02.22.2022 Pasco Board of County Commissioners Meeting (Morning Session)

[Music] okay let me get back to the clerk yeah thanks okay thank you i hid my script good morning i'd like to call to order the pasco county board of county commission the 10 a.m meeting of february 22nd of 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 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 of the united amen of america and to see the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and jesus okay now is the time for public comment oh roll call sorry we have to do that first district one district one commissioner oakley here district two commissioner moore district four commissioner fitzpatrick district five commissioner mariano here district three chairman chairwoman starkey here okay now is the time for public comment citizens are given an opportunity to comment on any current or future agenda item coming before the board and on 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 then we will take public comment from those who have 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 okay after stating your name and address for 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 individuals signed up in the room i'll go ahead and call out the first three names and oh just for the record commissioner fitzpatrick has joined all right so the first three names i have curtis marsh pastor troy peterson pastor danny fields good morning my name is curtis marsh i'm president of suncoast house rabbit rescue and i'm here to speak about the hopeful ban on

the retail sale of rabbits in pasco county uh one thing we've we've been doing this with all the counties we've been addressing and i'm hoping that pasco will be the he did ma'am go ahead oh i'm sorry oh she was asking me if i heard your address oh yeah but she said you did um sorry the rabbit details the sale of rabbits yes so there's been a concern we've been discussing with animal control that you know perhaps because the fact that there's not that large number in pasco county that it may be you know not a big deal but it is a big deal we've been lucky in pasco county we haven't had a hoarding case so there's that but in the last two months we've been contacted by people in bradenton who bought rabbits in pasco in holiday then they ended up with a horde with three generations of rabbits that they purchased in holiday and then took back to bradenton um the fact that pet stores are selling products they don't actually know anything about you can walk in you ask you're going to get whatever rabbit you ask for if you you know small rabbit you'll get a dwarf and it won't be a dwarf because they're just selling you what you want there's been some concern in some counties that they're worried about taking away a meat source and we're talking about pet rabbits not you know no one's buying a meat rabbit from a pet store they're buying a pet and the last issues that uh kind of falls into animal cruelty rarely do rabbits have adequate food and water even in the pet stores we go in and we check and they're either out of water they don't have food they don't have hay and they're just not being properly cared for in the pet store and that's what someone sees when they go to purchase a rabbit and that's what they think they're supposed to do when they go home so people are doing things like buying hamster water bottles for a rabbit so we don't even know how many rabbits aren't making it the first month let alone living a year so hopefully you take that in consideration thank you thank you all in favor aye opposed i guess i should say thank you i'm a work in progress uh pastor troy peterson uh 8114 leo kidd road uh port richie florida that's the light of the world tabernacle um i've been coming here for a little while just kind of sharing on the

importance of prayer praying in jesus name and i come here today and i wanted to thank the board of commissions of pasco county for the national day of prayer one of the things that since the early 90s somebody cares pastors have been gathering people together to do the national day of prayer that is on march 5th and it's actually right on the other side of the wall thank you commissioners last year for coming and commissioner mariano i still got them crosses i love them i hand them out to people and so i just wanted to thank you guys for opening up this county to to pray number two for several years more than 20 pasco county somebody cares pastors have been involved with the 40 days of prayer seeking god for our city now i've only been here six years um that i've been doing it myself but these prayer guides go out throughout the nation so people are praying specific prayers together in their congregations in their in their meeting places within their businesses and i just happen to turn to one here today it happens to be day 31 do not judge according to appearance but judge with righteous judgment and then this particular day they're actually praying that business leaders would pursue more than profits but community-wide righteousness and i'm like wow that that that's some powerful stuff so in the years that i've prayed this i have never found any scripture or any prayer that does not line up with the word of the god it usually has an old testament scripture and a new testament scripture this particular day uh praying for uh agricultural workers and so i would encourage you just take the prayer guide home and uh pray with us during these 40 40 days of prayer leading leading up to good friday also wednesday nights at the oasis coffee spot we will be gathering together usually we do that outside on the patio praying specifically for our government leaders and what what's on in the prayer guide thank you for your time i'm sure yeah pastor i think is the national day of prayer may 5th not march 5th did i say march yes i'm sorry that's okay i just want to make sure since the audience was listening may 5th i think it's may 5th okay thank you all right take care make sure i didn't get changed [Laughter] all right pastor danny fields followed by renee brevard followed by suzanne house okay my name is pastor danny phillips i'm with somebody cares pascal and uh so what also your address okay yes i'm sorry 7430 gimbal lane newport richie the

zipper is three four six five three thank you sir okay and i'm glad you uh corrected that because i was going to in a nice way thank you and so it talks about in the same thing with this i i wanted to hit on that and i will share some things about what pasco county is doing here with somebody cares how we're doing that and uh it see it's the city it's coming together working together like the people here are going to be bringing up issues today that you are going to have workshops on and you know decide on and all these good things so that way that you could come up the best solution for the people and for the government working together in our communities so father we just come to you in the precious name of jesus we say your will be done and we thank you lord that we ask for wisdom and lord that we come to get your counsel and we counsel together here we listen to the heart of the people and the communities because they're out there knowing what needs to be done i thank you that they're listening to the people but the people realize that they got a responsibility make decisions with budget with re land development and you know you know businesses small businesses and all this parking and you know all these things with water and sewer that would be in each district lord i thank you for each district here and all the board members here and all those that work in the city and in the county working together lord to come up with solutions that you will do for us and through us as a people and i pray this in jesus name and so i want to share a list that we got coming up so troy talked about uh the 40 days of prayer so here here's what we're doing we're going to be having easter egg hunt in the park and we do invite all those are willing to come in our communities to share the story and then we do have police fire department there we even had mayors and other people that has been there and watched the community grow and work together like back in the blue standing with all of our first responders and so on that we got the national day of prayer like i told you but we we're going to be doing five events in the water park so this is a good opportunity for the people and the governments working together to get to know one another i i've been here only a short time but i've got to know

some people here and i thank you for uh your service again i thank you i respect you i honor you and you know and it says in the book of timothy that all prayers supplication would be for all people though in the authority and so you're you're in authority but your authority is to govern this county and thank you for what you've done doing and will do thank you very much okay rene brevard followed by suzanne house followed by anne marie uh is it kenniello good morning commissioners renee rivard p.o box 81 cortez florida 15 years ago petsmart and petco stopped selling rabbits because they realized they were being dumped at shelters shortly after purchase four years ago the state of california banned the retail sale of rabbits there are approximately a dozen house rabbit rescues across the state of florida that are overwhelmed and struggling to fetch unwanted rabbits that are thrown outdoors because there are not enough facilities that take them in one of those house rabbit rescues is here in pasco county last year they paid 6 500 just to spay and neuter unwanted rabbits they are also paying 50 each to vaccinate them against the deadly rhdv2 virus the virus could spread to our wild rabbits and wipe them out your rabbit rescue here in pasco is full and having a hard time finding fosters and for have forever homes for rabbits in september alone they turned away 66 rabbits they serve the greater tampa bay area and we are asking commissioners in all five counties for help the animal services director in hillsborough county stated the rabbit problem is real and has been going on for decades at an average of a hundred and fifty dollars per rabbit the tampa humane society paid forty thousand dollars to spay and neuter 261 rabbits that they took in last year forty thousand dollars sarasota and defensive animals a rescue in sarasota said that in their 30 years of operation they took in over 5 000 rabbits and turned away thousands more even the sales people at the retail stores that sell rabbits have told us that cute bunnies are an impulse buy and are dumped when people realize how expensive they are and that they are they are hard to care for we have also brought up the point before about retail stores selling underage rabbits florida statute 828.161 states that it is unlawful to sell rabbits under two months of age to be used as pets a pet supermarket manager in pasco county admitted to your animal services director that they put six week old bunnies out on the sales floor two pet supermarket stores in sarasota

admitted to me they had four week old rabbits and six week old bunnies in their stores the problem of unwanted rabbits is getting worse rabbit rescues are seeing hoarding cases the only way to get this problem under control is to slow down the supply with a retail ban it will not affect 4-h i spoke with 4-h people at the county fair they said they would never give up their rabbits or take rabbits from pet stores because they are not purebred commissioners we need to stop burning out our rescue people and have to get this problem under control please consider retail ban on rabbits to help this situation thank you very much for your time thank you good morning suzanne house 8802 lagoon street tampa representing florida voices for animals pasco animal services said retail stores in pasco sold over 700 pet rabbits last year and they're concerned about the amount of offsprings from those rabbits it's hard to find fosters and homes for unwanted rabbits and rescues are usually full rescues turned away 66 pardon me suncoast house rabbit rescue turned away 66 unwanted rabbits in september because they were full this is a big problem in florida and in the u.s sarasota in defense of animals stated in their 31 years they took in over 5 000 rabbits and they turned away thousands more orange county and desoto county have banned the retail sales of rabbits as well as key west the state of california has banned the retail sale of dogs and cats and rabbits bunnies are an impulse buy at easter and christmas county run animal shelters do not take in rabbits so where do they go they're dumped outside where they don't know how to fend for themselves you have the power to help these animals and stop this please ban the sale of retail rabbits thank you next up is anne-marie um is it kensio and then aaron moore followed by amanda wallace good morning commissioners my name is anne-marie cancio thank you good pronunciation my address is 17802 ridgeway court tampa i do live in hillsborough but i volunteer in pasco county with a cat rescue organization called cat haven so just give myself a little bit more credibility here to speak i do appreciate the time i'm here also to talk about the rabbits i also want to encourage you to ban the retail sale of rabbits in pasco or at a minimum enact a ban on the sale of pet rabbits during the easter season rather than use my own words to state my case i would prefer to read from select portions of the findings of facts from desoto county florida's code of ordinances in which desoto county banned the retail sale of any dog cat or rabbit

i believe that the following findings of fact from the bach of desoto county expressed my own views perhaps better than i could myself and i read the board of county commissioners of desoto county florida hereby makes the following findings of fact according to the humane society of the u.s hundreds of thousands of rabbits in the u.s have been housed and bred at substandard breeding facilities known as rabbit mills that mass-produce animals for sale to the public many of which are sold in pet stores rabbits that are bred in rabbit mills often suffer from health social and or temperament problems that frequently result in costly treatment or even death in addition to the above mentioned abuses rabbit mills are particularly prone to problems of overcrowding rabbits can multiply every 28 days breeders easily get overwhelmed which leads to crowding filthy living conditions and toxic amounts of ammonia in the air rabbits are often treated inhumanely in the breeding mills and these animals are often viewed as disposable with the largest influx of abandoned animals being collected annually just after the easter holiday the humane society of the us estimates that 80 percent of rabbits sold as easter or springtime pets are eventually abandoned and cannot fend for themselves the desoto board of county commissioners deems a prohibition of the retail sale of rabbits in desoto county to be the best in the best interest of the health safety and welfare of its residents and citizens and the public at large and that such prohibition constitutes a municipal purpose and will encourage pet consumers to adopt rabbits from shelters and home-based breeders thereby promoting consumer protection saving animals lives and reducing the cost to the public their sheltering and euthanasia thank you appreciate that thank you learn more amanda wallace followed by shalita thomas good morning my name is aaron moore puerto richi florida 34668 which i'm the street address please the street address 86.50 ravina thank you uh i'm with operation cps they say a parent loses a child is the worst feeling imaginable because the parent is never supposed to bury their child and i truly cannot agree more because the amount of pain and grief that i have experienced my child being taken from us is unmatched to any other tragedy in my life so my condolences to all the parents who have had to bury a child truthfully i know the two are not equivalent but honestly that's the best comparison i can come up with to describe the moment cps snatched my daughter from school a moment where i felt complete helplessness where i felt like i failed

to protect my daughter like a father should where i felt sick to my stomach hearing my wife's pain over the phone telling me they took her trying to hold her mother while trying to be strong at the same time the moment had me paralyzed just thinking about my baby girl crying out for help wanting to go home how she was alone cps misused and abused their authority to take our daughter away because they felt like it knowing she is in no danger in no way shape or form the pain of seeing my wife looked defeated because her baby was taken from her as a sight i will never forget a moment cementing into my head her going through the emotions trying to imagine that my daughter is still there walking around our room walking around her room seeing her room wanting to hear her plan wanting to hear her ask me to do something simple as kill a bug or draw a picture together or make a tick tock help her with the homework i wouldn't wish that feeling upon my worst enemy even though i know it was only cps using method a method of attack for my family for personal reasons and they had no reason to take her beside spite i still feel responsible because it's my job to keep her safe and it was all my fault because i have the role as her father and i lay her down and ever since that day has took place nothing has been the same in my life and operation stops cps works hard to prevent other parents from experiencing the same thing so to them and to those who support them i say thank you and god bless you go ahead name an address for the record amanda wallace p.o box 46602 raleigh north carolina go ahead all right so like i said my name is amanda wallace and my organization is operation stop cps and as i prepared to come and talk to you guys today you know i went and i looked at you guys picture because i wanted to see your eyes before i stood in front of you and looked you in your eyes to let you know that there's a problem in pasco county and remind you that you are simply just people who chose a career path that brought you to the seat but the people that sit behind you are the people that hold you accountable to your job and pasco county sheriff's office is not doing their job they are kidnapping black children from safe and loving homes and as operation stop cps our job is to expose and educate society on the unchecked power of the child protection system and the impact that it's having on our on your community this family reached out to us because there's a problem and our job is to make sure that it's a problem for you until it's solved

we will continue to activate your community we'll continue to come to these meetings we'll continue to protest outside until this child comes home because a little bit about myself as i've been an investigator for over 10 years in the state of north carolina i've accepted reports of abuse and neglect i've gone out and investigated to make decisions if children are safe and i hope your county attorney is here in this room because i need him to understand that as someone that has been qualified as an expert witness in the area of child abuse and neglect investigations i can testify that this is unlawful and that this will your county if a resolution is not come to immediately and so we demand an independent investigation by a third party into the illegal kidnapping of this black child and we demand a ban on the kidnapping of black children by pasco county sheriff's office so we're not here to ask you if this child can come home we're here to tell you that she is going to come home and we're asking you how you want to go about doing it thank you next speaker is shelita thomas followed by diane kuhn followed by elaine uh galbraith my name is shalita thomas i live at 85 kadrina drive she has she had the mic what ritchie florida three four six six eight we can hear this is my husband um i've been a stock broker for almost 10 years we moved from chicago illinois and pasco county stole my daughter because a cpi worker made foster falsified reports because of her personal vendetta that she had against me they took my daughter out of gymnastics they took her out of soccer they took out a school that she's been there for two years because me and the cpi worker had a misunderstanding because i will not open my door i live in a subdivision majority white people um nice neighborhood and i was racially profiled from the beginning my child i have not seen my child since october 22nd her mother for nine years this is unfair this is so unfair and can y'all please help me get my child back because if i never moved to pasco county i wouldn't be going through this every day i woke up take her to school

when she got off i cooked we did her tutoring monday through friday monday through thursday was gymnastics because she had it all year round then we had soccer on weekends where she's at now can't nobody raise her like i can't i was her mother i didn't do anything wrong and when i say they falsify reports they locked me up once one thing once one thing they couldn't do something about it they locked me up on on a 60 000 bond and lied can y'all please help me get my child back i did not deserve this i wouldn't be here if they did not take my child imagine your children getting took it's hard thank you i i thank you we'll we'll be in touch madam chair yeah i think kathy pearson i think yeah if you all want to go outside and speak with our assistant county administrator there who oversees that division we'd love for you to talk with her wait a second she can the the assistant county administrator can try and help yeah but the folks need to know that cps is not a division that's under the board of county commissioners right the sheriff is not an employee of the board of county commissioners sheriff is a separate constitutional officer in florida and cps works for him now the public services may be able to assist you but it's not this board can't really intervene in that in a sheriff's matter county and cpi workers are abusing we can't we can't so we can't have discussion back and forth like this but please step outside and and speak with kathy and also chairman madam chair um she can also speak to ken killian our cpi and pasco sheriff's office well they're gonna have that discussion up there thank you this is the interest all right we have any more speakers yes ma'am we do um diane elaine galbraith and then lisa schmidt hello my name is diane i live at 9011 exposition drive tampa i'm here representing florida voices for animals today i would like to speak for the pasco county rabbits i'm asking that to institute a ban on all retail rabbit sales in the county a good person will go to the pet store with the intention to buy a rabbit they more than likely will know nothing about how to take care of one it's an impulse buy that will lead to a full-time caging or re-homing or animal shelter but worst of all they'll end up dumping the rabbit

in the wild which will lead to a certain death the selling and buying is a year-round problem but the worst time of the year is easter when impulse buying of the cute little bunny is at its highest did you know that a rabbit can have its back easily broken by just handling it incorrectly they squirm and they bite and they don't like to be held they are not kittens or dogs rabbits are the third given up pet after cats and dogs rabbits can live up to 10 years they are expensive to spay and neuter and they chew on just about everything and they need lots of exercise not a life in a cage please consider this ban this is not a new problem but we need a new solution to help stop this cycle of unwanted rabbits being dumped and abandoned this can be a new beginning for the pasco county rabbits thank you for your time thank you elaine galbraith good morning commissioners my name is elaine galbraith i live at 11825 hickory nut drive in tampa florida and i am i'm also with florida horses for animals this is about the rabbits according to the aspca rabbits are the third most frequently surrendered animals at shelters and the third most euthanized according to animal justice just like in puppy mills bunnies are often bred in large facilities puppy mills force rabbits to live their entire lives in breeding machine as breeding machines can find in cages with no ability to roam enjoy being with their families or perform natural behaviors bunnies are social animals and need a lot of attention and can get depressed and eventually die if left alone in small cages which many of them end up in small cages a huge number and this is me a huge number of those just for the holiday bunnies often go directly from celebration to a shelter and many are released into the wild where they usually die from starvation the elements or from predators remember people that buy rabbits as a gift for easter basically have the mindset that the bunny is a novelty and don't realize the amount of care the bunny needs to live a healthy life even if the pet stores give the person that purchases a bunny a sheet to educate the buyer on how to care for the living bunny it is already too late the bunny has been purchased commissioners i'm sure you call yourself animal lovers please realize that a rabbit is an animal that needs you to speak up for him or her

as they are not able to speak for themselves please for the bunnies support the band thank you so much commissioners thank you following lisa schmidt is uh kim roxwrote and miriam parla please state your name and address for the record thank you lisa schmidt 1976 south pinellas avenue tarpon springs florida 34 689 i'm sorry i've made a horrible mistake i did not mean to sign up on that paper i have nothing to address you about i was told to come for a check presentation as a representative for my work so i'm all done thank you [Laughter] [Music] that's funny good morning my name is kim rexroat i'm at 4402 whitton way newport richie i am the eagle watch coordinator for pasco county representing audubon florida i'm here to speak upon the eagles on lake javita and the wetlands that we are trying to preserve at 12 200 tradition drive this uh nest has been reported several years ago and has fledged over 20 um over a dozen eaglets that we know of but there is land development happening on this property and we are asking that the trees be saved because eagles do offer site fidelity they have attempted to rebuild their nest in those trees and we are asking that you please preserve those trees and those wetlands for the eagles to rebuild their nest on we do have we have spoken with u.s fish and wildlife and florida wildlife commission and they both recommend that those those trees and the wetlands be preserved thank you thank you miriam parlo and the last individual i have signed up is cheryl murse good morning my name is miriam parham i'm from 9932 caribou trail dade city and i've been a pasco resident for the past 27 years and worked in healthcare in the local hospitals and health department i also represent florida voices for animals a non-profit group with over 4 500 supporters in this area our mission is to educate the public about animal abuse and exploitation and i think i've shared some of this but the breeders really are an example of abuse and exploitation and they're like puppy mills you've heard that and they can have extreme conditions in the way they're raised and kept and then transportation very stressful animals are packed tightly into little cages even bunnies chicks and ducks can be included and all that and then when they get to the retailers even well-meaning retailers can keep them in cages with wire cages

that are very painful to their tender little feet and as you've heard they may not have adequate food and water and that's what people see when they buy and then finally the consumer probably mostly unaware you've heard i'm not going to repeat the things that have been said about they don't know how to handle them and they're very fragile and can be hurt so the thing about it is is that they're viewed as toys for the kids or things even by the well-meaning adults they talk about it replacing it not a sentient living creature and as you can see you've heard other things about them being injured but they can get sick very easily and they're good at hiding that until sometimes it's too late so with all these concerns that you've heard about the handling and the illnesses and the injuries and just the way they can traumatize children at the animal services committee we had someone that mentioned how as a child they went through four different sets of rabbits that kept dying or disappearing and even 50 years later a woman was saying her sister were traumatized by that you know mental health you know is very important for child well-being so just experiencing that and the fact that they can be scratched in the face or as was mentioned can bite so they have no place to go most of the time when people decide they can't keep them so they may dump them so education is important but it's not the answer it can be put aside um like a sheet of paper is not going to do it they're not going to go to a class i'm sure about the proper care so working in healthcare i know how many times people are handed medication instructions or discharge instructions and they don't read them they said well nobody told me well it wasn't written in paper they're not always going to read those instructions so you've heard they've been already banned in many places even in florida in other states new york city back in 2014 ban rabbit sales it's really going to happen it needs to happen let's be a leader we don't have that many here it's not going to be that difficult i think to be a leader innovator and start with pasco as well to this campaign which hopefully will go statewide thank you so much for your time thank you any more nikki cheryl martz and then i have uh three on webex okay good morning my name is sheryl mers and my address is 4007 barwood court tampa florida 33624 and i am the hillsborough county eagle watch coordinator for audubon florida and i do monitor nests in pasco county east pasco county of one the nest that i'm concerned with at this point is are there is no nest that exists but the trees that still exist for the eagles at lake javita and i am here to represent the eagles

and eagle watch to make sure that the trees are protected in the wetlands and on the property where the eagles do nest the nest is not there right now but we do believe that they will be returning in next season to nest in that area they are very attached to that to that property and they're there 75 percent of the time i do watch them on a weekly basis and i wanted to just be here to protect the eagles and make sure that their trees are protected along with the wetlands that are very important to that area as well thank you very much thank you all right you said we had three online yes um is there anyone else in the room here that wishes to address us well line up uh anyone else because if anyone else wants to please line up behind him okay that's be our only speaker in the room come on up and then we'll go to our online speakers thank you good morning good morning my name is kevin bone i live at 13 000 thoroughbred lane date city florida three three five two five i am uh here to assist the eagle people um i am the neighbor at lot 264 i also own three other additional lots those lots have got the same scenario that we have on lot 263 the lot in subject it's encumbered by a tremendous amount of wetlands native trees and in the building of my house which was completed two years ago we worked with your staff we worked with swift mud we worked with fish and wildlife and we had tremendous success we were able to in fact during the height of our construction there were two two eagles that were born and lived and survived so i can attest to that if we follow the rules that the eagles will survive and be able to co-exist with us the problem being is that our new neighbor has submitted plans that show a uh inconsistent wetlands with the county's own plans i had the opportunity to meet with your natural resource people out there and he asked me if i had set a plans for my property for lot 264 when i compared my lot property that was done by dc johnson and associates it matched exactly with pasco counties the plan that they had in their hand that was submitted for approval does not its alteration clearly shows that the wetlands have been impacted significantly this plan was also submitted to swift mud and apparently there was no contention with swift mud on approving the permit but if you look at your own plans that your own people staff wise have it will show that there is an issue this was brought to the individual's attention that it should be addressed and that

they then could proceed with the construction i have no problem with whatever homes they want to build i have no problems whatsoever but the problems existed when i looked at the staking that was done by their surveyor the survey stakes are encroaching on my property when we get deep into the wetlands and we've gone to great extents to preserve those wetlands and i can tell you firsthand that dealing with your staff has always been a pleasure i've built five commercial buildings and two homes in pasco county never once did i have a problem with pasco county building department or permitting department i think they're excellent people they do a outstanding job at what they do and i think if you have the opportunity to consult with your staff you will see that these inconsistencies have been brought forth now the owner has chosen to ignore those and proceed with construction without having all the necessary permits erosion control and the signage for permits that have been issued okay that's standard business practices so we're hoping that neighborwise myself that you would look into this and make sure that this individual please do it the right way you will have the best home you'll have the best neighbors and i promise you that we'll have a great existence together for the rest of our lives thank you very much thank you very much all right and then we have three speakers online yes uh madam chair we have an individual who's signed up as simone owalola and um there is a simone on line but it's with the name of the last name of russell i think it's the same person because the email address starts with an r simone so if we could elevate her thank you yes you may state your name and address for the record hi my name is simone lola um i'm at 29 bankers late apartment c in indianapolis indiana 46201 i think you may proceed with your comments okay um my name is simone i'm i'm the mother of chaletta thomas and i wanted to go on record and to let y'all know that dcfs has currently kidnapped my granddaughter from my daughter shalita thomas when they took her when they kidnapped a granddaughter she was in soccer she was in gymnastics she has been to disneyland twice she is in school every day good grades up up to date on her reading log well-mannered well-dressed my daughter is the epitome of a mother that is clearly invested in her child my daughter started her own business so that she could have the time and money to nurture her daughter shelita is a great mother and she knew she was above reproach but the pride of being a great mother blinded her to the fact that dcfs does whatever they want to whomever they want

regardless of the casualties the day dcfs kidnapped my granddaughter my tear tuggles from my daughter shalita thomas she calls me she was crying so hard she couldn't get it out she couldn't tell me what happened so many seconds went by and the agony in her cry made her pain tangible i knew at that point that she was crying about my tear about her baby and and that it was horrible and sure enough dcfs had kidnapped her child and the worst part of it all although that is bad the worst part of it all it happened because of some disquanto worker in my what i want to know is what is in place for disgruntled workers when you find them at these factories where they shot up people something happens to them and i just need something to be done about this lady because if it's apparent that she has no regards for life because she has done this simply because her feelings her feelings got hurt and and and it i know that if she did this to my child to my daughter she didn't did it to somebody else and and i just need somebody to put something into place to prevent this from happening again there was no record there was no cause on my daughter they were at the school for three days harassing my granddaughter before they took her they talked to the teachers there was nothing there was no reason there was no clear and evident evidence of abuse there was nothing there but they took her anyway they took her anyway why because of a disgruntled worker and i need something to get put in place and prevent the disgruntled workers because what they do is thank you very much i thought that um we hear you thank you very much uh all right we have the next one yes um kelly harder is up next if you could state your name and address for the record hi it's kathy harcher my address is 2284 chantilly terrace i live in oviedo florida and that's a suburb of orlando i'm a retired cpa and the president and treasurer of orlando rabbit care and adoptions and i know you all are learning more about rabbits than you probably ever cared to but um i would also like to add my voice and thank you for the consideration that you're giving to the ordinance to add rabbits to the ban of sale and of dogs and cats and pet stores i understand there is thought to rely on education rather than impose a ban but i think we know that education doesn't work other people have talked

about that and if education worked you might not have had to rely on an ordinance to prevent the sale of dogs and cats and although i'm a resident of seminole county through working with domestic rabbit rescue the largest one in the orlando area we see the impacts of what the sale of rabbits does in the community we have close to 100 rabbits and foster homes but we have curtailed intakes as we've heard most rescues have because we have no room and even if it wasn't the case that we're all full i would support the ordinance for other reasons for the humane aspect you've heard people talk about what happens to the rabbits that are dumped outside and also consumer protection aspects which i'll talk about a little bit um i also understand that pasco county animal services researched the sale of domestic rabbits and found no data to attribute the abandonment specifically to retail stores and that may be the case right now but it can easily change i would suggest that you proactively add rabbits to the band to avoid getting behind the curve if there's no impact to retail stores now in the future if it does then you're also going to have to deal with considering what impact to businesses you'd have if you add rabbits to the van animal services also noted that factors leading to the abandonment of rabbits include lack of rehoming options for pet owners access and affordability of veterinary care um while educate sorry um we've talked about how rabbits reproduce rabbits can get pregnant the day they give birth so what happens is a consumer may go to a pet store or a breeder or whoever get two rabbits thinking they've same gender 30 days later they have a litter and by that time the rabbit's already pregnant again so you have the consumer with no options of public shelters and the agony of trying to decide what to do with the animal and we've also heard about how traumatic that can be to the family i urge you to move forward with adding the rabbits to the band to avoid the future problem and in closing i would just like to say being an accountant i am very pro-business but not at the expense of the lives of living creatures i consider i hope you consider that aspect of the ban as well and thank you for your construction thank you and last one last one susan hall please state your name and address for the record susan hall my address is 2217 dartmouth avenue north st petersburg florida 33713 i volunteer with suncoast house rabbit rescue and i applaud and support all of

the people that have spoken up to this point i don't want to duplicate anything that they have said everything that they have said is hugely important one thing that has not been mentioned is that there currently is an a an epidemic of a horrible rabbit disease called rabbit hemorrhagic virus disease 2 which is sweeping across the country and is a a huge problem it causes almost immediate death within 24 hours and it's not detectable until it's too late the most critical way to prevent this from wiping out our native rabbits wild rabbits and our pet rabbits is to make sure that biosecurity measures are in place to prevent the spread of this horrible disease until everybody gets vaccinated which is expensive and not easily available i've had to go to a number of veterinarians in the state of florida trying to find someone to vaccinate my personal bunnies and get help for the rescue to vaccinate their bunnies it's a tremendous expense for the veterinarians to get the certification necessary and to get the vaccine which is similar to the covid vaccine in that if they don't use it that day it has to be disposed of so my veterinarian says that she is doing this as a public health concern because if this if this virus gains footage in florida we've had two cases in lake county and st john's county i believe but if it gains footing in florida we're going to see our native rabbit population demolished and it can easily happen if somebody goes to a pet store buys a bunny gets the paper that they're not going to read or doesn't cover enough and then because of the overfilled situation with all the rescues they dump the bunny and then it spreads to the wild rabbit population please please please i'm begging give us the ban on sales of rabbits from pet stores thank you very much for your time and consideration thank you very much uh that is the end of our public speaking it is all right all right so uh members we will uh move on to the consent agenda i have two polls somewhere i have resolution resolution we got four minutes i think we get the consent we have art at e of our two yeah before that okay we'll do our two madam chair yep uh i'd like to add c52 so pull for this quick discussion okay um r2 please [Applause] one moment um is anyone here from the concourse council you're talking about rs2 yes they're right yes please come up to the podium i'm going to go ahead and read the resolution first we're going to go quick okay resolution number 22-069 a resolution by the board of county commissioners the pasco county florida commending the concourse council

for their charitable donations to the community and declaring february 22 2022 as celebration of lights at the concourse day in pasco county whereas in 1976 a group of citizens met to discuss bringing cultural programs to pasco county as a result several theatrical productions were brought to the area the productions were well attended well support which were supported which supported the group's theory that a formal organization should be established to encourage cultural services for the area and raz the group was originally called the civic center council but a naming contest was held in 1978 to the group to the group was renamed the concourse council today the concourse council is a non-profit organization that seeks to partner with charitable organizations for the development of activities and programs which will enhance the concourse pasco county and surrounding counties the concourse property is a 216-acre venue available to host a wide variety of events including concerts plays weddings family reunions birthday parties rallies and cultural events such as arts and craft fairs musical festivals and civil war reenactments and fundraisers and whereas the concourse council has worked since its inception to bring programs and activities to pasco county that serve our community while partnering with local nonprofit organizations and whereas today the concourse council's park venue is home to a variety of spaces a variety of spaces and attractions including pasco safety town the rotary pavilion and event center the great the grand concourse railroad and progressive air systems railroad depot this venue also hosts an array of events throughout the year including the celebration of lights and whereas since 2019 the concourse council has invested over a hundred thousand in electric and light repair and refurbishing to make the celebration of lights event larger for more than for more of the community to enjoy and whereas this year on february 22nd 2022 the concourse council is donating funds raised during the 2021 celebration of lights to pasco county to pasco safety town west pasco saratoma paso county parks recreation and natural resources summer scholarship program paso county sheriff's office explorer's post number 916 wheelchairs for kids crude deforte future first responder scholarship program essential church crew of chasco and hope lutheran church hudson and now therefore be it resolved by the board of county commissioners of pasco county florida that said board hereby commends the concourse council for their charitable donations to the community and declares february 22 2022 a celebration of lights at the concourse day in pasco county dunnon resolved in regular session with the quorum president voting this 22nd day of february 2022. second

is a career diplomat and was assigned to his diplomatic duty to florida in july of 2019 and res council general siegel works to strengthen the political economic and cultural ties between pasco county and the district of gamershine and whereas since the council's assignment in florida he has been actively involved in efforts to promote the trade relationship between florida and germany these efforts include providing guidance to pasco county during its most successful trade mission to date this mission resulted in the document of friendship between the district of gamersheim germany and pasco county florida and res the board of pasco county commissioners and council general siegel believe pasco county and the district of gamershime share common values including supporting their citizens enabling cooperation furthering education and fostering understanding relationships and res at the october 26 2021 paso county board of county commissioners meeting commissioner catherine starkey spoke regarding a document of friendship with the district of gamersheim rylan palladin palatinate thank you you know is going to struggle federal republic of germany represented by district administrator dr fritz bretchell and rez a motion was presented for commissioner starkey to execute the agreement on behalf of the board which was subsequently adopted by the board and whereas the document of friendship establishes the basis for developing and promoting the trans atlantic transatlantic exchange of mutually beneficial information cooperation and furthers the relationship and understanding between the peoples of the district of gamershine and pasco county and whereas the document of friendship will continue promoting the increase of economic development educational opportunities and cultural exchange now therefore be it resolved by the board of county commissioners of pasco county florida that said board hereby welcomes council general andre siegel of germany to pasco county and celebrates the document of friendship with the district of gamershein germany denna resolved in regular session with the quorum president and voting this 22nd day of february 2022. liverpool thank you all in favor aye opposed good morning i'm so excited to have you here with us this morning and we'd love for you to say uh some words to the board and then we'll we have a little presentation and we'd love to take some photos thank you very much um i'm very honored and a great pleasure that i'm here and uh needless to say i agree and i'm in favor as well of this proclamation i think this was really an ex a very excellent business trip to germany the last one you did but it was not the first it was building on a long-term

relationship developed since 2007 if i if i understand correctly starting with the school exchange and one thing i want to do as soon as i can when coming back the next time is to visit the river ridge high school which i think is where the where it started uh started from and i understand they still have an ongoing german program which i think is very is the basis for mutual understanding to to learn the language but what you're doing is building bridges on several levels um first of course it's it's on the administration side but it's uh it's actually the people-to-people exchange that that matters and the economic exchange and uh i mean in tampa bay you have the the habit of building bridges and the experience so doing it in a transatlantic manner is is even more extraordinary and i can only congratulate you that you have chosen this reason this region of rhineland palatinate garments heim which is uh full of innovative companies and where i think you discussed also the dual vocational training model which germany has to offer and which we're trying to establish here in florida by the way first we have it already on the space coast with a couple of tech companies and there are ongoing talks to maybe have other company clusters that may be interested in this so the german consulate will as we have done before will try to assist and help wherever possible i think our next meeting will already be on thursday with the economic development committee we will have time to develop a little further the economic aspects of this and yeah so this is really a great day and i congratulate once congratulate you once more on your excellent team that you have who prepared the mission and who carried it out with you and you personally that you have this engagement to to to promote this mutual friendship thank you very much thank you so much and um board members we have a little presentation um we've been holding off talking about our trip um until you were here so they haven't seen any of our pictures so we um we just have a little a little slideshow of our our mission um that we did in october october right november november november um and we were the first economic development and trade mission into germany in two years um our our pasco county delegation so um this is uh i'll go ahead you can so uh we had um commissioner fitzpatrick um representative mariano bill cronin uh sergio represented amskills i think i

counted we had 15 or 16 people on our track i mean on our trip we had five different tracks and we're just gonna just give you real real quickly a little um look here at some of the things we did the consul general mentioned the um the innovative business community in that area and i can tell you carl's roo and some of those communities around there what what they have going on is amazing we actually already have been visited by a company from karlsruhe that we met over there with very innovative pipe sheathing and uh so we're already having dialogues and i think a number of the companies are are coming here and working with bill cronin so um in the bottom there that's it's that the uh i think that's the mercedes the mercedes truck factory we were the first people to ever outside of the mercedes employees go in and see the smart trucks and the mercedes plant there in germany so that was that was very cool i think it had opened like three days prior so i bet you haven't even been there it's very cool very very cool i think is this a video derek so we went to uh uh a pro we went to a school and what's so interesting about this school is it's in partnership with france so it's two countries working together do we have any we don't have any sound so um this is a smart a smart factory vocational school and and this this machine is it's it's a very expensive machine it's it's one million dollars and they are building this builds iphones and it's it's a it was amazing amazing program and i don't know if you'll see it on here but there's robots that move the phones around and the technology of the future so they are training german youth and french youth with this program so very cool um what's what's another next slide um we did um have an event at the uh the uh u.s consul general timothy liston's um residence and um oh well before that we did this wait we did this we signed our friendship agreement so our uh our commissioners have not seen this yet we had it framed and um we wanted to make sure that everyone got to see this um it's our first one we hope we'll we'll have more agreements with with other areas around the world but certainly this was the right place to start since we spent so many years developing our relationship with the wonderful people in this area so we'll be happy to pass this down um and here we are um signing it with our good friend dr fritz

brechtel and uh let's see we're good then we we met with the consul general and here here's a little idea of where we're talking about and a little bit of history of gamertime it started as a roman military camp in the second century and um it's a garrison town they still have some of the old walls or in the downtown it's beautiful um and there's some more stats there on uh on the area and derek what and we met this is our second or third visit to this high school it's a vocational technical high school and what else do we have here we met with the different um chambers the ihaka and we for the first time in maybe my six or seven trips we've visited with the craft chamber so that was my first trip there so just a very successful trip exhausting and we never knew um if we were going to be able to go on to the next meeting because of all the coveted things that were breaking down but we had great hosts and i think as as you heard it was our most successful trip ever and we look forward to going back and continuing our relationship so with that we're going to come down and take a photo i'm like everybody come down and um jenny you come get in our photo too did anyone have any questions but this is for you right here thank you thank you you know i didn't give anyone else a chance to say anything did anyone want to say anything to the consul general other mike so we'll go back up we there you go um you know i did want to say something because of the times we're in in uh and what's going on overseas i just um grateful for the german governments standing with us and us with your with our european friends um taking a stand against the aggression that we're seeing overseas so i'm grateful for that good um commissioner moore hey thanks hey welcome we appreciate everything and i just wanted to obviously come in or also come in you know chair starkey too because she's been working obviously with you in germany for all these years um the apprenticeship program you've helped bring to pasco county so again in your work with the edc so thank you to the chair of starkey and everything everything you've done so we appreciate it well they're the gold standard in manufacturing so we we started at the best place so commissioner fitzpatrick

it was a very exciting trip thank you for coming out today and i 12 to 15 hour days i would agree it was very exhausting but it was very exciting as well and i noticed when we were there they were mentioning that we usually send three to five students and they're able to accept up to 15 students so i'm going to work on making sure all of our students have that opportunity to get that experience so thank you for everything you do and i'm exciting excited to add more students to the apprenticeship program thank you commissioner mariano thank you this is the father of the representative who went on the trip yeah yeah i got to meet both my daughters while they're right there so we're both very very intrigued my daughter amber representative mariano was very very big with vocational education so for her hearing about chair starkey's passion for this to carry on forwards for through i've had my plaque there since probably 2008 when we first started this relationship so it's it's great to see it i remember reading about the german apprenticeship program just growing up in school learning how intense it was and to see it be developed and now to see pasco county taking full advantage from river ridge in the county itself with amb skills is phenomenal so we appreciate the friendship and the continued working with you well i'm i'm myself and a former exchange student to to the us with uh american field service at the time so i'm very much attached to to the exchange programs that you're working on so if i can be of any assistance in that or have a sort of a visit of of anyone who has participated in these programs alumni so i'd be very happy to do so and as far as vocational training is concerned where right now in the tampa bay area i'll meet several people who are involved in vocational training as well and i understand there's a current discussion in the florida house and senate about a bill uh sort of subsidizing certain types of high quality vocational training yes and but it's not through yet i understand so um i'll try to work out with the interlocutors that i have that we can maybe sort of push a little bit in that direction um members i think it's um tax credits for um companies who participate in an apprenticeship program which i tried to get years ago but at the time the um the voucher tax credit was going through and the father of that one didn't want a little competition but i think now maybe there's space because apprenticeships are so important and so valuable so i'm really excited that our state is embracing the concept so thank you very much um we have more

copies of the resolution jenny if you want to grab some of these and then i look forward to seeing you thursday maybe both of you i don't know yes oh good to mr oakley we certainly appreciate your friendship and what it will bring to your country and also what we can share back and forth will help our country at the same time in our district and uh really appreciate that friendship and hope it continues for the further in the future and surely it will so thank you as long as i'm here certainly yes well when we um when we have the celebration of some of the companies that i think we were successful in speaking with in germany when they opened their doors here um especially part of our life science campus that's coming in the central part of the county we for sure will um invite you up and then i think there's a few other companies too that are are going to be coming here so we're we're very excited and we're we'll be strengthening our relationship so we'll see you up here a lot i hope very much yes i'm looking forward to that hi and well see you on thursday see you thursday thank you very much for having me here today and uh well good for the procedure here today all right thank you so much thank you [Applause] did everyone get one okay i don't know where all my props went but they're around here oh it's along the wall okay derek can come grab those okay we will move on to the consent agenda and i have three polls and two three well um commissioner mariano added c-52 okay for discussion i'll entertain a motion for the rest second all in favor aye opposed thank you um c50 c39 margaret smith good morning i'm standing in for mike carbala and for c39 it's a correction of the amount uh from 64 million 696 dollars and 40 cents to 64 million 595 dollars and forty cents all in favor aye opposed thank you c-51 good morning keith wiley parks recreation natural resources we had to update the sale uh purchase price for the benchley contract to 395 000 which subs subconsciously uh updated the total to 1 million 235 000. look for a proposed revised opposed thank you c52 commissioner mariano thank you man do you need something else 52 oh that's you okay yeah 52. i wasn't going to pull this but i was just thinking about i thought maybe a little discussion would be good for it because it's tough as commissioners we don't know what other other thoughts are in the process uh so with magnolia valley i

mean obviously the number one thing we did are doing there is to try to improve the stormwater flooding the amenity that i talked about a long time ago was like getting the boring test down checking the soils out to find out what soils can be moved could be beneficial could be for sale and then if there was going to be some park amenities out there to what's the best thing to put out there so i'll say i think with a potential along little road with the properties that's there a bigger park may be the best use of out there but as we talked heath you had mentioned to me that the current plan for stormwater is they may only dig down 18 inches from the ground and if we're going to make this a truly water type of experience 18 inches not going to be deep enough we need to go look at putting more depth to it so they can put a kayak out there put a boat out there so if some fish can live we don't need just some small little mud hole pit to be out there so i think it may take bringing a private person in to go help get rid of the soils the other thought i had i've talked about this before is over at mitchell park uh especially the softball fields they get rained out they can't play on them over and over again if ever there was a time to take a look at taking those softball fields over and moving them over to magnolia valley might be this might be the ultimate time especially do like a nice three or four plex that could go right there that could go a lot a lot better for the whole softball community the other option that would give you later on is now you can go back over to mitchell we just spent a fortune not a fortune but a good sum of money building a beautiful uh uh concession center where now instead of they're just having like three fields to go around you can actually go look to maybe improve in those fields for down the road where there could be a much better soccer complex as well so that's kind of what i'd like i know keith is kind of like they're going to be looking at a bunch of different options out there and i just wanted to get it out there verbally that i'd like them to consider those things as well and that's going to take you looking at the viability of you know trying to improve mitchell field as well yep so commissioner i can add that we're we are looking at the west market area and all the park services and we're looking at the the mpd at newport corners mitchell drainage improvements uh renovations of pine hill i mean the whole area is basically being analyzed for those you know to answer those questions correct yeah because softball is coming to starkey and and what are you going to do with the softball fields where they're coming

from so there's been some discussions about converting those to baseball so for clarification the fields at mitchell are for adult play um softball and the starkey complex will be a youth sports complex to 220 foot fields so so um on what commissioner mariano was speaking about about the lakes does that can we dig deeper and it still be a storm water function because i i like that idea so actually the task order before you is exactly to analyze that possibility so what we're requesting effectively is to ask for an alternative permitting mod mod to take it beyond the stormwater project to create the open water feature that commissioner mariano is referencing yeah i mean um if if our benchmark is cascade park among other parks we want to make it as nice as possible commission mariano so to be able to claire so when they look at the storm water capacity digging down the 18 inches is only benefit for storm water the other benefit is going to be for the amenity park going through no i'm all for that um commissioner fitzpatrick um is this park to skate park cascade park is the um park in tallahassee that was a storm water it was a ditch and and then it became a really successful storm water park but downtown tallahassee really yes so parks can do that yes yes so i believe that was looking also at lake lisa possibly for a possibility for that and also magnolia valley and i know you had mentioned previously possibly a three to f uh four to five diamonds at the magnolia regional park so the magnolia storm water area would also be a regional park correct so we're so the 2015 master plan identified a need for a district park in that vicinity so the goal would be to to attempt to get as many facilities that addresses a district park uh you know package if you will as possible um obviously there's going to be some some restrictions in terms of space which is why looking at improvements at mitchell that's why we need to look at all possible park locations to see if we can deliver the maximum amount of services possible and i am excited about c-53 passing today with the land swap for pine hill so thank you for working diligently on that and i'm looking forward to seeing the upgrades we are too it's a big parks day it is a big keith day i missed the check delivery i was i was out without citizens thank you very much yeah all in favor aye aye i hope you all read c52 well okay um no c51 i mean okay we are

done with the consent and we might be seven what oh i think we're on a miscellaneous business no you're on the r57 oh sorry r57 oh yeah we're saving all the way we'll save my mic in the rabbit discussion for right before lunch okay good morning bob murray pasco county budget director i have the never mind so this morning i'd like to have discussed with you regarding what we see going on in the economy and the impact that we believe that it's likely to have on next year fiscal year 23 budget and yes it is time to begin planning for the fiscal 23 budget as you can see here the growth rate in the economy has been about between two and two and a half percent just bopping along since 2016 with the obvious exception of the downturn during the covet shutdown it's been two two and a half percent prior to that shutdown and it's been two and two and a half percent after the downturn in the economy we expect that to continue in the future uh unless there are what we call economic headwinds that are impacting that economic growth and there are two areas that we're keeping an eye on one is the growth in wages as you can see here the unemployment rate is at an all-time low and it has remained at an all-time low in the tampa bay region pasco county included for the past couple years you can see it was six and a half percent last year at this time nationwide and yet here in pasco it was three and a half percent this time last year and it remains at three and a half percent and so what that does is with that low unemployment and with the very high demand for employees that's going to cause wages to increase as we can see here the employment cost index has increased by about four percent and that is the employment cost index measures all compensation not just wages but wages and benefits and so that's increased by about four percent we expect that to continue you'll notice that although wages have increased by four percent they're not keeping pace with inflation we're seeing record inflation primarily because we have forces working on both the supply side and the demand side so on the demand side we have the federal government pumping lots and lots of money into the economy through the american rescue plan stimulus monies and on the supply side of course we have all the supply chain issues that we've been hearing about hearing about for all these reasons so you figure you got lots and lots of money out there just that people are willing to spend and on the other side of the coin we have uh not a whole lot of stuff for people to buy and so we look at that

uh we have a lot of money chasing too few goods as a result we have an increase in inflation of of about 9.6 percent and that's 9.6 percent that's the tampa bay region and that's the highest we've had inflation in this region for 40 years and you'll notice that this inflation rate is higher than the inflation rate nationwide so in the in the country nationally the inflation rate is seven and a half percent here it's 9.6 it's always higher in florida than it is throughout the nation but that gap is much wider than we would expect you'll notice one of the offshoots or one of the impacts of that high inflation rate is the impact on housing and here you can see the more orange or amber the color the higher the change in home values pasco county being in the middle you can see home values over the past year have increased in value between 25 and 35 percent we'll notice the producer price index has increased nine point seven percent so the consumer price index and the producer price index are very similar the consumer price index measures the basket of goods for the normal household what you and i would buy in our household the producer price index measures what we as an employer would purchase and so that is very similar to the cpi so producer price index 9.7 percent you'll notice a big driver of that is the cost of construction materials okay that is a crazy graph that is that's insane yeah and anyone who's been out trying to buy a 2x4 recently can feel the pain of that 87 percent and now you can feel eric's pain he's trying to estimate the cost of the new construction projects that are going on in the county and no matter how much we think these prices are going to go up they always they always surprise us they're always up higher than we think they are well you might not see as many big campaign signs throughout the past i'm sure the citizens will be happy with that oh my god they can all be nailed to trees so just to summarize we are expecting that the economy some of the factors in the economy are going to impact next year's budget in in as we talked about wages wage increase is going to be one of those inflation is going to be one of those and one of the hidden factors that's going to be here is that the federal reserve has already announced that they're going to start curbing inflation the way they curb inflation then is to increase uh interest rates yep and so once interest rates are increased once interest rates hit about the four percent or higher that then begins to impact our housing market so there are fewer people in the housing market once that interest rate hits about four percent and so the reason that's important from a budgeting standpoint is because fewer houses that means the taxable

assessed value is lower which means in turn that our property tax revenues are lower and so moving forward we're optimistic about the future however we do want to keep in mind that we want to it's important to maintain the level of service that our customers have come to expect and given the rate of inflation and the increase in wages just maintaining that level of service moving forward is going to be more and more expensive and the second piece we want to look at is rising interest rates as we talked about reducing the taxable assessed values and and impacting in the long term property tax revenues it's not going to impact next year's property tax revenues because once a house is permitted it takes about two years for that property to show up on the tax roll so this is a long-term impact and so what we're trying to do for the fiscal year 23 budget is to take advantage of these good economic times and at the same time look to the future we don't want to bring on additional costs now that we may not be able to sustain in the future and so here's sally's favorite graph we look at new home permits at record levels as we talked about those homes that are coming on board in 2020 those homes will show up on the tax rolls in 2022 and likewise that big blue graph those homes will be showing up probably in the fiscal year 2023 tax rolls and for that reason we're expecting taxable assessed values to be at or near where they were last year you can see the taxable assessed value in fiscal year 22 for this fiscal year was 10.8 percent i've been a local government for a long time and i've never seen taxable assessed values that are this high and have been sustained at this high level for a long time and so we want to prepare for the inevitability that they're not going to be at that level forever and so for 23 we want to look at let's for planning purposes look at 10.8 percent being the increase in taxable assessed values but what we've done here is a sensitivity analysis we've run three different scenarios we've done a low a more likely increase and then a extreme increase and so if we just look at that center 10.8 percent which was last year's increase that would yield an additional property tax revenue of about 27 million dollars we have an agreement with the sheriff's office because increasing population also impacts his ability to respond to his customers and so half of the increase in the property tax revenues would go to the sheriff about 13.6 million of course with an increase in taxable assessed values the increase to the community redevelopment agencies as well as the increases to the tiff tiff as you know is used for transportation

uh expenditures that's about three and a half million so at 10.8 percent that would be an increase of about 10 million dollars in property tax revenue for the board as well as constitutionals can ask you a question yes go back to that slide so what am i missing that your payment to the cra is staying the same at each percentage so the payment for the cra so this is a rounding thing so that 8.4 or 15 increase in taxable assessed values to cra is not i mean it's going to increase it by less than 100 000. okay so if we look at half cent sales tax so as you know half cent sales tax is an indicator of of the economy doing well and also half cent sales tax is a shared revenue and it is shared with the counties depending on county population not how much is spent here but the amount of population and this is an indicator that population of pasco county is increasing relative to other counties other population counties you know what i'm saying you know this is an indicator our population our population and the average florida county exactly we're increasing faster than other counties but i don't know how you tell that from that slide because there's nothing there's nothing else the economy is increasing the economy is doing better and since sales tax is based on population not on how much is spent as our sales tax revenues increase that's a sign that our population is increasing relative to other population okay so from january 2020 it was 2.75 million and the amount of sales to december 21st is three point roughly seven million that's a linear line to linear to smooth out i know it goes up and down yeah the up and downs so that's the linear line there's some seasonality to the sales tax as well you notice in may 20 that was the it's gone up about a million dollars in revenue yes okay so we'll bring in an additional penny for each of that thank you yes ma'am so i wanted to show you the penny for pasco revenues as you can see paying for pasco is doing well paying for pasco crashed there in may which is that orange line that was during the economic shutdown due to covid it's doing well i wanted to show you this because those peaks those are the sales tax revenues that we get from internet sales and so the state gives that to us on a quarterly basis and there had there after the mayfair or the wayfarer court ruling there was the thought that this was going to have a big increase in the amount of sales tax that we were getting but you can see in florida we were already getting that internet sales tax

so the increase is going to be marginal and we'll find out next month exactly what that sales tax increase will be for pasco county communication service tax this is the 2.86 percent tax that all of us have on our cell phones tax fax machines internet all that kind of good stuff because of legislative action and people owning fewer types of things that are subject to this tax the communication service tax has been decreasing by about two and a half percent per year and we expect that to continue as you know the communication service tax is what we use to fund the emergency 9-1-1 center and so from its peak of 6.6.1 million in 2009 until today that's two million dollars that we're taking from the uh general fund property tax to make up for that decline in revenue madam chair ask a question about this yeah and i have a question too thank you thank you um used to fund the 911 emergency communications center when we say use the fund um does that include salaries and benefits across the board absolutely because i was actually going to bring this up at some point it was it didn't mean it was going to be today but one of my concerns just for the future of the county as a whole as we know that the the folks that work in the 911 or 911 emergency communications center that is one of the most stressful jobs you know on planet earth literally when it comes to stress if you if you rank the stress that is you know i think it was in uh the last study i saw was quite some time ago i think i looked at it was back in the mid or 2013's 14 15 but i'm sure that hasn't changed um so when we think about retaining these people what's the attrition rate right now with the folks in the 911 emergency communications center is it very high i don't know it off top of my head yeah yeah the other issue is remember they stay on probation longer than the average county employee because not everybody they hire is fit for that so they do lose quite a few during that probation period so there is that as well and yeah i think i know where you're going with this yeah we are every three years we do a paying class study we are doing that right now that includes our 911 center operators and dispatchers and so that will be part of that and that will be addressed as part of the paying class right and for the record nobody has reached out to me whatsoever in that department to bring this up i was just something i was thinking about when i look at that i was reading some again some um articles in in some other areas across

the country which are having high attrition rates and having trouble bringing those people in the center so i did a little my own due diligence to look for studies and things like that because the last thing we want to do is not have that area staffed and staffed to the the fullest so i mean obviously let's let's be honest and i've said the support nobody likes when i say this but if there's positions and jobs out there that have high attrition rates are very stressful sometimes we need to pay those people more just the fact commissioner fitzpatrick agree yeah and we do that as part of the club and i appreciate that i just want to make sure we're looking at that so i know you're mentioning the do we and you can bring it back the turnover rate but and then do we have the mental health services set up for them and because it is we do have a program through hr that addresses employee employee wellness and there is a mental health piece to that that they can get access to and then is there such a decrease due to all of the free phones that are out there and then does legislature provide for the offset of costs instead of people having to purchase the phones well this is this is going from landline to cell phones yes that's it it's going from landlines to cell phone and the vast majority of people that move down here don't necessarily change their billing zip code with their cell phone provider which means they are getting taxed on where they used to live as opposed to in pasco county yeah so that's based on the billing zip code of your provide of what you give your provider so if your credit card is still billing to a zip code in new york then you get tax on their cst not ours and we don't get the revenue i i wonder if there's a way to address that it would you know if they could just no we don't want to make everyone change their cell phone number but if they could um address that so i'm sure there's some way with technology you don't need to change a cell phone number i have one from texas but my building zip codes here in pasco right so yeah somehow we have it's i know but i have a question than you you know when kevin was here this was an issue he brought up like every legislative session every year he's doing that now still it's dep but it's the department emergency manager it just doesn't get a lot of traction with the legislature so um i do see a slight uptick and i'm wondering um for commercial and for businesses they get they get landlines so do we get um

some revenue from those phones to the extent that they use those yes okay and commissioner mariano i mean i think creating an awareness out there would be helpful um you could start internally with just our own employees knowing that that's gonna be a factor but if we can get a place like the suncoast news to do a story on it and kind of work with tambry lane to do some promotions saying look we need the funding for the 911 center to protect you while you're here and if you change your address on your billing and kind of get that word out it may help in compared to most northeastern states or midwestern states rcst is significantly lower from some of its orders of magnitude lastly commissioner fitzpatrick thank you and what is the difference of the tax rate from a landline to a cell phone well cell phone has the additional 35 cents per month that's charged that's not on the land line and so that 35 cents is because of the pos the point of service so we actually bring in more revenue from the landline i mean from the cell phone yes ma'am oh interesting if they're building zip codes in pasco county yeah okay okay um move on all right tourism has recovered folks are coming back to pasco county not least of which due to our tourism department and the great work that they do you'll notice between 2017 2018 we increased the tourism development tax from two to four percent to fund the debt service on the wire grass ranch sports complex but after declining in fiscal year 20 21 and we're again expecting an increase in revenues in that area in 22. local option fuel taxes you'll notice in april may fuel taxes declined when most people were staying at home and it took quite a while for these revenues to catch up as a reminder first local option gas tax is used to repair existing roads and the second local option gas tax is used to build new roads or expand capacity of existing roads and so it took a long time for these fuel taxes to recover but here as we reach the end of the fiscal year you can see that those those taxes have recovered in this particular area the caution there would be is as a price of gas increases people will start figuring out how to do things differently which would negatively impact this revenue source and my guess is we're getting close to that that that pivot point here in florida at three and a half to four dollars a barrel per gallon sorry well there's been news today that somebody caught cut off a supply and yeah because it might get current situation that might right check it i think i think we'll see though i'm just saying it might increase

cost so it just comes you know yeah some of the economists are projecting oil to be over 150 dollars a barrel which would be another 33 increase on your on the gas prices which would really drive people towards electric cars and electric cars are not paying as much nearly as much we can have it for these two roads that the rest of us are and so not to put a too fine a point on it although we are expecting our revenues to increase and in some cases in some scenarios substantially we are also expecting increases in our expenditures so for example the shape the state's been kind enough to allow us to share the cost of medicaid and that's currently about 8 million dollars a year and that increases between three and four hundred thousand dollars per year we have employee health and retirement we have as dan was talking about the comp and class study coming up we don't know what the impact of that will be indigent burials and cremations this is not a large number it's between 40 and 50 000 a year but we wanted to bring this to your attention we have inflation which is going to keep driving up the cost of fuel vehicles new and used vehicles are increasing at about 40 percent and then capital needs maintenance those kinds of things plus we have some new facilities opening such as a couple of fire stations so with that i'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have questions anybody well there's a the budget uh the high level budget schedule for you yeah notice we do have tentatively scheduled a workshop in late may to kind of go a little more detail into specifics of the budget i will again to kind of echo what you know bob said it's going to be a challenge maintaining our current level of service across across all our lines of businesses with the expenses that we see right now so this isn't necessarily a year we're going to see a lot of new initiatives just because of just trying to maintain our level of service across the enterprise yeah madam shareholders one thing thank you man just something to think about in mr steinstein everybody and i've i've brought this up had a conversation i think on the diocese that maybe in private as well and i think you and i have talked about it when we talk about new growth can't always pay for itself we've had this discussion on many occasions especially when it comes to certain services that we have out there common sense stuff whether it be fire whether it be um you know sheriff's office whether it be parks recreation on and on and on again i'm not i'm not looking for discussion or debate or anything like

that but just something to think about because we'd have to look really dig deep into this but is there a possibility where we do make sure new growth actually pays for itself what do we need to look into when new housing or apartment complexes or whatever that product may be comes into the county that they do have to pay more to offset the cost so that our current citizens are having to pay more for the services so what can we do if anything you know legis you know and you know and again i don't want to get into a debate about this today at all this could be a long conversation i know we got somebody else coming on board but let's again between mr steinsteiner and and dan and whomever what can we do if anything to help satisfy the need that we're going to continue to have and like you said if we drop off we're going to be in a pickle we'll we'll take the question yeah i don't want to i'm not looking at today just keep in the back of your mind so let's talk about it down the road or in the in the um workshop or something yep commissioner fitzpatrick this has been on my mind due to citizens concerns and of course the infrastructure and everything so i was wondering if we need to be readdressing and looking at the impact fees and the mobility fees so we can stay caught up making sure our infrastructure is caught up with our growth and also when it comes to the metropolitan planning organization just looking at the future land use maps to make sure that our roads and our infrastructure is built because if we approve a project now and it's not planning to be built for two three four five years from now we can be working on those roads in advance and my last question would be is there a way to kind of pre-fund mobility or infrastructure costs and then when the builder comes in to build or the developer comes in to build their community then they can reimburse and pay back that fund commission mariana thank you i i you know i think pascal county led the way early on uh a lot of criticism about impact fees going up higher to help growth pay for itself as it comes in and that doesn't take care of deficiencies it only helps what's going to be coming i think what used to be said was residential growth didn't pay for itself but when you get higher in residential growth you see it's 7-0 just even starkey ranch that high tax base that's there i think

it fully pays its own way more importantly it's good executive housing which is going to get you better companies are going to want to come in the area too when you factor all that in the demographics that we want to look at as we approve things and try to push things forward it has a big factor for down the road and i think we we've done a very good job with that we just need to keep going i think pasco county you know between the school system doing a great job as far as being a great place to attract people to come into the county as well and i think the improvements we made between stormwater all our services going premiere with our products et cetera is making us a very desirable place now florida is right now i think because of our governmental leadership and i mean governor desantis pushing the way to say let's make florida a great place to live i think florida's going to be a very desirable place for many years to come i just want to make sure pasco county as well is going to be a shining star in that growth to getting all the right people coming in i do think we need to focus on that redevelopment up and down 19 because that demographic used to be a lot stronger when you had the retirees that had the pensions that had the money to go spend money elsewhere that's why golfing mall has gone downhill because the demographics don't support it a lot of the the the strong commercial retail as well as going from wesley chapel they used to come over here to spend is not one wesley chapel trinity has now got their own little base going with uh some great commercial too so the shift is going but i think for us to look at everything that redevelopment's going to be a big thing to look at as well to keep up with everything chairman um you know i think there are some things that have been said here that make me want to definitely have another primer in development impact fees when does infrastructure come in urban sprawl the cost of services uh when you put them out in the country versus an urban core there's a lot of planning principles that i think you know we're not planners and um and and maybe some people don't understand those principles and we should talk about them i think and maybe as we've worked through the comp plan we will be having those discussions come mr oakley um all these things i agree with commissioner mariano we need to be looking at that and also while we're going through the budget process we need to not forget about our staff road and bridge all all the staff and different departments and all because the entry level pay you have to pay now has come

up but if we don't think about those folks that are at the top and spread them like they should be and also don't forget about the people in the center of from bottom to top make sure we have the right levels of improvement and salaries for for all of them because it's very important because uh right now we have some salaries that come in the lower level just walk on you're only two dollars from a person that's been with you several years and has the uh knowledge of how to work equipment and stuff like that they're too close so it's got to be spread out and i think they're doing a salary study so i know that's something we're going to look at and i know that we're also working on a wages issue like that now so we're doing that study so all right members i want to try and get the bunnies done so those folks don't have to come back and be here through dinner time so if you guys are okay with that then we'll move on no madam chair i do have two lunch meetings just so you know yeah so let's let's go to twitter real quick on this one mike can get through his slides in three minutes yeah thank you commissioners mike shumate director of animal services our 58 is a presentation with a recommendation from animal services on the retail sale of rabbits and up to before you begin uh our 59 is being pulled to the afternoon so we'll be done with that after this okay okay so uh the primary complaints that you've heard from uh most of the advocates and citizens uh pet rabbits being abandoned in large numbers throughout the county and throughout the area there's a 90 percent mortality rate for rabbits being abandoned because they can't care for themselves in the wild most animal pasco animals shelters do not routinely take in rabbits that's true rabbits are the third most surrendered pet at shelters retail purchase of rabbits is an impulse buy with little knowledge and true ownership of cost or veterinary care honestly that's true for most pets even for shelter pets uh pasco retail uh pet stores in pasco cell what we've calculated with what they've told us uh we estimate they're selling about 732 a year um [Music] the next slide is just basically a lot of facts on rabbits i think by now you've heard most of these so i won't go into that um i thought they were called bunnies but you're calling them kittens

oh the babies yeah yes kids who knew they were kittens yeah interesting yeah um it there is an estimate that i came across that i wanted to share with you that is kind of interesting it says um 80 of rabbits sold either die they're surrendered or abandoned in their first year of ownership so the number one reason that most of the rabbits are being abandoned or turned into shelters is the fact that there's too many rabbits in the household they did not spay and neuter their rabbits and rabbits quickly reproduce rabbits are raised for pleasure show meat fur and resource purposes some considerations uh for the board is that um the chains uh pet stores uh source rabbits from out of state uh we've been told by a regional manager that they bring them in at six weeks old which is against florida law um but the district or the corporate office says that's not true they they only bring them in at eight weeks um unknown number of rabbits from local breeders online pet sales um and those sold at uh outdoor venues uh only one ravis rescue in in pasco and you've met them that's the suncoast house rabbit rescue they average one to two rabbits from pasco surrenders now they did more recently have one with about 12 rabbits in it only one nonprofit shelter and pasco takes in pet rabbits um other counties around us uh they are considering uh bands hillsborough uh opted for education first uh they looked at a possible moratorium for the easter season and they have asked their animal services to come back with a recommendation on a ban later but they did opt for education at this time most of the shelters that do take in rabbits north of us they take in agricultural animals as well they don't take that many the most i think marion county maybe takes in 30 a year pascal only takes in 10 annually and those are from involuntary abandonments we do have one non-profit rescue and pasco that takes in rabbits they took in 20 rabbits last year however if you looked south of us just a little bit into hillsboro they took in 250 rabbits at the tampa bay humane society last year so our recommendation to the board this time is basically to direct animal services to initiate an ordinance amendment that would strictly

focus on the prohibition of sale in public places such as the flea markets and stuff and require the retail stores to have certificates of source we are concerned about rabbits that come in from out of state which we know one of our retail suppliers or they have three stores they do bring them from georgia [Music] the rest of the recommendation is that the department will provide public education programming on rabbit ownership public information on rehoming assistance and resource support for the animal welfare organizations to help remedy the abandonment of pet rabbits and some of that resource can be to help them with the spay and neuter of the rabbits that come into their rescues that's it okay board members oh man all right nobody i know we have and i appreciate each and every one of you that that have come and spoken and stuff now i've had these conversations before on here my fellow commissioners know we're we're a rescue home i have two um rescue dogs both disabled um so obviously you know how the challenges those those can be we also have a rabbit in my house which was i don't need to get into details or anything but it was you can say we fostered and adopted the rabbit as well so i'm very familiar with rabbits ours is chipped and neutered for example and our rabbit has its own bedroom very very large area in a in our bedroom that when we took it in we realized that's what that needed and i even built a um gosh i became a carpenter and i'm not a carpenter a very large um decking area above the carpet so i wouldn't be able to chew the carpet and choke on carpet and it's oh it's got it oh it's pretty amazing it's pretty elaborate it's pretty elaborate and um and our and i will say our rabbit is like part of the family and it loves our little dogs and they play together and they have a great time and play outside and all those types of things so again i've said it before we have a special place in our hearts and in my family for for animals especially rescues and i go all the way back to rescuing a a dog that that we weren't told was pregnant um and we rescued and we fostered the dog and had nine babies in our kitchen and our home and we had to know not only did we have to foster one we had to find homes for nine more puppies we found homes for each and every one of them which was awesome and then we ended up adopting the dog that we were fostering because we spent so much time with it so i i can appreciate everything you you guys are

doing and understand the plight and the things what you're going for with i will say this at the same time you know usually you know it took a while for us to go through the the process when it came to dogs and in the adoption the adoption process you know this board i think this before commissioner fitzpatrick was here it was probably right before we moved forward with that typically we do give a little bit of time like is being suggested from um mr shumate from animal services obviously the professional um you know in his recommendation is the education side and you saw what that is um you know i i guess you can say i'm on the fence but we had this conversation so i'm going to need to trust mr shumei and his team to um you know give this some time see how it works and if not it needs to come back to us right and then and when we do this we amend this ordinance is your thought i guess you know is this uh where's looking for six months a year what are your what are your thoughts i think we definitely need some time so that we can actually start looking um at the volume of rabbits we're talking about that are abandoned we want to hear that from the public we want to hear it from the rabbit rescue the other folks that work with rabbits uh in the county yeah we want to see what the numbers are yeah i think and i and i would you know i think and i know you are i think this is a time perfect time too for our friends in the audience to be the stakeholders and work hand in hand and keep in constant contact with mr schumer and his team through this process as well that's all i have all right well i was just gonna say i was okay with the band um we had a couple rabbits and it didn't work out well for the rabbits um and our dog did not like our little my daughter's little bunny um and so that didn't work out well and uh when i was young we had a bunny and that bunny ended up folded up in the pull-out sofa we couldn't find it and then we found it it didn't work out well for that bunny either so i don't think they're great pets um however a friend of mine just showed me all the medals that their child just won with their rabbits at from the fair so i would have been okay with the ban i'll would go to your leadership and bring it back to us please and and let's see if we think we need the ban did you want to say something i just want to say mike i appreciate you doing the research to it um i'm going to go with your recommendation just to move it forward and let's take a

look at we always revisit it down the road but least we'll take it a step so i'll move approval again all right uh any more discussion okay all in favor aye aye thank you okay we're gonna break for lunch we'll be back at 1 30. right so [Music] you