04.07.2021 Pasco Board of County Commissioners Hybrid Virtual Meeting

[Music] good morning everyone i would like to call to order the hybrid virtual pasco county border county commission meeting of april 7 2021. at this time please silence all electronic devices and mute your microphones rise with me for the invocation and pledge o 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 district two commissioner moore aye district three here hi district three commissioner starkey here district four commissioner fitzpatrick district five commissioner mariano here district one chairman oakley here and uh commissioner fitzpatrick's uh parking our car and we'll be in shortly so okay um mr mr steinsteiner please go over today's proceedings for the bcc be happy to mr chair on march 12 2020 the board of county commissioners declared a local state of emergency after the governor issued executive order 2051 the public health public health emergency and 2052 the state of emergency related to cobit 19 which was recently extended by executive order 2145 on february 26 2021. the board has chosen to hold its board meeting with a forum physically present utilizing communications media technology for the public and team members to participate a detailed notice indicating the board's intent to conduct a hybrid virtual meeting has been posted on the board's website on september 25th 2020 the governor issued the executive order 2244 moving the state into phase three of the governor's safe smart step-by-step order which was extended by executive order 2297 issued on november 24th 2020. large gatherings of over 50 people are still not recommended to congregate in any public space that does not readily allow for appropriate social distancing the state's surgeon general's public health advisory is still in place with regard to maintaining social distancing and avoiding gatherings of 10 or more people the public has been afforded to make public comments either in writing or by the use of communications technology that has been provided the board adopted resolution 2182 on june 30th 2020 establishing procedural rules for hybrid virtual meetings such as the one being held today as with any meeting you might

you take action you are required to take public comment on any proposition pursuant to section 286.0114 florida statutes i'm available for any questions okay thank you i also let the record show that commissioner fitzpatrick is here and [Music] at this time it is time for a public comment citizens are given an opportunity to comment on any item coming before the board during this section the board also takes public comment on items to be placed on future board agenda other business under their purview the covet due to cover 19 operations and to safeguard the well-being and safety of our citizens and staff today's public comment will be handled as follows first we will take public comment from those who have pre-registered webex link for webex link and are currently on cue after we will read into the record public comments documents powerpoints videos that have been identified by members of the public to be read out out loud played played during the meeting or received and filed finally we will take public comment from those currently signed up at the cut kiock station comments are not to exceed three minutes per person this new format does not waive the request that when you address the board comments are not directed personally toward any commissioner or team member but rather directed at the issues this provides mutual respect between board members and the public for webex and kiocs participants after sharing your name and address for the clerk the timer will sound and will start a countdown after two minutes one beep will sound letting letting you know that one minute remains after the time is up two beeps will sound indicating three minutes are up and you should close your comments webex participants will be disconnected when their time is up and kiok's participants will be asked to step away from the kiocks madame clark do we have anyone pre-registered to speak on webex there are six pre-registered to speak on webex however only one has logged in okay we'll take that one first okay i have greg wegener name and address for the record greg wegener with coastal design consultants 7026 little road newport richie florida i really had only signed up to answer any questions if there was a question in

regards to a item on the consent agenda [Music] okay so is anyone um or do you have any emails to be read in the record did you have three emails to be read into the record okay we'll do this now the first email i have from stephanie ramirez address is 6149 11th avenue newport richie florida three four six five three hi my name is stephanie i write to you today with a growing concern of a citizen i wanted to personally point out the fact that i am using the excuse that i'm religiously exempt from wearing a mask please review the civil rights law enacted in 1964. according to the civil rights act law from 1984 it states that a business is not able to discriminate based on religious belief or race it also states that the business is obligated to serve a customer under these terms also what about hipaa law what businesses are not allowed to describe that businesses are not allowed to discriminate based on health disabilities i need to understand why sprouts the sally's specifically that stated their businesses are private property and due to this we have to follow their store policies i had no idea that a business could act as their own country and disregard the laws of this land as they are not acting privately when they are opened when they are open to the public they still require to honor the laws set forth now my family practices a healthy lifestyle as well as uses home remedies to keep us healthy i assure you we are not reckless and take anyone's lives around us into consideration businesses should not be should not be allowed to enforce these masks onto people that are advising the stores that they are healthy that they are health or religiously exempt as this is discrimination this is an overreach of power you took a step in the right direction by upholding the constitution and the people's rights to it when the mass mandate was lifted and for that my family is great greatly appreciative it is time these businesses realize that they are still required to follow the law and that they are not above the law last the people of paso county still would like to be able to meet with you in the same building having a separate building to speak to you makes no sense whatsoever you do not go to a store to shop do you not go to a store to shop are you completely secluded so that no one with covid can

be around you i thought distance definitely not close to us behind the glass in front of you at the meetings please consider this why do you make it seem as though you need more protection i apologize as i am confused by this action also why is the time frame for the meeting at 10 a.m why not make the meetings at night these people work during the day this almost seems to be done on purpose in order to keep them that's their concerns i hope you feel good into all the things i have question here i hope you are still for the people stephanie ramirez second email is from natalie cronin address is five one one one amulet drive newport richie florida three four six five two hello commissioners first i would like to express my appreciation for ending the mass mandate this is a vital step in returning to life as we used to know and enjoy it and makes us feel heard a good and vital next step is attending the meetings in person instead of having to talk into a kiosk county employees and others are allowed into the room and they are not inherently cleaner or safer than ordinary everyday constituents and i'm willing to bet that they do not live sterile and isolated lives outside the workplace this is therefore highly pointless security theater and if i am to attend a theater theatrical production i would like it to be at richie's suncoast theater with a delicious cocktail in hand county employees are not a separate class of people and this double standard brings to mind the phrase separate but equal there is also the matter of a representative government putting additional barriers and distance between itself and its constituents that goes beyond the mere symbolic speaking into a kiosk and watching others walk by us into the room is frankly an insult and calls to mind the situation in our nation's capital where they are so far removed from we the people that they aren't represented at all by any normal meaning of the word also having these meetings and public comment at the time when many people are working makes many feel you all maybe don't want to see us city council meetings are held after standard work hours and council members work regular jobs before holding meetings i see no reason why these meetings shouldn't be run similarly in public comic thank you natalie cronin the third and final email is from steph stephanie de pasquel two addresses 2807

planting drive holiday florida three four six nine one dear password county commissioners i am writing to you as a very concerned resident of paso county in regards to lifting the mass mandate what are you thinking better yet what are you not thinking i will tell you all that i will not stop i will not step foot in any count sorry again i will not step foot in any paso county business establishment from this day forward i will shop in pinellas county the cobot 19 pandemic is not over not by a long shot and you are sending a wrong and misleading and clear message to the public to let their guard down and be reckless and risk lives the president wanted us to wear masks for 100 days the cdc is still telling us to wear masks i'm disappointed in this decision you have made for pasco county i have received the vaccine but i continue to follow all coveted guidelines and will continue to do so this lifting of the mass mandate is wrong is a wrong thing to do for the residents of pasco as well as the visitors from other areas please reconsider this thank you susan they pass well those are the emails so that's all we have on those um okay anyone show up on the web x it was not there um believed that they would answer that at the at the kia or anybody else i'm sorry i didn't know if anyone else showed up they were late signing on so give them an opportunity to speak i do not see anyone else okay thank you is anyone at the kiocks to speak today there's nobody at the kiosk indeed all right thank you you also have the new port richie kiosk operating today so there is no one at the kiosk okay thank you all right so with that that ends public comment at this time we will move into resolution one which is celebrating uh 33 years uh i believe it's edward hunga see here i was informed that mr congo is not present so if you would like i can read by title only yes that would be fine right resolution number 21-150 a resolution of the board of county commissioners of paso county florida commending edward congo for 33 years of dedicated service to pasco county and congratulating him on his retirement okay approval again second all those in favor but say hi okay um um uh commissioner i mean chairman i am i did pop up that there is one person on webex that just joined it's up to you whether you want to re-own public comment or not you close public comments well since since they're there i'll let them speak

because we need to always hear from them so okay mr brian perez paris please state your name and address for the record there mr paris you see i'm able to we do have one person at the kiosk nouns um in the video if you want to try to go there and then see if mr harris can speak to us okay we'll go to the kiocks state your name and uh address for the clerk alexander 5038 clown eight avenue holiday florida okay i'm running for 36th district against amber mariano pasco county i'd like to mention my name to all you uh commissioners of the board also uh there is a situation that's ongoing that i've tried to reach out to each of your commissioners and regards to basketball county parks natural resources environment over where it's 402.58 i have been in touch with dave goldstein i have [Music] that as a mobile food vendor you can only set up in any county park for 104 days now the way it's worked in ordinance it states any location for 144 days so basically i'm old fender i own a barbecue trailer i set it up at ant cloak river park normally six days a week the problem is that i'm giving an ultimatum by keith wiley and i can only set up 104 days a year attorney's office elizabeth turned around wrote the ordinance in legal format she put location she didn't put the part five vendor locations within the park i am the only inventor at antelope river park this has been going on now for three months he's finally gonna bring it to the attention of the county attorney's office i have been in touch all last week from dave goldstein christina can you hear me i can't get minute the bottom line is i want the board of commissioners to address words 402.5a as i am the only inventor and if i leave because i'm giving an ultimatum of 104 days the patrons of the park have nothing can't get any food any beverage ordinance is ridiculous i would like it to change so i can be permanently there am starting a petition with the patrons of the park to present to the state senators senator simpson because nothing's being done by keith weiss he's made nothing but empty promises i have a thousand emails from customers from complaints basketball county needs change folks big

change i hope that in 2022 i bring it thank you very much for your time thank you for your comment thank you someone needs to uh silence their microphones we're getting a lot of feedback off a microphone out there i wonder if that was me i don't even know if people can hear me mr paris just spoke he is um can you hear me i apologize i've been trying to get on and just i finally got the password and having this technology stuff i'm not good at i apologize but um whoever said my name you said my last name better than i could so that was pretty cool but uh my name's brian paris um i am uh mr parents can you guys hear me am i able to go right now mr paris could you please state your address for the record yes ma'am uh 7401 allison street fort richie florida 34668 thank you sir go ahead and proceed okay thanks so first off i want to get off by saying thank you for removing the communist mask mandate that you guys finally listened to we the people should have done that a long time ago i heard that email about the person that scared crapless that still wants to match mandate well that person can stay home while the rest of the strong people stay get out there and work and then pay for them to sit at home but anyway why i want to also address why the public is not allowed to come into the building you guys are hiding behind dan biles or giles whatever his name is that guy is not an elected official you guys are the elected officials you guys are supposed to be the strong ones you're supposed to lead us you're supposed to lead pasco county into the next regulation right or not revelation uh it's the next generation you're the leader you're who is elected if you guys don't want to be reelected that's no problem most people most of you guys will probably not be reelected but we want to continue to have strength and keep removing any communist laws that go against the we the people um also i want to thank the pasco county sheriff all of them guys we you guys are so under appreciated we thank you for your service we thank you for what you do but we there will become a time when you have to pitch your oath over your job and we hope you pick the oath of we the people um that's pretty much all i have for now because you guys did the main thing is as far as removing the math mandate thank you again we appreciate it got brought to you and god bless america thank you for your comments no one else is on webex

okay so this time we close uh public comment but everyone that was going to speak it looks like they've gotten to speak now so we'll move forward with the consent agenda and here's my pull sheet on my pull sheet we have c9 pull and revise c33 withdrawal c35 pulling revised c40 core revised c7 withdrawal uh c41 pulling revised c6 uh by commissioner starkey to discuss okay entertain a motion on the balance of the consent items second kind of motion and second all those in favor okay say aye aye all those opposed like saying okay motion pass five zero we'll start with uh c9 [Music] welcome chief reporter mr airman members of the board uh scott kassem fire chief pasco fire rescue uh during a review yesterday of this item it was discovered that there was a document missing out of your packet that just provides some additional support to the document itself so we've included that for you this morning okay second got a motion in a second all those in favor say aye aye all opposed like sign motion pass five zero uh c33 c33 is withdrawn mr chairman oh that's withdrawal excuse me c35 yes sir uh mike carballo assistant county administrator of public infrastructure the agenda memo on item c35 did not have the attachments listed that's been corrected and in your packet okay move approval with the attachments a motion a second all those in favor say aye all right all opposed like saying motion pass five zero [Music] uh c40 good morning mr chairman members of the board keith wiley director of parks recreation natural resources c40 was missing pages eight through fourteen in the quote we went ahead and inserted those for you this morning for your consideration thank you got a motion a second all those in favor say aye all right i'll close like sign motion pass 5-0 c7 withdrawn c41 pull and revise c41 the term on the amended agreement was changed from 18 months to three months okay who will know to change second i got a motion a second all those in favor say aye aye aye aye all opposed lack sign motion pass 5-0 uh so we're down to c6 commissioner starkey uh just i don't think i can vote on myself i think i have to recuse myself from that vote mr chairman

we had we had this discussion right before the board meeting uh i don't know that there is a special private gain or loss with the commissioner being appointed to the the workforce board but if if she wishes to in an abundance of caution to abstain will file for me okay for clarification i am already assigned to the workforce board but now what this does is allow me to be a voting member my understanding from mr engel is that there will be a request that the chairman reappoint a different board member to fill the county commission well will that be a because you can't you can't hold two seats on the workforce so if you want first you want to represent am skills as a voting member that that's what the action today so this is interesting because commissioner merman was a voting member of her board and the commissioner of pinellas county was a voting member of her board um alice so why we're having to go this roundabout way for me to be a voting member on our board is before we appoint another commissioner because then we have a sunshine thing um i think let's just let me if you guys don't be the commissioner and have voting privileges and work that other part out i don't advise the workforce board so that's going to be up to them i don't know if we have a county attorney on the workforce point we don't don't yeah we were we i would the last time that my office was involved with the workforce board was when commissioner cox was serving as a as a member so i deal with this nationally as the chair of workforce for the florida national association of counties and we talk about workforce boards at every meeting and they always say you need to have a voting representative there so i don't know why ours is different than any other one um but today i'd like to be approved as a voting member so that we have a say instead we're just sitting there not being able to have a say and then second okay yeah got a motion in a second all those in favor say aye aye all right mr chairman mr chairman i'd like to have the county tourists take a look with commissioner starkey about actually changing if we had to change something to make that happen where a commissioner can be a voting member yeah the boards have done it we should be able to do it no no right yeah okay they can just open that up to another somebody else yeah okay i think man i asked that's all yeah let's approve 5-0

okay let's move on to um report yeah that would the administrator is correct if commit the commissioner abstained then it would be four zero oh excuse me four zero right yeah all right let's go to the regular agenda let me see 44 44. this afternoon 45 to be heard after public hearing in 46 to be heard right before lunch our 44 sir our 44th r44 yes sir okay uh good morning is the call the public works uh this is the board of vista lane uh pvas project back in uh october 2020 the board of county commissioners ask the public works to bring this back for the board's consideration as a board-initiated project this is project is um 3-4-4-9 it's one road there are 387 lots and 134.38 erus the estimated cost is just over 275 thousand dollars the maximum cost per eru is 2047.35 the discounted amount is eleven thousand nine hundred and ninety one and the maximum cost per eru is one thousand seven hundred and eighty five dollars and fifty one cents after the discount next please um this is a location map it's from um us-19 to the end of buena vista when wesley and the point of vista next please and these are two slides slide one and slide two and then that's all right there is nowhere pretty bad so are you done yes yes i'm done so i was i've been contacted over the years by if you go back to the map the pappas family you know salad that's their property there that pink that's the papa's ranch there's multi-million dollar homes back there and that's the road that they use to get there and um it they um i had a conversation with alexis pappas and she said she's lived there her whole life pretty much and the road has never been paid pre-paid and that she can't no one will come visit her anymore and um and so did we ever do a pfas on on this road no we've never done the best on this road but this this road is in such bad shape i asked uh them to just go ahead and bring it to us because this road is turning into our dirt roads and we need to get this done as soon as possible in the rainy season it's really bad so um how it i don't know so i would ask you to uh start the process here so we can get that road fixed this is just to start the process mr chairman there's a question yeah sure so

then they'll come back to us for a public hearing yes um we can get the notifications out there's a 45-day waiting period so i'd say about 60 days or so so do you need a voter got a motion a second all those in favor say aye all right all right all opposed like that motion pass five zero okay so we've got a bit of time left here before we go on to um uh 46 and that that's gonna be a while so uh we'll start with uh old business moore okay wow that was fast just some good news items only one sec here okay first thing i just want to give a shout out to our friends at parks and keith wylie and his team i think keith wasn't here but uh they actually were able to secure the bay area renaissance festival here in pasco county if you guys weren't aware of that so the bay area renaissance festival has been a mainstay at mosey for a number of years and the parks teams did an excellent job of bringing that here to paso county they are actually putting it over at whiff lakuchi river park so when we think about um this event being part of the parks it's also big for tourism right it's huge for tourism in our area it's gonna they actually bring people from not only uh the state of florida people actually travel outside the state of florida to come to this uh bear area renaissance festival on a yearly basis if no you've ever been it's pretty neat experience it's a lot of fun those dates are going to be april 17th it'll run six weekends all the way through may 23rd and again it's been a tradition for over 40 years um in this area and we're happy to have it here in paso county um so again i was at the park out at river park yeah river park yeah so it's pretty big deal they're going to have uh four stages of exciting entertainment and musicians magicians jugglers and mimes um obviously they have um food and beverages as well as um a number of vendors that you know sell odds and ends so it's a great event it's really fun so we're we're uh happy to have you here in paso county so again thank you to all of you next one to bring up is commissioner i'm hoping a farm share distribution next week tuesday april 13 uh 13th last time i hosted it with representative maggard obviously in the recession now um last time it was at the shops of wiregrass this time it's going to be over at the grove it's gonna be right in front of the grove theater entertainment and bistro going to start at 9 00

a.m open anyone they can come to join us where you know obviously this is really meant for people that do have a need so i'll just remind people that this is really set for people that do have a need and could really use the food at this time so again nine o'clock it's a drive-through only event uh people do not have to leave their cars they pull up open their trunk and we will place food in there last time geez i think i had over 50 volunteers that showed up we had more than enough and i see no issue with volunteers again this year so excited be great for the community again we want to we like moving around a little bit to give more people opportunity throughout that uh area and the last thing the abc action news highlighted wesley chapel that was on march 26th they focused and on wesley chapel and many staff members and community folks were a part of that it was just a really really good way to highlight pasco county in that wesley chapel area i think the week before they had done newport ritchie if it wasn't correct so they reached out to tamarind early march i did an interview with them um keith wiley adam thomas as well and a number of our team members and they actually chose the county facility wiregrass um ranch uh sorry sorry i always i mix it up myself sometimes too the um wiregrass ranch sports campus of pasco county is where they did their live shot all morning and then anchor d o'reilly which um actually lives in pasco county she was the anchor that uh did most of the work that that morning so it started at five a.m and it was i think it ran away for about ten about correct so five hours uh wesley chapel and pasco county were on air on that day so i think that does it for me so again thanks to the team thanks for the staff doing a great job oh we're going to play party graphic okay i don't think we have it would take five hours to play it off that does it for me thank you thank you miss starkey um i i have two things but i'm not sure so my melanie is is out recovering from something and derek is off getting his shot so i don't know if the residential lighting photo got sent to the county to put up okay so um i actually have this issue in my backyard um in uh gulf harbors when people have lights on in their backyard that um shine into your own yard and into your own house we don't have an ordinance that covers that we have an ordinance that covers it for commercial lighting you know all lighting is required to shoot down and

cannot take out someone's night sky and the stars in commercial settings but sadly it doesn't um it doesn't uh go over into residential and so apparently in this neighborhood they've kind of been having some light wars and they're like shining lights on each other and the sheriff's been called um i would really like for us to take a look at extending the rules and our light ordinance for commercial to residential it's you know i have to hang up things on my windows sometimes when people have their security lights on and they're shining into my living room i can't even you know watch my own tv so um i got no problem with people wanting security lights but they need to shine into their own backyard and not spill into everyone else's so um wanted to have the board's thoughts and um direction for staff so these are actually shining across the road yeah yeah and i have i have people who don't even live there um year round as my neighbors and they have security lights all over their docks and everything and i i can't sit outside and see the stars when they're on so uh-huh well funny commercial starting because the night before last i actually slept in my daughter's bedroom from my back and our neighbor's security light is like flashing right in the backyard right in that back room so i can see exactly what you're saying but these pictures here are pretty outstanding as well so i think it's worthwhile taking a look at yeah this is forest hills um so they're having problems but i tell you we have them in gulf harbors too and i would guess that anyone who has a neighbor who has lights shining into their houses would appreciate would appreciate it so um i don't know what the process is dan is that just in our next code rewrite can we just add a little blurb i don't want it to take you know it shouldn't be something that takes we'd have to revise that code to read well so the lighting ordinance right the problem is that you're going to want to apply it not to new development but to all development so it's probably it's probably code of ordinances we'll we'll look at seeing where it is to put that come back to us yeah okay all right great um uh is that a motion do we need a motion or do you have board directions i think misdirection i don't hear anybody i received an email from stephen lucas i think we all got it about the florida medical examiner's commission ballot

they will i would like to make the motion to discontinue the micro surfacing project for aristida you may want to tag on the if you're going to create another board board initiated for full depth reclamation you may want to make it all one motion because okay that will explain what you're doing to the right okay because i don't want to discontinue one and not be able to get the other okay so i would make a motion to discontinue the micro surfacing project for aristida and motioned to start the process for a board-initiated full-depth reclamation for aristida thank you in a second got a motion a second all of a sudden just so the aristida microsurfacing was a board initiated right so in effect the board is discontinuing that board initiated and moving to a full depth reclamation which is going to require new noticing to be sent out to the neighborhood okay and that'll change the cost to it it'll change it yeah they're aware because they'll they'll look into stormwater and other issues on that road exactly okay all those in favor say aye it's a uh 4-4 for the motion and one abstaining uh commissioner starkey okay um i would like to also say i visited am skills i would like to recommend recognize the work that they are doing and it's a great opportunity for people to be able to be re-entered into the work environment and they offer also offer it for our youth as well and if anyone has not contacted them i would encourage them to make contact and go for a visit because it's a very very good program that they're offering and i do like the fact that they're moving forward and helping people to get into the workforce okay next i did go out and i visited um the airports in our community and i like to look at adding some protections for our local airports we have four airports in pasco county whether they're public or public and private and they're a huge asset for our county i believe there is some step there is a stat florida state statute that would require us to add special protections and ordinances in place so i would like to ask the staff to take a look at developing an ordinance to that specifically outlines the protections for existing airports they're already under mandate by the state statute to do that so then all right because i saw that i mean you can ask for a status report on on that project but they're all they're already

they're working on working on okay so i can update on that please there you terry peters who's handling that harry pitos thank you and lastly i would like to thank dan biles for having the courage to lead us through this pandemic that mass mandate was very difficult to navigate and i think we should i would like to go over some of the numbers that they have discussed they said 70 of our 65 and up population has been vaccinated with at least one and also 57 of our population 50 and up has also been vaccinated i also feel and the masculinity is reason um just that we would strongly recommend their use especially if someone has an immunocompromised immunity or if they fall into an identified group that would be highly susceptible to the virus and please keep in consideration and be conscientious that we did just open the vaccines were made available 2 18 or 16 and up so our 8 16 to 40 population is still going to need some time to get their vaccinations so if we can still make sure we're conscientious of them and for people that are highly susceptible or immunocompromised in that age group so they have the time so they can prepare and get their vaccine thank you thank you mr springer thank you mr chairman um great to be with you folks yeah uh glad you're back i uh you know i i had a back surgery back in february i had a complication from a bad move i made that cause we have another back surgery so i couldn't make it here so i had the webex and didn't really want to fully get the full full discussion with it for personal reasons but um anyway i'm glad to be back in person and uh appreciate your patience with me is letting me speak in and i thought it was pretty fluid how about it all when so thank you for handling so well yeah appreciate it um i'd like to thank mr biles and i'm sure he had support from the board to uh take away that mass mandate um i think it's a it was the right move i don't know maybe dan you're going to talk about the in-person meetings as far as having citizens come in we talked about that last meeting when you got your committee reports and maybe the uh state of emergency how that's going to stand out coming up to the end of the month i'll let you discuss with all that i would like to say that as in talking about the vaccines i think staff our team has done a phenomenal job across this county getting people vaccinated anybody that wanted to at least on my list the list is now blank so everybody's got filled in we even had a

situation over in c ranch where they wanted to have one at their civic association and he had a minimum of 50 people but so many people had been vaccinated all the way around they actually we should reach out to gulf highlands with nancy benitez and got some people over there to get him to that number so i think you know dan you've done a phenomenal job working with mike napier et cetera the whole team to andy foster knowledge just to get this done it's been tremendously efficient and i know what people have really appreciated it um just a couple of things uh i got a call from a lady from tim brooks the other day and she was talking about sunwest park and uh you know i think we have a great price at 30 dollars for an in in citizen you know resident pasco county to get an annual pass there uh but she says you know some seniors are on such fixed income they don't even money for that so i'm just wondering maybe if we took a look at giving a senior discount maybe we cut the number down in half for the seniors called 65 years old whatever it may be just to kind of go through i don't think it's going to affect much other than just getting some more seniors out to the park um how does it how does a bullet that you want to think about that it's unreasonable just for the senior 65 years and older all right it encourages them to get out that's you know do we have waivers for our seniors through if you have a handicap sticker that they don't have to pay to go out to the park but as far as for that i mean we get to pay like everybody else does have to talk to keith about it i mean i did talk to keith i was going to try to pull him on webex i texted him before but i don't think he's signed in yet but he's he was he thought it was a decent idea as well he's in the building somewhere all right i think he went back to back to work but uh i can even bring it back to take a look at it because another thing were out there um like the shrimp and crab festival was packed they made i think seven thousand dollars in parking so having the event was great but there was also a lot of upfront charges they had to pay too like another four grand that we charged him to come in and as we come up to the summer maybe we need to maybe we don't but when we increase that parking that revenue comes in that can really offset his expenses and if he can time it all to go through that way i think we want to make it so that let's say our charities that want to come out there and do something you know will it be uh you know no matter what the event uh it's gonna get better down the road

but i think if they can events run uh get him with less expensive cost up front and just make the money the parking every time we're going to run it we're going to make more money he's still he's got this similar staff people there if they know it's going to be big he can also make adjustments for it as well so i want to give him the flexibility to kind of look at that and go he's kind of a little bit afraid of it but maybe i'll even have him bring something back next meeting coming up him and i did talk about it and they are working on a an event with there's a uh olympic champion volleyball player out of tampa i mean not tampa orlando phil dumas i think is his name and he's going to want to come in support with another guy down beach bums down in st pete and actually run concerts in volleyball tournaments would be sand soccer tournaments and maybe some summer camps for our kids coming up here so i want to make it so it's advantageous for them to come in and do it drive people to that park and then in the next year or so when we have a restaurant command hotel coming in now we've got a good infrastructure set up to to make it again more beneficial for everybody that's out there especially our citizens one of the things that was a problem that i didn't like that i saw was that this other concert that they had they were charging people to park and it used to be i think ten dollars to get into the concert part of the area with all that stuff well they had to raise the price up to 15 to make it come in and i think by the time you look at that number it's like you know i really want to go in there for that and it kind of has a negative effect and one of the things and i'm glad to see alex is here from the sheriff's department one of the things if you would get with keith wiley as well one of the things that they have when they set up these things as far as permitting goes they look at how much share of coverage they want to have out there and one of the things is they i think they have the sheriff's office two deputies there an hour before they even open and it's slow enough getting in the parking's just coming in i don't know if i need a deputy for all that time uh whenever there's alcohol involved we want to have it there but i don't know if they need to be there an hour before an hour after might be better so if you work with keith and judge on the safety et cetera but just kind of like we just want to cut the cost down so these guys can bring in more events and make it more appealing for all our people and and help the tourism aspect of the park go all right that's right that's all you have let's

join get up with um keith and then have him come back and give us some yes i'll keep them back but i just want to kind of run those ideas we had talked about so all right all right thank anything else that's it thank you mr mouse yes sir i have a couple things first again recognize animal services they were recognized as a tier one shelter by human animal support services a national coalition uh just recently and kind of getting pretty redundant they continue to get national recognition for the work that they're doing out there i just wanted to let you know they just found another banner on the wall okay out of animal services commissioner mentioned uh the renaissance festival that was on my list um before i talk about covid and meetings and that um just i typically don't bring you the permit numbers every month you know uh bob briefed you kind of where we were with respect to permitting as part of the revenue projections earlier in march but we issued 911 single-family home permits in the month of march which more than doubled march of 2020 and keep in mind march of 2020 is when the pandemic started but most of permits for the month of march already in the they're already cooked right they were already submitted in process we really didn't see a downturn in permits until april so march of 21 doubled more than double the permits we saw in march of 2020 so you know that's that's great a lot of work going on but keep that in mind you know from bcs perspective and you know whether it's permitting and inspections we're working pretty hard and doing a lot of overtime to try to keep up with the level of service demanded in the community so i want to give you that number because that's that's that's a number we've not come close to uh here in pasco county in at least the last decade so uh in this also probably still we we've stayed ahead of hillsborough county for the last six months i'm pretty sure that number will keep us ahead for the month of march as well so this one lets you know what's going on there because that is one of the leading indicators of economic activity uh in the in the area finally on um the the virtual hybrid meetings uh i mentioned last month that facilities was going to be studying and looking at some ways to do that they're working through the process for that you know there'll be capacity limitations that are significantly more restrictive than the old capacity limitations on both both board rooms and so we're working through that as part of that process we'll need to

update the rules for the virtual hybrid meetings the intent is to work through that get those in place bring you the rules to adopt at the first meeting in may so a month from now and then it would then obviously apply to the the next the following meeting in newport richie it's easier to start that in newport richie there's going to be obviously capacity limitations because there are still recommendations against large-scale gatherings and not social distancing and so we will still have the seeding restrictions in both boardrooms but that gives us the chance to work through the operation both here and in newport richie to make sure that we make those work so that we can't have public comment and have a smaller audience but at least an audience in the boardroom so that's kind of the timeline in the plan here you know if once we reach capacity we would be directing anybody else to the the government center a couple blocks away and they would still have to use a kiosk in newport richie obviously we over capacity in that room they can be in the lobby or right outside and still filter through the building but you know we don't have the space to cue a large crowd in this building either here or right outside so that's kind of the thought process um again we're still working through that uh and plan on bringing you something probably in about a month yes ma'am i don't i mean why can't we let one person out of time come to our kiosk and then you know come up one stairs and go when they're done go down the other there's a lot well you only have ada access on half on one side so we the access to this room from an ada perspective all has to come from the east side of the building so if someone's handicapped they can come up and down this way but otherwise everyone could come up and go across it we're we're working through that there will there be that opportunity for an audience to sit here but there will be a limit to the number of people that can be in the room so i guess but there's also there's also a queue outside in july in august well they want to god i hope by july we're back open but i feel a little uncomfortable that they can't come in and speak to us directly if they want to come in the building speak and then leave i think i personally think they should have that opportunity maybe they can't stay and sit in the room that's that's what we're gonna get to it's gonna we gotta work through the process

amend your rules and then you adopt the amended rules and then we implement it so that's because of the the way we're working today is part of your meeting so that's that's the plan is to bring you the amended rules this meeting a month from now and then start the process at the first newport regime meeting after that which i think is the 18th of may okay well i'd like i i hope that just not enough rooms to space people out to wait to speak if you have 20 people then they're out so just space people out to wait to speak if you have 20 people then they're outside themselves yeah we just limited on space here that's true i'm saying come in speak leave that's what i'm saying i understand but if you've got 20 of them here where you're going to put them i'm going to put them right there one at a time and then when they're done i understand but they can't be downstairs in a group they'll have to be waiting outside that's fine if they want to wait outside if they would prefer to have the opportunity to speak to us directly they can wait outside their names called to come in and off they go i don't yeah i don't see why we can't do that we're working on it and we'll get you updated rules for you to adopt as part of the process and that's all i have mr marion you want to say something yeah a couple of questions uh first one has cdc changed their rules as far as the six foot spacing now down to three no that is only for school aged children okay for contract tracing purposes that's fine i just want to just want to clarify i thought that was the case but i just want to see if anything yeah it's still so it's still 16 i'm sorry six feet uh for 15 minutes as a contract tracing guidelines that's still their recommendation so let's say for a public comment let's treat it different the public hearing because of public hearing if you get a whole neighborhood here that changes things dramatically as far as how the input can be had but for public comment for generally speaking i don't think we ever have more than five ten people the most coming in generally speaking you know there's a big issue some for public comment i think public comment we can take everybody in this room that room fit in 99 of the time and if not we can go to the extreme of having you wait outside in the morning it's cooler anyway but i think we can take all the public once we get the morning public comment and bring them in the room let them sit in here and if they have to leave

especially for this building one at a time when they get done speaking they're going to walk right out and get on the elevator there's no extra contact involved so i think we can at least do that part i think that's the public hearing i think you should do that even the next meeting there's no need for it i mean we're not going to fill up the whole room and if we do we'll go over whatever the capacity is a room we can then just have them wait outside i just don't think we're gonna have that issue be careful what you asked for so they come open that door and they'll come so but we still have the eight we i feel we should still give the 16 to 8 40 age group the opportunity to get vaccinated if they want that vaccination so they can feel safe coming out and doing things like everyone else but they're working all the plans yeah again if the board wants to do it next meeting just provide us that direction otherwise the plan we're working on is to make sure we have all the processes in place for you to approve the change to the rules at the may dave city meeting to implement at the maid newport regime meeting mr juma does it have to be changed at the same time or since we can come up with a safe plan and accommodations at newport richie allow newport richie to be in person but still continue date city to be hybrid or does it have to be at the same time you gotta present it i think my preference would be that you'd want both the operation that both meetings to be roughly similar yeah if you're having an in-person public comment newport richie that you have in-person public comment date city i think i just think that makes i don't i don't think you want to treat the locations different the structures are different so if they want to come in person and have that opportunity to speak right in front of all of us at the diocese then they have that opportunity and we're opening it sooner than later we're just making more accommodations because the facility is different so maybe if we start it there and then when staff is ready they can implement it here but at least the public knows that we're working towards that yeah yeah well our plan is to do the first one like that in newport regime okay and i guess the question really is do you want to do that next meeting or do you want to let us finish building the processes making kind of test it out make sure it works and then bring the rules to you for adoption which would be at the date city meeting in may for implementation in newport richie in if on the may 18th meeting that's that's kind of timeline we worked out

because we want to try to test the processes first and if you if you try to do it in two weeks we kind of gonna not give us a lot of time to test the processes that sounds like a good plan but i mean thank you um what about webex now there's still a lot of obviously a lot of people that aren't comfortable um coming out in public i think it would be important to keep that open as we can as that's my thought we still have quite a few people that are you know just would prefer not to be out right now so and that's their right just like it's somebody else's right to be out in public so given all that opportunity across the board i think is important okay commission um i i did have an interesting request from one of my constituents who is handicapped and um has to be driven everywhere and he is very grateful that he now has an opportunity to speak during a meeting through webex where before if you were handicapped and could come you could only listen i don't know if in the future there's a way we can allow i don't know that i want the door open for anybody to be able to um comment during webex when we get back to normal but i wondered if it was legal to uh allow someone with a handicap to comment through weapons can we just keep that as part of our procedures webex well i'm not sure that you can continue web xbox a majority of the public from using a tool that you're providing um i'd have to i'd have to look at that i mean there is no re there is no reason why you can't can't continue because we have historically always taken written comment from anybody who wants it and made it part of the record right um as as the accommodation but i i can look and see whether leaving computer access for only those with a disability i wouldn't i wouldn't limit it just to those people i would have it for everyone and that way you don't anybody can come on webex or they can be in person if they would rather be in person so you have more people that probably rather sit there and run webex and speak to us and others so that you've got them both ways some want to be in front of us some of them i think don't have a problem with webex so i agree to opening it up to everyone not just singling out the handicap because then if someone appears by webex you're going

to be singling them out because then they're going to have that title all right we could be opening a pandora's box though we could sit here for two hours or it's i mean it's open to everybody right now i can call in from anywhere and say something you're already doing it then that's how it's running i think what you're doing is you're easing into it so you're doing a slow conversion to coming back live so you from maybe over a three or four meeting period you do that kind of conversion people become more comfortable we only had a few i i my fear is that is is that the other way you seem to be singling people out as well that can't make it out or maybe have the underlying health issues that their physician said they have to stay home if we don't give them that opportunity i think that opens up a can of worms as well well then well then if you have to have that's everyone be able to do webex forever nobody didn't say ever said ease it in well that's what i'm saying that after we stopped this virtual stuff what's wrong what's wrong with webex for people who do public comment yeah i don't i don't know okay maybe it's not being able to do any business well i mean it's it's wide open everybody right now we had like six people signed up and i know but now and now you have two or three shows when we don't have virtual they have to take the time to come and it's more of an effort i guess and you know maybe that's good maybe that's bad but i but then people are asking us to have meetings in the evening at least if it's web x then they can don't have to take a whole day off of work and they can take just those ten minutes off of work yeah and they don't feel left i could make a decision at some point one way or another the answer in this time i think so yeah bringing something back and then mr mariano thank you mr chairman uh yeah i think the webex is a great idea that the technology improvements have been amazing for the past year nothing if a covered you can say that technology of the zoom meetings webex has been admit much more productive instead of being disruptive for other meetings that i've had as as well so i think if we incorporate that in for our people that can't make it but they just want to put in their you know three minutes worth of comments while they're at work or whatever and they can do that that makes it easier if someone's handicapped that's great i think the big fear and i will say years ago we used to have public comment at the end of the meeting someone could actually sit out there for eight hours waiting to speak

from a break to another break especially carried over public hearings what we're doing now is much better and there was that big fear about what if we do that what's going to happen are we going to set ourselves back first couple of minutes get a little bit busy but then just later on it got better and just like our public hearings i think when we do the budget if you're doing a good job pretty much all the way through no one's going to show up they're going to have confidence what we're doing i think everything we're doing uh is is going to as we free this up is going to be they're going to get more and more comfortable with it i i do want to stress i do firmly believe that i think dan you can make this happen at the next meeting at least for the morning part of the public afternoons will will maybe wait a meeting as you as you put it through but i don't think there's any reason why we can't have our public in here sitting in this meeting sitting in newport richie if it's more people than that we can put them outside and one by one just like someone's running the kiosk somebody can run in the new people coming in to replace the ones that walk out the door it won't cost you any more time any more labor but at least it'll give everybody a comforting feeling that they can come and speak in front of us like they so desire so i think he can make it make it work in the next meeting well i'm okay with giving them time to do it the right way so i want to make sure it's the right way so if they can do it by then i'm i'm good with it if if they need that time dan you can come back with us let us know so well so we will go back and work on it test it get with you know county attorney's office on the rules and if we can make it work the challenges that's actually less than two weeks from today so right but that's one where you would actually have to adopt the rules now see we have public comment before you adopt the rules right but we actually can't change it yeah we gotta change oh so yeah yeah you have to have the time to be able to change it i understand that they'll bring it back next week everybody does this if you can't do it today you got to bring it back anyway so there you go bring it back to us and tell us about how you're going to work it out yeah okay okay forgot that one piece all right anything else all right i think i'm done i'm looking forward to the next presentation we're going to have here in a second from our fire rescue guys i don't have anything for you today thank you madame part i have a quick update i was appointed by

senate president wilton simpson to the executive council for the clark support operation corporation i am so excited congratulations it says um it's actually a really um it's a big responsibility i'm excited for it um the council makes recommendations to the legislature in regards to court related service charges fines fees and costs we also develop workload measures and performance standards and review and approve the 67 clerk's budget statewide and we also prepare and submit reports to the governor as well as the legislature related to budget developments of the clerks and their expenditures so i'm very excited about this um i'm excited that i'm representing pasco on this statewide board i am humbled and honored by president sentence president senate president simpson's um appointment and i i will do a great job for pasco thank you yes thank you thank you good job anything else that's it that's it thank you good i only have about 20 things here um first thing i have uh we've been asked by the state's medical examiner's commission to complete a reappointment ballot from to consider the appointment district six medical examiner dr john i will say this i may mess up fog martin fog martin i guess is we pronounce it which serves pasco and pioneers county we're asked to rate by checking one box either favorable unfavorable or no opinion uh with explanations if possible so this this is the form fill that out for all this yeah i'll take care of that very good does anybody here know anything positive or negative against the medical examiner or ever heard anything everything negative you must be working good right i don't hear anything about it but uh i would need a motion and a second second motion second all those in favor say aye aye all the posts lack sign motion pass okay i'll take care of that after the meeting that's somebody you want to get to know very well is it um city of day city has asked for a letter of support for their wastewater treatment plant relocation and upgrade requests for funding from congress current plant is built in 1950 near moore mickens and the the new plant is the plan on building it on summer lake road just east of the railroad tracks out here from dade city and right next to their spray field and

so they're asking for a letter of support for them that for uh go through congress from the rapture's office okay so i need a motion in a second second second motion second all those in favor say aye aye aye motion pass five zero uh i would like to thank um mike shumate uh for arranging and housing our pasco county animal services facilities with hosts excuse me hosting our pasco county animal services faces with facilities with citrus county district 3 commissioner ruthie slaybach along with and you see the pictures she's standing between myself and mike on the left uh the commercial she's district three she's uh lives in black diamond and covers that area and then on the right hand side the lady in black is is her animal service person colleen yarborough and shelter veterinarian is dr megan milo she's in the uh red so we we toured them around the animal facilities and it was a very interesting part i thought citrus county was bigger than it is but it only has 149 000 citizens and i would have surely thought homosexuals uh crystal river would have more citizens than that actually so but we were glad to host them and their facility hadn't been taken care of very well and i suggested she talked to her fellow commissioners about not continuing to kick a can down the road go ahead and take it's up against curb and go ahead and take care of their issues so then they can be set and ready so we gave him a very good example with a national recognition of two of our employees in the animal services uh they're doing a great job and thank mike schumache's leadership and doing that so it was very good [Music] i've got um long list of things here but i'm not going to cover all this um there's there's a lot of issues coming to us and you know we're growing as much as we are growing a small business or seem to with the covet and everything they've had we need to be very on guard and listening to our small businesses there's no way to incentivize them now within your ordinances but i think in the future we need to make plans to possibly do that because there's a lot of mom and pops are having hard times and want to be good business in pasco county um with the survey had here recently i think there's about over 60 percent of

our businesses that were part of the survey have been in pasco county over 10 years and that's pretty good so they're not only coming here in new businesses but they're staying and we need to make things um business wise and make sure that customer service wise that we're doing the right thing and all of our departments and staff they're working hard and dan told you about over 900 permits you know the building department's having a hard time with that many that's a lot of extra it's double the work for the same amount of people probably we've added i think one or two but not a lot but we need to uh be aware of what's happening in our county and and look out for them in the future and i'm talking about near future and far future if we're looking out in the next five years to the next 10 years in some areas i'm going to be setting up a committee for the northeast rural area to be looking at it for there are some areas within that that need to be we've started a commercial park up in the couchie and there's a business related to the first manufacturer we have there's going to come in there also so there'll be two of them and i think we need to make room we're going to have to cut out some areas for workforce housing out of rural areas so we can do those things necessary to make that a success and it's already headed toward success and so we'll be this new committee when we form the committee we'll be looking at northeast rural very closely and also for things as far as in the future of in that rural area and our northern boundary with hernando county we need to start paying attention that where we'll get pressures from development on the north of our borders coming into our borders same as you have on the south side but you're going to get it from the highway 50 75 area you're going to get a push back toward our our county so we need to be looking at that and and being aware of what's coming in the future and i'm talking 10 15 years out i know i won't be here christina could be here but i won't be here for that but i'd certainly like it to be planned out to where we're prepared for that in the future and i know we can do it i know pasco county's uh ready to be that premier county and i think this is with customer service this is all a part of being a premier county to um also state we're one of the top 25

in tampa bay area of workplace to work place to work [Applause] and that's that's based on all of your efforts and all of our staff efforts because it doesn't get there by one person it gets there because we're a team and our team needs to continue working together and getting where we need to be and especially it's getting more and more apparent that uh customer service is one of the best things we can do for our county and our citizens because they're coming in some of these small businesses having a hard time going through the process we're making changes to where we can help them go through those processes and that that's going to be better for them also a lot of the ben top 25 we are uh one of three that actually in the work workplace that in our local area that provided this award that we've gotten so we're getting nationally recognized on animal services or nationally recognized a human trafficking area and i mean many many other areas that were doing things differently connected city when they came in it was a way of speeding up the process and smoothly and and getting things done uh better a little bit quicker a lot of people are talking now about all the traffic we have on our different roads but let me tell you we've got roads that are coming that when they're finished the traffic's gonna move without any problem uh i went out with d.o.t this past week saw um state road 52. on the top of the hill just uh west of prospect road clinton avenue on top of the hill there you can see the complete campus of saint leo college right here saint louis university to your north the day i was at i tried to get a picture but it it was uh overcast day it wasn't wasn't very good but that's that road's coming along very well i don't know if you realize but they put down a pavement a three inch asphalt pavement they put 11 inches of concrete on top of that then they come over that with a diamond grinder that smooths out the concrete for a smooth ride same way they did with the the asphalt when they did 56 and had the lasers all come out and they smoothed it for a smooth ride this this diamond machine that cuts that top edge off there that makes it a smooth ride on concrete so it's pretty amazing 11 inches of concrete but it's coming along real well they they hope that within

uh probably a year they'll be able to use two lanes of that and be able to open that up so they've still got two signal crossings they've got to do prior that too but they were thinking they're on schedule they're moving faster than expected because they're out there they don't have to control traffic because it's a new roadway across there it's us but it's coming along real well so you know also i got a call from d.o.t on mpo issues that we need to be looking for in the future um they're going four lane 301 on to 50 to our north they're going to four lane the bypass around eight city here and they're going four lane um 98 going to polk county so those issues have to be placed on mpos for funding and we'll be ready for that when it comes time so but it's a lot of roadways and there's a lot of work being done in my d.o.t in pasco county and not only do we think we work well with district 7 secretary gwen and his group but they think so also so we're a team even with d.o.t and and the county roads and all that we're working here so it's a lot to be very proud of that we have all these things moving and our traffic is going to get better commissioner starkey realized that traffic's starting to get worse in east pasco when he got held up a little bit coming into the meeting on 52. yes a few times yeah but it's it's really coming apparently in the mornings uh traffic is building up coming into date santana and nate city from from the west in the morning's just backing up at curley so um try to get margaret and check that light again because it was only allowed when starkey noticed it was only allowing about three cars to go through before it changed light again so that's not enough it's got to take more cars through there so but they traffic ops they'll they'll do a good job and straighten that out i'm sure they will so okay what is that i think they may have my photos now oh you got your photo okay we come up with that see which one comes up first i have an uh sad picture of a alligator but so this is the this is i think this is after this is the maybe it's after again the cleanup of the helen ellis so that code enforcement sent me these photos can you there's a whole bunch of photos not just one i think i scroll through i i'm this happened in a matter of weeks where does it say it's on us 19. um eventually you're going to get to uh 19 to the left there we go

start seeing what happened who i personally think the people look at that i think that because i'm gonna sorry i'm gonna be the dead horse but i think because there's not mandatory garbage in the area a lot of people decided they would also add to the joy of putting their garbage here and um that's a mess we had to have a contractor had to come in and and clean this up um put a lien on the property but this is like on 54 bruce b downs you know this is was right on the road and i can't tell you how many calls i was getting from businesses around there like what just happened here what just happened and um because we didn't have that no trespass sign when we did the condemnation it took a little while but um i just want to thank staff for going out there and making sure we got this nastiness um yeah so there you can see it cleaned up and i think the trees hide it you know that it hasn't been um cleared of the trees that it did some here and now we have a lien on this property um then i think hopefully you're going to see the picture of this alligator that was in the um did that one get to jordan so this happened in holiday nope i sent her i sent her dan i sent that to you too oh there it is this was very sad this came into my office yesterday what are you getting inside junk in the waterways and uh this is off the darlington in an alligator swam into a tire and you know i don't know how it happened but um it killed the alligator and then us spent a few days floating around and our staff did go um fwc said they wouldn't couldn't do it and someone from our staff went and got this but um we need to have more sadly regular some kind of cleanup programs on uh on our waterways that's a very sad picture right there um and i i uh let's see i was on a a phone call yesterday with an organization called lisk and we had a couple staff members on there one uh terry pitos was on and troy from um from david ankle's office um lisk i don't remember what it stands for it's a national foundation started by the ford foundation um what they were talking to us about yesterday was opportunity zones it's called the local initiative support corporation they're coming here to to tampa bay um they uh what we talked about yesterday was opportunity zones and they come in and they assist

especially with affordable housing in opportunity zones they have opportunity funds but we have to do some homework first before we'll start working with us they're going to be working with tampa and st pete and other other communities but um i'm going to be hopefully getting together a little group marcy couldn't join the call she was already committed and definitely want to see if we can take advantage of this national uh organization that brings money from verizon ford big corporations um into communities to help them especially in rural areas so um they're going to be working to stand up an office here there's one in jacksonville it's the only one that's that's here in florida um but uh hopefully they're gonna set up a board here in tampa bay and i hope to be a part of it um they also work with affordable workforce development and and other issues but uh um we don't we i ask we don't have one project going in an opportunity it's a little frustrating but we didn't get to pick them ours weren't selected so uh maybe the process going forward is going to be a little different i asked that one of the guys who was on the call was number two at hud um and asked him if he i th if he thought there was gonna be another round of opportunity zone um opportunity and could we maybe modify some of our opportunity zones to expand them so that we get some areas in that we can take advantage of um they said it's a possibility when the um census comes out they think that the data may show that we could possibly expand and so we need to stay tuned on that but in the meantime they highly recommended that we we hired a a uh consultant to um help us position ourselves better with opportunity zones so i'm going to talk to david about that and and marcy and see if it makes sense for us to so that we can move forward but anyway that's it okay thank you now we're ready for resolution 46 chief casey sorry you threw me off by resolution uh thank you mr chairman uh scott castle fire chief pasco fire rescue so we were really planning on doing this presentation which should only take a couple minutes we were going to do this a year ago but because of the pandemic we've had to shift forward the reason we wanted to do it a year ago because it would have been the five year anniversary of starting the program those of you that recall five years ago or now six years ago now

we came to uh in front of the board to ask for some money in cooperation with our utilities department actually to make a purchase for what we now call our squad one which is our special operations unit and it was the very first part of our special operations program and for those of you that don't know special operations is kind of a subset of emergencies that's outside the normal which is like normal but for us it's normal medical calls and fires so those are the things like water rescues trench collapses uh hazardous materials heavy vehicle extrication things of those nature things that we call low frequency and they don't happen very often but they're very very high risk there's a lot of risk for things to go bad and for people to get hurt so we wanted to establish a program six years ago that would be a group of individuals that are specially trained with the required equipment that they would need in order to to mitigate those type of emergencies so the very first piece of equipment was the squad which was a heavy rescue unit you can see that's the original group of firefighters that participated in the initial training to get brought up to speed we were able to fill that vehicle up with all the equipment that we needed at the time and that truck is still in service we've been using it the last six years that actual vehicle was so well designed that the manufacturer wanted to use that design over and over again so they actually asked that they could take that vehicle to a international trade show in indianapolis indiana and they did that before we actually took delivery so it was shown on the international stage to firefighters all across the world and they actually did end up selling quite a few uh vehicles after that um i don't have the remote really just uh next slide thank you oh sorry you have to keep hitting next slide till we get to the next slide so i kind of talked over this one there we go just keep hitting it uh so the program has grown considerably over the six years since we started with that first truck and that first group of people we've also added our truck one and truck one is a ladder truck but and i know you've all seen it it's a little bit different in the fact that it has a bucket at the end and that bucket at the end of that particular ladder truck which is 100 feet in height or can reach 100 feet in height that now allows us to have multiple responders working at height versus a straight ladder truck and only you only have one responder up there so that was a huge asset and and part of

our special operations program the urban search and rescue program was added several years ago and accompanying that as our drone program i think i'm not sure if we're going to have some drones out there or not but if hopefully we do the water rescue program we do have a wage now deploy some smaller boats we do have a quick deploy boat that's on the on the heavy rescue unit that you saw maybe we'll have that out there today and then all along we've been putting a lot of people through training so uh there's a lot of technical aspects to this particular program so we've been putting all of our firefighters that are interested through those different uh training courses so we've come a long way another big uh asset that we've added is our merv buses so major emergency response vehicles fancy name for these mirv buses and i know uh you all probably remember the lightning bolt that struck bayonet point hospital back in 2016 just as hurricane hermine was coming across our shores here in pasco county that lightning strike required the fire department to evacuate all 225 patients that were in that hospital that night out and we did that in seven hours but and everybody got to a safe place however we realized that we had a shortfall we didn't have a really good way to transport mass numbers of people all at once so we had to do it the traditional way where you literally put one person in an ambulance at a time and start moving so when you start doing the math 225 patients that's going to take a long time well there were we did call ambulances from all over florida as far away as alachua county and orlando but we were able to get a couple of buses that came out of pinellas county and alachua county that were designed to carry you know upwards of 12 to 20 people at a time so we say hey we need to get one of those well fortunately after the whole event was over our uh our friends at baynet pointing hospital donated fifty thousand dollars to the fire department for something like that so we took that fifty thousand dollars and we sought out to you know we get some of those buses here in pasco county specifically for that so we now in the future we would have a way to move a lot of people uh uh very quickly so we took that that was our started money starting money for the project and then we entered into an agreement with the school corporation pasco county schools were very very fortunate to work with them and they were able to give us a couple of of school buses they donated these two

school buses that we ended up making into these vehicles we also got a grant from the state of florida that allowed us to buy the equipment that will allow now us to put patients in the back of the ambulance or in the back of the bus laying down and and be able to take care of them that way but more importantly we had a lot of our own employees put a lot of sweat equity they actually built what you're going to see out there here in a few minutes they built all of that stuff themselves with all that equipment that was donated they put it all together we were able to get the paint job uh it wasn't donated but it was dramatically discounted same thing with the striping package the lighting that you see on there a lot of it was uh done by our own employees but also through discounts from various local vendors here in pasco county next slide we also have the same [Music] situation with these special operations trailers so special operations it covers a lot of ground and we've amassed a lot of equipment because a lot of what they do you may only use it once every few years but when you need it you need it so there's a lot of heavy heavy equipment that we have to carry around and some of it since we don't use it very often we put it on these trailers so when we do need it we have it tucked away somewhere here that we can deploy it so we have a couple of these big semi trailers uh that we got 100 donated from great bait distributors which you may recognize those as former beer trucks they uh i'm not sure which company they worked for but we did get them from them including the the semi tractor that's going to pull them same thing with the paint job and the striping packages and and some lighting that was done on all those all that was done through donations and sweat equity next slide so you see there just through the process over the last six years partnering with our community has saved it says thousands of dollars but it's probably more likely hundreds of thousands of dollars and has brought our special operations program to where it is today excellent so i specifically wanted to mention these particular partners that we've worked with over the last six years uh of course being that point hospital or beta point medical center great bay distributors pasco county school board pasco health and medical preparedness coalition pasco county health department king auto body and most importantly all of our hard working employees at fire rescue that put a lot of time and effort into making uh this project a reality

so that's the end of the year that is all here yeah so that's why you saw the barricades yeah we had the barricades out there last night so thank you they've had that blocked off from and the uh city police department who worked to organize that for us but we did bring some of that equipment that you saw there in the uh slides out there so you're more than welcome i know we want to do this right before lunch break so if you want to take five minutes and walk around you can see somebody equipping up close yep we're actually gonna adjourn the meeting right now so we can go outside and look at the equipment and then we'll come back here and restart meeting at 1 30 with public very good thank you appreciate the time [Music] you