05.24.2022 Pasco County Budget Workshop

[Music] i'm challenging that stuff okay let's roll i'm still under the weather but i'm here i don't have kovid test it three times but yeah so um i will uh call this workshop to order do we have an agenda yes ma'am yep okay so good morning i'd like to call to order the pasco county board of county commissioners penny for pasco joint workshop no okay i got the wrong one i think it's this one you're good okay so there's no script and we don't need a script just calling the i wonder why that was there i don't know i'm trying to confuse you yeah all right recording invitation invocation play oh okay we'll do the invocation on the planet creator your hand is open wide to satisfy the needs of every living creature make us thankful for your loving providence and grant that we remembering the account that we must one day give may be faithful stewards of your good gifts of amen and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right we'll call peace district commissioner district 5 commissioner mariana here district 3 turning 13. here okay so uh thanks do i need to move that away we'll probably continue to adjust from during the day okay they're pretty cool though new technology for us it's been three years since we've done this with these no it's been three years since we've set her on table oh i know but commissioner likes budget workshops i think it's important for the public to hear how we're spending their money so um so thank you thank you everyone for coming and i'm going to turn this over to you county administrator all right thank you man uh so commissioners uh you know we've sat down over the last couple of weeks we've kind of gone through at a high level where we are um before i turn over to bob and let him go into the slides just remind everybody again that we do not have the preliminary assessed values yet from the property appraiser and so there are you will see no recommendations as part of this you'll just see kind of a where we are from a budget perspective some trends and then what it looks like going forward so with that i'll turn it over to our budget director bob and let him uh run through the slides without a star wars tie on good morning things up here with no star wars ties bob gordon pastor county budget director this morning we just want to go through the budget with you very preliminary budget to let you know where we are with the budget what's happening the kind of the new initiatives that have been

presented by staff and then to give you the opportunity to weigh in on the budget so we can get your feedback on the budget before we there it goes before we finalize the budget and so we're talking about new revenues we don't have the not final numbers from the property appraiser yet as dance mentioned and so the scenario that we're working with is if the taxable assessed values increased at the same rate uh this year as he did last year about 10.8 percent which is not a crazy assumption given the amount of the amount of construction going on in the county that would be a 10.8 percent increase that would increase property tax revenues by about 27.2 million dollars if we cascade that down available to the sheriff as you know the agreement with the sheriff the sheriff would take 40 percent of that for 10 point almost 10.9 million dollars leaving 16.3 million after that if we sub deduct the payments to the taxable increment financing trust fund and for the community redevelopment agencies that's 3.63 million that leaves 12.7 million or so for the board to spend on new initiatives and ongoing expenditures if we do the same kind of math for the fire fund the increase in the fire fund last year was 12.6 percent and that would yield about 7.3 million dollars in additional revenue for the fire mstu fund so starting out with the big picture you can see we are recommending a budget has no increase in the operating millage of 7.6076 mills no increase in the fire mstu millage of 1.8036 no change in the storm water assessment of 95 per eru the water and wastewater rates will increase in accordance with the four-year resolution and the combined rate of that's about 2.7 percent and then we are on year four of the solid waste seven for seven plan and as you know that seven for seven plant is allowing us to accumulate the funds to be able to uh purchase the fourth burner for the solid waste waste to energy plant some of the things we saw the revenue so we want to talk about what are some of the expenditures that come right off the top the cost of fuel as you see it's up around 4.50 cents a gallon now so last year for fiscal year 22 we budgeted about 2.65 cents per gallon we're up to about 3.65 cents per gallon as of right now and so the reason our budgeted expenditures for gasoline is lower than what you see at the pump is because the county doesn't pay tax on the fuel that we purchase inflation we've all seen inflation at eight eight and a half percent that is really hitting our departments that rely heavily on building vehicles

and i.t so those costs continue to escalate we have the compensation classification study going on that will allow our employees to remain competitive with the surrounding areas and we have added the corrections officers from the detention center into that comp and class study to make sure that they are paid fairly fire station three that's in the beacon woods area state road 52 and u.s 19 that's coming online medical supplies for the rescue unit just because as the number of trips increases of course the number of the amount of supplies needed is increasing we have employee retirement employee health care starkey park as you know we have agreement with the developer of starkey park and it's kind of on the sliding scale so as we go forward the developer takes on less of those expenditures and the county picks up more of those expenditures and then finally contribution to the state medicaid and we'll talk about that in a little bit and so one of the issues hot topics right now is fire rescue and we wanted to point out specifically some of the enhancements to the fire rescue department depending again depending on the taxable assessed values received from the property appraiser we have the negotiated wage increase with the union we have rescues 223 and 226 that we're recommending come online and these rescues will help out in those areas with the high call volume we have a peak hour rescue unit which we are there it's actually two units that we're starting this year this fiscal year and we would like to continue those for next year and we talk about peak hour those that's an ambulance service that will run for 12 hours per day and they are paramedics only so they won't be firefighters staffing those units currently they're thinking is they'll be at stations 9 and 17 but they will be moved around depending on the call volume and where they are needed we have the staffing adjustment of 25 additional fte that is to help us get overtime under control we have a marine unit training so as you know there is a marine unit a boat that is being purchased currently being built for us that the board is approved we should receive that boat shortly we wanted to send our folks through training to make sure that they can properly and safely operate that rescue boat and then finally station house furniture and equipment this is the fancy name for what the chief casten likes to say is he runs the largest hotel in the county so we have a number of fire stations where

we have firefighters living there 600 firefighters living there 24 7. stuff wears out refrigerators mattresses chairs break and currently our firefighters have to scratch and claw to find the money to replace a refrigerator and that kind of thing and so we said well why don't we just put some money in the budget for that kind of stuff so this would be the first year that would put money in there and so that just for those quality of life things for the firefighters living in those stations so now we want to talk about the major funds and the and the changes in those major funds since last year yes sir the life skin and wellness program was a pretty good program too pardon me absolutely so the life scan is that's part of the union agreement and so it's for all of our firefighters to annually is it annually cheap annually go through a life scan to make sure that we catch any kinds of cancers or any kind of diseases early oh madam chair yes just on that we had a meet the other day and dan and the chief and i had some other folks we were trying to look for i think was about 250 more k so they could bring that in-house um are we gonna see that anywhere now or we're gonna work through that in this presentation uh if if we that would be a budget amendment this fiscal year okay uh say say that again so um you know i can let i know do we want the chief to probably explain that so they are they're exploring the option instead of contracting it out with some of the issues with how contracting it uh bringing that operation in house the life scan yeah but in order to stand it up we need about another 250k yeah about 250 thousand dollars to stand that up in house and so um we're working through that right now is that a machine is the issue of some kind of machine that's costly or is it because why can't our clinics do that it's it's additional to what our clinic can do so we're working through that ma'am we're not ready to bring something to the board yet but we're working through the process so that just when they came up in the meeting uh last thursday so i'm going to talk about the changes in operating expenditures for the major funds when we talk about operating expenditures there's no capital no reserves in these numbers and so you can see the general fund which is our largest fund increased by almost 7.7 percent and of course the things we talked about earlier the must-pays fuel inflation contract software contracts all those kinds of things are the reason behind those particular increases we see the largest increase here is for the tourism development and that's because this board increased the

fifth penny hotel bed tax and so we're our tourism department is going to be using those funds for international outreach and other types of promotions we see the stormwater fund increasing by almost four percent and that's almost totally due to the inflationary costs of construction materials we have the water waste water fund at eight and a half percent and we can see that those increases are due to increases in fuel and growth and finally solid waste fund there 6.2 percent due to inflationary increases as well as continuing to take uh trash outside the county if i could yes sir uh tourist development tax fund you know we talked about getting it through before legislature so it's a lot easier to get it done now exactly and uh the outsiders pay that are coming in to visit us we spent a lot of money on the wesley chapel side building that part which has been phenomenal i mean it's been a great success and really boosted tourism everywhere i want to make sure we take a look not just to do an outreach program internationally whatever but i want to look at doing capital projects over here could be the boat ramp don't end code could be sun west improvements could be other improvements that will help uh even hudson beach to bring more tourism by infrastructure too so i don't want to be just cut with that one liner saying it's going to be for marketing absolutely thank you and we'll bring that to their attention and kathy's ears are perked up over there we'll make sure that that message gets through to that thank you yes so just on that you mentioned boat ramps there's that money set aside that we allocated for boat ramps um previously when we did the wire grass works for sports campus of pasco county so i i think that's in commissioner or chair starkey's district if i'm not going to uh no that's in texas he's talking about the world we're doing it in clubs oh it ain't clear yeah that's been paid for with part of the level yeah um just as a reminder we have uh we may have um a youth sports complex coming that will also require some of our fiscal attention too we're waiting on see what the state does yeah just as a reminder you know obviously this you know there are certain things you can do and not do with with that fun as you know um you can talk to kathy about her or the or our dmo um director adam thomas but um you know they have a plan um but funds can you know only be allocated in certain manners so we're going to make sure we take you to that that's a state statute what do you support absolutely

mckay now focusing on the general fund departments we see an overall increase of 6.7 percent here we can see some of the major changes of the court technologies you know the pasco county pinellas county are in the sixth judicial circuit and we're required to fund state attorney public defender those kinds of things this increase is almost wholly due to the software stac is the software for the public defender's office we see the fire rescue increase uh 13.3 percent the general fund a lot of that was of course fuel fuels a big expenditure as is maintenance of the equipment we have uh information technology at 6.4 almost 6.5 of course that's increases in software contracts inflationary impact on hardware that kind of stuff and then finally emergency management you notice that has decreased but we haven't actually decreased emergency management what happened was we had a community risk coordinator that was funded from the general fund that position has been transferred to a different fund because it was more appropriate that that other fund paid for that position so we haven't actually reduced it we've just reduced the expending in the general fund municipal services fund we see animal services increasing just a little over two percent emergency services by 4.7 percent a part a big part of this increase is the new software that we'll be purchasing that will allow residents to text 9-1-1 and so that's kind of the text to 9-1-1 there we have parks and rec almost three percent and that's the e-lamp operations and that's just the normal ongoing kinds of operational expenses with that as you know outside funding the board generously funds other organizations outside the county the biggest of course is medicaid almost seven and a half percent and this is uh imposed on the county by the state and we haven't gotten the fiscal year 23 costs for that yet but just based on historic increases that will increase by about four to five hundred thousand dollars next year the other area that increased was this public assistance in burials and that's primarily due to increased expenditures related to burying uh indigents yep i think it's just important for the for the audience and people watching from home statutorily um which ones i know the answer but if you could go over the go over which ones were actually required by statue to fund because some of those we are not required by statute to fund obviously medicaid um health department uh daycare yes sir medicaid public assistance we're

required by state statute public assistance burials health department legal services bay care those are all required by state statutes the others are contributions by the board to those organizations okay thank you so the general fund municipal services fund this these are the business plan initiative requests and for the members of the public uh any department that requests new funding we call that a business plan initiative there are over 140 business plan initiatives up there we ask our department directors to anything that you believe you might need put it in there because we don't ask you you definitely won't get it and so there are over 140 there and the list of those business planning issues were sent out as part of the agenda so everyone has those and will have some here as well if anyone would like to look at those we have capital investments in the 2023 budget of course we have building renovations that's part of the facility master plan that's at about 1.2 million dollars per year i.t hardware and software just to keep up with that fast growing area as well as cyber security that's a little over two million dollars we have the central facilities management building and that was approved last year the design of that was approved and the construction approved this year the currently facilities management the central part is in the fire station out there atlanta lakes which will be demolished to be rebuilt and so this building will be housed the facilities management out there parks and rec we set aside 300 000 a year for parks and rec to renovate their fields and that gives us about six to eight fields per year that we can renovate mitchell park we started the drainage and flood control design out there parks maintenance this is just the ongoing kinds of capital maintenance that those playgrounds break those kinds of things well if i could stop you yes sir on the mitchell park before we do anything on that um we talked about uh newport corners coming in we're gonna have some acres over there that could take some fields we've talked about magnolia valley what could happen out front with the high grounds before i go spend the money i want to go look at the plan what we're going to do with that area because those parts you could change bring fill in raise it up about three feet make it so it's dry so when it rains it doesn't rain out like softball fields a little bit of rain they're gone softball fields they get wet they get torn up when they're wet as well we can do a lot better out there so it's not just a matter of

draining flood control it's going to be an investment so i think we should take a look at the whole thing timing is going to be important we're going to shut down fields in some way we want to make sure the other fields are built that they can transfer over to while they're going to go absolutely yeah keith has a plan for that we'll get him to come in and brief you yeah brief all of us okay yeah discussion for all of us to have i want to give you an update on the fire stations that are funded by the general obligation bond and so you see we have two fire stations currently under construction fire station 17 which is an existing station it's being it was raised and is being rebuilt and station nine suncoast lakes and that station nine is nearly complete and that will come online in july we're expecting that station to come online we have a number of stations in the design phase and a number of stations that are working through the process to be bid and i believe station three is the next station to be put out the bid yes in the next week or two question about those yes well then the next two even like two and four starting architectural work i know we make little tweaks and improvements i know the civil work is different for every site but if we're just starting architecture where that's kind of scary we pretty well have what we're gonna go build from the previous ones to what we're going to do well the buildings are effectively designed but they have to be site adapted so two and four will just both just resize really the civil work not the architectural well and you gotta make sure the the footprint of the the building fits on the site so you know like the 17 footprint is different than what we're going to build than what we're building at nine so again you still have to site adapt four two and four and for any of the other facilities we're doing so that they're they aren't exactly identical buildings i mean they should be pretty close no they are pretty close but you still have to do site adapt in the civil design and then go through the design process i mean if i'm going to buy land that's going to house a facility i would think i would buy enough land that i could build the same structure over and over again so i'm not duplicating cost granted you got to look at what's out there but there should be enough land that should mean that it should be constrained to make that work they're pretty similar you know but remember we don't always put exactly there's a base operation that goes on a fire station then there's other things that go in there based on the needs in the immediate area so sometime there is a little flex between fire stations and what we build i have a question for the operational

needs i have a quest why do why can't we put any numbers to any of these pages like i would love for i was just watching the um pope county's budget and state of the state of the county presentation and they were putting like values on things like this so sure i think it would be important for us to be able to say to our constituents we're spending x million dollars [Music] the total bond value's already been approved so we can have that yeah but i think it would be good to say what we're spending this year absolutely yeah thank you very much thanks for sure yeah just just add a little bit so i see fire station three beacon woods currently with purchase purchasing the county attorney's office um what can we do here when it comes to purchasing um to prioritize so i know obviously when you move something up or prior to something else bumps down but when we're talking about public safety obviously that should take priority so what can we do to there's a there is an administrator's priority list to the county attorney's office anyway okay that lists out all mostly procurement items where the administrator feels that they are the top priorities number three fire station number three is number four on the current ranking [Music] and that's what we prioritize our reviews unless the board directs otherwise for some reason with it so for example thank you what like what's one two and three let me look i don't have to open my eyes i didn't pick it up off the printer before i came down i'm sorry one is our frontier contract for internet service so that's that's been one i've had to uh i can't remember extend three times administratively while we wait what about the stormwater master plan um the third one is so the the sherlock route you can probably speak better than what that is chief just one of our rescues yeah collection uh collection for ambulance family and schooling and then number four is park station 3. just asking the rest of my board i mean do you do you think um three should uh be right reprioritized well i want i want to ask this question if we're we're doing all these fire stations how different is one contract from another it seems like it should be a pretty standard contract with just a few you know what's the difference you're putting a sink here you're putting a sink there i mean what are we

what do we have to go over with the fine-tooth comb the general conditions you know supplement conditions generally pretty straightforward it's the same architect so they should have had the same general supplement conditions the other ones yeah so what's why the the specific plans for what the contractor's going to build may be adjusted because obviously the site's a little different so there will be some but that's that's not necessarily part of what needs to be reviewed it's really the contract or provisions so which is really the general supplement conditions so i want to want to ask the county attorney what is there a is there a big difference between one fire station and another and purchasing i don't know if anyone's here from purchasing it the request for proposal um for the invitation for bid depending on what it is should be very similar um in terms of general and specific conditions right like the specs or you know the actual what epoxy we put down isn't necessarily part of what you know would be reviewed as part procurement process that's that's that's that's a design element so then can station two and four be put on the fiscal budget for this year no ma'am they're they're already being they're already nine months to do the architectural work there should be a way to streamline it so it's not taking nine months and if we already have the funding then we should move forward with station two and station four they are moving forward in the design process in the ready following bring them forward for construction will be late 23 early 24. i would like to see it in 23 because it's needed now not then no i understand it's imperative commissioner i mean when mcdonald's goes and builds a building they build the same one over and over again yeah they go over in all the other industries you get people that live in one area that kind of travel all over the world all over the country and they put the same structure up i don't know why at this point especially we have these bonds and prices are rising on different things why we can't just make this is what we're going to build is going to go here here and here and this way when every firefighter goes from one spot to another they know exactly what they got or we have a couple of models and you can have model a b or c on this this and just go the buildings are similar and if there's an upgrade it needs to be changed oh well we need this now when we after being here for a year we know we need this equipment then we can just make those tweaks and adjustments that's part of the design process that

they're going through but why does it take nine months because you have to do the civil site adaptation so you have to do the civil work and adapt it to the site because every site's different every site has different site constraints different access points all that's different at every site and so you have to go through that process yep so we've owned the site at beacon woods for years right why didn't get the civil the silica down on that immediately so i want to remind the board that before we even took the bond to the voters in 2018 we outlined a phasing program for all nine fire stations so that we could build them one when we had capacity to build them and when we had capacity to fund the operation inside the fire station so right now two and four we don't have the funds in 23 to actually operate them if they opened at 23. so you you can't so that was a request made by the board to make sure that we phase them and so that when we opened a fire station we could operate the fire station and so that's what we've done covid delayed that to a certain extent but that's they're still being built in the effective in very similar to the phasing program you saw in 2018 before we ever sent the bond to the voters so heaven said that with that decision made at that time i think was the right decision however with the surge of growth that's out there right now with the the extended times that people are taking to get service i think it's time we need to relook at it and maybe make an adjustment and especially if it means taking these and starting going cookie cutter for the next few fire stations to get to get them done quicker to speed up the time and so be it i mean a faster way you get rescues on the street is instead of two peak hour rescues we do four or six well i have i have a question about rescues on the street go ahead come here okay this is another way to get there without building facilities faster than we really can be building facilities because remember it's not just one point in the process that we're at max capacity we're at max capacity through the entire procurement process from the architectural capacity to the facility capacity the procurement capacity to contract or compete everybody in that process right now is at max capacity just go try to build something yeah yeah dr try to build a home right i mean so if you move yeah so i mean is it we're at max capacity in that process and so the phasing we've outlined is what works best for us throughout the entire process we can move some pieces around a little bit but ultimately you're kind of fixed because if we accelerate bidding then we're going to get even fewer contractors available to bid which means that increases prices even more than they're accelerating today so i mean there was a there was a reason we did it

the way the board directed us back in 18 and that's the plan we've been working on well yeah the funds you have for for servicing that fire station if you get it built early not necessarily mean you got the funds to put the people in there and operate we have phased the project the facilities so that when they come online we have the funding to operate them yeah if you build them too early you don't have the funding to operate it's like building a school before you get the houses in right it doesn't work or anything else so if you know the alternate is what we're doing with the peak hour rescue program because we can put those in existing facilities and they can be reasonably mobile so that is really which is what you know we're trying to work through and see if we can i've been approached for a temporary solution but i will bring it to you after mariana goes why don't we just bring the movement up like we mentioned earlier why don't we just reprioritize the story because you know the top ones are all being worked on the same time anyway so let's go ahead and take chairman's prerogative here so i was approached by someone who said that they had approached the county a couple years ago about this is that if if our dilemma right now is not having enough rescue we can contract out the rescue temporarily until we have more of our own and it's our same firefighters who are working for those companies that are you know manning those um ambulances that and that could be available parked around the county uh to help us so right now i think they just do transport but i've been told that they can also do rescue i thought they did too they're i mean they're they're different classifications of transport and we allow the privates to do a certain level than that we don't allow them to do the initial emergency response but if we're waiting 17 minutes for an ambulance to come from zephyr hills to us 19 why wouldn't we try another alternative until we get build up our own capacity you have two issues yeah well yeah that's not right that will work you have a you have a utilization rate on rescues and we're trying to stay below 30 a private ambulance tries to stay above 50 percent because they're working 12-hour shifts and they're trying to turn a profit and so they're going to they're going to utilize it so we're trying to stay below 30 which means our issue is not necessarily the number of rescues but it's also where they are we have you know we have conti as we continue to build we continue to have houses built where they're not within you know just a few miles of a fire station which is

where our rescues are housed and so as we build new fire stations we cut that down but remember we went over a decade without building a fire station and so we added a hundred thousand people in pasco county and we didn't build a fire station and then you built 38 that came online in 2018. but that was the first one in over a decade i think so so that's what she's talking about well the peak hour rescue plan isn't going to help when they're still having to come 30 minutes away that's why if we have the other stations two and four built and they're much closer then it's going to reduce the time to get there and then what if we just put the peak hour rescue plan there until we can utilize and find the firefighters or if you have one firefighter from this station and one from the station and of course we'd have to talk to the chief about that but just pulling firefighters in because i'd rather have fi three or five firefighters here than half at a closer location then have 20 at another location that's 30 minutes away we need to make sure they're located in the proper positions in proper locations then the peak hour rescue program is a way to do it but you pull them into existing facilities because because your existing facilities on 19 on the 54 corridor in the 301 corridor which is really where your peak calls are we have existing facilities there so it's put the peak hour rescue units in the facilities that we have and then let them be mobile during the day that i mean as opposed to building two and four because two and four splits the difference between 15 and 37 on 54. and then two is out in wesley chapel and it's 54 and no thank you i always get the medal i can't keep any number three so i mean it's they both help and they're needed but if if you really want to trim the program you go with a peek out rescue program that we're proposing three is at majestic and which is going to alleviate embassy near 19. and that is going to significantly reduce the timing if someone's in beacon woods and needs a rescue so they'll get the one for majestic instead of having to wait from them to get all the way from embassy well every new fire station is going to help but the issue right now is the peak call volume so the peak hour rescue program that we're already working to stand up is the right way to attack it and let us build two and four on the schedule that we that the board's already approved for two and four it will help but it's still the distance it needs to be taken into consideration and it's in the distance isn't going to be fixed with two or four where we have the issues is not the two and four zones it's it's in areas

outside of those where we don't have a new fire station programmed yet a question because on here you're talking about existing station remodel but don't we have issues with another fire station on 19. well fire station 19 is the one we're replacing design and should be out on the street after 18 and 3. but how is the um where are we with the existing one because i thought we had to move some stuff in we had it did temporarily i think those repairs are done but that's that needs to be replaced immediately and that's why it's on the program okay we had a piece of property there that we lost otherwise we probably would be almost done building that one and we had to go back to scratch and buy another piece of property start a veteran or leisure lane with some of that money commissioner mariana thank you um dad i do agree with you the rescue program that we have going on is great and commission fits tragic years ago we did a workshop with the fire stations and that was one of the things we actually brought up you can take that mobile unit and you can move it from here to there depending the call volume their schedule of work in the peak 12 hours is perfect because that's when the most things are so that flexibility gives us a shot right away at low cost to make it happen as we kind of keep on going what i'd like to bring up to was years years ago we talked about the hospital stay the time it takes that these guys stay at the hospitals and i just was informed by someone that it actually the hospitals have to get uh supposed to get us done a certain amount of time we can start charging them so i would like us to take a close look at how long they're staying how this is repeating and then let those hospitals know if they don't improve their performance of taking our people that we're bringing to them that we're going to stop penalizing them can i get yeah let me jump on this so we had that conversation the meeting we had last week as well so um i did reach out to um the hospital system ceo so we're going to now you know on the west side you guys will need to if you have relationships there you'll want to work on that having conversations with people more central on the east side of the county so we're gonna have a sit down and see what we can do they don't seem to be as bad the better southern eastern i think more it's more on the west side where we're seeing the majority of those issues those holdings happening delayed time times are more in the west right now more the west right it's it's about you know we studied that in detail and it's been pretty consistent it's about 30 minutes uh overall as an average drop

time we call it drop time by the time the annual's rise which is yeah one fell off recently though yeah one fell off recently but anyway so yes those are i think those are conversations if you have relationships with some of your administrators or ceos on that side of the county i've got to go and meet them have a sit down i'll do it over here so i'll do that okay somewhere better than others any more questions on fire or rescue i would still like to see fire station two and four beyond the fiscal budget for this year it's not physically possible on for construction it is it's it's design i mean i'm sorry for construction i think we're planning on trying to bid that late 23 it should be operating 24. again so it will be under construction in 23 later in 23. what month is 23 roughly probably 12 to 15 months from now so that's 24. laden no that's like 23. i'm sure yeah question as far as i'm building if we're going to contract these out we're going to build them at the same time are we better off putting the contracts out where someone can bid on two projects instead of one yeah it's better to do them individually it can't be for the structure it can't be i mean we should build them exactly the same i mean come on the same contract contractors if you have all the contractors take the same job they're gonna they're gonna have to split their crews so the administrator's right that you can get a fire station built faster if you have two different contractors building the same lifetime yeah yeah and most of the because they don't have the capacity right now we're the ones that generally bid on our edge it's a big job for them and so it's it's one that takes their full effort doing the pipe over here and he's done with the job a number one over here doing the pipe and now he takes it through the next day and moves them to the pipe over here or nothing they can go with their they're all subs anyway i mean it's ultimately it's it's better than one get it out under the contract and go out with a document and keep the competition on each individual one all right libraries library library general obligation bond project i think is a better story we have two two branch libraries that are completed three currently under construction the wesley chapel seven oaks branch library will be our eighth library but it is not a general obligation bond project but it nevertheless is moving forward the constitutional officer budget requests can i can i back up on that yes ma'am so um the centennial library guys if you haven't been there it's it's it's so much nicer than it was it's so

dated but we're trying to add a playground and um and you know we're it's it's a struggle to find the money but however i i personally think libraries should be more than just the building it's county land and it can offer other amenities to the community nearby so i think we should have a mindset to look at what else can we do on these properties and i think they all could have a outdoor reading area outdoor playground picnic you know a shelter of some sort we can go outside and have outdoor classes so i just want to expand our thoughts on these libraries and there is a little money in this 23 on cdbg side so we're tearing down the anderson house right so there is money to start that process but it's going to be small projects over a period of years to make that happen i'm just saying going forward guys be looking at your libraries in the land around it and see what more we can do to make a mess that's to the community around you yeah some of them are constrained push mariana i mean if there's land available to put the money in for a playground it should be easy yeah i mean even even the regency way we own a ton of land right there yeah yeah so there could be more happening there on the public land okay so the timeline for the submission of constitutional officer budget we have three that were due may 1st and we have received those the property appraiser is his budget is due june 1st next week and then the tax collector's budget is due august the first so the budgets that we have received we have the sheriff's budget at 121 million dollars for the 22 adopted you'll notice we took the detention center out of that 22 adopted number just to make it easier to compare those figures and so the sheriff's office request increased by almost 10 percent or 10.8 million dollars supervisor elections budget increased by 4.4 percent and this is primarily increases to employee health and employee retirement we have the clerk and comptroller's budget increase i see the clerk is on the agenda for later on so i will let her speak to that budget you'll notice that the sheriff's budget does not include the 10 officers that he requested that's part of the budget and that depends on the number that we get from the property appraiser whether or not we have 1.7 million to add those 10 additional officers if we now turning to utilities utilities for the most part is keeping up with growth the top line there is the american water

works association recommended the number of employees per wastewater and water connection you'll notice that we aren't at that line however we are at the same slope and so we are keeping up with that and so these for the most part these additional employees are being paid with through growth in the system the municipal solid waste you'll notice the the bars there are the tons of solid waste brought to the waste to energy plant the blue bar there that's the current waste energy plant capacity we are bringing on the fourth burner and that fourth burner capacity will take that capacity from about 350 million tons to about 500 000 tons and if we brought that fourth burner on today you can see that we would be nearly at capacity and so by the time that burner comes online in 2425 we expect that that will be nearly at capacity and so we'll be looking at other options for moving forward to address the solid waste i'm sure yeah so i think this is huge numbers we have to put together to get this extra burner right yes sir and by the time it's built it's going to be probably at capacity [Applause] recently was up at rogers park in the park here they've got this giant bin where people can take recycling not just like the bottles of whatever just they can bring it in recycling is now making better money as you say dan so we're making better revenue for that anyway but every bit that we take out of the stream that goes into that makes it not only just having the volume go out but it makes the burn rate better so the the waste plant can function more effectively i think as part of a plan coming up we should look and have something going forward to say okay we're going to go and put it in all our parks if someone's going to run a special event with tourist development like we used to do we're going to bring out recycled containers but we should have them out there anyway so i think we need to focus in the county recycling everywhere and up north i know they even take landscaping materials well they'll take them putting special paper bags bring them to it so they don't go in the regular waste stream as well we need to go look at all the evidence because to just we don't have we don't want to spend the money for another burner we won't have the money spent up for another burner we need to go get the more efficiency about all the recycling and not just the plastics but for lawn maintenance etc if there's a better way maybe we talk to merrell brothers

to see if there's something we can do maybe we can work with our landscapers that have to bring it there or bring it somewhere else and maybe we can find some better better ways to use what we're doing i think our landscaping stuff is already sometimes it goes somewhere else right what i'm saying is we can work with what we've got it could be it could be somewhere else i'm fine with that too we have some c and d landfills too that we don't that aren't ours that are managed by the people so the board last month approved a contract to develop a solid waste master plan enhanced recycling will be part of the effort they look at and to see how what kind of impact that would have on the future of the solid waste operation so that will be part of what that plan looks at in the short term we should be able to do some things yeah and we will be doing that and finally to wrap up by june 1st the property appraiser will provide us the preliminary taxable assessed values so we'll have some idea what the property tax revenue will be going into next year july 1st the property appraiser will deliver the final taxable assessed values we will set the trim or the board will set the trim on july 12th trim being the truth and millage and it's the process by which the county informs residents what we anticipate the millage rate will be for the next fiscal year so the millage rate that you set in july can be lower but it cannot be higher than the millage rate that you adopt in september and so that is all we've got for you be happy to answer any further questions you might have i'm trying uh commission mariana we can do a follow-up meeting with all the initiatives and talk about those as well yeah yes sir we will once we get the the property appraiser's preliminary number we will finalize our list and our recommendation of the board based on the feedback we got and we'll sit down with you you know individually and go through the details like we've done in the past to include the the fund profiles the 10-year five and ten-year fund profiles on the the major funds so you can see what what decisions that they impact in the future and then we'll be bringing back the trim at the july 12th meeting so that's that's the plan is to do it that way um and we're taking the the input information we have that we're hearing today as part of that you know we can have a discussion at the late june board meeting if the board wants i would not set up a separate workshop for that i would just have a discussion at the board meeting if that's what what we want to do on this list are these are these

asked initiatives are funded in this there's no there's nothing above the funding line right now because i don't know what the property appraiser's number is so i have not made a recommendation the individual branches and prioritizers but until i get the number from the property appraiser i'm not going to rank and prioritize and decide where the line is to recommend to the board okay so but something very important to me and that's why we're here to you in the meeting is code enforcement and you know it's the number one issue on the west side um we have 300 structures ready for demolition um the burned mobile home on buena vista it's been there for a couple years just came down so that's good that's done but we also have the initiative of trying to get the commercial properties to put the landscaping back in that they let die that takes a lot of manpower from staff and right now i think if i don't know if sally wants to speak up but the way they're doing it i believe is they meet once a month and they're doing four properties a month sally are you keeping up with that because i i knew four went out but i thought there was a month or two where you guys did at me potentially commissioner with regard to the meetings with regard to looking at those sites as you recall when code enforcement started assessing the sites and for those that weren't in compliance and they needed to go for pre-application meetings when we kicked it off it created a bottleneck where we had pushed out pre-applications meeting almost by two months with the volume that created a problem for all of your other businesses and projects that were coming in so we work with staff to create a governor because this is your planning staff that's impacted by it so we did create a governor whereby we were only bringing forward four projects a month to go before sites and review and and require them to go through that process so if we if um if code enforcement had their own site plan reviewer rather than having to go through the building department site plan reviewer because the code enforcement tells me they don't know how to review plans maybe we can avoid that and um and not have this issue commissioner keep in mind when i say sitecam review that is going through your planning and zoning review to make sure that they go through the process to get an approved site plan that lays out all the requirements associated with the land development code it shouldn't be it shouldn't i don't know maybe it just shouldn't be so laborious if their site plan has failed they just

have to bring it up give us a plan i mean it's pretty obvious if it's gone but that plan has to meet your land development codes and any others so is there something that a review process is part of that well is there something we can we can do policy wise and legally to say if you if you've let your landscape die you now have to follow the new landscape up-to-date landscape code submit a new plan and then not go through the review part but just start it over you'd still be doing the review part if you submit a new plan well i know but not but they're going through looking at the old stuff it's pretty clear when you look at the bank at old 54 and little they took out everything all the trees i mean they're gone i don't know why you have to review what was supposed to be there was pretty clear they're not following any landscape and just hit them with the new landscape ordinance and bring it bring it up to date instead of looking what they had in the past i'm sorry with those that have an approved site plan but fail to maintain their landscaping we're simply obtaining that site plan and staff will meet with the zoning planning and zoning team just to make sure they go over the existing site plan then go back and let them know they have to bring their land of their landscaping up to code in accordance with the approved plan so that does not have to go through full process okay well that's good but uh you know if if we if we had someone you know we're getting trying to get businesses back on track but if we had someone that was dealing with the current newer businesses that didn't let it fall into disrepair and save us a lot of trouble and just so you guys know i don't know if you're even aware we had a brand new 7-eleven on 54 who put their landscaping in as soon as they got the co they took it all their tree they took their trees out so this is this is this is an issue that we have to stay on top of and um we just need to it seems to me if we kept if we had someone who made sure before it fell in disrepair and say hey we require you to keep this up we we wouldn't have to go back in and start from the beginning i know but they don't have enough people they don't well i'm hoping that the two i mean i'm hoping that's there's an api for more code enforcement right so there's two here you know that i've got a lot of businesses on the west side that have let it all go to that church we got to make sure we're utilizing them properly as well we're not always utilizing code enforcement as they should be utilized i mean i've got

i had pepin academies that reached out to me my office and said they got cited for parking because i'm just being honest somebody's county commission office called code enforcement to go out there because cars were backed up i live in a community wow every school has backed up cars where i live the bus stop is two houses down for me the last 15 or 17 years cars back up in front of my house six times a day yeah that's okay they're picking their kids up i don't have a problem and if i need to get out they'll move so that's an example of are we we're not always using them properly we're going to take their time away from what they should be doing to go out there and do traffic enforcement because there's some cars parked around some houses when there's citizens that call your office constantly and it's not just one or two or three and when you have 10 or more people that are calling you and it's not just they're parked up in a line going around it's not as bad when people can't get to their homes because it is that bad and they can't get back there they can't even cut through other side streets because the parents are parking up and down seven to ten cars up and down every side street it happens all over the county another reason that posting law enforcement went out there and they put signs up there that they were not allowed to park on the side street and have their kids released as a walker and pick them up from there they have to go through the car line so the parents have to be following the laws and the rules i didn't want to get into the weeds i'm giving that as an example of let's make sure we're using code enforcement properly you know instead of taking their time out to do in my opinion my opinion that's nothing so it's not something code force must be spending their time on well i i was thinking that we should have worked with commercial specializing in commercial and then some residential and richard i think we just hired someone to run that operation we'll give them time and come up with some ideas about the best way to operate that so i mean we just hired somebody new to run it so let's let them have an opportunity to evaluate the situation and come up with some recommendations operationally you know to sally and then me but that's you know that's how they operate and organize is really an operational issue if we catch it before it all dies we're better off all right commissioner mariano yeah so and i saw the code enforcement item as well and my thoughts were a little bit different i don't know how many citations we've

written over the past couple years compared that we're doing before yeah i wouldn't mind looking at that comparison because of what i'm hearing we're not writing as many anyway yeah but as far as the landscaping part goes i think if they have an approved site plan if there's always a streamline the process say follow the plan that you've got or the citation the fines have stayed in place and you give them a certain amount of time maybe that's the way to handle that another thing coming up is uh at the last point we had a presentation from kelly funk about the homeless stuff and we talked about the uh expiration of the trespass agreements yeah so the sheriff has now come to where they're going to put them in so they can stay in there until someone either sells a property or upsell yeah it's going to be a lot better so now with the budget they're comfortable with what you guys have set up so great job setting it up they're going to put more resources into their behavioral health intervention team to actually start going to these camps now we're going to have to deal with i think cleaning up code enforcement violations as well so there's got to be a focus with that coming up because we can't just go in there and just go in there do a one-shot thing it'll happen just like laser beach just happened we cleaned the thing out we got rid of the people and they came right back in with more stuff i mean shopping property is it they're different landowners well i just think the landowners have to be have a little responsibility i agree but if they're if they're not there and they are they're out of town there's a lot of people these are out of town properties i understand i understand so what i'm saying is you've got to clear it out and you're going to make sure it stays clear and that's going to take code enforcement people to go work in conjunction to make that happen um i tell you when they we did that cleanup in gulf highlands there was this one house where older gentleman lived there beyond his own capabilities probably like 90 years old and guess what some young people drug heads moved in and they just trash the place and load it up with trash our code people did a phenomenal job going in there but that's going to have to be maintained as well so depending on where the code's going to go and what we're going to focus on we're going to find out what they're doing we shouldn't have 300 demolition permits sitting they should be done so i think i work with with christy sims to find out what she needs to to help move the process through and that team we got to work together that hr i think the last question just resides somehow you know christy sims did a

phenomenal job pushing through patrick moore as well we need to find out what they need to get the stuff through and get it through the process well i'm sure before we go to clark real quick mr steiner center do we talk about possibly finding out if the mstu with new development down the road for fire rescue and possibly um the sheriff's office would work for me with a fight i found no jurisdiction that has a program like that i have some doubts whether it could be done really um i think where where you're right now where you're missing the boat on new growth paying for itself is through your impact fee process fire has not updated their impact fees in years and so in essence your go bonds and the mstu are pushing forward that are subsidizing growth so if you if you want growth to pay for itself at least on the capital side we need to look at the impact fee program throughout through all all stages but fire fire is one that is particularly parks is coming forward with some revisions uh that the board authorized but fire is one that needs needs to look at their look at their fees you cheers mary this question for sally um sally a while ago we talked about if you had there's an engineer from one department to another department uh i didn't see an engineer in this budget did you request one do you want to get one commissioner thank you for asking we have engineers positions available unfortunately we are who struggle to fill the positions we have engineers that are leading the challenge because we can't compete with the private sector so it's when we get someone that's actually someone who has a passion for working for local government because as you can understand the economy of scale is very different for engineering private sectors to look at the local government so we have positions available we're just not able to recruit we're we're we got a third party engineering firm to help us with that program anyway so a consultant that would help us do the review uh commissioner fitzpatrick so also discussing code real quick and properties and the landowners having to make sure their property is being fenced off and

then what happens when they're cutting through the fences and then how do we help stop that because it's property on 54 specifically that they're just keep cutting the fence and going private property i think that's i think i think that one on 54 is our property which property the one that kelly showed um is she here no the one that was uh shown in the slideshow might be our property and there's another one that's owned by walmart i mean it's a code enforcement issue or a sheriff's issue if somebody keeps destroying their property yeah i wonder if anyone went out there and cleaned that one up i don't know either um okay so i wanted to throw something out at you guys and see what the thoughts are on the board i know this is not a popular thing to do but we had to do it once before when our deputies salaries needed to be raised when we were losing the mall to hillsborough county in meeting with the sheriff and going over numbers we have um 85 hernando county has has 85 let's say if i can say this way per 1000 we would we would need 399 deputies to meet pinellas ratio 120 to meet hillsborough and 85 to meet hernando um so pinellas county is at 1.86 we're at 1.03 now it and it did say it takes 30-month delay of getting new new deputies on the street i don't know how many are in the pipeline but we've we've got 10 in the budget and dan has found money to get 10 more but all right all right let's just qualify it yeah let's see what the property appraiser gives us that's what i was going to wait for i was going to break the same thing i was waiting to see what his numbers were okay well we'll see we'll see what it sure is but i i i'm just wondering if you know we we all love pasco county it's living here it's very inexpensive to live here but that in that comes at a price and at what point do we have a responsibility to fund um fire and and safety at a higher level what do you think about that madam chair i asked the sheriff several times for an answer on that number of that 1.8 per thousand and to my best knowledge i don't know that they've hired any deputies in the six

years i've been here for the road work out on the road because i haven't got the answer and i've asked it two or three times to the sheriff okay well that's so i think our sheriff does a real good job at that ratio because we are a pretty safe county we've got to be pretty proud of our citizens here so yeah well i'd like to get that number i haven't even hired maybe we can get it in the last five years annually but then we also have to know how many have left and gone to work other places wait for those waiting for the property appraisers numbers all right so i'm just putting that plant in that seat there let the clerk go weren't there numbers in the budget last year to hire new law enforcement officers well they get money every year to hire fire there was not a specific line last year for them to hire law enforcement officers so i i had a conversation reason with chase even this last night so i'm gonna let him maybe at the next board meeting he'll come in he'll talk to that uh i don't want to say that but i want i want to say the board six years ago pretty much gave the sheriff the budget here's what you've got here's your income for 50 percent of the growth going through we haven't controlled what he's done with his budget numbers now i think he has added long post but i'm gonna talk to the numbers specifically because i think your specific question is important right patrol deputies or other deputies et cetera so we'll let him come forward and do that presentation but for all those years he's he's been to his administrator controlling where that money goes i agree so if he hasn't changed maybe he saw a better need like behavioral health ilp whatever he's made those decisions where to put the money we funded them i think pretty well well all that that's what i'm gonna say um and i did ask the sheriff if he would be more transparent with his budget um as some of the other counties are and so i'm hopeful that we'll see more transparency but i still think we fund it fund him lower on the very low end of the deputies at the sheriff's office in the state i haven't seen what we fund our fire station i mean go to florida tax watch and kind of look at how florida counties compare and see where we fall compared to the other other counties in the state and there's no doubt that you know even that we've he's not one of the even medium-funded deaf um sheriff's office in the state so uh for for most of those categories we rank

county administrator has agreed to adjust my office's budget proportionately the second component of my budgets middle is the multi-agency criminal justice information system or sieges i believe on slide 10 it was called court related technology so um this is required for the county to pay pursuant to section 29.087 florida statutes last year the county funded only about 117 000 for this component this amount was short the amount that's on the slide 671 thousand 465 for the full cost of administering the sieges i've shown that florida law requires the county to pay for the sieges and that my office has been paying the county's responsibility since january of 2017. the county agrees that is responsible for the i.t expenses and agreed to fully fund this expense in fisc in the next fiscal year my office has no longer can no longer fund the county's responsibility therefore i request the board to fund 100 of the sieges expenditures next fiscal year as required by law the third component of my budgets middle covers local requirements specifically the annex courthouse in newport richie for approximately 7.3 million i have illustrated that florida law requires county to fund court related local requirements for the clerk and controller's office pursuant to section 29.08 sub 2 a1 and 2b florida statutes well sieges and local requirements are pending decision in court case number 2021-ca-2635 i'm requesting that the county fully fund sieges as previously agreed and could reconsider funding the local requirements i need your support in making my budget comply with the law so what is not included in my budget is any additional compensation to match the county's average increase so anything over the 5.3 percent increase also what's not included is the impact of the jail transfer from the sheriff's office to the board of county commissioners and back pay for the sieges component as well as the court house annex that was requested for this fiscal year while expect the jail transfer to have a significant impact on my office due to the early stages of this transition a viable determination of the number of positions required cannot be estimated at this time the county administrator has recommended and i concur to defer this component of our budget request until later this summer after further analysis on behalf of my dedicated staff i want to thank you for your continued support and the opportunity to speak with you today thank you thank you um county administrator isn't is that 671 in the [Applause] both of those items are being litigated currently oh the 671 is being litigated too okay

until i have a number from the property appraiser i have not gone through and prioritized what we add we're going to add to the budget and um just curious what what do you think is for the transfer from the sheriff to the bcc what do you what are you thinking what i mean you're looking you are auditing the what is it that you're auditing so the um really a lot of it is the fiscal component that's coming from the jail to the or the sheriff to the board of county commissioners the list is being finalized this week um it'll probably be emailed out to the county tomorrow because we initially started with a very long list and what we've identified is basically everything and what we're doing is putting a priority level priority level one would be part of what i'm going to call the um the accounting instead of an audit let's say from the external firm a two would be something that the county and the sheriff would work out outside of the audit one is to make sure that we can fit it in within the time frame that is um you know because time is short fitted within the time frame as well as the fitting it in within the cost to hire in a an external auditor the component firm to come the list it will be finalized it will cover things such as capital assets it'll cover balances that'll be coming over financially any accounts that they have to make sure that what you're getting what is being transferred is what you'll get on october 1. there's a long list over 100 items okay but after that's done what what more do you need oh oh oh um my finance department is going to have a big impact so now that you are bringing would it not be i mean if the sheriff was doing this with x amount of people she doesn't we don't finance for the sheriff no if the ship but the sheriff was someone was doing it at the sheriff's office so they is it one person is it two people do we know how many people are coming over from the sheriff's office i don't think anybody are coming over from the sheriff's office right that's why you wanted to wait until the summer to see what those numbers actually are so they can work through it how many exactly you don't know we're trying to understand like how many invoices do you process for the jail um and we and we can't they can't give us that answer i think it's hard for them because they have invoices from every aspect of their organization i don't know if they separate it out from well this is jail invoices and this is

non-jail invoices so so then how does he know how much of it it was costing him and how so i don't know i'm a little concerned about these numbers then are they real well what about the chart of accounts that should be listed on a general ledger on the detailed general ledger that's going to be are we just guessing how much it cost them to run the jail we've gotten expenses from them yes we're going through that so it's a guess if they did no we are working through that with them there is still work to be done i think the only my only concern is that you know right now the clerk does all the finance for the board so about 1.8 billion dollars worth of work and we're adding 50 million dollars to that so it's about less than two that's about two percent uh to to the to the volume of financial work so i mean i can't imagine it's going to be significantly more than a two percent impact okay i'm not sure yeah and jeff i'll just ask you and then if the question's okay to be asked so when i look at the budget for years it's been a steady increase to all the clerks we've had in the past clerks okay all right and this this year for continuation of service worth six million if the sieges fundings included 671 the big scary number is the 7 million dollar number so now it's like double what's there [Music] how can that be justified to write an offer from 6 million that need to go to 14 million where would that money go that was that was previously paid by the state okay that has never been up till last year that was never been classified as a local requirement by any of the clerks today the last year's budget was the first time that that was identified as a local requirement i don't as i told you last in last budget session i don't believe that's a local requirement the clerk disagrees with me and that's and that's going to be the big ticket in the declaratory judgment action between the county commission and the clerk all right thank you and i think that's that pool if i'm not mistaken it's so you know we don't get to keep our fines and i don't think we get our ticket money from the sheriff's office that i think all that money goes into that pool right that's what funds that you know when they those coding yeah so we're paying in to that fund okay madam chair i just wanted to make a correction the state does not fund my

court operations um it's a fee based structure so it is fees that are um assessed that are from from the court we collect it we keep a portion of it pursuant to statutes we submit the rest to the florida department of law or floor department of revenue and the amount that we are keeping is to run the court operations pursuant to florida statute so where's this money coming from now it's um i mentioned last year that i don't have enough revenue to cover the expenses because i'm duplicating services in an auxiliary courthouse so what happens is is i get money from the clerks of court state trust fund so other clerks offices are funding the deficit in my office for correlated operations and isn't that where the fees money goes the leftover fees money when someone pays a code enforcement fine yes yeah that's what sally that's what they told me from miami-dade that's where that trust fund gets funded the trust fund gets funded from other clerks offices well all the fees in the state all the state all the fees from all the counties go into that trust fund not not the clerking of the clerks trust fund no it is the clerk's revenue that comes in that is more than the expenses of the clerks so i don't put money into that trust fund i receive money from that trust fund and it's only the clerk's money that goes into the fund i don't know um if you talk to a commissioner or a clerk in in miami-dade okay i'll i'll ask again and madam chair yeah last year did we fund one-third of this the cgs fee no um you funded about a little over a hundred and seventeen thousand so not a third okay and dan just an update i know last year you mentioned it is this the phase i don't know was this the number that we talked about phasing in over three years that was wrapped into a line item that was about 1.4 million and we funded about half of it um i was just asking yeah i don't know that i'd have to go back and look i don't remember the exact numbers and said what i said was you know depending on revenue we would fund that over a period of two to three years depending on revenue so would we be looking at funding two-thirds of the and seventy one thousand i think it i will look at what i will recommend once i get a number from the property appraisal and i'm not only at seagesco's question if the other number is a completely if we're paying them but as i said we are litigating both of those items and it may be that the clerk doesn't isn't entitled to funding of the futures funding either i was gonna say i doubt that so um when you say and i have a question more for the clerk so when you say

what's not included does that mean this is still coming well the first bullet is if you provide more than a 5.3 average increase to your team members i would like that to also happen for my um county funded area of my office as well and then the jail is not in there and then the last goal is what we were just talking about the procedures and the um local pregnancy so um we're doing a pay study all right does that include a confident class and does that include her stuff and hired a consultant to do theirs okay i'm gonna try okay yeah so if our study says it's a six percent increase for what we're paying our people now but her study said it's a 5.3 percent increase well i don't know what her study says we've not seen it no no no the five points here i got from the county 5.3 is what the state pay raise is in the state budget and so we kind of have set that as a floor to we want to at least maintain equivalence with what the state gave state employees part of their budget we are doing a competent class there will be people that get more than that people get less than that based on the market and where they are and what they do but you know an average is exactly that right it's an average and i expect the average to be above 5.3 probably somewhere under seven so so that's kind of the range is where we expect the average but we're not done yet all right but so what do you want to study different than when the clerk did a study yes ma'am yes sir i'm sorry sorry i heard clerk and uh our hr department is doing the competent class studying house so barbara and her team were doing that in-house you know that same way we did last time save the board i don't know 150 okay good way to go but if we're going to study what it says and it says the number should be 5.1 or 5.5 whatever it is that's the number we should be using though well no we're not going to have access to ours and they can see what we we have a lot of job descriptions that are similar they can see what our changes on some of those job descriptions are similar the um what the board has done in prior years is whatever the average increase to your salaries um you know across your board you've applied that to the constitutionals so what what's being estimated at this point in time is 5.38 and what we talked about was um and it is the same with all the constitutionals that whatever the average increase is it would be the same for all constitutionals so that 5.3 for the state what i thought

they were trying to play catch up what'd they do last year the year before it was uh i just go back and look i think it was like a two two three four three and we did four last year right now but keep in mind the florida the inflation rate in the state of florida is over eight so even 5.3 you're still losing ground and they didn't do a complex class they just did what what the state did is they did several things a floor of 15 an hour for every state employee and then 5.38 pay raise you don't get both you know if if getting to the floor is greater than 5.3 8 you don't get anything else right that's what the state did and then they did a floor for i think corrections officers in in uh yeah because they could raise uh they had a specific increase in fdle and corrections officers um you know so that's what that's what the state did again our ours is a specific common class study to specific job descriptions and skills and abilities compared to what the market is for that and we make specific adjustments based on the almost 500 different job descriptions we have so it's not a across-the-board average though there will be an average at the end of it because we'll add them all up and divide by number employees but that it's not an average it's based on a common class study and so some people will get more we expect the lower pay ranges to see more than that because that's where the real competition is in the market right now and the mid and upper ranges will probably see bad or less than that depending on where they are and what the competition is what will that study be done before you approve a final budget because it has to be in there but i expect it to be done sometime in the next month and we'll have finals in the middle of july thanks barbara yeah so okay well i have a question a little on and off topic so there is a percentage of fire that we're increasing for them well what if the county comes back higher are we going to hire the firefighters too the union negotiated agreement is based on a study we do every year and that is in their contract so there's a contracted pay plan and there is every year there's an annual adjustment to that that's outlined in the contract so there's an approved contract that already says what that's going to be and it keeps us at market and we do a study every year on that and we think we're pretty close to market with that yeah i've always i've heard the firefighters say they're okay with their pay they're good with their pay just we need more facilities we took care of that for 14. yeah 14. yeah yeah you've been adjusting every year

and i think say with our deputies they're getting pretty decent they and comparatively 14 as well yeah it took three years yeah every year for constitutional offers constitutional officers and for the clever court if we're going to change theirs even though their study says something then why would we not do it clear across the board well we do it we so there is a agreement with the union that has that already outlines the pay raise we still do a study to make sure that pay raise is still consistent with the market still consistent with the market then we would go with the contract and if it's not then it's it's part of the you know future union negotiations but that's a negotiated agreement between us and i think based on where we think we are right now compared to the market around us i think we're a pretty good place compared to where we have been historically absolutely thank you yeah yeah yeah yeah well let's hope we have um better numbers um i think uh in the last few years we've always had a little we've been able to have a little bump and uh i think the uh property appraiser is um looking at a program too that will um find folks who may don't may not be homesteaded correctly and i admit i had met with those people i met him at a neco or fact conference and um i know i i do believe there are properties out there that are not uh following the law on the homestead exemption and i will be happy to see them back in the family so i look forward to that too i don't know how long that study's going to take well i think it's an ongoing he's not brought it to us we've not been in the budget of him before him to cover the cost of that yet but it will be an ongoing effort not a one-time effort yeah but the the one the first the one time is going to be a biggie there's a yeah there's a there's an initial and then there's a little tournament i thought that was a an amazing program and with technology today just like you have with vrbos where and where data can search many different web sites to gather information you can do that and catch people who are um illegally using a homestead exemption so which is not cool okay i think we may be done for today all right thanks everybody [Music] you