2.07.2023 Pasco Board of County Commissioners Meeting (Morning Session)

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foreign I would like to call to order the Pasco County Board of commissions 10 o'clock meeting February 7th at 2023 at this time please silence all electronic devices and mute your microphones please rise for the invocation and Pledge of Allegiance 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 amen amen [Music] one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice problems Madam clerk please call the roll district one commissioner Oakley here District Two commissioner Weightman here District three commissioner Starkey District 4 commissioner Bradford here District Five uh 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 birds purview today public comment will be handled as follows first we will take public comment for those who are here in person then we will take public comment for those who are pre-registered for a WebEx link and currently on the Queue we we request that when you address the board comments are not directed personally at against a commission or team member but rather directed at the issues this provides mutual respect between the board 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 activate you have one minute left when your time is up to beat full sound and you should close your comments WebEx participants will be disconnected automatically when their time is up Madam clerk do we have anyone signed up for public comment yes Mr chair we do Ivan Perez yes please stand to the podium state your name and address for the record and then you may begin good morning everyone my name is Ivan Perez and the address is 38 Knight two three Chapman Street I want to say thank you before God to give me this privilege to be here today and this is what I need to tell everyone uh we purchased on a property on 10 20 2020 we hired a title company and start to do all search links all documents necessary and we ask him we call building department for records blueprints any violation or something they don't provide any record for that and 11 20 21 we get a letter from the cause informants that we have a violation and they send us information what we need to do we hired an architect and engineer with license uh 11 2021 and start all the permanent necessary to to get this project moved on 216 I'm sorry on 320 3 5 21 we send an email

to all the buildings are chief and we call uh Mrs Esther Oliver because we have a lot of issues to get the right Form application because we have an existing room that will be without permit but I purchased on the property as at okay uh we did a construction without permits I want to say yes we do the installation of the window we don't get permit for that we do the cabinets we don't get permit for that and we do tires inside of the shower we're not at the permit with that about that okay but after that we hired my engineer my contractor um Architects to try to remedy that and we search on the building I'm sorry on construction allows that we can hire private provider to fix that issue and get all the money resources do I have more time you have one moment okay uh we get with Mr Ramon Blanco and try to solve that issue and they never allow us to get a private provider we need help because from June last year we get a penalty I think starting January something 20 of January 1st of 220 50. 250 50 every day what I need to do I have everything construction pyramid Master permit electrical permits mechanical permit I do everything you can check as a record public and I need help to to get this matter done okay um Sally Sherman is in the back so if if you would come up and maybe take the Sherman to the side and talk with them and work with them okay all right that's it thank you thank you bye Mr chair I have no one else signed up in person I do have two people in queue that signed up for the WebEx okay I don't know if you want to ask anyone anyone else in the audience that would like to come speak so close public comment from here and we'll just go to WebEx and okay hold on just a moment we're going to elevate you all right Miss April you should be able to take yourself off of mute and state your name and address for the record and then you may proceed thank you hello hi we can hear you and see you can't hear you guys can okay can you hear me now can you hear me can you hear me yes we we can hear you Miss April we can hear you I wonder if she's got a volume Miss April we can hear you and we can see you can you hear us we can hear you would you want to Mr chair do you want to move on to the next person and see yeah look at the top of the screen it says there's a microphone with a flashback inside of me that's why she can't hear us I don't know if it'll be a speaker symbol but it would probably be on her end maybe she didn't turn the volume up on her computer okay she can't hear us we can hear her all right let's go let's go to the next one we'll come back to her we'll try

okay Mr peppers can you can you elevate Ellie ardalani [Applause] all right Miss ardalani if you would please um take yourself off of mute and state your name and address for the record and then you may proceed we cannot hear you it looks like you're still on mute okay we see the mute was gone if you can state your name and address for the record and then you may proceed I'm sorry we still cannot hear you Miss artillani we cannot hear you and that's not us because both of them are having the same issues of definition well um the second one you probably can hear but we can't hear her so what happens in a situation like this is someone like calling her or getting a hold of her and whatever means they gave her to remedy so she can get back on or are they just I don't know it's a question for your staff I mean do you guys connect are you guys emailing her or texting her or I just I just texted the first one patty so I just told her go ahead and speak when we come back to you so let's try going back to her and then maybe alrighty that's the same thing with Ellie Mr Peppers Could you please Elevate Miss April we're going to allow her to speak even though she's not able to hear us and I'm curious what happens when this happens if we this is the first time it's happened oh no we've had people moved off we're resetting we're emailing the participants right now to let them know that we're having some technical difficulties I you know as far as the order of operations for the meeting if we want to come back to this and allow them to speak or you know I don't know that's general order of operations question uh so we just tried Patti couldn't get her again well someone may need to speak on consent so I just I don't know so I don't necessarily want to afford to the both of the speakers that were signed up did not it appeared did not sign up for anything that was on the agenda they signed up referencing Meadow Oaks which unless you know differently I don't see on the agenda no nor do I so perhaps we could move forward while our I.T team it looks like they're resetting and re-connecting with those folks okay um maybe someone can call them on the phone talk to him and then we'll wait for the break okay all right so cons consent agenda so we're going to close public comment now give the option for those people to speak if we can make the connection later another time for Resolutions Madame Clark we do not have any resolution okay and for the consent agenda I have two items uh c35 is withdrawn in c36 has been pulled in revised are there any other pulls or withdrawals for the

consent agenda if not may have a motion Move Motion the other items on the consent agenda be approved all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay Mr David Allen 30 C 36. I I did wanna question 14. good morning chair County Commissioners David Allen utilities director um the uh page eight of the proposed agreement with National Services for the utilities dual check replacement program was inadvertently admitted from the agenda package that missing page included the county standard Provisions for compliance with local state and federal laws and no other changes to the proposed agreement are proposed at this time and staff recommends approval okay thank you no problem thank you all in favor say aye aye any opposed all right so c14 we already oh was it c14 so we already voted on it but let's have a discussion on it yes yes uh commissioner promotion okay thank you is that the one the one but then it says District Five yeah five so it's not working for me to meet up around material up here so what which is the fire station that's on here so okay thank you TJ with Facilities Management um that is fire station 19. it's an archaeological survey for fire station 19 on um um trying to think of the road um so the the fires I'm just getting some chatter about the fire station that's being rebuilt in my district on Seven Springs so I'll bring that up under commissioners oh thank you that's yours yeah thank you and Commissioners we are having an issue with the board portal on Civic clerk the public view does work if you if no I can't get public email it's working for me so um okay we do have it working and looking into this as well comes in waves apparently okay so we'll go to r43 if we can but I don't have anything early on the time certain but everybody's here right okay that we can go and do our presentation excellent so Commissioners I you have a packet of information that's at your seat and it includes the annual investment summary port for the year ended September 30th 2022 as well as the quarterly investment summary report for quarter ended December 31st 2022 along with a printed out version of the presentation that is up right now on the screen I'd like to introduce to you probably a familiar face um we have from I should say familiar faces we have with us um Matt Lazar he is the interim Finance director for my office Mandy long has resigned and taken a position with the First National Bank of Pasco so Matt was working as the assistant Finance director and he's doing an amazing job

so he's here today as the interim Finance director to do part of the presentation and along with him is Scott Stitcher he is with pfm Asset Management Group and he does our investments for us as well and we have put together the investment summary report before it was just like a one-page um busy spreadsheet and we thought let's change it up let's add more information and explain to you what what has happened the past year as well as the last quarter so here um is uh Mr Lazar and Mr Stitcher to go further into the details of that so thank you all right thank you Commissioners uh so before you you'll see up here we're going to go over first we're going to start with the quarterly performance for the period end of December 31st and then we'll go into what Nikki was talking about the new presentation a more user-friendly format for you guys to kind of look through and look at the Investments this will be the new format going forward and then if there's any questions just please feel free to ask and then any input it's a document we will update if needed so uh but we'll go ahead and start okay good good morning everyone I'm gonna make some brief comments on the uh economy and then uh we'll jump into the portion of the assets that we manage on behalf of the county and um and then I'll hand it back to you to to to finish up um in a nutshell uh last year the Fed was fighting some persistent inflation and that led them to raise interest rates a total of seven times for uh 4.25 increase in interest rates in total taking the a Fed funds rate uh today to 4.5 to 4.75 so in a rising rate environment that's not a great thing for fixed income investor Rising rates lead to Falling returns uh a price decreases however in the long term that's the money we're talking about here is long-term operating funds it's going to benefit you in in higher income in the portfolio so there's some uh near-term Growing Pains as interest rates rise but in the long term you will be rewarded we're seeing that already in the portfolio and we'll get into this a little bit later when we look at the yield at cost on the portfolio which is again the income you're earning on the portfolio uh has increased consistently throughout the year is going to continue to do so as we move throughout 2023. um let me fast forward to this slide Matt you want to jump in here so on this slide here what we are representing to you is the portfolio for the county this is the unrestricted portfolio so what you're going to see here is we're showing you the makeup of the different investment Avenues so some of the various local government investment pools in which we are Distributing the over 1.4 billion

dollars in unrestricted Investments so the surplus funds for the county you'll see there's been some changes since the last time we presented to you so speaking to what Scott was talking about earlier we've started moving some money the finance team has done a great job so Richard van Steen has led that team to really take advantage of the short-term fixed rates so you will see that in that Florida palm term 203 million dollars so we are trying to take advantage of those so we can make sure to maintain one liquidity but also the operational needs of the county so being available those funds being available for use as you guys see fit big picture as Scott was saying at the tail end of the fiscal year 2022 we saw an uptick for September 30 and we finished with a return of about eight million dollars we are already at close to 7.3 million in returns for just the first quarter of our fiscal year so we anticipate being back in line with the pre-covered numbers really maximizing returns but also maintaining compliance with obviously Florida statute and the investment policy that you guys have approved let's see what else do I have for you uh we again just being in line with the prior year balances but I think as you can see we're going to continue to monitor this we work closely with pfm to we understand return on investment isn't number one in the listing but we do want to make sure that is there because we want to make sure that if the capital needs we've heard loud and clear Capital big part of the budget we want to make sure you guys are able to have those expenditures and and have that the offsetting revenue to budget for that so that is what we're kind showing here for you obviously some of the other information very familiar to you but if there's any questions you can just let us know and walk through them we'll just roll through you can continue to hear my voice so we'll just keep going here so in the investment policy and we're going to talk about this later when we go through the breakdown in the investment policy that the county has approved there is restrictions on the different pools in which we can invest so represented on this slide you will see the gray outline box that is the maximum investment percentage of the whole portfolio as approved in that investment policy with the blue bar filling in showing where we are in line with the investment policy we did want to really bring to your attention that bottom line the Florida Prime SBA in the investment policy it does allow for a maximum of 25 percent you will see for the period ended December 31 we were exceeding that and that is in line with the ad alarm revenues that the county had received in December so again we we use this graph and we'll show you later we're going to incorporate it quarterly to kind of show you we're to continue to monitor these so we can maintaining compliance but that is why you're going to see that 31.7 percent it was just timing of revenues that the county had received so

yeah I'll just add that it's not uncommon this time of year when ADV alarms are coming in to see cash balance as well but our conversations with the staff we were able to redeploy that money and bring you back in compliance so really no concerns there today I'll just note too on our portfolio again I'm going to make my comments around that 376 million dollar portion of the assets that you saw in that summary slide and I think it's important to reiterate something Matt alluded to and that's the fact that what we do on your behalf is driven by Florida State Statute as well as the County's investment policy that drives our investment decisions on on your behalf building on the compliance section this just shows you uh an issuer diversification to show you that you're again in compliance from an issuer limit as well as from a credit quality standpoint so there's no concerns from a policy standpoint with regard to issuers or diversification or credit credit quality uh let's spend a little time on this slide again it is a summary of the portfolio that we manage on your behalf we ended the quarter at a 376 million 458 thousand dollars uh I want to note the effective duration in the portfolio is 1.64 years versus 1.74 years for The Benchmark uh duration serves as a a risk measure it serves as the interest rate sensitivity of your portfolio uh so the fact that we are short duration relative to The Benchmark would mean that we're taking on less interest rate risk in the portfolio and we feel like that's pruned in an interest rate environment where you're seeing rates rise so you're going to continue to see us take a more defensive posture from an interest rate standpoint I mentioned earlier earlier the yield at Cost you'll know it stands at 1.83 at the end of uh December it stands at 2.04 percent today you're going to continue to see that number tick up as maturities occur as interest rate uh it is interest occurs and pay Downs occur in the portfolio that money will be redeployed into higher yielding Securities and you're going to continue to see that number tick up so again at the end of the first quarter in 2022 the yield of cost stood at 0.76 percent today at 204. and again why is that important because interest in the portfolio makes up a large part of the total return so we're going to see that interest rate number continue to tick up uh and benefit this portfolio and the county over the long term uh High credit quality double A for the portfolio fully Diversified looking at the pie chart in the upper right hand uh corner you can see we're spread across a number of sectors I do want to point out that we did take action in the third quarter to eliminate the municipal Holdings that are outside of the State of Florida so we sold roughly 2 million nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars in par for municipal bonds uh so chairman Mariano I'm hoping that that

makes you happy uh everybody just helps so uh that that is now taken care of again it was about five Bonds in total uh there was a slight loss it was incurred but uh uh a rounding error when you look at the size of this particular portfolio um down the bottom right is really just a bar chart that shows you how we get to that effective duration number that I was speaking to a little bit earlier just a breakdown of of how we are uh how that 1.64 years is made up and again you can see we are overweight the shorter end of the duration distribution which is a good thing again that means more money is coming due that we can invest out and higher yields and then we give you a credit quality breakdown in that lower left hand corner let's get into what you really want to see and that is performance we show you uh performance over the last three months so the quarter ending December 31st and then we show you the full year ending December 31st in that second column so some very good news over the last three months positive returns uh we haven't seen positive returns in the fixed income Market since the third quarter of 2021. so it's exciting to be here today to actually be able to deliver positive returns 0.82 percent versus The Benchmark at point seven three percent uh you net out a fee of about a basis point for the quarter and the net of fee return is 0.81 so about eight basis points of outperformance for the quarter the story's uh a little better in terms of outperformance for the uh year uh but in absolute terms it's not quite as pretty because of the negative number there in front of of the return but a negative 321 for the portfolio versus The Benchmark and a negative 365. netif uh fees a negative 326. so about 40 basis points point four zero percent of outperformance there I just want to stress you know although that number is negative keep in mind the the importance of of these assets and what state statute says and that is safety of principal and liquidity first and foremost um so it may seem ugly but think about an s p return last uh of 19 uh last year of a negative 19 uh and then this sort of you know is why you are taking a more conservative approach in investing these these assets so uh negative three percent is much more palatable than a negative 19 percent let me stop there I've thrown a lot of information at you in a short amount of time just see if there are any questions to this point let me just uh lead with you know I think you're right the the short-term Market is where we should be going right now and if if my thinking is if we need direct to give you direction to kind of change where we've gone the best I'm happy to kind of look to go that way because the short-term Market is the highest interest rates what's what's the highest interest rate on the CD right now it looks like it's a 3.85 it's probably more than that depending on how far you're going out okay yeah so

I mean I I think we should be taken especially if it's CDs whatever I don't care if it's six months or a year if we can put that in there and take advantage of the high rates right now because if they do drop down the next year or two then the more rubbing that we can draw in right now I think we should and especially it's it's being more liquid puts us in a good position for the next move Mr chair if I'd like Azar to talk about some of the strategies um he and his team have been implementing on the short term talk specifically directly to what you're saying okay so uh I think great minds think alike I'm going to say because we have done that we've been looking at that so that's back to that Florida palm fixed rate those are very short term giving us a fixed rate the last one we to participate in is a 5.14 return and then we also are working with finalizing some items related to CDs we're averaging about 4.25 percent return on those CDs so we are in line with you and we will continue to monitor those that is been a bulk of what the treasury team has done but we will continue to look into those so and those are the safest Investments for us to be in as well correct they're they are safe and we're going to get we're fixed rating that so we're knowing what we're going to get we have an expectation so we wouldn't see a loss on there so I mean for the years that we struggled with the down economy the low interest rates right now is an opportunity for us to to maximize this return so I like that approach I think it's good to keep on going and if if you need flexibility from us how we've said the portfolio should be I think we can say that if we look at it safer is better which would be shorter term so if I needed if you need direction from nothing to structure I hope you ask for it so um I feel that the portfolio um the policy for investment gives us the latitude to do that and we are taking advantage of that one thing that they balance is if they take money out of long term now they have to make sure that we're not doing it at a loss right right so they're investing the money taking it out of long term where we're not going to get hit with a loss and then reinvesting that in short term to take advantage of those higher yields you'll know when the take was the right time to take the right ones out yeah and again I think you're really going to see that in our next performance on the next quarter you'll see more in line count we will have the CDs reflected on there and a lot of those short-term gains showing up so yeah very good any other thoughts or questions right okay I uh honestly I really didn't have a whole lot more as far as prepared remarks but I'm happy to address any other questions that that might exist now I'll just point out too keep in mind that um you know the the uh longer term portfolio is sort of like steering a a

aircraft carrier uh so I I mentioned that yield of costs ticking up uh each quarter and at some point that's going to be a really really attractive yield and uh the other thing to keep in mind is when interest rates do start to fall money marketers short-term yields fall much quicker than what you'll see in this portfolio so the goal here is to lock in higher yields for a longer term so you continue to maximize that income in return but we'll continue to have those conversations on what the right mix of liquidity is and and long-term Investments are so that's uh you know the beauty of working with the county staff is that the lines of communication are very open we meet quite frequently and again you know with the interest in mind and maximizing the overall portfolio the County's total assets so very good commissioner Stark get a question I just want to say when I I got this the other day and I went through it I did look at who we were invested with and if you remember in the past we had little eggs for our new board members I can't remember we were with something in New York the city and New Jersey Turnpike New Jersey Turnpike and you know some things that probably here didn't want to be in so yes I'm glad to see it I couldn't find one that I said we'd want to say get us out of there that's right not that I'm an expert but yeah so thank you you're welcome we appreciate your maximizing investment we do know it's a big ship to turns and sometimes you're gonna look at when you can get out but I'm glad you're taking care of these short-term opportunities in front of you now for the expiring ones that make it easy to make the shift but I think I think your approach is going great so great thank you for listening to us about the previous Investments as well absolutely our pleasure thank you all right thank you good job thank you all right have a great day thank you gentlemen so the next thing we have is an 11 15 time certain um any luck on the yes citizens yes they're um going to call them correct so we'll go ahead and give the first person a call I think we're going to use this phone here do I just put a microphone up thank you foreign [Music] so my name is [Music] Patty Q3 Newport Shores Drive here in the Lakeside Community in Hudson and I'm speaking today on behalf of the meadow Oaks development project that's going to start behind me okay she may proceed you may proceed thank you so my house was built a year ago and When selecting a lot to build my home on uh I knew I wanted one that had some privacy in the back with no houses behind me in the views of nature so when looking at the lot I selected what was called a premium lot by our Builder which cost me several thousand dollars more for the lot well I can't change

what the builders did to us they did sell a so-called premium Lots stating they would never have homes directly behind us my lot in particular has this one amazing tree and I know I'm not on camera now but I was hoping you could see the view it is the focal point from the center of the property we have a lot of alligators one Sun base actually at the bottom of my property in the scene in this grass we have gopher turtles and birds and deer and whatnot it's very peaceful so getting to my point and why I'm speaking like many of my neighbors I was willing to pay the extra money for my lot to have this wonderful Ambiance behind me it's all going to be destroyed when the meadow Oaks project starts while I realized I would what I was told by my Builder was a lot and it's of no concern to the meadow Oaks development project I want to offer up something to think about both my neighbors and I were all willing to pay the extra money for our Lots because of this privacy don't you think future homeowners of metal oats would also be willing to pay more for the luxury of their private a study by the department of horticulture of Michigan State University published in 2005 based on 16 different markets nationally found that home values increased by five to ten percent with privacy trees and Landscaping list with clever which is a real estate listing firm in August of 22 wrote that home values increased with privacy trees embedded in a landscaping by seven percent for medium size and up to 11 for larger properties and if we consider the environment it is a scientific fact that trees improve the air quality by filtering out harmful dust and pollutants such as carbon monoxide trees also provide shade that help reduce energy bills which we know is high here in our hot summers to carry down all the trees reduces our home value but it also can affect the future home values of those other properties pulling in Meadow Oaks Additionally the cost to tear down and remove all the trees could be hugely reduced so for all these Reasons I'm appealing to you today to retain at least a minimum of 20 feet depth of the trees from the property line between our communities it isn't much but we it wouldn't be something that both sides can appreciate please provide us some of the Privacy we paid dearly for and return those lots on your side yet to be sold for more money for the very same reason that we paid for our Lots here and that's the privacy and that's all I wanted to say today I should be about three minutes in next one thank you thank you hi this is Ellie yes it is it's Joanna Cheshire calling from Pasco County we're ready to take your public comment if you'd like to start by stating your name and address for the record um yes good morning my name is Ellie and my address is 13927 Nesbit Court Hudson Florida

and I reside in Lakeside Community I'm sorry there's such an echo in the line so I uh I hear myself that's distracting but we can hear you fine okay um the reason uh for my participation me and my husband this morning is uh we built this house two years ago and um uh we chose this lot specifically because of uh all the trees behind us and shame on us to believe our Builder when we purchased a lot uh that that area behind us was uh uh natural uh conservation and nobody would build back there ever uh we recently found out that that was not the case that there is a development growing up behind us called metal uh of development all the lots have already been designed and they're I'm not sure exactly when but they are going to build uh right behind us and the way it's going to be it's going to be our backyard to the backyard of um the Lots on um in Meadows I am not here to uh shame I am shame on us to believe in our Builder but my request is uh if there's a way that the developer could leave uh a line of trees between us and the lost behind us um just for privacy purposes rather than all of us looking into each other's homes and um and I think it would make even their loss more attractive if they're a tree line uh rather than uh joining backyards and um and I think it would cost the developer less if they leave some trees rather than having to spend money to take everything down and not to mention some of these birds and you know nature would have some home rather than uh having all their homes destroyed so um we had requested to meet with the developer and the Builder but um maybe we're not granted that meeting so that's why me and all my neighbors that uh all alongside of Nesbit and Newport uh Drive Newport Road Drive we're all going to be facing um Lots behind us so that's why we are here and and hoping that maybe uh you Commissioners could hear this and somehow help us to achieve that and that's all I have to say thank you thank you are there anyone else that was going to be calling I don't know if they're on Queue I know we just had the two that were active it was the third one I thought I saw listed but I'll see you build not completed Mr chairman four more individuals is that there's still one by one sure this is a full call they were not online hello hi is this Tanya your public comment we're having a little bit of technical difficulties oh yeah no problem thank you for calling you can go ahead and start by saving

your name and address for the record please okay it's Tanya Drumheller and I live at 13327 Newport Shores Drive Hudson Florida 34669 like to submit uh to keep a 20-foot Tree Line Between Us in Lakeside and the meadow Oaks Community um we bought this property because of the trees we were told it was preserved by the Builder we do love seeing all the animals and it's heartbreaking seeing the animals being displaced all over the area in general and I know that that comes with growth but we do need to be conscious as possible um I know what I'm asking for no one is able uh really to do for some reason it's to put people over profit and unfortunately I know that that no one cares but those of us affected by this so with that I would like the Builder to try or the soon whoever is doing this to consider that we paid extra for this lot um for the property because we were told it was a preserve so we just wanted to say that I would assume that your buyers would for these houses would do the same and they probably want some trees also and that is all I have to say thank you okay thank you do I just hang up or is there anything else I need to do yes we can hang up thank you so much okay thank you bye-bye Denise hey how are you good how are you good we're having some technical difficulties so I'm calling you for your public comment oh I don't have public comments I'm just a you know I work here so I I always listen to the board that way I don't do a live stream because there's always a delay so I sorry okay one more foreign yes hi this is Joanna Cheshire calling from Pasco County you had signed up for public comment yeah from you now if you want to state your name and address for the record okay do I do it on my phone uh yeah no this is fine because we're having technical difficulties so everyone in the board all right wonderful um my name is Rosemary Robinson and I live at 13157 Newport Shores Drive in Hudson okay so um my backyard faces the trees that the builders are planning to cut down and um I moved in last August and one of the selling factors was the view from my backyard I was assured by my Builder Inland homes that the trees would always remain there and the homes will never be built so that was a great uh Plus in my decision to buy the home um I know that the building project is moving forward despite this and I asked the new Builders to please retain a line of trees for us here at Lakeside um it'll also be um beneficial for the builders

financially by not cutting down all the trees and their new homeowners will also have their privacy as well as the homeowners here at Lakeside and that's all I have uh we have a question for you Mr Starkey okay do you have to save any trees in your backyard did you hear the question no I didn't the question is did you save any trees in your backyard I have one tree in my backyard but the view past the pond that is there are all trees it's just gorgeous and did your neighborhood save any trees along the buffer between the property and the property next to you did your neighborhood save any trees along the buffer between your property and the property next to you yeah there are also uh all the trees are there nothing's been cut down uh what about in your neighborhood um no no trees have been cut down no will you ask me yeah okay I'll ask it again what's the name what's the name of your neighborhood Meadow no no it's called Lakeside Community okay did you did Lakeside communities leave a buffer of trees between your property and the next door property that's what I'm asking yes what what's happening is our whole entire block has a pond and then past that are all trees so that's the view that we're looking at and some some of the homeowners were even charged more for buying their home because of that view thank you I'm just gonna go to the property appraisers website for my answer thanks thank you thank you for your comment um we'll kind of look at the two neighborhoods back to back get with the people it's my district so maybe I'll be meeting up with the people but let's go take a look and do a little research first okay thank you all right that's the end of public comment on those line okay all right so now we're going to go to committee reports commissioner Oakley yes sir I have just a couple of things today um first item I'd like to cover is uh I would take this opportunity to it's been probably seven or eight months that our new administrators been in office and working for us and uh I'd like to thank him for the job he's doing the leadership he's shown in Pasco County to continue our growth and keep us in the right direction without a bump in the road and I only appreciate everything that you've done to help staff and all lead us into that direction and I think you've done a great job and I just want to applaud you for that so certainly appreciate all of you done while you've been in our ministry all credit to the team sir but thank you for the thank you the next item I'd like to um talk about is

uh the respect we should give each of each of ourselves in our own districts in other words if when I came into office and ran I visited a lot in uh District Five and Miss Mariano's district and then at the time it was Mike Wells and District Four and different ones and I had a lot of respect for them and what they wanted in their districts and thought it was very important that we continue that we got two new members now so think it's important that we understand that and respect each each of our districts because we spend we live in our districts we were voted to serve and and we've made that oath to be in our districts and live in our district so those districts take special issues from each of us for our districts to do the right thing so I want to be sure that we don't go in someone else some other commissioner's district and cause any issues or anything that's not really in line with that District's opinion of how she wants things or he wants things to go so that we don't um we need to be there and we need to know what they're wanting in their districts because we all need to work together to be able to support each other when the right thing comes along to be in different districts because everything doesn't happen happen and a lot of things are happening in my district now but y'all also have things happening in your District so I always try to make sure I know what it is that you're working on in a sense and the only time we can talk is during this time about any of these issues so I just want to make sure we just have a mutual respect for each other and then when it comes about somebody's District otherwise just an example of saskin award he's originally a Dade City person and all um he's I think you're working along with and I'm aware of it with boys and girls club which is in my district and that's understandable but we want to make sure that he doesn't do something in my district that I'm not aware of that wouldn't fit what I really want for my district and and so I respect him for what he wants in his district in this case he's only been here I think this is your yeah two months and he's only been here one month but I've heard him speak of the boys and girls club and some other things in my district but I like to know sometimes what he's doing in his district too where he lives and where he's he serves the County Commission so I think we all need to be give each other that mutual respect that that they working in their districts and you this is a time when you talk when you do things in your district and you visit different ribbon cuttings or ground breakings all in your District this is the time you let us know what's going on in Industry some of those issues we all get those messages to be there whatever but when it's your District that that's happening in

you should speak out about it and the good things that are coming about your District so um yes you know I I was trying to figure out a way to bring something like this up to and and you know we're all elected County white and um there are many issues that go county-wide um for example I like to deal with Workforce training and I'm working on expanding M skills throughout the county and it would go into some of your other districts um but I uh so sometimes we do do things that happen in other districts um and I think we need to give ourselves the I mean that's okay I mean we we all work for the county but I I will tell you where I do draw a line and is when a commissioner uh when someone tries to do something in my district or really anywhere that's against our ordinances and so um I've had this problem in the past where someone knows somebody you don't want to do the landscape ordinance they don't want to follow the sign ordinance you know I'm not okay with that I'm not okay with that anywhere in the county but but I especially am not okay with that in my district especially the parts where I'm trying so hard to bring it back up because so much of it has fallen has fallen down so please don't come into my district and try because you know somebody whatever to do something that's against what our ordinances say yeah okay um to continue a little bit uh in that fact that I care about trails and I like trails in my district but I actually give that um Kudos and stars out for commissioner Starkey because he works very hard at trails and so against my district I have no problem with her working with trails I don't have to worry about Trails too much so she's gonna she's gonna follow him make sure it's going to be a trail so and then it goes all over the county but I'm in support of her doing that I I like Trails I think people are going to be using Trails more for their bike ride and things like that rather than a highway we got a lot of busy traffic coming about and in and around especially in the eastern part where a lot of bicycle are like riding the hills and curves around here but it's very dangerous and so when you go to Trails I really would like to see more ride Trails because it's safer and with that I got one more item can I just touch on the two though this was in the subject for a second longer just for a second though as well okay and you know I think you know commissioner Starkey you make a great point we are elected county-wide we need to know what's going on sometimes citizens come out and they reach out and ask for advice whatever um sometimes it could be simple as a

pothole or something like that and I always try to defer those things to the district commissioner we've got a great team each one of us have a great team that are working hard and I think very effective for our people so I don't want to get stuck in minutia sometimes you'll get a bigger issue when we did redistricting back a little while ago one of the things of the districts I wanted to hang on to was that District down in Cemetery which you know we spent I've spent a lot of time I've gone in Tallahassee fought for water fought for the rage had a lot of great success I wanted to make sure if they needed help I was still going to be the district commissioner but Commissioner of he made a statement that I thought was fantastic he said look we're all working on things for the county the best we can for everywhere across the board and if we're involved in a situation even sitting at the commissioner's District I don't think any of us have a problem if it's something that we've got some expertise some health experience to kind of make that step forward so I'm very careful I think to kind of avoid another commissioner's District I really try to push it away when I can sometimes there's a little more dialogue going on such as some items coming up maybe later on today that I think are important to get input onto what I think because they do when people come to us they come to see all of us too so we still get a beaversed so um I think you're right the district commissioner should be able you know have that impetus that extra emphasis of what they want to do but everyone about decisions needs to be what's best for overall the county that's right but yeah you got on and I'm going to tell you when you came here and we were working with the flooding that was coming in all over the place you're being boots on the ground over in uh Griffin Park because you were there over there and I'm over here at Beacon woods and my water level is going down Griffin Park's going up we were able to find out there was a problem in the middle so I think it's all of us working together the way this is all designed to talk things through to go through things to make this all great so and your leadership has been great with that so thank you yeah thank you um it I'll give you another example of uh working on another person District I had a project that was Swift Mud actually that dealt with uh Hidden Lake and that's commissioner Wells District at the time and I so I went and asked him about it I could work on that not talk about the project but ask that if he mind I had a project that would possibly save flooding of homes up to about 60 homes if we could hold water back in that area and so so it's kind of been they've really done a lot of research on it it hadn't come to be yet but anytime we can save flooding Waters from going to someone's house we've done

a great job that day so that's the worst feeling you ever have is you have water entering your house that shouldn't be there so but and I'll end with one one other thing so since I was elected we had 400 and some million dollars worth of uh fdot projects Happening Here in in East Pasco or Pasco County across the county and actually today they have over 700 million dollars and still in roads and all happening a lot of it happening in East Pasco County but one of the first roads was 5654 all the way across the county was one of the first times we've had our complete four-lane Road go one side to the other accounting but with that I'd like to bring everybody's attention to our reroute of Highway 52. it's playing right now that that will open up for two lanes one in each way one East one West to happen on February 17th so hopefully that data will show up and be the right date and you'll start have a new route it'll change the way people think about some things because I'm I'm thinking that some of San Angelos tend to dry up on traffic backups and all because that Road's going to take them straight through to other areas and spread that traffic out so it'd be better for our public and for our citizens but uh well that that's all I have today and I appreciate all of y'all uh working together uh thank you commissioner wieving excellent well I guess I'll start off with a list of happy birthdays and Taylor happy birthday Joanna happy birthday Jerry downstairs happy birthday I think Marie had a birthday recently no coming up coming up well happy early birthday it's happy birthday to all those folks in the building um do you have a picture Andy yeah so we have a pretty awesome weekend so over the weekend or we had BayCare Hospital Wesley Chapel kick off it's almost full opening it's a great group there and the board members are it's a great board with members from around the region the Tampa Bay area and uh it's a really nice hospital when when you first walk in uh you don't get the sense that it's a health care facility it's very comfortable and uh welcoming and you know that that group's there to make life better I see commissioner Susan lavalla in that picture there's a there's a good group at uh at the soft opening uh so pretty neat the BayCare Bay care is made some 240 plus million dollar investment uh in our community and so congratulations to them and also it was delayed but Advent Health Wesley Chapel celebrated 10 years uh in business uh in Pasco so too strong Healthcare facilities uh working on their milestones could I add something to your statement about BayCare of course they're across the street from

Advent health and we certainly appreciate both hospitals been in Pasco County but you know the recipient of them being there and them I guess challenge each other for for the best care that we have the recipients citizens of Pasco County to receive better care because of that competition and it's a good thing for our County to have two hospitals both of them working for the same thing basically to give us better health here in Pasco County and help work with our citizens so I thank them for open absolutely coming a long way it uh Pasco has seemingly become a medical with Moffett coming in and these new hospitals so it's it's really nice to see these significant businesses coming in to help create a good quality life for us next up the follow-up on conversation last week with the Wesley Chapel District park and soccer fields and everything associated with that no Parks is working with West Chapel Athletic Association and the other group of tea that's looking to to take advantage of those of those those fields I think they're coming to an agreeable solution and the current uh kind of Delegation of authority is to have the parts director sign the agreement but I'd like to to make a motion to move that over to the county administrator's office and let the County Administrator broker that deal in his office directly I think it's it's just better that we we start looking at this situation from a more of a procurement perspective because it's a significant County asset and we need to make sure that we're managing that County asset for the best interests of our so when you have big money coming in wanting to use your Fields I think we need to look at most qualified and have some sort of formal procurement process to manage that situation it's a good problem to have because that means hey we have a lot of Need for our fields and I think it's just part of growing pains and so um I like the Entertainer as the board to support having the administrator office kind of take it out a second Mr chairman okay I have a motion a second and I'll just in more discussion on the subject any more discussion all right let's just say with Keith go ahead Mr Stockton yeah it's but um I just want to make sure that everyone understands the history of what has happened here right um as we go forward because there was a very vibrant soccer program at Wesley Chapel Athletic Association and other sports as well we're only talking the main issue right here is soccer but I can tell you my own assistant has to go

play flag football in Pinellas County because they can no longer use the fields on Mitchell field for flight football because it's all contracted for soccer that's not okay so um but there were there was a very vibrant and I have a division one soccer player in the family played soccer at the Air Force Academy married to a national soccer player so my husband and I have coached for 25 years many many different kinds of teams so I got some pedigree and licensed soccer coach in this Arena but I recall Jack you were here at Wesley Chapel Wesley Chapel Athletic Association which was great that they stepped up and took over handling all different kinds of sports on the west on the east side they left before they took 400 soccer kids and left Wesley Chapel Athletic Association and went to grad Sports and started playing on fields that were not soccer fields those were events event space so some of this pain has been brought on you know but the fact of the matter is at the end of the day I think we brought the paint on because we didn't have adequate funding for the parks and so this is just going to get worse until we do something quick with that I'm going to support you much thank you Mr yeah Wesley Chapel Athletic Association they've been 17 18 years something they do a that group does a fantastic job and they're not just running soccer they have six other lines of sports business essentially that they run and you're not going to be 100 all the time and I think you know they do a good job for that the park system there they put a lot of time and effort a lot of investment from the community and so you know as the the game of soccer has increased in Pasco I think it's just one bite of at a time and US revamping our policy on how field time is managed you know we have egg on our face too we're we're behind now I'm building our fields of wire grass ramp Sports campus I've expressed my concern with staff on on County on the county being behind on that so I mean it's you know it's it's a it's a it's a growth problem so I appreciate everybody supporting to take a look that way we ensure our kids oh it takes us a lot more money yeah yeah to get that done so I'll I'm going to support the motion but I just want to say that I I'm pretty sure that Keith Wilder is working very closely with my car Bella as he makes makes these decisions anyway so whether we made this motion and I think Mike is going to be on top of what's going to happen anyway yeah and I think it's important that we let these things work and frankly it's it's probably not a bad idea to have a maybe another a workshop or a presentation sometime in the future of the parks that's where what we're doing next anyway um but again with what we have going on it's been busy when growth sometimes it

feels lag but I think it's going to be important I think he's got a pretty good plan to work it forward to go from here yeah uh call the motion all in favor say aye aye aye okay thank you thank you Commissioners then the last uh my last item uh it's a sensitive one uh not sure I'm everybody probably saw recently about the sheriff Hernando and Pasco and the trafficking case the 16 year old out of uh based out of Pasco County gentlemen's club and it's a we have a true case now where we've seen a child be brought into that environment in the worst possible scenarios occur and so I started looking into whatever what are our rules for these x-rated um businesses in our in our County and so I'd like to with your support have a county attorney look into some sort of reporting requirement if this is the type of business that we're going to have here I think it's I think it's important that we we know kind of how that business is operating in the garbage business or any other business you have to report a significant amount of information about your employees report information to the county and the people that you're serving uh in Jacksonville for example I think you have to be 21 I read an article for a politician 21 to get into these facilities uh so I'd like to come up with a more stringent process on managing these facilities and also have the include uh the the stores that sell the products that go into it I think they're both kind of related is into a Gateway and so I'm looking for support and having our County attorney to really put some teeth into our ordinance to to release establishments in that way we don't have another incident or try to avoid another incident as serious as this one Mr chairman be happy to look at what others are doing I will but I will say this will take a pretty significant revamping of the way you regulate sexually oriented businesses in Pasco because right now there is no permitting requirement what it what is required is a it's a zoning the ordinance is a zoning ordinance um so we can go in that direction but you're not you don't have the infrastructure in place to go in that direction now so that's that that's just a heads up not that I don't want to do it or I'm not doing it but but you you're going to have to it's going to be staff it's going to be um you know it's going to be a departure from the way we had regulated this business Mr chairman I I think I think that effort is well worth it so I

more and more and more maybe there's something we can go to get rid of these places and it may be even that we can even take a look at and I've mentioned this a couple times before to other folks I kind of like the idea is maybe we can even try to put some incentives to go have these places if they convert to a regular type of business or something else we give them some type of tax incentive or some type of thing to make it financially worthwhile it's a shutdown event business because once it's shut down they can't come back again and maybe something like that is something we can do as well as a commission to kind of find out how do we squash this out because I'd much rather deal with a problem of having too many kids that want to play soccer in fields and enough Fields than having to worry about one kid getting stuck on a two-week jaunt by some drug person to go take that girl away like that and just ruin her for two weeks of her life that she may never get back and is going to be scarred for life so if we could work on that that'd be great can I bring something to your attention and I I've mentioned this dark code but I know they're very very busy I have one in my district at Grand and 54. we we thought we were going to be able to shut it because it got hit by a car uh and it damaged the building and it was closed for months and if one of these is closed for six months we can close it but apparently even though it was closed and there were never any cars there they were able to show tax receipts during that time and were able to reopen and I see now it's now called the Red Room and one of the big things about that place is they've always been told they have a room there that everyone calls the rape room is lovely um but where I want code to get involved in is is they are broken into the property someone has taken down the fence into that property owned by Walmart corporation next door and so the parking lot has illegally expanded into the field behind it so if we could keep uh them from parking 50 extra cars on a Saturday night perhaps it won't be so lucrative okay and um so I'd really like code to look at that or or the sheriff's office or someone all right if you want to bring more of that on committee reports let me just and commit are you good with yours yes sir okay all right so we're done we'll come and come back thank you commissioner and uh I just wanted to say for the record also for commissioner waitman's uh what his motion is and what he's working on um we certainly would not oppose any of that so but if you have any questions from the law enforcement side as we go forward I'll be happy to help we'll look through the next meeting and come back with some ideas what we can do but we're going to take it we're going to take a Mr chairman there's a process you have to go through okay so County attorney which will go over the process for the closed maternity client session we have

coming up Mr chairman I desire the advice of the Border County Commissioners concerning the case of Nikki Alvarez Souls Clerk and comptroller Pasco County Florida versus Pasco County case number 51-2021-ca-2635-c a a x e s Florida Circuit Court sixth judicial circuit to discuss settlement negotiations and strategy related to litigation and for that reason I request a private attorney-client meeting the board proves you should open the private attorney client meeting and announce the commencement of an estimated length of the estimated length of the private attorney client meeting and the names of the persons attending at the conclusion of the private attorney-client meeting the board's public meeting should be reconvened and you should announce the termination of the private attorney-client meeting the entire private attorney-client meeting will be reported by a certified court reporter and the transcript thereof will be made a public record upon the conclusion of the litigation I estimate that the attorney-client meeting will last approximately 45 minutes we have scheduled a certified court reporter to be in attendance in the commissioner's conference room on the first floor for the private attorney client meeting I hereby announce the commencement of a private attorney-client meeting at which the board will discuss settlement negotiations in a strategy related to litigation expenses in the case of Nikki Alvarez Souls Clerk and conferella Pasco County Florida versus Pasco County case number 51-2021-c-a- 2635-c-a-a-x-e-s Florida circuits sixth judicial circuit the names of the persons expected to attend the private attorney client meeting our chairman Jack Mariano Vice chairman Ron Oakley Commissioners Catherine Starkey Gary Bradford and Seth Weightman the County Attorney Jeff steinschneider and the county attorney Mike carbella administrator County Administrator sorry County Administrator Mike carbella outside Council Greg Gregory Stewart in a corporate border the estimated length of the private attorney client meeting is approximately 45 minutes the private attorney client meeting will now convene in the Commissioners conference room [Music]