08.09.2022 Pasco Board of County Commissioners Meeting (Morning Session)

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do [Music] good morning i would like to call to order the pasco county board of county commissioners 10 am meeting of august 9th 2022 at this time please silence all electronic devices and mute your microphones please rise for the invocation and the pledge of allegiance oh merciful creator your hand is open wide to satisfy the needs of every living creature make us think 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 [Music] all right speaking slowly so commissioner fitzpatrick can pull in uh but can you please call the role yes um district one commissioner oakley here district two commissioner moore here district four commissioner fitzpatrick district five commissioner mariano here district three chairman starting here okay now is the time for public comment citizens are given an opportunity to to comment on any current or future agenda item coming before the board and on other business under the board's purview today's public comment will be handled as follows first we will take public comment from those who are here in person and then we will take public comment from those who are pre-registered for webex link and are currently on cue we request that when you address the board comments are not directed personally against the commissioner or team member but rather directed at the issues this provides mutual respect between board members and the public after stating your name and address to the clerk a three-minute timer will be activated after two minutes a single beep will indicate 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 signed up for public comment we do we have manny mayer followed by pastor troy peterson followed by jim carrino followed by steve um eagle so mr mayor good morning hello thank you hi my name is mandy mayer i work with premier community healthcare and i am the community services manager this week is national health center week and we wanted to recognize the community leaders for their support for premier community healthcare who has been proudly providing quality affordable medical dental behavioral health services community for the past 43 years last year premier served more than 38 000 patients and we couldn't do it without the support of our community we hope that you can join us on september 15th at our community impact breakfast and it's going to

we're going to unveil renderings of our new health centers that will be opening up in newport richie and zephyr hills and and we hope to serve another 20 000 patients because of those zoom health centers um in honor of national health center week we wanted to present each of you with certificates um and would love the opportunity to take a photo now or at the next break and i have that in this bag here um just a nice little certificate for each of you that we uh put together but that's it very nice um i don't know what to do about that photograph what what should we do your call your chair um why don't we do i still have time is there within my little time limit resolutions okay we'll finish public comment and then we'll take a picture during the resolution so hang on but you still have more time if you want to keep speaking um no that was basically i wanted to keep it short and sweet again just thanking you all for the support um because again without the support of the commissioners of the community in general premier wouldn't be able to do what we do so just want to thank you all thank you we're excited for all the growth that you guys are having thank you okay next pastor troy pastor troy pastor troy peterson light of the world tabernacle 8114 leo kidd road port richie florida good morning commissioners staff this morning i felt led to give a praise report on some of the events and ways that we've been able to bless our community as the president of warriors of faith motorcycle ministry tampa bay chapter we were able to put together a team to work with local motorcycle clubs newport richie harley-davidson and pasco county schools to fill a bus with school supplies to go to needy families within pasco's county school district two saturdays ago was our annual somebody cares backpack giveaway with the city of port port richie and waterfront park like always children were blessed to view the fire truck we estimated over 700 people came through many families were blessed with backpacks school supplies free hot dogs chips provided by somebody cares warriors of faith christian motorcycle association and volunteer weight last saturday church of brotherly love hudson beach outreach which i am the founding pastor of did a backpack giveaway at strickland park known as hudson beach i got the green light from mr bailey from natural resources and informed uh him of several hundred people would be attend attending i think the park worker was overwhelmed with several hundred people showing up to receive their blessings troy stevenson also blessed us with several bikes i believe the highlight of the event was the kids that needed bikes to ride to school because of the bussing situation we also had a bike that went to a young dad that needed needed it to get to work through

the hudson beach outreach i've had the opportunity also to be given the opportunity to be with the coc pascal leadership council we've been affected and effective in getting elderly off the streets and in the permanent housing just in the last couple months carefest listen up september 24th launching out of waterfront park with local government churches and business owners tackling projects with elderly nutrition we're actually hoping this year that we can team up with code enforcement this year uh to be a support to that department as well i've been encouraging commissioners for over a year to allow somebody cares pastors to lead in the invocation we were in tallahassee a month ago i was given information of federal law that that will be given to you in future commissioner meetings by our attorneys to make this happen it's simple as chaplains we take the responsibility of leading in the invocation that puts the heats up heat on us and pasco county will reap the benefits from god thank you for your time thank you very much next jim carino good morning commissioners and staff my name is jim correia i live at 7311 amber drive in newport richie i moved to pasco county in 1973 and have witnessed tremendous growth in the years i've lived here i started my fire service career 35 years ago or for of 35 years in city of clearwater and a fire service instructor at st pete college for 25 years i assisted in instructing pasco and pasco hernando community college back in the early 80s when pasco fire and ems merged into one entity i've been following with great interest pasco firefighters flight to increase staffing and add more strategically located fire stations to better serve the citizens of pasco county government's main responsibility is public safety it must be a priority only a firefighter truly knows the demands and responsibilities that come with the title firefighter firefighters here today are out and out protecting our community come to you for help it is not a selfish action when they come to this diet to seek necessary resources they need to do their job pasco county continues to thrive and grow and with the huge demands on public safety workers pasco continues to approve large developments of single-family homes multi-family apartments and condominium developments without the necessary infrastructure to support it county continues to fall behind in keeping up with the demands growth that this demand places on our fire service i near i live near fire station 30 on massachusetts avenue even my neighbors say do they have to blow those sirens and horns all the time and i'm just thinking how busy they are every

day as a firefighter you never know what will be next i don't think we've forgotten what they just had to deal with in the past three years with the pandemic virus over 20 years ago the national fire protection association developed a standard for organization development of fire suppression services emergency medical operations and special operations to the public by career fire departments known as nfpa 1710 cities and counties have over 20 had over 20 years to set goals and attempt to meet this standard it's based on years of empirical data to justify the staffing and response time goals pasco county as well as many other agencies are far from meeting its national standards 20 years later we must develop a strategic planning to meet this standard of operation for the safety of the citizens and our fire rescue workers we must stop kicking the can down the road and get serious the longer we wait the farther behind we fall and the more expensive it will get this standard sets response times and deployment resources necessary for single-family residential multi-family and high-rise operations response times are most critical part of this equation getting the resources necessary on the scene to handle emergency at hand i came here today to ask you to listen to the emergency workers and to develop a strategic plan and follow it to make the lives and citizens of pasco and the fire rescue personnel here to protect it safer thank you for your time thank you next steve akel good morning commissioners my name is steve akel i'm a representative of iff level 4420 representing the firefighters at pasco my address is protected okay good morning commissioners i prayed this day would not come although not surprised based off of lack of action or inability of action in the last year after the first meeting where these issues were brought to your attention in july of 21 we are still here asking where are the stations and ambulances to stop signal 40. where is the pay and benefits for the firefighters currently serving so they stop leaving every meeting more housing building and infrastructure is approved yet here we are years later and not one new or rebuilt station and only one new ambulance in years and ward has it station nine is yet again delayed response times are still above the national average the department frequently has no ambulances available and you're still denying our firefighter his state entitled cancer benefits the infrastructure you are approving is flying up with unfettered growth and there is nothing to show for in regard to public safety all while the people of pasco pay the price for over a year now local 4420 has brought to your attention the death sentence you continue to issue to the

citizens of pasco and the mass deficiencies in the board's leadership leadership that allows fire stations to not be built for and i quote over a decade knowingly putting the public at risk population increases by thousands monthly with no support for public safety to retain experienced or new employees as is felt by the fire department and sheriff's office you say you want to work with us however these issues were and continue to be discussed and could have been planned for and prevented with an open line of communication however we've been dismissed in april you were told over 50 of response times were greater than 10 minutes and reminded signal 40 was still an issue in may you were reminded the geo bond was approved in 2018 which was supposed to go to fire rescue for five new fire stations and rebuild four of which we have zero you were told that in the last year we lost 50 firefighters and that number has only increased with the massive amount of support and pay other counties are providing their fire departments we will lose the majority of these new firefighters and continue to lose experienced firefighters in july after initially denying one of our firefighters cancer benefits you had the opportunity to do the right thing as stated by the county attorney and i quote you can choose to resolve this now yet you chose to deny him not only deny him when his cancer is a qualifying cancer according to the bill but continue a challenge against the state to fight all firefighter cancer benefits and continue to waste taxpayer money by paying an outside attorney to fight against him you could have at least taken care of this firefighter as the bill reads and then continued pasco county's attack against firefighters everywhere are these really your morals and ethics your fire department is ranked third busiest for ems calls and eighth busiest for fire calls in the state ahead of surrounding departments including hillsborough and tampa pasco county is a nationwide pasco county fire rescue is a nationwide leader in firefighter cancer prevention and receives numerous national accreditations for service excellence when are you going to get on board and take care of the people of pasco with us you have shown by your lack of action your personal agendas take precedence over the needs of the people pasco we will continue to fight for you please fight for us at the polls on august 23rd thank you very much that's it and there's no one on my legs no one on wednesday uh is there anyone else who would like to address the award this morning okay i think we'll take that photo right now so the gentleman um from premiere doesn't have to stay if he doesn't want to so we'll just come down in front of the podium and take that photo that one for you guys

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perfect thank you thank you okay and we have no resolutions today that's correct uh so we're on the consent and we have some pulled items here and remembers i'll read what we have and then you let me know if you want to pull anything else we have c22 pulled by andrew baxter poland revised c29 commissioner moore full discuss c30 commissioner moore pool discuss uh chief cast in ac 175 full revised and c60 withdraw by commissioner mariano anything else to be added to the to the uh pull all right i'll take a motion second all in favor aye aye aye all right all right we will go i just want to make sure that it includes the consent addendum not in the motion i just want to state it on the record it includes the consent so i will restate my motion to include the addendum thank you okay another second all in favor aye aye opposed all right uh andrew baxter please good morning members of the board andrew baxter facilities management director this pull and revise is there was a scrivener's error related to the um the agenda memo number that's been revised and distributed and we still recommend approval move pro second all in favor aye aye and that is for fire station number 20. correct correct man okay um now we are on to c29 oh thank you madam chair um you guys stay out andrew do you want me to i didn't know if the chief wanted to come up to or not yeah so i just pulled c29 and c30 um this is a delegation authority to administer the administrator which is my cabala now um to obviously award the bid an execution agreement for fire station 3 and on c30 is fire station number 18. um if i'm not correct andrew before you jump in we don't normally do this and delegate that authority but obviously we don't want things to be held up we did a little bit with ridge road to delegate the authority to mr biles doing the same with mr cabala so this does not have to continually come back to the board of county commissioners this allows mr cabala to sign off on the obviously any i'll let you do anything to do with that budget in reference to the building of that fire station if i'm not correct that's correct sir uh andrew baxter facilities management director again this uh these uh these two fire stations we don't typically do it this way we will usually wait till after the bid opening and then we bring it to the board in an effort to expedite in every way possible the construction of these fire stations we are delegating authority today and then

that will then allow us to move expeditiously through that process how much time do we think that may save months probably about 30 days to 45 days that's a lot absolutely these were these were part of the um bond issues that went through in 2018 was that correct that's correct sir i'll move performance and i would like to also say this is okay under discussion thank you uh this is very exciting because the bids actually closed today at one o'clock at 1 15. so it's very exciting that we can move forward allowing mike carbala to move forward with these without coming back to the board so thank you yes ma'am and now just for those who are here and who are listening it's um it's uh it's uh i'm i'm gonna probably speak for my fellow commissioners it's it's it's surprising how slow government goes but we have to follow all these laws and rules and purchasing and advertising and contracts that you think could should be on the road in a regular business environment in a month can take years so we're doing everything we can up here to expedite these fire stations and uh so glad we're taking this action today could you uh say again where rescue number three and west view number 18 is yes uh they are generally ones in zephyr hills area uh near chancey road um and then the other is in the hudson area off state road 54 u.s nine or state road 52 us 19 area okay well we all know we need help on the west side so all right um all in favor say all right thank you very much thank you did you do 30 as well that was for 29 mover approved um c30 yeah second okay uh all in favor aye aye aye opposed all right and now we have chief castle and commissioner starkey station three is that majestic and 52. majestic thank you morning scott caston fire chief this particular item had a couple of literally last minute revisions to make first of all was a final approval stamp that was received on the scope of work from the state and also there was a few non-substantial editorial revisions made to the document and while i'm up here i do want to say thank you to all the parties that came together to make this particular item uh reality today because there was a lot of people that put a lot of time and effort at the last minute to make it happen so i wanted to you know publicly thank them it's very exciting to see this happening yep very good program we're looking forward to it so and i want you to stay up there after we vote on this because i have a question for you sure um all in favor of ac one seven seconds the motion of the second amendment uh in favor aye aye so i have been traveling the last week um but and often on the last few

weeks but i keep seeing these mobile home fires and frankly we've had two on buena vista is is there any thought that something may be going on here or they just randomly happening all of a sudden like we're saying yeah unfortunately it's not randomly all of a sudden it occurs regularly we respond to those very regularly it's nothing out of the ordinary for us in terms of the at least that i'm aware of we could certainly go back and look to see if there's been an increase in the number of those type of calls but um yeah i mean speaking from just general experience and hearing the calls go out that's a that's a very common call for us unfortunately and some of the ones that you're probably talking about you know resulted in some unfavorable outcomes um which results in the news stories uh the news covering them so that may be resolved uh or maybe why you're seeing that um because it's more prevalent in the press do you have any data like the age of those mobile homes i don't believe we generally track that i can check with our community risk production but i'm going to go and say probably we don't have that available because that's not really a general question that we ask um does someone do a fire investigation and does that come out in a fire investigation so yeah every single fire no matter how big it is in pasco county is investigated um so we do have investigation records so that does that age of a thank you get in there somewhere probably in general no but there may be some circumstances where that would be recorded anytime there's a death involved you know they get a lot more in depth with the investigation and that's a possibility but i don't know if there's any way like i said i certainly i'll check with our community risk reduction division and find out if that's something that we can uh track or or have the ability to do so even moving forward all right just i know i've had two on one street in my district yeah yeah so and they're you know generally more prevalent in the wintertime when when folks are trying to heat their homes and they don't have a means to do it so they use things that probably shouldn't be using and then we have more fires all right well thank you and i think i want to talk to you more about hawthorne sure that's right thank you very much thank you all and then we had um c60 is withdrawn so we will now move on madam chair yeah um joe marine is here from with licucci um i think joe was going to speak the public comment but um i'm going to i'm going to coach them properly joe do you want to come up and talk about the project [Music]

future firefighters leaving the county commission joe come on up i guess i know how to clear a room [Laughter] good morning joe marina district manager with coochie electric 21st street and dade city i'm here this morning on behalf of with kuchi to ask your support for our installation of a 20 megawatt solar system it'll produce the equivalent energy of between three thousand and thirty eight hundred homes there's quite a bit of energy being produced by the system this system will be a benefit to our membership and the county as a whole by increasing electrical capacity it is needed in addition to other improvements to support our growth the location of this project will be on the pinellas county property way north of 52 and good distance east of 41 very rural area so with gucci electric and eight other co-ops own seminole electric that's our wholesale power provider they will be installing the system for us and they'll be installing other systems around the state for other co-ops in addition to other large solar projects it'll be installed using helical coil posts so steel posts that are drilled into the ground so very little disturbance to the earth very little construction activity and obviously would be easy to remove move in the future if ever needed to be because of this location it'll be mostly out of sight which is a good thing it's also near our existing power lines and that'll support the capacity of those lines and reduce the project cost so we will need about 120 acres to do this and because of the terrain the area there's some wetlands etc this is high usable ground that meanders through these several sections of land and seminole electric already has a tentative agreement with pinellas county if we can have your cooperation that we would appreciate to have a rezoning the zoning now i believe is conservation but this in my opinion in our opinion it fits in with conservation this will obviously produce electric with uh with no pollution so that's what i'm asking any questions well i have a question for you yes ma'am um that i've never asked you guys but um it's due so we we put trails in the duke corridors

and what um i've not looked at your corridors but i'd be very interested to look and see sure where they are and if it couldn't help um some of these districts help realize a master trail plan we'll be happy to do that all right so i'll get with you with some of our staff in the near future sure hey thank you yeah yeah i know joe's going to have to do some legal work and um work with pinellas county uh saint petersburg to try to make it happen but i thought it was a great idea glad to see the taken step forward and i also suggested him to go take a look at arapeca we have some land up there that could be some uplands that could work as well still protecting keeping a lot of protective at least getting some value to it which could help the area up there is too so i think it's another great opportunity so i think if you come forward both of them is great and talking with terry pitocin's staff it's just a zoning change on pasco trails on the other one this really structured agreement because the den the zoning on arapeaker actually works as well joe what is it you that has the station on ridge near ridge and little yes so i had mentioned to them as well we have um property there that is an old um landfill that can't be used for many things and i thought that also might be a good site for a solar field excellent oh good idea madam chair no yeah i may be thinking of the wrong site that pinellas owns but you may need a future land use map amendment my recollection is that there if it's the track that that has their well fields the tampa bay water well fields i believe that that the con designation is comprehensive plan not zoning so you may need more than just a rezoning but we can look through that would you i have a a map of it would you y'all like a copy yes gonna you're i mean you're gonna have to come you're gonna have to come forward with us okay with a with a petition and planning staff clearly can determine whether or not it's a map amendment or whether it's a okay a zoning amendment i just last time i looked at some of that um the con designation actually was future land use but good morning uh niktarios pito's planning and development the company attorney is correct it's actually uh a future land use map amendment to the comprehensive plan zoning is agricultural and so solar is capable of locating within the area so zoning is fine but they're good but they'll need a comp plan right and so the project would have to be tested against the different conservation policies

in the comprehensive plan okay so madam chair let me if i could say terry to help him through the process he's still going to put his agreements in place i would think um but can we make this a board initiated and help him expedite this that would be at the pleasure of the bcc all right so we'll make a board make ask to make this a board initiated com comprehensive plan change for the parcel he's talking about as well as a another agreement possibly looked at with the uh of lane madam chair yep if this is on uh agricultural property under state law they can do that without our vote the comprehensive plan however is is conservation they can't so is it that arrests i don't think there's an issue with our vote it's just i don't think timing is expensive madam chair what is that location so that so the state law doesn't change the fact that that's changed the future landings they're allowed to do in in an agricultural category they don't they don't need a conditional use that that was what the legislature did right several years okay two years ago i think um that doesn't that law doesn't override your comprehensive appointment oh okay got you okay no we don't have a motion in front of us yes we do you did it i celebrated it is this the location on galen wilson and san miguel no well what no what he's talking about is which location um can you state where your location is this is north of state road 52. is it crossbar it's the ranch the best that i know looking at this there's no wealth fields on these this is just part of that massive no the well fields would have been deeded to tampa bay water but the protective area around the well fields i say crossbar albar that they that pinellas for that purpose and you know i haven't looked to see where the exact location is but this brings back a memory of mine i don't know i think only jack was on the board when this happened but there is an access road um where we have residents along the southern edge and the crossbar is on the north edge and the road deteriorated and um the and they were using it for logging and other um you know things that were happening on the crossbar and the residents had to pay for that road to be fixed and because the county owned it pinellas county owned it they were exempt from having to help pay for the road so i want to be careful what road you're going to be using to build your welfield and or your solar

field and just make sure we're protecting the residents that paid for that room absolutely uh initially looking at it we would access the through our power line housemate perfect okay all right um i didn't know this was an action item well it's it's we want to help them through the process by making it blood initiative he's still going to have to go get help agreements et cetera on the outside but we just want to help monastery you can clearly tell staff you want it expedited you can waive fees if you want to do that um you can't take action to change the comprehensive plan okay um but are you is that a precedent you want to start setting that when someone comes in front of us to do a comprehensive land use change we're going to start uh paying for them what i'm sure yeah i think just in this instance it's for the public good because you're going to actually lower we want our rates to be lowered in in this county our electrical rate so it's a public good item i think this doesn't set a precedent unless we have another similar item that's for the public good well we we had the one out out there uh by the community college that was tico i think it was tico i mean this is an opportunity i mean i think it's going to give them a chance to look at it a little bit closer too because we can't figure this out today but yeah it's when it went out by the college came to us because there was not a state law at the time yeah okay so what was the motion again motions to make a board initiative to work with with likuchi to look at uh getting a solar farm out at to change the land crossfire the land use there and then working with him on the arapeca property to put an agreement together there as well sir okay all in favor all right opposed all right thank you thank you thank you okay so we are now on well we're we're ahead of schedule so um we can either go to 79 early if that person is here or we can go to our 80 which is under me and do the presentation so my madam chair i have multiple people here for 79. they are not all here okay let's go to our 80 then because i see mr cronin is here i got a little conference going on down there when you're done we'll have our 80. that's you bill i'm just waiting for somebody to tell me where to go thank you again and it's my pleasure to present to you the third quarter report for pasco edc to the board of county commissioners and to our stakeholders i have a clicker um bill cronin with the

pasco edc uh 16800 iv lake drive in odessa let's start out with the mou presentation and that's the agreement that we have with the board of county commissioners per our memorandum of understanding and this covers a lot of the general activities not the penny for pasco activities which we'll have following a nice slide at the beginning not necessarily a company uh groundbreaking but just like the conversation you just had about solar education and talent is also for the public good and it's one of the things that we really depend on here not just the the companies but also the workforce looking at the pipeline and this i think is probably what gets most people most excited uh right now we've had seven wins already this year this is through the third quarter so we're already into the fourth quarter we have one more reporting period to finalize the year and i can tell you that those numbers are going to change as a matter of fact i anticipate you're going to have a couple big wins here before the end of the fiscal year that you'll be hearing at the board of county commissioners and one of them for at least 500 jobs coming up in the next couple weeks so um manufacturing good stuff i know that commissioner starkey is going to be happy to hear about more manufacturing and advanced manufacturing if you look at our lead pipeline and our project pipeline advanced manufacturing still the biggest bar on the graph by far and that's again because we can do clean manufacturing here we still have land and we have people but coming in not quite second but close life sciences and that should be no surprise to us at all with what we're doing with moffitt that seems to be the gift that's going to keep on giving because we have companies that all want to co-locate next to moffitt including another really big manufacturer looking at right next door so that number is going to change as well too but a very robust pipeline 96 active projects you guys want to know where we're at that's where we're at working the project so these guys will come at the drop of a hat come do site visits and we've got to sell sell sell normally our pipeline is about 35 projects so 96 is about three times our normal workload and each one of the projects have just as much heavy lifting as they normally do so we are busy uh the leads 47 so that's the funnel you know coming into it if you look at it the leads are here projects here success is here so we need to get some more leads in the front end while we're working the project we're going to continue hitting shows and doing a lot more one-on-one calls where we're actually going out to companies meeting them at their place for example the company that we're getting ready to announce uh in the next few weeks was a meeting in the bronx new york of all places so we don't just rely on

people coming to us we actually go to them and get them to move and especially the companies that we want to see move here uh just a little more graphic of it the the big number there is a capital investment and that uh that translates to property taxes and a good return on investment for the past for the board of county commissioners in pasco county uh incidentally these numbers on the mou side the general fund side that we get tax money and tax dollars and general fund dollars the return on investment for the last couple years has been right around 200 230 up to 290 for every one dollar we get from the board of county commissioners our return back to the county in in terms of gross product is almost 300 to one i mentioned that because when you look at that capital investment number that's where a lot of that comes from so already this year we've got almost 163 million of new capital investment coming in and that's even without the jobs but i foresee no no problem in us hitting each one of those numbers before the end of the year and i know that's what you're most interested in is how we're going to end up at the end of the year commissioner starkey did you have a question nope okay i'm just thinking where are these people going to live there's yeah you know that's that's interesting because a lot you remember back when i first came here we talked a lot about 40 of our workforce leaving every day to work somewhere else so a lot of those jobs can actually those people can work here instead of leaving every day you know i think we need to do a marketing campaign to promote that as as much as we can and and that may mean that we've got to go in maybe sit on the highways as people are in traffic every day and remind them that they can work here much as i hate billboards you know maybe the county puts them up stay here you know work here whatever sounds like a historic day already if we can do that that would be amazing yeah i think i think you're starting to see some of the trends and some of those will change so when we talk about these jobs that we're creating it's not just new people coming in filling those jobs the people that are already here can fill those jobs and they don't have to get on the road every day so that's something that we always have to remember it's not just about the new people coming in yeah because i'm hearing of companies that were going to come to the tampa bay area but they couldn't find that their employees could not find housing that they could afford and they've gone somewhere else so we're starting to see that yes we are we're no longer a low-cost solution or alternative uh for quite a quite a long time we could still do well during downturns of the economy because of in

your new york and new jersey florida still is a low-cost solution compared to those markets we are still a low tax solution though and business generally goes to where the tax burden is less so keeping an eye on your cost and making sure we keep our costs low and keep taxes low will continue to do us well uh in this but we are no longer a low-cost solution that's for sure especially when it comes to housing working with existing companies and this is where again we spend a lot of our time each one of those big companies that we mentioned if they don't land here we don't get a single job the companies that are here already are creating jobs uh may be incremental but it's a lot easier for us to get a hundred companies to hire one person than to recruit one company with a hundred jobs so we spend a lot of time visiting our local companies both with our bre program and also with our workforce connect program um i'm sorry couldn't you go back to that slide i think so maybe i just want to remind you about and and i think it's in our agreement with you about including amp skills especially with these manufacturing in that in the uh because i don't see anything there yeah it's in the third item there so the workforce connections uh for q3 so those were been referrals over to am skills okay so no that is in our that is in our agreement both for the mou and in the penny for the workforce connect program which is a penny program and i'll we we talked a little bit so i'll go through some of these rather quickly conferences trade shows events yeah people are back they're meeting things are happening again there's a lot of pent up demand to get out there and a lot of business that has pent up demand that needs to move so we did hit a lot of events this last year a lot of co-marketing with moffat moffatt actually will join us to go on these trips to recruit companies to locate next to them that's the beauty of this campus is that uh we're bringing in for-profit companies around them with talent and innovation and they recognize that this campus is not just going to be for cancer it's it's a city that they're building so they need everything there uh local presentations we're still getting out and speaking locally incidentally i just got a text from the tampa bay partnership they did go out and did a op-ed today about supporting both referendums for the schools and for the penny for both ourselves and and hillsboro so that came out today uh we're starting to see a lot more regional efforts to make sure that we're all growing in the right direction marketing uh 3.59 million year-to-date earned media value um we can't deposit that you know that's not money that we get to keep that's that's

that's actually the value that we leverage in our advertising working with those other partners but had we gone out and actually purchased this that's what it would cost uh ninety percent ninety seven percent of uh users to the website are new i believe that is because they reset it each month so each month we're getting new users each month which is fantastic and i'll go through these 91 investors right now at the pasco edc on the private sector we've raised over half a million dollars so far this year into the third quarter uh goal of 550 000 and that's the private sector funding is what we use to leverage things like if we're going to take somebody out for entertainment private sector helps us with those expenses where we can't use tax dollars for for that been great partners we're at 45 uh board members and policy council members 10 policy council members to date including uh whitney coochie who's here with us tonight with the coochie river electric co-op four new investors uh winston consulting commercial partners shaffer general contracting and amaranth bank you have new bank in the community and uh just some general updates before i hit the the penny information i put on there the iedc board meeting and future forum in dallas as something to highlight the international economic development council is is the industry certification group for our type of industry i'm on the board of directors for the international economic development council and they have asked me to actually get involved with the strategy to define the industry for our industry so we're actually going through some changes looking at workforce development entrepreneurship things that pasco is already really strong at and a lot of our our peers are taking note and looking to copy us uh that's great flattery for us we attended a lot of the events as i mentioned some of our own we had meet the members back on may 18th uh this is for our entrepreneurs our incubator members so our startups have the opportunity to meet our existing business so that's one neat thing that with us actually running an incubator our our members can have that business to business connection rather than busine just business to consumer so our board members actually will work with our entrepreneurs at the incubators to give them opportunities for example st leo's hired several of the food incubators to start selling food at the campus as well too so that's i love it when that happens because it's us taking care of our own and making sure that we're we're helping everybody rise in the process smart start the crate grand opening june 4th if you haven't been to the crate park over at the grove from really cool food there where your stretchy pants lots of neat things there we haven't at a crate there for

our uh food entrepreneurs to be able to have a pop-up place for their products to try their hand at selling it so there a lot of them are here in the dade city incubator they'll go to the crate to sell their goods if it works hopefully they'll go into market-based solutions and then the executive success i'm sorry pasco 50 was june 9th uh with 23 companies work on that that is our workforce development uh hr sounding board where we find out what each of our hr practitioners are going through uh what they need with talent what kind of trends they're seeing i told you somebody will tell me where to go esp is the executive success program and this is something that mike bishop created when when he came it replaced our ceo roundtables but as new companies come into pasco we now are taking the leadership from those companies and running them through a program that's kind of like a leadership pass to our leadership tampa bay and at the culmination at the end we hope they'll become more involved and engage and become board members but really that first year is so critical because they are so busy and they don't know anybody so it's a way for us to get them plugged in and then of course their graduation is august 18th next week and then coming up we have our awards again so going back to the old model of the awards but a new location so since covid we haven't had the the full blown awards like we used to do at saddlebrook each year we're going to be doing that it'll be september 8th the thursday after labor day and it will be at the ipac the performing arts center and we will be probably the first big event of this type there uh so something very new and different but we'll we'll have that same feel uh and we'll recognize our local companies uh for their work so i will stop there before i go into the penny and i promise to go through the penny fairly quickly any questions on mou if not um commissioner mariano has a question yeah bill i just want to say you're doing a phenomenal job taking every opportunity we've got you keep on bringing great stuff to us so we greatly appreciate it thank you thank you commissioner so so i'll do this really really quick cause i know you guys are short on time but this is the penny for passcode okay okay good have a good time this is a penny for pasco uh portion of the presentation so really important as we're getting ready for the referendum coming up that we point to these activities that we're doing and i think a lot of people know about the transportation programs that we've done education i think pointing to the buildings that have come up and the jobs have been created are going to be important to a lot of people when they go to the polls

this year to vote because there's so many people here that weren't here 10 years ago when we talked about the last referendum so we need to make sure that we're all talking about these things that we're doing some of these programs that we do remember these were over and above what we do normally through our mou and we use the penny to do that so that we could be more competitive than our other counties in the state so i've included a summary and there's a report card for each of the program activities but the summary if you look at ready sites uh ready sites remember when we first started looking at this we had a lot of land but they weren't really sites yet so we used the ready sites program to go out and assess those sites and certify them whether or not they were quote unquote pad ready or shovel ready once we did that we we now are at over 2 000 acres of ready sites that means we actually have land to go market so we have been marketing those like crazy so when we market a ready site those ready sites are generally 50 acres or more those are going to be big industrial users that's not somebody that is just looking at one little site they're probably looking at several sites in several states so that puts us in a very competitive position and it's paying off we've had a couple of the ready sites already sold on this so we've got uh probably right at 2 000 acres left but they're going fairly quickly and we we still have to be very vigilant about what they're used for making sure that they're used for manufacturing in industry international program so international uh again last year there wasn't a lot of activity until one november we went to germany and in switzerland we saw a window of opportunity to go out and make some calls on companies uh and then a lot of those communities closed again uh with another co-vet round we went back out and attended the world forum in edinburgh and we complemented that with lead generation in england london cambridge and oxford and as you can guess a lot of those were life sciences companies looking to come here to co-locate at the near the moffat facility but out of 10 meetings we've got eight leads or eight projects that will be projects that we will continue to work with some are small that will land in our incubator some will actually buy buildings i hope we continue to work with the counties to the south and partnering regionally to promote global tampa bay looking at doing a trade mission to panama in september we have at least one company looking to go to panama and

they will be participating as part of the enterprise florida mission and we'll also be looking at europe again later in the fall and then seus japan southeast united states japan conference will be in orlando also in november this is the first time in 14 years the conference is back so seven states are part of this conference and every other year the event is held in japan and every off year it's held in the united states so the last time we hosted this was 14 years ago it's very important for us to to keep a presence with the japanese i don't know how many people in the room know that we have a japanese very large japanese manufacturer right here in dade city clark dietrich steele sounds german it's japanese yeah it does not sound japanese at all but uh and the council generals historically have come up to visit uh that location and visited with our leadership here too so we anticipate we'll send a delegation there uh to continue to support that relationship we also hosted a competitiveness committee at santander which santander of course is an international company in itself commissioner starkey chairs that particular committee no robust conversations but it's nice that now the new companies coming in that are international are actually participating in those international committees and then enhanced marketing so this is marketing over and above what we do general marketing so these are marketing those programs that would be the ready sites international workforce development and also smart start which is the incubator program uh workforce connect again mentioned we hosted the pasco 50. we also have a really cool video that that we produce talking about careers in target industries in pasco county so we continue to look at this talent pipeline becomes really really important to us 14 000 jobs for moffitt alone a lot of those kids haven't even been born yet so we need to know where they're coming from and we need to grow them locally as well as bring some from other places this is probably the first time you're going to hear me talk about talent attraction uh years ago we would only look at jobs just for the people who already lived here now we have more company needs than we have people believe it or not so we're going to see us bringing in certain types of talent that are needed for certain types of position but this is a big change for for pasco the executive success program i mentioned is uh closing out this next week the companies that participated they'll graduate will be moffitt santander true simulation baymar solution synorama mettler toledo and bravado pharmaceuticals so the companies that many of you have met in the past and and quite a few of them had incentives

associated to them when they when they first came here as well and smart start i mentioned the the crates open uh the grand opening uh june 4th they also hosted a meet the members event there i mentioned especially the food incubator members are getting a lot of traction there uh i don't know how the our staff has managed to not be hundreds and hundreds of pounds because these guys bring samples every day uh to the things that they're they're trying out so i think they call it r d i think that's a research and development portion of it um and i'll just go through some of these fairly quick there's the ready sites that i mentioned if uh especially for those of you who haven't seen this before that's that's our ready sites that's where you you will hopefully see factories and lots of high-paying good jobs for our people if you look through our report card you'll see lots of checks that means that it's been completed and then a lot of airplanes which means they're in progress but ready sites at 88 progress for the year international program 78 executive success program 75 percent which makes sense we're at three-quarters of the year uh 80 on the workforce connect program as far as the deliverables per our agreement and then the incubator network while i mean knocking it out of the park year-to-date 711 event attendees this year 711 it's a lot of people that that are hungry for information and going through the smart start let me get to the end here 90 percent of the smart start goals have been completed micro loans we still need people to get the word out about micro loans we there was a lot of money on the street the last couple years thanks to covet ppp things like that these micro loans again are still they're up to fifty thousand dollars you have to be refused by a local bank or a commercial bank otherwise unbankable we're kind of a lender of last resort in that it's a very low interest rate but we find it's also a very low default rate too because we're the only ones helping a lot of these companies and they're very loyal to us it's a very very good program and it allows us to touch people that we normally weren't able to touch uh and overall so for all the penny programs together uh as of end of third quarter we were at eighty two percent of our deliverables for you uh per our agreement a hundred percent not any pressure on you no pressure yeah there's some there's some that are cumulative over the the period of the contract and then some are annual year to year

but the annual year to year we've been we've been cranking it out and getting a lot of attention especially the programs like workforce connect and the entrepreneurship program because that's become so important and i think you'll hear that from me a lot in the future that talent is still our most precious commodity that we have here uh and it is an asset and the other is going to be making sure that we've got those opportunities for small startups because that entrepreneurial attitude is what's really going to shine through and how we take care of those small businesses is the best testimony we have in getting those big companies to come and locate so with that i think i'll finally stop yes okay any any questions perfect and we're right on time for 11 o'clock how about that good job i do have one one last parting comment and that is to thank uh commissioner moore who's been serving as our liaison this last year i just realized this is the last meeting we'll be presenting to you at least as far as our quarterly report goes uh we'll do something to embarrass you at our board meeting i'm sure coming up but i did want to say how uh how great it was having you with us this year a lot of transition going on this year going from hybrid to in person uh and you're no stranger to the organization as well but thank you again for for your help too thank thank you okay um thanks bill next we are going to go to our 79 which is our 11 a.m time certain uh commissioner moore it's your item thank you madam chair let me just fix the microphone okay um bill thank you i i don't know if you want to hear the band pool and and mike just this may i'd like you to hear about this so you can tell businesses when they're relocating here this won't take good well thank you madam chair um you know our our last commission meeting we had a discussion in reference to a feeding tampa bay we also had a it ended up having a deeper discussion into um our senior services in phoenix finney pass goes utterly so what i'd like to do is bring brian hoeven up here first he's going to do a presentation then i have um our taxpayer center senator mike fasano here i also have property appraiser mike wells here as well on behalf of feeding casco's elderly which are going to give a presentation of what they've been doing in representing that and then you know i'd like to kind of let them keep going before we chime in because once they're done i also have a small presentation i have a video that i would like to show in reference to the site that feeding tima bay is attempting to put up in hillsborough county thank you madam chair good morning members of the board brian hoeven director of community services also joined this morning by tom snee our senior services manager and we're going to talk a little bit about

the senior services division our home delivered meals program as well as the food insecure wait list of seniors in pasco county that is owned by the department of elderly affairs so as i mentioned there is a wait list of approximately 411 food insecure seniors in pasco county at the moment that waitlist is owned by the department of elderly affairs and senior services takes their older americans act funding from area agency to remove seniors off of that food insecure list and provide home delivered meals clients requesting home delivered meals through either pasco county senior services or area agency on aging are screened with an assessment tool and then placed on that wait list based off of a priority scoring system that scoring system takes into account items such as financials health care issues transportation issues it's an overall assessment of how food insecure a senior is and then we work that wait list to provide our services and home delivered meals to the most food and secure seniors here in the county clients on that wait list are reassessed annually by area agency to capture any status changes and to keep that list as up to date as possible and as of january 1st of this year there is a meal rate of eight dollars and one cents per meal so for us to serve a single senior off of that wait list you would multiply that meal rate by the number of meals per week that we provide each senior which is seven meals per week and then of course multiply that by the number of weeks in a year which gives you an annual cost of two thousand nine hundred sixteen dollars to remove a senior off of that department of elderly affairs wait list we say that that's an annual cost because once we serve a senior off that wait list we serve them for life we provide services to them until we hit one of a few categories of attrition which we'll talk about shortly i'm sure yeah i apologize for a second is that eight to one is that for a full day's meals or is it just one meal one yeah so 411 was the the wait list that we approximated we mentioned that already so just given kind of the overall picture there multiplying that by the annual cost there you're looking at around one million one hundred and ninety eight dollars excuse me one million one hundred ninety eight thousand three hundred twenty eight dollars to go ahead and deplete that wait list that we have as of today it's important to mention that that waitlist is a snapshot in time you see that as of january of this year we've had 330 clients have been added to the waitlist and 390 have been removed so when we talk about 411 individual wait list you see that there

is a lot of attrition but there's also a lot of growth at the same time so it is a snapshot we could serve that amount of clients today and tomorrow we could have 425 clients on that wait list placing you know i mentioned this already placing a client on the waitlist from the waitlist onto active home delivered mail services is a lifetime subscription because we do serve that client annually until they either end up in a self-care facility move out of the area or for the remainder of their life we serve that client we've served clients home delivered meals for 15 20 25 years depending on the client so since january first of this year there's we've averaged about a 19 uh attrition rate we've had a nine percent growth rate um we do leverage multiple funding sources one of which that i would like to talk about is fpe or feeding pascal's elderly they are a not-for-profit 501 locally here in pasco county that's mission is to help feed food insecure seniors they do a lot of fundraising and we work with them on a quarterly basis and they have been a great partner at helping us feed those food insecure seniors on that particular department of elderly affairs wait list so much so that we use their funding to gap the service of moving these clients from a wait list to permanent full-on meal services through senior services so what that means is feeding pascal's elderly is providing us funding we're serving 90 individuals right now off of that 400 and 11 person wait list but they don't get removed from the wait list we don't remove individuals until we can offer them that lifetime service of meals but the 90 individuals on that waitlist that are being served are served on an average from six to eight weeks with the funding that feeding past goes elderly provides us and again that provides a gap and provides food to food insecure seniors that otherwise would not have received that those meals or anything until we could put them onto permanent service so they're filling a very big void in the community and helping us feed a lot of food insecure seniors then of course we have the effect of the pandemic and one-time funding that has been associated with that in 2020 the wait list dropped significantly as we received family family first act funding cares act funding consolidated coronavirus relief and american rescue plan funding so we're going to look at a chart that kind of depicts how that has affected the wait list and and the services that we provide uh provided but the also the important thing to remember with that is that a lot of this funding has either been expended or does have an expiration date of 2023 2024 or 2025. here is some historical data as it pertains to the waitlist and what it looks like

over the years i think you'll see a major increase from 2015 to 2020 which probably coincides a lot with our population growth and our growth overall in the county which would also correlate to the growth of the senior population here in the county and then in 2020 we had all of those aforementioned coronavirus relief acts and and grants and funds that we've utilized to spend down not only the wait list but also to provide meals through drive-in services as our congregate dining sites were shut down for the pandemic so as we've expended about half of those funding those amounts of funds and uh get closer to you know ending these temporary funding sources we're starting to see an increase from 2021 um to current date on that waiting list so we just want to talk about potential options in reducing the current wait list of course we could reallocate one-time revenue to temporarily reduce the current wait list which would act the exact same way that the funding from feeding pasco's elderly does it would help us provide meals to food insecure seniors and gap a service until seniors could be placed onto permanent home delivered meal service we could reallocate certain additional reoccurring revenue to permanently reduce the wait list and we also do seek additional outside funding sources to either permanently or temporarily reduce it we work with the counties granting agency langton as well as other partners not-for-profits and community advocates to raise funding for home delivered meals and our services that chart there at the bottom just depicts based off of that 801 mill rate uh what it would cost on an annual on an annual basis to go ahead and remove seniors from that current wait list 250 000 annually would remove 85 seniors half a million dollars would remove 171 seniors and one million dollars would remove 342 seniors on an annual basis we currently serve 550 approximately home delivered meal clients that's the amount of individuals who are currently on service that we're serving actively today just want to take some time and see if we can answer anything i have some questions but i'll see if my board members have any questions um no can we okay well i wouldn't say it was gonna be nice if we could let people pass early come up too and yeah sure um a question because i i recall my first experience with this was um when i was first elected and jack you were there i don't think commissioner wells and commissioner moore were on the board then but

um it used to be that different groups would come up and ask us for money and then we ended up giving it all now to the united way but we had cut the count the county commission cut the amount of money we were giving to this organization because we were cutting everything because we didn't have the money that we wanted um and that was um when we suggested that you know we would hope that the private sector could step up and help fill the gap so and that was the genesis of feeding pascal's elderly i'm very grateful to those people who stepped up to help do that so um what are the requirements and i don't know if you touched on this and i was distracted what are the requirements to go on that list financially sure tom sneed senior services manager financially there are no requirements it is part of it there's an assessment tool that takes into account your finances but it plays a much lower impact than it does the actual frailty of the senior on the that's being assessed the uh active activities of daily living have the most impact of this these are things like how difficult is it for that senior to actually get out of bed in the morning or to go from a sitting to a standing position can they take a bath can they take a bath on their own these things a frailty is what will increase that priority score yeah so i'd ask that question because i had befriended this elderly gentleman who was just absolutely delightful um he was a multi-millionaire lived near near where i lived but he was on a special kind of diet and and he didn't really cook so he joined this program and was getting meals which i used to bring in meals as well um and so i wonder if since we have so many if there if we wouldn't want to look at putting some kind of financial question if if you can afford it or not if you if you can afford it should you pay um so that we can get those who can't afford it more more of them off the waitlist and i'd love to see it where we had no one on the waitlist and my understanding too is that um so on the numbers that you gave us is that all for the meal delivery or is that also for the lunchrooms this is only meal delivery and to add to address one of the questions you brought up since our funding all comes from the older americans act they're encouraged to donate if they can afford to but we cannot mandate a donation we can't put a sliding scale in place now there's other programs as like community care for the elderly um they also serve people in pasco county

and they do have a sliding scale that's run by cares in pasco county and one other important aspect i think of this program of course the the lunchroom one is where people who don't they're lonely and so i took my mom there i was hoping she might volunteer there um this is an opportunity for them to talk with other people and the same happens with the um what with the food delivery is many times that's the only time these these elderly people get to talk to them because it's very you know that's another rewarding part of this so okay so you wanted to continue with yeah if you don't mind if we could bring um senator pisano and property appraiser wells up as well and they're going to give us a presentation on um feeding passwords early and all the great things they're doing and how they're helping to raise funds for these food insecure seniors this is kind of different i kind of like it [Laughter] good morning am i supposed to name an address mike wells ninety four oh five super recordings um good morning chairwoman starkian commissioners um i heard commissioner starkey talk a little bit about it um i've been on the fpe board with mr fasano since 2014. dr musanu is on the board with us sean foster's on the board david lambert and we have an unbelievable board that does unbelievable things for our seniors in pasco county and i'm honored to to serve on i mean it is amazing what we do and i have to take a minute just to give props to kathy and our team they are unbelievable what they do partner with us from the start of the land lakes kitchen that was built together as a team with the county save the taxpayers a lot of money we're able to help the seniors and just so you understand the number with the eight dollars per meal is all in with everything the actual meal is four dollars which is what fb would pay for and so that's all in with delivery which absolutely makes sense that's the number you all need to see in my opinion so as you can see we already have nine peop 90 folks on the waiting list um to give you an idea of what that means this fiscal year that's 14 118 meals that pat that feeding pass goes utterly has helped these seniors um it's a shame that we still have 300 plus on a waiting list but as brian explained to you that waiting list is never going to go away i had the honor of serving on air agency on aging which is very connected with this and i can tell you pinellas county doesn't have this feeder like we do with this non-profit their waiting list is a heck of a lot longer so we are blessed to have feeding pass goes utterly we work very hard and just to give you an idea

and i don't know what funding is available what funding but i can tell you 125 000 you heard brian talk about the numbers but 125 thousand dollars would feed 42 seniors for the next two years figuring the four dollars for the meal that feeding passcode would pay so i think it makes sense there's a lot of need in pasco and keep in mind and commissioner starkey spoke a little bit about it we don't even advertise this program what if we did how many more seniors could we have and i honestly i don't think it's a bad idea if we've got maybe seniors that are still food insecure aren't able to leave their house why can't we have maybe an application process at the county level to maybe help these seniors that are missing the gap because you you know there's thousands of other seniors that are out there that need assistance and i know you all care a lot about them and so that's i just want to educate you a little bit about what we've done in the time we've been as a non-profit and again we've honored to be here we want to help but i don't know if you have any questions if not we can let senator fasano come up good morning mike fasano pasco tax collector i thank you very much for bringing this issue up i've lived in pasco county for 52 years i grew up with our seniors and i've been blessed to know many of them many of them no longer here it's sad that we have so many seniors in pasco county that uh are food insecure that don't know where their next meal is going to come from we speak to them every day at our tax collector's office because they don't know how they're going to pay their property taxes to think though to think that for a simple million dollars plus we can rid ourselves with that with that wait list if i'm not mistaken and i'd like to give you a little history about i know that an entity from from hillsborough county has come up here and asked for money and if i'm incorrect please correct me and when i read about that in the tampa bay times i wondered why would we want to do that when we have so many people in pasco county that need help first you know there is a there was a food bank on aaron cut off volunteer way no food bank of pasco county run by ken buck many many years ago remember ken yeah between the cdbu grants and uh and and us in tallahassee we helped build that in fact mel godwin donated that property to build

that food bank it then turned into um i think mel gave it to uh food bank or harvest food bank it was at pasco and i drive past there a lot as i go to my date city office and one day i thought well now i see feeding tampa bay is in there which is great great location for them in fact if you look at the documents you'll find that harvest the food bank of pasco gave them that building gave them that building no charge and then all of a sudden the building is empty and i have all the dates if you want them i have all the warranty deeds in front of me i have all the numbers all of a sudden feeding tampa bay is no longer there and then after a while i see a private company in there private company a landscaping company so so i thought yeah i got to check some things out here now they may come and tell you a different story and if i do i apologize but if i have it correctly then i'll be corrected so milk gave it to harvest the food bank of pasco in 1996 harvest of pasco county the food bank then turned it over to tampa bay feed and feeding tampa bay uh back in 2011 again at no charge well feeding tampa bay then goes ahead and sells that building that was paid for by taxpayer money for 890 000. well there's our donation i'd love to know where that money goes i'd love to know where that money went just think of how many people we could have fed in pasco county how many seniors we could have taken off of that waiting list so when hillsborough county comes up here anyone comes up here and says we need money asking what they did with the 890 thousand it's a dollars day when former legislators work differently and our former county commissioners and present county commissioners work diligently to help our seniors and others in pasco county and tax dollars are being used to build a building to help with those who need a meal that building's no longer being used for that person purpose that building was sold and who knows where those dollars went so i want to bring that to your attention and i bring it to your attention because just think again being repetitious how many meals we could have helped with our seniors so as you do the budget think about think about um think about that if you will before you start giving out dollars to other counties who

request it ask them some simple questions senator son i don't know if anyone's here from feeding tampa bay and you know i have no idea what happened there but um i just feeding feeding tampa bay is the organization that supplies all of our food banks with their food just just just so the public understands i'm aware of that who they are so um and pasco county is a big recipient of um the food that they collect from publix it's just i think they went to a unified storage facility to save money but uh so that's that's what feeding tampa bay does yes ma'am although they're i think they're branching out into other things as well i'm sure the mounted chair would you agree with me that when a building is built by taxpayer dollars yeah it shouldn't be sold to a private entity yeah i don't i that's concerning to me yes and until we get an understanding you know that could be considered maybe our portion of paying for a part of the building in house bureau right but why do they give up the building if they have a building in hillsborough and they need a building why would they sell a building in pasco county well i'm i'm again i'm not sure i'm qualified to speak for them but i'm guessing they went to a centralized distribution to save money yeah that's just my business i would love to know the answers yes but i don't but again it's not my decision but it's a tax payer of pasco a former legislator who helped get those dollars to build that facility i would love to know the answers and of course as tax collector i'm not going to collect money now i guess i should be happy i'm collecting money on that building because there's a private company in there but i'd sooner collect money from a non-profit or not collect any money from a non-profit then collect money from a building from a company that was using a building that was paid for by taxpayers yeah i think over the years it would have been more beneficial to keep an extra location in pasco county well i think that's you know we may see one day the need is so big that we'll have one here but um let's see this video because i'm keeping these gentlemen over here well madame sure can you have something else yeah i i do but thank you sir thank you god bless you all have a great day okay all you're doing on this insane here you might want to stick around just for a minute you're okay with that okay and thank you property pleasure wells for coming up and obviously brian and the team for everything that you're doing yeah but go ahead and cue that video because on a question when is your next um breakfast your next right do we have one scheduled yet

in october okay we'll make sure we advertise it from here yeah he'll make sure i always go before i play the video too i don't know if you guys um saw it or not but we uh c-72 on this morning's consent was forty one thousand six hundred dollars for feeding tampa bay in the city out of ddg funding so we did make a contribution today to feeding tampa bay that's actually going to support groceries on the go which will be used for food vouchers issued to premier healthcare patients we had somebody from here this morning for premier healthcare to assist with access to healthy fruits and vegetables it's once a week for a six-month period um so there was a contribution made today through pasco county but if you could play the video and let me explain the video a little bit what you're going to see in the video is um from a meeting in hillsborough county initially when they started bringing this up now this was i think initially brought up to hillsborough county for a request for funding back in i think november of last year they voted on it in march of this year and kathy correct me if i'm wrong i don't think we even heard about a request until march of this year ourselves um so they asked ask them quite some time before but okay so when i play these two clips it's the march 2nd hillsborough county commission meeting where they allocated 5 million dollars but they allocated their 5 million to the facility through their federal american rescue plan which was art funding not from their general fund go ahead and play please it'd be best if we had sound yeah and madame chair can we play this before we're in the middle of playing a video well i was just going to ask and if they can confirm didn't we also provide an additional eight hundred thousand dollars of our care funds carries funds to feeding tampa bay that's a good question let's just play this okay i think we practiced this right because while we're waiting on this is there someone here about the vanpool yes okay you what okay well just your just be ready you're up next because like holding people here and i want them to i want to make sure they know about this okay well are we gonna why don't you just tell us well you kind of just said it they they funded it from the our fire yeah but that's not what i wanted to show okay do you have the dialogue we sent this this past week and it was supposed to be working do you want to send the video to all of us the link well it'd be nice for the public to see it as well and the people that are in the audience this is why i send things ahead of time jesus christ and i you know the sound is unblocked

down here on the left so did we not did we try this before this morning is my question because we sent it in plenty of time can you transcribe or do you recall oh i have a call i haven't i have it right here okay but it would be nice if you heard it from the horse's mouth versus me trying to explain something that they said because i'd rather hear from them well okay during the presentation to the commission both the county administrator the chief financial administrator said that this feeding tip of a facility that is we have a request for funding for will include job training opportunities for hillsborough county residents i mean okay so again we're about helping or helping the entire region entire community at the same time do we need to take again 250 000 out of our general fund to go to a facility that's going to do drop crate training in another county i don't see us asking um for our drop training centers anymore hillsborough county or pinellas county or hernando county anymore to contribute to that we're they're trained we're training pasco county residents that's where the funding should come from and that's where it should go so you know that's one of the things you know i was bringing up last time which i had some concerns about senator fasano brought up some things today that we have additional concerns about um you know is it appropriate for federal government to provide funding for it which they did sure is it appropriate for the florida legislature to provide funding for that facility probably there was an ask but it didn't go through um appropriate for hillsborough county and the city of tampa to provide funding for sure it's going to provide job training for their citizens in that county is it appropriate for private donations sure that's where they get a lot of their money from but it's not appropriate for pasco county citizens to pay for a facility in another county that's going to provide job training for the citizens of that county let's keep the money here our taxpayer money here in paso county for the citizens that pay their taxes so you want to do let me continue one second we're going to do drop job training here we'll put money towards job training but to make it simple we do again like i said last time you went to set a precedent for years to come and have a line outside the store again i'm leaving i have six meetings left but the last thing i want to do is have the commissioners are going to be sitting here after me have to worry about other people coming so we do capital projects outside of this of outside of pasco county and help fund them for something that's not going to benefit i had a great conversation with the ceo

of speeding tape of bay i took his meeting last week and i told him i said if initially you would have asked for funding for meals themselves and showed me where those meals were going to assist those pasco county residents i probably would have said yes but there's no way in the world i'm ever going to say yes to a capital project in another county that's going to provide services that aren't going to benefit the citizens of pasco county so again so based on that discussion that we had last time based on the discussion that were happening today you know i'm making a motion now to reallocate that 125 000 to either feeding passengers out early or to senior services because this is a one-time and you're saying it can't be reoccurring then the money can go to feeding pascal's elderly to assist that's two years but we can only allocate one year um or it goes direct to senior service we know that money's gonna go in there i'm good with either one commit commissioner more but what and i have no id you know i would hope that this would not be the repercussion and i i don't think it's pay to play but a large percentage of the foods that they collect in that general distribution center comes to pasco county so would you suggest that they don't participate in bringing that food up to one community now volunteer way all the all um metropolitan ministries that's where they get their food bank food from but we're not paying for food we're paying for a capital project that's okay with more money from that okay in all due respect i think it's an eight and i agree with you on the workforce training part um but i think that what our portion might be it doesn't even cover are the racks that are holding the food for pasco county or the air conditioning or any of the logistics towards getting that food up here to pasco county so 125 i think we're getting a lot more food donated to pasco county than 125 thousand dollars for two years it's going to pay for it i appreciate that again like i said before i'd hate for us to be cut off from their services well that would be not that it wouldn't be politically expedient i agree and i don't think they would do that but i'm just saying hillsborough county residents are paying for our food to be stored and transported to pasco county not sure um you say no senator yeah that's not the case all right you know but again going back to what i stated to them and i appreciate everything they're doing again if this ass would have been for food that have been a different story again building a building in another county that's going to provide services for citizens outside of this county too i i can't i can't do it i mean that's my

motion that's on the table right now if i can get a second madame i will continue on i'm done um well i'll do a continuance [Music] you'll you'll learn through the time that you give the person talking time and then you and you share and you allow everyone we don't have why don't you wait for a second and then we can continue okay so we have 17 and a half million meals that are in security of meal insecurity they're feeding tampa bay provide seven and a half million meals one of my questions when i did meet with feeding tampa bay was they did say they would if we're providing x amount of funds they would provide x amount of additional meals can they provide more meals than we can provide with the funding that we're going to provide to them and with this additional funding they can store the additional meals to provide to our citizens and of course we would have to look at that break-even analysis to make sure but they are providing seven and a half million meals to people for meal insecurity and then i do have the concern that senator mike fasano did bring up so i would like some additional answers before moving forward and voting on this topic any other discussion second well i'll just continue one more time so um the laker eludes news wrote an article about this as well about our discussion that day um i don't know if anybody else got emails but i got a number of emails agreeing 100 of my position on it not one person actually stated the opposite so the citizens are paying attention the citizens of paso county are paying attention and when they saw that meeting or read the article they're in agreement so i think i don't know so i wondered as well okay so i wondered if we could um allocate that the money that we gave um could go let's say to the racks that pasco county you know i don't know how they would designate it but some of the um racks that hold food that's coming to our county uh would be held on or percentage and that when we built a facility if they both if and when they told me they want to expand it to different areas because they go they serve hernando and citrus as well so at some point as the need grows they're going to need another facility up in this area and maybe that those capital fixtures move to our facility and that it gets designated commissioner oakley commissioner mariano okay um when i first thought about this issue about the donation of 125 tournament infrastructure i didn't think of it as that i was thinking of that i was paying

for food that was coming into pasco because they i think they do a great job feeding tampa bay in this in our area and our our citizens here but as i thought about it more and it came more private that i shouldn't be paying for their infrastructure in another county that they can be so proud of i'd rather have an infrastructure and they didn't want one in our county because they sold it they got 890 000 or whatever for that building they were given to them free yeah so they've already gotten their 250 000 toward a building without 841 000 towards the next facility here yeah exactly but with that said yeah i want to help citizens in pasco county and i will do everything i can help our citizens before i send money to build a building in another county okay thank you mariano and uh commissioner i was going the same direction uh in matter-of-fact uh center for sono you still sold for 890 thousand what year was that twenty twenty okay twenty twenty okay so that's 890 000 i wish when that decision was being made that we were notified yes look at the volume going mike if you want to keep that going go ahead i'll wait go ahead and play sure commissioner mariano did he say 2011 or 2020. he said 2020. so they just recently sold it okay all right so let's get into that listen i'm okay with not funding this today and finding out about that 849. i just would say they do a lot they do do a lot yeah i'm not saying that right so if the building sold just in 2020 don't you think we should have been notified yes i don't think this thing just came up they're gonna go build this building so as far as i'm concerned at this point we've made an eight hundred and eight hundred ninety thousand dollar nation already without even being told right what they're doing with the asset we gave to them so if they made the decision to go consolidate they get 890 grand from us our taxpayers i think we've made our contribution can we call the call to vote call the question yeah i'm okay with that um all in favor well okay your your emotion uh opposed to not good was to take 125 though and give it to feeding pascal's elderly for two years for two years correct three passes you guys made the decision where it needs to go it could go the fusion house was early you can go to senior services as well we don't need all the seniors are taken care of it's not recurring

every year so it's exactly right so that's why it might have a good feeling and let's continue to talk about and this doesn't mean we can't contribute to a specific meal amount later in the future right now okay so what so that one's done thank you very much we think we've contributed to that building it was five zero okay so we're good all right so um can can you guys come up real quick we'll finish my name thank you very much thank you all commissioner and that was great information thank you senator fasano to bring that to our attention because you know that should have come up in our discussions with feeding templates uh and it never came up in my correct way to do it in the sunshine [Laughter] great cub great job commissioner moore thank you all right frankly we should make that 125.00 we can afford it yeah that's a good idea great we have some slides up my name is uh ken bowden i'm the manager of the commuter services program at t barta i'm joined today by my colleague arlinda karuli with commute with enterprise we're just going to give you a general overview of the vanpool program some of our successes i do want to mention right off the bat that we're funded by a grant through the fta the federal transit authority it's 5307 money and comes in the form of a commuter assistance program grant so i'm going to push through these uh first couple slides so that we're kind of limited on time but i do want to mention that we have other services that we provide folks in terms of active transportation such as bicycling and walking we have information on our website about the best routes to take we provide information on public transportation system go pasco for instance is on our website and we also provide occasional regional challenges so these are commute challenges where people have an opportunity to try other modes of transportation other than just driving alone every day so the way that we like to promote our services is actually through the employer and when our linda and i go in and we talk to our employee employers we have a couple questions that we really want to know we have an open conversation but we really want to know are they having problems with attracting and retaining employees do they have parking issues at their facility and we also want to know do they have a green initiative are they participating in a program to

help reduce their carbon footprint tying all of these programs together we provide the emergency ride home program and that's really a safety net it's a way for people who let's say they're in a van pool they're in a car pool and they happen to miss their ride home we'll provide them the cost of an uber a lift or a taxi all they need to do is collect the receipt there's a form to fill out and then our agency will provide compensation for that ride home let's talk a little bit about the vanpool program itself so at the time in 2020 right before the pandemic we had a high of 1772 vans on the road and two months into the pandemic the number fell to 137. we probably would have even gone lower but fdot helped us out they reduced the number of people necessary to keep a vanpool going so we went from four to two occupants in a van pool these were it was just a strategy to make sure that these van pools didn't go away um we're now back up to a minimum of four people per van pool and uh through uh 2021 the first part of 2022 we kind of bounced between 150 and 140 van pools since march with the price of gas going up to four dollars a gallon pushing past that amount the program has started to really expand rapidly when i sent this slide deck over we were at 186 bands we're currently at 190 vans and it keeps expanding most of our employers are actually part of the federal employment system um we have james a haley the va in tampa has currently 90 vans in operation mcdill air force base has about 60 in operation but this is just a good overview of the people that we're currently working with um we are working very hard to get the program expanded to non-federal work sites um and we're finding a lot of interest in people in companies that are involved in food processing health care bay care has approached us about setting up band pools for their employee employees and the hospitality industry as well and some unusual folks too landscape companies who need to move people from distant locations into a central uh location there they've been talking to us as well this is a map of all the current van pools in operation and i just want to really point out that right now 40 percent of those van pools cross county borders so this is a really great example of a

traffic and then also again the number the infrastructure cost when it comes to parking we show what that number looks like so again these are the challenges that we end up seeing out there we address immediately with the work sites we've had a lot of communication more in the private sector now than ever because they're facing all of this or offering them a solution our biggest challenge right now is sometimes getting in our foot in the door just because they're not aware of how the program works right so we need the help of the community to kind of help spread that ideally we like to work with human resources because they have some analytics they typically provide us data so what that means is they give us an employee zip code or their address with an employee identifier so they remain anonymous to us but the company can take a look and say hey we've got you know 10 or 15 of these individuals that are living outside of this 10 mile 20 30 mile radius let's see if we can connect all of these folks and ken and i will actually physically go in there and talk to them about the program share what the cost looks like in comparison to their drive to excuse me a loan to their personal vehicle so the benefits to that employee are yes cost savings because now it's spread among four to five other individuals less wear and tear on their personal vehicles we provide the insurance as well so that their vehicle is covered for bumper-to-bumper up to a total loss there's a million dollars in mobility so there's a bit of ease right maintenance is also something that we include in that cost so we've got preferred vendors that take it out too and charge enterprise directly so again it's kind of all planned out and thought out including that emergency ride home program so they don't feel like they're stranded at work if there is an emergency but this is really the best way to identify that there is an opportunity for a work site and we recommend as you can see we have a lot of federal sites so they can't release a lot of the information so if they can't we normally suggest they do that internally like look at the cities that you've got where majority of our folks are coming from the longer commuters let's go ahead and approach that group so looking at again why employees love it the maintenance program we talked about 24 7 roadside assistance so they don't have to have another plan to to if there's a flat tire right or if they lock the keys inside the savings is really the biggest piece here when we talk about fuel costs being able to have that insurance included it's a month-to-month program so there

it's not a long-term financial commitment that they're just signing a contract they're stuck in if it doesn't work out for them we just need a 30-day notice we take the vehicle back average lifespan of the vampire covid was six years so we're starting to get back up there as we're adding additional vampires obviously covet affected those numbers and it wasn't just the fear of maybe sharing the ride but a lot of folks started working from home right administrative staff that we had at certain work sites a lot of deployment when we start looking at mendel and then a lot of retirement just you know folks deciding to leave a little earlier but now that we're leveling off i'm very comfortable to say we're hoping to approach the 200 milestone number uh by the end of december and we've got plenty the pipeline and a lot of other private sector work sites so you know we're probably proud to hopefully show some samples here coming up soon um in terms of the actual vehicles that we offer they're anywhere from a seven passenger suv eight passenger vans 10 12 15 so it really depends on what the group is interested in moving forward with the cost variations are going to be based off of that again they're not stuck in that vehicle so we end up seeing a lot of vandals grow tsa is a big example we started with one seven passenger went up to 15 they started splitting now we're at 17 bamboos this was just launched not too long ago so that's our little success story there and then also looking at the impact to participants i think this is some important data this is from all of the vampires that we shared with you so these numbers what happens once a month this report opens up for the vanpool where they kind of check mark all the folks that wrote and the days of the week we already have their route already put in the system and then once they check those names off we get this report on a monthly basis so we can see that there's an average of almost nine thousand dollars in savings per year always a lot so now that they're kind of rotating through the driving responsibilities they're getting some time back we call them families because they end up really building that community culture within the vanful program they'll get coffee for each other they're skeptical at first because they're not sure how it's going to work out but we hear some great success stories out there and then the mile is reduced again looking at what they're removing off their personal vehicle this is not personal use this is just traveling to work it's about 20 000 miles per year looking at vehicle shortage right all the what's affecting the economy right now and pricing of the vehicles that goes a long way for someone that's

going to have to replace it soon since 20 000 miles a year is a lot so we're lucky that enterprise has fleet to support that so we could go to our car rental company and just take vehicles off of that if we can't get them directly for for commute uh on our own so and uh this is just defense a financial consideration that we put together to give you an idea at what the pricing looks like the calculation for this is based off the first 2 000 miles per month which is normally what we end up seeing the route is just under that so the monthly cost that you see on there for the variety of options that we've provided for vehicles it includes that insurance the liability right it includes the maintenance the roadside once we remove the 400 subsidy from tbarda you'll see what that cost the passenger is so again the more they have in a vehicle the lower that cost is going to be to them so if you have you know a 50 passenger van 53 dollars we actually i love to break it down on a daily basis per person what that looks like just so they can see we're talking about a couple dollars right we do the same thing for the work sites i'm going to pass it back to ken to talk a little bit about that i believe we have a couple more on pricing but yeah some uh yeah we've only got a few minutes left someone's yeah some of us have lunch meetings so just looking at the the impacts to the tampa bay region itself we've reduced the amount of vehicle miles traveled in our region by about 7.5 million that's over 2021 and we've reduced the amount of co2 emissions by about six and a half million pounds as well that's the same amount of co2 that would that would be contained in the air of 1665 raymond james stadium so that's a lot of savings and we'll go on so really we're here now just to take your questions if you have anything that you'd like to ask us fire away well i just wanted you here to make sure that the public was reminded and we have a lot of new people that moved here about these opportunities i i know the clerks sitting here uh gathering some information for our employees i texted mike carvalho when we take over the management of the jail i'd love for there to be a presentation over there about uh band pooling for those employees and as we um are more and more successful with companies moving here and you know european companies in particular i just want this to be part of our presentations to them that this is this is an opportunity that they need to be aware of because i think most people are not aware of

this opportunity 100 that's why especially with a lot of companies like you said that are relocating here then they're used to hundreds of methods of transit yeah i'm from europe myself so i know exactly how much easier it is to get around or companies that come here from up north we get a different type of response they're like oh yeah let's implement this immediately let's talk through those so now that we're seeing a lot of them relocating on this side we are in that communication stage right let them know it's available but we really appreciate coming up here because communication is big and our contact information is on there so if anyone is interested in learning a little bit more or doing that analysis for their work site it is free of charge we can um take care of that so let us know thank you madam chair i was just curious how long has this program been going on for well uh vanpool was initiated originally with the very first gas crisis so that's back in 1972 and in the tampa bay area it's been running strong since the 1980s okay because i know my my brother-in-law was on the board when it was called bay area commuter services right okay and i remember hearing about this in 2012 but i haven't heard from it about it since so it's out there but it it's good to make everyone well aware thank you enterprise acquired a company called b ride which is who was managing at the time about four years ago so we've revamped we've done things a little bit different they um across the country there's 48 states now that implement the vampool program through commute with enterprise so things have changed a little bit i think it's very smart very surprising so okay thank you very much very glad you came up with that um we will adjourn for lunch [Music] you