03.07.2023 Pasco Board of County Commissioners Meeting (Morning Session)

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once in a while make up the last one good morning I would like to call to order the Pastoral County Board of County Commission 10 o'clock am meeting at March 7th 2023 at this time silence all electronic devices and mute your phones please rise for invocation and pledge thank you oh merciful Creator your hand is open wide to satisfy the needs of every living creature 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 ities Madam clerk please call the roll district one commissioner Oakley here District Two commissioner Weightman president District three commissioner Starkey here District Four commissioner Bradford here District Five chairman Mariano here now is the time for public comment citizens are given an opportunity to comment on any current or future agenda item coming before the board and on any other business under the board's purview today's public comment will be handled as follows first we'll take public comments from those who are here in person then we will take public comment from those who are pre-registered WebEx link and are currently on Queue we request that when you address the board comments are not directed personally against a commissioner or team member but rather directed at the issues this provides mutual respect between the board and members and the public after stating your name and address for the clerk a three-minute timer will be activated after two minutes a single beep will indicate that you have one minute left when your time is up two beeps will sound and you should close your comments WebEx participants will be disconnected automatically when their time is up Madam clerk do we have anyone signing for public comment Mr chair I have one person signed up in person I do not have anyone signed up on WebEx okay morning session I have Mr Dylan rich please state your name and address for the record and then you may proceed right bye thank you hello my name is Dylan rich I'm 29 years old I was born and raised in New Port Richey I'm here today to speak on the federal development of Enclave Beach growing up in Newport Richie like many other long-time residents of the area we would take frequent trips to Anclote Park fishing trips birthday parties family outings things you would typically see many other families enjoy and Club Beach on any given day now some years have passed and I've been given the wonderful opportunity to make new memories there with my own children and family to share with them the Peace of old Florida Preserve I was intended and foot Beach Park the coastal Park such as this is probably one of the few unique features that fossil accounting has left to offer one of the few things that separates itself

from the chaos of theme parks and cheap novelty souvenir shops I honestly can't say I'm surprised to hear of the interesting and close Progressive development however I am surprised to hear his approval and how little residents and have been made aware I was planning an approval I'm not against progress I'm against construction a project I'm preserved Parkland that will draw excessive traffic voting crowds noise and exhaust fumes the central anthocyst of Parkland the exceptions are made here where will the line be drawn what project will be next water slides and River Rapids at Green Key further development may not be the committee's agenda but it will be for the next lectures I'm not entered to think that my words will impact on any way a project of this size has already been decided upon and set in Motion One were vast amounts of money have already been allocated and spent I'm here to State my piece for my children and for the building quora that will see the value out in their future thank you for your time thank you and when no one else anyone else you have the public like to speak and there's no one on WebEx who will close public comment and that was a time for Resolutions Madam clerk would you please read the first resolution yes is anyone here for newspaper and education week thank you please step up to the podium I will go ahead and read the resolution resolution number 23-080 resolution by the board of County commissioners of Pasco County Florida declaring March 6 through March 10 2023 as newspaper and education week in Pasco County and commending the Tampa Bay times for its participation in this program whereas newspaper and education week is an initiative of the American Press Institute is an international program that encourages the use of daily newspaper as an instructional classroom tool and is celebrated annually during the First full school week in March and we're as a newspaper and education program encourages the use of daily newspaper as a living textbook for students from primary through adult education levels and Raz for more than half a century the Tampa Bay Times newspaper in education program has served Tampa Educators students and families by providing print and digital newspaper award-winning educational Pro Publications teacher guides lesson plans educator workshops and many more resources all at no cost schools teachers or families and res during the 2021-2022 school year newspaper and education serve 14 271 students at 37 schools in Pasco County and the Tampa Bay Times provided more than 10 million digital educational educations in classrooms across Tampa Bay and whereas newspaper and education serve 919 as teachers at 467 schools in Citrus Hernando Hillsboro Manatee Pasco and

Pinellas County's newspaper and education produced 15 original educational Publications three of which won national awards from the national newspaper Association and res more than 60 percent of people with high exposure to newspapers and childhood are regular readers of newspapers as adults according to a study conducted for the news media Alliance former newspaper Association of America Foundation that percentage is significantly is significant because statistically people who read the newspaper daily are more engaged citizens engaged citizens participate in their communities by voting and practicing good citizenship and now therefore be it resolved by the border County commissioners of Pasco County Florida that said board hereby declares March 6th through March 10 2023 as newspaper and education week in Pasco County and commends the Tampa Bay Times newspaper for its participation in this program Dennen resolved in regular session with a quorum present and voting the seventh day of March 2023. move approval second all in favor say aye aye aye commissioner good morning and uh here's a little piece of history that you may not know that um my husband is a great grandfather Williams drop was the founder of the times what is then the Saint Pete Times now the Tampa Bay times but he bought it uh from uh the Dunedin it was like the Dunedin evening weekly or something and moved it to Saint Pete and I know Trey's grandmother and her and his great-grandmother used to drive around and deliver it in the evenings when it started um but it you know it grew to a pretty big newspaper and they they sold it to the pointer Institute but if you open if you don't put the times you'll see William Straub of straw park there in the Masthead um and so uh it's kind of special for me so but we welcome you here and why don't you speak to us a little bit about this program good morning my name is Sue bedri I'm with the Tampa Bay Times newspaper and education program um I didn't know about that Family connection that's awesome then um we it is our pleasure and our honor at the times to provide class sets of the newspaper as well as other educational resources to schools we have done this since the mid-1970s and it's really important to us not just to create or help to create literate students but also students that are engaged in their communities and will grow up to be involved they volunteered they vote and maybe even they serve on the County Commission or a similar board so that that is our mission and our purpose and we are glad to continue it even in these tough times we still provide print newspapers twice a week to schools and we also give them free access to the digital Edition so thank you Mr chairman Commissioners we really appreciate your support you know times have changed because it used to be that when you were getting the print edition if you're going out of

town you know and I would stop my subscription you could say well donate that to the school district that when you instead of stopping it you donate something to the school district but you can't do I mean most people probably get it digitally now so you can still donate the value of your of your digital subscription to us when you go on vacation so please continue to do so all right well board members uh would you like to come down and be in the photo purpose okay folks right here please thank you thank you so much foreign resolution the second resolution is for the Irish American heritage month month is anyone here for that please step up to the podium no one's here just read the title only Okay resolution number 23-079 a resolution by the board of County Commissioners the Pasco County Florida proclaiming the month of March to be designated irish-american History Month in recognition of the long history of irish-american contributions to the state of Florida a little someone make a motion to approve so moved in a second all in favor say aye aye okay thank you next order this is a consent agenda I have two items listed to be pulled C6 and C30 are there any other items that need to be pulled at this time move we approved the rest of the atoms on consinogen second second all in favor say aye aye aye okay Andrew Baxter C6 morning board members Andrew Baxter Facilities Management director this is to uh correct a mathematical error that was on this uh this agenda item in the amount of one thousand thirty five dollars and fifty cents which was incorrectly reflected as the closing cost the closing cost is actually 593.50 and so the new fiscal impact section will now read 11 593.50 which includes the purchase price of eleven thousand dollars plus the closing costs of 593.50 with that correction recommend approval thank you have a motion some move got a motion a second all in favor say aye aye aye okay thank you and C30 good morning board members uh Panos concerts assistant Engineering Services director uh this item was pulled and revised because there were some uh edits uh markup changes edits that remained in the final document so we revised Pages 32 and 33 of the final agreement to remove those markups document we will program for the second all in favor say aye aye aye thank you very much again now to the regular agenda starting with R38 presentation only good morning the Pasco County budget director this morning we'd like to talk to you about our early thoughts on the economy for the upcoming year as well as the potential impact that might have

on revenues for the fiscal year 2024 budgeting process so we've all heard the horror stories out there there's going to be a recession there's not going to be a recession there's going to be an economic downturn there won't be an economic downturn one thing we know is with the exception of the wild swing in the economy at the beginning of the coven the economy has been growing at about two percent per quarter for the past 10 years we expect that Trend to continue for the near upcoming future and if there is a recession we believe that our area because of the growth in our region we are much more able to withstand the negative impacts of any recession more so than other areas of the economy there are two economic indicators we are keeping our eye on that we do believe will have an impact on the 2024 budget the first is the unemployment rate as you know the unemployment rate is at historic lows which is causing wages to rise so it's a simple supply and demand as the supply of labor goes down the demand of labor goes up the cost of that labor also goes up and you can see the impact on the economic or the employment cost index there it's been increasing uh every quarter since 2019. the second area that we're expecting to have an impact on the budget is inflation inflation is now 9.6 down from its high of over 10 percent a few months ago and has been declining the FED is taping steps to reduce the inflation and as the stimulus money moves through and out of the economy we expect this inflation to go down however it's not going to be down anywhere near where we want this so inflation for our purposes is primarily going to be impacting Health Care energy vehicles and as Andrew Baxter is painfully aware of construction so in a nutshell looking at the economy we are expecting the unemployment rate inflation to impact our costs our expenditures in 2024 one bright spot on the horizon is tourism is back to where it was prior to the pandemic and tourism is important to us because about 12 percent of our sales tax revenue comes from visitors to the county building activity remains strong and just for playing purposes we're expecting this to continue to increase in the short term in the long term as the FED increases interest rates to bring inflation down that is also going to impact the mortgage rates mortgage interest rates so in the long term that's going to bring down the number of people who are willing to buy a house so as we look at our permitting you can see we are at record highs in our building permits and for that reason we're expecting the 2024 taxable assessed values to be at or a little below where they were into 2023. as you can see in 2023 their taxable service

values increased by 16.7 percent we're just showing on the graph we expect it to increase anywhere between 12 and 16 percent so for planning purposes we've laid out three scenarios here we don't believe the eight percent scenario is a realistic scenario although we do have it there for your viewing pleasure but if we just look at the middle section there if the taxable assessed values increase by 12 percent that would yield an additional 35 and a half million dollars in property tax revenues of that 35 million dollars 40 percent of that or 14 million dollars would be the sheriff's allocation almost three quarters of a million would go to the County's community redevelopment agencies two and a quarter million dollars would go to our tax increment financing District which is the entire County and that's used to fund uh Transportation projects and when we do the math that would yield an additional almost 18.4 million dollars for the board to spend on important new initiatives so that would be money available to the board and any increases that constitutional officers may ask for if we go to the 16 percent if they were to increase 16 that would yield an additional 25 million dollars for the board so if we look at our other Revenue sources our half cent sales tax revenue is our largest revenue other than property tax revenue in the general fund as you can see here month over month increases is about five percent we expect that to continue and we are expecting a five to six percent increase in accent sales tax revenues in 2024. penny for Pasco which the county uses for environmental environmentally sensitive lands Transportation Public Safety and economic development again this is increased to 5.5 5.2 percent over last year and we're expecting that to continue in the five to six percent uh increase in 2024. you can see those humps those blips that happen every so often the reason for that is the state collects our internet sales tax and then they distribute that to us on a quarterly basis here we have Communication Service tax this is a 35 Cent uh fee on your on your phone bill every month and we use that to fund the 911 Center as you can see there's been a drastic reduction in that revenue between 2009 and today although in 2022 an estimate again in 2023 those Communication Service taxes are increasing at about two percent per year so we're projecting out in 2024 that that will be again another two percent increase keep in mind that in 20 2009 we've received almost six million dollars in this Communication Service tax revenue so we're making up that difference between the Six Million to 4 million we're making that up with general fund revenues local option fuel taxes as you know the first local option fuel tax is used to

repair existing roads second low cost you gas tax is used to add capacity to existing roads or to build New Roads as you can see there are increasing at about two percent per year and as more and more electric vehicles come online we're expecting that as well to sort of flatten out in the out years so as you saw we're expecting increase in our taxable assessed values which will result in an increase in property taxes we're seeing an increase in revenues in our accent sales tax and so on but at the same time we have additional revenues that we have to consider going into the into the 2024 budget so we have the jail expansion so that's expected to be completed next summer of 2024 and we're expecting that we will need upwards of 200 additional Corrections Officers to be able to safely manage that expanded space we're looking at a new fire station a new library we're looking at taking over rad Sports the Wiregrass sports complex and you can see all the other areas here that will be coming down the pike as additional expenditures for the 2024 budget so we are as you can see in 2023 new construction was a an all-time high was even higher than the 2008. we are expecting that to reduce to kind of the average we are not expecting this to stay at this very high level forever and we're certainly not expecting it to drop off like it did during the recession so don't anybody go out there and panic and sell your house today we are expecting it to go down to about the average soap staying at this level doesn't isn't really all that relevant for the for the near term for the long term and so in general the stimulus funding we've got the stimulus funding we don't see any more stimulus funding on the horizon we are entering the 24 budget year optimistic but we want to stay I want to stay uh agile in case there is a recession or something that comes up that we need to respond to we are expecting significant increase in taxable assessed values but we must ensure that that spending is it spent in a sustainable way so that when those taxable success values do come down that we're not then left with these high expenditures that we can't maintain in the future and so because of that we're recommending that we balance uh new recurring expenditures with a significant piece of this new money going to Capital spending which are one-time spending so if there is a downturn if there is something that comes up we can always pull back that that one-time spending and not spend that but it does allow us to address a lot of the capital spending that we haven't been able to meet in our Parks libraries and so on and our facilities and so with that here's our budget calendar the tax collector I'm sorry the property appraiser will be giving us a preliminary taxable assessed values on June 1st and the final by July 1st we will be back here on May 16th for a commission budget Workshop we will update you on the revenues where we are

with the revenues at that time we will talk about business plan initiatives which are mood spending which our department directors have recommended and we will also be asking you for kind of your ideas of where you'd like to see them spending in 2024. and with that that's all I have for you today I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have waiting thank you I appreciate the update I've shared this with staff Mr krabala and I think we'll have a discussion later later today with some of your team as we go into this new funding season I think it's important that this board remember his new school tax be coming online up to one mil we're going to be implementing potentially implementing the Rogue Paving him Stu it's another one the dredging msbu which the citizens want but that's still that's number three and then the potential and the conversation you know has been going around about a potential fire mstu so that's another one and then if there's conversation around you know the average normal increase of property tax increase of another three percent so I just want to go on record to say hey we've got a handful of different you know taxing abilities that could be coming down all it all at once and I just think it'd be mindful in in the roll out the timing and the setting of the rate depending on the direction that this board decides to go so there's things important that we understand kind of the bigger picture that you were talking about here Mr Bradford thank you Mr chair I concur with uh commissioner wave in all the different assets and all the different needs that we have the additional constraints and pressures that we're going to have on the budget he says it much more elegantly than I do but it is a choice some of these are a choice that's us up here making those choices and that's what we were elected to do and I'm sure collectively as a board we will make the right choices thank you Mr Oakley as you look at the new year coming on and looking at the budget um I had first thought the values of Home are going to come down a little bit but then I understand it's it's at best pretty flat from same thing we had last year basically but along with that you have more and more expenses with the inflation so things have to be done that you can't keep kids can can down the road and you have to take choices in doing those things the things like the the fire MSU and also the uh our parks and things of that nature and and also the canals the Canal's been sitting there for years and years and no one's done anything about it and now we've going to set up a MSU to take care of those issues not just

for now but for now to continue that along in maintenance personally I think they should have been done a long time ago it would have already been in our budget so that's something we should have taken care of but you can't you can't cut back millage and you can't stop one day you're going to have value start turning the other way and those extra tax monies that you get in from citizens on their value of their property going up will be used now but as it turns South and goes goes down you're going to be trimming that budget quite a bit to be able to you know provide for those different projects you want to do so uh there's a day coming that that won't always be values like we've had in the last last few years but it can change and go the other way just as well and if you change your military you change uh the ability to ever get that back and you don't need to lose that that Revenue to keep your county going we're going to be a premier County we we've got a lot of things happening in our County to be Premiere but it costs money to be premiered so but we're on the right track we've got a lot of fire stations coming on board that we didn't have before and and several of these things the citizens of Pasco County stood up and voted for and that's why they're on our budget right now for those Bond issues that we put out I think it was in 18 so those those some of those fire stations are just now we did the groundbreaking on fire station three yesterday over in Hudson and Jax area and going to be a great addition it's going to cut down those things that citizens been asking for when they reach out and say we need help we can't get service from our fire departments because it takes 30 minutes to get here with that one yesterday was in the infield in between stations that are going to cut that down to five and ten minutes so we're doing the right thing for our citizens and I think they appreciate it and I know they appreciate it on those five Bond issues that we had back in 18 because they voted it in themselves without us having to vote it in we would have this board would have done that back then but we were so proud of our citizens they stand up and and realize they want these things and we have to have some way to pay for it that's how this Bond issues got on there but I think things are going the right order and we'll we'll pay special attention to those things coming during this budget cycle to make sure we do the right thing yes so I actually asked staff to prepare some charts for you all especially for our new Commissioners who may not know the history of our millage rates and and things that happened to us in the past so I don't know if you're able to put that up um but there was a time under the Gallagher regime and when things in the last big boom when our when our millage

rate was really high and um and I this starts at 2004. I'd be kind of interested to see what it was even before 2004 but um our marriage rate was at 8.6 and value started increasing um and and so the County Commission rolled back the military and and back in 2004 um you know we didn't have a lot of businesses it was mostly um our government was funded by residential property values and and things have changed but we're doing a lot better now we're still not where we want to be I think but you'll see um you'll see that the County Commission rolled the military back from 8.64 to 5.4 is that coming up and and I and I get that that they were being responsible stewards of the taxpayers money but they here it is there were a few things that we didn't do then that we do now and that's forecasting Capital needs like a new um new buildings you know growth preparing for growth even with their own County government and our constitutional officers needs and they didn't put any money aside and then but our our government was very responsive here but others around the state did not roll back their millage and people got angry and they put the fourth the save our homes and the three percent cap and Pasco County got caught at that 5.4 valuation or taxable military or the millage rate uh and and we killed our our libraries and our Parks because our budget got hammered and we are still recovering from that I would tell you today um and it's one of the reasons why when we say we we are so low in comparison to other counties is because we went all the way down to 5.4 and then our ability to to uh raise that raise our budget was hampered so so we are now at 7.6 and we we have not raised taxes since 2016. we have been flat and doing doing the same nodes rate ever since then but we are growing like crazy and um I want to show you another chart that I had to make that shows us compared to our neighbors and I hear this all the time that's why people move to our county is because we are we are an inexpensive place to live compared to others in the area so um can I have one of you guys explain this better than me so this is the value of one mill comparatively to the other other areas around us absolutely as you can see the different counties in our area the blue would be the village that for the general fund and then the orange or whatever that color is would be the other millages so for us it would be the fire msdu and the general obligation box some of the others such as Hillsborough Pinellas they have an EMS millage but there's different Villages that they have so you can see how our millage Stacks up to the others the comparison that's interesting here is that that red line shows the value of one mil so in Pasco County for example one mil is equal to

about looks there to be about 30 million dollars whereas in Hillsboro it's equal to 140 million dollars and the reason for that Gap is because properties in Hillsboro are valued at a much higher rate than they are in Pasco so we'd have to have a higher military to generate the same amount of money as they do in these other jurisdictions yeah and so other things that as we discuss our budget going forward to think about is is what comes out of our general fund and I wrote it in a highlight so it's hard for me to read it I'm gonna try it's our libraries are parks the monies uh some of the monies that we use to combat homelessness um the jail rescue so we have a fire mstu but rescue comes out of the general fund that's our ambulances right um the sheriff uh the Constitutional officers come out of our general fund um our tip is somewhat reliable reliant on our general fund so that's you know helping fund Transportation improvements around the county and well I can't re I can't oh the cras so the cities use um that money you know to do the improvements within within their cities so you know I think we need to be be careful um because I I'm going to guess that most of our constitutionals are going to need some more money this year and so uh I just wanted to lay that out there for for for all of us thank you Mr Turkey um and I'll say it's I was here on 041 when it started when your chart starts there and at the the emotion at the time was for everybody to cut the taxes wherever you can stay officially conservative that's what we're trying to do every step of the way it was tough to foresee that when the downturn would happen that all of a sudden would be kept yeah from the state and other restraints were on there and all of a sudden we couldn't respond back to where our citizens would probably have said look go ahead and raise it up and put yourself in position to uh plan for the future and I'll say from that point this the previous boards looked at to say okay let's go start building up our reserves and we got them up to 16.7 percent and if you think about the logic to that if we have a hurricane Ian that comes here one of those comes in you've been have reserves in place and I think financially we're in great shape for that at this point but at this time I think it's time to also be cautious that if there is a another downturn I mean Florida's going to be straight people people strong people are still wanting to come to Florida in big droves but if there's a big collapse up in the Northeast all those people that are bringing down and paying money and cash for these

places they're buying right now because it's not their people financing and buying right now it's people have cash and if things drop up there and that that that's going to affect us big time uh I will say Consuelos here with tourism and the tourism has done a good job working on the local market the Florida Market to make sure they come so if people can't afford to travel far away they still may come here in terms of it could still be going on establishing themselves the ranch project is something that's good the hockey rinks are good Sunwest is great so you've got reasons for people to come here and take the day trips to keep spending money when you look at the cost of food meals I mean look at what it costs you to go to eat now we're going to tell you about your grocery bill now you see those increases they're not five percent ten fifteen percent whatever the number really is um I mean even it states here at 9.6 percent um I do want to say a couple of things as far as the jail coming on that's going to be a big expense and right now the allocation used to be I don't know what the allocation used to be for the jail but now we're only allocating 10 percent of the sheriff's previous budget to that that number there is now going to go from yeah yeah another thousand beds coming in that's a big big expense coming up now I do want to say that with the sheriff's office in the past six years we have given him as we saw a picture of the growth money that was coming in here um and I want to say as far as the ranking goes per capita I had Bob kind of run the numbers population rank where 11th in funding the sheriff cost per capita rank we're only 16. we're not that far out of the range so I think we're in pretty good shape as far as continue long does to support the sheriff as we want to but it's this budget from the the jail goes up much higher to numbers and I think Bob you're seeing numbers that may be kind of a little scary how your costs are going to go for things you've got to go buy right now that you've got to be a little conservative here where we're going to go um I think we all heard and and I know commissioner Bradford and Weightman just being on the campaign Trail you heard a lot about the fire service team and what's going on and I will tell you it's so great to have all these ribbon cuttings grand openings with all the great things we're doing to protect our firefighters to serve so they can serve our people better I think we're doing some great things there um the ambulance is coming in place so we're doing a lot of good things um some other changes coming up and you you've seen it with Swift Mud uh Swift Mud has changed they don't want to do these local projects anymore for stormwater we've got some projects right now matter of fact on the agenda I don't

think we had five items to see Pines phase three is still not funded yet we've got to figure out how to take care of that I'm going to be saying I think we should take a close look at that at store my Ram is to you go look at what Swift Mud cut back and we can deal with our own internally and let's go figure out what the difference would be to our citizens and maybe we need to increase it to kind of get it to where we can keep our projects going on uh it's so much better when you go to Jasmine lakes and Timber Oaks that aren't flooding out all the time down in Trinity the improvements were made down there people don't want to get flooded out we want to make sure we can protect these people all the gold bonds that went through that was how citizens telling us they want more services and I think can people come from the Northeast they don't want just a Slimline County government they want someone who's going to provide services like they're used to they voted on it they told us they wanted to do it the paving assessment members do I think is going to be a phenomenal thing um and and I think just we can always keep it to the higher level if you're going to cut later on later on is the time to cut but let's go through the process and just kind of keep the millage where it's at and keep on rolling Mr Stark and I read today and I've been hearing this that the legislature is looking at going uh with the save our homes Captain three percent to two percent um so that's something else that we need to think of up you know I I think we're all uh conservative thinkers up here and um uh and it's you know only once in my life that I really vote to raise the tax and that was when we were losing our deputies to Hillsborough County and City of Tampa and and you know sometimes you just have to really analyze the numbers and it was cheaper for us to raise the millage and pay for increased salaries than to train deputies for three years and ship them off to another municipality so you know we just had to bite the bullet and do it um but you know I I'm sure you guys are getting hammered by the people who are citizens who need more playing fields and that is General Revenue money and we're still years away years away from catching up on where we should be with Playing Fields compared to our population growth sure I just want to add something to what you said about the uh the jail the new proportion the jail for a thousand beds I think we're only going to get somewhere around 600 beds out of the money that we put aside for that bond issue because of the inflation was so high at the time we couldn't finish that out to to a thousand beds so we're still shorter beds in the future that we're going to have to prepare to take on and take you know build that out to

have a thousand beds so just and our population is growing in the Geo population will grow the same way so and I think the people they look at you know part of the go bonds with parks and libraries literally we had to cut it 30 back when the economy dropped 30 percent uh we put Park fees in place with commissioner Starkey didn't want Amy arguing about those fees anymore for a long time but wait and I understand what the board was doing but I didn't like him still wouldn't have done it again but anyway that's the type of battle that was going on because you didn't have the funding you had to take care of your core Services first the safety first and then everything else you could go do and that's where it fell I don't want to push in that situation again and I think our people clearly said look we want you not only to get Services back to where they were but they're willing to back it up with the funding to go forward with it so it's an opportunity where it's a different game from what it was I'll say 18 years ago people want the services I think they like what the board's doing yeah and I think we should continue on providing services that they're asking us for we're not just raising taxes we're giving them the service they want yeah well we have ways to go still on the budget yes ma'am I will say um we used to do this a lot later in the year um and uh when I went through the advanced Commissioner of classes with fact we had the opportunity to go through the budgeting process with Leon County and um it was such an eye-opening process because we we would be fighting about things in September you know I don't know if you remember yeah it was very contentious and I mean the summer was stressful and so um this was Michelle Baker was our County Administrator at the time and we um put and you weren't here I don't think no and so we we had um some conference calls with the team in Leon County in um our staff and Michelle worked with Leon County staff and we adopted their budget process so we we now start much earlier than um than we used to and I mean it's nothing like what it used to be in September in August when we were all still fighting over everything in the budget and I I always tell other countries you look and see what Leon County did and you know we adopted that so we started so much earlier and it's so much better for all of us well it's a large it's a large budget to go through yeah some of our departments their budgets and their departments are larger than budgets for some cities around so but they're very large process to put all that together and starting early nothing wrong with starting early and yeah getting it done yeah and you know we we do need we always tweak it near the end because we don't know where that final number is going to be when we get those numbers um you know towards the end and we we know what we pretty have a pretty good

idea of what we can add and it's like a little gift at the end kind of for some departments not everybody but I really like the way we do it and I appreciate appreciative of our staff yeah we're starting so early is a much more professional approach um it's very calm compared to what it was as you say years ago yeah and I want to say just one thing I meant to touch on as far as the budget goes keep in mind we just did a pay study went through a look at our employees because if you don't have good employees you don't get things done anyway so we've gone through that and we've raised the pay I mean we had stormwater utility people were making not not a lot of money and now they're being compensated for the job they do and I'll tell you when you can take your internal people and grow them and let them go that money gets spent right back in your economy so it's all going to be right here absolutely thank you Bobby team's doing a great job thank you thank you more code officers more code officers yeah so so I I would I would like to publicly thank Bob can I get on that one yes yes yes yes so I would I would like to publicly thank Mr chair if I could Bob Bob and his team for a phenomenal job yes as you point out commissioner Starkey uh this this team has been working on the budget since December all right so these these things have been going forward and I think we appreciate the opportunity to have the revenue forecast discussion with all of you to kind of get your thoughts and and input as we we take all that into account as we build the budget build a responsible budget that provides the services that our citizens want um and and do it in an affordable way you know that that's not lost on us and so we'll continue I think I'll get to see some of the first rounds of these budgets in April and then we'll be coming back to the board in May with a little more detailed discussion on what those expense items look like yes there's a lot of demand for a lot of different things and so we'll we'll be looking to the board too for some guidance on on how to finalize craft that into into something that's going to work for our citizens I would also like to add too that Bob and his team we're looking forward to and trying to leverage grants and other outside funding sources too to leverage our taxpayers dollars that's something that we we really need to focus strongly on and that we intend to in the coming years to bring home more more of our taxpayer dollars that get spent in other places to bring them back to Pasco County to leverage that so okay commissioner well commissary um since you brought it up mister about coding for it I find it and I guess this question is Mr steinsteiner's just a question to see but it seems like code enforcement sometimes is their hands are tied because they can't go on the property to

verify if someone's doing the right thing for a conditional use whatever can't you can't actually check it can't go on the property or make any checks like that why is that is something in the law ordinance we need to change or well it's more difficult Mr chairman yes sir commissioner Oakley it's more difficult when you're dealing with residential uses um but the legislature has also made it more difficult not taking Anonymous complaints that but anything that that the code officers can you visually they can enforce problem is if it's behind a fence behind the wall there you go that's the issue that's you know there we would have to get administrative warrants and then you'd have to have probable cause to get back in to do those inspections it was too late what's up that's number blocks all right so let me let me follow that commissioner uh County attorney on a special exception can we change the laws of the rules to like put in inspections is it so special exceptions or would like would be diff a different situation those things which we are enforcing General approvals that we've given I think there are Well we'd have to deal with those on a case-by-case basis but yes right when somebody applies for a permit they open themselves up for inspection the continuance of a use that is a privilege would also I believe give us the same rights if it's a permitted use maybe maybe not I mean we'd have to go over the particular uses that you're that you're having concern with and and figure out okay what it is we're doing okay you're strugging well on that same line and then I'm gonna say what I was gonna say before um I I actually was talking with one of our legislators yesterday at the fire station ribbon cutting that seems to me our hands are are tied on some code enforcement action where we don't really want them to be especially when we have people squatting uh on on land that they shouldn't be and so um in talking with our legislator uh he said bring me ideas and suggestions so we wanted to meet and plan to meet with our attorney's office and see if in our code enforcement people and staff and see if there's any ideas that may be legislatively let us legislatively we can do that help um take care of these problems because it's just not it's just not fair to the community when you know we have people living in places that they shouldn't there's syringes and everything there and there's nothing we can do and they contaminate our wells and I mean I just we just need more tools and sometimes maybe some tweaks in the law will give us some more opportunity to make sure we're out of the Safe Community um

did you want to comment on that same line because I'm going to turn to a different direction you go right ahead uh well this will only be a 30-second commercial but uh in Korean uh I just want to say again that as we're talking about mstus I've been asking and asking and advocating for a parks mstu and the reason why I feel strongly about it is because we are so far behind Bexley needs their Little League field we complex we actually have a Starkey Little League um I don't know District now and they have no field to play so so it's the first new little league since I moved here 30 something years ago we always played out at on Pine Hill but now we have a whole new one and they have no Fields so uh I know we're talking about raising the impact fees but that is not money that you can Bond and that's going to take a while to build up so that we have Capital money to go build some more parks but in mstu we can Bond and I'm not saying it should be a big number I think it should be you know 25 or something like that but it it gets some money in the hopper quickly and we can Bond it and go build some soccer fields and baseball fields because we are way behind I think that's more than 30 seconds we got another resolutions Mr don't we have another item I just thought you make a comment I'm always going to fight for my district like everybody else does and I completely understand uh building a Aquatic Center uh on the west side for for our kids to learn how to swim because drowning is the number one cause of death uh I understand I live in Bexley so I understand that issue there in my particular District the the the parks are so old and then the one on Little Road Mitchell Park but it's a nice park it's a beautiful piece of property but when it rains you need a canoe yeah so it's not really a park half the time so um I just share that with to keep it on the radar screen and I and I appreciate you keeping that in mind thank you that Mitchell Park is a big thing we've talked about for a long time um and I think between the opportunities that Newport Corners Magnolia Valley and there there's a one of our budget requests this year is to actually go and find that to go through to raise those those fields up and I think all that together and again I think I mentioned maybe last month that we need to go study Magnolia Valley Newport corners and find out what's the best next move to make right anything else in the budget okay so that takes the regular items and now we get to go to committee reports commissioner Oprah okay got a lot going on this past week I don't have any I didn't bring any pictures or give them any pictures to show but on Friday March 3rd we had the anniversary 50th Anniversary cares game of

Celebration over in Spartan Manor very well attended a great great night for celebrating cares and what they do and we got to really appreciate all the the work they do and volunteers are part of that from year after year but 50 years is a long time so I spent 51 years in my regular business and they've been in business of theirs is 50 years and so that's a long time a lot of people involved a lot of volunteers a lot of caseworkers and social workers all dealing with with our elderly and our seniors so I'm kind of a special feeling for seniors now so I said when I spoke I wanted I wanted to say this but I didn't but I'll say it today because Miss starkey's present but I was going to say I'm the I'm sitting on the border County Commissioners and I'm I'm the only senior and I think I'm the only veteran but I wasn't sure if Miss Starkey went to boot camp or not in the military not a veteran being a veteran I no I lived on military bases but well I'm just joking never was a paid member yeah uh the next item was on Saturday I went to the 112th annual Founders Day celebration parade in Zephyr Hills wrote in a 19 43 army vehicle that actually was used by the French during the war so but I was in that vehicle while we rode through so two ancient piece of equipment going together but I tell them myself also yesterday we broke ground and I'm not going to say a whole lot about this because this is in commissioner Mariano's District the fire station three that we broke around on yesterday on 52 Majestic Boulevard um I'll leave a lot more of that for you to say but it was one of those infill stations that cut that time of 20 and 30 minutes for service out into the public to five and ten minutes which is very well needed and great great needs that we have in the county and so we're really it seems like every time I'm turning around two or three weeks we're putting another either we're cutting a ribbon for a station or we're digging ground for a station so it's good but a lot of good things I got another one coming up soon it's going to be down in Zephyr Hills so yep that's all I have all right thank you commissioner wheatman good thank you first uh first up just want to wish our legislative delegation all the best of Tallahassee and thank them for all they've done for us to date and uh say that I think we can collect we say we're here to support them to support us and excited to work with them uh through this upcoming session uh next I think we have some pictures don't we I have pictures for royal commissioner Oakley here celebrate commissioner appointed as chairman or voted as chairman at Tampa Bay water so uh we need to have some strong Pasco rep representation on the

board and want to congratulate commissioner Cleon being our chairman for the second year and then earlier last week went and visited Swift Mud and uh got an award for representing Pasco over the last three years and watched Dusty roll and get sworn in as pasco's new representative and uh wish him all the best and excited to work with him uh the upcoming years that he represents us next so I want to thank John Tillman and his company certified services so they they've adopted a couple of Roads across Old Pasco and Wesley Chapel Boulevard and he and his team a couple days ago for American cleanup the Great American cleanup picked up over a thousand pounds of garbage and uh they cleaned up it was over 30 bags and they absorbed all the costs and his air and started cleaning up and sent us a bunch of pictures of what was going on abandoned you know homeless camps so I wanted to share this you know the good work that certified services and John does for our community but also reinforce the fact that you know we need to continue to fight these the trespassers and the littering and uh you know keep keep Vigilant and figure out a way to combat this this problem um and again just grateful to John and his team for cleaning that up for us and I can see that the landscape's missing on the left side of that photo um commissioner uh what does certified services do they do a series so John they do a series of like maintenance for different industrial facilities so kind of uh from from cleaning maintenance painting buffering John does you know they I think they did business with Amazon warehouses and so they come in and they they provide not exactly janitorial services but high level cleaning and maintenance services seemingly for the business of John's listening I'm sure he'll call and correct me but uh he's gotta you know seemingly growing business and okay uh do good for for our community next uh visited Pasco County up daycare we're waiting for them so I don't know if if we all got invitations but we all got I got an invitation to go tour with Patrick mosquito control district and uh so they reached out and uh kind of looking to have a renewed partnership scene with the county and we talked about coating grass because they have the people and they're out in the out in the world and to try to come to a collaborative effort or try to find some synergies on how we can work well together to combat some of the environmental issues that we see out there so they invited us out and took a tour and they have their third annual open house I told you might share these flyers at their office off Marathon road and so I said I'd share these flyers with everybody if folks were interested mosquito control district and then today big care Wesley Chapel is officially open uh so we took a final

final walk through a couple weeks ago and met a lot of their team and they're they're ready to rock and roll today you can see their test dummy behind Andy the skeleton hopefully that's not a sign of things to come there but I saw it out of my peripheral and I kind of jumped as we were walking through it startled me and it's just kind of been a running joke so congratulations to BayCare we're excited to have him and uh best of luck to Becky and her team as they they take care of the folks of Pasco County and that's it okay thank you commissioner Starkey um yeah so if you're following some of the items that are a big news in the legislature this year um and I'm so excited about it uh Senate President pasadomo has really taken up Trails as trails and uh the uh Workforce housing as her two big issues and um and I think her counterpart in the house is right along there with her so I'm very excited to see the bill moving forward with the Florida Wildlife corridor and the double double investment in Sun Trail network of what's the Coast to Coast Trail is a part of and I follow when I do go on Facebook which isn't very often um I go I do have the coast to coast Facebook page and one of the biggest complaints I see on it is the lack of signage so this is kind of a shout out to our staff back when I was chair of the tourism Council one of the things we talked about was signage and wayfinding along our Trails so that we can alert people who come to our County to ride our Trails where businesses are nearby and you'll see this all over the country all over the world on Trails where you they have way funding signs to tell you what's nearby so I just want to make sure we put that on our our plans to um to add sinus to the trail and to help businesses around um get some you know exposure uh it's it is the County's responsibility to do the signage in each County though there is a Coast-to-Coast logo but each county is responsible um then uh let's see um I don't know if you also saw the bill that's worked its way through that combines heart with PSTA to Transit agencies I personally think it's a good idea but you know we're not involved in that but uh might make it easier as we work look to do a regional transit plan that there's two agencies and maybe one day there'll be one for the whole region uh Transit Agency working on solving that problem um it came to my attention that Swift Mud is taking out the bridge over the anklet River in the Starkey Wilderness Park and I want to begin talks with mud and maybe our our County about replacing that bridge I don't think we need to have a great big heavy beautiful wooden bridge that used to be there for a long time but we do need some kind of access for hikers and cyclists to get from one side

of the park to the other and so we we need to get that discussion going um glad to hear you talked about Coke and grass because as I drove along the new 52 it's all over the place and frankly I saw it all over uh in the entrance feature along 52 of um murata so I called kartik and let them know that they have sculpted into their beautiful entrance feature cocon grass and I am sure they are bringing it in from someone who has cleared their property for development and so we've we've really got to move on that before we make it just so expensive that it would be hard hard to tackle but they're they're gonna try and jump on that so I think that's uh oh no I have some lovely pictures for you in my district in Holiday we wanted to show it to you um this is one of our my residents you win uh yes yes we have been dealing with this for a year uh can you show the other picture so you really get idea of how they've expanded onto our road wow so but how nicely they put a little warning cone to not hit their stuff um out on the road uh so of course my residents are not happy about this and um we are so this the person that lives here has mental illness obviously he while he has lots of possessions he doesn't like to wear any of them so he's frequently outside in his birthday suit um and I have a question for a county attorney uh and we are working with the judge um on whether he's going to be cited criminally or civilly because he was cited and he didn't do anything so now we have to go to the next step it's tough when you ask someone with mental illness but uh if this stuff is in the street what what can we do with that if it's within our right away the Public Works can take it yeah we can just so we own everything from the light pole to the left and we can go get that yes if it's blocking the right of way we can I think we should be dispatching a grappling truck out there immediately and I asked can the health department get involved in this because that's surely has rodents in it so I did reach out to the health department and there's some collaboration efforts and we've already talked with Public Works about this particular matter so it sure would be better if we could get a handle on these things before they get to this stage but we've been we've been dealing with this for a year and and it's just mind-boggling that when I saw this picture I'm driving it tomorrow I I couldn't believe it um because I this is uh just south of Mile Stretch um in holiday so I wanted to share that

with you yours thank you Bishop commissioner Bradford thank you Mr chair first of all congratulations to the various Awards and appointments that my fellow board members got uh I think it's absolutely wonderful the bigger footprint that we have because uh out of town a significant part of last week so I missed several events uh the one I really did not want to miss was the ground cutting ceremony of the new Fire Station however I gave my word to a group of people and I always keep my word and it was about dogs cats food delivering thousands of pounds of food that we collected through rotaries at a Toyota dealership and a Honda dealership and we were able to uh there we go that's at the uh Taylor's leadership there's a guy on the right you might know some of our staff members my lovely wife's next to me there's me and my new Marine Corps haircut which I was not in the Marines so all the players we loaded up there the next picture so uh there's our staff on the uh on the left volunteers on the right uh some PR people from Toyota very exciting by the way it's uh forty six thousand dollars for that two and a forerunner and then we shifted down to the Honda dealership that's the uh general manager of Honda and uh thanked him for his service collecting more so it's in the back it's on the side uh shout out to Honda is uh or my daughters bought a car there so I started out with that that kind of maybe helped but uh so they picked up all the food yesterday and our code enforce or our Animal Control uh animal support services or be delivering that throughout the county for uh neighborhoods and and people who just can't afford to feed their pets and if they can't feed their pets and they turn them into the shelters it puts a burden on us and generally you know sooner or later if they're not adopted out you know what happens so that was my uh that was my commitment so I I appreciate the uh I appreciate everybody stepping up to the plate thank you good job um another item um I've been here six years and I've been working on permitting issues and things to go through our permitting Department raise your text and for six years I've heard from many many people that they would no longer do business in Pasco County because they can't get a permit through our department now I know there's issues that some people when they do their pre-ap they've come back and start doing their projects and there's some information sometimes it doesn't get too

um our people the staff some somehow through the Acela system the comment's been sent back and we're right there in the setup they can't get them out of there so I always hear how long it takes to get a permit it's just continuously and I'm just tired of it I think it's time we need to really do something in that department to straighten it up because it hadn't changed I've been here six years working hard I have even a quarterly meeting with the group so people can come in contractors come in and work out their issues here at the courthouse to try to get their permits moving smoothly and don't get me wrong some of them are the citizens that don't put the right information in or don't give us all the information I'd hear that but something's wrong with with when they first have their preamp meeting for any small or large whatever it is that they're putting them for preamp meeting we're not informing them or giving them the right guidelines to get through the system because many times they'll come back oh well I've been waiting three months well they've either put their information in and staff is not picking it up or they've come up with these ideas that uh they just don't get the right information or they get more information after they put their information in so it's just continuous and I I'm just tired of of dealing with it the calls that we get I think y'all get the same kind of calls I get continuously we need to have some changes so it's it's got to happen can't go any longer I've been here six years with it I don't want to go another two three years or six more years with that so I want it correctly Pasco County is going to be a premier County it's got to deal whether it's public and and make sure they get the right information in and if we're not doing a good job preamp I guess that's part of our fault that we're not getting it right but somebody's got to give them the right information and of course we've got to receive one issue was was stamps waiting on comments and they're here they've been put in through the seller from the public side and nobody and staff can read it or see it don't know where it's at and goes on for three months like that but that's just one example but there's many examples just like that all over our County it just needs to stop so I don't know what we have to do but we need to do something uh commissioner Whitman thank you yeah I have Echo commissioner hopefully up I have a problem brought it Forward yet Mr cavallin team but I'm compiling a workable file folder of examples of what commissioner Oakley's describing in steps within the process where they seem to be failing real life examples not just constructive criticism that the public shares with us so

definitely second commissioner Oakley and before we adjourn commissioner Starkey didn't mention it but it's important you know she works very hard for us at the association of the counties and want to recognize her for being appointed to the board of directors and representing Pasco at a national level so they work very hard to get there and very passionate about the organization and I just think it's important that everybody know that you've climbed the ladder I'm not sure it was a good idea but uh so I thought you're going to talk about primary a little bit Yeah well I just figured uh and commissioner O'Day I share your sentiments my assistant Sonia she takes care of my calendar and they try to ever take care of permanent issues it is such a burden to follow up over and over with these projects that are going on for different reasons coming in where we end up spending a lot of our time on following issues like that and it should be right to understand and and and the use of time and money for the for what they do and I'm going to bring up something to my my items about a license and maintenance agreement that it had to take 40 hours of Staff time over a simple piece of land that a community had been taken care of for many many years and they wanted to change the Landscaping on it and they're going to charge you twelve hundred dollars matter of fact go hold it Mike's got a check of his pocket now for 1200 because I didn't want them not to pay any money to get this result but I'll be bringing that up but uh I've got a lot of faith that Mike is going to jump in and he's already started some changes but it's something that is near and dear to I think myself and I know commissioner Stark have been dealing with them as well to get people through the process uh I don't know if it takes more people in the office to greet people maybe we need someone to actually take an application that comes in to get these pre-app meeting because it certainly as soon as you slowing things down get a person to take the application let's go take a look at it and let that person then walk it through and set up some type of new system but continually the things that are going on um I give an example I was going to talk about later on there's a lynx mpud that's coming in I looked at the data to what's submitted to the conditions of making it a full submittal and six months later they still haven't made a decision that you have to go through the full submitted yet and I'll I'll talk about that in the mind but I think definitely we definitely need some action yeah I I have a constituent and I just sent some information to Sally and forgot to do it yesterday I've been trying to get his Co since October uh he is a pharmacy who is a task with I think it's Baker and he's got a lot of patients who need his

prescriptions and um now granted I think he he moved into a building that wasn't suited for what he's doing but I think he's worked real hard to comply with everything and um that's been since October so I'm hoping that we could see what's going on there and I'm going to look at his timeline but it just takes too long I mean it's too long um I was gonna I wanted to add something um that I forgot and that is on uh on the 20th of March you know when we did our International Trade Day um we had already invited the police Folks up for that date in February but we realized we just didn't have all our ducks in a row but they already had their tickets to come so we went ahead and did our Proclamation and you know did our showed them around but we are going to have our big event uh at the barn at Starkey Market on March 20th and they'll be the businesses in Pasco County that deal with International Trade their tourism will be there and um and our commissioners are all invited you'll get an invitation in some of the administration there to come to the event we will be having an auction a live auction and the proceeds will go to not a live auction uh there's be a couple baskets that the rotary the rotaries are donating I'm donating one and there's one on one um yes silent auction I bet the money will go towards building a a uh a kitty for our students in Pasco County who want to participate in the international program you know we have uh we have one with Germany where they send us students and we are supposed to send students back but historically we didn't have the funds to send our students over and they need a little help and the only one I am aware of right now is the one in Germany but if anyone knows any others let us know but that this will be run through the I think it's the Newport Richie rotary because they they have a some kind of international program so that's where the the money will end up but it will go to help our students be involved in international events so I hope that you might consider companies and you'll get an invitation okay it used to be that there was uh some staff over here he developments on the east side they could come in and talk to them especially people like Denise and so I've been asked and maybe you guys have too if someone could please come back here um and that could be that opportunity for people who want to talk about issues that they're having over here and not have to drive all the way over so I talked to Denise and she said she would be willing um to like on the days that they have mpos over here or meetings here that it doesn't matter they won't come because the fact of it is quarterly ever since

I've been a commissioner I've had a quarterly meeting with Business Services uh Sally's been here Esther's been here one inspector one or two of the inspectors we've had them here and we have solved some issues but nobody comes but then they're the first ones to pick the phone up tell us how bad things are so I mean it's just a never-ending cycle unless we change the way we do things on the intro of a new project and how they can get their permits done something just to be better to be easier for our people to be able to do their projects or get them started on permitting because I mean it just continues well Denise was willing to come up you know a little earlier and have open time for people that had issues one of the things I was hearing was driving we have a whole afternoon huh we have a whole afternoon accordingly right here in this building right here and that's zoning but I think what the commissioner is referring to here is an opportunity for Denise to provide additional customer service to folks and to be available I think yeah we'll be referring to is a meeting with with development services that obviously is not bearing the fruit that you you think it needs to see and she is one of the first people I call about any zoning issue you know where they are we'll hire them and as we were talking about grants and working on the budget uh one of the things that the administrator has talked about I just want to reiterate it is that and what other counties do is they have a Grants Department and I talked about with one of your staff members today it's a Grants Department and a grant fulfillment within that department so that will be a budget head um in some form or fashion but I think the return on investment on that will be significant don't we have that already nope I mean we have rant Riders I mean we're we're looking at realigning how we do that how we do that business to provide more Focus I guess would be that would be the right term to make sure that we're aligned with goals objectives of the overall County and making sure that we're pushing forward on those things I I saw they make all their stuff and uh and they need skilled labor over there so we're gonna hook them up okay all right County Administrator thank you Mr chair just a couple of quick things first I would like to recognize Troy Lampson of our Lead Animal Care Tech who actually received a lifetime achievement award at this year's Florida Animal Control Association conference so congrats to Troy that's that's fantastic and also out at our Parks five of our beaches now in West Pasco now feature Moby mats which help people with difficulty walking actually get out and to be able to enjoy the beaches so I think that that's uh that's a positive thing

um I I was prepared to talk a little bit about Leisure Beach if you want certainly so you know it came to our attention that we had some we've had some Civic associations that want to beautify their community and these these communities are located within their rights of way within County owned rights of way and as such whenever there's work done within a County right of way we require right-of-way use permit if there's certain improvements then we we want license and maintenance agreements as well because you know we need to make sure that everything liability is taken care of and that you know if folks are coming in to plant things we want to make sure that site triangles and all the technical things are taken care of in the past I think there were some different ways of doing things but when we when we went forward with a new fee schedule and adopted a new fee schedule there was about a thousand dollars I think or even twelve hundred dollars for a right-of-way use permit license and maintenance agreements that came with that and so that turned into appearing to be a little bit of a hindrance for a lot of these what I would call legitimate Civic associations and HOAs wanting to do the right thing and beautify their community and so what really two things that I would I would ask the board for today is we had a very specific instance with with Leisure Beach Community that I would ask that you wave waive the fees for the license and maintenance agreement and and right-of-way costs um because they were doing the right thing but to also have us come back and amend the fee schedule for right-of-way use permits to essentially not charge or minimally charge whatever maybe there may be some basic intake in administrative costs that would be lower but to be able to handle that for the Civic associations and neighborhood groups that want to do the right thing and are in their streetscapes and allow us the the flexibility to not assess those fees so just those two separate items if if the board is interested I would love emotion and I I strongly encourage we do that because when you get a group like Leisure Beach and if you saw the even the entryway they make it look really nice they maintain the grass all the way through they want to come in and do landscaping they were going to spend I think five thousand dollars on plants and trees and whatever all the way through and I said look I said I appreciate you doing that for right away to make your community look better but I've even got a landscaping grant that I want to see it took about two months of time for Colleen to go back and forth between getting an answer from staff to what the permit was going to be how what the cost is going to be how did it get all done and then the final thing Not only was it the 50 fee but the 1200 on top of that and they were just getting frustrated during American cleanup that's when they wanted to when the Time battle up so we're trying to make it all get citizens to take care of

their you know properties for us I think is a great thing they want to make the community look better it's a good thing right instead of dealing with code like you've got to deal with in that situation so I would love to see a motion that we so what's the emotion you need good yes sir so really really really two things one for the case of of this Leisure Beach right-of-way permit that the board waived the fees associated with that action and then secondly to direct us to go back and amend the fee schedule for civic associations HOAs that want to do beautification projects in right of ways that we can either reduce or eliminate the fee I would want stuff yeah we have this problem with golf Harbors I'll make that motion any further discussion yeah I just come in what's the motion to eliminate eliminate I I took it as eliminate okay eliminating them and I will vote Yes I appreciate corvalla coming with attack oh I better be happy with it do you want a second and novel from my second year all in favor say aye aye any opposed Mike thank you very much uh you jumped on this when you've heard about it to go through and thanks for taking it forward this way thank you and thanks to Nikki spiritual she did a great job helping us to get the language we needed as well and Colleen thank you for doing a great job helping make that happen and the the people went out there that did the work and I told them how to go apply for the Orion so thank you anything else okay County attorney I don't have anything for you today okay thank you Clerk and come from yes yes um one thing Mr Governor was talking about how the tourism is back into normal here in Pasco County and I can tell you that passport applications in my office are record numbers we held a Saturday event because mouses are usually closed on the weekends so we held a Saturday event this past Saturday for four hours and within that four hours we hit a record number of passport applications 309 passport applications and that's processing about 77 applications an hour the line here in Dade City was out of the office down the hall and to the stairwell in the government center yes um and the question I usually get when I'm out and about is you know what is the turnaround time for the passport agency to process passports so I can give that information of routine passport is between 8 to 11 weeks right now which is actually pretty good considering the volume that is being sent to them and then expedited is between five to seven weeks so you have to pay extra fee for expedited now there is a way to get it even sooner for let's say um urgent travel which is a non-emergency case you need to go in an emergency and get that you have to go to the actual passport agency so the closest one is

either Miami or Atlanta and you can get in get one on an urgent basis within a 14 days 14 business days or let's say there is an emergency situation they'll process it within three days so so is that the same for Renewal no renewal you mail in so you can mail in your renewals but um what's the turnaround time um for renewals I don't know if their turnaround time I'm assuming that it is the same as um doing it uh routine but I am not certain so something to know about the passport because I have this coming up on mine is that um mine expires I think in December but there are some countries who won't let you in yeah if you're within six months correct I've got a trip in April and a few a few out of the country coming up and I'd rather get mine renewed I'll look for the um renewal uh turn on time and I'll let you know thank you it's also somehow I am flagged and every time I leave a country I have to go talk to somebody I don't know what's going on with me but certainly I'm a terrorist suspect did she say she was on the terrorist watch list I don't know I don't know how that happened I am not happy about it and I have complained to Homeland Security [Laughter] [Music] where the pictures fall out my items all that's coming up I'm going to nominate commissioner I'm gonna appoint commissioner Bradford to the canvassing board are we waiting for something I think I got some pictures I think you were you already made him the alternate like he'll just move up he'll stop okay all right so um last week we went down to Pinellas County to take a look at their Central Energy plant um it was really interesting they've had this since 2015 it's a chiller plan and Eric if you would come up and describe the trip and what we're going to be looking at for down the road certainly good morning to the best to the best you can we still get a lot of information probably our Brighton box assistant County Administrator for internal Services had the pleasure of accompanying chairman Mariano Andrew Baxter and a couple other folks from Pasco County went down to visit with train in their Central Energy plant that they have downtown Pinellas or Clearwater area uh it's pretty pretty uh Innovative concept they have where they have one building that provides the chilled water for about seven buildings that are in the downtown area and quite frankly they've even partnered with a hook excuse me a condominium complex to be able to provide the chilled water for that facility as well this is a a very well maintained and run facilities about eight years old and it has promise and something we're going to be looking at to do here in Pasco County as well some other area it's um I think Water Street does that too they have a central

Chiller for most of their buildings the gentleman that designed and helped construct this was trained he's responsible for eight or nine different Chiller plants like this in and around the Tampa area and so he was describing how with each successive one he's taking the lessons learned and improved his design however comma it has we still have to run the numbers and do the calculations but it does have the potential opportunity for significant energy or electricity savings if we're able to do something similar to this I'm thinking at the West passport Government Center or maybe even other areas around the area yes ma'am also that's a good candidate is the Land of Lakes Public Safety campus so we'll we'll be evaluating this in the future I just it was it was a it was a wonderful trip and it's been pretty pretty impressive operation to happen on there Eric I want to thank you and Andrew for going down it's one of those times you know you get an idea you want to buy staff see what they think and Andrew and Eric said they want to go down take a look at it right away so we went down there took a look at it very impressed with everything and it could be a great opportunity so sir thank you for that all right next set of pictures get more pictures I got probably five different slides coming up there's a picture of Sunwest Park there's my mother on the lower right frankly she must have the lobster roll from the uh got Lobster people I love that was a nice little setup there for uh look at that drinks out there yeah a little elevated bar and the place was a really I'd say Andrew ceceros has done a great job over the years improving and improving improving but we still have lime rocket which we'll talk about a minute there's the lake it was packed the bands were great I didn't get there Saturday it was moving my daughter from Lakeland to uh over to Odessa but uh I got there yesterday Sunday it was like packed everybody said it was just a blast my brother went and it was his first time at the park and he said it was fantastic yeah yeah good stuff it's great so I will say what I'm going to be looking for down the road is that as we go spend some money out there they're talking about putting Paving out there I don't think we should put the full Paving in with the medians Etc let's just put a base skim coat on I think through zoning it's coming up very soon we already did the land use change to bring a hotel and a restaurant out there but if we just put a skim coat of asphalt out there it'll make it better for the next year or two until the new guys come in and then they can cut out what they want to cut out without spending a lot of extra money this is a Starkey park where the opioid awareness walk was going on I guess it's a second annual Pastor Estelle from Calvary Church so it

was marching forward to stomp out opioid addiction I will tell you it was something else to talk to so many people that are directly involved and been affected by the opioid crisis you know we've heard for years as Pastor still on the right for years about what what we're doing all the treatments actually talked to a lady who was knocked out narking saved her life about two years ago and she knows she's thriving thriving citizen doing great I talked to a mother who lost his son other family members of the same scenario and people making comebacks so I am excited to what she's trying to do she's actually put a plan forward uh I wanted her to have a chance to go present to the opioid task force but they want to wait to do rfps I'm going to say we've known for six months we've got a lot of money coming in there's different programs going out there I think it benefits the opioid task force to hear from anybody who wants to hear say something even go through the process and Kathy if you want to come on up for a minute but I I think we've had so much time I know we want to make sure we get money spent the right way done the right things but I've got a lady a pastor from a church that serves 5 000 people that has people directly affected by it that she wants to get started as opposed to taking this long bureaucratic process so at least and if this church wants to do it another church wants to do it there's enough money to come in I think to let's get out there the Outreach the counseling that can be going on for these people that alone is a value handing out an arcade maybe at the church if that's what they want to go do is a benefit to people I mean literally that one lady I talked to just really touched me that she's this saved her life and now she's thriving so many times you think okay what's going to happen to do it again though this lady bounced back she hit bottom and she came back and all these people are making comebacks or no family members that have suffered so badly so Kathy if you would let's go talk about what the committee is doing because I do want to see this presentation done before them and if we need to get a board motion to go do it so be it but I want to see faster action that's and I appreciate the diligence commissioner thank you so Paula barakava was the chair of our opioid task force and a lot of the members just to brief you all have been selected by a lot of you to serve on that it has been a year we just re-elected or reappointed Paula to do the chair again we did receive our first money in February it was 945 367 thousand dollars that's we just got that money there is a board meeting up with your task force is meeting on March 27th at 10 A.M and they are going to begin the process of you know we got to get this money out there is about 7 million 951 uh thousand dollars that we

still have not received the first problem Monday of the 945 was from the county City pot of money this next one is from the regional we're expected to get that by the year end we have no idea when it is coming so the a committee their thought is we want to give the biggest bang for our buck whatever the committee decides to do the final decision will become before all of you just as we do on all our other cdbg grants we make the recommendations we do the rfps we bring them to you so I know at the next opioid task force meeting they are going to begin to see what we can do about this 945 thousand I think we had talked about we want the biggest bang for our buck do we want a whole bunch of people coming and collecting small bits of dollars or do we want to do big bang with big dolls so I've talked to each of you individually if you've gotten some feedback I think we can do both and so what we're hoping to do and I think Paula is on board with trying to push this committee to at least start getting maybe some small rfps with a small amount of money and get this thing going Mr Mariano completely correct opioid is a problem it's a huge problem and it's not just here but you know the fentanyl all of it and I think we just met with Tracy Kelly today from BayCare she's amazing she's talking about putting an urgent walk-in clinic in one of her facilities coming up so we've got some great plans for this money and I'll take any questions if you want and I'll just go a little further one of the things this pastor has submitted a plan a project with a lot of good ideas some of them just in there as far as counseling goes preventive like going to the schools talking to the kids maybe it's in Sunday school maybe it's in the regular school I don't know but at least if you hear the presentation it might even give more ideas to go forward as they get ready to to make the allocation to make recommendations I mean granted I know what's coming back to us but again after a year's time first money's coming in just seeing this with real people just pouring their hearts out as far as what they've gone through commissioner Brantford thank you Mr chair Kathy I remember the briefings that you've been giving me and correct me if I have uh blurred the lines or I don't correctly remember is there a an attorney assigned to the money to see if it's spent within guidelines hopefully so Jordan wolfgramm is Works Jordan wolf gray and works for Jack she's been side by side with us all the way on this she comes to every task board meeting she's at every meeting and so yes she is definitely on top of it thank you absolutely thank you and thank you Jeff for signing Jordan Mr chairman yes if I can follow up on the commissioner's question but you've set up you've set up a process we were required to have the opioid task force to get this money I would discourage the commission from taking it

away from them and and giving the money out to whoever um the RFP process was the way that makes this competitive to anybody who has a plan there are some of some of the board members who have said they're looking for brick and mortar and they want it to be a large contribution uh they they don't want the money piecemeal so you know if you start if you start breaking it off and giving it to worthy causes that money is not going to be there to to build a facility so let me be clear as far as what I'm asking for when we had the restore our committee solved up we had the survey committee we had presentations done over and over the RFP process wasn't there we looked at project to project they want to do rfps so be it but I don't think an RFP necessarily is the only way to go about it and I think if you've got people in the community invested into it they want to take a look at it give them an opportunity to hear what they have to say it may change the opinion I think there's going to be so much money coming in and the way they've categorized it I mean I was first a little skeptical with the state with the money coming in to have all those controls on it as a settlement but what they put in place are great programs and if we can partner with the state I mean we should be leveraging the money from the state funds that they get as well especially with the governors just put out some great programs too that could be the way to go I just don't want to let's say even smaller programs not considered for it and right now they're waiting for the RFP process I think if they get an idea there's nothing wrong with them hearing an idea what somebody wants to do it may trigger some other people some other ideas to come forward as well it's not it's not a negative to it I'm not looking to control it I have to go through the process but I'll remind you and restore there was an application process and there was a ranking process that is very similar to an RFP process um so I while you uh while you took ideas at public comment at each restore meeting because you're required to take public comment at any of these meetings um there was a process in place even for ReStore that had all the projects graded to see which ones would move forward um I just think that if you start if if you're going to go out on the street just like with procurement you don't want to jeopardize the process by having somebody come in and sell their project before everybody else has foundation so help me with the difference between the restore they did presentations we decided we ranked right now you tell me it's an RFP process that sounds different from restore actually so when we did restore we it was less formalized but we put it out

on the street through our website through I don't you'd have to ask a courtesy how how that reach out was done but it was put out and then they were given a certain amount of time to apply and then those applications were then graded by your team and then brought to the restore committee the the difference I think with with RFP it is they weren't graded by the team the committee did the writing well that's true that's true um they were packaged and broken through the process um so let me just let me stop there so I just want to make sure Kathy that this pastor other pastors other groups et cetera they come forward and I want to be make sure we're careful with it all but I want to make sure that they have the opportunity and right now it looks like I don't know how long this opportunity is going to take but I want to get the urgency that I want to get this going fast commissioner I I do not serve on the opioid task force so I'm not I have to deal with sunshine I will personally reach out to her and make sure when the application is ready we've all the sister okay okay thank you Mr chair I have the answer for commissioner Starkey I have some pictures for you Jeff it is the same time frame so renewals are the 18 to 11 weeks eight to 11 weeks so it used to be you could go down let's say go to Miami and walk it through in one day you can't do that anymore you have to make an appointment yeah and then you can do it that day but it's going to take three days for processing and it has to be on an emergency basis however I can um we can talk offline okay but that's typical I don't have to get stuck and live in another country do you have the next set of pictures okay you ready I'm ready I've been meaning to bring this up for a couple years since our last trip to Germany can you show those pictures um and you start talk about Southwest I said this is something I think we need to put in some West and we went to visit this uh when we did our trip to Germany not last year but not one before I guess before this is a company called Crystal term and um they build ropes courses without trees they have them all over the world if you could show more of the pictures it's so cool because they they they're all different sizes and and looks and they can customize it so this one's in some Oriental Community I think at this one's in Korea that's a really big one um um keep going but I so this one is kind of western themed and it's hard to tell but he's he's actually on a uh what was it was that a horse I don't know and it

zips you through um and uh so this one shows a lot of the different elements that they've added on to to that that you can add on and they're all customizable and this company comes to the Orlando Expo every year for the parks equipment and I don't know what it's called but I'm sure our staff does and they always sell their exhibit because they don't want to pack it and take it home and wouldn't something like that be great for sun west I just thought that would be a really good location for something like that so I keep forgetting and I since we would be something that we might vote on I couldn't do it privately so okay I just want to share with everyone I think this would be great for the west side of the county since you all have one on the east side of the county um and it could go in the park so it looks great I I think I may have the brochure amounts but if not we visited them with pedc so yeah okay do you have any other pictures up there for me there's the ribbon cutting of the VA Outpatient Center right down the street uh finally open yes yeah the river becoming Saturday morning wow and I want to tell you uh Congressman Mike belarakis was there he um was there for him and his wife were both there and Gus talked about how his dad started that 40 years ago to try to bring that to Pasco County and they fought and fought and that was one of the first things he tried to work on and Gus carried it on and finally they had the opening and I tell you what a beautiful building from when I first started they had we used to have like Vehicles we'd get for the VA or for the veterans to actually go down to Haley hospital and back we had to supply them now our veterans can be served taken care of here locally so for vision Dental Optometry all sorts of care and now they can do it here locally is it's a great service for our veterans a great accomplishment and the VA is happy because they actually Consolidated four of the buildings to build this one here so efficiencies are going to be better as well so I want to thank Congressman Bill arrakis for following through and delivering that to us because it's it's going to be a great thing do you have the next set of pictures that's all you have okay well we had some pictures of the beakwood's fire station as commissioner Oakley said it was a great opening um you know right next to Gulf Highlands neighborhood right below Beacon Woods right close to the HCA hospital it's going to be a great service and it's going to definitely help our people and it's going to be another modernized one that's going to really help our firefighters as well with all sorts of safety accomplishments um and last thing I want to just talk about is

you know commissioner can you talk about permitting and you know we talked about how the lights license and maintenance screen we just went through took hours and hours of Staff time and I'm going to tell you about one that's coming up uh the lynx mpud um the people have been told also to different things staff set an application since I believe it's August and in a change of a mpud the certain requirements one of them is 1A it says any change in a site-related condition that was opposed by the BCC of the public hearing if there's a change there it's going to be a public hearing period it changed in the golf course the driving range of the roadway um section n1b the alteration of use if you're going to remove a golf course remove a driving range should be a public hearer in what age if you read reduce a reduction in open space or recreational errors both recreational space and open areas are reduced or adversely impacted n1i any change to a plant reproval change in boundaries of open space and recreational spaces same same thing there any change in any aspect attribute of future which might adversely expect inspect the site impact the site stormwater drainage when you put pine trees and drainage when a whole neighborhood is designed to take the impact there's an impact there when you build within 30 feet of a home put trees out there those trees grow up in 30 30 feet they can topple over or they catch fire real quick there's an impact uh people paid a premium to buy those houses in the golf course all those things said and done staff's got to move quicker in these things and that's all we have so we'll take a break to Launch thanks okay um I just have to run down and switch front door they're here to take my car [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] aquatic animals storm drains are meant for clean if you suspect County Department of Public Works 834-3611 [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you yeah [Music]

[Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] welcome to another episode of aging on the Suncoast I'm your host Jason Martino so each and every year hurricane season starts on June 1st and last through November 30th while we prepare for all potential hazards it's extremely important that we spend time preparing for both our County's biggest threat a hurricane back in 2017 both Pinellas and Pasco dodged the massive bullet called hurricane Irma then in 2018 our Panhandle experienced the incredible force of Hurricane Michael long-term recovery efforts are still occurring today because we've been fortunate it doesn't mean we stop preparing this is especially true for the senior population that resides in either Pasco or Pinellas counties today's focus is going to be on Hurricane planning for independent and homebound seniors to assist our viewers understand planning and reduce vulnerability we've invited Jess McCracken the whole Community specialist with Pinellas County Emergency Management and Andy fossa the director of pet the Pasco County Department of Emergency Management today our guest will help shed light on important senior preparedness information Jess welcome to aging on the Suncoast thank you for having me sure and Andy welcome to aging on Suncoast as well thank you sir so let's talk hurricanes and preparedness and before we really start talking about it I want to kind of throw it out there is that what we've seen as Professionals in this field for for some time now is because we haven't been directly hit for close to over 100 years or so that we see a little bit of complacency and so we are always trying to mitigate that complacency and encourage people to do the right thing which is prepare the second thing that we've seen uh in the last probably three to five years is a pretty big influx of people moving to our area from the northern states Massachusetts New York New Jersey all them and while they may prepare for some of the hazards that they live through during that time they certainly haven't prepared yet for a hurricane season so we want to also encourage them to do uh to do the right thing as well so Jess I'm going to start with you what's the first thing that people do when they when they're getting into a mode that they they're trying to start their planning for for Hurricane Season well when prepared for Hurricane Season we really want you to know your risk make a plan and stay informed and knowing your risk means knowing your evacuation Zone and understanding that mobile home communities will always be asked to

evacuate in an evacuation order and once you know your risk then it's easier to go ahead and make that plan and making your plan should include knowing where are going to go during an evacuation having all of your supplies ready for your emergency kit and communicating all of that information with your family so they know where you are in an evacuation especially in situations where communication is lost and finally staying informed is very important on both sides communicating with your family but also having two trusted sources of information whether it's media our websites and taking advantage of those to keep yourself informed during storm season absolutely and we're going to go over a little bit later all those resources where they can get a hold of all that information on there andy does it look any different in Pasco County no sir the biggest thing that we look at is as Jess said two bits of information that are trustworthy another item is that complacency not only with the Floridians that are here now but the Northerners that have come down they have they get complacent because nothing has ever really happened we get bits and pieces of storms that go by but they think I can outright the storm and that is not true especially in the coastal areas the mobile home communities they need to be diligent on watching the weather and and the weather reports and go tens of miles you don't have to evacuate hundreds of miles go somewhere with other family members further Inland but you don't have to clog the roads up trying to go from here to Georgia so keep it close it's funny you said that because I made a massive Mistake by going to Georgia during Irma I took a little uh pressure from I'll just say a family member that was a little nervous during that time and we ended up in uh whatever Georgia and getting back was less than than fun so um you're exactly right staying uh close but safe is is definitely a good goal so uh Andy we talked about those vulnerable communities how do people in in Pasco County find out what Evac level they are so we have the Pasco County disaster guide which is online it shows a a map of it they also have the ability to go to the mypasco.net website we have it there and then there's a public sign of something called Pasco mapper and they can go onto that website and it pulls up the maps and it'll actually show you your evacuation Zone you gotta love 21st century technology it makes things just so much yes sir compared to the paper and Pen days yes and Jessica what about Pinellas what are the different Avenues people can take to find out their Evac level very similar with Pasco we have it in our hurricane guide you can also go to our website to check your evacuation Zone and with the evacuation zone changes it's very important that people do check their evacuation zones so they know what's incorporate into their plan you can check storm.pinellascounty.org and that gives you a side-by-side map and it'll show

what your evacuation Zone was before and what it's been changed to if it's been changed that's really cool that's really cool the um certainly our show is geared towards Helping Seniors those with disabilities and caregivers prepare caregivers are taking care of a lot of our vulnerable seniors as well and not all seniors live in our community in a home or an apartment a lot of our seniors in our in Pasco and Pinellas County they live in an assisted living facility or they live in a Skilled Nursing Facility but just in my incorrect by saying that these types of Institutions don't have plans and residents should know what those plans are so these facilities are required by law to have an emergency plan including where the residents will go and how they will get there here so it's really important that those residents have those conversations and understand the plans not only to manage their expectations during an emergency but also to communicate that information to family members especially again if we lose Communications during a storm then your family is going to know where you are and that you're safe yeah and I'm glad you're beating the drama about communicating absolutely I beat the same drum when I'm in the community is to communicate your plans to your family members some of those family members can also probably talk to those institutions and find out what it is because maybe Mom and Dad may not be capable of understanding what those are same thing in in Pasco County Andy yes sir one of the big things that we also need to reiterate is if we move a family member from a nursing home into a special needs shelter and they have a Specialized Care that they need they need to provide a caregiver for that that citizen that patient because when you're in that special needs shelter the Staffing that is in there is will not be capable of taking care of every single citizen that's in there so we we try to embed into these skilled facilities that if you're going to send somebody and he's a Specialized Care a caregiver or a family member needs to be there with them it's imperative yes I totally agree with you so let's talk about options because the counties are are good enough to provide options for people and certainly the options are staying home or going to like a general population shelter or special needs such as what Andy brought up so if I were a a consumer a resident of Pasco County and I elected to stay home because I thought it was a good idea at the time what are the things that I need to be thinking about in order to make my staying at home journey is as safe and comfortable as possible so you have to prepare you have to prepare food for yourself non-perishable foods make sure you have enough water your go kits a very big thing is go kits in case you do have to leave it's imperative that you have your insurance papers your medications important documents another big thing is uh if you you're forced to evacuate take pictures of your valuables

insurance companies are getting really really big on well you said you had a 55 inch TV I want to see a picture of it and have those documents with you if you choose to stay home make sure your house is boarded up make sure you have everything in place all anything that could be a flying missile is removed and then if you're going to stay stay indoors they got people have to remember when that storm passes through you're going to get a lull and when that low that does not mean the storm is over that means you're past the eye is passing over you still stay inside and then right out the back side of the storm yep that's a that's a good idea and also a good tip about taking video or that I've walked around my house with my my smartphone and just taking a video of Everything rather than just the uh the pictures all the time but you're absolutely right insurance is not going to help cover what they don't believe may not be there so correct anything different in Pinellas County um Jess um I think you covered it pretty much but uh to reiterate with the insurance side of it definitely set yourself up for Success yeah so you can help that adjuster come claim time have all that information and help you get recovered yeah and I guess I I just add that if um if you have the means to hurricane proof mitigate your home then that's certainly something that you should take a look at bracing those doors especially the garage store maybe investing in some good impact resistant types of Windows hurricane straps for the roof and all that would make you feel a heck a lot more comfortable in there because the entry points for some of those strong winds are in some of our oral housing stock in Pinellas in Pasco County are are tremendous you know uh Jess let's talk about options that if somebody said I don't feel safe staying home and I'm deciding that I'm going to go somewhere else what are their options what does that look like for them so there's a few different options um you know we will always open public shelters and a storm when there's an actual evacuation order needed but shelter should be a last resort now we don't want you to not evacuate we want you to stay safe so if you have to go to a shelter make those arrangements and plan for that but the recommended option is to try to stay with a family member or a friend that lives in a non-evacuation zone or you can look into hotels motels airbnbs again in a non of equation Zone but have two backup plans if you're going to do something like that make sure that they take pets if you're going to have your your furry babies with you and know what those plants are during blue skies don't you know don't be making those arrangements when the storm's barreling down on us yep and and communicate right right and communicate and thanks for bringing up the pets because we're going to talk about that a little bit later there's there's tons of options so that people can take a look at into preparing for their pets and we have a wealth of seniors that have something that's furry

or may have feathers or something of that nature that they're just as important as a as a family member on there so Andy what um um if they are going to leave in your county you're obviously offer some different options does it look the same as it does in Pinellas County pretty much so we still like to reiterate like like just said that instead of going to a shelter try to find a family member like the hotel or an Airbnb because folks need to remember you're not walking into a hotel when you go into a shelter yeah you're walking into a 20 by 20 space that's going to hold your family and it's going to be extremely crowded so we prefer that you find families that are not an evacuation Zone friends whatever it may be but if you have to go to the shelter prepare it's not a hotel you're going to be in some dismal conditions I'd have to say it like that Lifeboat versus cruise ship right yes sir yeah so um Pasco County as long as I've worked with you all and in Pinellas County we have and he brought it up earlier the term special needs shelter what is a special needs shelter so special needs shelter specifically designed for Citizens that do not have the capability to take care of themselves they're not hospitalized patients but they're patients that are elderly that need certain types of care that might be oxygen dependent they might be electrical dependent and that's the basic need for that shelter it's not a place to bring somebody that needs a high Acuity care because we do not have the ability to do that in there that's why I said earlier if you're going to bring somebody and it's a Specialized Care you need to bring either a caregiver or a family member to take care of them but this is basically for people for Disabilities mental conditions O2 conditions and electrical dependency right for in there is there a process for negotiating if that's the most appropriate for them yes they'll still money they filled with special needs form out there's a bank of questions and once that comes into our EOC it's vetted by our special needs coordinator or RN that we we had as a volunteer at one time and they all make the determination if they have the ability to be housed there or they're going to need to find another place to reside them and that's super helpful because that consumer may be filling out the questions on there but maybe special needs is not the appropriate place or maybe they need to go somewhere they can handle a hierarchy of care what does that look like in Pinellas County Jess is it similar to Pasco a very similar program I will say that if you are going to special needs shelter to bring that medical equipment anything that you use on a daily basis to keep yourself safe and healthy there are some supplies available there but it's not going to be enough for everybody so again set yourself up for success and and bring those things with you that's a go kit just like absolutely had brought up before making sure that you have things you need at home and and that you that

you would bring later medications is obviously super important so before we end the first half of the show we have a wealth of seniors that do live in the community in a home or apartment and a lot of them receive help from home health care coming in there to help them out with their activities of daily living what should people know about the companies that provide that care for them well definitely ask the real questions and get a good understanding of what that continuity of care plan is going to look like and it's recommended to ask for a copy of their plan to compare it to your personal plan that way there's no surprises you know that you're on the same page and everybody knows what to expect that's such good information because we deal with a wealth of people that live in all sorts of different environments thanks so much for coming on the show and we'll have you back for the second half of that please stay with us while we take a short break as usual don't forget to have a pen or pencil ready during the break-in at the end of our show we'll be highlighting important information covering both Pasco and Pinellas County's disaster preparation resources when we come back we'll Explore More senior preparedness ideas foreign abuse neglect or exploitation can happen to a family member a friend or even ourselves elder abuse is a growing problem and is severely underreported many victims are reluctant to report due to fear embarrassment shame or guilt in order to prevent elder abuse we must take action don't be afraid to talk about the issue and report it to the Florida abuse hotline at 1-800-962-2873 together we can make a difference welcome back to aging on the Suncoast during the first half of the show Jess McCracken and Andy fossa helped us understand senior disaster preparation and Sheltering options so let's continue this conversation and talk about other simple ways we can prepare Jess Andy welcome back to the show thank you thank you you all provided such good information on the first half of the show and we're going to continue that and we're going to probably talk about a little some of the little microcosms that people are faced with when it comes to planning and all that so Andy I'm gonna I'm gonna start with you medications is inevitable in our senior population many of our seniors are taken on average between four and five medications to combat whatever is ailing them at that time how do seniors and or individuals with disabilities or caregivers plan for the need for medications during times of a hurricane so it's always as we preach it's always good to be prepared so with medications you have your normal daily 30-day Supply 90 day supply whatever it may be however when we were being threatened by a storm the federal government back with Katrina went ahead and enacted a new law that gives pharmacies the ability to give you a 30-day emergency supply of the

medications so it's best to get with your doctor it's best to get with your Pharmacy and go ahead and prepare for that they're not going to give it to you under a blue sky day normal day but if we have an imminent storm coming in the pharmacies will fulfill that obligation yep you're totally right and Pharmacy we found that pharmacists are a good resource even in the blue skies because somebody can go there and they can get a running list of what they have I couldn't remember all the different meds I was taking if I was taking six or seven nor the intervals I was taking it does it look any different in Pinellas County Jess uh nope it's it's pretty much the same but take into consideration any medications that need to be refrigerated that that's a very big thing that you would need to plan for so generator or ice packs something like like that yep and part of your your to-go kit or your stay-at-home kit making sure that you have a way to refrigerate or keep that Refrigeration on there as well excellent point Jess let's stay with you and let's talk about what we kind of brought up uh very lightly during the first half of the show we talked about pets many of our seniors out there they have pets with scales pets with hair pets with feathers and these pets are seen just like children or grandchildren matter of fact we've seen some cases where if they're if they didn't think there was arrangements for their pets they were going to stay home and that wasn't the best case scenario for them so what does pet preparation look like in Pinellas County like you said pets are part of our family so preparing for your pets very similar to preparing for yourself you want to know where they're going to be going if they're not going to be staying with you preparing their go kit so their crate collar leash medications food and a comfort item especially if you're going to be going to one of our pet friendly shelters registration isn't required for the pet friendly shelter but be prepared to care for your pet they're not going to be in the same area with you but you will need to walk them feed them and animal services is on hand at the pet friendly shelters to keep all the common areas clean so that is an option for you yeah and I think that's very tangential to what Annie was saying is that while the county is providing a great amount of resources we can't meet all the needs so the consumers or the residents excuse me have to do their part by helping to take care of it does it look the same in Pasco County as well Andy yep it sure does um the only thing that we require and and just pretty much covered everything was that they have to bring their vaccination records with them um in order to get in the shelter if you bring an animal to the shelter um they have to have their vaccinations or the shelter has the choice of not to take them yeah but no registration no no pre no sir okay that's that's good stuff to um to know um all right so um you guys in addition to

providing the op um the options for where people can shelter and encouraging them to do the right things you have so many Logistics going on as well and one of the things that's probably maddening is the development of your hurricane guide but once it's out there it's such a good guide I've seen it a thousand different times I use it I put it in our many of our consumers hands as well um Andy where can people find these hurricane guides in Pasco County so they can find them a couple of places uh one mypasco.net website and we have it on there on the Emergency Management page and we also have guides at Emergency Management and we distribute them to uh the elderly population especially the high Hazard vulnerability Zone we actually mail them to each resident out there get out of here no sir we actually do that our guide is a little bit different um than the the standard guy we kind of broke away from the Tampa Bay Region planning Council and we did our own thing so ours doesn't only care uh Encompass hurricanes severe weather tornadoes sinkholes um all flooding all those items and then we have a very robust uh phone number listings for different departments and able to make contact with them yep and I remember how quickly you guys were had to update it when the pandemic was in full swing still here but not in the full swing it was before yes sir you uh you come out with guides as well if I remember correctly that you uh you do your own specific Pinellas County guide where do folks find the Pinellas County guide we have electronic copies in English Spanish and Vietnamese on our website and also ADA Compliant in all three languages which is a huge resource you can pick them up if you need five or more copies we have two distribution centers lealman exchange which is in Pinellas Park and the center which is in Palm Harbor and then we have some in government buildings and town halls and again we delivered some to schools to hopefully those kiddos took them home and got them in the parents hands that that's such a cool initiative we did that as well we found that sometimes as professionals that the people we were targeting weren't really listening to us so much but if you put it in Johnny or Susie's hand and they were to explain the same information that grandmom and Grandpa generally would listen to what they said over there I always thought that was a pretty cool initiative well we're talking about initiatives you guys are no strangers to living and learning finding out what worked in the past and different ways to go forward and and then be ahead of the curve really so just um let's talk about some of the initiatives that Pinellas County has us that benefits the residents that live here we have the Sheriff's Office Barrier Island re-entry program which is for the folks that work and live on the Barrier Islands you're not allowed access back after an evacuation so they're going to want that re-entry badge or pass and you can get that at the Sheriff's Office and some Town Halls

we've got a storm surge app you can access that through our website and it actually will show you in real time your address and what the storm surge will look like it's a it's a very cool app yep I've used that app many many times and and I actually I redid it when when the Evac levels had changed just to kind of make sure but it's a pretty cool interactive app to kind of show you that in this kind of situation over here you know your house could be inundated it could not in that sense um alert panels too right we have just launched our new alert Pinellas app and it's in real time it'll show you the evacuation zone of where you're actually at at that time or you can look up evacuation zones by address it also has the know your risk make a plan stay informed special needs information and it has blue skies and gray skies messaging so when we get to that point we can switch the messaging over one thing that's really neat about it is there is an insurance section where you can actually log all the items in your home take pictures and keep that inventory so it's all right there which I think is a really neat tool yeah it really is and if you're watching we're going to have tons of information during the break and at the end of the show that will help you get in touch with some of these initiatives in Pinellas County Pasco County is is no stranger to thinking forward and moving on initiatives what's Pasco County doing so we have the alert Pasco app that's still up and running uh We've updated it it'll give real-time info information on when we're in gray skies when we're under an activation also our social media another big thing that we have done now is weather Sim stations we have one in partnership with the state and we have probably up to 27 weather stem stations now and they're free to the public they can go on the Pasco County website and they can get real-time live data of the weather conditions that are in their neighborhood or area that's really cool another thing as as Jess had said the re-entry program so we've been working in conjunction with our stakeholders and we found out that after a storm has passed people need to get supplies and food so we're worked with public supermarkets on working with a re-entry program with them so they can get their employees and key staff in to get those stores up and running and get them their doors open and hopefully start serving the public again and then some of our social our social media sites at times and items like that that we have gotten them up and running because the people are not going to want to sit there they're still going to want to see the media the news and all of that stuff and we can get that live firsthand back to them yeah and I think people want to get back to some normalcy as well because we're trying to work with some of your stakeholders and so they can get back as quick as possible you also I've been on your web website numerous times you also have videos on your website too yes we have a cereal video vignettes they range anywhere from a message from myself to

how to do sandbags how to make a go kit how to make a pet go kit so we have all of that on there on the Pasco website as well super helpful super helpful um let's let's let's stay with you uh Andy and let's talk about you know everybody has a smartphone in their hand um some you know how to use it a little bit better than that what types of apps and different types of helpful resources can people find on their on their smartphones so there's a numerous ones there's the alert Pasco app um that's the biggest one um another I would watch weather ones uh especially herovac not huravac um there's weather related ones for storm predictions and items like that I would pay attention to those and I I I don't be dependent on one app because one app is going to give you one thing another app is going to give you another thing use multiple and and gain a census out of that study those so you can get a real-time idea of what's going on and then of course our social media Facebook app you know Instagram and I'm gonna say tick tock tick tock that's up and coming we actually see a lot of things now being posted by governmental agencies that are using Tick Tock to put their messaging out I think they have to the world's gone in that direction they were there too just what uh what about smartphones in Pinellas County um obviously the ready Pinellas but same channels Facebook Twitter also Nextdoor is a really helpful app to use yeah but you know I saw lots of information especially during the pandemic on next door I always use Nextdoor just to find things that I'd like to purchase golf clubs absolutely but I saw a lot of public information officer information going through that and I guarantee you it got to right to the household it's just like you're sending these guides to people's houses Jess Andy thank you so much for coming on our show we cover so much information and all very valuable information residents in Pasco and Pinellas County are they're really lucky to have you guys helping them prepare for these days there well thank you very much I enjoyed myself this morning good we hope you learned a great deal from this month's broadcast we also hope this episode helped you take this hurricane season as serious as you should at the end of the show we'll repost some valuable resources available to you we'll see you next month and until then please stay safe and utilize all the resources these two Emergency Management offices have offered you [Music] many of us don't want to believe that elder abuse neglect or exploitation can happen to a family member a friend or even ourselves elder abuse is a growing problem and is severely underreported many victims are reluctant to report due to fear embarrassment shame or guilt in order to prevent elder abuse we must take action don't be afraid to talk about the issue and report it to the Florida abuse hotline at 1-800-962-2873 together we can make a

difference [Music] thank you [Music] you see all of that you know what that is that's opportunity you probably don't know who I am and that's okay you probably don't know a lot about Pasco County either from country to a nature-rich coastline Pasco County also known as experience Florida's Sports Coast has a little bit of something for everybody let's get down to business specifically your business we are right to work state with a pro-business government that offers low operating cost and no personal state income tax sounds pretty sweet right 14 500 feet don't worry it gets better [Music] sounds too good to be true it's as true as the planes people flock here to see given Skydive city is one of the top Drop Zones in the world I mean take a look around what do you see that's right Terry possibility and lots of it pasca recently implemented a ready sites program that is assessed and evaluated over 2 000 acres of land to prepare property for Industrial Development each property is strategically located with the Necessities to support your growing business let's say Free Falling Towards the Earth is it your cup of tea maybe a refreshing Arnold Palmer is something more your speed [Music] Saddlebrook Resort is the Premier spot for a luxurious getaway they have over 90 000 square feet of meeting space a spa 43 tennis courts even two full-size Arnold Palmer golf courses [Music] there's more than enough space to network or strike deals while hitting the Fairway now I know you've seen them all but have you seen them all like this shops at Wiregrass is Tampa Bay's Premier open air lifestyle shopping center with over eight hundred thousand square feet of retail restaurants and entertainment you can even bring your best friends [Music] Pasco County houses a robust Craft brewery scene ideal for people who love to make and drink beer Florida Ave is the perfect place to host at events or just to have a casual business meeting this is one of the largest family owned craft breweries in the state offering three unique event spaces to choose from perfect for networking events and meetings the beer is pretty good too hey who let you in here [Music] Terry do you know what Synergy is stop I'll tell you owned by Florida Sports Coast this facility came together with private and Public Partnerships including a private land donation that this community project now sits on this 98 000 square foot Sports campus can also be transformed into an expansive meeting convention event space with two 34 000 square foot separate

spaces there's even an on-site Residence Inn by Marriott with a rooftop bar for an excellent view of the surrounding area pasco's award-winning Workforce connect platform allows employers to find programs that produce talent that will thrive in their Industries and explore resources that will help their business stand out to top candidates as well as allow job Seekers to discover and explore various career Pathways in a diverse economy of fast-growing Industries oh Terry I said top candidates foreign county has a long history of specialized production from the early years of pioneering technological advancements in Florida Citrus industry to our revolutionary breakthroughs in advanced sensor-based manufacturing methods for Global Brands like mettler Toledo and touchpoint medical Pasco is positioned for long-term growth with access to the second largest manufacturing Workforce in Florida that is high skilled Forward Thinking and growing like crazy Pasco is ready for the future scary don't touch that Florida Sports Coast is the perfect destination for the active individual hit the trails by biker foot and explore the hundreds of miles of paved and unpaved trails the destination has to offer excuse me Terry thank you wait that's my bike wait wait wait wait Pasco County is experiencing an unprecedented growth with over 19 000 Acres of Master Plan developments in the works to create The Ultimate Live work and play communities speaking of live and work Pasco is one of the top places in Florida to work from home where do you like an adventure what about an adventure on the water we are a Coastal Community with plenty of hidden gems just waiting to be explored Harry since there are many options for business visitors and residents alike being close to waterways lends itself to an improved quality of life with plenty of opportunities to Adventure Florida Sports Coast has places to work play and everything in between from the extreme to leisurely we have the talent space and a desirable quality of life for you to start move or grow your business so now that you've gotten just a glimpse of how we work how we play how we live I only have one question for you what are you waiting for cheers [Music] thank you foreign [Music] 50 000 veterans who live work and play in Pasco County our team at Pasco County Veterans Services is here to help you and your family making sure you receive the benefits you deserve from filing compensation and pension claims to crisis and Aid in assistance we're here to serve you so all of the veterans

service officers here in Pasco County are retired from the military we all come from different backgrounds different branches of the military but we all bring forth the experience and our expertise just through things that we have gained from our own personal military services you should come in and talk to a veteran service officer if you're trying to put together any type of claim that involves the VA I just think the team is great here very caring that's for sure and they put their all to help you you get total attention from them when you do come in which is awesome it'll provide you with the guidance we can help you put together the paperwork and we can also give you a status and update on your claim after it's been submitted so I have had veterans that that came in with five dollars in their bank account and once their claims get approved now they're getting a monthly tax-free benefit of over three thousand dollars a month that's huge sometimes we can do it over the phone we can do it over video but it's it feels more personable when you're sitting there across from someone who probably live the same life you lived and big is one and it's more understanding to your needs and your wants give them a call find out uh if you can come in have your documents with you ready to go and they'll they'll help you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music]

particles of asphalt or lime rock next we spray tack which is a mixture of oil and water onto the road surface to make sure that the asphalt bonds to the root surface then we apply a layer or two of asphalt Evernote is steam rising from the asphalt that's because it's shocked to the work side at a whopping 325 degrees or hotter next we drive a steamroller over the asphalt to make sure the surface is flat and smooth and that's it now let's look at the second Paving process Pasco uses which usually takes a bit longer our geotechnician team drills into the roadway at the job site and takes samples to a lab to help us determine what mix to use then we create a mix to use on the road from materials we Salvage from the pre-existing Road a machine grinds 10 inches into the road base feeding all that material into a giant mixing machine where it mixes with other ingredients before being spread onto the road the surface has to be set for a few days and then our team returns to the site to test the road's strength if it gets two thumbs up we grind 2 inches off the base sweep the fines and add attack and lay the asphalt so those are the two ways Pasco Works to make your commute a whole lot smoother Public Works inspectors are on every job site to make sure there are no bumps on the road so to speak we follow tough guidelines and high standards to keep our roads drivable for years to come to learn more about Pasco County's Paving process please visit mypascode.net and thank you for watching [Music] Pasco County waterways and Wildlife depend on you to keep them healthy excess fertilizer grass clippings trash oils and pet waste wash into gutters and storm drains when it rains storm water carries these pollutants directly into our lakes and rivers creating an unhealthy environment for fish waterfowl and other Aquatic animals storm drains are meant for clean rain water most other discharges are illegal if you suspect an illicit discharge please contact Pasco County Department of Public Works at 727-834-3611 roughly 90 000 dogs in Pasco County create more than five tons of waste every year when left on the ground storm water carries bacteria nutrients from pet waste into waterways causing algae blooms at unhealthy conditions for fish and other aquatic creatures polluted waters are also unsafe for swimming and Recreation please do your part to keep Florida waters clean by disposing of your pet's waste in the trash for more information contact Pasco County Department of Public Works at 727-834-3611 I'm Catherine seabe brand manager at this at this Park Library we're putting the finishing touches on at your favorite branch there are lots of changes inside and out starting in the parking lot it's been repaved and new sidewalks and Landscaping have been installed we've also added a bright new sign to keep you informed of events and happenings at the library at a glance

there's a covered entrance now to help you keep dry and in the shade inside the flooring is complete along with the ceilings and lighting an expansive new front desk is the Hub of the library with friendly staff ready to assist you quickly and efficiently the furniture shelves and fixtures are in place and we're preparing to deliver the books to the branch soon The Loft is the new maker space devoted to Studio Art such as painting and arts and crafts there's plenty of room to conduct classes in the maker space or to explore your artistic side on your own we know you're anxious to enjoy the remodeled Centennial Park library and we're eager to show it off follow our social media pages and pascalibraries.org for updates and the opening dates thank you [Music] hello I'm Cindy of pasta Village rescue I'm Linda of pro rescue and a volunteer here at Pasco County Animal Services my name is Dr Christine Glenn at pcas we're here to talk with you today about the number of cats coming into Pasco County Animal Services you've probably seen looser stray cats in your neighborhood did you know Pasco County does not have leash laws for cats that means cats can roam free in our County and that's why Animal Services doesn't pick up or accept Stray Cats In the Land of Lakes shelter in fact some of our neighbors enjoy allowing their cats to explore their Community knowing that they won't be picked up and sent to the shelter the average shelter return to owner rate for cats is less than two percent that means if you bring a community cap to our shelter it's not likely they'll end up being returned to their caregivers cats in our communities often have one or more caregivers and they usually hang up in their home area the best thing to do for these cats is to leave them be share that message and you too can help battle pet overpopulation Pasco Animal Services sees a staggering number of kittens from March through November more than a thousand kittens under eight weeks old in 2018 alone it's human nature to want to help when you find a litter of these fragile felines but in most cases they really don't need our help the mama cat often leaves her babies for a bit to go find food again the best thing you can do is leave them be in fact these kittens have a much better chance of survival if we leave them for mom to take care of kittens eight weeks or younger can't stay in a shelter they're simply not strong enough to fight off common diseases or viruses that older vaccinated cats are able to handle by leaving them be you're actually helping save their lives if you're concerned that kittens have really been orphaned meaning they haven't been moved or you're sure mom hasn't been back in at least eight consecutive hours then you can step in and care for the kittens Animal Services offers resources on our website about kitten fostering spay and neuter Services trap rentals and

vaccinations whether you have a single Community cat or a bunch of kitties we encourage you to contact us at 813-929-1212 for more information on our sniv trap neuter vaccinate release program this means healthier and fewer Community cats in your neighborhood healthier because we can prevent diseases like rabies and fewer because all of the cats that we treat are also spayed and neutered cats are eligible for the program at eight weeks old Pasco Animal Services understands Community cats can be an issue for some neighborhoods and we encourage you to reach out to us we'd love to come visit your community group our team members are available for meetings and presentations you can book an appearance right on our website popular topics are solutions between neighbors feeding stations and Humane deterrence for keeping cats off of certain properties Pasco County is a strong and growing community and through our combined efforts we can help save lives with three simple words leave them be [Music] thank you [Music]

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[Music] foreign [Music] thank you foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] hi I'm Bob Harrison with Pasco County libraries today I'm sharing my morning blend book club recommendations my first book takes us to Scotland for a tense murder mystery it's a season to kill by debut author Nick winter when lawyer Darcy Sinclair finds the body of local socialite Ellie Bradshaw it quickly becomes more than just a gruesome scene childhood trauma bubbles to the surface as the body count rises town secrets are exposed and grudges are uncovered the characters are Unforgettable and as the book rushes toward its violent climax it's clear to Darcy that a malignant killer resides within her Inner Circle if she doesn't uncover the truth in time Darcy might lose everything my next book is all the beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson this is a clever tale of obsession revenge and murder Harry Ackerson has always considered his stepmother Alice to be beautiful if a little aloof days before his college graduation Alice calls with shocking news his father is dead and the police think it's suicide devastated Harry returns to his father's home in Maine shortly after he arrives Harry meets a mysterious young woman named Grace she claims to be new to the area but Harry suspects she may not be a complete stranger to his family Harry finds himself falling deeper under both their spells yet the closer he gets the more disoriented he becomes fearing they are hiding dangerous even deadly secrets my last book is perfect for middle grade readers it's scritch scratch by Lindsey Curry Claire has absolutely no interest in the Paranormal she's a scientist which is why she can't think of anything worse than having to help her dad on one of his ghost-themed Chicago bus tours she thinks she's made it through when she sees a boy with a sad face and dark eyes at the back of the bus there's something off about his presence especially when she checks at the end of the tour he's gone now she's being haunted the boy from the bus wants something and Claire needs to find out what before it's too late thank you and happy reading you can read a story both Welcome to our story walk here at JB Starkey Wilderness Park we have installed a new story in our story walk check out this new seasonal themed title The Very lastly by Steph Wade and illustrated by Jennifer Davison where you'll learn about Lance the Cottonwood leaf and how you must face his fear of falling with the change of the seasons the story walk consists of 18 reading stations positioned along a 0.2 mile

Loop along the way you'll also learn some fun facts about the changing colors of leaves the outdoor reading experience allows children families and people of all ages to read a story while walking along a nature trail head to the back left Trail of the playground area follow the purple trailblazes and you'll be on your way a special thank you to all who partnered with libraries to make this project possible Pasco County Parks Recreation and natural resources the friends of the Pasco County library system and Americorps [Music]

I mean they've helped me keep my home raising my two grand boys if it wasn't for them I wouldn't uh I don't know where we would be purpose of Human Services is to see how we can best meet the needs of the Pasco County Citizens there are various needs housing food medical needs and various things mental health at both offices we have four core programs one is the eheap program which is the emergency home energy assistance program and we help with past due electric bills for that in addition we have something called The Cremation burial service we can help Indigent families in Pasco County bury their loved one if they are not able to afford cremation and burial we have a program called hitcraft so if someone from Pasco County has Emergency Services provided to them outside of the county we can help assist them in paying for those bills we also have something called a Roundup so we could pass help pay for past due water bills to come here when they have the funding they will do everything in their power to help you if we don't have the funding or the ability to help them we try to connect them with agencies around the county that can help them with whatever they need but we're a group of 10 very friendly helpful willing to support our citizens as best we can we're very resourceful so if you want to reach us you can go to mypasco.net you can also call the offices or stop in we're happy to help we want you to come and you know see us so much [Music] [Applause] [Music] they serve as I did fight for our freedoms we here at go Pasco want to return the favor by serving you go Pasco offers all active duty military and Veterans unlimited free rides on our fixed route buses when you step on the bus to show the driver one of these forms military ID Card DD Form 2 valid VA card V on your driver's license or go Pasco veteran ID go Pasco we're veterans ride free [Music]

we provide a place to seek support and services [Music] we provide you a way to keep going [Music] we provide affordable housing opportunities and create Community Partnerships [Music] we provide a place to play and preserve precious resources [Music] we provide you a place to learn and create we provide you a place to rescue and care for your Furry Friends [Music] we provide a place for you to flourish and agree [Music] we provide you a destination to invite on your next adventure we believe it's essential to give the best resources to you your family and our community we are humble and proud to serve you we are Pasco County Public Services [Music] the community is pitching and helping their neighbors it means everything to our neighborhood and it's a good effort on behalf of not just the community but it's also the counties working together the dumpsters the County Employees the recognition that we are coming together as a community very important to get out in the community and do these kinds of things to take pride in our neighborhood means a lot so is it cool to see all this stuff getting cleaned up yeah [Music] today we're celebrating the transition of Pasco County public transportation to a new more modern name go Pasco [Music] it's it's time for a change it's a little so much brighter so much better colors the buses look a lot better goodbye pcpt it was always hard time to remember those initials and to have go Casco is going to be amazing for our citizens to remember even for us to remember we've been pcbt for 25 years go Pasco envisions exactly what we mean we're here in Pasco to go where you need us to go I think we're looking forward to the future showing that we have a lot of pride in our community we get to the yeah people actually liking that a lot and they said they just like the modernization is a lot better it makes us more reliable go Pasco tells you who we serve we serve Pasco where peace VT it was tough to determine that so that's why we went to this new new name and new brand again vibrant colors help us get that message across thank you to the team for putting this all together this has been a 20-something years we've been pcpt goodbye and see you on go Pasco [Music] here in Florida we're no stranger to rain and Pasco County Public Works wants to show you how we're working to improve drainage along your roads our crews work hard to keep your roads in great shape and you'll notice after a heavy rain we often see ponding or

standing water on the road that doesn't easily drain away ponding can be a problem for a couple reasons most importantly it can be a safety issue because when you drive through standing water you can start to hydroplane and lose control so why does pounding happen in most cases it's because the shoulder doesn't slope away from the road so the water doesn't have anywhere else to go Pasco crews are always on the lookout for these problem areas and have a relatively easy way to fix them most Pasco roads that have water ponding problems have a sod curve where the Grass Grows Right up next to the road our crews use this machine called a greater shave off about three feet of sod running along the road this creates a slope allowing water to run away from the road our crews also use a loader to scoop debris and a sweeper to clean the work site then finishing touches are added like new sod or stone to prevent the fresh soil from washing away and just like that ponding is gone and your roads are protected this easy cost-effective fix doesn't alter the rights of way or affect your property in any way [Music] thanks for watching and please visit mypasco.net to learn more about how Pasco is working for you [Music] foreign [Music]