Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

¶¶ Thank you. We missed you, Kevin.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is 9.30. I see that we are on the air. So I'll ask Commissioner Dilary to join us on the dais. All right, commissioners, if we are ready, we are going to have the invocation and the pledge by Robert Bradley with Bread of Life Christian Church. Please rise.

Good morning. Good morning. Let us pray. Eternal God, our Father, we thank you for this day. We realize fully that this day is a gift that's filled with grace and mercy. we thank you that we are here today to put our hearts and our minds together pertaining to the finances of this great county we understand that we are in a time now that's filled with challenges financial challenges emotional challenges political challenges But we believe, God, that you have strength provided for us that will allow us to rise above it all. So, God, we pray today for your divine wisdom, for your direction for these commissioners and for these department directors, and that we set our hearts and our minds towards doing what's for the good of the county. So as we invite you in, we ask your blessings upon us, we ask your approval upon us, and we ask all these things to be considered done. In Christ Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you so much, sir. County Manager, would you like to kick us off here today?

Absolutely. Thank you, Madam Chairman, Commissioners, and by the way, Commissioner Lockhart is almost here.

She's right there.

Oh, is she? Oh, there she is.

But thank you for calling it out.

I'm sure she appreciates that. Thank you so much for speaking. You know you never get sick around here, right? So thank you for yesterday. Yesterday, as you know, we focused on our constitutional offices and any of our outside agencies that were requesting funding from the board. So this morning, we're going to focus on our departments. We're going to kick it off with our public safety and then our operating departments with utilities and environmental services. Chief Judge Chase has notified me this morning that she will not be here this morning, but Judge Galuso will be here. So as soon as that, if you want to do the same courtesy when the judge comes in, we can wrap those up. There's just not much. There's a place we can cut. Also, I believe that we can be finished by 12 or 1 o'clock today if you all want to work through lunch. Depending on the questions you have, of course, we're here all day if you need us to be here all day. But I'll leave that up to the board if you want to take a lunch break or not.

As long as Jay's taking care of his dog.

We are here. And he has the chocolate already, the chocolate basket. Yeah, we're good there. So if anyone needs some snacks. So with that, Madam Chairman, I'd like to turn it back over to you, and we can start with our Emergency Management Department with Mr. Harris.

Mr. Harris, I'll turn it to you and your entire team that's sitting behind you ready to defend you should you need it. Thank you.

I do have an armed force behind me, so thank you. Alan Harris, Director of Emergency Management, Public Safety Department was our previous name. We are, of course, the public safety background for Seminole County. We have five accounting divisions for operating divisions in emergency management. We have addressing. We address for all unincorporated Seminole County as well as Lake Mary and Longwood. We run the E911, enhanced 911 center. That's our first division. We have a co-located, consolidated weed dispatch, of course, for all municipal law enforcement and fire law enforcement. We have two 911 centers, the primary one and then the backup in West Lake Mary. Our second division is Animal Services. Since 2016, Animal Services has been a no-kill shelter. We have not had to euthanize any animals due to space, breed, or length of stay. And that is due to an incredible amount of work from you all as well as the staff over at Animal Services. Our third division is emergency management. Emergency management is consistently ranked one of the number one emergency management agencies in the state of Florida. It is one of only two jurisdictions in the entire country to be accredited and never have one finding at all. So that's a pretty impressive thing. Us and Las Vegas County, what is it called, Henderson? Henderson County is part of Las Vegas. We're the only two jurisdictions in the entire nation, including states, the state of Florida has had findings, but we have never had a finding from our assessments.

So it's rare that we get to use the word never in a positive light. So we have never had a finding. Never had a finding. That's amazing. Congratulations.

Thank you. Our fourth division is emergency telecommunications. We run a fully interoperable telecommunications system here in Seminole County. supporting all different agencies, government, police, fire, and all channels are the same. So you hear a lot of times in other counties and states and parishes across the nation that folks can't talk to each other. That is not the case here in Seminole County. Every police officer, deputy, firefighter, government worker has the same bank of channels, and we are fully interoperable. We can communicate with everybody.

The total proposed budget request for the department is $22.9 million. 54% is funded through ad valorem revenues in the general fund. That supports emergency management, our EOC, animal services, and emergency telecommunication. Then we have E911 revenues, which are fees collected on wireless and non-wireless services. This funds 30% of the department budgets. Penny sales tax funds are proposed to pay for the construction of a communication tower in Oviedo, and special revenues include animal services donation and other grants. The department has 73 full-time positions with no changes in the proposed budget. The budget request is increasing from $13.8 million to $22.9 million. This increase reflects one-time investments in public safety infrastructure, which had been deferred in previous years. A majority of the project increase is funded through special dedicated revenues in the E911 Fund and Penny Sales Tax Fund, with no impact on the county's general fund. Total base budget increase for all personnel and operating is 4.8%.

Our capital improvements for FY27, the first one is the crematory service. Of course, that's something that has to be done at animal services. We're a high volume. We pick up dead animals on the side of the road. We pick up very sick animals. We have sick animals that are dropped to us. This crematory is high volume, used every single week, multiple times, sometimes a week. We are needing to replace that, and we're needing to actually replace that a little bit faster than we anticipated. We had deferred this a couple years, and this year we've gotten to a point we're just going to have to do it a little bit before budget. So even though it's in the budget, we're looking to actually replace it before the budget even starts in October. Next year, we will be doing a replacement of the entire E911 system that is all paid by E911 funds that are part of your funds that you pay from cellular services. We are paying for the recorder, so we record, of course, every 911 call as well as every 800 megahertz transmission. So we're going to pay a portion out of that from general fund, and we're going to pay a portion from 911 funds. AI technology integration, so we do translation services right now, so if you text 911 in your native language it will automatically translate to English and the dispatcher can respond in English and translates directly back to the native language. We're looking at enhancing AI in other areas of the 911 system where you can actually speak your native language, it translates the dispatcher hears English, speaks back, and translates back in the native language. So a very exciting new technology there as well as some other integration related to AI. I want to call your attention to the next item because the next item is not in your budget, but we are going to be requesting this. The state of Florida notified us that they will not be paying for WebEOC anymore. This is our system that does everything in the Emergency Operations Center. We were notified that at the second special... Excuse me. Can you repeat that, please? Sure. We were notified by the state of Florida on Memorial Day weekend that they would not be paying for WebEOC. Right now, they pay for the counties to have WebEOC. In fact... On Saturday of Memorial Day, I called the state director personally, and he said, not only will we not be paying for that, but you're going to have to pay for accounts to access our system. So if we want to request something during a hurricane, we would have to pay for the accounts that would enter in those requests. Pumps, urban search and rescue teams, SWAT teams, whatever we would need, dams, temporary dams for flooding, all of those things we would have to pay for the account to access our system. so they did find some residual funds to pay for web eoc until october because all the county emergency managers said we don't have any money from june to october you've never told us this so this is a new item that i will be asked i've asked the county manager and we agreed that we would ask you all to make that request to you to add this to the budget even though it's not in your budget packet i need to add that for for the next years and if we could add that to the The mandate column? Yes, absolutely. And how much funds are we talking about? It's $75,000. So $75,000 would be for our system. If we have to pay for accounts on the state system, it runs about $300,000, $400,000 per account. And we would need probably five or six accounts. So it's not that huge, but still money that we would have to pay.

So when you say $300,000, $400,000, are we talking hundreds or thousands? Hundreds, per account, per account.

About $80,000.

It's a playground. Couple thousand.

Yeah, it's roughly $80,000 in total.

Right.

That is a surprise. It is. That is happening mid-year, right after budget cuts at the state level.

During hurricane season.

During hurricane season. Yeah, let's just throw that in there.

The emergency managers of the state were not happy.

And was this... I mean, what was the decision-making tree on this? Was this legislated?

Was this... Yeah, this was part of the budget process when they went back to session to pass the budget. The thought was, from my understanding and speaking to some of the representatives, was that fiscally constrained counties, they'd be willing to pay for them, but anyone that's not fiscally constrained, they can pay for their own WebBOC, and they can pay for the accounts to use our system.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

So I told myself this morning that I was just going to listen and not talk, and you see how long that's lasted.

Sorry.

That's okay. I think we need to be keeping a very accurate running list of these things as they come up in our conversations. No more than two weeks ago, I had a conversation with one of our legislators, and I explained to them my concerns about some of the things that were being done. And they said, well, listen, if the state's been able to cut our budget, there's no reason why you can't cut yours. And I said very reflexively, well, it's easy for you to cut your budget because you are just making us provide the services. And so this, and of course they didn't like that response, but this is the perfect example of how this happens time and time again where members of the state can stand up there and say, hey, we cut our budget or we reduced costs or we didn't exceed, add as much. And yet they don't, They don't say the rest of the story, which is, and we did it because we are now telling the counties that they will be responsible for delivering those services. It is absolutely disingenuous and very frustrating.

Well, it's the counties, the cities, whatever other entities, the school districts, whatever it may be. This may be the quote I regret forever, but... Stuff runs downhill. And I really had to clean that up. But stuff runs downhill. And now it's just funding requirements run downhill. And we're downhill. We're the first place downhill. And it's just interesting. This is only $75,000. But it's the tip of the iceberg. And how many of those are coming that we don't know about. Yep.

Madam Chair, if I could get whatever.

You were technically first, Commissioner Constantine, go for it. Madam came out before the hand went up, which I swore to my mother I would never be called that either.

I don't want to call you Mr. Chair. It breaks me out every time you say it. You know what, Commissioner Lockhart and yourself said it best, but I just wanted to say one thing. I have never seen the state of... legislature in all the years I was in it or now to this point, cut themselves. They always cut the local governments or the management, the river water management districts, the special districts. They cut everybody but themselves. But they always say, and look at the tax cuts that I just gave you. And all it is is a shift.

I think the real disingenuous activity that is occurring at the state level is not only what's already been indicated by my fellow commissioners, but then go on press conferences and talk about the huge surplus that the state has. That tells you everything right there. I don't know of a single county they can brag they've got a huge surplus. Why? Because it's government closest to the people. Our constituents hold us accountable for doing what's right and efficient and conservative in the budget process. That necessarily does not happen at Tallahassee, and it's easy for that to be shifted off to us. And if it continues down this path, it's nothing more than an attempt to centralize government in Tallahassee, which then will make all counties and city beholden to the state, and anything that needs to be done in the counties or cities will have to go to the state to get their permission. That's not what the state of Florida nor the Constitution of this country was founded upon. Mike Oliver, please, sir, can I have some more?

So I'll close that commentary with a positive note, and that is that I hold out hope that the citizens of the state will share their opinions with their elected officials, including us, around their intentions after becoming well-informed about how this is working. And I do hold out hope that those that are elected, even in Tallahassee as we said today, will be responsive to the needs of our community. And I think it's our job to continue to ask and expect. It's not just an ask, but expect them to do the right thing and expect ourselves to do the right thing as well. So Alan, I'll turn it back over to you. Hopefully you don't have any more surprises in here that get us down that rabbit hole.

No worries. The Oviedo Tower is not a surprise. The Oviedo Tower, I think we briefed each one of you on this. We own all of our towers except for the Oviedo Tower. This is our 800 megahertz portable and mobile radio transmission system. When we did our microwave project a couple years ago, we identified that the rented tower, the space where we rent, it is structurally not sound to put our microwaves on it, so it did not have any more capacity to do anything else at all. So we are not able to stay on that tower and be at the level that we need to and the level that we are at every other tower. Plus, the tower is so structurally not able to handle things that we are concerned that during a hurricane that system may not work just because the amount of stuff that's on it. So our ask is that we build a tower within close proximity, about a half a mile from that location. We've identified a space partnering with the city of Oviedo. This would be a sales tax item. So this is when we looked at the pie graph, that's where that comes from. The next couple items are related to as buildings are built now, repeaters are put inside of the building and we're getting interference from this. So this is to identify where that interference is taking place. We just had an issue in Altamont Springs with that. Fire units responding to things, law enforcement, and they were getting feedback and interference from things. This will help us triangulate where that's coming from and immediately go to the location to work with the building owner to fix that. The second to last is a trailer, so when we do lose a tower because of whatever the situation is, we can bring this out to that location, pop it up, and provide good communications in that location. We used to have one of these. We actually took it to Lady Lake after the Groundhog Day tornado in Lake County, and we were able to transmit for them fire and EMS calls. They had no transmission before we got there. When we got there, we set up the antenna, and they were able to communicate with fire law enforcement and police when they were responding to that back in 2007. And then the last is we have a phased UPS and HVAC replacement for all of our towers, so that is our final ask for FY27. As we go into the capital improvement plan, I just want to go over first animal services. Animal services has five bureaus. Medical services, the front office, animal shelter operations, field services, and our special programs, which is our adoptions, volunteers, and fosters. so these are the items that we are looking at doing over the next three years some of these you may have seen in previous budgets we've deferred a few of those the first one is a pretty high tag item and that is for hvac for all of the kennel space right now we bring in temporary hvacs as you know to cool down the buildings during the hot summer months it seemed to get hotter and hotter just this morning coming in i heard a couple of you all say gosh the summer's back and so we we need to keep that not only for the animals but for our volunteers and our staff and everything that work in there as well replacement of some laundry equipment we have some drainage issues on the property and that's just years and years of being in the same spot and and the water's coming down and rains and things like that so we got some work to do there I know this is a weird word, and I'm sorry that this word is the word, but this is the word it is. The guillotine doors. This is the little door that keeps the dog on inside or outside, and they call it guillotine. I don't like that word. I think we should... change it, Chris, but, yeah, right, something. But we do need to replace all those doors. As you can imagine, the dogs running around in there, beating up against the doors, things like that over time. They don't go up and down easily, so they need to be replaced. Fencing just around, just like your fence, our fences are old, so those need to be replaced. Kennel door replacements, that's the human doors where people are going in and out. As you can imagine, we're cleaning shelters all the time. Water, bleach, things like that formula starts to rust out doors. This is a phased-in project. We've already started to do a few. We're going to continue to do those. Kennel gate replacement, this is the replacement on the front of the gate. So when you're walking down and you're looking at the dogs, these are the replacements of the gates. Those haven't been replaced in a long, long time. kennel repair and resurfacing. The dogs of course in their runs jump on the concrete on the side and myself and Chad went and walked the building and there's amazing how many little holes there are and concrete things that are falling down because the dogs' paws continue to hit the same spot. And it's just a time for us to resurface that. And then we have multiple enrichment yards. I will say this is a seminal moment. The enrichment yards have all been done with no taxpayer dollars at all. That's real important. All partnerships, all partnerships, so private, public partnerships, They look amazing, but we will need to eventually replace the shade covers. If we can get those done, I know Chris Stronko's working on that, the vision manager. I didn't say y'all's names, I'm sorry. But Chris is working on that. So if we can get partners to do that, we certainly will. But we wanted to put it in our budget for our capital improvement plan. This is looking at the next three years, and this is where they all lay. So the initial PowerPoint is just simply the total cost, and then this is how we break it out. E9-1 addressing is, Dina Walker is our division manager there. We have a couple things that we're gonna be doing. Thankfully, all of these are funded by E9-1 funds, so no general funds at all here. We are looking at doing a map update on our E9-1 system, doing some recording technology upgrades. As I mentioned earlier, we're gonna continue with our AI upgrades. So the Sheriff's Office is looking at some QA AI, so call taking quality improvement. So that's something that we're looking at. We also are looking at call taking AI. And we're not going to be for next year or the following, but a little ways out. But we're continuing to look at how AI is improving non-emergency calls and how we can improve those. We need to do some upgrades to our backup 911 center, which is in West Lake Mary, as well as, this is the high ticket item, we have to replace our 911 consulates. Those are the consuls that are at every 911 dispatcher station. So we're looking to do that in FY29. And that's gonna be split funded between emergency telecommunications, which is general fund, and then E91 paying a portion of that because they utilize some of that system. This is how it looks for the next three years. Office of Emergency Management, of course, responsible. Stephen Lerner is the division manager there, responsible for preparedness, response, recovery, mitigation, and resiliency for any type of disaster, including earthquakes. So we respond to all types of hazards. We got 911 calls for it, so we did respond to a couple buildings the other day from the earthquake, so the rumblings of the earthquake. So... For Office of Emergency Management, we're looking at a couple different upgrades. First, the renovation of tables and chairs. We haven't done that since we built the thing in 1998. They're getting old. They're starting to creakle and crackle and all that stuff. Replacement of our persons with special needs shelter equipment. This is the cots, the medical cots, the wheelchairs, the IV poles, all the stuff that we use to open an emergency special needs shelter, replacement of the audiovisual system in the EOC, and a replacement of one 500 kW generator. We have three 500 kW generators that fully power elementary schools. We have three elementary schools. We have three 500 kW generators. This will be to replace one of those that's one of our oldest ones. All of those have been obtained through grants. We're continuing to look for grants for the possibility of getting another replacement, but we wanted to put in the budget to show you that this is something that we will be needing. This is how that looks in the next three years. And then emergency telecommunications, my last division. We are going to continue with the HVAC replacement on the towers. We have wave technology. Wave technology is utilizing your cell phone like a portable radio. So this is a cost savings. So this portable radio, this cell phone right here, is actually my portable radio as well. So not that I should be doing it, but I can be in London and listen to Engine 32 at a fire and actually talk to them if I needed to. I won't be doing that, but I've been going to London. But if I am, I'm still not going to be doing that. But you could. So if the fire chief, though, wants to hear his call and he's out of town at a conference or whatever, he can tune in and listen to what's going on no matter where he is. We're looking at doing a radio test analyzer. We're real blessed here. We have two technicians that can fix portable and mobile radios. If they break, we don't have to send them out. We fix them internally. That's really cool that a lot of counties don't have that. We actually do it for our municipalities as well, as well as UCF, just because we're so good, and some other ones.

And do we charge them for that service?

And we do charge them for that. So that's revenue that comes back into Seminole County.

I want to be transparent about let's not do to others what is being done to us. So let's be transparent about if we do something for somebody and we charge them, then we are really... doing it together, not for them.

So this is the high ticket item. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to all my fellow directors. I hope that this doesn't upset anyone. But we are going to have to replace the portable and mobile radios for all the deputy vehicles, fire trucks, government vehicles, code enforcement, animal services, and parks and recreation, anyone else that has portable radios. We haven't done this in a while. Portable radios, just like your cell phone, eventually have to be changed out. It is a high-ticket item. As you know, we've deferred this a couple years, and it does look really big, and that's because that's the entire project. I'm not proposing at all that that go in one year, that we phase this in. And we could push it out years, and Darren and I have talked about that quite a bit. But this is, in the next slide, you're going to see how that looks. The way we currently have it, we're very flexible in how we do it. Now, it is end of life for some of those, so.

Oh, no, I was going to comment when you were finished. Go, go, go. And Mr. Harris and I and Tricia have talked about this a lot over the last couple years. We know they're not going to be supported anymore. And so we know that date is looming. And so what I had asked, actually we started this probably two years ago, is for Alan to put together his five-year plan on how we're going to get those replaced. We are looking at federal appropriations. Yes, we're going to go back to the state and see if we could get some other surplus dollars for this. So we are putting together a plan for that $33.9 million project. That actually is going to have to be done by, what, fiscal year 30? And so we're already working on that now, how we can get outside funding to help support that.

Mr. Zimbauer?

I just want to ask, this is the same upgrade we've been discussing at this budget meeting for probably at least three years? Yes. Okay. I just want to make sure. Thank you.

Will parts of this $34 million be charged back to each department, or is it all coming? How is that being handled internally?

We've always funded it for all of the agents. So the agencies that we do are Seminole County, Board of County Commissioners, and the Sheriff's Office. Cities buy their own using their funds. The school board buys theirs for the school buses on their own. We program them, but they buy them. So when they buy them, they work with us to make sure that the radios are the exact same, make, model, all that stuff. We maintain them, and we program them. And Tommy Olivares, our division manager, if there's any specific questions. He's the technology guru.

I think it's great that we do it and that we are the ones, we're the hub of the wheel for that because it's very important. I'm just curious how it would be reflected in budget documents. So when we're looking at this, do we see it reflected in other departments as well? as inter-fund transfers, or how is this happening?

Sure. It would be centralized through Allen's department, through emergency management. But some of that is for the fire department. That would be charged to the fire fund. Public Works has a few radios as well that will be charged to their funds. A lot of this is in the general fund. The sheriff has paid through our general fund, as well as most of Allen's department.

So when we see potentially in the sheriff's budget, would we see, I should phrase it as a question, would we see in the sheriff's budget his portion of these radios? We will not.

No, this would be paid for through Alan's budget. However, we do have other support besides the sheriff's transfer in the sheriff's budget document. If you look, there's not just his transfer. There's additional support, including facilities maintenance at the jail. So this would be one of those other items.

Okay, great. Thank you. Appreciate that.

And just one follow-up question, and I believe you said it, but I want to hear it again, and that is that this three-year cycle does take us through the end-of-life structure for the materials that we're replacing. So there is no kicking this can down the road without jeopardizing safety based on them not servicing the equipment that we have waited this long to replace.

Can you go to the next slide? So this looked a lot better a couple years ago because it was spread out. Now it doesn't look good at all because the next three years look better. We understand we were in the budget crisis. So, I mean, we pushed things and pushed things as much as we could. The 911 center consulates, I already mentioned those. That's the split funded between 911 and emergency telecommunications. And the last is our virtual prime site. We have a prime radio where it is transmitted out to, I'm trying not to give our system away, but we want to have a virtual prime. So if something happens at the location, then it can feed all the towers.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Commissioners. Hold the mic up. This would be a geodiversified location as well as virtualized as well. We have one core, and if that core was ever to be compromised, we have other things in place to go ahead and mitigate some of that, but we will be in a dedicated state, and this would just go ahead and be able to give us the resiliency that we're accustomed to here in Seminole, being that we propagate signals for every city and every agency that's governmental within Seminole County.

I would just point out that we are taking the responsibility for things for the smaller entities so that the citizens in Seminole County are safe regardless of what jurisdiction they live in. And the cooperation between the county and the cities is exemplary. And I'll leave it at that.

Thank you. That concludes mine.

All done, Alan? All done. All done, Alan. Commissioners, you've asked questions as we went along. I see Commissioner Lockhart.

I have a general question for budget that, Alan, you're just, it's your poor luck that you're the first one up and I'm asking it now. And then I have a comment. Reflecting health insurance, I see each division has a different percentage allocated to them. How has that been determined?

So the health insurance is done by employee. It's based on the employee's election health insurance at the time we printed the document. So it's possible that an employee changed from employee only to family plan. That was something we saw yesterday with Guardian Ad Litem. They had a small budget, so you saw a much bigger percentage increase. I can tell you that in the health insurance fund, we had initially hoped that the rates would go up approximately 7%. We're going to be presenting a health insurance forecast. We have now changed that to 10% adjustments. But any variances you're seeing in the percentage on health insurance is likely related to either change in positions or a change in elections because the rates we applied at a 10% rate across the board.

For the record, so health insurance increase, the variance for animal services is 16.6%, while the health insurance variance for emergency management, E911, is 7%. And so it just, I didn't realize we were down to the granular detail of per employee.

I will say on animal services, I believe we did shift positions there. There was a reclass in the middle of the year to take positions from another place and move it into there. So that's another reason you would see that difference. Okay.

And then my comment is purely, you know, when you're out and about and talking to people, you get all sorts of feedback. People view animal services and particularly everyone through a different lens. And so just sharing that while we all know that you pick up dead animals on the side of the road and you do an amazing amount of work related to public safety, related to animals, dangerous dogs, and what have you, I think we have done such a great job with our social media of promoting adorable kittens and feeding animals and the feel-good stuff that a comment was made by someone in our community. Well, you know what? If you have somewhere where you need to cut, why don't you look at animal services? People should be feeding their own animals. And I said, well, you know, that's not exactly what animal services does. And so we had a protracted conversation about the work that you all actually do. And while it may be distasteful to some people, I think the real work of what you do and the hard work of... the ugliness of the job that your folks do is important for our community to know what they are funding, because some of what you do is brutal. And it is truly public safety oriented, and that's why you're in public safety. So just my two cents for whatever it's worth, it's OK to share some of the ugly side, because that's what you're doing.

We average about 1,400 calls for field service folks with eight officers. And those calls are animal neglect, animal cruelty, bites, loose dogs, loose cats, Very, very tragic scenes, hoarding calls. The things the officer sees, I have seen, and people shouldn't see if they're an animal lover. It is not just the pretty adoption thing, so I really, really appreciate you bringing that up because the things that our medical team sees and has to deal with is very, very sad sometimes.

Any other comments? Thank you, Alan.

I'm sorry.

We're going to be saying this most of the day because I really believe that it's for all county employees. You all do a phenomenal job on so many different levels and Commissioner Lockhart just You just touched the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. And we could talk about all the departments in that great detail and even greater detail. So we may miss one or two things during the budget hearing by not saying thank you. So please remember, you all do a phenomenal job on so many different levels. And there are some interesting times coming up, especially in November. Just be patient. And I'm sure the public will understand it as we're starting to figure out what's happening as it's rolling down, as we just found out today, because things are changing. And I think that we can all get through this. But remember, you all do a phenomenal job. And we have a lot to be thankful here in Seminole County because it is a great place, not just to work. but to live. And we hear about it in so many different levels, all of us. And so to say thank you a lot of times doesn't go deep enough. So stay tuned. Thank you.

Alan, before you close out, would you introduce your whole team?

Sure. First, of course, Tony Olivares right here. He's our Division Manager for Emergency Telecommunications. Stephen Lerner is the Division Manager for the Division of Emergency Management. Dina Walker, E91 and Addressing. And Chris Dronko. is our Animal Services Division Manager.

Awesome. Thank you all for being here. Commissioner Zimbauer was waving at me.

This is probably more for Darren and Tim, and I'll just make a standard blanket request to the rest of the budget. It's not lost on me, and it was just reminded with Alan's presentation, some of the services that we provide for the cities. Now, of course, all the cities are taxpayers here in the county. There's always that understanding. So what I'm about to say is in no way, shape, or form an indictment on what we are doing for the cities who are a separate government entity. But I would like to know the actual cost and value of services that we're providing here at the county on behalf of the cities that the cities otherwise would have to undertake themselves. That would be... animal services, mosquito control, radios, communication. And I understand there is contracts with communication. But there's some other things that I think that have slipped through the cracks through the decades because we just always did things to help our neighbors and our fellow cities. And I'm not advocating we shouldn't do that. But I think we should put a value on that in understanding that Another item which is a point and placeholder that we know what's being provided for the entire county and by jurisdiction. If that's possible.

Thanks, Commissioner, for bringing that up. In fact, Commissioner Delary brought this up last year, if you remember, during our budget work sessions. We have that list together. So we'll definitely, you know, the plan, and I was going to say this at the end, but the plan is to bring back at the July 14th meeting a strategy on property tax reform, and then I'll ensure that that is on that list as well so you know what we do provide to our municipalities and the school board to that extent. Correct. Absolutely. No, I appreciate that very much.

I'm not so sure that even management knows perhaps everything that's being done because we are good neighbors. And when something happens, we just, okay, yeah, we're happy to help. We'll do it, blah, blah, blah. So I think it may inquire some interrogation of directors to really understand those one-offs, two-offs that are being done. And again, I'm not advocating we don't do that, but it needs to be quantified clearly. and shared with our partners so they understand.

And just to also let you know, all the city managers are meeting already. We already scheduled that meeting. We all talked last week when all this hit, you know, I don't want to go with the commissioner or the chairman, be careful what I say, but when all this came to fruition about what the impact or what impacts were going to be to the cities and to the county, we immediately got together and we're going to do an afternoon session with all the city managers and myself to see, you know, continue to see what services could be, but also what we can share together and help each other out. So we're going through that scenario as well. Thank you.

Mr. Constantine had his hand up, but before we move off of that topic, I would just like to make sure that when we have that list, that it does disclose whether the cities are funding the expense for us to provide the service or not as well. And I think that was your request last year. But if it doesn't, let's get that together now. Commissioner Constantine?

As a city resident... as well as a county resident and one of half of the county lives in a city. I'm putting this into context. They pay the same amount of county taxes as non city residents. So what they pay in this city is above and beyond. So they should be treated equally and fairly as everybody. So it's really not we're doing it for the city. We're doing for the citizen who happens to live in the city. So I just want that to be put into the proper context.

It's very good contextual information. All right. With that, Alan, you are now officially done again. And we'll call up Chief Matt Henley, Kenley Henley. Commissioner Henley is channeling through me.

Good afternoon. For the record, Matt Kinley, Fire Chief for the Summit County Fire Department. So our department is broken up into four cost centers for budgetary purposes. We have emergency communications, which is where we take in the 911 calls, EMS fire administration, the operations side of the department, which is where all the trucks and everything come out of, and fire prevention, our most unsung hero.

The total proposed budget request for the fire department is $131.5 million. 96% of this is through the fire ad valorem and fire fee revenues. Just under 4% is funded to the general fund to support emergency communications. The department has 581 full-time positions with no proposed changes. The fire department's total budget increase is 4.6% from $125.8 million to $131.5 million. Base budget increases are primarily attributable to existing personnel, which include changes to the state retirement rates for special risk employees. The department's capital budget is $28.7 million, which is an increase of 1.1%. And following up on something the Sheriff mentioned yesterday, the final state retirement rates were approved after this budget was published and include addition of future COLAs for retirement, which is increasing the current cost more than we had anticipated in the budget. We are still calculating the budget impact that will be presented as a public hearing adjustment later this summer.

I would like to point out the 4.6 at the end does include, out of the $440,000 increases, $187,000 of that is related to transport billing and PEMT, so revenue generating. So there is an offset, a huge offset. If you take those off the top, we're just under 3% increase in our costs. Before I move on any further, I would just like to introduce, to my left, Deputy Chief of Administration Matt Hetler, and to my right, Ryan Schweitzer, our Tim Jacks. I could not do any of this without these two. The spreadsheets that he is able to create for us to be able to funnel down and find where we can find cost savings is just tremendous. So as you know, a month ago, I already gave a CIP presentation to the board, quite lengthy. I'm going to try to hit the highlights of a lot of that, just what is in this next year's budget, starting off with facilities. The first one, Station 23, a new build out in the Howe Branch area, our oldest station. It was built in 1970. Very old station. It's been added onto a couple of times. It just does not meet our needs anymore. the bathroom situation, lots of things that need to be upgraded. So we have already bought the property right across the street. Hopefully there's going to be some cost savings there and using signalization that's already in place. And we've had the first few meetings for design for that station. The request for next year is $4.5 million. Next station, Station 24 in Winter Springs. This is one of our merged stations with the city of Winter Springs, built in 1975. We call this the House of Doors. This used to be not only their fire station, but also their administrative building. So there's doors everywhere. Crews are spread out amongst the entire building. footprint of the station. One of the biggest issues is we really only have one shower and that becomes complicated when people are trying to come back and decon and also with our fire department makeup. Next year's request is to add a million dollars to that budget. The next station, Station 36, out in the Lake Mary area, end of Lake Mary Boulevard and Markham Woods Road, built in 1985, is in dire need of a new roof. We've held off on that with the idea of expanding that facility. Talking to Chief Kaiser, the founding fire chief, when he built this building, built it so that a third bay could be added on. We would like to add on a third bay, along with increasing the living area for everyone. Again, we have a budget already in place, looking to add a million dollars to that. Station 42 out in Geneva. This one, we're looking to transition from a renovate to a new build. This station becomes the hub of operations for anything that's happening out in the rural area. We have an engine, a rescue, a tanker, airboat, a UTV, burn trailer. This is the first place that our high water vehicles go, as we know that this floods any time we get a lot of rain, especially when you've had rain and then hurricanes. So we've looked at doing the renovate. There's not enough land, and the building's old. With cast iron pipes, it needs to be a new build. And we're looking to add $9.6 million to what we currently had for a renovate so that we can build a new station. We are currently looking for land, have a couple of leads on that. Hopefully one in particular works out that would make for a very good transition of operations. So I talked quite a bit in the CIP presentation about apparatus. I talked about our rescues and how we transitioned to the Braun rescue with the idea of in the future that we would be able to do remounts. So take the box off the back and put it onto a new chassis and come up with savings. I said then that we had planned on doing that in fiscal year 28. Some things have changed for the positive. Braun has taken back into the fold their remount. They were subbing it out to a third party. Longer lead times made things a little more complicated. Now the lead times are going to be six to eight months. We are looking to reduce our current ask in the first public hearing by $300,000. We're going to take three of the five trucks that we're ordering and do a rechassis remount instead of buying a new truck. That saves us $300 at minimum right out of the gate for this upcoming budget. So we'll be looking in the first public hearing to reduce our request by $100,000 on three rescues. Another opportunity, cardiac monitors. So the piece of equipment and technology that is on our trucks that really makes us a mobile emergency room is our cardiac monitor. This is where we... see if people are having heart attacks. We can actually help identify strokes with what their heart's doing, all these different things. Our current product is at end of life, much like radios. The company has switched to a new model. We're no longer going to be servicing the old model. Once parts run out, we're not going to be able to replace the pieces and parts. This is known. We've known this and have had this budgeted in the past. We already have $1.6 million that are budgeted This product, the new product, we tested it out, and it did not perform to our liking. So we've held off. They said that they were going to fix the certain things that we're having wrong with it. That has not come to fruition. There are departments across the country that have invested millions of dollars into this product and have since pulled them off their trucks and switched to a different product. We've looked at the new product. We believe it's going to meet all of our needs and then some. We will actually be putting two of them on two of our trucks next week as loaners from the provider. We've talked to the fire departments that have put this on their trucks, and they have nothing but glowing remarks about it. It's a different type of product. So instead of doing the strategic implementation of a new product, which was very similar to the old one, we're going to be looking to do a wholesale replacement this upcoming budget year. To do that, we are requesting in the first public hearing to add $1.2 million to what we already have budgeted. That will accomplish two things. One, it gets all of our trucks to have the same product. There isn't any confusion amongst our providers. Our EMTs and paramedics happen to switch back and forth between two technologies. The second part is if we do that, in the aggregate, we'll have a $400,000 in savings. So moving up next year's request to this year to combine will save us over the next two years $400,000. Again, that will be a first public hearing request.

So can you just reconcile the slide that says cost savings of $250,000?

So this was built last week. We just got our quote this past Monday, so it's now an increase in what the savings are going to be. This is what we were estimating two weeks ago, a week ago. We now have a hard quote that is good all the way into October, this upcoming October, and then the aggregate is now $400,000 in savings. We were estimating what it was going to be.

But the net impact to this year's budget for this item alone is an additional 1.2.

1.2, correct. OK.

And I guess we should give you credit for the $300,000 that you took off earlier in the presentation. That's not lost on you. You're at a net plus $900,000.

Well, and as we move into the future, you go into the next year budget, not this year, but the following year budget, there will be some savings in service of the units because included in the total price is a bumper-to-bumper warranty for three years. So I would just like to close and point out, you're going to hear a lot of budget presentations today, and I would be remiss if I did not point out, for the fire department, that it's public safety. For emergency management, that it's public safety. You have fleet. You have facilities. You have public works. You have roads. All of these things we utilize. We don't put down roads to get to the calls. Roads does. We do not put in fire hydrants. Public works does. If we don't have our bullets to fight these fires, we can't put these fires out. There's all of these different things, I mean, human resources, legal, everything that is under the umbrella of Seminole County has a public safety aspect to it. Without them, we could not do what we do. And I just want to thank them for all of their help throughout the year and the years and going into the future. They truly are a part of public safety. Thank you.

That couldn't have been better said. And I would tell you that we should clip that. I know you hate public speaking. We should clip that and use it over and over again. Because quite honestly, how many times have you told me you can't put speed bumps in there? You can't put speed bumps in there. It impacts public safety. But that was really well said. And certainly in the forefront of our minds as we're going through the process for planning for the future. Commissioner Zimbauer?

Very well said. It'd be surprising maybe to the average citizen that may not realize that during hurricane events, natural emergencies, It doesn't matter where employees are dispatched and posted to and which department. They're all helping and providing services on behalf of the citizens. Even if it's not in their typical line of profession, they're backfilling the voids in public safety. And I don't think the average citizen realizes that, that those people are doing work on behalf of the citizens that they're typically not doing during the week. But the question on 42, and of course this occurred this past week. You all were in Mims area fighting a brush fire. what further conversation is happening with volusia county in light of we're servicing that whole southeastern corridor of their county out of 42. i know we've got an agreement which is a financial agreement and and i thank chief for a couple years ago getting that to the level it should be or something that makes sense do we intend on having any discussion with them with this station as a prop share that they may want to help pay for this infrastructure? versus they build their own in the Lake Harney area? I think it's a fair and valid question we should be asking Volusia County. Yes, you're paying X amount of dollars to do these calls, but otherwise they have no firefighting in that whole corridor. Right, right.

And I have had communication with their accounting manager as well when we actually increased their contribution to us because, as you know, they were not paying – much and they are they do not have plans to put a fire station out in that in the southeast part of the county so chief and i had a conversation on this last week actually we talked about station 42 so we are actually putting some numbers together and we are planning to go and talk to volusia now whether that is to contribute to the station or to contribute to the overall cost of what they're paying now on an annual basis for the calls for services that will increase. So either way, we're looking at that to see as we start moving forward with that. We'll continue the dialogue with Volusia County. Great.

Yeah, I think they should have more skin in the game. Yeah. You know, our taxpayers are paying for the infrastructure. Yes, we are charging them what we believe is a fair schedule or close to thereabouts. But when we're getting ready to put new infrastructure in, I think we need to have a very candid conversation on. what that increase would be, whether it's an increase annually or a one-time payment towards the asset.

I think we need to have that conversation. And the other thing is, when we put that new fee in place with Volusia County and what Chief Kinley and the team, Ryan probably does it more than anybody, we go back and look at the calls for service that we actually did, so we true it all up. So when we look at next year's budget, if it has changed in any way, we change that accordingly to the actual experience that happened the year prior. Great. And Mr. Jackson, I've had a conversation about that too. We may add that extra piece of the capital improvement piece to their costs. Great, because what concerns me is they already have plans for additional development out in that corridor.

So what is happening today will be far different than what's happening five years from today. Right. And if they don't want to put the money up themselves to build a station, at the cost that stations are now, maybe they want to kick in 25%, 40%, whatever that number might be, or do it in an annual payment.

Right, right. Again, another cost that we're helping our neighbors with that we just need to be made aware of. Right. We need to be like the good neighbor insurance company.

We'll be a good neighbor, but you've got to pay your way. Yes. Thank you.

There is a lot of empty land. That's the continuation of the empty land on the East Lake Mary Boulevard corridor. Right. The same thing is happening across the border that's happening on our side of the border, probably more so. All right, any further discussion? Hearing none, I'll say on behalf of all of us, thank you for everything you all do, the entire department. But I will also throw in there that it is not lost on us that we all received a letter from the union recently that's going to play into the budget as well. We'll have no further discussion on that, but just for public awareness, we know that more to come. So we appreciate you.

Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen. All right, that takes us to utilities. Johnny Edwards, come on down. I think we need walk-on music next year.

Where's Chad? Chad gives us the music. We talk about that.

We struggle with technology.

You can't get out of sitting at that table. Nice try, though. Nice try. Welcome, Johnny. Take it away.

All right. Good morning, Chairman and Commissioners. I appreciate the opportunity to present to you this morning. I'm Johnny Edwards, the Utilities Director. With me, I have Kerry Grein, our Business Office Division Manager, and Wanda Wilson, our Financial Manager. In Utilities, we have four divisions, the Business Office that Kerry heads up. We have two operating divisions. One is out in the field, away from the plants, and the other is inside the plants, running the treatment plants. And finally, we have our engineering and construction division, and I will dive deeper into each of those divisions later in the presentation.

The utilities department total proposed budget request is $94.8 million, 100% funded through the water and sewer fees as expected for an enterprise fund. The department currently has 154.5 full-time positions. The half FTE increase is related to a position that is currently split funded with solid waste and will now be fully allocated to water and sewer. There's a corresponding decrease in the solid waste fund. The utilities department total budget increases 4.6% from 90.6 million to 94.8 million. The base budget variance of 3.6% includes increases to our wholesale water and sewer agreements. The capital project budget of 35.6 million includes necessary improvements in maintenance to the county's water and sewer system.

All right, thank you. So this is a budget presentation, but largely I want to keep the presentation qualitative rather than quantitative, but I do want to start off with a couple numbers here. Tim mentioned in the chart previous that there was a $1.6 million increase to our operating expenses exclusive of personnel. I just wanted to shed a little light on that specifically. It's actually in three program areas we're increasing by $1.7 million, and the majority of that is wholesale fees, which on the chart to the right, I've broken into two slices. One is for water wholesale fees. The other is for wastewater wholesale fees. We have satellites and consecutive systems that we manage where we buy water and distribute to our customers. And it's not connected to one of our water plants. So we'll buy water from other utilities. And conversely, we receive wastewater in certain areas and send that to other utilities treatment plants. So those wholesale fees, which are actually about one-third of our operating budget, represent the majority of this increase. A couple other areas, treatment plant repair and maintenance for our plants. We went through a series of work sessions leading up to the master plan, utilities master plan development. We talked about the need for increased investment in repair, maintenance, and renewal and replacement in our plants. Lastly, backflow prevention, $200,000. This is a federal and state requirement for water systems to have backflow prevention. This is a contracted service for us to provide this service for our residential customers where we inspect and maintain those backflow preventers. And this is right-sizing the budget with the contracted expenses for that service. So those are the three main areas that are increasing and everything else that we do in terms of operating expense expense I'd like to give kudos to Carrie and the rest of our team that managed to find efficiencies Reduce the budget and they actually have a net reduction of $100,000 across everything else that we do in terms of operating expense Programs and projects. I want to focus in on another number that was in Tim's table up front. $29 million, a little over $29 million for projects. A couple months ago, the board approved the utilities master plan. And it included programs and projects, and I'll touch on these briefly, just highlights. Renewal and replacement, as I said before, we need to increase the investment in our treatment plants. Our distribution and collection systems outside of the plants, that includes pump stations. We have about 350 pump stations that move sewage. And if one of them isn't working, there's going to be a sewage spill somewhere, and we want to make sure we avoid that. Fire hydrants, we actually have about 4,000 fire hydrants that we inspect, maintain, and replace as needed within our system. We have programs that provide information and help prevent problems in the system. CCTV of gravity sewer, where we do literally have stuff flowing downhill. help maintain the gravity sewers. Unidirectional flushing, this is a program to help clean the pipes and maintain water quality within our systems. Hydraulic modeling helps us diagnose issues and understand what changes in the system such as new development may cause within the sewer and water systems, and then leak detection will help us look for leaks in the system that we can fix and conserve water. The last section there under the programs, a couple smaller opportunities and responsibilities I'll call them. Oversizing and extension where with new development we look for opportunities to find efficiencies and minor relocations when there are other projects in the right of way such as road or storm water projects we might have to move mains to accommodate those projects. Some projects that we have upcoming in 27, just to highlight real quickly, Timucuan Master Pump Station. This is one of a couple projects that will help us redirect wastewater that is currently going to Greenwood Lakes Wastewater Plant to the Yankee Lake Wastewater Plant where we have more capacity. Lutheran Haven is a pretty large project out on Chapman Road that we need. A force main from Greenwood to Greenwood Lakes that will help us accommodate growth near the Reagan Center area. A couple distribution improvement projects, Meredith Manor in Apple Valley. Oregon Street, this is in the northwest part of the county. We have water and force main under an I-4 on-ramp that we want to move into Oregon. um the oregon street right-of-way to make it more accessible and then lastly a couple new small water names near the reagan center to accommodate growth in that area full disclosure on this slide 29 million dollars in projects is a little bit smaller than what was presented and approved in the master plan for fiscal year 27 we are ramping up our delivery of programs and projects and we wanted to program in for fy27 what we know we can deliver and as designs get more mature and we're ready for additional funds we'll come back to the board when the time is appropriate to launch additional projects some ongoing projects i just want to touch on these quickly the greenwood lakes water reclamation facility we talked about this a couple times in the master plan presentations The plant needs some work to meet class one reliability requirements. We're out on the street currently to get an engineer for a project that exceeds CCNA limitations. We also got some state funding to help fund this project and a couple other sewer projects. Hampton Master and Howell Estates Pump Station is a couple larger pump station projects that we separate out from our normal R&R pump station upgrade program. We have 350 pump stations. We can't do them all at once, so we lay out year after year, investing money and renewing these pump stations, the pumps, the wet well lining, the pump rails, the hardware, the... the control panels, excuse me, just reinvesting to keep these pump stations operating. Reinhart Road valves and meter, we're putting in a sewer meter, a wastewater meter, and some valves. Again, that will help us redirect flow towards the Yankee Lake wastewater plant where we have more capacity. Highland Pines Pipelining, small community off of near Oxford Road. We're wrapping up a project where we've lined pipes to reduce infiltration and inflow, which we talked about has an impact on the sewer collection system. Carillon Relocations, we have a force main and a water main that are installed under the Little Econ River. This helps service the Carillon area through years of natural river meandering and maybe some hurricane-related erosion. The pipes have become exposed, so we're going to redrill those pipes to ensure that they're safe. Rolling Hills and working with Parks and Public Works, you know, we have a small component of that project to improve the water distribution system in that area. And we have large renewal and replacement projects going on currently at Yankee Lake and Greenwood Lakes water reclamation facilities. And lastly, this utility owns about 20% of the capacity at Orlando's Iron Bridge wastewater plant, so we help fund projects at their plant for renewal and replacement. Diving into each of our four divisions, and I'll try to keep this brief here, but the business office, again, that Carrie heads up, is responsible for accounting, billing, customer service, and one-stop permitting, which is one of our lines of communication with new development, one-stop permitting. Some recent notable efforts, working with the comptroller and administrative services, our municipal bonds have been refunded for a cost savings to our customers. We're updating the billing platform to modernize our billing system to improve the customer experience. That will help provide our customers more information, give them more options, and give our staff more options for data analysis about water use and expense. We're looking for efficiencies with artificial intelligence to help ramp up this new platform, populate the data, look for billing errors and maybe meter configuration errors as we move this data over. And then lastly, some administrative code updates will be coming forward in the near future to modernize some of our business processes. Engineering and construction is responsible for our large CIP capital improvements plan program. Engineering, development, review and inspection and cross connection control. We have increased the delivery of our CIP projects and I look to see that increase further in the future. We've updated our engineering standards, our standards that we send to new development to keep standards, to keep our components standard. Utilities GIS, I apologize. Utilities GIS, our geographic information system. This is the system that we use to locate our assets out in the field. Pipes are buried, don't always know what they are, where they are, except for the GIS system. And not unique to our utility, sometimes there's a little bit of a disconnect between what's in the computer and what's actually out in the field. So we've gone through a pretty large effort of reviewing decades of as-built drawings. to make sure that we have the best information possible from those drawings in our GIS system to improve accuracy. And the next step will be field verification of that data to improve our GIS system. I talked previously about prioritization of pump stations, which ones are the oldest, which ones need R&R projects sooner rather than later to help us invest wiser in those projects. pump stations. Lastly, permit renewals. In the not too distant past, we renewed both of our water reclamation or wastewater facility permits with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and in the near future, we'll have to renew our consumptive use permits with St. John's for surface and groundwater withdrawals. One of our operating divisions at the treatment plants, they're responsible for five drinking water plants, two water reclamation facilities, which again is wastewater, where we turn it into reclaimed water, and a surface water treatment plant for reclaimed augmentation. They're responsible for the operations, the inspection, monitoring, and reporting for permit compliance. They also run our supervisory control and data acquisition, which is kind of our brain center of monitoring all of our assets at the plants and out in the field. And they're also responsible for maintaining the plants, the facilities at the plants, and the grounds on which they're located, and managing the contractors that help us achieve that. Recent notable efforts, we're ramping up a new asset management system, OpenGov, also known as Cartograph, to help us identify, list, and create proactive maintenance plans for assets in our system. We're also improving our proactive maintenance initiatives, and we're looking for opportunities for efficiencies that AI can help us identify just some discussions with staff. There's probably more fruit that we can find out in the field rather than at the plants through AI, but we're having these conversations with experts. And lastly, field operations. Their responsibilities include water distribution, both for potable and reclaimed water, wastewater collection and transmission. They manage the meters out in the system, and they are also identified in Florida statutes as first responders. Recent notable efforts, emergency response. My hat's off to these guys that have to respond in the middle of the night, weekends, holidays, whenever to main breaks. that happen, they are ready at a moment's notice to go out and fix the problems. In the wake of Hurricane Milton, they pointed out that over the years of acquiring assets, there's a variety of connections between our portable generators and the pump station panels, which under normal conditions is not a problem. responding to widespread power outage. Standardizing those plugs improves our response time. So they took it on themselves to standardize, acquire the plugs, and install them. So we have that in place now. And lastly, they are converting the infrastructure for meters to an advanced metering infrastructure. We've got about 20% of our meters installed already. This is the new generation of meters that will help provide us real-time data at headquarters, and we can give an app to our customers so they can see real-time water use and possibly an alert to help them identify when they have a water leak at home. Last slide here. I wanted to talk a little bit about collaboration. I talked about wholesale fees early in the presentation. These are derived from our interlocal agreements with partnering utilities. We are updating these agreements. Longwood has a draft currently that they're reviewing from us. We have a meeting next week with Oviedo to talk about a request from their utility and updating all of our, we have several interlocal agreements with the city. There's a draft in the county attorney's office currently for the city of Castleberry. And then we will work towards Lake Mary, Sanford, and all the other utilities in the area on making sure that those agreements are current. University of Central Florida, we have one of our staff engineers in utilities is recently accepted as a doctoral candidate at UCF, so we're very proud of him. We're going to have a meeting next week to brainstorm with his professor, a pretty well-known professor, about research that will – one, help our utility, and two, help him get his dissertation. And we're kind of leaning towards the arena of emerging contaminants in utilities. What type of research will help us all? Program management, we have consultants in-house that have helped us achieve a variety of objectives. One, strengthening regulatory compliance assurance. Two, utility-wide key performance indicators so we can measure our own performance year after year and compare to other utilities in the region. They're supporting us with design and development review. One, design standards. generated by our contract engineers for our system, and then development review for new development. And then they're also mentoring and supporting some of our younger project managers to help ramp up, again, our project delivery. Central Florida Water Initiative with Environmental Services, we're participating in that, and the board knows that's a coalition of Central Florida utilities, state agencies, and other stakeholders looking at solving problems like potential potential over pumping of the Florida aquifer where water conservation is definitely key. But we're staying tuned in and involved in those meetings. Lastly, we're also working with communications to increase our communications out to the public. Do we have projects in your neighborhood that we'd like you to know about and keep you informed about? And other general utilities functions like hydrant flushing, smoke testing, flushable wipes, not so flushable. General utilities information to help us all maintain a functional utility from which we all benefit. So that concludes the presentation. I'm happy to answer questions.

Mr. Edwards, I just want to point out it is not lost, I'm sure, on any of us how far we have come under your leadership. Amen. It is absolutely remarkable. It's just remarkable. I'll leave it at that. To you and your entire team, I know you brought the rock stars with you, and there's a whole list of other rock stars that we're glad to not be here today. But we appreciate your leadership. We appreciate the department and all the work that's been done to bring us to this point. Commissioners, anything with regard to the budget? Commissioner Constantine.

Thank you very much. Johnny, last week I attended Altamont Springs Pollution Power, and they are actually making biosolids into energy. are going to fuel their wastewater treatment plant, a large portion of it with that. Talking about collaboration, I know we had some staff there, but are we working with them and trying to coordinate that and see if we can do that also?

That is something we're looking into. We've talked to several utilities over the years. Going back a couple years, I know John Slott led up an effort with Orlando and other utilities, including Altamont, to look for opportunities along those lines. This is a more recent initiative from a pretty large consulting firm in conjunction with Altamont. I think what they're doing is testing a newer technology in Altamont. We're excited to see the results. And if it makes sense, you know, love to partner with them.

Well, it is with DEP and AECOM. DEP being state, we should be able to get cooperation with them. And AECOM, we have used them and continue to use them on a number of different consultants. I just thought it's natural. And that would be a great feather in our cap.

And we're making sure we're present at those. Frank and I talk frequently, and so we want to ensure that we're a part of the conversation.

It just looked great when you were doing that.

Commissioner Zinbauer.

I've got nothing in the interest of saving time. I see the good judge is here for his presentation.

Anything further? All right. Thank you. Thank you to the entire team. The Honorable Judge Galuzzo is here in place of Chief Judge Melanie Chase, who is, I think, in the courtroom today. Thank you.

Now we're going to see how proficient our staff is that they have a name tag switch. That's what he just said. I bet you that's what he just said.

I know what Tim just said.

Doesn't seem so. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for allowing me to appear on behalf of Judge Chasey's. Unfortunately, he could not be here this morning. And as you may know, I'm in the middle of a murder trial. So I had to switch from yesterday when we were supposed to be here because we had a medical examiner from out of state who used to be our chief medical examiner who is now in, I think, Colorado. and he could only appear yesterday by team, so it became a little bit of a logistical nightmare.

We're always happy to work with you.

Thank you very much. Madam Chairman and board members as well as Mr. Gray. Ms. Latorre, am I pronouncing that right?

We haven't met, thank you.

I thank you for allowing us to appear here today. If you have any specific questions, I'm going to direct you to ask Mr. Yannis, who's with me, who's our court administrator. He knows much more about this budget, but I will say a few things that I've often told you in the past when I appeared here as chief judge and as the administrative judge of the county. The county here is so helpful to us, and I say that quite honestly. I've been in a lot of circuits around the state as chief judge, and the fights continue. We don't seem to have those here because you've always been so good to us. We try not to ask for anything more than what we specifically need. The courthouse reconstruction is going around well, very well. The contractor is very professional, very responsible. In the course of this trial, I've heard a few bangings, but not very much. But they're not disruptive. And the others are very complimentary of the fact that it doesn't seem to be disruptive to them. So we appreciate that and everything that you're doing for us. I will end my short brief presentation on a quick personal note. One is I'm retiring at the end of this year after 20 years. And my wife has already told me this morning she has a plan for my future. I'm now wondering whether I should have retired or not. We'll figure that one out. The second thing is, on behalf of the Woodard family, I want to thank you again for the proclamation that you held last year for Judge Woodard. Sadly, he passed away this year. And he was a great man, a wonderful judge. He started our mental health court and our veterans court process. And his widow has asked me to express to you her desire, if you can, on June 26th from 11 to 1.30. She'll be holding a memorial service for him celebration of life. There will be some food there, some refreshments. There will be very little speeches. She wants everyone to come together to celebrate him and what he's done for all of us over the course of his years on the bench. So with that, if you have any questions, I'm going to go ahead and refer to the presentation, and then hopefully Mr. Giannis can answer your questions for you.

The judicial department's proposed budget request is $1.9 million. 21% comes from grant agreements in support of the adult drug court program and the drug lab. Article 5 fees pay for 12% of the program, and general funds support 66%. There are eight county full-time positions in judicial with no changes for fiscal 27. The total budget variance is 5.9% from $1.8 million to $1.9 million, primarily related to salary, benefit, and health insurance for existing staff. The capital line includes $15,000 for a one-time replacement of a network server.

Commissioners... That was easy. Yeah, that was easy. I actually do have a question, and this doesn't necessarily have to be answered now, but... One of the things that we would appreciate from the judiciary is feedback with regard to the technology that's supplied by the clerk's office. We do continue to hear from the clerk's perspective, which is very valuable. But we would also like to hear from you all so that we understand that what we're delivering through the clerk's office, through the budgeting process, is what you need and up to speed, et cetera.

I could touch on that a little bit, but I think that Mr. Yiannis could probably do more from my perspective. Some years ago, Mary Ann Morris started a process for electronic signing and filing, and everything I do today that I used to do by paper is on a computer. We have an ICMS system that can be complicated at times, but she started it and built it herself at that point in time to try and accommodate us for electronic signatures. When I was Chief Judge, I was able to implement some of it in Brevard County because we were having trouble there as well. And I think it was the Eighth Circuit that lent us some of their software, as much as what they did with our eWarn system as well, to help us build this system. We could not process as much information as we do today. I could not... handle the files. I handle five different divisions. I handle probate, mental health, guardianship, also delinquency and dependency. I couldn't do all of those. I probably sign 100 different orders a day. So it means I'm reviewing 100 different files and I can do it so much faster electronically. That's all in credit to the clerk's office. They build the system. They maintain it for us. It cuts down on their need for personnel, I think, but it also makes us so much more efficient. I don't leave my office at any day if I haven't cleared out my viewer of all the orders I have. And I even get messages sometimes from lawyers and say, why did you sign this on Christmas? Because it was there. because I think I owe service to the public. And I think the clerk's office goes a long way to help us with that. I know the technology costs are extensive in just keeping up with the system, but the service to the community is so much better, I think, because we have it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Commissioners, any further comments?

No, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for being here. To you and your entire team. All right, that brings us to fleet and facilities. So we're bringing up Chad Wilski right after the compliments on the courthouse renovations. That worked out nicely for you, Chad. Lunch will be later.

The next presentation was environmental services, but we'll jump ahead to fleet and facilities.

Anything Chad wants, we'll bring to it. Was it really? Environmental services.

We'll let Chad take the lead. No, no. Go ahead, Chad. Kim's good.

My apologies. We're just keeping everybody on their toes. It's all good.

Good morning, Chairman and Commissioners, and thank you for the opportunity to present the good work of our Fleet and Facilities Department. So in Fleet Facilities, we have three divisions. We have Facilities Development, Facilities Maintenance, and Fleet Maintenance.

The total proposed budget for the department is $33.5 million, with 96% of the funding centralized in the general fund for fleet management, facilities, maintenance, and countywide fuel. A small portion of the revenues comes from the water and sewer and solid waste fund, including $500,000 in budgets transferred from environmental services starting in fiscal 27. The department has 79 full-time positions with no requested changes. The department's total proposed budget increase is 2.5% from 32.7 million to 33.5 million. The base budget increase of 4% is primarily attributed to changes in existing employee benefits and increases to operating contracts for custodial and security services. The capital budget of $5.1 million is primarily for countywide HVAC and roof replacements.

All right. So good morning again. This morning we are going to focus more on the facilities maintenance part of the operation. Over the last couple of years, the commission has made some great investments on the facilities maintenance. I want to share what we've been doing and how we're going to use that information going forward. A couple years ago on the facilities maintenance side, we truly didn't have facilities maintenance programs in place. It was very, everything's reactive, reactive, reactive as things came up. So in the last couple years, we've been conducting facilities condition assessments of several of our facilities, fire stations and the fire training center, a couple of our water treatment facilities, all of our libraries, three of our parks and recreation support facilities, the public, Works Administration Building there on County Home Road, and then the buildings at the Central Transfer Station. Upcoming condition assessments, we have the Public Safety Building, the Juvenile Justice Center, Juvenile Detention Center, Juvenile Assessment Center, and then also the John E. Polk Correctional Facility. And on these assessments, the areas of focus, we're looking at the generalized large areas of focus, is the roof, the building envelope, the fire panels, the electric panels, the building generator, all of the HVAC systems, and also the elevators and those buildings that have elevators as well. So here we are collecting all of this data. And, you know, typically in the past, we would put it into a spreadsheet, which Mr. Jakes loves. But the commission was gracious enough to provide the resources for our capital asset software solution. So we are in the process of the assessments that have been completed. It's putting that information into the software solution for us to, again, to plan out our capital assets. So what does it do? So forecast asset health, predict asset life, balance needs and budgets through scenario comparisons, and develop smarter budgets. Again, for being reactive, being proactive. Also, what the solution will do is allows us to plan out in the future, create a strategy, something we do not have in place now. When we talk about strategies when it comes to the budget, and we know that the resources are finite, it will allow us to determine if we do this, expect this. If we don't do this, expect this. So when there are items that we have to defer, we'll be able to understand what is the true cost of that deferment. Not just if the equipment fails and the comfort and how it impacts operations, but the cost of that deferment as well. So we're looking forward to getting this fully implemented and utilizing it for next year's budget process. So when I come to Tim and the county manager and then ultimately to y'all for a budget request, it's about having all the data that goes along with that request. And it's just not of we think. We know these are what we can expect. Along with that is our energy management, our utility tracking. Just a few years ago, we really didn't have a good grasp of our electrical accounts. Actually, we have a little over 1,300 accounts with FPL and Duke Energy. So we've centralized all of this. And so with the energy management solution, we can now track all utilities in one centralized location. We can track and compare usage across buildings, view and compare actual energy spend compared to what we should be spending for that building type, and then we can identify the anomalies in utility usage. I will say we are in just the beginning stages. We've captured the data. It's been challenging getting the data into the system, taking again a paper process and digitizing from that perspective. I can tell you what we've already come across now is what we've been focusing on, simple things. Are we being billed at the correct rates? So over those 1,300 accounts, amazingly, we had same building types but being charged at different structured rates. Small things but across the system when it comes to dollars. One thing we also looked at on the commercial side is demand rates. So what's the demand rate is when all of our systems kind of hit the system at one time, sends a message to the power company that, ooh, they need this much energy. We're going to charge them a rate now on that demand. So what we're doing, and we'll discuss this on the next slide a little bit, is through our building automation, is looking at when does our systems hit the grid. So instead of having this peak demand and getting charged a high rate we can now level off that demand through the day let a lower rate so again things that in the past questions that just weren't asked and we didn't have the ability to look at going forward All right. Energy management building automation. And, again, thanks to the commission for making the investments into our HVAC systems, into our control systems. I know there's still a great deal of work to do. But the key is just I could be provided, our team could be provided – Endless amount of money, and we could spend it. But the key is, what I've said is, we want to make sure that we're not doing a Band-Aid job. We're actually fixing the problem, and it needs to be strategic in what we do. This is through the help of a contractor services through building automation. So we can identify equipment not working and or using more energy than it should be, provide recommendations and strategies for repairs, optimize equipment runtime schedules. So I'll stop here. We had systems running 24-7 in our buildings, not needed. And so what we also are working on is developing a system to where, let's say, we have a certain schedule that our systems are going to run before they go into non-occupancy mode. If you have a meeting, a training, or something happening after hours, you'll be able to request that time into the system. We can make sure that the system is turned on during that time for your after hours meeting. We can extend the equipment lifespan. We can minimize emergency repairs and equipment downtime and then improve overall employee comfort. For the building automation as well, it gives us insight into how the buildings are performing. The interesting thing, our highest user of energy, you would think it would be the jail because it's 24-7 operation. It's actually right now our criminal justice center. We can start asking questions. Does it make sense? Right. With this data, with this information, we can start asking questions. Why? How does that compare? This building here compared to the square footage uses a great amount of energy compared to other buildings within our makeup as well. With that, again, data that we didn't have access to before, now we're getting access to, now we'll be able to see what equipment is somewhat working, not working, making those repairs, making the strategic repair that actually fixes the problem, doesn't band-aid the problem as well. All right. Transitioning to our fleet operation. So about a year ago, the commission approved us being a Ford warranty service provider program, and I wanted to give you kind of an update on that. So since that time, we've performed 87 warranty repairs and recalls. from our fleet division. We have 42 claims in progress now. They're just awaiting forward approval. And just as a reminder, all the work that we do for these recalls or warranties, we are reimbursed by Ford at Ford's rate for parts and labor for these things. But I tell you, the biggest savings is in staff downtime. Because when a vehicle comes in, for us to take it to a dealership takes two people. we drive it to a dealership we let it sit it's in a you know it can sit for days for however how long until again we're not the only customer when it's ready then we go two people pick it up and so forth so really the the savings and just down time of our staff is has been instrumental Additionally, with this program, it's provided additional training for our staff, which has been extremely helpful. And then through this, we're looking at providing ASC, additional ASC certification training for staff as well. When I arrived a couple years ago on our fleet side, the operation management system we had, it wasn't built for fleet. It was a one size software solution that was meant for a very, very large department that had a lot of divisions and groups in it. Recognized very quickly we needed to make an adjustment, and so again I appreciate the investment of a new management solution for that. What it does for us, it gives us again real transparency, real visibility into our assets, Allows us to manage our vehicles, equipment, parts, and maintenance from one platform as well. We have improved maintenance management. We can track all of our inspections, repairs, warranties in our parts inventory. Gives us better control of our maintenance costs in our inventory. Then again, our reporting and analytics in the past was a lot of manual processes. Now we have the automatic reports through the systems. The nice thing with our new fleet management solution too, it will help us in our lifecycle management as well and looking at when we do replacements. Fleet telematics. So this is another investment made, and there's a lot of questions about what is telematics on a vehicle. Well, it's onboard vehicle diagnostics. Well, what does that mean? Well, that means when these days vehicles are way more technology-driven than my vehicle, they give alerts. They give off codes that something's happening. In the past, we relied on the driver to say, oh, the engine light is on. Sometimes they see it, sometimes they don't. So that information is in real time shared with our fleet division. from all things with the engine, from the braking system, you name it, if it's covered in the computer, we're now getting those diagnostics communicated to this. It's wireless telecommunications, and then we have the vehicle location services as part of the telematic system. Again, the benefits. So strategic operational visibility. Think about this. So when we know Alan and his team, actually Alan loves to respond to emergencies. Now, now.

He disagrees with you from the back. No, Alan has to respond to emergencies.

Thank you for taking all of our, all the monies, all the budget money too. So I appreciate that. But now he can look at a map. And we can be proactive and look at where we have assets staged for deployment. We can know during a storm where assets are. Before, it would be, hey, where's that spreadsheet? I don't have 10 more spreadsheets. Where's that spreadsheet that has everything listed? And do we remember that it was moved? Oh, I forgot to do that. So this is real-time knowing where our assets are from that standpoint. Proactive maintenance and asset reliability. Again, real-time diagnostics. We're getting alerts. When it's time for the preventative maintenance of oil change, whoever that vehicle is assigned to, the primary person, they're getting an email. Their supervisor is getting an email. It's not someone in an office now that has to send this information out. We can automatically schedule things out, reduce downtime, extend asset life. Now we have the ability to really fuel usage. It's key because fuel usage in the past has been when someone goes to the pump, they plug in the mileage at the pump. Sometimes it's accurate, sometimes it's not, sometimes we forget, we put in a number. Now we can determine real fuel usage. Idle time. This is something that we'll be working in the future on the idle time. Idle time is one, it burns fuel, fuel's not cheap today. Two, it's hard on engines as well. Having an understanding where we have idle time and how that impacts the operation. Is it needed? Are there things operationally we can do differently? Greater organizational efficiency and accountability. Again, automated reporting. Real data on location in a sense, hey, I'm broken down. I'm breaking up. Well, what road are you on? I'm not on a road. I'm in the woods somewhere. We can find you. We know where to go. When we do have storms, the system also will capture the data that we need for reimbursement in the future as well. Another great tool of this is that we have this system on our major generators. And so now we can look at when generators are running, when they're not running. We also have the ability to know the fuel levels of generators at certain locations. In the past, we sent someone around driving around. Check the fuel. Check the fuel. Check the fuel. Now, again, we have information. Do I need to send somebody there to check the fuel instead of just driving around checking the fuel? All right. Fleet replacement strategy. Our current replacement criteria has been age-based and mileage hours. Makes sense. As we go move forward for future replacement with our systems now, with the data that we're going to have access to now, now we can look at reliability. And it doesn't mean that the oldest always is the one that needs to roll off the books first. And we see this in today's time, that there's certain years, certain... models where, for whatever reason, a tweak was made in the transmission and the transmissions are just trash now. And those replacement transmissions are very costly. So it's looking at the reliability and the lifecycle cost of the vehicles that we have, looking at safety issues, looking at operational uptime, looking at fuel efficiency of our vehicles, and then also comparing that to resale. Realize there is a point in time that from an operational standpoint cost and then the resale value that that is when you want to unload your vehicle. And it's not the same for every make. And every year. And that's typically how we have all done it. It's a certain year, certain amount of mileage, it rolls off the books. But we need to look at, again, when's the best resell? And then how do we ensure we get that best resell value as well? So things we have to work out. I mean, we still utilize age-based in mileage and hours, but there's a whole list of other data points that will be incorporated into that replacement program as well. And then that's all I have.

I've never seen anybody as excited about fleet. Possibly Mr. Zimbauer down here. We all know that. But particularly technology with regards to fleet. So that was a fantastic presentation. We appreciate that. Questions? I'm sure there are some. Yep.

I'm thrilled.

Yep.

Maybe I know Commissioner DeLaurie is aware of it, but I've been here seven years and probably 12 years ago, and it was Commissioner DeLaurie and... We've been talking about this for probably 20 years. Commissioner... It was Kerry? Yeah, Kerry. Commissioner Kerry reached out to me as a private businessman and asked me to come review the entire fleet service program, which I spent... nine months going through document after document after document to determine we had a problem or the county had a problem so this is great news that this is finally taking place and under your leadership it obviously is is moving along quite well and i think the commission has facilitated the assets that were necessary that weren't being provided years ago, which was being conservative to your own demise, if you will, keeping vehicles 15 years, 12 years, way beyond their useful life expectancy, and in many cases, $3,000 and $4,000 and $5,000 a year being spent on the same vehicle year after year made no financial sense whatsoever. The telematics, one portion that you omitted and hopefully we're using it, which is the benefit to the safety of our employees as well as the general motor and public. With the telematics, we have the ability to understand if somebody's driving habits are hazardous in nature and get those alerts centralized coming into your office saying, hey, car 2578 has slammed on the brakes three times in the last 15 minutes. That's when you pick up the phone and call and go, what's happening? So that's a benefit as well. But the overall management of the fleet now is far superior to whatever it was. Likewise, getting the in-house service and repair capability through Ford, which the majority of our vehicles were Ford vehicles, is another benefit, as you've well outlined. But the technology that Ford will allow us to accommodate for the technicians servicing it with equipment and all the assets and training that come to bear on that are great. But it's also shifting from fleet to these buildings that this county's owned. To your point, the electrical cost even in this building, to the point what it is, and the commission through the years was conservative to its own demise in staying in buildings that are costing more to maintain and operate than a completely replaced unit. and doing something different. So I applaud your staff for doing that and the commission with the commitment to move the county forward to supply efficient and modern technologies not only in the fleet but in the building side as well. So thank you very much. Great work.

Very much appreciated. We also appreciate that you came here alone, so good job. Very brave on your part.

Well, his team is out there, I see. They're sitting in the back row.

Nice job. Nice job, gentlemen.

And that's the key is we've been able to move individuals where they can excel and really do what they do best. And then also we've attracted very great talent from that perspective. And as the chief said, everything that we do, it's in partnership. So honestly, the things that we're able to achieve with my fellow directors, it's definitely important. a team effort county-wide, so that's how it all works. So greatly appreciate it.

Except for Alan.

Except for Alan.

Except for Alan. Thank you for the clarification.

Commissioner Constantine.

Thank you very much. This has been said by others, and so I didn't want to repeat it, but I'll give a blanket statement now during Chad's presentation because he's new. Basically. Not that new. Basically. I'm so impressed with all the staff and how well you're putting this together. Tim, this has got a lot to do with you, too. And I'm not going to forget our county manager. He's shaking his head like I was going to forget him. But you put together a team. That did not cross my mind. You put together a team. Okay, I'm not going to give you a compliment. Please do. I'll hear it later. You put together a team that has really come together and working very hard. Chad, particularly, I want to tell you that since you've come, I haven't frozen up here as much. I haven't seen Amy come out with her blanket as much. And we could have told you that this room itself uses too much electricity all the time. Nobody's running to that to fix it. But thank you very much. We've all over the years have said, we've got to get control of this, the fleet and facilities. And it seems that we're finally making real progress to do that. And thank you very much. And again, Darren, it is because of the team you've put together. Congratulations.

Commissioner Lockhart? And in response to the team that you've put together, I haven't heard one of us question what size tires we're buying.

Yes.

So there's that.

Depends on the application.

I'm just saying. If you know, you know.

I think that part of my wrap, but I'll add on to what you're saying right now, is that we are Let's give a little bit of kudos to the five of us because we've moved from micromanaging and really managing around the CEO of the organization to being of governance, which is the role of this body. in our charter, and that has facilitated a change, partially because of the way Darren is managing and partially because of the way we responded to it positively, to allow experts to be experts and have us meddle less. Less.

Less.

It's not gone. I see the faces out there. It's not gone. I was purposefully not looking in the audience. Less. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

With that, we will move on to environmental services. Kim Ornberg, and I promise I didn't leave you off intentionally, but there are multiple versions of an agenda in my hands, and you are not on one of them.

Madam Chairman, if I could real quick. One thing that Mr. Wilski did not go over and it was intentional for is our capital facilities program that we have a lot of capital projects going on now. I call it the year. The next couple of years will be the year of the capital projects. We are bringing that back to you, the first meeting in August, to do an in-depth review of all of our capital projects so you know what's actually funded in next year's budget, but the next five years you'll actually see that list as well. And then just a little comment about the meddling. We actually appreciate that as well. I think it's a check and balance on myself as well as our directors, so as you know, I welcome that, and I believe that we have a great, the board is great. You are allowing me to manage this county, and I seek feedback, and I just want to tell you that I appreciate that as well, because I know it's just not me. We have the right people in the right places. That good to great book, you know, having the right people on the bus, but actually having them in the right seat on the right bus. But I believe U5, along with myself and our senior leadership team, It took us a couple years, but we got the people in the right spot. So I just want to say that appreciation to the board as well.

But not micromanaging. Meddling is okay. Whatever adjective you use.

There's a difference between asking questions, which is the role, and reaching around and managing through the organization. And we are much better at that today than we were before. So we're to the point, I'll pick up on the good to great reference, we're to the point where we actually are seeing the flywheel has started.

Right, right.

And we're moving forward at a pace that we've not moved forward before. So it's pretty good. And the other thing is when I look out, folks are happier because they're making more progress in their own roles, and that's kind of cool. That's what we want.

It's a much more efficient machine today than it was two, three, four years ago.

All right, Ms. Orenberg, take us away.

All right. For the record, I'm Kim Orenberg. I'm the Director of Environmental Services, and I am going to talk to you about a little highlights about our budget. So to start with, our department includes a solid waste division managed by Joe England, which includes landfill operations, the transfer station operations. and our solid waste compliance program. We also have the watershed management division, managed by Shannon Wetzel, which includes mosquito control, lake management, and water quality. And last but not least, we have water policy, which is headed by Keely Carlton, and Carlson, sorry, Keely, which includes holistic water policy, plan and implementation, the water conservation program, and all of our water-related education and outreach.

The department's total proposed budget request is $21.5 million. 83% is funded from the solid waste fund, which supports the county's landfill and transfer station. 13% from the general fund is for watershed management to monitor and improve water quality in the county. Water and sewer funds support the water policy division, which is managed by environmental services. The department proposes 104.2 full-time positions in the budget, and you can see the removal of the split funded position to water utilities. The department's total budget increase is 0.9% from $21.3 million to $21.5 million. The base budget increase of 1.5% includes increases for personnel and operating. The capital budget of $6.7 million includes necessary fleet replacements and an expansion of the central transfer station.

Now I'm going to touch on some of our budget highlights, but I do want to make a note that all of the highlights I'm going to talk about are related to solid waste and therefore from the solid waste fund and not the general fund. This first slide shows our net annual recycling costs. This equals the cost of transportation and processing of recycled materials, which currently costs us $170 a ton, minus the revenue that we get from the recycled materials, the commodity value, which can vary significantly from month to month and from year to year, and we split this revenue with the vendor. Historically, recycling had generated a net positive revenue, and where the commodity values were greater than the cost of processing, which is why the tipping fee had originally been set to zero. Our current tipping fee for our regular solid waste is $41.63 per ton. So the graph shows the net costs over the last six years, and you can see that with the exception of fiscal year 22, recycling has had a net annual cost to us due to the increase in costs of processing and the decrease overall of the commodity values. And over the last three years, you can see that our net costs have been around $1 million, And if things continue on the way we are tracking this year, our projected cost will be actually about $1.7 million. So if we were to set our recycling fee to the same as a regular solid waste fee, the $41.63 a ton, we would generate about $840,000, $850,000 a year and significantly reduce waste. our overall costs. If we decide to do this in the future, we'd still encourage recycling because the cost of disposal or recycling would be the same. So the benefits. Why is it important to continue to recycle? Well, first, it's required by the state of Florida. But equally important, there are benefits to continuing our recycling program besides the environmental and sustainability. There are fiscal benefits. and this has to do with the lifespan of our landfill. Our current estimates are that our landfill has about 37 years left of airspace or lifespan and we are very fortunate to have that amount of time and space because the cost of permitting and constructing new landfills are very expensive. Based on some recent local data that I found, it was costing one of our neighbors about $1.5 million per acre to permit and construct a new landfill. And our current landfill is about 250 acres, so if you do simple math, it's about $375 million on that order to permit to permit and construct a new landfill at this time. We are also fortunate to have this space set aside to construct a new landfill when the time comes on the same property. So our airspace and our property situation are not the norm, at least not across the state of Florida. We are fortunate in that. But with that in mind, if we were to stop recycling, we would, with the volumes that we manage, we would lose about four or five years of our landfill lifespan. by adding these waste streams to the landfill. But if we continue to increase our waste diversion programs like we've been doing by adding textile recycling, our sneaker and shoes recycling, we're looking at styrofoam recycling and looking at composting, in addition to our traditional curbside recycling, we could potentially extend the life of our landfill another 15 years. So these are the things that we're working on and we're looking at. And we'll bring this back to you all to consider more in the future. So next I want to talk about a couple of budget highlights. One being the expansion of the central transfer station, which is a project that's been long time coming. We're connecting the current transfer station, which is on the right-hand side of the slide picture, to the adjacent former Toyota David Moss property, which the county purchased several years ago, which will allow trucks to exit via 1792 and will improve safety and traffic flow at the transfer station as well as enhance our capacity at the facility. We're working together with Chad and his team at facilities on this and on the renovation of one of the remaining buildings on the David Moss site, which will create an environmental services compound, and the whole department will be there together, so it'll be great. Finally, highlighting our solid waste capital equipment, which is typically the biggest ongoing annual capital expense for the division and the department. This year's request of $3.1 million is actually about $2 million less than last year. and we're replacing some larger equipment like a compactor and a dump truck along with a couple of shuttle trucks that transport the solid waste from the transfer station to the landfill, as well as continuing our cost-effective trailer refurbishment program, which we've been doing for the last few years. It's saving us about 50% of the cost of purchasing a new one. It's about $65,000 that we're saving, and this is working exceptionally well. So we're very happy with that, and we will continue to work with Fleet on that. And with that, that concludes my environmental services presentation. So thank you.

Thank you so much. Commissioner Talari.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Kim, with your recycling program right now, the tipping fee is zero. If you did increase it, what's been the analysis or the litmus test in the community with our partners about who do we lose as customers and how would that affect it?

We've been working. We have interlocal agreements with all seven cities as well as two outside cities, Winter Park and Maitland. We've been talking to them about this for several years now since I've been involved, and they're aware of the costs and that we're looking to recoup those costs long term. So as far as I know, we won't lose any.

So you feel, with your analysis, if we did increase the tipping fees, it would not have an effect on our customer base, because it would have an effect on the customer base on the user end, because their rates would have to go up.

Yes, because, I mean, if we were...

It all gets passed on.

Correct.

Do we know where they are in the market projections of the users on those sides of the equation? So in other words, if it was a city, now we charge them a tipping fee for recycling, how much would their rates be going up by?

That I do not know what their residential rates are. We would just be charging a tipping fee at the gate.

It all gets passed on, so I'm just trying to understand how that's going to work or if that's going to happen.

We have been working, like I said, with the cities on projecting what those costs would be when we started to implement a cost, so they're well aware. I don't know what specific impacts it would have to their residents, but they're well aware, and I know we've been sharing that information.

Okay. When you said on the landfill that there was 34 years left, I believe you said? 37. 37, I'm sorry. Is that the existing cell that we're using, or is that for the vacant land that we have out there?

No, that's the existing permitted landfill that we have right now.

Great. And in that landfill, I know we've been expanding the harvesting of our methane system there. How's that working out? And have we been getting more money because utility rates have been going up? Has that been adjusting as well?

We've had to do a major, this year you all approved for us to do a major expansion and renovation of some of our landfill gas collection systems. With that, we should see more long-term that we should increase the collection and therefore the revenue.

Do we know what the projection cost would be for that increase?

I do not, but I can certainly get that and bring it back to you.

That'd be great. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Commissioner Lockhart.

Good question about the impact to the end user. I think one of the things that makes it probably difficult for you to determine what it would be is that every city funds their residential differently. Some completely subsidize it or mostly subsidize it with commercial pickup. And so every city would have to decide on their own how they want to pass the cost on or absorb it. Some of them may decide to absorb it, but that's one of the great things about that whole local control thing is we do get to do it how it works best for our organization or for our city's county. I am so excited about composting. I cannot begin to tell you. When this concept was first talked about a few years ago, just as a passing like, hey, we could do, I was like, yes, let's do it. And so how, I know it's weird.

That's fine.

How far out do you think that vision really is for coming to fruition?

I know that we've been with Joe at the helm in solid waste, and we have Adam here that's really passionate about this. He's been investigating that, and I know that's within our five-year plan, too.

There are just so many opportunities, not just to lengthen the life of the landfill, which would be the primary fiscally responsible thing that this board is concerned with, but from an ecological and environmental standpoint, But to be able to turn people's waste back into garden gold for them to take and use in their home, I just think is such a progressive small P thing for our county to be at the helm and leading the way on that I think would be phenomenal.

This is spoken by a commissioner who I believe received a composter as a birthday gift.

Yeah, at her request.

I love my mill, and I don't get paid, but it's a fabulous little machine. You put all your kitchen scraps in it, including chicken bones, and it cooks it overnight, and it grinds everything down, and you can use it to feed your chickens treats or, you know, in your garden.

Everybody should have a milk.

I don't see that in my future. In case there are any husbands listening, not a good idea in her household. I just don't think I can do it. Commissioner Zimba.

Doesn't that cause like mad cow or would that be mad chicken disease if they ate bones of their own that were composted?

Chickens are pretty cannibalistic as it is.

Bones would be the least worrisome thing that chickens eat. Let's just say that.

So shifting gears on the landfill, I think we actually have a pretty huge opportunity at that landfill with the amount of acreage that we own. If some of you weren't aware, I think it was two years ago, the state tried to pass legislation that would have caused us to be unable to use that 1,000-plus acres because some legislature was upset with what was going on in Dade County. Fortunately, our people intervened and said, wait a minute, our county actually planned – for this landfill and just because there's a residential property within half a mile of it should not preclude us from being able to continue to use it into the future for its intended purpose. But tire reclamation and recycling is a huge issue. It's a huge issue not only in the center Florida region but throughout the entire country. With the amount of property that we own, there is an opportunity for private-public partnerships to bring an entity in to not only handle our tire load, but also profit for our taxpayers the ability to use that reclamation for the surrounding counties that otherwise are paying haulers to come in pick them up and haul them to wherever north florida south georgia there's a couple of grinder plants in south carolina we have the asset right here to do it i would love for us to see look into it to see if we could get somebody here to do that okay

So Commissioner Zembauer gets tire grinding.

Well, and I would say we should – I think there's opportunities for public-private partnerships with that land that go beyond just tires that are worthy of exploring that I think discussions may be in place for.

And on the tire issue, hopefully – Since we now have millings going out to the hill, we're not seeing the tire failures of new tires at the rate we were at one point. because we were literally put brand new tires on a truck, and three days later, they would fail. And those tires are not $100 tires. They're $600 tires apiece. So good move putting that stuff there and using the resources that we already have, which is mountains of fines that can be taken to the landfill and be used for that. So it's good stuff.

Working with public works and environmental services together. Yep.

Yep. Commissioners, any further questions? Hearing none, thank you so much for everything. Oh, I'm sorry.

And the holistic water policy is coming along. You didn't say it. But I'm so proud to see all of my environmental commissioners. I really am. I mean, in every budget session. Commissioner Lockhart brings up her chickens in some form or fashion. In every budget session, Jay brings up tires, and I bring up my worms in the fertilizer, so I just had to do that.

All right. Hearing none, and before this goes down a rabbit hole, we're going to let you go. Thank you for all of the work that you do, your entire department, and all the progress that we've made. Thank you all very much. We appreciate your support. All right, information technology. All right, look at us.

And, Madam Chairman, I have to think of another word. I can't call you Madam anymore now that you've said that to me. So, Chairman.

You know what? It reminds me of my mother every time it happens, so it's a pleasure. Call me Madam.

I just wait as Kim is exiting there with Joe England as well. He's a great addition to our staff. We are working on a solid waste master plan that we're bringing back to the board to incorporate a lot of what the discussion was that you all had today. So look forward to that and how we're going to manage that in the future.

All right, terrific. With that, we're going to turn it over to Joe and team for information technology. And I'll just start this off by saying it has come through multiple presentations today that you are behind the scenes, often in front of the scenes, making stuff happen for all of them. So tell us what's happening with your budget.

Certainly. Tim?

Oh.

Within information technology, a couple of different areas that we've got here are our client experience. These are our desktop support and trainers. This is a group that provides the desk side, hand-holding support that you all experience. Our enterprise infrastructure administration team, this is very much behind the scenes group of individuals here running much of our servers and applications behind the scenes. Enterprise Software and Development. These were our dashboarding group, Power BI. It comes out of this area, our data analytics. Yes, exactly.

First one that said it today. Congrats.

Do I get a gold star for that as well? So that's with our enterprise software and development team from that area. GIS is our geospatial information systems. It does a lot of stuff obviously with emergency management as well as the other departments here. Information security. These are that wonderful fish alert button that you have in your Outlook. When you think something looks fishy, so to speak, it goes to this team. They validate it, verify it, and look at that. So that's our information security team. They're also heavily responsible for that annual training that you get as a result of the state mandate. So this group also helps to manage that process for us.

Network services.

This team manages, obviously, the network layer and the telephone system that not only that we use, but also all the constitutional offices that we provide that level of service to. And then finally, our project management team. This group helps us to identify what it is that we're working on, tracking it, finding out any risk or issues that may be coming about as we're doing the projects, not only for ourselves, but for the county departments and everyone. When I first got here, I was asked to do a review of the department. One of the things that I changed was our structure. Initially, it was just the client experience and enterprise software and development teams that were reporting directly to the CIO. I wanted to bring information security and project management up to the top so that myself and whomever's in this chair going forward has a direct line of sight into the information security of the organization as well as the project management. And the project management is critical in the sense that, again, it's a matter of identifying, are we working on the right projects? Is this the right time? Do we have them resourced appropriately? So those were two of the changes that were made from a structural standpoint.

The Information Technology Department's proposed budget is $17.7 million centralized through the general fund. They provide a county-wide service and approximately half of their budgets are charged back to departments and 11 other county funds. The department has 64 full-time positions with no requested changes. The proposed budget increase is 16.9% from $15.2 million to $17.7 million. The operating budget increase of $938,000 includes $400,000 for licenses for the new building department enterprise software. The capital budget includes $1.2 million for the replacement of computer hardware that supports the county's 911 CAD dispatch system. Exclusive of these two new budgets, the department's overall increase is approximately 6%.

Thank you, Tim. So, you know, within the 27 budget, these are some highlights that we'll be discussing and reviewing. The Acela completion and associated dashboards, obviously that project, as Tim mentioned, is going to be coming to fruition at the end of this fiscal year, but we've got much to do and continuing development with relation to that project and, more importantly, dashboards, right? What data is it producing? What decisions can we make? And how are we hitting our KPIs and so forth associated with that? We've got several cybersecurity enhancements for the upcoming fiscal year, as well as our network refresh and redesign project. We've made great strides in this current fiscal year, but next year we've got continued development in that area. And then finally, you've heard throughout numerous presentations about artificial intelligence. It is going to be something key that we'll be looking into and continue to develop in the coming fiscal year. So I wanted to touch on just a couple of similar moments that we've been able to, one we've been able to achieve and one that we see great opportunities in. The first one is in process automation. We identified this last year as an opportunity in looking at where are processes that require a significant amount of human intervention and how do we learn to be able to automate that and be able to take that workload off and become more efficient in that area. So one of the examples that my team came up with, that we did, it's a little bit of an each-your-own-ice-cream approach, and that was within our GIS maintenance plan. This was a process that took our senior GIS developer, traditionally Friday. This was their Friday work routine. working to gather the data from various data points, assimilate it, ensure that it is accurate, and then upload it into the various systems. What they were able to do is take this manual process and automate it and essentially gave themselves back six to eight hours of actual work time back into their daily process. So what we've been able to do now is take that manual process that literally took an entire business day, automate it, and now we've got a resource that has got an additional basically 20% capacity to put toward other higher value-added tasks. And finally, the next one is AI in the call centers. This is an area where we see great opportunity in order to be able to leverage AI for folks that are calling in to be able to leverage that aspect to answer commonly asked questions or frequently asked questions that hopefully just much like you do at your bank or any other aspects where you can get data or information about the county and some of the operations. Some of the great things here is the ability to expand our hours of operation. Obviously, AI doesn't need to take a lunch break. It doesn't need to go home and take care of the dogs or anything along those lines. We've got the potential to expand the hours that our phone systems are available. More importantly, it has the ability to scale when demand increases. While we can bring in additional resources, it can take time to scale them up where in AI we have a much greater opportunity to scale. So the next thing I wanted to identify, and as Tim mentioned, some of the notable areas of operational increase this year, approximately 50% of that is tied to our Acela platform. It is what it is, so to speak, but we are looking, that will come online this fiscal year, so that is an anticipated cost. Associated with that, we are at the end of our three-year Microsoft agreement, so we've been able to keep that cost flat for the last three years, unfortunately. As with any renewal, there are cost increases associated with that. And then finally, you've heard Scott, our investment advisor, speak basically monthly about AI and its interaction on the workforce and the economy. This is where we're seeing it in our operations directly. The cost of computers, laptops, and desktops, we've seen about a 25% increase simply because there's a lack of supplies. Data centers are consuming a lot of that hardware. We hear a lot about data centers. And we're also seeing that in our networking side of the house as well. Especially on the networking side, when we would get quotes for projects, typically they'd be good for 30 to 60 days or longer. Our vendor has let us know that quotes are now good for 14 calendar days, basically about 10 business days. So that's from the time we receive it to the time that we give them a PO that says we are buying this, that timeline has shrunk dramatically. Laura here has done a phenomenal job keeping up with that process and those purchase orders to ensure that we get those taken care of and that we're not caught by surprise when a price increase occurs during that short time frame. The next thing I want to touch on were some nodal security enhancements. We talked about that as some areas. A couple of things that we're looking at here is an enterprise password management tool. This tool basically is a standardized platform that all of our teams can use. It certainly helps with disaster recovery and business continuity in the sense that we've got a single platform, a single tool that we can all reference and utilize. The malware analysis, we talked a little bit about that phishing icon in Outlook. This area here, if there's attachments associated with those emails, it gives us a secure container to be able to open that up, take a look at it, and find out, okay, is there anything malicious in this to ensure that obviously we're not being compromised in any form. The extended threat analysis, this gets us insight into the dark web. What's happening in the dark web? Is there anything associated with, say, county credentials that maybe might be being leaked and indicators of a potential compromise? So this gives us some insight into what's happening in that space. The multi-factor authentication, this is going to be a similar moment for us in the sense that you all have Duo as our two-factor authentication. As part of our Microsoft agreement, Microsoft has their own application called Authenticator. It's part of our agreement. There's no additional line item associated with it. If I didn't want to use it or didn't want to pay for it, I still got to. So we're going to make the transition and adopt that, and we're going to drop DUO. So that's one of the things that we'll be doing in this coming fiscal year. And then finally, the Microsoft tenant security policy. So this is a value add aspect in my sense, in my mind. We do have, as part of our Microsoft agreement, obviously we've got Exchange in the cloud, we've got these other areas in the cloud, offices in the cloud. But we've also got our identity management stack there as well. Associated with that, there are numerous security enhancements and capabilities that Microsoft offers that we're going to take advantage of, and we have been. One of those was one of the ones with relation to geolocation and the ability to access our systems from within a defined area. So we've put some geofencing in. I think maybe one or two of you have actually experienced that. So some of these are what we would consider security best practices that we're going to go forth and implement, and there are numerous other feature sets that are in our tenant. Again, there's no additional cost associated with leveraging those. And then finally, I wanted to highlight just a couple of the countywide technology projects that we've got. Tim mentioned about the fire department here. We've got the hardware that runs their computer-aided dispatch is really significantly outdated. It was initially scheduled to be replaced in 2024. We've pushed it out a couple of times. But unfortunately, we've reached the point where the vendor's no longer supporting some of the underlying infrastructure. We do have a third party that we've contracted with to provide hardware support. But no pun intended, we're kind of playing with fire here on this one if we push it out any longer. Finally, the end-user computer technology replacement and our network equipment refresh programs, those are continuing to move forward. The insourcing, I understand that a couple of years ago, several years ago, there was outsourcing on a lot of that, so we're continuing on our path with relation to the insourcing of the devices and our network equipment plan as well. And then finally, earlier this year, I believe we approved the e-warrants. I heard the judge mention earlier about that. That project is moving along smoothly. The sheriff's office and the clerk's office were working diligently with the vendor to get this stood up. The latest update that I received was that they were working closely with the clerk's office to integrate with their system so that the data is flowing seamlessly throughout everything. So... That project is moving along very well. And with that, that concludes my presentation. Commissioner, any questions?

I have one question. Thank you, Madam Chair. Joe, you talked about end users computed with AI. It's going to 25% increase due to demand for memory and storage, as well as the network could potentially 10% increase. What's the cost associated with those two percentages?

So from a laptop perspective, we ran the numbers on this, and it's basically about $250 per device. On the networking side, that's a little trickier depending on what type of device we're buying. So I could come back to you with specific numbers associated with that, but on the laptops and desktops, I know we're about right around $250. Okay.

Great, and also with your cybersecurity, how is that going to be integrated with AI for sensitive information? Because once you start using it, Anything using AI for now has the potential to be out there. And so I'm hoping that whatever we're doing with cybersecurity is looking at that. Correct. Because that's one of the biggest issues that are out there in the public that people don't realize.

Correct. And, you know, we've had an AI policy, you know, come up a couple different times. We haven't quite been able to get across the finish line. I know that's going to be coming back. Obviously, some of that is policy as to, okay, let's best practice as we don't want to put sensitive information into those tools. But also associated with that, in our Microsoft tenant, we've got some of those security enhancements around data loss prevention and DLP specifically. So we do have future engagements with Microsoft to look at what DLP capabilities that we have at our disposal. and looking at configuring those and bringing those to the forefront.

Because that's one of the biggest issues large companies are looking at, sensitivity with cybersecurity out there for AI. I'm just curious how that's going to work out.

Thank you.

Yes, Commissioner Zimbauer.

The only comment I have to make is on the AI comment earlier about AI doesn't rest, doesn't need a break. I think as it continues to learn, if it's learning from the wrong angle, it's going to take a break.

Oh, yeah.

Very true.

So I actually do have a few questions. One is, is the annual training, cybersecurity training, required for all employees?

Yes, it is. That is a Florida state statute.

Includes us. That is correct. And all of the constitutionals.

That is correct.

When we do AI in a call center, is there going to be a very easy upfront escape hatch for those of us that don't want to deal with it? I'm not saying I'm one of them. I use it regularly. But we have a large constituency that isn't going to want to deal with it. Correct.

Representative.

I'm sorry?

Representative. Customer service, please.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, there will be a fail-safe, if you will, an opportunity to get out of that loop, if you will. So, yes.

Early on in the process before they hang up and call our offices. Not that we don't want the calls, but you don't want the calls coming through us.

Agreed. Understood.

14-day bids with board approval, not necessarily problematic for anything that falls within the budget that's able to be purchased, but really problematic for anything that's coming through RFPs. Is that applicable in RFPs as well?

RFPs, we generally get a little bit longer of a grace period because of the process that's associated with it. I do know that my peer at a local higher educational institution ran into this process where the vendor came back two days before the board approval and said, we've got to renegotiate. They were able to work through that and hold to the current bid. I will say it's not out of the norm, but we do get a little bit greater grace period associated with that.

Okay. We're seeing it on the insurance side, which is for the first time in my entire career that this has been a problem, but it's a serious problem. There was some joy at the notion of dropping Duo. We're not dropping dual authentication. We're just moving from Duo. I just want to get this out there to Microsoft Authenticator, which is going to feel the same. Okay. You're still doing it.

Yes, it's still necessary.

It's much more seamless.

And that's it. So thank you for everything you've done. Dashboards obviously are a big deal for me, so I'm looking forward to seeing what comes through the Acela process. The Power BI progress has been remarkable. The more we have dashboards to our public, particularly now, the better off we are. I'll just leave it at that. Thank you so much for all the work you've done. Thank you all.

Thank you.

Thinking about the dashboards. If we don't push people to the dashboards or push the dashboards out. To the people. It's like bringing a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. I can't tell you how many. I mean, we have so much data out there for people, so much accessibility and transparency, and yet we get hammered for not being transparent and not having the data out there. So yes, the dashboard, but we've got to make sure that people are looking at it somehow.

Well, it's like anything else. For some people, it's just easier to pick up the phone and call our office and go, tell me about this. Well, you know it's on our website. Yeah, but I don't want to go there.

Well, you know, it's interesting. So that's the institutionalization of any advancement. And one of the things we should be doing is responding to constituents with the link to the dashboard. But I'm not sure we are all thinking of that. Because that gives them the path. They see it's easy. Now you know where to go. They can bookmark it, the whole nine yards. So we should be thinking about that in all departments, all customer service, all constituent interactions of how do we link them to the data that's available to them. Really good point. All right. We're going to move seminal. That's right. And we have Tawni Allure here to discuss. And your entire team. Thank you.

Yeah, I brought all of our 159 employees. Thank you, Chairman, Commissioners, for having us here today. Public Works consists of five sort of business units. The three main ones are supported here today. In our engineering support, we've got The whiz kid, Joe LaFasso, who's the assistant county engineer. I nicknamed him my young grasshopper and he got a lapel pin that has a grasshopper on it. Also from Rhodes and Stormwater, we have Marie Lackey. She's doing a fantastic job. And then to my right is Charlie Wetzel. He's an art traffic engineering division manager. We also have our business office, which sort of makes up of the director, as well as our capital projects delivery. I was up here at the end of April giving you a pretty detailed report on that. For the last couple years and prior to me moving into this seat, we have been concentrating on right-sizing this department. As Tim will mention, we have reduced our FTE count this year by five, and we've also consolidated our consultant services, which you won't see in any numbers, but we've also moved five off our consultant services, and they've gone back to work on other projects. So I just want you to know that was part of the big thing that our county manager wanted us to look at.

The Public Works Department proposed budget request is $41.7 million. 7.5% comes from the dedicated road ad valorem millage, 19.9% comes from a general fund transfer, and 30% comes from gas taxes. Those revenues combine for 58% of the department to pay for road maintenance, traffic control, and engineering. 42% of the funding is from our penny tax, which is dedicated to infrastructure projects on the county's road, bridge, and drainage system. Department currently has 164 full-time positions and is reducing five positions through attrition in this budget. The total budget is decreasing 14.8% from $48.9 million to $41.7 million. The reduction in staffing results in a savings of $1 million in personnel cost. In the capital program, the proposed budget includes $17.5 million in penny tax projects, including midway drainage improvements, road resurfacing, and mast arm replacements.

Perfect. So as I mentioned, I was before you at the end of April spending quite a bit of time of talking about all our capital delivery. And when I found out I had the opportunity to come before you today or I had the opportunity, I thought, well, what are we doing? What are we delivering? How are we delivering it? And what dollars are we? And so we spent a little bit of time looking at not only the Public Works Department, but the budgets that this commission spends and this county spends on moving people, our regional transit services. So not only do we have the Public Works Department of $47 million, but we also spend an additional almost $30 million on regional transit services. Now, when you add that all up and you divide it by the number of people in this county, it's about $150 per person. Now, I'm going to probably sound through the next phases of my presentation like that commercial, but wait, there's more. But wait, there's more. And so I wanted to spend a little bit of time just sort of talking about just where how we're moving people, who we're moving, vehicles. So the next couple slides will show that. So as I indicated, we've got three transit services that this county is providing funding sources for. There's Scout. There's Lynx and there's Sunrail. But did you know that we are moving on an average day 4,000 riders for those three transit services? We're moving another 2,000 on the weekends. That's 1.3 million people a year. And really keep in mind for $150 per person. So for $30 million, we're moving about 1.3 million. Now, the real impact, of course, of any public works department is moving vehicles, okay? And how many vehicles are we moving? Because that's what public works does. It maintains those roads. It maintains that infrastructure. It maintains the traffic signal. So we started looking at these numbers, and actually Charlie was on vacation. Lucky Charlie. But his folks helped me put this together. And on an average day, this county moves about 3. million vehicles on 154 roads. okay that that astounded me i'm like are you sure now let's just talk about that a little bit okay those vehicles could include one two three four people right so this is not people these are vehicles but and also on these roads there may be more than one traffic counter but this is only 154 roads we maintain over 2,700 roads. So that does not even count all of those other roads that we're not providing vehicle counts on. And then when you add in some of the larger city and state, that number increases to 7.5 million vehicles a day. Then now let's add in I-4, 417, 420, nine and that's over 8.8 million vehicles that are moved around this county and again we're not talking about every vehicle right because we have 2700 roads the state has more roads the cities have more roads and really this public works department People don't care if you're on a state road, a city road, or a county road. And the state roads and the county roads, they affect our drainage system, and we affect their drainage system. So we have to work with our regional partners to make sure that these vehicles move around this county efficiently. So... And it's pick on Allen day, but in thinking about it and working on this, I didn't have any dogs and cats, but we have some cool equipment and we do move people for all the departments here in the county. So it's really important as you're talking about $150 per person, how many people and how many vehicles this department is moving. Next. All right. So as we indicated before, the public works department budget is $41.7 million. Really, the primary expenditure is roads and stormwater, traffic engineering, and then engineering. So for roads and stormwater, this budget supports maintaining over 1,900 lane miles of roads. And as I indicated before, this department or division maintains 2,729 roadways, including all the stormwater ponds. They are constantly digging out ditches, over 130,000 feet of ditches and canals, and they don't wait for a month before hurricane season. This is all throughout the year. They also repair nearly 1,000 potholes, and they maintain over 900 miles of sidewalks. Traffic engineering, so Charlie actually maintains 419 traffic signals. Now 302 belong to the county but he maintains and we get additional dollars in from the cities, from the state to maintain because it's really important when you're thinking about moving traffic that all of these traffic signals are synced with the state system, with the city system and all of that. So it's very, very important that we're looking at this as a regional transportation system, not just pieces and parts of roads. They also maintain over 32,000 signs. They maintain over 450 miles of fiber optic cable. Every year they install and work with the school districts for the rectangular rapid flashing beacons. And as I indicated in April, we're in a refurbishment or a rebuilding program where we are taking some old signals and rebuilding them. In the budget for next year, we're going to begin design on nine and begin construction on four. This program, this rebuilding program, is over a 12-year cycle. The traffic engineering do so much in the movement. of traffic. They maintain, they have a wall of cameras that they're constantly looking at the different signals to make sure that there's not an accident or they're timed right. And so that's so important because you just can't keep adding lanes onto roadway. You have to be smart about it with CCTVs, all the signal timing. One of our seminal moments was utilizing signal siren to make sure that our fire department is able to get out on the roadways, move, the signals are timed for them. So we didn't have to buy that. We utilized DOT's system and that was over a $5 million savings to this county. We also, I mentioned in April, rolled out our One Network to make sure that our citizens know if we have a lane closure so that there could be rerouting and that's pushed out to all the major GPS, Apple, Waze, Google Maps, all of that. So that's just really important. The movement of traffic, the movement of vehicles, the movement of people have all got to be coordinated. And then finally, our engineering department, for the next year, we are completing third generation projects. We have about $40 million left, but they've made substantial progress in that. Within the budget of next year, we are continuing the midway drainage 2C. We've got money to resurface 20 miles of arterial collectors and of course we are constantly out there inspecting our bridge and tunnels. One of the other things that this department does and it's so important is that we support all the regional transportation agencies. I just got an email when I was sitting here listening to all of the presentations from DOT wanting to talk to me about the I-4 Ultimate North. They want to tell me about the progress on that. I know there was a Metro Plan Orlando board meeting this morning where they were approving the TIP and the prioritized project list. Joe has done some analysis. He talked to me about it yesterday. our number of projects has increased over the last cycle so we're constantly monitoring that and making sure that this county gets their fair share of projects within the dot work program within metro plan orlando which is so important so we can stretch that local dollar more so with that i will take any questions thank you thank you thank you thank you very well done commissioners

Commissioner Lockhart.

I'm going to blend a little bit of yesterday's conversation into today, if you don't mind. I was afraid of that. Well, so several of us attended PBAS this morning where Richter and Guy Cunha presented, did a wonderful job, by the way, that private business associates of Seminole. And someone caught me on the way out asking about Scout. They had passed a couple of vehicles on their way to the meeting. And so very good question. can we compare how many people we're moving on Seminole County roads today with Scout with how many people Lynx was moving prior? And I said, well, the short answer is no. Right. And they looked at me very, very perplexed. And I think from a private sector normal comparison, how are you measuring Seminole County that what you're doing now is better than what you were doing before for the dollars that you're spending? And so in a parking lot conversation, tried to explain, which is really, really difficult to do because it just doesn't make sense. If there is a way that your team can work on helping to succinctly communicate that Scout is providing, we're moving more people, from more areas to more areas than would have ever had access before. And until recently, while we're still saving money, we were saving more money. Just some way that for when we're out there in the public and we are being asked these questions, which are really valid questions to have a a clear and easy way to communicate what is not clear and easy, I think would be super helpful. That's number one.

No pressure.

Yeah, no pressure. Yeah, pull a rabbit out of your hat.

I think Commissioner Lockhart's point is it's hard to complete an equation if you don't have a numerator or a denominator. Right. It's clear, and that's basically what we've dealt with on the link side since you and I arrived here in 2018. It's been a long time.

And then a member of the media yesterday asked another very great question, and it was... trying to wrap their heads around the impact of LINCS's, the funding formula model change, what Seminole County would have been paying, what we're paying now, why we're paying more now, just sort of to be able to tell that story, because of course we all, we were saying the number was, I think it was nine, was it $9 million a year we were saving, I think?

Yes. Nine million was the savings.

And so the question that the reporter had for me was, how much are you saving now? And I'm doing quick math in my head, and I was like, you know, I got a guy that I'm going to put you in touch with. Because I don't even know that we... are completely clear on what all that means. So those two things for me, but I think for all of us, would be super helpful to have as we talk with members of the community.

And I think, if I can follow up on that, it goes directly to the conversation we had yesterday with the LINCS representatives that were here on the moving of the goalpost since we started it until they decided that punitive or whatever you want to call it, they decide they're going to charge us more money for less service. And I think it was pretty clear we feel it's disingenuous. So finding that answer, I think, is going to be tough. Except what we already know, to a certain extent, that this is what it was. Gold Post got moved. Now it's this. That was...

Unfortunately. Commissioner, if I don't interrupt. Great question. We'll include that. At the end of our second meeting in July, we have scheduled, Mr. Swenson will be coming up here to do a full scout briefing with the board about our experience, what it has been. Really, we started in October, but then we went full in January of this year. We will include especially from the conversation yesterday with paratransit and all that will include all that information And then finishing out that equation to will make sure that is addressed to so we'll be reporting back to you next month on that Yes To that point What I can say is and I am probably the same experience of all the commissioners In all the years prior to Scout I

I think I fielded maybe half a dozen calls from riders of lengths that had some kind of complaint of either they couldn't get the bus or wanted the bus route over here or whatever since the inception of Scout. Everywhere I go in the community, everybody's like, that Scout's a great thing. It's wonderful. It's fantastic. You all should have done this a long time ago. In interacting with other elected officials, they realize and have said, wow, we really see that's working great for you all. So from that perception, I can tell you, for the most part, our public is happy about Scout.

Commissioner Constantine.

Yeah, I'm going to try to end this. But we know we're doing 1,000 people a day. There's no way Lynx is doing 1,000 people or we're doing 1,000 people a day. And the only indicator that I'm getting, other than people saying it's a great idea, is that it's taking too long. And that's an indication of success. That our good friend in the green outfit out there is hopefully, as says, he's working on it.

Yeah. We do have an upcoming plan that we're going to be, that Christian will be speaking, briefing each of you on, about to help those wait times. He's been working with Freebee a lot about condensing those wait times, especially in the peak times that we've noticed. We do say that's a good problem in a way as well, moving those folks. So we do have a possible solution. And that's what I love about this board. when you gave us that task of, okay, let's provide an alternate type of transportation, public transportation, to move folks around the county, we knew, and I think one of, you said that many times, there's going to be challenges, and there's going to be, but that's good for us, because that's the way it will help our system really react better to our business owners and our residents of our community. So he's excited about doing that, and I told him I needed sunglasses to look at him this morning in that suit. It was a little too early for it. Where do you buy a suit like that? He said there's more available.

I'm sure. Anyway, that's coming.

He's so into it that his team's meetings is inside of a scout van.

Commissioner Dilary.

Thank you, Chairman. Tony, I like your approach that you talked about, $150 per capita. I like that. To be fully transparent, how does that relate to the surrounding counties? That's really the question. Because people are going to be looking at us and like, okay, great, $150 per capita, but what does that mean? You know, the other counties, are they higher or are they lower? I would think that they're higher, but that's just a guesstimate on my part. And so we really need to be looking at how are we comparing to other areas so that we can show people that, you know, we are trying to cut the budget. We are trying to be more efficient. We are trying to find new ways of doing things, i.e., scout. You know, there's a lot of different ways of looking at this. But until you show the public that's how we get judged, you know, what are we comparing it to? Right. Good point. And I like what you talked about, you know, by, you know, comparison to, you know, we're doing a good – we are doing a great job. That's not the issue. The issue is we've got to compare it to something.

Right. It has to be an apples-to-apples comparison. Yeah. And that's going to be different with some of the surrounding counties.

Well, yeah, for sure. I was just thinking about, like, what – There was some comparisons of some counties thrown on a piece of paper that was handed to us yesterday, and I was like, manatees? When do we get compared to manatees? Why are we picking that one? Right.

We know why he was picking that one. I know.

Why don't you pick Pennsylvania then?

So I think it's really important that we make sure that as we do comparisons that the apples to apples and counties that have access to sun rail and – It'll be interesting to see what that looks like.

And that maybe don't have Disney and Universal, and they're not moving a bazillion tourists through the corridor. That's an impact. And funded through other funding sources.

But then there's that whole idea if someone else is jumping off a cliff, do we want to be the ones going with them?

Right, right, right.

Just saying.

Yeah. So I'm going to wrap this up. On slide 241, page 241, that slide, in case it ever gets used external to the presentation without all the verbiage that you added to it, needs to include the footer of what was not included in that. Or that will become, you're only doing this. And so I'd like to prevent that. Good point. I'd also like to go back to the Scout conversation and remind everyone that the comparisons on the wait time, we are being compared against a private sector solution called Uber and Lyft. And from the very beginning, we said we were not Uber and Lyft. This is not a replacement to those two or any others that pop out of the private sector. The comparison should be to how long it took you to walk from your home or ride your bike from your home or your electric scooter from your home or all the other new ways that you do this to the bus stop, to stand there, to wait at the bus stop in the weather, to get to the next transfer, to get to the next. It should be end-to-end, and that is not the comparison that's being made in small sectors of the population. Right. It's also not necessarily the comparison that's being made by the media. And so I just want to say that we are never going to fund this program, I would like to think, to compete with Uber and Lyft.

We said originally we were not going to do that.

We said we were not. But we are moving more people through our county, getting them out of their homes and into commercial businesses, doctor's offices, potentially jobs that they couldn't take before because they were not willing to ride the bus. And so we've changed the dynamic in the community. We're comparing apples and oranges. I think all is good. But every time we talk about reducing that wait time, I implore us to talk about wait time from buses to this.

Good point. You're absolutely right. And full disclosure, we talked about that before we ever went into the Scout model, which was we were going to have a lot more people riding this model than they ever rode the link system. And that's what we have. We expected that.

Right. We expected that. It is a good thing. Just the measurement, even in our own conversation, needs to be clear.

Yeah. There is a different level of personal responsibility with this system that was not necessarily there with a links bus on a fixed route. You have to kind of plan ahead a little bit in a different kind of backwards... on the clock thinking if I need to be at a doctor's office by 2 then that means I need to plan ahead to call for the ride and maybe I have to sit and wait at the doctor's office because I got there a little bit early but the ride came and picked me up right at my home and it took me right to the doctor's office and so depending on you know, the member of the community, that is a true paradigm shift in planning their day. And that's going to continue to take a little bit more hand-holding, I think, for some folks than others. But I'm looking forward to our update because I think some of – I've gotten a little hint, a little preview of some of the things that we're talking about doing with Freebie, and I think they'll be exceptionally well-received.

All right, with that, thank you. We're going to move on. It is 1230. We are getting close to wrapping it up. Come on down, Mr. Slott. Talk to us about seminal moments.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Commissioners. It looks like I have the unenviable between you and lunch position.

No, there's more after you.

There's more? You don't have to take that.

All right, perfect.

All right, Tim's between us and lunch.

Thank you very much for this time today. Ready? We're ready. Okay. Thank you very much for your time today. Pull that mic up a little bit. John Slott, the Director of Organizational Performance and Strategy for the county. Thank you all commissioners for this time to give an update on the Seminole Moments program. So as an efficiency program that was kicked off last year by our county manager, Darren asked us to, as a group all over the employees, start to think more holistically about efficiency and operational improvements we could do that have a true financial impact on the county. So came together and put an inaugural list together. That inaugural list was about $39 million worth of projects. And I'm here to show you a couple of updates to that that even extends it even larger. And also we've achieved some of those things in actual real findings. And you've heard a few of those examples this morning from the directors that have presented so far. So as we look at moving this program forward, we think of it as a portfolio of projects. Things will come on, things will go off. Like I said, we had about $39 million worth of projects before. We now have about $60 million, and that's a stabilized five-year estimate of savings. These initiatives, we actually completed four initiatives so far for $6.5 million worth of realized savings over the five-year window. In addition, this is one of those activities that takes a village, so as with everyone else, everyone behind, including the 1,500 employees of the county, and yourselves, as well as our public, helping to actually make these things happen. This is not a one-person event. final part is that we're starting to stabilize that ongoing rotating potential savings so looking to try to move the needle even higher with a estimate of 15.8 million by 2030 if we continue forward with these types of investments as we will Finally, we have some top initiatives we want to highlight, so some notables that, and you've been talking about one of them, Scout, and a couple others. Also, not all ideas are equal, and not all ideas can actually be done, so we've gotten pretty good at saying no to things, so we had 27 ideas that hit the basement floor. And they're not gone. We've set them aside. We've not lost them. But they don't merit effort at this time. So I think one of those management built to last. It's not what you say yes to, it's what you say no to. That's the intent here. So as we looked at the portfolio, the first project was kicked off in 2025. You've heard a lot of the realization of those projects. So fiscal 26 and then fiscal 27. The overall program, we first came out, we thought it was 39 million. When the team started to vet and understand the costs in those projects, that actually went up to 42.6 million dollars. So sometimes they'll go up, sometimes they'll go down. fluctuating amount. You'll also see that in the 2026 program, we added another $17.8 million of potential savings over that five-year window. And we think that's a good way to think about all of these projects, not just as a one-time, but as what is the ongoing five-year stabilized potential savings so we can have a little bit of that window. And then this year, you can see that we've had an impact of $5.8 million. So as I pointed out prior, what we really want to see in this program is continued and sustained savings, and that's bringing in new ideas, realizing it, and making sure that those ideas become actuality. So on that $60.3 million of potential savings, you can see the 2026 has a little bubble, and then we stabilize and continue to grow. We want to continue to see that, and we want to realize that benefit, not paper gains, but real gains. So as we look at the overall savings distribution, you all have talked at length on this one yesterday and today, the public transit side, and we'll go into those numbers here in a second. Also, between Joe and all the teams, Kim's team, Johnny's team, what Chad and the team are doing, all of these team leaders in technology and innovation, what are we doing differently that can be better? Then, of course, what Chief Kinley brought up and Alan, now that he's been lambasted all morning long, we'll just leave it right there and just say he's done some really neat ideas as well. And then, of course, Public Works and then the Environmental Services team as we go to the next. What we're encouraged to see here is that Pareto principle exists here. Top five notable projects are really driving a significant amount, 50% of the overall potential savings. In that, you can see those projects that we've been talking about a little bit. The Scout program over the five years, $14.9 million, even with all of the maturations that we've seen, it's still looking like it's going to realize that type of savings. One of the projects Tawny mentioned was the emergency response signal preemption. I'd like to pause here. This one, this is under that Takes a Village. So this is FDOT created software that allowed for signal preemption using new technology, actually old technology, the computer-aided dispatch and automated vehicle location that's already in emergency vehicles. It's CAD AVL technology. So they did that. What our team, so Charlie, a gentleman by the name of Chad Dixon that runs the signal organization, figured out how to take that technology and apply it to our emergency vehicles and preempt signals. So by doing that, they saved, the county and Chief Kimbley from having to buy the technology for signal preemption. So real savings, $5 million worth of Opticon technology that did not have to be bought. So one time, significant savings. And then finally, the chief had some light duty personnel. They drove every intersection to make sure this technology worked. So the team came together, they figured it out, and they implemented it. That happened over the Christmas holiday. So when the chief judge was signing, our team was driving signals and making sure that things got done. The next one is the overtime management, as well as the recycling program, as you heard this morning. And then finally, the building and lighting improvements, some of the things that you heard last year from Chad and Rick Durr. This is LED replacements at Boomba. These are those types of savings that are realized in true cost to the county. I think Commissioner Constantine, you mentioned a little bit earlier, and Board, you had a conversation around P3s and where they make sense. This is where these could come to play. So some of the activities we're looking at is, of course, this waste to energy concept. Can we leverage the landfill? Can we look at the MSW, all of the different waste streams? Joe and his team are looking at what those volumes are, and let's convert them to energy instead of just filling up the landfill. There's things like bioreactors, which are really cool. Basically, think of a very super hot kiln that will not only take that material, but take that material and create a fuel. and therefore be saleable. Very similar to what this board approved around the methane capture from the landfill. So just taking that to the next level. In there also is things like floating solar. How do we use our assets? Can we use that floating solar at the landfill? We have a 20 acre pond. We can most likely put something in it, so on. So more to come with those large ideas that are potentially game changing in how we utilize the assets of the county. One highlight, and we heard some of your comments regarding this, is what's the resident impact of AI? There's significant technologies around call centers. When done correctly and when done appropriately, it can be very successful. If we think about when we're dealing with storm events, when we have very high call volume, can we get... really solid information to the public quickly in an appropriate manner. And this could change the way we actually interact and help our citizens. But point taken from the board, we have to do it the right way. There has to be an option for representative. Let's move on to the next. Each of the projects that we're talking about does one of the four of these. It's either a force multiplier, something that is helping us improve. Joe talked about how his team's able to do things differently that makes them more productive in their example. We have these things, these AI agents that are being built and actively used within the software we buy as well as the things we may do ourselves. So how do we govern that? How do we make sure it's used appropriately? And how does it become an asset that can be utilized to the benefit of the citizens and the county. We talked a lot about process automation. So are there things we can truly do differently and save money doing it? And then finally, the leapfrog effect. Are there things that we can just do differently? So Scout is an example of that, right? The board made the intention. Can you do this differently? And the county manager asked us all to jump in and Here's how to do it differently. So we have that and then some of these public-private partnerships that you all have pointed out that we'll continue to analyze. So as we move forward, it's a simple framework for process improvement and continuous improvement. We identify it, we prioritize it, we deliver it, and we monitor it. Without these four activities, you don't realize it. Therefore, we have ideas, but how do ideas become impact? How do ideas become reality? Through a simple framework that we can identify here. Again, we're going to fail early and often. There's going to be things that are... great the first time you hear it, and then that's just going to sink like a stone. And we move on, no harm, no foul, and just work on the projects that make the most sense. So next steps. So really what we have here is we've moved and matured Seminole Moments from an event to a program, something that changes and makes real benefit to the citizens of Seminole County. We're trying to advance, not trying, we are advancing high impact projects so that they can actually realize value. We will look at the call centers and AI initiatives and come back to this board with information regarding what we're learning in those pilots. And then, of course, it wouldn't be a presentation without a dashboard. We will make a dashboard. sync the moment we have a dashboard on these seminal moments that we'd like to show here. As you can see, it's an active web-based dashboard that shows some of the slide information that you have seen in this presentation in an active and interactive way, completed projects. You can see the different projects that we've done and analyzed. How the overall program looks year over year and which projects are being reviewed and potential savings. And then the notable projects, what have they done and how are they impacting savings as well as what are the remaining projects. And then an overview, so by different areas of the public transportation, the technology and innovation, fire, so on. And then finally, the project details. So all the information has to foot. If it doesn't foot, it doesn't make sense. So these are each of the projects that the team countywide is going through and figuring out and monitoring. So this dashboard will be updated quarterly and will be available on our webpage within the county information.

Will be or is?

We have it. We haven't launched it yet. We can turn it on imminently. That concludes my presentation.

Okay.

Great.

All right. Commissioners, any questions?

Just one statement, if we could. On the signal preemption, working with the fire department, I would also note that you're also saving fuel. You're also saving wear and tear on the vehicle. from being able to get through these efficiently. And I'm sure we should be able to quantify that to a certain extent. But there's also a pollution aspect of that as well. The less time spent running in our vehicles, the diesel vehicles are putting hydrocarbons and nitrites of oxide into the atmosphere, the longer they run. So there should be a byproduct there to emphasize The green benefits, if you want to call them green, but environmental benefits as well. Just a thought.

Pretty significant and tangible is the safety aspect of that. I will tell you I was personally in a car accident as a result of the signal not changing, an ambulance coming through. Car behind me saw a green light and drove right into me. Lifelong injury, $1,000 of damage to my car, which was nothing but lifelong damage to my neck. And had the light not been green, I wouldn't have been hit. And that was right here in Seminole County in 2016. So that's a huge impact.

Anything else? Yes, Chairman, if I will. And the reason I wanted, before we get to Tim Jecks, to wrap up the rest of the, I call, administrative-type departments, I wanted this board to know that, and you all know this, that saying, what gets measured is what gets done. Our Seminole Moments program, our efficiency program, as we launched it last year, I will tell you that we are on top of it daily. I have moved the administration of that into John's office, to our strategy office, because you You need someone to coordinate the program, work with each of the directors. Directors are working great with each other and their teams because now it's drilling down just not to directors and managers. It's actually drilling down to the people who actually know how to get the savings. And we all know what we know and we know what we don't know. So this is an exciting program. I appreciate John leading that team on that. We also have our AI ambassador program that we just launched as well. So we have actual folks from across the organization in different levels coming together to actually help us. Okay, how do we implement this type program when it comes to the board, when you actually give us the direction to move forward on? on our new AI policy and how that's really going to affect our performance in the county for our residents and our business owners. So I just want to let you know, it doesn't go unnoticed that you may not see it all the time, but we are on top of that every day. We're looking at how we can deliver services at the best way we can deliver service at the lowest cost. So I just want to add those two cents in. So thank you.

I would only add that it's great to see that's a huge cultural shift from historically that our employees are emboldened to speak freely, bring ideas forward. I've always said we're not the experts. The directors are not always the experts. It's the men and women in the trenches that are doing those jobs that see those little things that can now speak freely and will speak freely about, hey, why don't we try this? Right. This could be saving us 20 minutes every time we do this. Right. So it's great to see that. I think this board has promoted that. Your leadership has allowed that, and I applaud you for doing that because that's what makes a difference in an organization. Absolutely. From the bottom up. Thank you. Good stuff.

And the perfect selection for the role, Mr. Slott. You've done a wonderful job with this of starting it from scratch and turning it into something in very short order with reporting metrics associated with it. So we appreciate you.

Thank you.

With that, thank you. And we will move to Mr. Jex to bring us home.

Thank you. So we have five remaining departments to cover the budgets for. The directors are here for questions if there's any individual questions. We've provided full detail of all departments in your budget document. These departments are being presented by me because we're maintaining services without material changes to the overall funding for the county. In fact, you'll see budget decreases in many of the departments. Starting with Parks and Recreation, the department is led by Director Rick Durr, organized in the five divisions shown here. The department manages six active parks, 26 passive parks, and 130 miles of trails. The proposed budget is 30.4 million with 81% of the funding from the general fund to support parks and library operations. 6.5% penny tax funding is proposed for an LED sports lighting replacement project. 2% of special revenues includes grants and donations. 1.5% of the funding is in support of tourism at our active parks. 0.6% is transportation for maintenance of trails on the county's road system. Finally, 7.8% is from the Wekiva Gulf Enterprise Fund. This fund is balanced with no proposed transfer from the general fund. The department has 176.9 full-time equivalent staffing positions with a proposed reduction of a part-time position to 176.6 FTEs. The proposed budget is decreasing by 10.9% from $34 million to $30.4 million. The base budget, including personnel and operations, is increasing $985,000 and FY27 to $28.1 million. This includes an increase in the Wekiva Golf Fund, which is fully offset by park revenues. The department's general fund increase is 1.7%, and the total project budgets are $2.4 million. This includes $2 million for an LED lighting project at San Lando Park. Additionally, the FY27 proposed budget includes $4.2 million in funding for the Seminole Forever Natural Lands Ordinance. This will bring reserves in that fund to $15.4 million. Moving to community services, it's led by Director Allison Thall and organized in the five divisions shown here. The total proposed budget is $30 million, with 45% from state and federal grant agreements to support attainable housing, low-income assistance, and opioid treatment. In the general fund, 37% of the revenues support unfunded mandates for Medicaid, medical examiner, and the health department, and 17.6% is for general funded community assistance. The department has 55 full-time staffing positions with no changes in the proposed budget. Total budget includes personnel and operating is increasing by 4.2% to $22 million. The grant and aid line includes transfers for our unfunded mandate contributions. The constitutional transfer is a request of opioid settlement funding from our sheriff. And the project increase of $8 million is entirely related to the anticipated state and federal grant agreements. The proposed budget includes annual operating grants, which were not included in the FY26 adopted budget, but were added via amendment in the current fiscal year. Moving to development services, the department is led by Director Mike Rhodes, organized in the three divisions shown here. The total proposed budget is $11.75 million, with 52% of the funding coming from permit fees to support the county's building department and a dedicated special revenue fund. 45% of the funding is from the general fund to support growth management and planning activities, and 1.8% is the fund balance of the county's restricted arbor violation fund. The department has 96 full-time staffing positions with no changes in the proposed budget. Proposed budget increase is 5.8% from 11.1 million to 11.75. Base personnel and operations are increasing 1.1% to 11.1 million. The total project budget of $603,000 includes $225,000 for the building department's fee and rate study to address requirements for House Bill 803. The proposed budget includes $50,000 for body cameras for code enforcement officers and $250,000 for a countywide redevelopment study to review commercial corridors and identify revitalization opportunities. This slide shows a forecast of the county's building fund. FY27 building permit revenues are projected at $5.6 million, with expenditures projected at $6.8 million. This deficit leaves $2.6 million in reserves in the proposed budget, but the ongoing deficit will have to be addressed through fees and cost control measures. The Administrative Services Department is led by Director Lori Bailey Brown, organized in the seven divisions shown here. Total proposed budget is $48.8 million, with 71% from various MSBU programs. MSBUs are self-assessments by taxpayers who have voted to pay for the county to manage specific services, including lake management, street lighting, and residential garbage pickup. 17% of the department is funded through the workers' compensation and property liability self-insurance funds. Finally, 12% of the department comes from the general fund for the purchasing division, print, mail, and business office. Department has 48 full-time staffing positions with no changes in the proposed budget. This chart shows the total department budget variances by fund. The total budget is increasing 10.3% from 44.2 to 48.4 million. General funded activities are reducing 0.6%. Increases to the department budgets are fully related to self-insurance activities and the county's MSBUs. Primary increase in the MSBU is $2.3 million for stabilization of the clubhouse at Deer Run Park. Additionally, this budget includes $387,000 that was transferred from the clerk's budget to the county's general fund for the annual lease of the record center. Finally, we have our administration department, which includes the budgets for the board, county attorney, as well as the five offices led by the county manager, Darren Gray. The total proposed budget is $56.9 million, with 70% under the Human Resources Office to fund health insurance activities. 5.6% of the funding is in support of tourism activities under the Office of Economic Development. The small transportation funding is related to staffing costs to manage the county's microtransit service, which are under the oversight of the county manager. And 24% of the funding comes from our general fund. This department has 81 full-time staffing positions with no changes in the proposed budget. The proposed budget increase is 3.4% from 55 to 56.8 million with all the increases in the health insurance fund. Program budgets across all other funds are reducing in fiscal 27. This is the county's health insurance fund forecast. There's a fairly significant increase in claims starting in fiscal 24. The FY27 proposed budget includes an assumption of 10% increase in premium revenue going into the fund. Even with that increase, we're still forecasting deficits. The fiscal 27 reserve of $10.6 million represents three months of claims. That's not an issue in and of itself, but the deficit is projected to grow. County staff will be coming back to the board at a future meeting to discuss this fund in more detail. This is our tourism fund forecast. FY27 revenues are projected at $7.3 million with growth assumptions moving forward. Expenditure budgets are $5.8 million with a $1.5 million structural balance. The FY26 expenditures include $12 million for field replacements and conversions at the Boomba Sports Complex. The reduction in FY28 expenditures is related to the payoff of the inter-fund loan for the sports complex lighting. The structural balance for this fund is projected to grow to $1.9 million by fiscal 30. Finally, we have our fourth-gen infrastructure penny tax forecast. We're currently collecting around $50 million per year with a sunset date of December 2035. The FY27 forecast matches the proposed budget. Under the expenditures, you see the annual capital maintenance program managed by Public Works. Then we have other infrastructure projects which have been presented and discussed with the Board. This is a list of the projects included in that expenditure forecast. On the left, we have projects which are not expected to have a net effect on county out of loan funds. The list on the right includes projects with either new staff or potential net increase in maintenance costs to the county. That concludes my presentation.

And so, Chairman and Commissioners, that's the end of all of our operating department's budget presentation. I appreciate you allowing us to condense it just a little bit to be more efficient. The next step in our plan is to come back at the July 14th meeting. In fact, the senior leadership team, myself and all the directors, county manager's office, the directors are meeting tomorrow to start the framework to outline with a potential property tax reform plan. And also then to meet with each of you all to give us your direction or comments or input so when we come to that July 14th meeting that we can set out the framework and the plan on how the board would like us to move forward. And then from that we have, as you know, the trim notices for this budget will go out in August. We have two budget public hearings in September that are statutorily required. And then this budget will go to effect October 1st. And, oh, yes, I did forget. Thanks, Tim, for bringing that slide up there. We will approve the millage rate at the last meeting in July as well. One thing to note, as Mr. Jax mentioned about the health insurance fund, we are bringing that to the July 14th meeting as well. Charles from Alliant and Christina Bernalini from our HR department have collected the information that this board had asked them to go look at. And so we'll be reporting that back on July 14th as well to go over the health insurance fund for future direction from the board. Thank you.

I would add to the, just the health insurance fund is being discussed at every single municipality that I do business with. And so this is not an us thing. It's a market dynamic that's happening in Central Florida. Commissioners, any final thoughts? Commissioner Constantine.

I think it's one o'clock. Perfect. Madam Chair, with the inclusion of Guy and Rick that got to speak at the PBA today, the only significant person here that hasn't spoken is the joker over here. The Riddler. The Riddler. He's coming to you later. Is this your plan? Yes. Is this a plan? Yes.

Actually, he did a great presentation in Tampa yesterday. That's why he wasn't here with us yesterday on transit and scouts. So with a lot of the DOT folks, and he's great. I don't want to burst his or take his thunder. So when he comes back to us next month, he's going to tell us some significant impacts that we have made all over the state actually regarding our new program.

Well, in saying that, I just want to say this board has done a great job today, too. You know, I mean, this has been a really good meeting. And I am so impressed being at so many different budget hearings, not just for us, but others over the years. This has been one of the better ones.

Thank you. Mr. Zimbauer. No way.

I would just say as much as it's difficult for all of us and of course our staff to not be concerned with what legislation is being proposed to go on the ballot in November, I would urge each and every one of us to just take a deep breath. This too shall pass. We have to do our due diligence, and we have no need to upset this organization or our community. We'll get the facts out. That's not what this workshop was about. This is about this year's budget as we move forward. It's on our radar and our staff will do the due diligence and bring it to this board for consideration so that we will be prepared, hopefully, when we get to, if it ever makes it on the ballot, number one, and number two, depending on what the citizens decide. And at least for me, whatever the citizens decide. My observation, this board will do whatever is necessary to honor the will of those voters and make the adjustments appropriately. And it will be our job to inform those constituents what that looks like if a decision is one way or the other. But I would urge that... our staff not get too rattled and too concerned at this point. I know there's a lot of chatter about what happens in the future and so forth. Again, just take a deep breath. We'll get through this. Great work today, and I look forward to our next budget hearing. So thank you all very much.

Commissioner Lockhart. You didn't have a hand up, so I'm sorry.

I'm just waiting for you to say talk.

Commissioner Dilary, please talk. Go, talk. Thank you, Chairman.

I know you spoke about us reviewing the fee structure and development services at a later date. I would like to get to projections of what that would be as the years project because we've always looked at that in great detail. And then I know that some of the stuff we've already approved with Boomba, some things have been getting held up with St. John's with the permitting. If we could just get some more information on that as well. But I do want to piggyback on what Commissioner Zimba was talking about. You know, it's easy to overreact. Please don't. There's a lot of things that are happening out there. We need to all take a deep breath to figure out exactly what's going on because it is changing, as Commissioner Zimbabwe spoke about. We all spoke about it. It's going to keep on changing. So we've been through this before, and we do. what the public wants, because that's who we ultimately work for. And it's important that they're educated. Our job is to educate the public, and that's what we're going to be doing. And the big thing right now is take a deep breath. It's going to be okay.

It would probably be best for the sake of time for me to just say ditto. But I will say, after reading one of the – Articles synopsizing our meeting from yesterday. They use the word alarm.

Yeah, we didn't do it.

We did not know And and I think that's so to to reiterate we we are Being responsible it is we are by state statute required to have a backup budget in a normal year Anyway with a percent reduction, right? This is just It's our job. It's our responsibility to make sure that the citizens of this county and the operations that we do for the citizens are able to continue. And Commissioner Herr, I think you said it very well yesterday when you said the sky is not falling and it's not business as usual. It's somewhere in the middle or the best thing since sliced bread. I forget exactly how you said it. But I think it is really important, so I'm going to say it even though you all said it as well, that our citizens understand that when we talk about the facts and the numbers and what funds the services that we deliver to our citizens, it's not sounding an alarm. It is communicating factual information about what it takes for you all to do the jobs that you do every single day serving the citizens of this community. And so if someone chooses to make it sound like we were alarmist, that has to be on them. But that is not what our board is doing, and that's certainly not the direction that we've given you and your team. We are being fiscally responsible and responding to the needs of our citizens, and we'll figure out what needs to be done when the time comes. So thank you for that, and thank you again, colleagues.

Well said.

So I'll wrap it up by saying, yes, I agree that overall the article was nicely written, and there were a few insinuations that may not have been accurate.

Imagine that.

I will say that it is our responsibility as leaders of the organization to be as proactive as the people that are running the organization. If you listened all day long today, there was a whole new cultural shift in this organization to be proactive about thinking about the future, about planning, about executing, about measuring what we've executed, and then doing the cycle all over again. And Mr. Slott represented it. I'm actually going to steal that slide because I thought that was magical. to include the seminal moments becoming a cultural shift that it's woven into every department, into everything we're thinking about, and the use of measurement tools. We're doing the same thing with regard to what could potentially happen with a legislative adjustment that's now potentially going to the voters that could make an adjustment for next year. If we weren't thinking about what would be happening, we would simply not be doing our jobs, and we would be derelict, and that's not who we are. We are not going to overreact, but we are not going to stick our head in the sand, and that's the reality of where we are. We have an obligation to the employees and their families of this organization to do everything we can to sustain the operation and to be responsible so that there is not a impact that is earth-shattering. We've been through that in 2008. I remember it as sitting in the audience as a consultant. We're not going to go back there. But part of that was because it was an immediate shock. And I will give... Credit where credit is due. There is a phase-in. There's planning that if this does pass, there's opportunities for us to respond nicely. I would also thank all of you for all of the work that was done prior to walking into this room, all of the briefings that you did, all of the details that you've asked, all of the questions that then got responded to on the spot for most of you that got us to this point. And I will wrap this up by saying, Alan, we love you or we wouldn't make fun of you. And Tim Jacks, you are our rock star of this season of the year. And I can't wait until we're done and I find you at that local establishment in downtown Sanford. I'm certain it will be the ice cream shop. With that, if there's any further comments.

I would just add this real quick.

You're down there, Commissioner Constance.

You can manage it. To give our executive team credit, we're in a far better place for the endeavor of work that we're about to undertake because it started last year.

Because we started it, yeah.

And your team was wise enough to take what we asked for. This group asked you last year to go find savings. Mm-hmm. Here we are. And I think that was... We'll say we predicted the future, although that's not really the case. But as fate would have it, we're in a much better place in this county because of that than many others are going to be in. Because you already know the routine. You already know where the nooks and crannies are to go look, and it's fresh on it. So fantastic. Good for all of us. Thank you.

And we do it anyway.

Yes.

Do you have any public comment?

We have no request for public comment.

We have no request for public comment.

All right.

Meeting adjourned.

Thank you.