our meeting, some people were not aware of the different levels and different types of e-bikes versus what would be considered more of a motor scooter or dirt bike. So it was really informative to be able to kind of clear that up. But I was very appreciative that the Sheriff's Office is also providing that educational information so that they should know what to do. And if they decide to purchase one for their child, then what it requires.

Yeah, we've been working closely and they developed a good kind of trifold thing. That might have been what you provided. But yeah, they've been doing a good Largo PD, St. PPD, Clearwater as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. uh so then another main focus of the work group was uh youth focused considerations um and so you some some cities and counties have instituted class-based age restrictions so that means saying like you have to be 16 or older to ride a class 3 e-bike or something to that effect Or looking at potential helmet requirements that exist beyond the existing statute. So existing statute says 15, I believe it's 15 or younger or under 16. It's one of those two. Well, that's the same thing. But anyway, going beyond and saying if you're riding an e-bike, say under 18, you have to wear a helmet, things like that. And then continuing, as you mentioned, with the school district, that parental outreach and making sure that they know what's legal and they're not kind of setting up their kid for a situation they didn't even know was a problem. And then they debated the pros and cons of photo ID requirements for someone writing one of these devices. On kind of the elephant in the room that we've been talking about is the vehicle classification. So kind of looking at how can we really you know, set in stone that the E, things outside of an E bike as currently defined are not allowed and what happens when we find them, things like that. Because right now everyone, every law enforcement agency kind of has their own way of treating it. There's different ways that they could under existing statute. And then looking at penalties for when, you know, when we have one of these, do we, you know, just contact the parent first? Do we go to impoundment? Things like that. We also have a lot of rental shops. We have a lot of strong tourism economy, and so there are tourists that come here and rent these devices, either from a shared fleet, like in downtown St. Pete, or at a location like a shop in, bike shop in Dunedin or the beaches. And so there was interest in working with, Expand the Move Safe Pinellas program that's been really successful within the Public Works Department. And then also working kind of more directly with those rental shops to ensure that people that are coming to the Pinellas County and renting these devices kind of have a baseline understanding of what they should and should not do. Am I understanding again that the area of ones that we're talking about that aren't

I don't know what the right word is, legal. They're not at the shops. They're ordered online mostly.

Yeah. my understanding that most reputable bike shops in the county, because this is a big problem for the bike industry as well. And so I'm not aware of any shops in Pinellas County, brick and mortar, that sell devices that aren't legal. I know there was one at one point in St. Petersburg, but it's no longer in business.

So are you getting feedback from parents that spend the money buying these illegal bikes? Are they surprised? How is it happening that there's not more regulation on that notification?

yeah so like i said if you just do an internet search for e-bike most of the things that pop up for the the least expensive option online are not compliant e-bikes and so we see people that buy it from a bike shop 99 of the time it is a legal e-bike as current you know statutory definitions but a lot of the devices that come from an online purchase are not.

Is it easy for our enforcement officers to tell those illegal bikes by visual, just by looking at them driving by? Is it easy to tell which ones are the legal ones versus the illegal ones?

I can't speak specifically for them, but there are some kind of trends that, like wider tires, kind of more motorcycle-y, if they don't have pedals, because that's a requirement under statute. So some of them just have pegs that you can't actually pedal.

So if there was any kind of change, we'd have to look at it from a standpoint of... probably multiple levels of warnings, making sure the parents got the warnings. And if we do that, then they have to have an ID on them that says who they are so we can get the warnings to the parents. I mean, if you get into that in the policy side. I mean, I don't know how else you... You have to go to the root of the problem, which is the parents may be buying something they're not aware is illegal. Since it doesn't pop up on the screen when they're doing an Internet purchase, this is an illegal purchase. If it was, I'm sure most parents wouldn't have bought them. I'm guessing. I don't know.

Did you have a comment, Commissioner? Just a comment. I just pulled up Amazon and just put in e-bikes. So there's a Varla M75 electric dirt bike with a 5,500-watt motor capable of 50 miles per hour for $1,799, and there's only nine left. So if you want one, I suggest you. Wow.

No, I'm not going to go on anything over 20. They're right here.

Wow. On Amazon. See, that's Amazon. And I guarantee I've seen these on the trail. They pass me on the trail. Oh, no.

They leave you in the dust on the trail. Right. Yeah.

Commissioner, if I could, I just wanted to kind of frame something a little bit as part of your conversation. You talked about an illegal bike and what Commissioner Scott just pointed out. That's not an illegal bike. It's just not allowed to be used on the trail. If it's street legal, you can ride it on the road. If it's a dirt bike, there are places they can go ride dirt bikes. But buying the thing in and of itself is not illegal. It's the use of the thing legally. in a different way. We have to be careful then that you can't, telling Amazon you can't sell that to someone in Pinellas County, it's simply not something you can do because they could use it for riding as a dirt bike somewhere, for example. So anyway, I'm just trying to point out that as a complexity, one. Two, that's already illegal to ride on the trail, period. That's illegal to ride on the trail. Your issue is now one of education and enforcement, and you need to coordinate with your law enforcement people. As a practical matter, I can't imagine your code enforcement people having any ability to deal with any of that. So it's really a function of dealing with having buy-in from your law enforcement people which are a different group this is the county unincorporated regulation you can talk to the sheriff about how that works and each of the cities are going to have their own individual uh... enforcement issues with some of that so i want to point that out because they we keep talking in generalities about broad brush things here so well no that's why i was specifically asking about how we identified them right there illegal on the trails are illegal in the parks right they're illegal on the sidewalks

Right. Yes? Yes. Are they legal in the streets?

If they have appropriate things on them, they can be, yes.

What does that mean, appropriate things?

They might have to have, and I'm- A tag. Talking out of turn. They may have to be tagged, they may have to have lights, taillights, turn signals, things like that, appropriate brakes.

And these particular bikes, which are maybe easy to tell, I don't know that, but they're not really allowed to be anywhere legally if they don't have a tag. unless they're off road or if they're off road somewhere but not not in our parks not on our trails not on our sidewalks that's that's probably the case i i don't want to speak totally in generalities but probably yes that's why i was getting to the specifics yeah yeah we're bouncing back and forth i get that this is not easy stuff to understood i just wanted to kind of thank you appreciate that anybody else okay go ahead

And then there's some things that are best handled from the state level. And so there is the point of some of these devices are sold as an e-bike, but there's the ability to make it go faster than the statutory allotments with a smartphone app. And so kids are smart with technology, so they figured that out. You could also... kind of again solidify that when you buy a device that's kind of more appropriately categorized as a moped or a motorcycle, that you have a license with the appropriate endorsement when purchasing that device. and then looking at standardized tracking on crash forms for e-bikes and e-scooters, things like that. That is something that the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles is.

Again, we're not talking young people buying a moped, and we're not talking about a motorcycle, because there's something in between, again, that we're talking about that you said is obviously legal to purchase.

But they're treated the same way.

What's that?

They're treated the same way under the law. Just like a motorcycle dirt bike, you may or may not be able to ride it on the road if it has the proper lights and a tag and whatnot, but you can go ride it on a dirt motorcycle track somewhere all day long. Private. Yeah. Or there's some public ones in some places. I don't think at Patel's, but yeah. All right.

Well, I can tell you they're riding him on the street. Yeah, yeah. And I saw one. It looked like he was 10 or 11. No plate. He cut me off on the road and then took up down the street. And so, I mean, and he was like 10 or 11. I couldn't believe a parent would buy that for their kid and let him drive it in the street. But he was on Gulf Boulevard even. Gulf Boulevard. No plate, no tag. And he was going way over 30, 35 miles an hour. So... Don, do you by chance know, I remember when there were a bunch of wave runner and jet ski accidents and fatalities in the county. And I believe the county, I thought it was the county and not the state, that issued an age requirement to drive, that might have been the state, to drive a wave runner. And I don't know if it's the county that did it or the state, because I know there's an age limit on who can drive a wave runner. And we're having way more fatalities on these than we did on Wave Runners, I think.

I don't remember that. I will look, but I suspect it's the state. So let me look into that. But I've had the similar experience, Commissioner. I've been driving on East Bay before sunup and had an e-bike coming the wrong way on East Bay towards me. So there's a lot of enforcement that could be done. I'll say it that way.

Some other things, as I noted in the beginning, the current state statute says you can't modify an e-bike without changing the sticker, but there's no stick, if you will, associated with doing that. So kind of changing that. And one of the reasons that the governor stated he vetoed the legislation that passed the House and Senate this session was that bicyclists don't have a way of knowing that they're speeding. And so one way of getting at that is requiring e-bikes to have a speedometer at time of sale. And then also... Again, just the clear definitions on when it's beyond the scale or size, speed of an existing e-bike, what is it, what's allowed, and what explicitly isn't. The work group also really wanted us to continue our existing partnerships that we have, so we work closely with the Florida Department of Transportation on this, the school board, and then at Fort Pinellas, we have a lot of committees. I've already touched on the trail, that is comprised of local law enforcement. But we actually brought this to our Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee on Monday morning, and they kind of echoed a lot of the same considerations that you all have. We attend the statewide Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Coalition, so that's MPOs and FDOT districts from throughout the state of Florida. We meet quarterly, and this is a big topic on the agenda the past couple meetings. And then also just continuing our strong partnerships with all of our local governments and law enforcement.

How about your next meeting checking with Commissioner? I think it's Commissioner Valor Commissioner Wiki's youth advisory group and letting them sit in on a conversation because they clearly. even younger than you, I'm saying everybody's young, but they're really, they're right there, right? There are sophomores, our juniors, and our seniors in high school, and maybe they can provide some perspective, a different perspective that you guys might be able to include. That's a great idea.

The YAC open house was yesterday.

Yeah, I might have found somebody, too. Did the guy go to you guys for that?

Well, yeah. He's kind of taken over.

So now the easy part, right? That's right. Now, it sounds to me like there's a lot of things, and you had a couple of slides about what the state needs to be looking at. Maybe they are, and some of it got vetoed. I really don't know. And then you've got... Things that we might be able to control and to me it it's that connection between the kids that are riding illegally. Because there's doesn't sound like there's any place for them to really ride legally unless they get a dirt track or some other public or private place designated for them, right? That they can't write in our trails. They can't write in our parks. They can't write in our sidewalks. They can't write in the streets without some kind of license designation, so. connecting with those kids, it's not easy because when they kind of go out in groups, they tend to encourage each other in their activity because we each have stories about it, but running through lights, you honking at them because they just about, they don't even stop for red lights. And then following me down the street on the sidewalk, flipping me off happens twice now. And we've heard stories about some seniors in our parks being uh... bothered by this so this is a serious issue it's not to be taken lightly we don't want to have the the police chasing them with lights flashing through the because they don't really listen but if maybe if a cop was there and stop them they would stop and uh... take the take a back to their house and maybe educate the parent it's almost like that point of contact i don't know how else you do it

Yeah, I know one opportunity that we've heard on the security task force is the sheriff's office specifically working with school resource officers. So if they get like a picture of one of the individuals that's causing issues, because yes, they don't. want to pursue someone in a you know right fleeing um and so it's working then with if they notice the individual going to a certain school working with the school resource officer to identify them and then connect with the parents and the the one that and they've had some success doing that so that's i was going to ask if they'd had those kind of encounters with parents and what kind of

or getting from the parents about their $1,800 purchase that they maybe thought had certain rights that they don't have. So we locally have the right to implement certain, I think sounds like we're already have things in place. What additional things can we consider?

Yeah, so go back to the things that the legislature gives you or gives a local government the explicit ability to do is minimum age requirements to operate an e-bike. Again, this is for, you know, this statutorily allowed e-bikes. This is not separate to the kind of e-moto discussion that we've been talking about. But isn't that what isn't that where the problem is?

So you're saying we can't do that first one with those bikes?

There's the operation of something that is not an AB class, AB or C, I believe it is. A one, two, three. A one, two, three e-bike as defined by statute. Those are e-bikes. Your regulatory authority is as to e-bikes. Once you get outside of that, the state prescribes how motor vehicles are treated and the rest of those things that aren't e-bikes, for the most part fall in the category of a motor vehicle so if they're more than the the appropriate uh... wattage so that the motors that we're talking about that's treated as a motor vehicle now whether or not it's legal it depends on how it's equipped in where it is but that's a state law regulation it's not you can't require what is it that was the state law that group talk about regarding age

What does state law require about identification on the bike? Anything?

That is not an e-bike. That by definition is not an e-bike.

How about the other part?

I believe it's a motor vehicle, so you'd have to be licensed to operate a motor vehicle.

So 16 years old?

Well, it depends. Motorcycles, I think you may be able to run at 15 at a certain place, but again, that's state law regulation of motor vehicles.

So the kids that, like Commissioner Peters was talking about, probably 10 or 11 years old. Totally illegal. Yeah, totally illegal to have that bike.

Well, it's totally illegal for them to be riding it. Oh, so be riding it.

All right, I get the nuance of that.

But that is also, again, you don't regulate who's riding on the road in whatever manner they're riding on the road. That's law enforcement under state law.

Right, well, we have a relationship with our partners. Right.

No, you can certainly discuss it and policy help drive them to focus on those things, but you can't regulate it under state law. Again, so all of these things that you're talking about are for e-bikes?

Yes. Well, that's not the problem. The problem is in the other purchases. What's that?

There's still problems with e-bikes.

Oh, okay. I thought that most of the problems were from the other ones, but go ahead, Commissioner Scott.

Well, I think, so there's problems with all of it. I mean, because some of these class three bikes will go up to 28 miles an hour. So that's a problem, too, if you've got something that's- In our trails. Right, that is behaving dangerously or recklessly. So the class three ones are a problem, but- You know, I see, and I think we've all seen, we've all had personal experience here, the proliferation of the ones beyond the class three, the Emotos. So those are becoming, I think, the bigger problem, but the class three still presents a problem. I mean, if the maximum speed limit is 20 miles an hour, on class one and two. That's not really a huge issue unless you're doing it in close quarters, right? If you're doing it, Dunedin, where there's a lot of people on the trail and you're winging through 20 miles an hour, that's a problem. But the problem grows exponentially once you get beyond 20 miles an hour. And that's where we don't really, it doesn't appear we have a lot of opportunity to really, really any opportunity to do anything about that. But we do have an opportunity these items here as far as class one, two, and three.

Commissioner, that's a good point. We can start sending a message that we're talking about mostly the class three, as you said, but that this is something that we're continuing to look at and that goes beyond the e-bikes. We're starting to look at them as the attorney said, we're starting to look at them as road vehicles,

The e-motives in the electric personal assistive mobility devices is where the bigger problems are coming from. Because like I said, once you get above 20 miles an hour, the problem grows exponentially.

Yeah. But the ones that you were talking about, they're not class three. They're beyond class three. They're beyond class three, right. Yeah.

And they're the ones I was just looking at on Amazon.

And they're not really legal anywhere. I mean, legal to be driven without a license on the streets.

Right.

So where can you drive them legally? Nowhere. If you don't have a license, if you're not 16 or 15 or. And if you don't have a license plate on it.

Right. So if we focus on there's four things that we're allowed to do. Right. So jet skis by state law, you can't ride those unless you're 14. State law, have to be 14. Thanks for sending that, Don. So I think you could do a speed limit. Even though there isn't a speedometer, it's hard to do it. If they do what St. Petersburg's classification is, I think you can do that. We definitely can restrict where they can go, right? But we don't have that many, I mean, like Fort DeSoto, are we having a lot of problems with e-bikes in Fort DeSoto? Because on the beaches, we don't have a lot of beaches. So it's Sand Key, it's Fort DeSoto, it's Fred Howard, the rest are municipalities. So I think the trail is a big problem. And really, you have to talk to the sheriff on if it's enforceable. Can he enforce the speed limit? Or do we have to put a different directive? And I think he's the one that we have to talk to about what it is we do. I kind of like the government issue ID. Because, and I, you know, there might be some 11 and 12-year-olds that are responsible on their electric bike and their parents will get upset if they can't drive them. But if you require them to have a photo ID, that could rein in a lot of kids that are doing this because they may not just take the time to... So, you know, I think we've got four tools here that we can use instead of just, you know... We know that those motos and those other ones are a problem, but we have four options right here that we could use as tools. And so I'd rather kind of discuss on what do those look like. I think we need input from the sheriff on what he can enforce. But I kind of like that government issue photo ID, because an officer pulls over a kid and if he got an ID, no. Well, you'll have to call your parents and pick up the bike because you can't ride it. I don't know if I want to go with age restrictions. Some of those scooters go pretty fast, but young kids are riding those to school. It's their mobility to get to school. And if they're doing it under 15 miles an hour, I don't really have a problem with it. So I'm not sure where I stand on these. I think it's worth the discussion on the age and the ID. But I think the age, the idea, the speed limit are some real tools that we can use, and that's worthy of a conversation.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think this is a, I'm not saying simple. This is an area that we can focus on. But again, I think really the kids being able to ride to school, I don't think that's something that we're overly concerned with. And yet they're using the sidewalks and that's not legal. I mean, so are we promoting illegal activity, letting them... I mean, do the parents know that they can get them a bicycle and go on the sidewalk to school, but you can't use an e-bike or the one you bought on Amazon that can go 50 miles an hour, even though they're only going 15, to school. That's not legal either. I don't know if people know that. I don't know. Sounds like we got the tiger by the tail right here. I mean, this is... Any other questions or comments at this time?

Go ahead, Commissioner. Back in May, I think it was, I sent out to everybody an ordinance that, I think it was Palm, Yeah, the Palm Coast had created. I'll resend that to everybody. And it's not only it's I think it's they've got some really good things in there. I don't necessarily think it's it's totally perfect, but I think it's got really good things to frame around. Right. That we can probably have a further discussion about.

I think that's a good idea. OK. Also, great idea. Thank you, Brian. All right. So I guess we'll leave item two. So we'll go from buildings to e-bikes to now we're gonna talk about budgets. Do we wanna take a 10 minute break and continue or just keep going? Keep going, all right.

I repeat, pull up the slide presentation. So commissioners, obviously this is our first workshop following the budget presentation we had last Tuesday. So we wanted to really reserve the time to dig into the areas that you want to talk about further. There were some questions that were raised. We tried to, as we got questions from you, we tried to copy. the entire commission on our response to those questions but we did want to go over a few items before we kind of get into your workshop and your discussion so we had several different questions uh specifically on a few items that we wanted to cover uh in detail one is there was a question on the rollback so the rollback this year outside of new growth those things is approximately 10.4 million But we also wanted to point out, you saw the reductions that were made in the Board of Commissioner departments. And that's important because we kind of forget they've actually met the rollback. So if you looked and you isolated them down, they've actually achieved a full rollback through the reductions that they've made to help balance the budget. We look, and so you can kind of see, you know, where that cost is. In the sheriff's office, it's people. And so you give a 3% raise and health care increases and contractual increases over in Lake Jail Medical and things like that, that's where our costs are adding up. Thank you, Whit. And so it's very hard for without a programmatic reduction in those areas. It's very hard for them to achieve that. But but that's I think it's important to highlight that as we're going through options that we have. They actually did reductions, programmatic reductions, department by department throughout.

But Barry, just for clarification, the budget that you presented to us still needs $10 million more for a full global rollback. That's correct. Okay. Just want to make sure I'm clear on that.

Commissioner? Plus additional money to save Wheaton Island.

We're going to talk about that. We had some questions about the historic funding. This gives you a graph of where. We talked about the sheriff because obviously it's almost half of the general fund. A lot of times we talk about the board of commissioner departments, but we forget that a lot of your departments are not general fund. They have other funding sources, utilities and transportation trust funds and things like that that really drive their budget. Your budgets have largely remained flat and you can see with the sheriff and the sheriff will come in and defend that. I mean, we can talk about the items that where we've had increases a few years ago. I mean, his officers weren't paid as much as Largo and Clearwater and we gave them some pretty significant increases to get them competitive with the area market. Recall back when he bit out jail medical and during, you know, coming out of COVID, it went through the roof. That's an actual big contract that there's something that is statutorily has to provide as part of running the jail. And so there's been certain touch points that we can talk about why, but this is a graph to show you the actual allocation of the resources. And then we talk about Wheaton Island. And I told you before that this was a tough one, but it is state land and we're looking at reductions, but this is your cost. So we made it for nine months. Obviously, these are the costs associated with that. It was... we had our state legislators in the same time we were doing our budget and you know so that that i think is a discussion we can have with them uh but but this is the this outlines the cost and how we got there um what we didn't do at the other presentation was go through we we put we gave you a number on parking fee changes we wanted to go through those in detail so you could see those clearly outlined and as you can see We changed for the three county parks from $6 a day to $3.50 an hour. What we really want to encourage is people to get an annual pass. You have an opportunity to do an annual pass that actually gives you an option that's far cheaper if you choose to go there. We have several different options available for people depending upon the class that you fall into. So these were the recommendations that drove to the overall increase in parking revenue. But we just didn't call it out.

Pretty sure the wiki had a question.

Yeah, I mean, I'm probably really not in favor of increasing these fees. I don't think I mean, if it's like an eight hour visit at the park, I mean, that's like a 300. and 50 plus percent increase in parking for an eight hour visit um and the low income increase is 49 i mean it's you know i mean i think we can you know maybe dial it back a little bit um but as the current recommended rate increases i i wouldn't be in you're talking about on all of the discounted passes or you talk about that top line which yeah i mean like per an hour if someone's there for you know uh know eight hours you know then it's a compounded increase it's not just like um a one-time increase it's compounded and then the low income i mean almost a 50 increase on the low income i mean we you know our parks are as we get emails are the most one of the most cherished assets in our county I think we just need to make them more accessible and not limit our residents by increasing the fees so high. It's just my opinion. Commissioner Scott.

Barry, when was the last time we adjusted any of these? Many of these haven't gone up in 20 years. A couple. 2004. OK, the last time these the last time it was we changed it a few years ago from $5 a day to $6 a day. I think the rest of these haven't been touched in since 2004. Is that correct, Paul?

Okay.

Commissioner.

So, I mean, you could do hourly, and this is what we do at Clearwater Beach and stuff like that. They do hourly or you have a choice for the day. So it's $30 for the day or so much an hour, like $3.50 an hour or $35. I think they're at $35 or $40 for the day now. And I'm not saying I want to be the same as Clearwater Beach, but I think you're right, eight hours. $3.50 is about $30 a day. So it kind of comes out to the same thing. But if you give them an option where if you stay all day, it's cheaper, right? So if it's $20 for the day, it could be $3.50 an hour or $20 for the day. Then the annual pass is great. But let's say you want to spend two days at Fort DeSoto, and you want to do the all day for the weekend, that might be a better option that you can do the hourly or you can choose a day. And then the day is whatever it is, and that could be a better deal than the hourly rate if you're going to stay for a long time.

And Paul, as you answered the question, do we have a breakout like where we're getting our revenues from? Like, is it mostly the the top line or are people mostly in the annual passes? How does that kind of break out?

Yeah, most of it is daily fees. When we look at the breakout on passes, you know, our annual parking passes, we only have them selling about 700 a year for beach parking, for boat ramps. It's about... Give me that number. boat ramps about a thousand seniors are our biggest pass purchasers between the beach and boat ramp parking pass that they purchase it's about eleven hundred or so And to your question, Commissioner, we have the capability with the park mobile system. We can set, you know, whether it's $12, $15, $18 a day. You know, if you decide you want to be there for more than four hours in a day, you can set a cap and people can choose to do it by the hour or by the day.

Commissioner Flower, sorry.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, so there are a number of families that go out and visit the park because it's a form of entertainment where they can take, you know, their kids, they could spend the day, they can have a little picnic, not just for holidays, but you know, in general, it's, um, a form of, um, recreation for people who may not be able to afford some of the other more luxurious, uh, types of entertainment like a Disney or Busch Gardens or whatever. So I am very apprehensive about increasing the rate to an hourly rate. I do recognize and thank you all for pointing out that we haven't raised these rates in quite some time. but i think unfortunately because of the situation that we are in now and we'll be facing we are once again having to make decisions to cut away things from our residents that they could want to afford that some may not be able to afford it may seem like it's really not that much but if you're making minimum wage and you're taking care of your family 32 dollars, I'm just going to round up to 4 dollars an hour for 8 hours, you know, because when you're at the beach, you go for a long time. 32 dollars is a lot of money for some people, you know, to pay the part. So, um. I'm hesitant about increasing that rate. And then, you know, our seniors that I see a lot of them out there, you know, sometimes they walk. That's their exercise question of the amount of money that we collect for parking revenues. What is the dollar amount that we pay for park upkeep that this the money that is generated from parking revenues? how much of that or what percentage of that actually covers for maybe re-asphalting the parking lot or park services that we have out there, maintenance, cleaning the bathroom, I don't know. But what's the amount?

Do you know? We have a recovery rate, I can tell you that. Now, how things are collected and where they go, that's all general fund stuff. But we typically fall within the 36% to 39% cost recovery. And that's all of our revenues. That's just not parking. All of our revenues include parking. the parking fees, boat ramp fees, camping, picnic, shelter, rental, special events, those types of things.

Okay. Those are, those are just, you know, again, I think we do a wonderful job at our parks. I'm really appreciative of the work that you do as well as our Rangers and whatnot that are out there. And, um, some of the classes teachers take their scholars out there, you know, for learning opportunities, um, So I really like what we're doing. But, um, again, that's, this is just one of those things where our residents for a little bit of money can go out and enjoy the day with their family and have a really good time. And so to make it now be a potential for them not to be able to go cause they can't pay the part or if they don't pay or don't re up, they get a ticket. So that's on top of that. So I, I, I would like to keep the, um, I would like to keep the vehicle fee at a flat rate, not a three 50 per hour. I know some other places do do that along Clearwater beach. It is very expensive from time to time. We've gotten some folks that have complained about I'm here, I'm visiting, I'm a tourist or whatever, and then I'm paying this to park and then I got a ticket or what have you. So, um, you know, I could see maybe going up to $10 for the day. Um, but I wouldn't like to do a three 50 per hour.

So one of the things when we were originally discussing this, you know, Paul said we could probably do a better job with is really encouraging the annual pass, right? You know, and that's an area that we can certainly focus on because for our residents, for our visitors that are here for a few weekends, I think, I don't think we'd have the same thing, but we do have to set a uniform rates. And so having them really emphasizing the annual pass is another way to do that. I just want to point out though, within our budget, you know, again, this is the reason for the budget workshop. There's a $2.7 million swing. So these changes to this, we'll have to, yeah, between everything, we'll have to make other adjustments, um, accordingly because we've included the $2.7 million as part of the revenue.

So, okay. Commissioner, thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the benefits of almost dying last year is I don't have to go to the beach this year. But when I had to go to the beach, we went to Sand Key, which is the best value in town because you could park for $6 a day. And it's literally the same sand as down the street where it's like $30 or $40 to park there. And then Clearwater gives you a ticket if you're five minutes late, which I have gotten before. And I would be in favor of like even $15 a day or $20 a day, because we're still cheaper than Clearwater. And I think one thing that we could do with the communications department with especially with tourists is try to advertise Sand Key more and advertise Fort DeSoto more. And, you know, cause everybody knows about Clearwater Beach is one of the best beaches in America, but sand key literally is part of Clearwater, and it's the same sand, and it's less rowdy, and I think it's a much better value. And maybe, and especially advertise the annual passes for residents and get people you know, here to buy those, I think would definitely help too.

So on the rate issues, and again, you can't probably break out tourism versus resident income, but is there a way to structure these passes so that if you're a resident, they're a little bit cheaper to get than, I don't know, tourists that come here a lot, is there a way to give our residents a little bit of a break? Again, you go to the CVB stuff, you know, It's all about our visitors paying for a lot of the things that we're enjoying here locally.

Well, I think that's the idea of the six-month pass. That would be more of the tourist, and it's not too much more for our residents for an annual. So I think that was the idea. Paul, do you have any more?

Yeah. I can tell you that we have... based are passes this non-resident resident thing based on an attorney general's opinion that says counties cannot charge non-residents more than residents. It's a little different with municipalities because the source of the funding, but because you will see Indian Rocks Beach you know, they charge for non-residents, residents get a pass. We don't have that same freedom.

Okay, so my last question then on rates is, I'm a resident, I'm sitting here going, an annual pass makes the most sense. Can I pay it incrementally? Or now you're talking, well, no, that's too complicated. Now it becomes a six-month pass. There's somebody... let's see the senior pass, $55, it goes to 70. They can look at $15 a quarter easily. Is there a way to, no, you can't commit to it. And I think what you're doing is you're probably hurting the other, the passes.

But I'm just trying to figure out ways to help people get over a hump. I can see our staff thinking about the, how to work something like that in. So, I mean, I think this is a workshop so we can look at those types of ideas and whether or not we can do something like that. I just don't know. Yeah, it's probably... Oh, he's saying there's a payment platform. I don't know what's going on.

That would be something we'd need to look into.

What was she saying?

Just that there's various payment platforms where people can plan that out to make that payment over time. I don't know what the legality is of paying for a service prior to it.

you're basically you're basically like a credit card and right you know and so you're going to pay you're providing credit to to be clear commissioner what i what i heard uh miss silverboard talking about was like paypal as an example will let you that paypal will actually pay the county but you pay paypal over time it's a private side platform thing to be clear yeah interest

So, you know, just kind of, I mean, so these are, again, the recommendations. We wanted to go through those. We didn't do that during the budget, so we wanted to show you that. The other piece to that is on the boat ramps and, again, making some modifications to the boat ramp parking fees. You can see they added another one there, which is military, which has both parks and the boat for $105 million. Again, together, these generate about $2.7 million that we have included within our total revenues as part of the budget recommendation. And you have the boat ramps not been touched since 2004 as well.

Correct. Yes. Thank you.

Yep. That was my question too. Yeah. Yeah. Commissioner flowers.

So that daily vehicle parking from $6 to $12 is, for the day for your boat ramp.

That's for the boats. Yes. Okay.

So if we could do that for the boat ramp that we could not do the three 50 an hour for the car.

And again, the real idea is to drive the annual parking pass for, you know, for the ramps too. And that gets you into the parks and to, you know, store your boat, you know, for the day. Um, And we can, yeah, that's for both. So it's a great deal. It's only a little bit more if you have a boat. The other pieces that we can look at, if we set a cap of whatever, $15, whatever per day on that hourly to where there's a cap to it, I can come back to you and tell you how that impacts revenue based on their projections. But that's something we'd have to calculate.

Yeah. And if we're trying to drive the annual passes, maybe we don't look as big of an increase at the annual passes as we do the daily. If you really try to drive them there, go from 110 to 125 or something.

We can tell you if we make any changes, here's the impact of that and the choices that we have to make, absolutely.

Yeah, Commissioner Blackwell. I've received some emails when this was first mentioned, some concern about boat ramps not being fully repaired.

Yes. Well, Paul, since you're up there, we have received a lot of those, and he can answer it. There's a lot to this story, but I'll let him answer that.

Okay. Commissioner, of course, war veterans in Fort DeSoto Parks were badly damaged during Helene and Milton. We worked with FEMA. We've had to go through a lot of permitting, but I can tell you that contracts have been awarded. We have... Work starting at War Veterans now to be shortly followed by Fort DeSoto. The intention is to have both boat ramps open and operating by the end of the year, January, at the latest. Right now that's what the schedule we're working on. and talk about some of the changes there were some issues with that was damaged so much that you really had to get a new permit you know you just couldn't repair right and and we also have we have redesign their sustainability uh... issue resiliency issues i should say uh... raising the height of the pilings for instance uh... so that in future storms lose the actual docs like this what happened uh... during helene and melton uh... so We're having to re-engineer, redesign things, but unfortunately it's taken longer than anyone has wanted, but there's a lot of hoops to jump through.

You also had contractors that had more work than they could actually complete.

So boat ramp access for the county, and I don't mean just us, but have others experienced the same issues? Are we having a massive problem with access to the waters? Because it's not just ours, but others as well?

It's not just ours, but of course we have the most boat ramps. So we've been impacted more than others, but I think Dunedin's Marina, they've only got the one, so it's a huge impact. It puts pressure on everyone else as well, just like when ours are done.

How about Clearwater?

Clearwater Seminole is open. But Clearwater Beach Marina is under repair.

Which one?

Clearwater Beach Marina.

Oh, Clearwater Beach. Okay. And how's the purchase for Tarpon Springs looking? You know, the extra land up there for a new boat ramp.

Right now, we don't have a seller right now.

Yeah, I got you. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Another item that we raised again for your consideration is modifying the MSTU grant funding based upon the discussion. Again, this is based on the feedback that you provided. We came up with kind of a modified grant funding scenario where we still provide some funding opportunities there, but more limited. Here are the criteria that's currently used And if you change that, you would go to this criteria and we recommended modifying it to 125,000 versus I think 225 or? It's currently 220. That would give you approximately six. The biggest thing is that it would reduce funding for special districts. It would add some criteria, again, that would be more limited, but it would give you some flexibility to continue to do some things based upon the discussions about what happened in Palm Harbor or down in Tierra Verde or something like that. So we can modify this however you want. We were just throwing out, again, between what we're currently doing And this would be another option for you to consider. So you can read this and think through it.

Again, I think the concept behind this was that cities all over the county have opportunities for people. And we have none or had none. And this was a way to help our... 501c3s or government groups, special districts or whatever, to ask for the funding. What we didn't control maybe was how often they can ask for it. Now they can ask for it every year. In the early goings, it seemed like the FICSA groups were the only ones, the four groups up there were the only ones taking advantage of it, and we built up a pretty good reserve over, because, and then others started to understand the possibilities. and maybe we can look at limiting to every third year that they can apply for a grant or something. I still think because we have no dedicated funding for downtown Palm Harbor, zero, in terms of it's not a, like downtown Dunedin has their own special taxing district and they all have their own special, we don't do those anymore or try not to do them too much. Palm Harbor's never had anything in terms of dedicated funding source. So what they have to do there is get private sector folks to pony up money for lighting fixtures. Lighting fixtures were ponied up by the county, excuse me, the ongoing payment of the fees for the lights So there's no incremental tax there. There's no incremental anything to help out the downtown Palm Harbor. So the idea behind some of this was to try to assist in different ways to infuse some extra money and it takes pressure off of those individual groups and the taxpayers that are paying the tax dollars for those four entities. Self-imposed taxes in Palm Harbor for sure. Eastlake is a mix. But, I mean, I think the idea of just kind of getting rid of it because it's $220,000 is a little cavalier and that we ought to maybe look at. This is a model. Yeah, slowing down the process of how often you can ask for it.

So this was an attempt to do that. More limiting because if you have a special district, you already have funding source, so we eliminated them out. But, again, you tell us what you're wanting to do and we'll tell you the financial implications. I like the idea.

of an MSU district to have the options but maybe once every three years and not every year or not even every other year and maybe I still like the I have to the 220,000 I don't think we have a lot of reserves now do we now we spent those down with the lighting district

Yeah.

Maybe we drop it to somewhere in between the two, 175.

That's what we recommended here, 125. Anyway, this was an attempt to again address the concerns. But I really wanted to go over how we got here because we got to a balanced budget, not by happenstance. There were a lot of decisions that we made in terms of making that recommendation. The opioid moving care about me funding over to the opioid abatement funding. That was $1.4 million. Modifying social action funding from $1.7 million to 667,000 to just current ongoing programs and no new programs. The sexual assault, I think, was more of a policy issue, really, that the hospitals are required to take that on by state law. How's that going, Barry? Well, we've sent out the letter, and we've kept funding in, partial funding, through December to give them time, and then we'll evaluate that. But they need a sense of urgency, because any time you ask somebody to take on funding, It's your fiduciary responsibility to try to minimize any cost impacts. But we've worked with them well. We should continue to be able to work with them. And so Karen's working on that currently.

How are the improvements with the group that currently has the responsibility of doing it? I know there were several issues that were there.

I would have to get Karen to address those. I couldn't address those in detail.

Because obviously the need for that Service in our county is without question important, critically important. 100%.

So it's got to come from somewhere. The question is who should pay for that.

Well, push the hospitals. I mean, we seem to work with the hospitals pretty well. Correct.

Yes. uh... the and then we talked about this is show key and wheaton island that was part of it the lifeguards three hundred seventy four thousand for the twenty five positions uh... building and developments for services we did a reorganization there that say three-and-a-half positions two hundred basically fifty thousand dollars Planning pitched in with one position. We talked about the MSTU. We did nine internal positions just in my office with our internal services. GLP-1s we talked about. Health insurance fund, again, the savings there.

hey barry those seven that 727 that you're talking about does that reduce the fee that gets charged to everybody to pay for the g general services you know how we get to get an add-on number for each department to cover the indirect cost plan yeah yeah through the indirect cost plan so yeah it'll impact that so it'll reduce that it will it's two years in the rear um on your indirect cost plan so it'll it'll impact in a couple of years okay

The 3% reduction scenario, I asked Chris to calculate that and when we have a better new modern budget system will be easier to do. And I don't know if you've, oh, he does have a number for me. He didn't have that last night. So we took as part, and you saw that in the budget information sessions, we asked our departments, your departments to present a 3% reduction scenario. We took those automatically and we've applied those to the departments to get there. That was $16.3 million. So under the 3% reduction scenarios, in addition to everything else, there's 3%. That's 16 million that the department's report to the commission have reduced down.

And that was- Is that general fund? That was before the, without the pay increase, right?

The pay increase is separate. I understand.

So you have the 3% reduction, 3% pay, so it's kind of the same costs.

3% budget reduction is on their budget. Pay is just on salaries. So this is $16 million. For instance, the total increase for the 3% is what? About $4 million. And the reduction was how much?

16 over 16 million, so it's a net of a 12 million reduction. Is that what we're saying? Yeah, Commissioner in the wiki you had a question.

Thank you chair and appreciate the stress test. I think it's important, but is that. on what we're actually spending or just the budgeted amounts?

It's on the budgeted amount. It's how to balance from, and I've got a slide that'll talk about actuals. We're actually lower than what we spent in 25 on actuals.

Right, yeah, because I'd like to see a 3% reduction scenario on what we're actually spending.

Well, by doing this, we're actually lower. We're actually spending lower. than previously. The last piece is, as we've talked about, we're also building towards the new campus and what that bond payment will be. We think it's important to start that. It's only going to be a few years now that you made the decision earlier, so we can get going towards building that new campus. There's going to be a debt service payment on that. We'd like to have capacity within the budget to be able to make that payment. We're starting with building some funds for that.

As a conversation piece going forward, we do have a sense, I think we've talked about this before, but just of what those... If we didn't do the campus, what the ongoing costs would be for... the existing facilities that we have because that's that's the number you almost have to compare to your your bond payment because it's it's really in the short term we're not going to have a high maintenance cost on on on those facilities so we're going to so you're going you're going to have a savings for you know the ongoing maintenance but the real issue if you recall back and this has been several years when we did the cost comparison

And there it was a $325 million new campus, but it was over 150 some million dollars for repairing the current campus. And that's before you open up a wall and figure out you got more there than you thought. And then you still have an inefficient old building in design. And so there were, you know, we know you're gonna have additional costs coming into that. So that difference really drove that business decision.

I think that's always good to refresh because in this time of what we're going through, I mean, I think it's important.

And the new property tax that will be generated on this site, on our current site versus the place that we took offline out in Largo. makes it a financially feasible decision.

That's all incrementally important to understand for our residents.

Huge economic development issue. It made a good business sense for the new campus, and that's the reason you guys voted for that.

Excuse me, Chair.

I had a question.

Go ahead. Barry, I was looking for the total dollar number on the building in the future for the campus bond payment that we're paying in advance. What's that going to be?

It's probably going to be around. It depends on how much we bond as we get to the final cost, but it's going to be around $25 million.

Well, I mean, how much are we putting aside on this budget for the future bond payments?

So under this scenario, we put about 4.7 of ongoing cost and additional money totaling about $7.5 million towards reserves.

In this budget, we're putting that aside?

Correct.

Can we cut that by $500,000 and save Wheaton Island?

That is certainly within your purview. That's what I'd like to do.

I agree.

I agree.

Well, that was quick. I didn't have the total numbers, so I couldn't figure out where.

Yeah, we set aside about $4.7 of new money towards. That gets that increment. So that's the increment you have to play with. Obviously, if you eliminate all that, then we're not setting aside money for the future. But you do have flexibility within that area.

I'd like to just get that done. Commissioner Flowers.

Thank you. The only thing, again, I don't disagree with you, but we're still trying to negotiate with the state that didn't even know that they were doing this about the proper responsibility. They could fund us the money to operate those two parks. I just want to make sure that... That's fine with me. They keep talking about having the healthiest of budgets up in Tallahassee. They need to take responsibility for what they own. We can manage it. We can operate it. We can do all that stuff. I just want to make sure we get all of that considered. But I don't disagree with your concept.

The Wheaton Island proposal was very sudden and caught a lot of people by surprise. And I... We haven't even figured out when we're going to sell the properties here, so I don't see that way. We couldn't at least have that as an option for our next workshop to see what that, make sure we can get it done. Okay.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead, Commissioner Flowers. I'm sorry. No, I'm just going to get in the middle of you two. I'm not going to do that. Go ahead. Finish up.

No, I did have my pay up. So I was saying, Commissioner Sher, I certainly agree. I shared with Barry when he brought up the subject, my two selections was either from the general fund for the nine months until we had an opportunity to go into the next legislative session, which is in January, and for us to make the request to the state legislature as a part of our priority list, asking that they fund us Commissioner Eggers, that they fund us in order to operate, and they make that a part of their ongoing budget, not just a one-time occurrence. So I agree with you. It would be better to take it out of the funds for the construction and development, but should that not occur, I wanted to also have that option for us to look at our general fund to make sure that we were doing that to keep both of those. Whether the state says yes or not, but for us to continue. Yeah, I think it takes care of this coming year. Yes, 2027. To your point. Yeah. Yeah, for the following, for the next budget season. So yeah, but that's why I was sharing. Did you have anything else, Commissioner Flowers? No, that's it, sir. Thank you.

So yeah, I'm just going to reiterate. I think we do it for one year. It gives us time to talk to the legislature. And then it's up for discussion again next year, depending on how Amendment 3 goes. And regardless, however, Amendment 3 goes, if it passes, then we know what we have to deal with. If it doesn't pass, something else is coming. So I think it's a serious conversation that we have to have with our delegation about what the state owns and what the state's willing to fund. So I agreed to fund this for a year. and then have the conversation with the legislature and see if they would. Because like I said, they do an outstanding job at Honeymoon Island. That's state property and they do a great job. So there's no reason why we can't make an assumption that the state would do a great job at Wheaton Island. So I'd recommend that. support the change on the MSTUs. I don't want to eliminate the MSTUs completely, but I'm okay with reducing the number. And then coming up with criteria that makes it more competitive. So I support that as well. And I still hurt with... I don't know that we have an option on that. It pains me to do that. We just had somebody pass away in the water in Fort DeSoto. And the rip currents this year have been unbelievable. There have been so many rescues on. on Clearwater Beach and I'm sure in our own beaches. And I know it's a program that is difficult to sustain. What I would really, and I've mentioned this before, and maybe it's a partnership with the fire department to do what Clearwater does and use the EMTs and use the lifeguards as a feeder system into a fire department. Whether it's, I know I see Jill shaking her head. We've looked at it. I just don't know if there's a partnership, right? And is there a partnership with Lillman, right? Because Lillman's down at Terra Verde a lot. And is there a partnership that we could do with them that- allows that a feeder system into the fire departments. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know if it's possible. I don't know if it's being successful in Clearwater. I've heard good, I've heard bad, I've heard, you know,

There's one thing for sure would cost, you know, a significant amount of money. We did meet with fire departments looking and pursuing those different options so we could bring you all the options. And there really wasn't a lot of interest to be real, you know, Frank. But, you know, but but it would also, you know, drive an issue within budget. I mean, it would it would it would cost significantly more. And so but we have pursued those options over the last several years.

Commissioner Scott. Oh, are you finished? Commissioner Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I had asked Chris as well if he could put together a list of discretionary programs that we fund over and above what our requirements are. Um, so I'm hoping that we'll, we'll get that here. They're not too, not too distant future. It is because I think there's a lot of things out there. We found that we don't probably don't even realize that we're funding and are we getting return on investment in those things? And one thing I found while just looking through the budget is we're funding, um, for the public defender, seven hundred seventy six thousand this is the court request for next year almost seven hundred seventy seven thousand dollars which is not a requirement until under article five but it's something that historically we we've done so i've just you reached out to sarah to just try to understand what where is that money going And are we getting good value? Is there a return investment on those funds? So I think there's a lot of things like that that are in our budget that we probably don't even necessarily recognize.

There's not a department or a constitutional officer and I'll throw them into it, where just because a constitutional officer is required, there's things within their budget that they're doing because they want to provide a good public service. It's really hard to break this down because when I was a budget analyst, we had the same questions and you're trying to go through the departments and says, this function is mandated, but it doesn't say whether you have five people doing it or 50 people doing it. and level of service and response times and things like that. So it's really hard to break down. We certainly can look at the programs, but you gotta go through each and every program. We have parks, but we have education pieces to it. So does that go with the park or not? So we will try to get you more, but that's the difficulty in coming up with something like that.

Yeah, I just think the more information we have, are we getting good? return on investment for those dollars. Those are the decisions we have to make.

Well, I understand anywhere where attorneys are involved, and I mean this, no, I'm saying it in a positive way here, that whether it's the public defender's office or our own office, they're grossly underpaid compared to what the private sector. So, again, it's good to understand what you're talking about, but But what's the alternative?

In that particular area, the stack program, we never had to fund the stack program, but now we have a whole new technology with body cameras and you either have attorneys watching film or a technology that allows them to go to the incident that they need to for the purposes of their case. We also have diversion programs there. So we're not required to do that. But if we don't, is that person then sitting in the jail and the impact on that? There's a lot of different pieces like that. Right. And I'm not calling Sarah out on it.

No, I understand. This is just an example. I just wanted to... It's definitely not going for attorney pay. I can promise you that. I just wanted to know... What's it being used for? Is it a good use of taxpayer dollars? And that's it. And I just think those are questions we should be asking.

And when I use the word grossly, I didn't mean that badly. I just meant it's a significant difference between what they're getting paid and what that private sector alternative is. And it's hard to keep people. And her office tends to be, by definition, it's almost a revolving door. So anyway, well, I look forward to that list. Thank you, Commissioner Scott, for asking for that.

So I just wanted to go through a couple other clarifying points. There were some questions about number of positions, and as you can see in the county administrative departments, I wasn't here in 2016. The first budget, actually the 19 budget was passed before I even got here. So the first budget I had was in 2020. So I had 2,156 positions today. I have 2,141 positions. And that includes increasing the parks maintenance, where we increased about 15 or 16 positions in parks several years ago. Like down at Fort DeSoto, we didn't have dedicated maintenance people and things like that. So you can, those are just, those are real numbers. That's, we also had, you can see vacancies are down. When I got here, we paid $12.50 an hour if you started out. public works or parks or utilities, well, obviously, that wage is going to drive how many vacancies you have. Today, we've tried to improve that, and we've tried to create career ladders to where people can actually make a career out, and it's not enough, but it's a lot better than it was at that time. When we look at our overall budget, When we look at our overall budget, you can kind of see, we all said questions about where our actuals are versus our proposed budget. So this breaks it down. In the 2025 budget, this is our actuals of personnel. So when you take out reserves, you can actually see that we're $30 million less than what we actually spent in 2025. And that's budget to actual. And again, with that, I offer those as just clarifying comments and welcome your discussion.

Okay, it's now 12 o'clock. Is there food coming for lunch or not? We do. Okay. So we can set that up whenever you want. Yeah, I think we go ahead and take a half hour break now and come get some food.

Commissioner, I just want to remind you we have the attorney-client session.

I know, I know. But we've got to get some food in, people. So let's take a half-hour break. We'll come back, work for half an hour, and then we'll do our other thing.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I know, just so we have, it becomes like a moving target, but let's say before the discussions that we just had a minute ago, I just want to make sure we're clear that what the estimated value increases are from the property appraiser's office. So what we have to do on our end But to effectuate a no growth government versus the one you're proposing, I just want to make sure I'm clear on what you're proposing and what that really looks like for, you know, in terms of the reality of it, but also what we as commissioners can tell our constituents.

So the difference is, and what I was trying to articulate in the previous slide is it's $10.4 million is a full rollback. What I was really trying to show is that the departments that people would generally say is common government, so the BCC departments, they've actually achieved that. The hard part is in the growth in the sheriff's office. And so they go hand in hand because it's part of the overall general fund. But just because the sheriff's office is all people, you give salary increases, you have contractual increases. We've, under this budget, and the sheriff worked with us. I mean, the sheriff reduced his budget request down, but it's still a lot, right? Just to keep the lights on. No new positions, no anything fancy, just to keep the lights on. And so, you know, The sheriff's request was $22 million higher. He reduced that down by what? About $7 million. But it's still a $15 million increase. Full rollback is $10 million.

So the sheriff's original request was $23 million higher.

Correct.

He lowered it by $7 million. So now it's about $15 million higher. That's correct.

And that's just to do a basic 3% increase, which is on the low end for area municipalities and police agencies. So, you know, that's kind of where we get. So we've, you know, the departments report to you, we've tried to control that growth, you know, and they've actually made the 3% reductions and actually more than that in most areas. But we used all of those. And but it were so we're trying to control the growth and our and our property tax Through that but but it makes it hard because again what what we're also not seeing is before we start talking about a rollback We had 13 million dollars of unfunded mandates or revenue reductions by the state And so you're trying to achieve that you can't and you know, I'm not trying to you know Pick a fight or anything, but you that's something you have to deal with the sheriff the sheriff mandate that they give a cost of living adjustment on police pensions costs additional $5 million this year. And so it doesn't go into the officer's paycheck. It goes into a future retirement, but it's still a pay that we have to make into the whole retirement system starting this year. they redo they changed the sales tax you saw the sales tax number we're down over six million dollars on sales tax revenue about five of that is due to the change on the business the sales tax on business rental that they changed again that that then lowers our revenue to for what you guys been trying to do which is to roll the property tax rate back as much as possible And then they passed an additional one where we have to pay the fees to the tax collector for school board levy. And we've always had to do portions of it. There was one piece that we didn't. And so they changed the state law to make us pay that. So you're starting with $13 million in the hole before you even take care of your employees. uh... take care of your health care you know health care cost increases in contractuals uh... and that's a reason we did everything we could for the county ministration departments uh... to reduce our costs but again that is a small portion of your overall general fund so you're trying to take you know

a a everything out of a very small percentage of the overall general fund barry how the fiscal year 26 um positions on that page 12 that you have um what what kind of what's the that look like i see from 20 to 27 there's only a hundred and Looks like 120 people that were added of which mostly in the constitutional office, probably mostly in the sheriff's office. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, I would imagine. I'd have to go back and look within the constitutionals.

So from last year, this current budget that we're in versus next year, are we seeing increases in people or is it mostly just in?

No, we've been black for several years. We really haven't been increasing people. Like I was saying with the sheriff's office, it's not like they've had a lot of positions. Remember back during COVID, people bought boats. We have a lot more boats out on the water than we did and they were only running, I think, four days a week back then. We increased by just a few positions to where we could have coverage. when people are out on the water. We did another time where we added mental health folks into the sheriff's office for a dual coverage on response. And he's done a great job with that on tracking the data and making that a countywide program. But we gave him like six positions for that. Other than that, you know, it's been contractual increases, jail medical skyrocketed, you know, over several years ago. And so it's things like that. And just, you know, keeping his salaries in line with area police agencies. So I can tell you where it is, but the impact at such a large department is... I'm getting there. I couldn't remember where. is that, you know? And so, you know, when we talk about trying to control your budget, well, I mean, I think that this slide kind of articulates that, you know, if you go down into the yellow, you can see that it's largely flat and coming down a little bit each of the last several years. But, you know, when you're a service base, a people-based program like the sheriff, that's been very, very hard to control that cost.

And of the people, the frontline officers versus administration at the sheriff's office, do you have a sense of the numbers? I have no idea. Okay, all right. So we don't know if it's 50-50 or 75 on the streets, we just don't have any concept. We don't, okay. I mean, because they're both two different issues, right? I mean, you know. Yeah, so just trying to get it over. Anyway.

Yeah, commissioner. Thank you chair. I guess going back to the line graph, you know, obviously I wasn't here in 2019. What and I don't have the context. I mean, so like reserves were at a hundred million. Now, they're approaching 200 million. you know i think you know that's like a big job and you know if they're separated out obviously the general fund departments in the reserves because it would be higher uh... united you took the sheriff i'd i think he has reserves in his budget i don't know he doesn't know what i was looking for uh... but if we added reserves in ours it would be up there so i could look i guess background twenty nineteen eric when those reserves jumped i mean what's the What was the process for that or reasoning or logic in 2019 to 2021?

Chris, well, I mean, reserves really haven't jumped except proportionate to the budget. We have seen some reserves increase. We also then started setting money aside, for instance, for the new campus. And so you've got to look at, Our dedicated reserves, which is the blue line, versus dedicated projects, which is like a capital project where you're setting aside money for that. So there are certain years where we increased the amount, but we increased it for a specific purpose, which was to get ready for the new campus. For instance, when we bought that property, we were able to pay cash because we had set aside money for that property. Then when we go into building, we'll come back with you for a schedule. We won't need to take bonds to start the project. We'll have cash available to be able to get it and then we'll issue bonds.

at a certain point as we draw down the so so Barry he could we could get a detail of that makeup of the of the reserves because I think we also had and I didn't support it but we did have a change in policy also from 15 level to 20.8 I think on reserves and I'm I'm assuming that's a reflected in that in that 16

Yeah, because if you're saying the reserves are relevant.

I'm talking about the regular reserve, not the stuff that he just talked about. There was a reserve policy change that went to 20.8.

Yeah, it was 16.7 to 20.8.

Yes, but if you're saying that the reserves, are those capital improvement reserves in that blue line or no? That's just dedicated reserves. Right, so if you're saying it's relative to the budget of the county admin departments, which is the overall departments, so the entire general fund. Correct.

That's right. Okay. I know. It becomes a little confusing to know which question to ask. Right.

Yeah, because I was saying if it's relatively to the admin departments, well, that's flat, but yet the reserves.

The extra money we set aside for the purchase of the land is not in those blue numbers.

That's correct. Okay. But to the point, it's a total general fund, which includes a share of constitutionals, et cetera, et cetera. what that blue the reserve yeah yeah okay so we can get a breakdown as to where those reserves are where they're slotted well the reserves is just your reserve policy for everybody correct okay 16.7 moving up to 20.8 but we're not there yet but yes well we were we were yeah okay yeah we drew them down out of the storms correct

That's right.

Say that again. Well, we're really not bringing it back up because we're just trying to We're trying to get ready for the new.

That was a pretty big hit. And yet we had plenty of reserves. I think I still argue on the 20.8%, but that's a policy decision.

And that's a policy we can, you know, we can make that change. It doesn't, it doesn't affect us this year.

It doesn't affect our budget this year because what are we at now?

We're just over 17%. So it's, it's really, we're right there with our old lower reserve policy.

yeah so you're not going to find it there but yeah because i'd like to i mean keep our reserves flat for 27 because we're adding almost 5 million into reserves i mean and that's half of what we need for a full rollback Right, I mean, we're adding 4.9.

We're not adding them into the reserves. We're adding them into the new campus debt service payment. And so, you know, you absolutely have flexibility there, but we, you know, if you take $4 million this year, okay, let's just take 4 million because we have about 4.7. You want to fund Wheaton Island. I get that. If you put 4 million here, we're going to be about three years, four years until we're making a debt service payment. So you want to have capacity within your budget to where you can make that payment. Otherwise, you're going to have to come up with that $25 million all in one year. But you are every year. Each year, if we add $4 million, then we'll be ready for the debt service payment. The first year. Well, but if we do it as ongoing revenue, and then next year we do an additional four, next year we do four. So you're building it. We're building the capacity for that debt payment. And we'll have to borrow less because that'll be money set aside as a down payment also.

And I think that's another piece that we don't have any clue right now. We don't know what the total cost of the campus is going to be.

think for the purposes of planning you can plan on about a 25 million dollar debt um there's there's lots of different ways we can schedule that out that's 30 years that's 20 years 25 25. so i'm just

chair just to piggyback on commissioner wiki i i agree with him that it's too much to be putting aside and i don't see why we can't use 500 000 for whedon island and and and pull hold a little back on that reserve uh to give us a little millage rate reduction at least start picking away at that millage rate because right now we're not talking about any millage rate reduction i'd like to start talking about millage rate reduction so i see that as a a place where we can make some effort

I mean, those are, as they say, low-hanging fruit that we can... Well, that's fine.

I'll take that for now until we find some better-hanging fruit.

I don't know where we're going to find the money, the additional money, unless we talk to the sheriff. I have some recommendations. To me, that's where the money is. It's either in those reserves or the sheriff's budget. Set aside, right? I mean, that's... Where else do you have it?

value adjustment board there's a few hundred thousand there that they've increased in legal fees um which there was really no justification for i mean i got a whole list if you'd like i mean well we can start okay well we're also waiting on chris is going to give us a list of programs that we're funding that we can pick on next time as well right so

We're working on it. It's very broad. I was explaining the difficulty in doing that. I mean, we can almost start October 1 and bring each department and have them break down each division and each area. It's the only way you get through that. I mean, and I say that because each program you got to look at. We've been driving. I mean, we've done, you know, four out of the last five years, you know, right? we've done property tax rate reduction. We've done that by driving dollars and budgets out of the BCC department. So if the BCC departments represent 18, 19% of your budget, you've taken 100% of the reductions and rate reductions out of that 20%, that 18, 20%. Now, the percentage is skewed because we also have reserves in there, I get that. But it's not out of the biggest pie. So we have really pushed our department. Our departments have delivered for you. You asked for that, and they have delivered because they've constantly looked at how to reduce and deliver the same services at a reduced cost.

Well, I'm really interested in seeing this list of... programs that we're funding. There's a lot of things that we're funding that would not affect our level of employment and things like that. How much money are we spending supporting chamber of commerce's around the county? We spend about $300,000 a year supporting the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council. Do we really need to be doing that? There's a lot of those. programs that we're supporting that I'm not sure we need to.

I don't know when that list is coming out. That's not general fund based, but it's still something we can talk about. The Chamber of Commerce's are coming from our TDC. Economic Development. We can still talk about it. It's just not from the general fund as we're discussing today.

The regional planning council is coming from the general fund. The EDC funds some chambers, which is from the general fund. That's what I thought. The EDC, economic development.

Hold on, hold on. We're talking about Chamber of Commerce funding. Where does it come from, general fund or TDC? That's pretty straightforward. It's both.

So that's how straightforward it is. And I was glad that come to me before I actually didn't know that. But over in EDC, over in economic development, they have some. We can get the breakdown for you. I don't have that here. There you go. The CBB funds the visitor centers, okay, which are housed within the chambers.

Yeah, okay. I thought that's what we were contributing to the chambers, the visitor centers. We do for that.

I'll have to get you the number for economic development. That'll be on that list probably. It will. We're taking notes here, so if you guys come up with ideas, we're going to go back and staff that.

Go ahead, Commissioner Flowers.

simply going to say for those who have ideas or suggestions about where you think we would be able to pull some revenue from that you share that with the other commissioners as well as with staff and then maybe allow staff to come back when we're having the additional discussion to say if you do this this is how it would look and that way we could have I think a more robust informed conversation versus we could do this, this, this, this, and this. And then I have not had a chance or others to look at, okay, so what does this mean? So I know we've done that in the past, excuse me, where, you know, we just share what it is that our thoughts are. And in that way, all of us can take a look at it budgetarily wise.

I don't, I don't disagree commissioner. I do think there's some value in, in sharing some ideas here from different people that, you know, just, There was a thought the other day, and I think it was Commissioner Nowicki, but as soon as I say that, I may be wrong, that talked about the next budget being a dress rehearsal for our voters on the referendum in November. Now, of course, we're only one of 67 counties, and if we prove it right to our counties and we vote not to do it so that we can control the pace at which we roll out those additional tax reductions instead of the way they're proposing it. That's the idea. It doesn't mean the other 66 counties will have done what we did. Like if we all do agree to do a rollback, every county swears with their little pinky that they're going to do a rollback, then we can really state the case that we're talking about. But I think there was something to that that says, hey, you know, we can do what, you know, we can do smaller government. And here's our dress rehearsal. We did a full rollback, and it hurt. And here's what we did, but we delivered. I mean, there was something, I don't know, it just sounded like, you know, easier said than done, but there you go.

And this is the conversation we're talking about. And this is a conversation because how do I do that with a sheriff when it's all people and he wants to give a raise that is absolutely justified? And I get a state mandate for $5 million of additional pension costs.

Mr. Chair, if you don't mind, I agree. I wasn't saying to stop the conversation here. I was just saying, I think I know for me, I don't mind communicating, but sometimes when I also have it, you know, in my hand where I can look at it and kind of massage it a little bit better. So I wasn't saying to discontinue, you know, that the conversation here wasn't a good lively one. That's number one. Number two, there are a couple of other counties and I'm happy to email it to you guys that have gone through the exercise that are creating a budget with Amendment 3 and a budget without Amendment 3, even right now, for next year, so that the residents can see and make those determinations. So just throwing that out as a...

They're doing that even though it won't affect next year. Yes.

Yeah, so I'll share that with you as well because those individuals are reporting it back to FAC so that we could try to compile the data when we're sending out our spreadsheet of the 67 counties. You know, this is what others are doing and this is how it looks. So I'm happy to share that with you guys as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Well, you know, the and I'm on a call with all the county managers around state. Everybody's doing a little bit different. I'm also on a call with the city managers. Everybody's doing a little bit different. You know, the politics is going to get real on preparing another budget because, you know, the area that I'd have to go to to get 184 million dollars, you know, is is around our law enforcement costs. I mean, there's no way to get around that. And so how much do we cut parks versus sheriff versus. pick another function. Those are gonna be the difficult discussions if that passes and we will have those. And you did it back in 2010, 11, you had to go through that and we will too. But those are really difficult discussions because that's the way our budget is made up. And so try to do that twice. I'd rather do it once. Because I think people are throwing out numbers, and as soon as I say we're going to cut the sheriff, everybody says, well, then you're crying wolf. But this is a fiscal reality. There is no way to do $184 million out of the general fund without it affecting police and fire, period. There is no possible way to do it. after November. If it passes. Correct. So let's wait and see what the voters decide. Because if we took the $184 million and we took that completely out, if we just funded our constitutional officers at the rate that they've been funded over the last several years, we're still minus $60 million, minus $60 million to even meet what the constitutionals need.

Including the sheriff. Did I read it correctly? You can't do it without it. Barry, is there anything in that constitutional thing, or is this more going to be driven by the House and the Senate next year about changing the way that whole...

There's an implementing bill that would go along with the passage of Amendment 3.

It excludes first responders?

This did not exclude first responders. I know this didn't, but... The constitutional amendment does not exclude first responders. That was one of the comments I think Governor DeSantis stated that the reason it wasn't his bill. But even so, even so, if you, and we're going off budget and we're going down a rabbit hole with Amendment 3, but you know for instance everybody thinks about the general fund they talk about wasting government okay how many different property tax funds do we have on our property tax bill that is not county general fund we have an ems fund an ems fund pays for seats out on the fire department it's a it's the emergency medical response out on the fire trucks we will lose twenty it is a separate fund it's no general fund of support from anywhere else it loses twenty eight million dollars under amendment three the only way you can do it is to cut the number of seats for the funding out to the fire departments It is a separate fund, and I use that as just one example.

And that's just one fund that needs some work. And that's just one fund. And that needs work to balance it by itself, right? Because we're not balanced in that fund.

There's no other way to do it.

No, I'm talking about in that fund itself.

We're losing money. Our reserves are going down every year. That's correct. Okay, so we're spending more than we're bringing in. That fund will be out of money in 2031, 2032 under today's environment. Right, I understand. This will speed that up to where we're going to have to make serious decisions. Sooner. Sooner. Much sooner. That's correct. That's just one of our, how many of those are there?

How many property tax funds?

23. 23 property tax funds. Okay. So everybody thinks about the general fund, not the other 22. Yeah. But they're real. Yeah. you know the health department you have a health department fund you have emergency medical you have all these ms to use library services um you know recreation services they lose funding east lake recreation loses 44 percent of their funding east lake fire loses 44 percent palm harbor recreation loses 41 percent palm harbor fire loses 44 percent so those those are real it's it's bigger it's bigger where you have where you don't have commercial or non-homestead properties and so in the north you know it's a bigger percentage and down in the middle of county where it's more like 28 you know percent or something like that because you have offsetting commercial and non-homestead properties and on your on that pleasant note that you just said we're going to pause because we're going to go to this one o'clock meeting it's going to start

I've got about a minute and a half, so we're going to go ahead and break from this meeting. I'm going to turn it over to our county attorney.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I have an announcement to make about the specific matters arising in and from the case of Pinellas County versus American Empire Builders Incorporated et al. Sixth Judicial Circuit case number 24-005416CI. As stated last week in an open meeting of the county commission, the county attorney desires advice concerning this litigation and is asking for a settlement negotiation or strategy session related to this litigation expenditures to be held in private. Since this matter is strictly regulated by state law as set forth in 286.011 sub 8 Florida statutes, the entire session will be recorded by a certified court reporter whose notes shall be fully transcribed and filed with the clerk of the board records. This transcript will be made part of the public record upon conclusion of the litigation. The meeting has been duly noticed for today, Thursday, August 20th, 2026 at 1 p.m. At this time, I'll turn it over to the chair to announce the commencement and estimated length of the attorney client session and the names of the persons attending. At the conclusion of the session, the public meeting will be reopened as to this shade mission meeting portion and any necessary public business as a result of the private meeting will be handled and the chair will announce the termination of the attorney client session at which time we can move back into the prior workshop meeting in accordance with the county attorney's request for a closed attorney client session to discuss the currently pending litigation involving empire american empire builders inc and its surety as just described the board

The board will enter a closed session to discuss settlement negotiations and strategy related to litigation expenditures. The persons attending the closed client attorney client session will be myself, Chair Dave Eggers, Vice Chair Chris Latvala, Commissioners Renee Flowers, who will not be in attendance at the meeting, correct? Yeah, she just had to leave. Commissioner Brian Scott, Commissioner Vince Nowicki, Commissioner Kathleen Peters, and Commissioner Chris Shearer. County Attorney Jewel White. Chief Assistant County Attorney Don Kroll, Managing Assistant County Attorney Kristi Donovan-Pemberton, your outside counsel Brett Henson, County Administrator Barry Burton, and Court Reporter Cara LaCognata of Executive Reporting Service. This session is commencing in this open public meeting and is estimated to last one hour. The entirety of the closed session will be transcribed by a certified court reporter. The transcript will remain exempt from public records until the conclusion of the litigation. At the conclusion of this closed session, the public meeting will be reopened. Any necessary public business as a result of the private meeting will be handled, and I will announce the termination of the attorney-client session. The public meeting at this point is now in recess, and the private meeting will commence in Studio B. Thank you. All right. Let's go.

Thank you.

within the shade portion of the meeting at this point, seeing no members of the public here, we had made a recommendation during the shade meeting that action needs to be taken at the public portion of the meeting. So in order to act on the recommendation that was explained to you during the shade meeting that we private session, we just had, we would ask that the board entertain or the chair entertain a motion and a second to accept the recommendation that had been expressed to you during the shade meeting.

Motion by Commissioner Peters, second by Commissioner Scott. And do we need, we'll just do a roll, no, we'll just do a voice vote. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously.

The public portion of the private attorney client shade meeting is now over from the county attorney's perspective. We'd ask the chair to close that meeting and then feel free to open back up with your workshop meeting.

We are officially adjourned on that meeting, but we are reestablishing our current meeting. We're back to talk additional budget. I think where we left off pretty much is that there's a seems to be an interest on getting additional information from you guys before our next budget workshop.

We'll get you additional information on this. So there's several errors and if you want to discuss it, we can or we can save it to the next time you want us to get additional errors on programming areas and and possible programs that you could consider. You want us to look at parking and whether you want to put a cap on that. I heard a little bit of interest in not having them as steep, but then that gets onto the revenue side. So we'll give you some options that way. I heard clear direction that we'll look at restoring the funding for wheat and island and for one year and that will ask the state as part of our legislative program to help fund that state land the cost associated with maintaining it and then let's see what else chris am i missing off of that or chris or team in their notes

If I could interrupt while they're doing that, I just want to give a reminder. Commissioner Flowers talked about each of you submitting your own other ideas for potential reductions. I encourage you guys to send those to County Administrator and to Chris Rose, and you can copy each other. Just be sure you do not comment back to one another or create any kind of dialogue when you do that.

So you can do that. We also talked about we'll get you more details on reserves. That's another discussion that you had. And what else?

Dedicated to Paul Harbour.

We talked about the MSTU. I didn't get real clear direction. Some seem to be okay with the modified recommendation.

Compromise maybe between what you proposed and what we've been doing somewhere in between. That's what I'm suspecting, but maybe that's my own preference.

We'll just save for the dialogue. Save the dialogue. That difference, tell us. It's 100 grand. We can work that out. Um, and you know, and so then we'll, we'll share that and we'll have it on for the next discussion. Um, when you talked about the parking and Paul, uh, just emailed me, uh, regarding that and based upon his averages, if you set a cap of $15 for a day for a cap, um, that would not impact the revenue numbers because he was, he was based on about a three and a half hour stay. Um, so if you set a cap that, that would, you can do that without, um, impacting our estimates. And so that's easy to accomplish and I think that makes a lot of sense.

And that includes the proposed increases for the annual passes and that kind of thing.

Well, yeah, the annual passes, we didn't make any adjustment on that. I'm just saying that the $6 to the $3.50 an hour, we can cap that at $15 a day without impacting the revenue estimates that we have from the overall parking plan. If you want to do something different than that, well, then it will impact that, and then I'll have to find the funding to be able to make that up.

Okay.

Other than that, that's what we had.

Yes, Chair, I want to remind you that we also talked about, we were going to look at programs.

Programs, Chamber of Commerce, and Regional Planning Council.

And specifically for me, I want to know about this Tampa Bay planning council because we spend a lot on that and I just don't see a big fruit.

was going off of my notes i've got other staff taking notes so i haven't conferred with them but i got you um the economic development the the chambers of commerce out of eds out of economic development um the tampa bay regional planning council so we'll also look at those

Great. Commissioner Scott, you said?

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I've got a meeting tomorrow with Sarah Mallow to discuss that line item, $760,000. So once I get a better understanding of that, I'll share that with everybody. And just share one way, right? Yeah, I will. One way for sure. And just thinking out loud on something here, probably not something that would affect the fiscal year 27 budget. And I don't know if this is a good idea or not a good idea. I'm just throwing this out for discussion purposes. Have we ever looked at just contracting out the jail of what that would cost or potentially save? Um, no, um, we, we haven't, um, you know, they got a lot of sworn officers there that are paying a lot of pension for and hiring bonuses for and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

It wasn't, I don't know how long ago, but Pasco County did that.

I believe. Did they not go from now? They just brought it internal to Pasco County. So the sheriff's no longer running at County, the County administrator is. Oh, so they, oh, they didn't, they didn't outsource it.

They brought it into the, that's correct. Okay. Are there examples of that?

There are. I mean, you're just assuming those contracts, so it doesn't mean you're necessarily going to save anything unless, you know, a jail's just like anything. I mean, it has a post. It has a post here, it has a post here, and so you've got to eliminate a post to save money. So how you're gonna do that by switching it over to a different person overseeing it, I don't see how that saves money. We could look at it, that would be a very involved study. It won't be for next year. And it would affect so many pieces within the sheriff's office. That's a pretty complicated issue. I mean, the sheriff, regardless of his cost, you gotta admit, I mean, he knows his business and he runs a really good operation. Whether that reduces cost, I just don't know.

It just seems to me like it might be worth having a discussion at some point, particularly if Amendment 3 passes. Well, I was going to say probably. We're going to have to get creative on a lot of different things, whether it passes or doesn't pass. So I just think it might be worthwhile to have a discussion.

So the sheriff and I had this discussion, you know, like if I said I'm going to come back to the sheriff and say you've got to give us, you know, three more million. Well, he'd look at safe harbor. Yeah. It's not required to do it. They started it up because of the need. So what does that mean? Well, that's going to have a community impact. It's no different than some of our recidivism type programs because it's not just a sheriff that runs Safe Harbor. We have mental health professionals and stuff in there. trying to connect people to services. So then are there less people that get connected? I mean, those are the hard things that I'd have to get. I'd have to get folks at work in that area to talk about the impacts.

So the other impact is the legislature passed a law that said if a homeless person sleeps in a business's doorway, that business can sue the local government. So if you get rid of a safe harbor and those people are sleeping in a business, now we've just set our set up for her to be liable for a lawsuit because a homeless person fell asleep in a doorway.

Yeah, it's almost. So the sheriff and I started that program a couple years ago when the law passed. We met with all the chiefs of police. We actually worked with Karen and her staff along with homeless leadership group about how to work with all the law enforcement agencies about the public camping. And so the law enforcement agency worked together, but that was part of, we put additional mental health counselors in safe harbor because that became the relief valve of where somebody could go. And so it's all integrated in some shape or form. I'm not the expert on that, but you squeeze a balloon and it's gonna come out. And so if you don't have that, we'd have to understand what the community impact would be.

So it may be worth talking to the sheriff about a study on transport and just other things where there could be efficiencies. Maybe have someone come in and do an analysis and look for efficiencies. I know he doesn't like to spend money that way, but I don't think he does. I shouldn't speak for him, I apologize. It could be that there's things we haven't thought of or he hasn't thought of that there could be efficiencies, whether it's transport, whether it's, you know, I don't really know. That is not my expertise, so I just don't know. But there could be a way that he could do some kind of analysis of some efficiencies that can be found within the detention department or center or transport or how we're managing courts. When we have our new campus, is that going to save them money on courts? I don't know. Is less transport? I don't know. Most of that's all at the criminal justice system, not here. So I don't know, but... Even if Amendment 3 doesn't pass, something else is coming and that exercise is going to have to be done.

Commissioner, I agree with you. You guys have stated it very clearly that something more is going to occur. We've got to somehow limit that growth in government. I think it's implausible to eliminate it, but you certainly can limit it and and so we gotta figure that out. The sheriff's been very open to looking at different ideas, but we'll have to have those conversations.

Just one other thing. Barry, I was trading emails back and forth with Blaine before he got his surgery about the use of drop employees. I'm just confused on drop employees. If you have a full-time person at their They retire, but they choose to be in the drop program. Does that save us money every year? It's exactly the same cost.

And the other big question is, are we required to allow them to participate in drop? So I give you a good government answer as both. OK, so. when you your any employees allowed to go into drops you say i'm going to retire in three years or five years or whenever eight years right you know well that's what i'm trying to get at it's it is eight years max but for the first five years it's the employee's choice Okay. And so it used to be five years maximum and drop and you had to leave. Right. Um, and so you pay a premium and that goes in, it's not goes to your FRS benefits. It goes into a separate drop fund that then goes, it's like a 401k for that employee. It costs you, it's a premium pay. It's about 5% more, but it's limited at that five years. That is the employee's choice to go into that under state law. The, what happened is a couple of years ago they extended, drop to eight years. So if an employee wants to stay for eight years, then it becomes our choice if we want to let them stay out to eight years for just that three years. So it's basically the three years. And so, you know, we have an approval process and it actually comes up to me to extend beyond that because I want to make sure you know, employees that we want to stay, you know, and so we do have an internal review process for that.

The first five years, we have, I mean.

We absolutely have to. Okay.

All right, well, that kills that idea.

Yeah, no, you were bringing it up, and Blaine was trying to get answers, but remember, Blaine's new, so, and I've been here, and I've dealt with it, and we had to go through that when they changed the state law. It's the reason I understand it more.

Anything else? All right. When's the next budget workshop? September 3rd.

Can I throw something out there before we go on to agenda review? Go right ahead. So, you know, we talk about affordability and... You know, I publicly stated I think a lot of the affordability problems is because corporations have bought up our housing inventory. So I learned of a new business model, and I don't know if you've heard about this, but now instead of buying up inventory of housing, The new business model is you buy up leases in apartments and condos that are for rent, and then you Airbnb those apartments and those condos. So therefore, the business is not buying the inventory, they're buying up leases. So we already have a problem with people having affordability issue with rentals. And now if the inventory of rentals get bought up by people that are Airbnb in their rentals, then we no longer even have an inventory of rentals. And I don't know if there is anything that we can do that can curb that. Because that's the new business model that's going out there. It doesn't take a lot of money for investment. It's just your first and last month and then what your monthly fee is and what you're marketing your Airbnb for. But they're making more money on their Airbnb than they are on their rentals. And so that is the new business model, and I don't know if we can get ahead of it based on statutes. If it's Airbnb, it's Airbnb, but they are buying up all of the leases in rental apartments and condos that get rented. I don't know, but this is the new business model, and I just don't know if there's something we can put that on your radar.

Yeah, I would suspect there's nothing that we can do at a local level, but I will follow up with the county attorney's office to review that. Thank you.

Okay, anything else before we jump into agenda?

Well, I was just gonna answer one question. Commissioner Newick, you brought up to me separately. We have an ICMA fellow position. We've had two of those. We use it as like an internship. They come on for two years. and we rotate them around two departments. We've hired most of them, some of the best and brightest. Aubrey was an ICMA fellow, and so we've used that. In next year's budget, to answer Commissioner, but just for transparency of all, we've only kept one, and that's the one that's one year in, so it's part of a two-year cycle. The one that was due to start as part of next year's budget, we've eliminated that out of the budget. So we could stop the internship, but I hate to do it. It's in the middle of a two year. They moved here for this. So to answer your question.

Instead of two, we have one.

We just have one. Yeah. Okay. All right. Then I'll move to agenda review. Thank you, Chris. I mean, Chris and his team have been working tirelessly to get answers the best we can. And I really do appreciate him and Jim. Okay, going on over to our agenda. First real item besides receipts and file are item 11, which is ratification. So we had a... grant that opportunity that we had to apply for. And so we couldn't meet that. So it's just ratification of me going after a grant for a Lillman gymnasium hardening. Item 12 is an award of bid to, uh, for a replacement of existing 24 inch force main. You got a County attorney, um, report, but I don't think any, I don't think there was anything there for 14. I'm done. Doesn't move good with one. No county attorney reports expected. Item 14 is a word of contract for the rental car concessions at the airport. Item 15 is a lead event funding for Clearwater Offshore Nationals. Item 16, it's actually the next two items. It's an amendment to the Crisis Stabilization Unit and PEMS. This is the... It's to... add Care Connect, which is an electronic information exchange for the medical records. And so this adds it to this group and then also on item 17 to the Permanent Supportive Housing and the Safe Haven Agreements with Boyd Centers or Boley Centers. Item 18 is a resolution. So this one is resolution authorizing me to waive certain budgetary controls. That doesn't sound good, but this is for our American Rescue Plan Act. We have to spend the money by the end of the year. We have a defined list of eligible projects. And so if I come up $1 extra in one, I can move it over and pay it over in a different account. They're all pre-approved. It would only be within that defined list. and it's just so we can spend every dollar of the ARPA funds. Item 19, and they have to be completed by the end of the year is the reason we're adding that. Item 19 is third amendment to precision sidewalk safety for tripping hazard and prevention and maintenance. Item 20 is a resilient Florida grant for the South Cross Bayou Advanced Water Reclamation Facility for pump station improvements. Item 21 is an agreement for the clerk for their banking services.

Item 22 is an amendment to a legal services agreement in the case of Pinellas County versus American Empire Builders Inc. We'll discuss that. Item 23 is proposed initiation of litigation in the case of Pinellas County versus John Kreps Estate, and that's an action for foreclosure on special magistrate liens. Item 24 is proposed ratification of initiation of litigation in the case of Pinellas County versus Brittany Staten and Michael Carey, which is a petition for custody of cruelly or neglectfully treated animals. Item 25 is the resolution approving the early extension of the 2026 tax rules. This is a statutory process you do every year that allows early extension for the benefit of the tax collector. Okay. on actually on uh i i misspoke there will be no attorney uh reports under 26 expected however back under 13 there is a receipt and file of civil lawsuits there's a report attached okay

I will have County Administrator's report and then we can go over to our public hearings. So the first is a zoning from general office to R3 unincorporated Pinellas County. Make the current single family home consistent with the zoning district around it. You voted unanimously. Item 30 is a petition for vacate a 33 foot wide right of way. Staff recommends approval. 31 is a petition to vacate a portion of this avenue. Let's see, it's a vacate a portion of the petition roads internal to the petitioner's property. So staff recommends approval. Next is a petition to vacate a 17 feet right away on East Lake Drive. Let's see, it's adjacent to the front of the petitioner's property and staff recommends approval. And 33, oh, this is an ordinance amending the code related to the Tourist Development Council. This is what we discussed previously. This takes the amount from 3.3 to 3 point, or 3 million to 3.3 for a one year increase. It does not permanently change that. And that was what Brian briefed you on before. So you have to really decide whether you want to stick to the $3 million, which is then the current programs, or if you want to increase it, which is what the TDC recommended, and cover the additional program recommendations. And he's here. He was here to answer any questions. I guess he left. 34 is Elite Event Fundings. This is the recommendation from Elite Event Funding. And that's the modification to the plan.

So the first question, why is it the boat races for Clearwater taken out of this one? You have one on the regular agenda for the boat races, which is typically an elite funding. And so why isn't it in this one? Just out of curiosity.

Yeah. Well, I think we'll did it get missed and they added it in or I don't know the answer. We'll get you an answer since he's not here and we'll send that out to the entire commission before Tuesday. Because I don't know the answer to that.

Okay. Okay.

That's fine. Thank you.

And then finally is recognizing unanticipated revenue. So it's a budgetary adjustment. So there are several listed within your packet. If you have any questions specifically regarding any one, then we can certainly get you answers to those. And that concludes the agenda.

Chair? Yeah. Thank you, Chair. Barry, on 18, the ARPA funds, it said it was like a pre-approved list of things. Correct. I didn't see that list, that it was things that were pre-approved. Correct.

We do have a pre-approved list, so we can certainly get that to you.

We can get it to you. It's just all the projects that are still ongoing. And we've spent 93% of ARPA so far. The real concern is any projects that underspend, we need a place to put those, the flexibility.

So if we can, we'll email you the list, and then we'll upload it onto the agenda. Okay. Thank you. Thanks.

Anything else? Well, thank you all. That's a bit of a long day, but appreciate your all being here, and we are adjourned.