Pasco BCC Legislative Workshop (8.24.23)

good afternoon I would like to call to order the Pasco County Board of commissioner's legislative agenda Workshop of August 24 2023 at this time please silence electronic devices please rise for the invocation and pledge make us thankful for your loving Providence and Grant that we remembering the account that we must one day give may be faithful stewards of your good gifts amen amen to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under Europe indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you Madam clerk please call the roll here Mr three commissioner Catherine Starkey District 4 commissioner Gary Bradford District 5 chairman Jack Mariano here and uh commissioner Bradford is not able to attend uh commissioner Wakeman his family just had a baby boy last night so priorities first we wish that him and Jessica will and Catherine is on her way um good afternoon everyone welcome to this year's legislative agenda Workshop we have pressing challenges and opportunities ahead so I encourage you all to act actively participate share your perspectives and engage in constructive discussions throughout collaboration exchange of insights we can identify the most effective Pathways forward let's make the most of this opportunity to drive the positive change for our community a special thanks to the staff and more for organizing this events um this is a new format for us and Mr Carbell I want to thank you I know that years after year we go up in Tallahassee we're kind of like running from spot to spot to spot and um I think this year we're going to get set up better by having this pre-meeting to go through a few different things that are out there talk it through and then as we progress further we'll be able to talk to our legislative delegation a little bit better and hopefully you have even better results we have been out so thank you for setting this up oh thank you all credit to the team for getting this going for us and we are excited and we've got a great great lineup uh to kind of prime the pump if you will to have some good good discussion on what should be our priorities as one Pasco County going forward with the legislature so here to Chief of Staff join Cheshire okay thank you good afternoon Joanna Cheshire Chief of Staff County Administration welcome to what I believe to be the first Workshop of this kind designed to Foster collaborative discussion and set some direction this is one step in our legislative efforts making them more collaborative and strategic like you just said we're going to be a little bit more communicable communicate more and have a strategy but also know that there is some level of running around during legislative

session and keeping track of things and kind of pivoting on on quick notice we do look forward to engaging our cities our constitutional offices and our state delegation and each other as we go forward for a better Pasco today we'll hear some legislative session predictions from Sean Foster of Sunrise Consulting Group and Ralph Lair Pasco County intergovernmental Affairs officer we'll present a brief overview and discuss each legislative proposal submitted by the team in your packets and share topics that are important to you all this includes both policy and Appropriations the intended outcome of the workshop is to agree upon three to five legislative priorities which will be on the September 5th regular board agenda for your approval as our official legislative platform I respectfully ask that you keep the following in mind the proposals you'll hear today are conceptual with your direction we'll refine the topics you wish to continue to pursue also issues specific to Pasco make up a great legislative platform there are at the end of your packet there are a few things from Florida Sports Coast as well as libraries that are great to note and to consider but maybe not the best for our platform for Pasco because they align with their associations it's kind of like a broad support or a pose so we can still consider those things without it being part of our official platform just because we as we agree that a topic is important doesn't mean that it has to be on the platform the legislative process is very nuanced we can push an issue by seeking opportunities to amend language of germane bills or support organizations with similar intentions like the Florida Association of counties another Nuance to consider is the appetite of the legislature it's prudent of us to pursue issues that are viable and have a likelihood of success every year is an opportunity to build you may hear an idea today that is better suited for the 2025 legislative session so just keep that in mind your dedication to this process underscores your commitment to effective governance so thank you and I now welcome Sean and Ralph to get us started thank you appreciate that uh good afternoon Ralph Lair I'm the intergovernmental Affairs officer and we have our contract lobby as with us today Sean Foster from Sunrise Consulting Group I always appreciate uh the work that his team does for us so I thought we would start off and we would talk about what we predict nothing has been said yet there have been a couple of uh discussions uh with the media with the top leadership the president of the Senate and the Speaker of the House on issues that they may want to tackle this uh this year but other than that that's really been about it but you know there's just some things that we know ultimately come down from Tallahassee every every year so I'll let you start

off absolutely actually you know Ralph and I are already having conversations about it and the first one I want to mention no one's going to be surprised is the word inflation that's gonna you know somebody said really is that going to be the top issue yes inflation is directing right now a whole change of course how we have paid for schools colleges row roads and everything else those costs have gone up increasingly numbers I have a revenue estimating report that I'll give you here in just a few moments too hurricane recovery are we are we out of the hurricane recovery we're not we're just in the beginning stages just pray right now we don't get hit by another hurricane of any such magnitude of what has hit us in the past couple years but I'll say one of the biggest issues that I have heard and I have been in legislative meetings in the past two weeks in Tampa and down in Miami with leadership and Health Care is going to be a huge issue in what Manner Health Care all over Health Care takes up such a huge amount of our budget it is unbelievable and that takes from how do we control Medicaid and the different costs coming through there because we know of other needs that we're having older the older people are getting the more need of our health care I was going to stop you on that one um I don't know if they'll go right into Medicaid that's always a tough uh tough issue to tackle but I do know they're talking about reciprocity I know that's always been an issue that we've discussed in the past where we bring in healthcare providers doctors nurses from other states and make it a little easier for them with their licensure when they come in here which I mean that's what the rest of the state is doing and it's good to see that Florida's you know jumping on that bandwagon any way to curb the cost and and uh help the citizens of Florida absolutely on top of that car insurance and people are have said it's crazy you don't say homeowners insurance well can I can I back up on the medical thing sure of course isn't part of the problem with the medical is the insurance that the medical people have to carry due to lawsuits and correct correct I mean that could be one of them I mean there's there's but that's not a direct cost to the state they're looking at several yes what are businesses being implicated by the insurance that they have to have but also how can they rein in some of the costs that are impacting the State of Florida when it concerns with health care and I hate to go back to inflation but it also is based on what inflation you know the costs of procedures that the same cost to put you know tiles uh roof tiles on your house have increased costs in health care and hospitals also so commissioner you are correct those are some of the provisions I would expect them to look at as you know they went really after those type of fees for attorneys when it came to roofs you know last year and other items we can talk about a little bit of that issues I expected I wanted to talk to

we've met with before he is from uh Bartow some more Central Florida by the way both those areas were hit by hurricanes I just want to reiterate that um the ones coming up afterwards are already been planned and they've already been voted for and that's Sam Garrison in the house he is another uh representative he is up by the Northeast in Orange Park uh this is unofficial but understood to be official Jim Boyd from Manatee County will be the Senate President during that same turn it is not official they have not taken the vote so I want to be very very firm with that when we talk about leadership the house goes a little faster than the Senate they take their time which is good they've always done it the house is already as he said made their vote and last session it was Jennifer Jennifer Kennedy if her last name sounds familiar her husband is uh on the Supreme Court Supreme Court and she is also I believe from Lakeland and the last one is Jay Trumbull he is from the Panhandle up there near Panama City so I just kind of give you guys an understanding of where some of the Future Leaders are from this is the part where I kind of I nerd out I want to kind of give you guys a full understanding of the revenue estimating conference and what they just reported uh the new state and National Economic forecasts they take everything in by a revenue estimating conference and they meet several times a year the first forecast that they talked about in February still hadn't assumed mild recession in the first and second quarter of 2023 that has not manifested I'm gonna when I'm saying this in the in in The Economist way I know there's others so that disruption is is still evident in its coming and some of those are varied impacts on household savings are less now credit card usage is more you're seeing more normalization of spending and and people going out as you know coming out of uh covet times and there's strong inflationary pressures on households you're feeling the pressure it's harder now buying consumables how many times have you heard what the price of eggs have gone up and everything else so explained in part by the the recessions failure to materialize we've had a very good 2022-2023 and we even had more money coming in 2023 and in 2024. they had 2.7 billion dollars more projected from the one that they just did in July beyond what the projection did in February so I'm giving you so they did February they did July over two years we almost have three billion dollars they almost have one billion dollars more coming in for this fiscal year and I always get asked so what happens if sale effect is coming in what do they do that stays in reserves it doesn't get spent it cannot get spent without legislative authorization that stays in the reserves and put over until next year so one point billion now the sales tax gains I want to kind of give you some implications are up on every single count when I say sales tax sales tax for cars sales tax for all the other Goods every single bid is up for my realtors

they'll also appreciate this there was a little slow down for a few months but not below what they had expected but it's actually gone up and over so part of those projections are also projecting the housing market continuing in the way that it is and that will continue to have the funding come back from the the docs documents yeah um the conference also noted risk though to sales tax projections including consumers returning pretty soon to a typical purchasing mix of goods with inflation when it hits them when inflation hits in I mean and I mean a recession hits and you're going to see that pull back and that's what they're projecting after 2024. um the conference also increased the forecast by 256 million for uh sales tax moving forward and even higher for the housing markets meaning they didn't expect those two areas to slow down in 2023-2024 so I I like to tell you that because in other words we've added more money to this one more money to next year that tells you a very good sign going into the last time I've been in the legislature when this recession is hit so has Ralph it is a very lean time it is difficult items get cut I don't expect that but I do expect as I told you in the beginning comments to see a lot of that money give back to taxpayers that they have done in tax cuts right so right um go ahead sir I was just gonna say the other thing that we can agree upon unfortunately legislation that we can guarantee that will probably happen is preemption right uh what it will be we don't know uh but it's it's just almost a given that will happen uh the good thing is is that um this session it's going to move quickly uh they'll start their committee meetings or really in October there's only one chamber meeting in September uh and then they start in January and they're going to be want to be out in 60 days they it's election year for all the house members and half of the senate members so they will be out and we don't anticipate any special sessions other issues that will not come up I think this past session we spent a lot of time with the governor's uh platform I don't think he's going to have as much as he had last time so it'll it'll make the session go by quicker so with that that's the um the Outlook that we predict for the 2024 legislative session and we can go ahead and start with our organization and staff talking about the policy proposals um that we would like to bring up and address so the first one uh up is uh I'm gonna bring up David Engel to fill in and talk about the live local and just go right to there got the mic is there something is there going to be something on this no we'll just picture the Nazi yeah good afternoon Commissioners David Engel economic growth I'm here today to represent uh David Goldstein who's at

the Planning Commission meeting this afternoon in Newport Richie hello you won't hear a sound it does pick up on the tape though uh and also in collaboration with Nick terrio's pizzos the planning director uh we assisted David in crafting a 2024 policy proposal submission for live local and before I get into the Dynamics of the proposed document I would just like to indicate that the Border County Commissioner's primary platform and strategic plan addresses the fact that there is a need and we have to develop a balanced Community with a balanced Diversified tax base we are basically been identified as a bedroom community for many years and the board has realized and acknowledged that a balanced tax base in the job creating component in our economy will make a sustainable Equitable community over the long term so keeping that in mind last year the state legislature passed and the governor signed into law the live local Act and the live local Act is very intrusive to local land use policy and also fiscal policy the the statutes now as they read indicate that in any commercial or industrial zoned area of any Community a live local project consisting of a minimum of 40 percent low and moderate housing can can entertain a site within that area and it consumes very uh very scarce industrial and job creating land and in fact the board has been concerned about this for the five years I've been the economic growth director and and two years ago they instituted a study from the Tampa Bay Regional planning Council trying to identify the balance and how we can go about providing the jobs but also maintaining and reserving land for employment and to that end the um the proposed the law as it reads today is in direct conflict with board policy the live local act also does other things that are very detrimental to the community and that's our fiscal responsibility if there is projects that consist of live local and there's 70 affordable units or greater they those projects and those units are exempt from ad valorem taxes from up to 80 percent of the average monthly income level in the region uh any any those units in those households those units to pay zero ad valorem taxes and from above one eight above 80 up to 120 percent there's a 75 percent reduction in ad valorem taxes and it the reason that it's important to note is is that residential development constitutes a cost-intensive development for the for the County residential consumes more of county services and costs than it delivers in taxes and The Balancing Act is in the employment side industrial and also commercial development generate more tax dollars and we we need that to cover government services and I'll make a case in point when we're a growing County and what are the pressures and uh and challenges for us down the road that's providing schools Parks recreational amenities and also basic

life safety that's fire that's uh our our paramedics and the sheriff's department and as you know the sheriff is very undermanned as it is and if we don't have the tax revenue coming in that means that the rest of the county is subsidizing the housing that we're injecting into these industrial commercial areas all of our industrial commercial areas are not designed and comprecent comprehensively planned for housing in fact we are promulgating in in working with certain developers to bring forth low and moderate projects whether it be through our community development department or initiatives through our planning and development department and those properties and projects are well situated they're near Schools they're near retail amenities they're near parks and they're not isolated in industrial areas that have no amenities and for residential development so in fact we believe that there needs to be a revision into the current law and the revision is focused on the balance between jobs and um and and housing and if you remember there was a very important chart in the Tampa Bay Regional planning Council study showing that Pasco County is a dramatically imbalanced towards housing and not against jobs so there's a second there's actually a appendix to the the documented revised law proposal and you'll see it's housing jobs balance impact on commuting and commute times and we are proposing that the law be amended that for counties and cities that are below 0.9 on this chart meaning that they're biased towards housing and not have enough jobs to support the housing that they be exempt from the live local act that'll be a more Equitable way of producing low and moderate housing within within the region and within the state I I am very um sensitive to affordable housing back in the 1980s when I lived in New Jersey I was on this New Jersey Supreme Court affordable housing Council and we drafted up an affordable housing plan for the entire state and the courts uh had some wisdom at that point because they indicated that to meet certain Regional goals they gave every city in the state the opportunity to craft their own plan because the courts realized that every city was unique and this doesn't this one size fit all doesn't work and it really hurts Pasco County any questions okay um David I appreciate the report it lines up with what pasco's looking for we've been too long a bedroom community to other areas in Hillsborough and also other counties where people are having they're living here but they're actually going from here to work elsewhere and we've been working very hard I know if it was six seven years that I've been here we've been working very hard to make as many jobs as possible in our County to where we don't we definitely don't need to lose warehouse and jobs and things of that nature to Hernando County to the North or Hillsborough to

the South we need those here and even in saying that and the growth is large because we're listed as fifth largest community growth in the in the country the fact of it is is we don't have enough housing here right now for all the jobs we have in coming for our economy and we just need to be sure we don't lose any warehouse space or any big jobs and manufacturers and things of this nature to other counties around us we need those in our County and need them here so to support the residential that we do have and in fact it actually helps our citizens by having that because it keeps our taxes on our citizens down and we definitely need that well you know commissioner the way it's written today really dissuades people from obtaining local jobs if we're taking and consuming very scarce employment generating lands then the people that are coming in with local where are they going to work and how are they going to get to work so we're basically putting people in a situation where the affordability factors be more substantial yeah it's very important to have affordability in Workforce housing and in some of the collective that we're trying to grow and and bring more business and all in that area we also need Workforce housing for those people to live in a lot of people will talk about the fact that uh intro house for New families are three hundred thousand dollars there's people who can't even afford to pay their uh pbass or Paving assessments and yet they're looking to have to an entry house for them would be three hundred thousand they can't come up with that they can't come up with the money for the paving a road so it's very important to watch out uh for expanding and bringing more business into our County Mr Turkey first I want to thank the board for uh going forward with that project in my district with dominium yesterday that will bring 268 um affordable housing units to the community at 60 Ami 80 and 120 percent you know I'm not sure how affordable that is but it's better than nothing but I there's there's no doubt that we could have all predicted this was going to happen when the Sadowski trust fund um was continuously used for other purposes other than what it was found and um I'm just wondering if I mean I think we all agree that Workforce housing is important to the state and we have an issue with it but it's just I think the manner of delivery and and wouldn't it make sense to just maybe funnel some more money to our community development departments in the counties and offer more opportunity for those people who are in this business to build more because right now they have to compete for Grants I believe it's um it can be uh there's a lottery for getting some of these funds right not for ship which ones have the lottery are experts back here Marcy's here but I know that we've had we've had an adult Workforce housing or affordable housing one that we all approve to go forward

that was on State Road 54 near Old 54 and we we helped them move forward but they didn't win in the lottery so they couldn't build this was before your time so they actually they are building now that's Tanager square and what you're talking about this one was a Clark hobby client on 54 before you were here okay um so Commissioners for the record Marcy sberg director of Community Development and I think what you're speaking of is the lottery at the state level yeah for the low-income tax credits yes and yes if we offered more of that money couldn't the companies that where this is their space and their Lane and know how to manage these kind of projects build more potentially they could but those that Lottery is millions of dollars and we're we're not even near that and we're getting between five and seven million dollars of ship funding but I have a proposal that we're going to discuss a little bit later about dividing that money up because that is an issue so so one of the problems with this kind of project that was brought up at a fact meeting and a workshop was um the companies that do this are set up to know how to do the income verification and to manage those but I don't believe that these companies who are coming in have that expertise to do the income verification and management yeah and and that's who's that going to fall to that's another cost that will probably come to the county that is not fun and with the loss of ad valorem and the hit on the schools the fire department the Sheriff's Office it's gonna also burden our County staff to be the ones regulating and being sure that they're following the rules so I I think the whole Pro program while while uh a worthy idea it just needs to continue to be tweaked if I can give you some commissioner real quick if you can look at this this sheet real quick y'all better give you some numbers real quick for unemployment rates just interesting here no but I'm gonna give it because I just came out yesterday okay was that ratio of 0.9 yes okay so to the right I have Pinellas County 2.9 percent unemployment rate Hillsboro 3.1 percent unemployment rate to the left Citrus County or on the line 4.6 Hernando 4.0 Pasco 3.5 anything starting to you get what I'm saying I mean I only did the five that had in the Tampa Bay Area the Statewide unemployment's 3.1 but I'm saying we just understand what a 0.9 is it's that's going to be a hard one to explain to folks number one but I want to you know let's talk about and I love it and I leaned over to Ralph and I said Ralph how do I actually explain this point nine and he said simply jobs poor Community you know we were a jobs for community and we should say this Commissioners we have more people leaving like we said last summer here Pasco County than any other County in the whole Tampa Bay Area to work somewhere else yeah we're at the top it's almost close to the top ten okay for that that's a great point I was

wondering how you're going to get that data but that makes sense that's a great way to go yeah you know when I look at the amount of industrial land that we've taken preserved and people like Powers Dorsett over in softlin was like holding on his property just took all the residential property switch it to Industrial that's the type of thing you want um and to the State of Florida you would think that all right you get all these people want to come to Florida now for all the right reasons right all smart people we all live here now so for that there's and there's more coming nobody shut the door behind us so they're all coming they're going to need jobs when they get here right and if we take take away the industrial land the commercial land the mixed use land and just let housing Go in all of a sudden you can be in a situation where they're not going to be able to work and those numbers are going to get worse and it's going to it's not good for the state I mean how many times you hear about when people are shipping stuff down in Florida it's expensive to bring it down to Florida but those trucks are going back to empty because there's nothing to bring back up right the more stuff we make here the better off we'd be anyway to balance out our whole Transportation issue with Freight all right so I'll exasperate your job support right right yeah so job support is great for us yeah and I think just that flexibility that you know sometimes you're going to hold on the limb longer for industrial and I know when I first started that was one of the big things over in the Shady Hills Road or Hayes Road where they had industrial that was there and switched over to residential and you know cost jobs for that area that would have been right there right now instead we get residential commission at the same time we got uh we got a lot of jobs coming in but they're not high paying jobs so when you got all the inflation and everything going if I had someone to email me today that the Commissioners were raising taxes well the values are growing up we're not changing any millage to raise taxes but the fact of it is it's going to cost our citizens more and more money inflation setting them at the grocery store they had to pay more and the job it seems like the job paying the market out there is not staying caught up with with what's happening so it's really unbalanced where people can be able to work here and be able to live because they they're looking for better jobs so we we need to strive to try to get as much better jobs as we can higher paying jobs so so I would say if we can and we're going to continue that if we can strike the whole part of changing our industrial land for letting those guys come in just strike the whole thing if you can't get there then use the job jobs for argument and that's the argument that they use is to exclude those counties that are jobs for and then we would be removed from that uh clause and the and the uh rather than

rebuilding the whole right it's a good argument I think it's a good argument and I think it's an argument that um I've been talking with the legislators that they they think it's palatable that they could even sell next session so this has to be an amendment this is there's not a state senator uh that is sitting in the state center that is going to do a bill full Bill to the pool bill right we're all laughing but I'm being vincer and lastly it's got to have to be understandable um and and and and I think we can put a couple of those bullet points and I'll leave it with this it's the same message of just be prepared to answer this question guys this is the same thing they've said that's fine if we implement this policy and we change some of these that we feel is a benefit which we don't you know what are you going to do to expedite affordable Workforce Workforce housing projects in your county and we just did one yesterday and we did before Richie's doing doing one I think it went through so I get it we are working on it and I do want to get I just heard of some of the reading items some municipalities are actually passing ordinances that would require a public hearing for development proposals involving affordable housing so they're not they're making public because the public has also been a little bit upset that industrial has been changing so I'm just on my reading that I found out some municipalities are doing that around the state but last thing I think the other discussion has to be what is affordable housing right affordable housing that's right affordable truly isn't somebody who couldn't afford a two thousand dollar you know one bedroom at 1800 right so what truly is and maybe that Dynamic needs to be discussed because you're going to see developers you know take a bite and you've already seen this and move these projects forward but I think we need to have a bigger discussion with the legislature an untrue Workforce housing not just a two thousand dollars off of 200 do that I'm 200 off in 2000 a month I mean it's going to be difficult to not push people into rentals compared to ownership right and that's that's a big issue right now because the interest rates as high as the average driving that cost up uh hard to get them financed with they're doing all sorts of creative things buy down rates so it's it's a difficult move but again you just don't want to take away your Prime industrial job creating the land of Housing and somehow it's got that's got to shift right that's easily explained I think so sure and I think staff did a good job you know and they it's a two-parter you know so excluding those guys that are job four uh and be removed from that mandatory you know that that developers can come in and use these lands that were never intended that way and we have also plenty of residential a zone property as it is right now and um I don't think that was ever the intent of what the president and the legislature

really wanted to do it's just one of those things they put it into place and let's see what happens I remember in the discussions they when they think thought of Pasco County they thought of 19 in an existing building that set empty there for years that someone would come in and take up and utilize that space nice concept genius has it happened no but um you know it backfired on him you know uh with their idea so but it's it's uh if you know I think the staff like I said did a good job and we clearly show that first one and on the second part it was a two-pronger uh and and David did mention this is that you make the mandatory property tax exemption I'll live local um make it an option like the other uh tax exemption that's currently in the bill for those counties that have Law Enforcement Officers per capita rate that is at the bottom third in the State uh that way it's it it Narrows in on those counties it gives us you know it starts with the letter p yeah yes and I I know you guys are all good at this but remember there's there was a lot of good things in the bill there's 811 million dollars extra for sale for ship for the Hometime Heroes so as we're talking to your delegation and I'm telling you guys call them up after talk to them and say we're concerned about this we're hearing from other County Commissioners around the state you all did some amazing things in this bill you know I always had to sing the word but because that always takes away everything you just said but there are some things we need to come back and I and I think they're going to be ready to make some technical changes but I just also want to leave you with this you know I also have been told when I've brought this up Time After Time with legislators that we have to wait another year because of Senator pasodomo Senator Paso Domo will be here two more years after she's Senate President so no I would say we need to do something we can do it now now and I and I think it's it's available I've already you know we've been talking with uh some of our members of our delegation and uh they're receptive to the idea of proposing something and uh we'll we'll continue to talk with them this will be an issue that will be brought up at fac see as well uh what comes out and will it be legislation that they write next month when it does come up for their policy uh or will it be you know we support change um but I'll even say my counterpart in Hillsboro on Pinellas we've been meeting this summer um Hillsboro and and those two counties they would like us to be United I said we can be United on the issue that we need to do change on on live local we might not be on the same same page or deal with the same issues that we have we're a job poorest county our people are living here and working in your counties um and you know we have an issue with the law enforcement on the on the tax exemption

um but we're I think you're going to see all counties and municipalities United that we're already seeing problems even though it's been a short period of time we need to go in there and tweak it again so with fac when they look at something they're going to look at something and get behind it one way or the other they're going to look at what's good for the overall State correct like even the Gulf Coast Consortium after we correct picked it up and ran with that for a bit they've shifted that back over just the 23 counties and they've worked that issue because it's Unique to them and I think if you the jumps was a good argument for us but if you push that argument you may lose a Hillsborough which you're going to want in the mix so just I think has come back to let let the locals figure it out they've already put their plans in place they've had citizen participation saying where they want these jobs to go we all want jobs in the economy give us the flexibility I want to ask Marcy a question yesterday Marcy at the board meeting we had a couple of items coming out Tuesday uh we had a couple items coming up one was dominions because commissioner Starkey talked about and they had a low income thing of 60 Ami and right behind it we had another one coming in that was going to be 80 Mi the Dominion was able to say that they wouldn't be looking to get the tax break from the property taxes but the other one wouldn't take that position and they were selling it for more money how do they break that out is there a way to simplify that we can make maybe recommend make a recommendation so financing of affordable housing is not my specialty but I will say that both of those developers Finance in totally different ways and dominium is a national company and they have deeper pockets and they use four percent um non-competitive tax credits because they have a lot more funding to do the work that they do and that's why the funding that they're get makes them go for 60 or less it's tied to that funding source that's why they do it that way whereas bayonet Gardens is um you know they've got a whole section of land and that section of land they're using different projects for so one of the things that came through on uh consent was putting that project forward for the nine percent competitive tax credits and that will have to be um served at a certain rate and then the rest of their project whatever they do whether they go to 80 or up to 120. so it my understanding is that is all tied to the funding source so again this tax credits will if if they go for tax credits and they get those tax credits they'll tell them you have to rent to people of a certain income okay all right and more on the subject any more on the subject I know we've got a few few different vitamins cover okay let's go the next one uh the next uh one on our list is uh from corrections

to come up foreign provider is taking about 20 25 of the overall jail budget cut to operate um um so last year we had a 1.5 million dollar outside medical CAP which meant for inmates that were leaving the facility and going out and getting treatment at a hospital or if a specialist was coming into the jail we had a 1.5 million dollar cap written into our medical budget in order to to fund the cost of those services for the inmate um we went over that 1.5 million dollar cap it was 2.25 million dollars um this year when we um came to the county uh from the sheriff's operation um we put in place a two million dollar cap knowing that we had gone over um last year so that was written in our in our current contract uh so what we're looking at is a legislative change uh statute 951 So currently Florida statute 951 and its Point hold on here um 0.23 it provides that the county is responsible for medical care of the inmate so when we send an inmate out initially the the hospital will look at that inmate that's okay and most of our inmates either had Medicaid when they came in or they had no insurance um so Medicaid goes away upon an inmate and incarcerated in the county jail um so we're going to talk about that in a second so um because we're not a Medicaid expander Escape so therefore those are often again Medicaid's not available uh for the inmate population the inmate can be billed but most of them are Indigent and therefore the cost the hospital is supposed to receive payment from that inmate prior to coming to the county but we know that we get those bills those bills can take anywhere up to six months to come in after treatment and we are paying um those costs um so right now there is not a designated uh cost or contract of a cop across the board for all of our hospitals and for all of our providers and um the Department of Corrections does have a statute that provides that they pay 110 of Medicare not Medicaid rates but Medicare rates and it may be up to 125 of Medicare rates we are just looking at a statute change that kind of TAPS the expenses that the county is paying for well I'm 100 for this but there's I want to expand on it a little further and uh so at Naco and as chairperson of the fact federal policy committee we've been looking at the issue of when someone is arrested and they go to jail not not charged and you know becoming a customer of our jail for a you know a sentence but when they're arrested and spent time in our jail they immediately lose their Medicare and Medicaid their Federal benefits my understanding is they have now um

waived that for states that suspend Medicare Federal benefits but Florida is a termination state so um so what we need to find out is what does it take for Florida to move from a termination of federal benefit state to a suspended state so that we can take advantage of those of that policy change and I've spoken to Congressman billericas about it it's actually part of his committee but I I think it takes a language in Tallahassee to switch us from one to the other but we have full support of all the counties in Florida and frankly across the country um to to be able to keep have these in these people who've been arrested keep their benefits while until they get charged and correct me if that's wrong I'm guilty oh that's a county attorney is it it's like before until they're adjudicated is uh yeah and when when I um I showed this to Senator Rubio in Washington last year and he couldn't believe it and as an attorney he's reading it and he said and this comes from the Social Security Act in 1956 and he said they just didn't Define it right and then all these years we've had to live with with this cost to the counties so he didn't think it was a hard fix um and he saw the issue right away it also spoke to Senator Scott's people but there are there this is a high priority at Naco and and right now we could fix it here in Florida if we just went from a termination state to suspension state it doesn't help everything that you spoke about because these are just for people who um aren't adjudicated yet but uh it's a problem and and if you have a family under your federal benefits they lose their Federal benefits as well Ralph and I just learned something today no I do that part yeah you know the first part you're talking about this so um so is it a federal decision or is it a statement part of the Social Security Act that that um they lose it that they lose their benefits so that's a congressional fix right but they have been to the suspended State they have fixed it for suspended States but not states that terminate and we are a termination state so we need to maybe Sean you can help me with Congressman belarakis to help them understand it I tried to explain it the question is is that tied to the fortune Medicare expansion okay may very well be legislature the governor can make it well it might be right okay I don't know the nuances or termination said I know she was going to you talked about that one bill that they tried to do this before in 2012 and so we have some information there which is which is good makes it easier it passes the Senate um like any Bill sometimes they get bogged down uh and it uh got stuck in the house um don't know why it's not been

addressed I'm looking at the uh sponsors from 2012. of course they're no longer here yeah um but um it makes it easier if this is an issue that you want to pursue and you think absolutely I think this should be our priority for us and you know so just to say that so if the hospital is going to be the one that fight this correct because they're not getting because they're going to get it yeah now and you address this and you had a point raise so what can we do via the contract process and and when you set up that contract it's an annual contractor yourself with each individual Hospital so um previously um I can tell you that I personally years ago went to multiple hospitals we went to friend me we went to uh Bayonet Point we went to Underpants in general and um we ended up with um one contract from a Bayonet Point who tends to be the provider that we utilize the most um but it was a Medicare plus and that has changed because now they're going strictly on BRB right so um the contracts right now are set up with by the medical provider so I do not um negotiate grades with the hospitals okay the medical providers negotiate the rates with the hospitals I'm just thinking about this just just a little bit here Stacy um so it it I mean to me it sounds like if these are Indigent folks and they were outside of jail coming to a hospital they they would be the hospitals would be stuck with the bill but because the local government is coming forward we're in a must-pay situation and we're not uh we're not being afforded uh protections that say other government entities that are with our guaranteeing payment we're paying whatever the rate prevailing private rate might be I mean this sounds like an inflation Health Care issue seems like it's in line with a lot of the priorities I think it's something we really you really need to tackle here we have inmates um and those um obtain their treatments while they're in the jail once they're released they do not get treatment they're rearrested and they're in worse shape than when they have done previously who's the Medicaid who's the medical provider then right right now we have the university survivors yeah I mean it just can that be part of the negotiations with the the well I don't know that's a good question back but I don't think they're incentivized to negotiate it doesn't seem like it well we've uh answering all the questions some medical providers do and not to succeed almost like a Seymour and then you split their cost savings but then you so but that's part that'll be part of the process we'll go through we're not

putting a hard line hopefully not put a hard line because they go over we pay the bill yeah so just being as I mentioned earlier you're I I agree with the policy I absolutely understand it you know I think we've already said it you're fighting the Florida Hospital Association those individually they already feel that they don't get the funding that they should for an Indigent care I mean I know you guys there's pots of money but don't we part of our agreements don't we pay part of that state agreement for the Indigent care from the county also what's it called it's just a big issue in Tallahassee it's one of the last items in the budget that they agree upon what hospitals get for energy care so I understand and this will be if it's I don't know what the pot of money would be Statewide for them but it's pretty big just think we should we should have some conversation something with the legislators but again it may be the right time right here with the healthcare conversation okay Stacy I wouldn't mind seeing a breakdown to show show us what these major costs are I'm sure these cancer treatments are like phenomenally in cost and percentage-wise for the the people there it would seem to me if I was an Indigent person yeah it's gonna get picked up no I whispered that to Oakley well but I'll give them the idea the logic's logic I mean there's a push for them to come back in just so they can keep cancer treatment yeah well I mean some of them well the system is broken and that's just crazy you get arrested and you're in jail and then you lost that health care that you had before you and you can be found not guilty and and that affects the families like you say then we have high high amounts of recidivism yeah we just come back in so I can get care um that's definitely a complex issue to go forward with right well we'll we'll get together with with Sean and let's let's flush it out into some very you know using your kiss principle there and um thank you for bringing us a simple issue yeah let me let me throw an idea out there I know we talked about this we did the jail construction as we're going through and looked at different things and try to incorporate the medical and I suggest we put a building out beside it for like a clinic where they don't have to go to a regular hospital now they go right in and kind of I think Charlotte County did something like that where they had built in they built it from Behavioral Health mental health drug addiction and just regular care so that when they went they didn't have to go to a hospital they could go right there get treatment and after four years five years I think Eric was telling me it was working pretty

well down there and we have um we've been down to Charlotte County and we have all the similar services that Charlotte County has I think the only thing that we may not be doing that they may be doing partly as on dialysis we didn't have a room and a new bill for dialysis but it does not have the equipment so right now I'll provide them I know I just said that before we actually checked them in and they lose their coverage let's go treat them medically first if we need to and then recommend right exactly uh so the next issue that we have I'm gonna have a Adolfo Gonzalez come up and talk to us about contract amounts and continuation of contracts doesn't it affect several departments in our organization good afternoon Commissioners Adolfo Gonzalez your utilities engineering and contract management director we have a request to amend the controlled as competitive negotiations act under that ACT public agencies such as Pasco County secures Professional Services related to engineering architecture landscape architecture and Survey Services one of the types of contracts that we secured through that service are continuing Services contract those contracts allows the board to select a list of qualified Consultants that then we could issue task orders to do all sorts of design and studies under that contract the typical time that it takes to go from scope definition to having the board accept the list of qualified Consultants is about six to eight months but once that solicitation process is over we then can issue task orders and Define a scope and a habit either executed by the County Administrator depending on the on the purchasing threshold or by the board and save anywhere from four to six months off of the typical solicitation schedule under the current statute A continuing service contract can be used for Design Services so long as the estimated cost of construction is less than four million dollars or if an individual study is less than 500 000 and those thresholds are burned into the statute so what's happened by the way those those thresholds were last increased by the legislature in 2020. uh since 2020 we've seen substantial increases in the cost of construction mostly because of supply chain issues the global pandemic an inadequate lack of Workforce to help us get our projects moving along quicker but since those thresholds are burned in as the construction cost of construction goes up we're limited as to the number of task squares we can then use because it's tied to that four million dollar threshold and then that means we had to go out to solicitation again and we're back to a much longer process to start a project and deliver it for the citizens of Pasco County what we're asking you to do is to ask the state legislature to increase those thresholds from four million dollars for construction costs and 500 000 for a

study to 10 million dollars and one million dollars now this amendment would benefit all public agencies within the State of Florida not just Pasco County it does benefit all your operating departments the manage Professional Services related to engineering architecture landscape architecture or survey because it allows us then to issue these task orders under your approval for higher value construction dollar amounts that's a real issue I I'm mouthing over my mic this is a this is good it's common sense going back to the top issue next to the essential inflation this is the type of thing that's going to be understood um it makes a lot of sense where it's index yeah and I want to tell you it might even go higher than that especially on the construction side just one example of a grant that we involved with um remember Randy representative fine talking about Indian River all right talk about all the treatment out there the basketball box et cetera found out that we've actually had companies in Tampa doing it for 30 years right we've done we haven't done any ourselves but even Saint Pete's done a molesmar has done an even Tarpon Springs and we put it I was working with the Estuary program trying to get them to expand their areas so that we didn't just have the Hillsborough River run through Pasco that we could actually pick up and do along the coast these same baffle boxes to go help the gulf we actually did a joint venture with them we picked up 9.5 million well above this number the amount of money that the Estuary just got was a million dollars to go set up and do the Estuary study you know for for for the for the whole area for the for the whole region that's like perfect numbers he's talking about right there but I'm thinking even that 10 million number might might might might might be better to go higher especially if you ever do anything that it continues to erase on their Consumer Price Index in the future well it's not even for them yes right but I'm saying all right yeah but part of the thing is there's so much money out there federally in state that's out there that these numbers are going to be higher for most a lot of the projects so why not give ourselves a cushion it's like we've been higher than that I would even say go to 20 20 million now Commissioners during the 2020 legislative session the original ask was for a five million threshold and the Appropriations Committee reduces down to four million dollars the the original ask also included an escalation cost some kind of indexing and the government oversight committee eliminated that portion from the uh finally approved bill I don't know why uh but those were two things that were amended or changed last time when this bill was finally adopted by by the state well I I appreciate it because that helps us with some information kind of going into that and um

but I I think it's throw it at the wall and I think this is a reasonable request and I mean if you do hire you could I mean I kind of understand why he did that he did a he did double the amount 500 000 to a million and a little bit over double under 10 million um but there'll be a balancing act with it I will tell you that typically I've asked if you could find out advice or some of the Consulting engineering companies were were in favor of it for years the numbers and the CCNA stayed right stagnant and they were they were like that since I got into Consulting right and those numbers had stayed until 2020 which was a relief but now of course the inflation you look at those numbers four million dollars that used to be the cost of a fire station now we've got fire stations that are upwards of six seven eight ten million dollars and so now to say that we've got to go add another year to the procurement process and go through just to even build a fire station for those of us in growth counties I think that it's there's a sense of urgency there but I do think you could get other municipalities behind this possibly the Consulting Engineers could be behind it it's it's double-edged because if they don't have continuing Services contracts then right they're kind of cut out of it so there's probably a sweet spot there but but what Adolfo is bringing up is is very real the numbers that were pitched in 2020 aren't the same as they are in 2023 right so we may want to consider enlisting other support especially from those other agencies and organizations someone comes to mind what about like a wastewater treatment plant what's that going to cost oh that's you're you're into yeah I mean it's something to look at maybe it's even a clause to throw in there yeah I did have a quick conversation this morning with the executive director of the Florida engineering Society he was not aware of any uh public agency requesting this but he was going to pull his membership to see if there was any other interests yeah that's okay Stacy see much easier his wife thank you okay um the next issue that we have uh we're gonna bring up uh Mark Marcy sberg uh talk about the ship program foreign thank you and again Marcy esberg director of Community Development and I am uh speaking about the statute which is the Sadowski act which uh came into play about 1991 and in the statute for 420.90 75 it gives uh every Community a very clear Direction on how to establish an affordable housing program uh a plan and how they have to allocate the funding that they get so as you know we are a community that gets Sadowski funding from the state it's our ship funding and you know we have gotten anywhere since I've been here to zero to 5.5 million and with the increase that is coming from the live local act we I think are getting 7.7 million however if you look at the statute and it is

um uh um I guess I don't there's a section of the statute which tells us how we have to spend our funding and 65 percent of the funding that comes in has to go to Home Ownership activities and this is uh throughout the state so this is very prescriptive they're telling every single Community this is what you have to do so when you do the math um let's let's just use seven million dollars 65 percent of that over 4 million dollars has to go to homeownership activities now while I realize I spent 10 years of my career in helping low and moderate income persons become first-time homebuyers and I realize that the that home ownership is the key to stability for our communities it's the key to Quality neighborhoods it is the key for individual families Building Wealth that's all absolutely true but if you look at what home ownership rates were in 1991 when somebody could buy a house for 50 or 75 000 to now having to buy a house at 325 or I guess I heard this morning the average value of a home in Pasco County is 408 40 000 so it makes it very difficult for us as a Community Development Department to spend the money in that way and then what happens is I can't even submit my report to ship until I've spent money in every single one of those buckets the way that they tell me to submit it so commissioner you and I have met and you know you you know dominium comes and they say we want a million dollars and then they say we want a million and a half dollars and I could I could tomorrow put all of that seven million dollars to multi-family housing however I wouldn't even be able to submit my ship report because I haven't done the 65 for home ownership so my proposal is I'm going to sort of tag team in an unusual fashion uh and in an agreement with uh David Engel is giving uh giving the opportunity for the county to to do what is best for the community because I believe that really that the the sense here is to bring funding from the state to the local community for the community to solve their housing needs the bottom line is we all want housing we all want to meet the housing needs of our community but what might be right for Pasco County might be different for another County and so in the beginning of this act they tell us that we have to do a local housing assistance plan which we do every three years so rather than them telling us you have to spend 65 percent of your money my recommendation is we go to them and we say every Community will decide every three years based on the market what's happening in their community and the needs of what's happening in their Community how much they're going to spend on home ownership how much they're going to do for rental housing how much they're going to do for special needs how much they're going to do for construction and it's the same buckets it just should be determined by the needs of the own their own community so give us that flexibility let me ask you this Marcy do you know

um from the history of the statute 420.9075 it was Prem 5 for an a that had the 65. who came up with that number who do you think came up with that number I'd I my assumption is that those numbers are reflective of the um many uh groups that were in favor of the sadaskiac the Sadowski Act is one of the those few kinds of uh pieces of legislation that brought in Realtors Builders Habitat for Humanity you know the list goes on of the number of people that supported it and um I would imagine that Realtors and Builders were heavily involved in advocating for that I would think I was wanting that if that's what it was so if there would be opposition it would be more than likely those same groups that would say no we want to lock them in and make sure this money's going to have actually purchasing a home but it you know it's it's good to have that flexibility well let me say this about flexibility I think it's great on certain things however um and Marcia I think you're using only on the same talking points commissioner Oakley used yesterday when we talked about home ownership and I'm going to say I want to see more home ownership in this County to put money in where it's just going to be a rental thing and a rental thing and the rents go up at a certain point in time now they're stuck and now they get moved how many times we have we heard about I just got bumped out of my apartment because I just went up 600 a month or 300 a month and I can't afford anymore at least with the mortgage other than Insurance costs it's pretty stable all the way through if we need to if we need flexibility on how to use that 65 maybe you can put more money now maybe maybe it was a cap on how much money you could use for helping someone get a home on their own I'd rather see that number again more flexible to it than just drive the money out to a rental part Mr Starkey uh I'm thinking along the same line same line and just plain devil's advocate here because you know I have so much respect for what you do um would it is there a First what is it a first home buyers down payments program that we participate in and yeah do we just you're seeing if I if a house is four hundred thousand dollars do we need to have more flexibility to be able to offer more on a down payment assistance program we just increased it and so for very low income we put fifty thousand dollars uh into that uh and there are communities that are doing 100 and 125 000 however that that goes to that family and when they sell it you know then we'll get that money back but then 10 years from now how much is that hundred and twenty five thousand gonna cost it might be at that point two hundred and twenty thousand so um you know my argument uh my professional argument would be I can invest 125 or 200 000 into a rental unit that will stay affordable for 30 years and will help many families and I will

also say that are right now are um our ratio of home ownership to rental and in our county is very heavy on home ownership it's like 79 to 21. so even even with us yes even with all the rentals that you've seen it still hasn't flipped that ratio yet and so um and what we are seeing is a real Trend towards people wanting to learn over ownership especially with uh the younger population who saw what happened during uh 2008 nine and people losing their housing they're like you know I'd rather rent and so I so I think the key to any Community is balance having a wide variety of housing units available and and this would allow us to spend our money well again I'd like to take a look closer to the um if we can expand things and I I wouldn't want it even to be like just a first-time buyer person I mean someone might have bought a town home now they want to move up that's what you want kind of like a small business you let them grow to something bigger I wouldn't want to limit to like first-time buyer I'd rather take that money where people can get in to their own home own their home because I think they're then bonded to the community better and again they have a chance to build wealth and create a better situation with their family a stable situation where they know this is home I'd much rather see that Focus so it can be expanded right and I think you'd get a lot of help from the Realtors because every time a home sold that's the desk fund's going to get more money too well I'll just ask I just looked up Florida and I looked up the state where it's the same and Nationwide I mean 66 or 34. so one of the things we could put in here is not just this but maybe allowing this to counties in certain percentage rates and ownership too you know I mean if I'm the legislature and I look at somebody like Pasco County who you just told me 79 to 21 that's a different percentage than another County who's 60 to 40 right yeah so it's you know I mean it's more palatable but I mean than the whole state I'm just and she's asking for flexibility to design a program that works better for our community and maybe the things we just talked about are better for our community see I see that the ask is just right Let each Community determine because each Community is different their their percentages that they feel is more appropriate so we're hearing yet we'll go back and work on a little bit and and uh come back with you on that issue well and think about this now I've got kids that are doing very well they're looking at homes where they want to live you know stocky Ranch they want to be there and the money that it costs is huge right now the kids want to go somewhere else whatever right and that first move is a big move it is all the way through and I I had a gentleman telling me earlier he goes if you're going to take over my house because you

better get ready to go pay a million dollars it's worth like five or six now but by the time you're getting ready and he's like 13 14. you've been having money aside to be able to get this house so if I can help again a family grow to stay here that's that's where I want to be so if I get flexibility that way where she can devise a program would that help I'm good with that there's also habitat you know helping people um you know interesting I had a conversation with Metropolitan Ministries yesterday and um and I have something that they want to do which I'll share with you later but you know we were talking about how we have this pipeline now where they take in homeless families and Mad Men then they can transition to our Workforce housing and then we could just transition them out after a few years to a habitat house and what a great success story that is all right in the same Community if we could get that that whole pipeline thing going and that Leisure Lane project I think was going to be a great one until I went and sold the property on us but that's the type of thing you could do when you can still do in smaller pieces right to help them get their foot up and let them they could go the other statistic that I find very interesting because we just finished our Consolidated plan which you approved that went to HUD is 30 percent of our households here are single person households so again where where do they go when they're when they're here and they want to live so uh so so maybe they have to start off in a rental before they end up creating a larger household to go and to buy but it you know there's different stages for People based on their household and their and their um okay and then the next issues that we're going to address I don't see is Adam here yeah okay yeah he's hiding come on up Adam so now the issues that you're going to be hearing now again it's as Joanna said is this something that we want to include when these usually are addressed annually and it's part of other associations um that that do this as well but it's worth talking about and and having our support behind that being said good afternoon Commissioners uh Adam Thomas tourism director for Pasco County first I'd like to thank commissioner chairman Jack Mariano for storming the capitol with me during tourism day to speak to our legislation uh about these tourism initiatives uh and they are our legislative positions for 2023 first is the stop expansion of the use of the tourist development tax uh the industry as well as our own Pasco County tourist Development Council of poses legislation that would expand the use of Taurus development tax destinations Florida and the industries against any expansion of the use of the

forest development tax for purposes other than tourism we saw this last year when a representative filed a bill that would drastically change our our business model as well as visit Florida bringing five percent of our own local tourist development tax dollars back to fund visit Florida and 75 percent of that funding that's collected on an annual basis would have to go towards marketing rural counties also funding our marketing the state's forestry as well as the state park system as well as marketing the rural counties as well so that would actually hurt our business model and the way we effectively market and communicate with our consumers out in the marketplace next is um can I just like say one thing I was at the Florida League of cities conference last week Orange County Central Florida is really big into doing what you're saying by the way it's it's a major major issue over there and I expect this issue it will be an fac it is every year yeah although you have one County that I think that that does ask if they could do it it's like you're and everybody speaks up and says if you start you know tweaking it you're gonna have that problem down the line so go ahead secondly we have uh funding for visit Florida we want to uh maximize the opportunity for funding for visit Florida uh so that Florida Indus tourism industry can create jobs promote economic growth keep residents tax base low and also generate sales tax revenue uh destinations Florida as well as the industry supports fully funding visit Florida to enable uh demos such as myself ourselves to maximize our marketing efforts and co-ops we're seeing that this this year that visit Florida their budget was raised from 50 million dollars to 75 million dollars and I can tell you right now we're actually planning for our business our biggest Co-op marketing buying with visit Florida without them coming on board and co-oping our marketing efforts we would just be a raindrop in the ocean so we need visit Florida and we need to maximize their funding and I'll say the the governor did a great job I thought leading the way to put that extra money into it to put the legislature to go that way and that kind of like squashed the other stuff that was being talked about and put the money in so I think it is a big thing we push that that's that's when we can give him a big attaboy on that's right I agree and finally is the short-term rental taxation uh support legislation that codifies fully full Collections and remittance of the tourist development tax by short-term rentals and requires a Department of Revenue number or a similar unique property identification number to be included on all short-term rental advertisements I think that's you know you support that no complexity see that station no complexity nice and easy thanks gonna have Sean McGarvey come up let's chill

[Laughter] good afternoon commissioner Sean McGarvey director of libraries uh these are two very simple requests every year the state legislature funds the state's Cooperative grants for libraries to a certain dollar amount we would just like to request that it be fund at 21.4 million uh that is an equalization grant for every dollar and 82 cents that the library's operational budget spends that Grant is then divvied out between all the counties and given that money is then spent specifically to enhance Patron Services books materials items within the library it can be used on Staffing costs but this County already covers those things so we use it to supplement our collection the second request is that we will be putting in a request for the Wesley Chapel Branch library for the maximum amount of the state aid for libraries construction Grant at five hundred thousand dollars the last Grant we put in was for the Starkey Ranch TLC which was funded in 2019-2020 at the full amount of 500 000. they have not granted any requests since but we were hoping that we could advocate for that to put money in the pot in the ranked programs and we could be one of them gonna be good very simple did um someone striking we got that 500 Grand when you say we haven't uh I don't know if you said we haven't applied for anything more but others have we have not applied for anything more Wesley Chapel is the newest Library we've constructed since Starkey Ranch this will be our first application since Starkey University but I mean others other Counties have done oh absolutely sir there's a 14 to 15 libraries on that list okay Sean just wants to ensure that we're matching what the feds are giving us we're leaving us okay and commissioner Stark you had that big list with all the different I do get to that yeah so she was talking about like non-profits like Friends of the library they can go up to different brands or whatever I talked to Sean about this yesterday but but when we're when we're done with these I will bring this up but I'm fixing these yeah okay so we finished that policy now and we're we're going into to HR um funding request and uh I thought before we start bringing up what the the organization and the Department's uh presented and I know commissioner um or chairman um Mariana you you had a specific project you wanted to bring up again the one that uh you did we did last year uh we'd have that discussion uh commissioner Starkey uh going forward you know I think we've always talked do we all want to be United around bigger projects that impact our County um and hope that that might have bigger bang for the buck and and uh if we're all United on something that might be on in the central or you know in three part of the areas um uh and I think we've heard that discussion uh do we know or but we did not have any product projects I think that we were ready for that were ready for prime time because all along uh when

John and I tell you uh what there is no there is no guideline set up in the Appropriations process as far as it comes to member projects how much should they be uh how much skin in the game should you have at the at the county level so we just give estimates that we hear other counties do and and uh and say anything to wear from a 500 000 to 5 million um I mean we can give you an idea if you do a project more than two million dollars and would we consider a water project that is generally leadership driven and so if you don't have so many leadership that request probably isn't going to happen that's what we've looked at historically I will say though there's only one change uh Senator blazing Golia has some different ideas on on how it should be he believes that local governments and others should have um not asked for a full request but they should have some money in it so you know you have Senator blazing go there for the first time doing it and this has been the same sentiment that he has treated as he was a State Rep and I've dealt with him for eight years with her Nano so I just I I can talk about that more but I will tell you the first thing he asked is have they voted on it and have they approved it all together and then secondly how much of every project are they putting in and he asked that message for counties for if he asked it for cities non-profits everybody across the board right I don't get that question from you know Senator Burgess or Senator Hooper you know but I'm just telling you Senator angolia is a little bit different when he supports so you you know remember we have three Senators now that we can go to to ask for to submit Appropriations well and I I wanted to talk this discussion too because I don't know what's the best way to go I mean we put like five projects through I think one got done on the small project right is that really worth going after is there a better approach we can take um meanwhile out in Moffett we did phenomenally well with big stuff so should we just be thinking big without projects and just going that way as opposed to and we all want to try to take care of our districts without different things that need but I don't know if this is the process to go get that so I I'm listening to some guy I mean I'll say and then Ralphie I mean you have a very young legislative delegation right now your most elevated person in the legislature right now is Ed Hooper who's Ted appropriation chairman almost a remainder of all of them and Senator Blaise is a freshman in the Senate the others are freshmen in the house so you have a very young nobody in leadership of both um Senator Hooper can help us with debt Appropriations I wouldn't recommend to submitting five you know corporations that are going going through this committee so it's you know I I just say it's kind of like chess it's not Checkers it's not one little simple but

I think there's multiple questions and and how we can do it I think the best thing is is ask for several items that hit different pots whether it's a water project a park whether it's you know fire whether it's you know Transportation you know different different difference to those and also yeah I mean you can put a 14 million dollar in you know item in there those are those are those are big items some of them some of them get them and but again I can break it down and probably tell you the county that got it was the chair of that certain Appropriations Committee or it was the speaker of the house or the Senate President that made sure that his local community got it yeah so with Senator Hooper with his district should we look at something big in this District then I would I would look at something you know a couple good a couple million dollars I would meet with Senator Hooper too I think some of these are before we even vote on some of these and put it on there are getting them to buy into it before we even approve it and because all of a sudden now they're bought into it not just us coming up and asking them to do it but I like some here's five projects what are these fives are your favorite which one are you hearing from your constituents that that you think is some the biggest need they may think there's a greater need on 54 than you think there's on 52 I'm just I'm just mentioning things but um Mr Starkey um and look you know I I asked um and I'm sorry I asked both of you guys and and everybody to get me the list of um county by county uh Appropriations and every time I got one it was it had the the ones it was the ass not the right the ones that were granted so after the veto yeah after the veto so fact went through and now and they did this for me and now they're gonna do it every year so um I want to talk about this about more Community asked but what I but uh what I want to say here and going through a lot of these counties is the amount of water projects that do get approved in each County but they're not all coming from the county I mean or they don't say the county next to them do our and so see but a lot of them are septic to sewer and a lot of them are are Mains and I think we got got some water right um but are there some categories Sean that are more advantageous for the county to apply for and are more likely to make it through say septic to sewer since that's uh so let me give you an example you had pulled one from a particular County uh and it was in Ben albritton's district there was a five million dollar project and uh it was first epic to sewer uh it was for uh one of the municipalities it wasn't for the county for that municipality put in 21 million dollars and they got 5 million from the state and it was a 30 plus million dollar project and and he's also a future

Senate President and correct 12 months right but but just showing that they're it's a that's a big ticket item that you're going to probably need we're gonna have to put a lot of money in toward that what that figure is I don't know but that was you know like I said it was a 30 million dollar project and I think it was Punta Gorda put in 30 or 21.5 so I I had mentioned this to the administrator that um you know when I was in Washington and I went around with the federal committee and all the different counties came in with me they sat there and were thanking Senator Rubio and their staff and Senator um the other one Scott for all the money they'd sent back for septic to sewer conversions and I'm sitting there thinking gosh we haven't done one in our County and they're thanking them for all the money and they've gotten back and I am seeing a lot of septic to sewer and many counties getting funded and and then we then we heard um Wilton Simpson tell us how he's put some money aside that would help the homeowner on their side of it right and so yeah it seems like the stars are aligned to do something correct and if I may interject to that to that point the utility does have money set aside in its budget now to do what I would call preliminary design to get projects closer to shuffle ready because right now all you have are conceptual cost numbers right so we'll Target those areas and we will have projects aligned that may not be this year but I think septic to sewer is going to continue especially in the state as water quality becomes more and more important and money becomes more and more available uh to be able to do that so I think we're on that path I think the original priority were spring sheds and a lot of these other areas in in the state and the federal areas so I think we're on that path commissioner and and we'll we'll continue that I think Sean Mike Mike my real question back to that is do you think there are certain pots of money yes exactly that we should really be thinking about more so this year 10 of perforations Transportation Economic Development Appropriations I would put in you know probably two to three projects ask you know him to put one to begin remember here's the here's the thing you know you've got Ed Hooper who's the future Appropriations chairman everybody knows it so he's going to be getting the things that he wants I would pick one in burgess's District One in blazes district and one in at Hooper's District then you're kind of taking up one of the uh the list of projects that we got um that little sidewalk Center coming in next to schools uh might be might be good options and then but are those big enough and then go I mean he I mean I I'll look at the amounts I mean you're looking at several million dollars on just on one okay five million dollars worth of stuff right projects already because I'm thinking of these 13 million

dollar bike bike overpasses that we for some reason in Pasco County we have to pay for them ourselves but in the other counties the state pays for right I know that and well and back to your point Sean earlier I mean those are projects we have funded so I mean I you know if we can offset those cars differently so I mean I think as part of the strategy you know we we need to decide that let me ask you this Sean yes sir does it does it make sense for us to have I mean I think you mentioned here with Senator angolia is is is the project approved and kind of underway sometimes I always use the term shovel ready yes or no correct and and is there a match so should we be focusing on projects that we already have in our Capital plan that we are just duly marching down and then absolutely for representative Mongolia I mean the higher the match the more excited to get but again I want to preface this he's also knows that he can submit it but anything we put in for Ted Appropriations they're not going to have to put any political Capital out Senator Ed Hooper is so that's why even yes yes on what you're just acting specifically with with him but also knowing anything we're putting on is not a burden or political capital on the other two state senators is on Ed Hooper is going through his so putting one in each of them doesn't put all three through his district he's giving something to the others I would like again I said earlier about looking at then maybe a couple other water projects maybe or something for Parks maybe it's something for fire but different areas three different pots one guy that's in leadership we have a good path and strategy I've got an idea for you this morning we're on a phone call with staff looking at septic sewer and thank you Mike for putting money in the budget to actually have it we're going to study it to to go forward with the grants coming up and the conversation was about water projects one was about Sea Pines one was about elfers and the other was Atlanta Lakes so you got two audio three Senators there actually three Senators would be covered different districts that are right in there the Sea Pines one we've spent I'll say over eight million dollars with Swift Mud doing a project in there to fix the flooding now they've been accepted the super conversion for a long time but we wouldn't do it because until we had the flooding fixed it didn't make sense to fix it yeah yeah and the roads are terrible out there so we're going to do the roads eventually as well but not until the The Strangers fix as well so that's a project we got a ton of matching monies in that project yeah and I support that project yeah and that's that's in Blaze's District yes yeah perfect employees and isn't that where they have to keep closing the beach for September well it's it's it said that up in that area it's right down Downstream so they say that when that gets heavily flooded there's a farm that's there that

may take the water that pushes it down further and coincidentally a lot of time when that does happen the water goes down there dep we're actually doing fecal studies et cetera now with that whole area and we've spent our money working with dep to go study that area and Colleen's been very well versed in that and helpful to make all that happen but as Echo study that that can tie into again water quality as well as matching funds like you're talking about alfres is a very low income area which right in the Middle East Parkway you're talking about uh got the d The cdbg Dr money to buy out some houses so wherever that septic soil project is I'm not sure exactly but that is directly in Hooper's District as well that could tie to that and the one in Land of Lakes I got to think is going to be close to Danny's but should we do three or should we do one well here's the thing all three we've got basic information to take a step forward and I think by time session comes especially we had to hear them say what we should do well too was um Angelo's still here and you know Mike mentioning I think we were talking about that so so be cognizant of the fact when we all right so I've got the expert right here who's on the line with us today so so if you would talk about the uh the three separatists who are projects and where they actually are in how if we could submit them all together as one project hitting three Senate districts sure thing commissioner so we've requested in your five-year Capital Improvement project two million dollars in FY 24 and 2 million dollars in FY 25 to start the design for two specific projects one is Sea Pines that would be the first one and the other one is elfers now we picked those two because a few years ago we hired a consultant to look at all the different parts of the county and there were four areas identified Sea Pines Alphas uh Weeki Wachee and Hillsborough river basins and out of each one the top four the top one in each group was identified as a priority project cbines being one of them our intent is to start the design and possibly complete the design for Sea Pines in the next year year and a half and we've also by this time next week we'll have submitted Grant applications to this state for the I believe their resiliency resiliency grants for Sea Pines and alfers as well our intent is to submit design Grant applications one year follow up by destruction Grant application the following year and then essentially just recreate that process from there on so that we always have in the process some grant money available for design and Then followed up by construction and just build on that program and that's being administered by your uh how is that Grant or appropriation and that's one of the things so now talking about Appropriations it's better to wait for the con to go after construction dollars rather than design so once you have that design done let's say on a road project you have the right-of-way done and then

you're ready for the construction that's when you want to go that's what we consider shovel ready uh when we when we talk about and that's what the what the legislators say you know is the shovel ready they're they're they want construction so they're not red so those septic to sewer projects are not ready not yet no he said there's just still on the design so are you going to recommend that we wait one year yes because you said maybe 25 it will be ready for the 25 so we're going into 24 25 with the state in January so it'll be 25 26 that we could go after uh in the legislature for 25 for funding for construction yes because we get reimbursed in arrears so the grant that we're applying for now would be available July 1 of 2024 for the state's fy25 cycle so we're we're starting one year ahead of time and then we'll just create a program that just constantly asked for design and construction grads to just keep that process rolling and that would probably uh uh I mean we could probably have some skin in the game toward that our program didn't but that could be a larger project and uh and kind of achieve these goals that we're you're all talking about and I wanted to go after but but I want you this if you if you let's focus to see punch just for a second if you focus on that project right now literally been working in that area for 19 years trying to fix that flooding thing in between planning and other things up there it's been difficult but we finally have it where we've got the last pieces of property which we've signed off on everything we need to hold plans together we're going to fix that drainage Now Chelsea Apartments coming from above us coming in they gave us eight and a half acres of land I've got so much matching money right now that if you wanted to look at that type of thing especially in blazes District we've spent a lot of money we've done a lot of things spent a lot of time I think it's a great time to ask for the design money too and if they don't give it to us maybe it just leads up to where we're teed up for the next time no so no if you get if you get it down you don't you can't ask the next year so then maybe not I I called up commissioner Starkey we went through every single project that was vetoed and Pasco Hernando and citrus in the Tampa Bay Area okay and 75 of the projects that were veto this year were vetoed last year yeah number one yeah just thinking that that number was there every single project city of Brooksville Inverness I went down to all those other municipalities and school boards again looking at you looking at a strategy than me that's why you all are doing this I think this is honestly this is great I hope we continue to do this in in years moving forward because it gives us more the old address more than one way to skin a cat right and I think you're in a good position if you do multiple and I say multiple I'm looking at like three three projects one for each senator for ten Appropriations one or two for for water you know it

wouldn't even hurt to do one with Senator uh ask Ed to do uh Senator Ed Hooper to do two projects one Water Project another because you know other projects that he's had he's gonna have leverage to get projects but unfortunately yours is in in center and goalie's out and you either do one with him and Senator and Golia and one with him and one with Senator Burgess we definitely want to spread the wealth for the county but I keep saying East West because again I don't want to see you know I think it's wise to spread it across everybody so then we're talking like one two at the most three projects we're not talking per commissioner's district and and when I when I think of it and when you're dealing with with other with other counties Hillsboro and Pinellas do not do it by commissioner right they do one or two projects everything they only submit one or two that's correct they do not do it by commissioner um and I think you could probably go pretty much in any County and it's not five percent Mr starkey's going right to the list watch out but you don't do that now the member projects are different member projects you're talking I mean municipality projects that's why I gave that to our council members that's what that's what I'm saying but it's not it's not per commission right again I but I do think you could do a couple Transportation projects and even some water projects so what do we think about um so I'm teeing up then rangeland for the over the bike ped overpass at 54 and Suncoast that's already in engineering those projects are are in design yeah and they're they're currently I think Penny funded is yeah but we can we use that penny for something else Tracy we probably could can I take her up and bring her up then and start talking about the project it's part of that penny even if we got half of that funded by the state we'd be in good shape but the sidewalks that are on the list that we gave you would be future Penny projects but we're looking at what's that place but to her question though on the on the trail issue I'm sorry can you tell me the question again um so the the residents of Pasco County have saved we've saved penny for Pascal money from the first time to pay for the overpasses at 54 in the Suncoast and 52 in the Suncoast and there are about I mean they're almost ready for construction so uh and there are does anyone here from engineering that's Tracy oh you also do you know how much those are they're 20 000 20 million 10 15 million yeah how much yeah easy yeah so if we were asked the state to do so if we didn't have offset and ask the state for a project as a bigger project um could we do then divert that 10 million that if they did half of each

one they paid for the ones in Hernando and citrus a hundred percent but if they if they um if we got half of ours paid we could divert that 10 million to do sidewalks and lots of other Penny projects right I I I'm sorry to speak up it just sounds a little bit sexier for sidewalks than it does bike paths I'm just mentioning I mean you know I mean not enough but if you're able to fund these type of paths and then able to fund that I I'm just yeah when I go to the legislation it's me talking about bike you know sidewalks versus bike hats but I'm not saying it's not I'm just I mean these people are traversing back and forth so it gets into a park from one way or the other uh it continues with a great trail that runs down to the south and north of us uh and I think you get the leverage to say look you don't have that the state funded the other two right up in Hernando and citrus I would have to look on how they funded it was it in Appropriations or they put it into the construction cost of the Suncoast now they did a different from us yeah they did it different yeah no they did so I mean so we get the leverage treated I don't care how it gets paid for but as far as the state was responsible for it getting taken care of okay now we've got matching funds which players will like and now you've got construction documents ready to go yeah and we just said so you got construction documents ready to go you want to talk talk about shelf already here you go and it is a connector help connect our Hernando because if you're working with Lee is any of that up there yeah that'd be funny but I knew I knew the answer but I'm just saying yeah that I would suggest doing maybe one of those and a bike path and a uh sidewalk right now there are any of these in blazes well again you want to do one you want to do one in blaze or Danny Burgesses and you definitely want to do one in Ed Hooper's District you want to do some type of Transportation economics that's in Hooper should you do them together going 50 looking for the 50 50 match or put them put them together or keep them separate two separate ones okay let's do 52 154 separate but let me then and I'm throwing that one out there but let me back up and ask the administrator for a second what is the list of shovel ready Transportation projects in Hoover system I I mean I don't know if we have that off the top of our besides but I think we can provide the board no no no that's under study right now so but I mean I think we can provide the board with a list of projects that we either have currently slated in design that will be ready to go to construction and we have a number of those and certainly you know these districts Traverse the county so they'll be in someone's district and then we can certainly balance that out if it's the board priority it's important for me to know if the board's priority sidewalks and these uh you know head pedestrian

bike type facilities then I I think we can certainly come up with a list of things that we have funded and then with those again we provide a match and there's an offset savings that we can go and reinvest into other probably similar type projects because we have a very long list of sidewalk projects signalization projects there's a lot of Transportation safety needs that that we have out there that we certainly will have no trouble providing funding for I think Carl wants to add something to the conversation I would like to encourage any transportation related project that we wish to pursue funding make it expressly stated that is coming from General Revenue and not the transportation response yes I just wanted to remind everybody please thank you by the way you just made our job a lot easier yes and Carl I'll explain why that's important any funds that come from the Transportation trust fund that are later vetoed by the governor's pen are removed from the trust fund budget overall that money is just simply gone and they take it out of our hide if you will that's right in terms of what they're going to spend in Pasco County but if it's from General Revenue no harm no foul we still get our money and Dot has been exceptionally generous with us in the last two years I do not want to damage that relationship that's right thank you for mentioning can I go backwards yes going back to this idea of of getting money for the two overpasses ones in your district and once in line um that um are shovel ready and we have the money if we could get and if we told the narrative that we'll we would take the 10 million that we would save and we put that into sidewalks it's kind of a win for everybody that it's more than this whole list which is 5 million we could do 10 million dollars worth of side effects and we could pledge that the money goes to sidewalk and we could do it cheaper because when I wouldn't be subject to Hera Harris bacon I just want to listen to you guys if you think that's a good good again I'm just saying I think be reasonable with your ask you know the old pigs get you know the Hogs get slaughtered type thing we're going to have Senator Hooper as an Appropriations chairman that lives in Pasco County off of Trinity Boulevard he is going to be very very kind to us for the next two years while he's a preparations chairman so I just say that in consideration let's be is that too much two projects yeah no I don't I don't listen I mean if you are if you're asking you to do a 10 or 13 million dollar project that's big if you're if you're saying that let's ask for a five you know million dollar project and and do another one for three and two and then remember anything that he has to give up for his County I mean there's other things that he has to give up with that other committee chair over in the Senate they know I mean in the house they know he's trying to get these projects here and he has to give pots of

his budget to them so it's all a negotiation so if we asked for one and my understanding is the 52 one is good probably ready to go before the 54 one because they're still in design at 54. and said because so if we ask is that his district or will that matter is 52 in the Suncoast um I I would again I would just if you're going to ask for money from his pot at least do one project from his commission I think with his feedback I think we can tailor a package a challenge I think if you all would allow us when you get that list put together let us meet very quickly with Senator Hoover and then get back with you on it and we could probably give you information very quickly as soon as you get that list together okay the same for water projects across right well and let me ask this too this water projects if I may uh you know given Senator Hooper's background are there certain any public safety projects that yeah that's why I mentioned fire a couple times is built we pay 100 of the fire stations if we can get a 20 match that's two million dollars that we can the fire stations are now nine million dollars yeah yeah and we fund those 100 out of the Geo Bond so that would be so only only a very few fire stations usually get funded in that budget item in there and so getting that item any higher than 2 million is probably much but you know anything 2 million and under is um I mean again if you asked for 20 if they give you ask for 2 million if they give you a money you know a million tours of fire station that's still great so when I see the fire stations getting funded there in small counties yes okay if I can there's a rule there's a grant there's there's money set aside for role or volunteer fire department right but it's it's generally the government usually when you see those being vetoed those are the the governor be the governor has an internal rules that he believes that those funds should go to rural counties who are fiscally restricted constraints yeah and statute but you can still ask for it well I think I think the approach where we're here in is let's go focus on Hooper's District number one let's go look at what we have with blaze let's go look at all of them and as we set them up let's let's forget the commission lines from now on okay right yeah let's just go look what can each one of them put something on for their own District so they could say I brought something back to my area put that list together with your staff very quickly and meet with the delegation I had one more idea I wanted to throw out there that I thought would be good for the county and you know maybe this isn't a good idea to have gone down this path but um I think our County could use an aquatic center and um I know someone I know Wilton had

tried to help get one correct um somewhere in the center of the county and I'm I'm still in support of that idea someone that center of the county or wherever it's it is very high up on tourism list I think Adam's here and it also helps all our school districts that don't have aquatic facilities um and then there's a long line at the feud that we do have because I know my daughter used to dive at River Ridge and trying to get pool time uh in the afternoon or before school it was it was very very difficult so so I don't know if that's so something that's an idea so real quickly I'll say on that one I I I like the way you're thinking uh and those types of approaches you can then say if it impacts the school the county um a partnership uh if you have a developer landowner that's willing to give up land uh that could that could go for something that large I think when we were talking uh let's let's go ahead and continue to talk about Aquatics the parks can use but you need an olympic sized pool that you can use for events yeah I'm talking like the Long Center yeah so you you know you don't want like a regular County Pool you want a big pool so that's something you think I I think what we're planning on but there's a lot of facets to that and again we're not ready for prime time uh for that kind of thing but you're you're thinking right again rather than member oriented projects bigger projects I'll stop there yeah and commissioner I think too we also need to consider operational costs of those of those facilities too again like where we're thinking but we just I think that would be something we need to put as a priority on our own Capital plan first because it sounds like even if we were to have multiple participants in it you know we can we can kind of we may be able to craft a more hybrid type solution and then pulling you know state or federal money is my sweetener right well I you know since we have sunshine I couldn't mention that to my fellow board members but I I do think that is something that that is lacking in the county and it's we should discuss it maybe it's not something for this year but which should be in our radar for the near future you know one time uh Lou Friedman was actually up at Sunwest and I guess he's done long distance swimming and he said that northern part of that Lake would be ideal for that long distance swimming with the trailer on the state park well but usually at a swim meet you've got a lot of defanya platform diving and lot lots of things going on but and I want to stick to the to the the time there were some issues that we weren't able to address uh I did go ahead and pass out when we were looking at individual projects there are some fire uh rescue projects in there as well you know but we'll have continue this discussion to get it ready for the September 5th um date uh so we can kind of hone in and clean up our our list wait wait don't leave councilwoman

sorry I'll say this really quickly and the reason I handed this to you and if you could and I didn't know if there's any other elected officials here um but if you if you and Ralph taught me this yesterday or the day before I never knew this on Appropriations if if you look at these and you don't see any numbers on the end of them like Senate form or house form that means it came from a grant and or a pot of money like the the transportation well I'm not you don't look at the transportation Workforce program but everything else and if you look I had my staff count these up for example uh Brevard had 86 projects granted um [Applause] um and you go through well I'll do ours last uh Polk and I just I had them look at counties near to us in population 78 granted and I'm not doing the ass versus granted because there's political reasons why things get vetoed and that's not what this discussion is about uh Sarasota 81 granted um and I think I have one more Volusia 68 granted Pasco we had 39 granted we didn't ask for our citizens our non-profits our cities did not put enough in so we would ask that you guys start asking for some money and I'm sure you have projects I'm thinking the Grand Boulevard Trail or the wastewater treatment plant that's on the water that should be moved off the water every every every municipality in Pasco should be asking for something and and many of our non-profits because these these asks come from all kinds of entities and they're and if it's a grant funded Chris Brown's told me that money's sitting there just waiting to go out and they don't get vetoed and so let's just bring as much as we can back even if it's twenty five thousand dollars um let's go for it so let's get all our non-profits to be thinking about asking for money how do they do that Sean sorry just put it sorry bro hang on that thought for a second uh Newport Richie councilman our councilman Kelly Miller said come on up Kelly and why don't you tell us some of the things you guys are thinking about doing that maybe we can even partner with yeah so be unprepared I don't have you know but we're glad you're here we do have a lot of projects that we're working on and the Grand Boulevard is one of them the multi-use path coming through um through Grand Boulevard we also have the storm water issues huge stormwater issues with the the plant over there on green on green Key Road that's a that's a big one for us too we have a lot going on downtown but we have all of those issues that we need to fix and we are we are meeting and we are going to be talking about requesting more funds than we have in the past for sure excellent and Kelly I could say and I'm glad you mentioned that plant then because we jointly own it with the with the city and some of the increases they want to do as far as releasing water into the

canals I get calls all the time on what are you doing what do you know we got to stop that the bacteria the fish kill the the wildlife kill that's out there is very strong there is a ton of money uh out there for wastewater treatment plants so I would love if you would push that forward that's right in hoopa's District as well that would be something we could partner with real easy and then you know if only go up there and I think we've got a great chance to get that funded to move that away in a safer Better Way absolutely and that's one of the things we're looking at is being able to partner and get some of these things done a little bit easier and a little bit quicker we're 40 with you in that plant exactly and when you go up and talk to the legislators you know we and when we go up we should each endorse and support each other's projects and we want to get the chambers involved and all and rotaries and all other groups to get behind the projects that benefit citizens Pasco County yeah and I actually had a conversation with a couple of our charitable organizations too and putting in some requests so um yeah we'll talk about that too and I just want to say I mean you've read off some of those counties this reader I mean Pasco County has very few cities Brevard and then Pinellas you know they have a lot more cities so a lot so we need our our six cities yeah and we have to all we just have to all get together and work and work on it together and like you said you know help help push each other so but both the uh both the state and federal delegation are there to help that's their constituency we're on it this year I agree thanks for being here I think I'm the only one here well one thing I like to add is if we're doing projects and we're getting monies where this municipality or if it's one of our districts or wherever as a group we need to be pushing to get that money spent because instruction on those roads and things because we've got some on the east side that they've gotten the money but nothing's happened oh I mean it's just it was just recently they went from on design from 30 to 60 and they've had the money for four years yeah we have some big road projects too I mean we just started on River Road so we have a lot a lot of big big road projects we need to push together I think to finish get those all finished if we can okay yeah all right I'm gonna pause for a minute okay just one minute that's our library is very efficient with their money we have to change the tape actually all right so we'll pause go ahead Sean all right so again I'd like to just say that I love this setup I'm glad we're doing this meeting um the closest I think is is great so as much as it's a little extra work I think it's helped the dialogue quite a bit in the presentations so I want to definitely keep keep this strategy last year with the run around back and forth

I think this full dialogue makes it so much easier it does so it does great planning yes sir all right okay okay anything else for me uh no but again thank you we appreciate it thank you uh your call let me just let me just kind of like lay out kind of what I'm what I'm hearing what I'm what I'm what I'm think I'm seeing perfect and I think that the five Commissioners I think we clearly want what's best for the county whoever it plays out wherever it goes It goes we just want to be more effective with our ask every step of the way and if you guys can lay out you can even team up with us with Hooper and Blaze Etc however you think we need to do but let's go look at those projects with staff kind of like teed up quick say we're good with this we like this we like this what do you like to our representative and then kind of go that way let's let them lead the way we'll kind of like yes the groundwork is a talk and let's what what do you think works better that you can go and get through for us to make it fly all right I'll say it very simply I think by doing this you've taken those steps in the right direction okay Mr garbella so I guess yeah thank you for the kind words all credit to the to the team that's here and then this team up here that that kind of got all this set up so thank you for for really handling that up dude yes my ADD just kicked in I had two things that I wanted to bring up about possibly policy stuff and one I think I think we said if fact is going to take it out we're not going to push or stay white or whatever but I want to try again for the anonymous code um correct code I have a constituent I've had quite a few who've been beaten up by their neighbors one was in the hospital 18 stitches so um I I think this is a bad idea and Sean I know some Senator who's a builder who was it that it was getting it it was a Senator that was blocking us because he was in latch work County and that's good Harry yeah is he still in yeah but I have had that discussion uh with a uh one of our own legislators that uh is receptive to we could probably go talk with him on a on a separate note um don't look at it as repealing but the the suggestion that he was comfortable with is that a citizen could contact their Commissioners or their counties no because then you're just basically basically you're repealing then the law by saying go to the county but if they go to their commissioner you don't have to take their their name and address you just find out where the location of the complaint is and that's how it's done okay that would be for next year that'd be okay then you're after that and it's going to be out of policy at fac I can tell you that even though it's it's they're there every year the other one has to do with third-party inspections and we've got we've got someone right here with Terry who's um live in this is Rob Marin here

okay so and I don't even know how up to speed Ron Maron is on this but we have we have quite a few homes that have been built that have mold and because they have been inspected by a third-party provider yep he's going to tell us there is nothing we can do right and it's so sad because some of these people they know that their house is going to have mold they don't want to close and they're being told if you don't close then you lose your deposit and um and they go in they have mold they have to move out and go stay in a hotel right and unsadly even kind of knowing this a little bit Miss pito's got a house that has mold in it and he and that was inspected by a third party provider nothing we can do yeah and we've had that encounter with some of our legislators the constituents are calling them yeah new build putting in hvacs so it is a discussion and the only thing we as a county can do on that is tell them if they are licensed or Tippy Murphy building construction services with Ramon Plinko um building construction services as well um our answer is and yes we have gotten a handful through our legislature our legislators is that they are treated as licensed professionals just as our building officials are and if it has gone through the private provider process their their recourse is through dbpr and um and making complaints about that licensure in a civil matter we have no oversight once particularly after it's been coed but if we see the building plan and we see that it's under uh under vented the AC unit may be too small we can't step in and make comments on defects that our our staff sees um the limitation on plan review we cannot go back and do plan review or inspection like for like that's specifically in statute but we can audit so to the extent that we are allowed to audit a private provider up to four times a month now granted there's not a whole lot of quantity of private providers so we're sort of limited based on the volume of homes that are being built the ability to go in and do those individualized audits but in in terms of doing plan review we cannot do plan review after the the providers on plan review well you know so we have to tell them sorry this is a civil suit and I tell you our constituents don't like it yeah that's what the legislators have to come and so I think they're hearing it loud and clear and you're probably going to see that get tweet they're going to address it well it should be tweaked because I think some of them are actually using that so they avoid our County inspectors from seeing what's going on I think it's very important that we know that thing is being built right and they're being looked after I know a gentleman that that I I guarantee everything he did and the past was done without permits so I worry about what they're doing and

they got a third party inspector they're paying them maybe they're paying them extra so they don't have to they can cut corners and not do the right thing but it's out of our hands it's just a problem yeah so so going back to where we were that really might not be the issue that we want to be the one to lead the charge uh we're hoping that the association the legislatures on their own will just say yeah we're hearing it loud and clear which we you know I put that bug in the uh ear of that representative and said if you wish to change the legislation we are happy to work with you uh with the knowledge that we've had on that uh but it's definitely going to have to I think be a Statewide effort rather than us being the one to leader but they're seeing it more and more in there yeah be very important when you have a developer brand new built home perhaps offering the opportunity for the homeowner to select make a selection of advisor versus the local County building a department to do the inspections because our homeowners don't have an option maybe like an extra disclosure for them to say if you're going to go with a private provider keep in mind the county cannot go back right and help you after the fact something like that would be great yeah a little notice well I think but go ahead apartment heads comment is right now it's the Builder's choice not the homeowner right so even if we provided a disclosure they're not really it's after the one they're well when they saw the contract when they signed a contract they've locked themselves into using a private provider that of the Builder's Choice it's not like they say well we can get our home built Faster by using a private provider that they're not even involved in the discussion but the legislature said the developer you're going to have to get show them the option and say with us you're doing private you you have to change the statute to say that that the consumer must be given that choice that's what he was suggesting right and I think that's that would be one that you could say is do now with the developers like no but the consumer and their constituents would so we can hear you loud and clear on that one thank you okay I'm done this is definitely not a Pasco County issue this is a All County all Florida amen thank you all right okay now now for the landing no now for the landing and Ralph yeah you may have some follow-up housekeeping items but I think we we've gotten enough information here on on policy I think we can pull something together and craft a uh you know a capital you know project type assessment based on the various pods Senate districts Etc I'd like to maybe come back to the board we wanted to bring uh bring this list back and have the board codify it on September 5th I think a regular item where we can just kind of rehash and

review yeah which would be appropriate and we can discuss that on September 5th if that's good with the board members at least here so then talking about housekeeping uh then um the delegation has not set a date yet for their delegation meeting they are now in October they're looking at uh which brings me to I heard you loud and clear Commissioners that you also wanted the possibility of as we've created this Workshop to do a joint legislative uh workshop with our state delegates that's what I thought this was and our federal the first day so this is the end this was the first step so I'm running into problems by the the dates that I went out uh we were looking at the end of September to try to do that um all they got back some response from one two four out of seven of our delegation members uh two would not be able to participate uh two did uh so I wasn't getting good feedback so now the next one I'm looking at would be at the end of October because there's three weeks of October that they're doing the uh uh committee meetings um that being said are they in November at all any in November yeah there are many meetings November oh have we we haven't started yet to try to get them there to consider but there's three uh in committee weeks there's three in October two in November and two in December um and and then we're gonna start looking at dates they're they're gonna start coming down on them and saying you got to have your bills submissions in and you're gonna have to do your Appropriations in by a certain date they haven't set the gauntlet yet of when that is the house has released their new form the Senate has not so once we start you know teaming up that we got to go get sponsors for any legislation or and definitely our funding um but where I guess I'm going with that do we continue on uh I think what rousing is has been a challenge to get a Deja it has been a challenge just to get a date to get the delegation to have a delegation meeting so let's let's look at a different approach then maybe maybe there's going to be a Tallahassee trip when they're all up there we do something later at night when they're down for business or in the morning before they go we take that block of an hour of time we just go up to there at their place while they're in there while they're up there so we know we're going to get them all and it may be a good thing because you're going to get to speak to them at the delegation meeting yes it's only for a few minutes but they're we're going to see your 50 000 foot level and maybe in the middle of session route we can talk about about things that we know are actually being filed at that time and what we oppose and what we support does this stop us from going to the legislators and getting sponsors no no so we can work on

that and uh and so if you could just give me the okay that we we maybe work on that for next year for the for that joint the federal is going to be different I'm going to be shooting for October you're only talking four but we'll probably only get two and then the staff from all of them okay yeah and commissioner Starkey I always think of the same thing we're going to have everybody here today too so yeah but I like this yeah this was a good way to do it though this allows the board to have a discussion Ed Hooper would not have been happy that his name was called out 42 times this is this is a great way to do it I like the setup I like the structure structural setup of everything I think was a great way to go about it so I think whether if if we can't do the delegation meeting like we wanted to with everybody in one room down here in Pasco yep I don't think there's anything wrong with just going up there and just picking the time to go up there up there as well so that's not a not a problem so when I was when I was driving here from Miami skills board meeting um Brad Yeager called me and I I said oh I'm on my way I'm almost there all set to where and I said to our legislative meeting and he said what meeting I said what had called me seven times he said that's why he said I just landed from Milwaukee it wasn't on my calendar and I said oh my goodness and I said well just get in your car you'll only be 45 minutes late and he said I'm in shorts and a t-shirts it doesn't matter it's better you're there than you're you know dressed appropriately too funny yeah I thought yeah then I found out it was just such a cool man yeah anyway so great setup if I can there is one that that has come through my office of policy matter that the Florida Association County attorneys is working on that has nothing to do with public records on Pace and I've emailed you on this when some of you have said this is okay this is their uh the fac is wanting the counties to go ahead and let us know that we support it so they could when we go to the meeting next month it'll help every County listed and this is the one that Senator Fasano you know has been fighting on I teed it up they've gotten an email I've heard from some of them but I haven't heard from all of you so if you agree then I will be sending an email to fac saying our County as well supports the legislation being proposed quick question if I could sure what is this our tax collectors I don't think about it he's definitely foreign brought this issue to you there was legis there was a court case in Leon County in which the Court ruled in a bond validation hearing that the pace providers because they were created by interlocal agreement were basically governmental entities and so they didn't have to honor any of the tax collectors interlocal agreements so there are multiple counties now that are

in litigation uh either the Florida Pace suing them or Pinellas and a couple of others have sued the pace providers um there was a bill that was introduced last session to reverse this court case it got through the Senate it's my recollection right and it got held up in the house and so it didn't pass Palm Beach County has said they'll push they'll be the legislation they're they're they're they're moving forward the legislation it's just they want all the counties that are affected so you know what I'm good with it yep so again some of the other Commissioners that aren't here today are good with it so if you're all good with it then I will be sending an email to fac Saint Pasco County to support that thank you very much sir yeah okay thank you sir thank you all right anything else no nothing all right well thank you all very much thanks for the staff of doing everything you did showing up and give us some great feedback and Mike for you and your team to coordinate this great job okay thank you thank you sir