09.09.2025 Pasco County Board Workshop: 2026 State Legislative Priorities

[Music] Um, okay. Well, then we can get started.

Uh, good morning. Are these all on? I'd like to call to order the 2026 state legislative priorities workshop of September 9th, 2025. At this time, please silence all electronic devices and mute your microphones. Please rise for the invocation and pledge of allegiance. [Music] Uh here we go.

Good morning.

I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, we are going to go around the room and introduce not the whole room. We're going to go around the table and introduce ourselves.

And we're going to start right over here.

Representative Randy.

And you don't you're not you don't have a mic, so if you do speak, just ask for one.

Jonathan, we're good. Hi. Uh, I'm Jonathan Till. I work for State Senator Danny Burgess.

Matthew Lawson. I also work for state senator Danny Burgess.

Uh I'm Representative Kevin Steel. Uh District 55,

which we're sitting in, I think.

Jaden Cuz legislative aid to Representative Steel.

Uh Chase Mohannon, legislative aid to Representative Joerger.

Jeff Steiner, County Attorney.

Seth Whitman, Pasco County Commission.

Uh chair Katherine Starky.

Jack Mariano, vice chair.

Uh Lisa Joerger. Uh Randy Maghard, District 54. Uh

Mike Carbala, Pasco, County Administrator.

Joanna Chesher, chief of staff, county administration.

Mike Moore, the Southern Group.

Mike, is Sarah joining by Zoom?

Um Sarah um went to the West Pascal Government Center, so she will be rerouting to here.

Okay. All right. And Sarah Sarah uh we won't introduce her when she gets here. So she's with um

Advocacy Partners.

Yeah.

Okay. So, um, well, I just want to thank, uh, staff for putting this together. Ralph is on vacation. Um, but thank you, uh, Joanna for all the work you did to help pull this off. Um, thanks to our lobbyists also and the members of our local delegation for attending and being part of this important discussion. And, um, Joanna, I am going to turn this over to you this morning. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Uh before we get started, I just want to offer a little bit of context um and the process and some objectives for the workshop. Um so this is our second year I believe doing a legislative workshop as we go into the legislative session. So thank you so much for your time. I know that you all have um you know the the legislative delegation has its own uh meetings going uh leading up to the the legislative session. So this means a lot that you would take time out of your uh your your schedule to meet with us and hear about the county priorities. um the process, you know, we met one-on-one with our commissioners. This is the first time that they're all kind of discussing this together. Um this is a work in progress. Um we also met with our our team, you know, to hear from the departments of what their priorities are, appropriations as well as proposals, policy proposals. Um and so we we kind of flushed them through this uh a matrix, if you will. We really considered the especially with the appropriations asks. We considered the amount of the appropriations, whether or not there was a match for it. Um, uh, alternative funding for that kind of thing. Um, and we really, uh, kind of chose skimmed from the top of the ones that we think would be the most successful, but we but this is still a work in progress. And so we want to hear from you all of, you know, what what to expect during the session, what of these projects and proposals kind of resonate with you. Um the objectives for this workshop is hopefully we we come up with what will then become our actual legislative priorities that will be uh approved in an upcoming um board work uh excuse me a board meeting um hopefully the end of September. So um so yeah so we we do have a PowerPoint the copies are in front of you um we'll get started with that. Mike do you want to say a couple words about um legislative priorities and

Sure. Um, again, thanks thanks to everybody for being here. It's an honor to uh represent the county. Um, and we're very grateful obviously for Rep. Maghard and Rep. Steel for being here as well. And just kind of kick things off before you hear from the county and the county commissioners, we wanted to hear from each one of you.

Exactly.

And we wanted to hear your thoughts. What are some of your priorities for the county? what are some of your policy objectives so we can work together and collaboratively work together you know not just for again the county's priorities but yours as well so I know if Repste steel rep Mard if you want to kick things off and maybe just talk about some of your upcoming priorities and how we can be of assistance

well it seems like we say this every year we don't know what the budget's going to be like last year was quite interesting uh I do hope we do not do 102 days again um it'd be nice to come home a little earlier than we did last time, but it be what it may, you know, really um um I think uh from my standpoint in district 54, uh the senator Burgess and I have talked quite extensively over the summer, our priorities have been a couple of things. Uh one is the U emergency management center that just, you know, we're we're going to see if we can get that through one way or the other. Um so that's probably our top priority in the in as far as that him and I concerned. Uh the second thing we're really focused on is and last year was a phenom as far as flooding. We're really going to uh try to drive our municipalities to look at anything to do with flooding, anything to do with water movement, uh something along that line. Now, we all know last year was hopefully we'll never see that again. That was a phenom. But at the end of the day, we did find some weaknesses in just normal storms uh and things like that that we feel that needs to be addressed one way or the other. Um so, and I don't know, Mr. Hill may have a different thought from the senator, but that's the conversation we had over the summer uh that we really wanted to, you know, prioritize when we sat there and talked to Zephr Hills. This is the same thing we're going to tell them as it is Saint Anne, as it is St. Leo and Date City. Uh if those are not top of your list, it's going to be hard for us to put it in there. Now, I know there's other projects and I haven't seen all of yours yet, but as of right now, uh that seems to be uh Danny and I's uh top priorities that we want to go in and try to accomplish to try to get those projects in works cuz we all know how long it takes to get something, you know, get it to the shovel ready stage. And um so that policywise, you know, I don't uh nothing really sticks out for me. Um there's a couple things we've been kicking around, but we I really have uh nothing in the hopper um um that policywise that somebody's brought to me. Um probably will do a couple of more autism bills this year. We we we did do a big one last year. uh we'll look at that again this year, but right now I don't uh I really have anything policywise that somebody's brought to us that's like pretty know earthshattering for us to change. So that's from my standpoint.

Thanks Mag Representative Steel.

That's a loaded question. Uh because if we give you our secrets now, somebody else is going to jump in front of us uh and and try to take it. There are there are copycats in the state, believe it or not. Um, thank you guys for having me. This is the first time I've been here, so I wasn't prepared to actually have dialogue about the county. Um, I look at policy, but I like like Maghard said, you know, the emergency management uh center is important. Uh, we need to start focusing on protecting the citizens uh and and firefighters is another issue and and police officers. So, we need to make sure that we keep them intact and and uh changing out all those fire departments to make sure that they're ready uh for for the men and women to be safe uh at the same time while they operate in our in our uh county. Um my focus from a legislative perspective has always been about giving back to the people that actually pay the taxes. Um and so most of the focus I've done has been stopping scammers from scamming the senior citizens in our in our state as well as everybody else. So, there is a uh another bill I'm going to run again this session. Uh last session I got a stop the scammer bill put out and this one is going to be a little different. It's stopping the uh the phones phone calls that are being made and coming in because those I don't know how many people here are familiar with phone systems. Um I am I you know I work for uh anch uh so I understand phone traffic. I actually built uh some of the star 69, star 666 features uh for GTE. Um those can be controlled in the switch. We can they can stop systematically without being spoofed uh showing you somebody else's number. Uh so my plan is to make sure they identify the true number of the caller so that you can call them back if you want to

blow a whistle on their

what's that?

Blow a whistle in their phone.

Yeah. So it's it's it's common sense things. um you know, property taxes, you know, I I ran three bills, as you guys know, last session, uh to to reduce property taxes with a a a a small budgetary cut versus a whack. Uh the governor is never going to get that accomplished. Um I know everybody here wants to do that, but you know, the first second you try to cut complete property taxes out, you know, every sheriff is going to be out there saying they're going to defund the police. You know, you're going to be defunding the fire department. Uh you're going to be defunding education. And so you have to have a plan to do that, not just cut. Um, and so my plan was, you know, a common sense approach, which is your house's value should be set at what you paid for your house. We should not be charging, you know, an an exorbitant amount above what you pay for your home. And so it's the common sense approach. I call it the reverse of Camala Harris, um, which is taxing on unrealized capital gains. You don't realize the value of your home until you sell it. So why would you pay capital gains? It's the only asset you have that you're charged in excess of what you paid for it. Even a company when you're sitting in your office chair, you have to you have to pay tax on that every year. And that's a diminished value. Even on your car, you know, if you can you imagine being recharged taxes on a car that you bought, it's the same thing with your house. So, I ran a bill to to reduce it back to that. Um, and there's ways to cut the the expenses on top of that when you're cutting back the the uh the taxes. Um, there's also a section in our law, sorry, I I don't know how much time I have, but there's go.

There's a section in our law that that has duplicative leadership. Uh and and we were in charge of dozing, but before the governor decided to doge, the House of Representatives uh dozed every agency in the state and and they they tasked me with elder affairs, you know, which to me it's like they don't want me to get reelected. Uh that's that's 34% of the population, so there's no statewide race in my book. But um with that being said, I went to it with the mindset of I'm not going to attack any single benefit that goes to the individuals that we represent. I want to look at it from a different perspective. And so in doing that, I identified 67 people being managed by 77 people. So when you think about

Yes. It's called a telephone management style and a poll telephone poll management style. So, I'm going to address that section of the law and eliminate it. I'm going to try to at least this session. Um because to me, there's no reason to have uh multiple Thank you very much. Uh multiple people uh managing or single people managing single people. Um we also had duplicative services inside of that. By the way, 89.1% of everything Elder Affairs does for our state is outsourced to a private company. Okay. So, they only do a small se segment inside of it, which is another duplicative service.

Uh, and in that duplicative service, um, a doctor recommends they go into a nursing home and they they have to be validated by a nurse to verify that this doctor knows what he's talking about. They don't only do that once. They do it every year for every patient, every single time. And I don't know about you, but I know I'm not getting better, faster, and more efficient the older I get. Um, and I I don't think people are are getting better, faster, and more efficient that are in nursing homes to come out of it. So, there's no reason to be doing those services. That was $14 million off the top. So, there was about $48 million that we could cut just in elder affairs without affecting a single benefit to the constituents. it was removing duplicative management and removing duplicative services that are not needed. So, those are the kind of things I want to do. I have a solution for insurance, homeowners insurance. We can talk about that at a different time. It's a little more complex, but um I have Rick Scott and Laura Lee running some uh some stuff uh federally. So, it would help out. It would also help the state out because we'd eliminate the risk that the state has under citizens uh with my plan. It would actually nullify them completely. Um and and it would it would benefit the people of the center part of the state because we wouldn't be pulling the risk with the people who are at risk the most with the people who are not at risk. And so it kind of lowers the the cost of insurance uh doing this for everybody else, not just the people who are on the coast. So

thank you for giving me the time to talk.

Sure, Madam Chair, if you don't mind. Um obviously we have representatives from some of the um

representatives and senators that could not attend today. So obviously maybe starting with Jonathan Matt from um Senator Burgess's office.

Uh excuse me. Uh well uh Senator Burgess uh first off he apologizes he couldn't be here. He's actually in Wula this morning meeting with President Al Britain. So hopefully good things come from that. Uh so the uh what like what Representative Maghard said uh one of Senator Burgess's big priorities is uh inland flooding and we saw what happened uh in the county after Helen uh Debbie Helen and Milton last year particularly Milton on the east side and central Pasco where the senator represents. So he is very committed to ensuring that we're not hopefully not going to have a Milton every year, but we're going to have another one at some point. That's just the reality of living in Florida. And he would like to make sure that the things we saw, particularly in some of the neighborhoods in Zephr Hills that were devastated by the flooding, that we at least have the infrastructure to we can't stop 18 in of water, but at least we can direct it to a place where it'll do less harm. uh on policy. Uh Senator Burgess is chairman of the Senate uh budget committee on education, K12 education. So, a lot of what he's focusing on right now actually deals with what Representative Steele mentioned on taxes and revenue and how much we're going to have to spend on the education budget. So that's so really we're kind of keeping uh the senator's kind of keeping his powder dry to see what our numbers are and then how we can best invest those numbers to get the education and get the uh address some of the issues with the scholarship program the step up scholarship program and those sort of things. So those are kind of what the those are what the senator is focused on obviously so senators get unlimited number of bills house members are limited on the number of bills that they have. So, we I'm fairly confident the senator will have uh a decent number of bills, but we're still in the process of looking at ideas and coming up with what he wants to take on for next legislative session.

Thank you, Chase. Representative Jagger,

uh thank you all for having me. I'm sorry, Representative Jagger could not be here today. Um, but I am here. So, uh, but I know to everyone's point, you know, inland flooding, especially over here in West Pasco, is, uh, definitely a big issue that we're going to take on. And I know Representative Vieger, we're still working through the process of getting in line. Um, what we want to do for this next upcoming session. Uh, but I know his one of his big issues, I know he's always, like to Representative Steel's point, we're always interested in helping the police, helping firefighters, helping small business. Um, so yeah.

Great. Thank you, Chase.

Yes, sir.

Madam Chair,

um, so that's everybody. We don't have anyone here from Hulcom's office. Okay.

All right. Um, you know, before we dive into this. Can we just mention a little bit about the federal money um, and some of the rules around it? Some of the good things, some of the bad things about the federal money that we received, well, we hope to receive from HUD. We've been told we're getting it.

Yes. Actually, in uh your next meeting, you'll you'll be recognizing that that revenue. So, Pasco County was awarded a grant from the federal government through the Housing and Urban Development uh um department. Uh $585 million. Now, this is a this is a HUD grant. Um the the county has really taken great great measures over the past six months uh to ensure that that contract is is in place and and we have been hitting all of our milestones uh well well on schedule, I should say. Um and so we're we're at the point now where we will be hiring a consultant uh to assist us in how those programs are managed. To the commissioner's point, um a vast majority of that money must be used towards what we'll call housing. It is a HUD grant at the end of the day. Um that that housing ranges from everything from affordable housing to um we could even be assisting homeowners with um with with repairs or elevation of of their of their homes out of the flood zone. So, we'll be we'll be having programs to uh to take advantage of that. The remaining dollars are split up between what we'll call um infrastructure as well as um I use the term resiliency, but I'm looking looking more to mitigation. Thank you. Uh and mitigation projects as well as economic revitalization. Um the mitigation projects are probably our our most uh competitive funds because they are the least least restrictive. Um, and we have a number of projects that we are uh that we will vet uh through a formal process that would go towards things that you're talking about such as flood uh flood flood issues. For example, out east, probably one of the one of the neatest projects that I've seen is is the Zephr Creek uh project out out in the Zephr Hills, which um I think is a is a is a pretty good project in my opinion. Um but we have a number number of uh number of projects that would that would qualify for that. Um the restrictions as you point out commissioner do have to benefit uh area median incomes that are um I forget the numbers Joanna 60 to 80% or less than 80%. There are restrictions in terms of income qualifications and and census census tracks as to how those numbers get get invested. So it's not a quick straightforward process. Um and as with anything that comes from the federal government, there are plenty of strings and red tape attached. U but um we'll we'll certainly take their money and reinvest it in our community. One of them is we have to spend it and then we get reimbursed.

Yes. Now we do have an account that we can draw out of and uh which is which is good but uh yeah the there there is some um there are some complications and and and cash flow and liquidity things that we have to keep in mind as we as we try to go forward on that.

And then I think another restriction is it can't be something that's already in our funding pipeline.

Yes ma'am. That would be supplanting of funds. And so we have to be very careful on what we have budgeted things for versus that. But we have six years to spend the money. So it's we have a five-year plan. So as long as we're thoughtful in our approach, um you know, we we intend to try to thread those needles.

So we're um and another unique thing about this money is that we can match federal grants with it. We can use federal money to match a federal grant. So we are going to work to stretch this money as far as we can. Um, but I just wanted you to know that as you look at our proposals, we we have these things in in our minds, uh, as we're coming up with lists.

Correct.

And, uh, Hillsboro Hillsboro received 900 million.

Yeah. Uh, roughly, uh, 800. I think Panellis received closer in the sevens.

Yeah.

Um, so,

and this was for um, Adidalia, Helen, and Milton.

Yes, ma'am.

Yeah.

Question.

Yep. Are any of your thoughts going forward in these that you're planning on doing that match with

or all of these outside of what you're thinking use the money for?

So it's that is part of the matrix. So when we when we as Joanna mentioned when we looked at the projects that we wanted to bring forward we we looked at alternative funding sources and if there were alternative funding sources other than the state we're going to explore those versus asking the state for those dollars. So, Madam Chair, I think Joanna's, I think, ready to go ahead and start with the priorities of the slides.

Hi, apologies for my problem. We've all done that.

Thank goodness for Ridge Road, right?

There you go. And the traffic was not bad at all. It was lovely.

All right, Joanna.

Okay. Thank you. We have this uh PowerPoint put together. Um it's also in front of you. Um, we do have uh some key team members in the audience today. So, if we have any questions, they're hopefully able to come up and answer any uh specific questions there. But, we'll go ahead and get started with appropriations. And then we just have a couple policy, not specifics, but just some categories that we really uh want to watch and care for going forward. But we'll start with the money. I just want to make sure I'm in control here. Okay, perfect. Um, so to get started, the fire rescue decon truck. Um, I believe we have some

Chief Glenn is here.

Mike, put that mic close to me.

Yeah, just you.

Okay,

thank you.

Yeah, we we love this one because it's um it's it's not uh too much out of the ballpark there. Um, and the truck is specked and kind of ready to go there. So, it's something that we could

Yes, ma'am. Yes. Thank you, Representatives. Um, this truck since 2019 when you guys, you know, implemented the cancer resumption bill, firefighter health and safety has always been a top priority for our organization as well as for the commissioner. So, we currently have a decon program. This truck is going to be a a replacement truck, but also an upgrade. What it's going to help do is we currently service about 900 U firemen and women right now providing clean cancer-free bunker gear after every single incident. This truck is going to help us provide that gear with them, provide equipment on scene to actually wash and decon some of our other gear as well and help us uh continue that progress. I don't have a I have con conceptual ideas of what the actual truck would look like, but if you picture a uh Snap-on tool delivery truck with a workspace in the back and storage, that's kind of what it's going to be like, but we don't have an actual full rendering. I'm sorry.

Not Not a problem.

That's okay. Chief,

Mr. Mard,

um is this a countywide truck or just on one side? Chief, maybe explain maybe for the representatives and and um our team members from the other from the senator's office and the other representatives. Maybe just get in the weeds a little bit more of the importance and and instances and the negative things that could happen without having another contract.

Thank you, Mr. Moore. Absolutely. So, as you know, cancer is one of the leading killers of firemen and women right now. So, we've we've took an initiative of providing them with two options. Whether we dive into a large financial burden of providing two sets of bunker gear, which are upwards of almost $10,000 a set these days, or provide a way to provide them with clean um secondary sets of gear. So, we don't have to provide we don't have to buy 1,800 sets of gear. We buy about a,000 sets. And you know, keeping our men and women cancer-free is part of our initiative, which also includes our hot, warm, and cold zones that we build into our fire stations, which also implements into our um cancer screenings that we're doing yearly for our firefighters as well, and our uh occupational health program that we have. And it's kind of this holistic allencompassing approach to to help reduce our cancer numbers. And also, Chief, I mean, you know, prior to this type of stuff, firefighters would just have to bring their stuff home and wash it in their washing machine, you know, and I mean, that's

and that's some that's what some of the research has found is that we've actually um, you know, contaminated our our kids and our wives and and family members.

Yes, Representative Sue.

Uh, thank thank you very much. Um, thank you guys for what you do. Um, h how much of the contaminants are from the actual vehicles versus fires that you fight? It's well it gets transferred into the vehicles from the fire. So um as you can imagine anything that catches on fire these days, none of it's natural material. It's all full synthetic and we're that stuff gets absorbed into the bunker gear. It gets absorbed into our skin. Um that's where most of the cancer rates are actually highest at is around the neck, the groin, the wrist, the ankle areas, the head areas. That's where the the bunker gear is drawn tight. And what happens is is in the past is we would get back into that truck with that dirty gear, those dirty air packs, dirty helmets, dirty tools, and it the contaminants would get transferred into that fire truck, not knowing that the next crew coming in would absorb those chemicals as well. And if any of you been in a fire truck 5, 6 days after we've been on a structure fire, you can still smell that smell inside the truck. That's that gear and equipment still offging all those carcinogens. So removing that from the vehicles completely, removing that from the inside of the living quarters of the fire stations completely has helped reduce those numbers. And we haven't got a lot of data back, but it it makes sense.

Yeah. But sorry, how much of it is though from like the diesel itself from the diesel truck versus

some of that as well from the diesel? We have uh incorporated uh diesel exhaust capture systems within our fire stations. We've also started producing our fire trucks with a new um POS preventative filtration system in the exhaust as well. So, we've taken steps to mitigate that. Thank you.

One other question.

So, if there's a fire in Date City and a fire in Newport Richie, that's a truck drive to both.

We have two. So, we do have two, but sometimes we have to send both to to the same call. If it's a large incident, we can handle multiple incidents at um one time. Actually, we can handle up to three or four cuz we'll we'll revert back to grassroots tactics. We'll throw a bunch of gear inside of a delivery van if we have to and get them there to maintain that program, but we prefer to be able to to wash and decon all the equipment there on scene.

So, Chief, this would just be an added one for a total of two. I mean, what would be your optimal number?

Yes, sir. So, we currently have two now, but one is just a standard box truck. Got it. that doesn't have the capability of decontaminating any of the any of the air packs, helmets, tools, equipment on scene. This truck will be that replacement as well as the upgrade to the program. So, the the other vehicle does have all those capabilities.

And chief, I think, you know, with the continued growth of Paso County and obviously we're seeing more rooftops on a consistent basis and now you're seeing a lot of things go vertical. Yes, sir.

There's a more of a need than ever

and we kind of think about the future as well. you know what the growth's going to be and you know in 2030 in 2035 and probably in a million people in 2040 if not sooner.

Absolutely. And that's what we're kind of looking forward to is trying to that the program is is sufficient now. We're looking for the future to expand the program to make the program a little more u accompanying and you know with the fiscal constraints that we have trying to just keep pace with the organizational goals as well as some of the optional programs that we're maintaining. We're trying to keep course.

Representative Steel.

Thank you. And and this is probably more for the county commissioners than it is for for you. Um but but while we're thinking about the development and growth of Pasco County, are we including um impact fees for these new communities? Not for everybody, just these new communities to have fire departments with these trucks with all the gear they need versus having the entire rest of the county pay for their responsibility.

Yes, sir. And in fact, the the board recently adopted a a change in the fire impact fee and how that is assessed to capture those costs and and um that covers the cost of new capital equipment, which would be fire stations as well as equipment like this. We also take investments from our uh penny sales tax and put towards public safety as well to help augment those dollars. U but for the most part, we are looking for development to pay its way.

And we also remove the cap.

Yes, that those are the changes, right? Yeah. Remove the cap on some commercial properties. um that that would allow, you know, to to increase the collection rate of the uh of the fire impact fee.

But we're talking about impact fees, not taxes, right? Not

correct. Yes, sir.

I just want to make sure I'm

Okay. All right. Thank you so much to you.

Thank you.

Next.

Thank you.

And before we go before we go on, are these in any particular order in the in the like a priority order or just

No, the the board still has to meet and set their priorities. should be.

We will get that to you, but right now this

I mean it sounded like that seems like a priority to me.

I haven't seen these myself. So this

I mean the chief sounded like he was very enthusiastic about this being the first one

as he should be.

It comes down if the state if we see some uh hesitation from state state leadership then you probably won't see it on the final list. So it's a fishing expedition it seems.

Is someone coming up for the Shady Hills? Yes, we do have some some folks that can help out with this one, but this is um one of the sidewalk projects. We have a couple intersection improvements later in the presentation, but this is um a sidewalk project that we felt good about because there's uh it's in kind of the the sweet spot of what we're requesting. Um, and it is shovel ready and I think is

before we jump on um I can't thank the members of our delegation enough for what you guys have accomplished with sidewalks for our schools and our kids. I think in the last three years we're pushing some close to $8 million from the state. Plus, we have penny money uh that's gone to it. And we've been with your help incredibly successful uh in in tackling uh sidewalks for the most dangerous schools in order from the most dangerous and chipping away at the list in the county. And it's really been a team effort from the state uh county and with the school district. So, uh, just been very successful and parents allows parents to feel more confident that their kids can walk to school safely with the later start times and, uh, you know, with the busing situation and folks can get to work, too. They feel more comfortable leaving for for work and and so it's just been a really nice um really nice success story over the last couple years and we couldn't have done it without y'all's help. It it really means a lot. They're not overly exciting projects on paper, but I can tell you the impact that it has on communities and for parents and for our school kids and um even for the teachers that way kids are getting to school on time. Uh it means so much more than than y'all can ever know. So, thank you.

And and a little context with that, too. I don't remember when the time switched, but for many decades, Pasco County when they built roads did not we didn't build sidewalks. As you know, living on the east side, there's a lot of roads without sidewalks, but now um we we do put a sidewalk and a multi-use path on the side. Um, so, so as our road network grows, we're building them organically, but we still are filling in from those that century of building roads with no sidewalks. So, it's tough to see kids walking in the dark on on the side of a a on a shoulder. You don't get into schools.

We've had Yeah,

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

I was going to say just to to follow. She says, so all these new developments coming in in front of the developments, they're putting the sidewalks in. We're even taking a mobility fees to go stretch them further to go try to connect to the next piece that's coming up. So, we're making sure that we're doing whatever we can every time if someone's coming in to make sure they're protecting their own and helping the neighborhood get better as well.

Good morning, uh, members of the board, uh, representatives. My name is Panos Conces. I'm the assistant county engineer. I am with the transportation engineering department. This appropriation is for a 2.6 six mile sidewalk, 5 foot sidewalk on Shady Hills. The uh limits are from uh uh Mary Elementary to Bosley Drive. Uh and it includes a pedestrian crossing and a flash should be beacon at Greenland Lane to provide access to a local park there and also includes a stretch of 10 foot uh multi-use path to connect with the Sun Coast Trail on the south end. So uh this is uh sidewalk is very important because there is a lot of schools there. There are several schools there is students walking right now on the grass. Uh so it's very important that we provide this sidewalk. Now as the commissioners pointed out as part of the developments uh other developments as they coming along they're building other segments on Shady Hills. Also because of the increased traffic we see lately on Shady Hills, we got the direction from the board to consider uh action for a widening Shady Hills Road. So we are working on that right now. So uh this is SH already. Uh we have completed the design. So we are ready to go to construction. If if if I could add um something that we're seeing is the growth of Fernando County and um you know they're coming through our county to to get to work and so Shady Hills is one of those roads that is getting a lot of Fernando traffic and we have added quite a lot of um industrial uh jobs on that road too. So, we have large trucks interacting with uh Cruz Lake Middle and those that are elementary school there, Marella. And it's kind of a mix for disaster right there on Shady Hills. Yes.

I I'm I'm a math guy, so I I'm just doing math in my head. Um and and in my calculator, did you say 2.6 miles?

2.6 miles.

Okay. That's like $254.95 a foot. Yes. Is that Is that

It's at least a million a mile for a segment. is why is that acquiring land or you already have access to the to the

No, this is within the existing right of way. This is plain.

So it's just concrete

for construction and includes also the uh CI services to the firm that will supervise the construction. So it's total contra construction work and supervision of the construction.

So I just seems excessive per per linear foot 250 bucks a foot. Well, it certainly will be bid and the market prices will will will dictate ultimately, but these are budgetary cost estimates that that we have come up with. We we share your sentiment. That's why we we bid bid work to ensure we get best pricing.

Commission Commissioner Wait.

Thank you, Chair. Yeah. rep. So, you see in private sector when we go and get bids, if there's a what I've noticed in this job, if it's got the government name behind it, you can expect bid prices to come back what 50 to 100% higher sometimes on on work because it has the government price tag or the government name behind it, which is quite frustrating to see. Um, but with this project, Shady Hills, uh, Commissioner Mara, talk about it further, but Shady Hills has become such a hot market,

like it kind of went from nothing to something in the last couple of years. And um, it's it's the place where industry and and folks are really wanting to to move and and be there. and as government, you know, you don't we're not able to pivot as quick as private sector, but this is an area that I think we all recognize that has growth challenges and the schools went from being empty to now they're filling up and now, you know, those schools will be back into action. And so this this this effort for this project is to try to move government quicker or not 10 years uh to pivot with the market that's that's changed in that area. And um it's really going to become a successful successful um place for jobs and people to live and and traveling in our county. And um so this is this is something that we kind of I guess the board we sprang on county staff really overnight almost basically, right? So thank you guys for for moving on it. But um just some context there, Madam Chair.

Yep. So, and with the growth of Hernando County, as you know, we've been trying to work on kindline road, which you guys have been very helpful with as well, trying to get that funded. So, it looks like it's moving, which is great. But just like Bellamy Brothers Road, Shady Hills Roads, at North South Road, they're all using it. When we had done our comprehens, we took Shady Hills Road. We went up to a certain area to close to Kurilla Drive, Nick Cruz Lake to try to bring jobs into that area. Very, very job depressed, etc. Very low income area. So everything down to the south going from all the way up is where we created the job. We had Gary's Plastics come in created 500 jobs. Their supplier Hild come in with another few hundred jobs and more and more are coming. That whole area is developing the way we wanted to. We took 300 acres of residential properties and turned it into industrial change the comprehensive plan which is like unheard of nowadays. But we're trying to create the jobs in the area but the infrastructure down below is not going to be there for a bit. Uh the sidewalks we're looking at are all going to the north. That's where the residents come in for let's say from where this area is here going to the north. We had a developer recently take a work with us on a project where it was going to be like $900,000 take us two years to get it done. So next year school it would have been done. We got the developer to do it for 200 grand less and he got it done in four months. I was working with us the team and getting it done. So saving dollars and speeding up time. But this project here, it doesn't look like there's a match there, but I'm telling you, from PY Homes to come in with a big residential community. We had them take the sidewalk all the way up to Mary Ja Elementary and match it up there. The next developer came in, he took it up to Cruise Lake from there. Now, we're taking it all the way up from Bosley. This is just going to help us go through it. So, may not look like a match, but we put a lot of money into it and we're going to continue to put more money into it to get this done because when Shady Hills Roads is going to get expanded, one of the things working, Turnpike Authority is going to work with us. There's an interchange we're going to try to do at like Hudson Avenue, so be about two miles up, which will be another reliever off 52 to try to free up the traffic. And they're studying that right now. Just Justin just Justin has made that happen. Hopefully we'll uh we'll have that conversation again to make that happen. But that's something they looked at when we re realign that road. That should help with more traffic, more jobs as well.

Chair.

Yes. Why why why couldn't we why wouldn't it be able to be used the penny as a match

to help if it help that's what we've done with other projects in

this was not part of the penny for Pasco uh resolution

sidewalks aren't part of the

we have yeah we have a priority list

we have a list

that was voter approved and then once we get down that list we'll have flexibility for the board to come back in and set new priorities.

So we don't have any flexibility to with with the penny list to to move with the market.

But there are there are other sidewalks.

We have we have what we have done is we have made that list very short in years past. We had a very long list which handcuffed us to do exactly what you're saying, which is why we cut that list to something that we could probably responsibly knock out in about five to seven years and then be able to add new priorities to that list. um at that at that point in time.

Um I kind of agree with Commissioner Mariana though to to say that there's no match. This is kind of an incomplete picture of what's happening on that road because we've had we we've been putting pieces of that sidewalk in through development and us working with developers because they can do it cheaper.

I like that idea. I you know I'm also not about just putting our kids in harm's way. So I don't want come across that it's about dollars and cents to me. It's not just that efficiently.

Yeah. Do it efficiently. Right. Um h how is the bidding process done for these kind of scenarios and and is it do that comes in and does the work ultimately or is it is it a private sector concrete? Yeah, we we follow our our purchasing our purchasing rules which we we send out a sol a solicitation invitation for bid set of engineered plans and specifications that all contractors get and then they they do their calculations on their bid sheets and whoever the lowest uh the lowest bidder is we we will typically recommend to the board to make an award.

However, if there's some way you want to dig into that and help us.

I already have. Yes. So, I just texted like three people I know in in construction.

I'm going to give you an example. I wanted to put some um say uh slow speed um what do you call those uh poles in the water?

You know the signs in the water.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I had someone working on my dock in G Harpers. They said that company said we could put those in for like $1,000 a pole or 600, but Keith Wley's here. We have to we have to bid it out and the cost goes up to like $4,000 a pole.

It's 000.

How much?

10,000.

10,000 a pole when the private sector without a bit, you know, could do it for so much less. So, if there's a way you can fix that,

have that person come in and bid it out at $1,000 a pole. I mean, invite them into the process. See, that's that's where I I just I get baffled by this.

I'm in the private sector quite more than I am in the public sector. This is my first run in office, and I am perplexed with the amount of no common sense that's used inside the business world. I mean, inside this world, the political world, and I'm not talking about these folks, um, because most, this is not an, you know, an outlandish ask. I mean, I ran I think I ran your the sidewalk bill, uh, my freshman year and and got it approved. So, I'm I'm all about doing the right thing for the community. It's just, you know, there's a lot of people in our community uh, that actually do this work.

Yeah. and and why not open it up to local bids first, you know, with the mindset that you get one shot at this and if you want it, take your best shot and if you don't, we'll go out we'll go outside the community.

I love to hear you say that because this board has actually passed what we call a local preference um um portion of our purchasing code. Whereas if if you're a local bidder and you're within 10% I think uh of the low bid we'll say to you representative if your company's going to do this if you can match the bid the work is yours and it'll go to local folks. So I think the board is really focused on on and and and the procurement process of government procurement is is an interesting animal. There are a lot of rules there is a there are a lot of rules that that ensure accountability um you know that that come sometimes at the price of efficiency. Um, but nevertheless, um, we we we do do our due diligence. I I can I can assure you of that. Uh, when we when we seek that and we can't force people to bid, uh, if they don't want to bid, we do reach out and our purchasing department can I I certainly love if you want to have a conversation with our purchasing director on on what's going on and probably members of our attorney's office. It would be welcome.

And I just wish Yeah. And I just want to say we do encourage local people because we want the money to stay in Pasco County. So

yeah.

Yeah. And just to encourage a little bit further, we do projects through FDOT for sidewalks, etc. When you do those, you have to follow the Davis Bacon rules.

Oh, let me talk.

The paperwork is like ex staggering. The all the extra cost, it can double the cost of a sidewalk or a road project. Do you want to really take a look talk about federals? Um, if they change that rule and there was talk about that in Niko this year. Yeah,

it didn't take like that. Her committee heard it, but my my my committee with the with with transportation and the traffic engineers, they wanted to see it happen, but they said, "We'll see how that committee goes." Her committee went and they just shut it down.

They shut it down. My my libs. Yes.

So, your your libs, is that what you just said?

Yeah.

I'm not going to say what I was going to say to that. Um

I tried to keep it soft, too.

Well, help help me then because I h I don't have any room in bills, but I will make room. Is there some law that we can change?

Yeah, let's let's have a conversation.

Yeah. No, like I said about earlier on about the the bureaucracy of leadership and management and all all the stuff in line. Why not change that so that we can fix the bureaucracy and get better pricing?

So on on that, I have one question. Okay, let me ask this question. Maybe you're going to have the same question. If if developers can do it cheaper for us, but we have to get the money for it, can how can we marry the two in this appropriation ask?

Well, I don't know about this this particular appropriation ask. I can tell you that we have we are we've currently adopted a stance in the past couple of years where we are looking to have developers construct our infrastructure. Now, there are rules that we have to follow, right? I we cannot just extract land. We cannot extract things that that we don't without paying fair fair value for. But uh through use of of impact fee credits and things like that, we are trying to accelerate in advance getting infrastructure put in that normally a developer may not have been required to and then also ensuring that they are putting in things. So I would have to look at this to to see if there's an angle that we can explore and I certainly will take that back prior to we bringing this to you. It's going to be uh Representative Maghard, then Jack, then Zack. Yes.

Thank you. Uh question for you. You you mentioned um you're going to widen this road anyway. Is this I mean,

well,

I don't we don't want to pay for a sidewalk and then you're going to tear it up because you're widening the road.

So, how are those correlating?

That's a good very good uh point. uh we will look at ways to widen the road in a way to avoid uh the existing infrastructure. Now how how we can do that you know it will be also a factor where we can minimize impact on local properties on uh environmental lands. So but we our effort will be to uh maximize the use of the existing infrastructure. Yeah, we won't tear it up.

And another a couple of comments I wanted to say. Um, and Representative Steel's aware of all of this. You know, we started a couple of years ago looking at our processes. I was on TED approps last year and you know, part of our job was to go in the Department of Transportation and say, "Hey, man, 20 years to build a roads crazy

cost amount of money. It cost to build roads crazy." And we're looking at different ways setting, you know, thinking outside the box how we're going to do this. We had an opportunity when we were in Washington DC last week to talk to Secretary of Transportation about the same thing on the Fed side. We understand what you're wanting to do, but what it takes for us to do that and lawyers in the world can't figure it out. And they are very aware and they're wanting to make a change. And I don't know if you want to call it deregulation or whatever you want to call it, but they're trying to figure out how to cut that what we've got ourselves into. You know, the problem is that we see, you know, especially I can speak for the state, none of us want $500 hammer come out and oh my gosh, the state paid for $500 hammers for this project and it somehow got past us and everybody's scared to death of that. So we put all these processes in and tie our hands, try to do a bid and only thing we did was add cost and add time to it and you know the way our state's growing every day we wait to do something the you know the the dollar amount goes up. So which makes it hard on bidding. You know you want us to bid for a road or do an interchange time it gets there that money is not even relevant.

We saw that on the Ridge Road. Um

so you know We have started looking at that uh because we have to I mean roads is when it's not insurance my number two calls is roads you know and and Pasco has been blessed that we've a lot of construction going on the bad part of this is a lot of construction going on there are some counties who don't have anything going on

so one day when this gets through we'll have some nice roads I mean 52 once that that's really nice driving that way uh and things. But um we we took our uh our time in Washington to talk about these processes, not oh, how can we get all this money? How can we cut all the red tape to get a project done quicker? You know, we saw what we could do during the hurricane when we put our mind to it and said, "Okay, we're going to we're going to stop all of this. We need to build this bridge today. We build a bridge in four months." Okay. So, it can be done right now. How can we take the layers off

all the way down the line to protect the citizens and their money,

but to get a project done quicker? So, on that note, what Kevin still representative still was talking about, we've been looking at this. We had our opportunity and I think, you know, timing is everything in our world. It seems like right now there are some times lined up to make some of these changes. So, you know, my recommendation to the county, reach out to the transportary uh transportation secretary and tell them the same thing. Let them hear it again that, you know, we got it takes too much to build a road. It takes too much to get a grant. Um, how can we cut that, help speed this process up, which in turns brings down the cost?

Can you briefly say how we um got the money to do four lanes of 56? I know there was a special state. It was a special state.

You You were an administrator there.

Yeah. Was we were

I mean I know it was it was partially it was it was a it was an elomeration of property owners uh who kind of fronted that went through and converted to a loan. Jeff, do you recall the exact

kind of state program?

Well, so well then Senator then Representative Burgess was working with uh with the county on this one. We what we did was it was a combination. I know the county, the city of Zephr Hills and the land owners got together and there was a state infrastructure bank loan like a S loan from the department of transportation cuz originally it was going to be two it was going to be two lanes and

we went to the people in Tallahassee and said the moment you do two lanes it's going to be too crowded and we're going to have to come back and do it again. So we uh through the department of trans the EP DOT we work with the county with the developers uh land owners and with the city of Zepher Hills who I think took 10% 10%

yeah 10% of the loan and together we were able to get that through for the four lane expansion.

Imagine if we were building those other two lanes today.

That was the original appropriation from um the original appropriation from speaker weather for that time.

Yes. Right. We took it and representative Bur just took that over when he took over the suit.

So just initially that road was going to be a full lane. It got switched to a two-lane. That's the start of the whole dialogue to make it happen. So working with the state and the county and the private sector made all that happen to make the right thing happen for the project to do in one shot.

So

um Okay, you wanted to bring up something. We got to move a little faster though, guys. I'm going to

This is This is like huge. So, I'm glad you're talking like Davis Bacon is a big thing for those costs, etc. Pay brick

drives up the cost of a bid, etc. dramatically. Uh, and then trying to monitor it all the way through.

Years ago, and and maybe you guys know this, maybe not, and maybe it's changed. I remember years ago, they made it a certain point where if you were going to go spend money as a county, and the threshold might have been a million, 2 million, 3 million, whatever the number was, that you had to go put it up for bid. You couldn't just do it internally. I will tell you that we can do side side sidewalk project and have done them in our county

and we can do them a lot cheaper than going out to the bid etc. This could have been one of those things but I don't know if we're limited because of the scope of the project to actually go do it. I don't know if you know that that rule is in place.

It's a good thing. Write that down. Let's um

cuz maybe you know it's sort of like we're looking at DOT raising the threshold of of certain vendors being able to build roads up to a higher dollar amount now instead of having the same guy. You know, it's cheaper to have a smaller guy do a $5 million and down project than it is bringing, you know, one of these big guys and they source it out anyway. So, we're going to be raising that tab up. So, maybe it's the same thing. We need to take a look at that what they can spend and raise that money up that we don't have to go out and you can do it yourself. So madam chair because I was going to give you the statute too if you want it.

Oh you got it.

Yeah. Yeah. So so for general public bidding I know you you were interested in this as well. It's Florida statute chapter 287. If you're looking at construction bids and public and public works bids that's going to be chapter 255.

Nice.

So those are the two chapters. But then representative

weight. Yeah. and I apologize. Um, we're coming in here with some knowledge that probably wasn't in the public eye. You know, meeting with the Trump team, every every secretary basically came forward and had long dialogue with us about what they want to do. And it is about cutting the red tape. So, we can we can actually reach out to that secretary and probably get them to overlook this just for this project. I mean, there's there's that kind of uh way, but just to give you a quote, this is from a a person who does concrete. did the quarter mile race that's over there off of uh what's the road anyways right down the street um it would be 10% less than 10% um of the budget that you're asking for

just just so you know

okay commissioner

wait u just

at at 3,000 PSI sorry go

so if y'all take a look at this um sheriff's departments don't have to have don't follow the procurement rules that counties have and the state allows allows that. So their procurements are streamlined. It doesn't take near the process. They don't have to use the clerk to manage their their monies. So maybe if there's a way for certain types of projects, say, you know, infrastructure projects, if the state would be willing to amend the language to allow streamlining of of of roads and storm water infrastructure and and and those kind of

the parameters around that were critical infrastructure projects. Um that would be that would be wonderful cuz the sheriffs they just they just get it done and it's like

well that's easy to do if you put language in there like it has to be marketable rates. Um that way if if it's excessive then you have some target to go back after um somebody's getting to it.

Yeah.

Let's work on it.

We spent this much time on $3 million. I don't know what we're going to do.

Thank you very much. broader concept.

Next time I suggest you have a map to put it in better context for those who don't know what's going on. Okay. Um people go fast too.

Okay.

Come on up whoever's next.

Yeah. Come on up Mike. Um next we have the Pas County Veterary Resource Center to meet our growing demands. Tell us a little bit more about it.

All right. Good morning. Uh my name is Mike Schumade. the director of animal services and uh this project is to build the uh veterary resource center. Um our shelter uh that we're currently operating out of was built in 2011. Uh it was prior to us uh taking on any additional mandates by the county such as our save 90 program which means we would become a no kill shelter. Previously we were a highkill shelter. We didn't invest a lot in veterary uh operations. Uh, our primary veterary operation was to spay and neuter, get them out the door, uh, alive if at all possible. Uh, since we've been a no kill shelter, we found a lot of new ways to operate, uh, save money, uh, partner with the community, do a lot of different things. But the core of all of that to operate under those situations is to have a very robust medical department. and we have invested through the county um uh heavily into our medical team. We used to have one vet, two vettees. We now have two full-time vets and seven vettees. And we produce quite a few surgeries for the public already uh through some uh programs, but this is primarily a veterary clinic, low low cost for the public. Um what we have found uh time and time again through different surveys is that some of the greatest needs of pet owners in Pasco County is affordable vetare. And uh we ventured into that just a little bit a few years back where we opened a vaccine clinic one day a week for 4 hours. It ran phenomenally. we booked it out uh months in advance and uh so we decided let's open a second day. Uh so we did and uh that revenue that we bring in has helped our budget of course but we've also seen thousands of of pets and being able to provide their uh basic veterary care such as vaccinations and and things like that. So, this is what we're looking to build. Um, to add on to our facility. Uh, and then also, uh, it's actually a two-story building. The upper part, uh, would be for administration. Uh, our current administration building is very small.

Yeah, it is.

We've pretty much uh remodeled some closets to make some more office space and pack people in there. Um, when I first got here uh 12 years ago, we had a staff of 32. We got staff 57 now. So we need some more space for that as well.

Madam Chair, Representative Steele has his hand up.

Yeah. Thank you. So are are you open to all who want to come?

Yes.

I'm I'm going to keep it very brief. I'm I'm I'm not typically vocal about this, but I think private sector I mean you're competing with local veterinarians, right?

Not necessarily. Um we had uh Dr. Carlos Campos who used to be on our uh advisory committee, we when we first were going to open the vaccine clinic, we we brought that up and he says, "Well, I don't think you're going to have to worry about that because your clients are not our clients." And uh basically they know that they have a good strong client base. We're not offering anything other than preventive veterary care. In other words, vaccinations and then sterilizations. Of course, uh we will venture into that for the public. Uh because one thing we've we've seen is the great need in our county for that. When we um went out with our senior services group for the meals on wheels and we took a survey with those people, they could barely even afford the food for their pets, much less the veterary care. And as we went through the two hurricanes recently and we packed out the shelters with animals, the conditions, health conditions of those animals was very poor. So much so that we had to go in and vaccinate some of them to even keep them there for the long period of time that we did after the hurricanes.

Is this is this the same uh project that you all asked for last year as We've been actually this is this is we've been trying to do this project for a long time.

Okay.

Yes.

What what's your and not not this but what's your total budgetary line item for the state

or the county?

For the county

or both project you mean?

Yeah. No, not not for this project. I mean like annually what are your costs?

Uh we're right at about 6 million now.

6 million.

Pretty low.

Okay. I'm going to try and keep us moving. Any more questions on this one?

All right. And you are welcome to tour. Actually, it's down the street.

Yes. Yes.

And you can see what what our situation is there. All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay. Next. Cine septic to sewer project.

All right. I'm Joseph Moa, utilities director. Um so C pines um subject to sewer conversion is one of um many projects that we planned um for the area as you all know um the priority is the priority of the state that um know reduce environmental degradation caused by algae bloom um and um nutrient loading to our groundwater. There we all depend on ground water um for our water supply but um a lot of pathogenic infection of our water resources is going to affect our primary source of drinking water. So this project is one of many the subject to sewer projects we planned. Um we identified this project as one of the feasible ones because it's very close to our central um PCO county central um seiwa system where we can easily make the connection. um he's going to remove about 229 parcels um within the sea pines area is going to benefit from this project and also reduce a nutrient loading of over a,000 um um pounds per year. Um this project is going to be um we we planning we're bringing this forward at this time because there's um storm water capital improvement project for the sea pines area and um we want to make sure we move this along with that project so that um it will mutually benefit both because we don't want to go back and redig um the places again. We asking for 6.5 million. The total project cost is 9 million. Um there's about 2.5 million that is going to be bought by home owners for the service connections on-site plumbing and pretty much to abandon their septic system. Um but of course if we can get the entire million we'll be glad

question. Yes.

How many homes are you

229 homes?

229.

Yes.

On the coast. Yeah.

You don't want any septic on the coast. Not a good good plan. Commissioner. So this is an area for 20 plus years. Every time there's a storm, I kind of start to stop my county, work down the coast. First place I'd always go to. The sea level is about 5 feet, goes down to 3 ft before it drains out to the Gulf in this whole sea pines area. We're on the last phase right now. I think we're almost at 100% design for the final phase, which will be an ask for storm water stuff. We've hesitated putting the septic sewer in because if it goes underwater, it's not going to work anyway. So we haven't done it. We haven't done the roads in there which is going to be another thing that we do later on um with this with this project as well. So between storm water septic to sewer and this um road project to come. It's going to change this whole neighborhood where the water's going to flow. It's going to protect the Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of America. Um and you're going to be able to take water as it's going to be treated before it gets released all the way through. It's the last part of a of a big project that's been going on for a long time. And again, there'll be an ask coming up just like we did last year for the uh storm water part, but that's coming right behind. And we've already bought the land we needed. We got developers to coordinate with us to help us. And all the easements and cooperation from the civic ass been done. So there's like the final part is this part right here.

Quick question. Uh you you'd indicated a couple of different things besides this project. How much are those other projects?

The storm water project I think is a total of 29 million. We need about 22. Uh the road project. I'm not sure what that is, but we're gonna we're going to take care of that after we do the septic sewer because you want to tear up the road and put the road in before that's done.

You have a ballpark on what that looks like.

Um Branford may know what the road is. Jason,

they're asking about how much

30 million.

So let's talk let's talk the storm water. So we'll get that out of the way, too. Let's talk.

Well, yes. Yeah. Let's go. Let's go to the storm water and then we'll talk about doing a road as well after these things are done.

Good morning everybody. Uh my name is Jace Michl. I'm the public works director. Thank you for um putting this together today and allowing public works to be here. Um we I if I could commissioner um I I just part of what I wanted to what I wanted to bring up to this um committee today was we just finished a stonewater master plan. Um the board was instrumental in helping us get that through. I I see chairman's looking at me like to speed it up. I know. But I I just want to I just want to make a a couple of quick points. Uh our storm water master plan has just been adopted by the board. Um in that we've identified 142 projects that need to get done throughout the county at a price tag of about $2.8 billion. It also listed 15 top priority projects that we ranked um our staff ranked along with our um third party consultant. Um and of those 15 projects, it's about $88 million worth of need. any of the storm water projects that you see today will all be on that 15 project list. Um we have about a4 to5 million annual budget for our capital program. So you can see the need that we have um for for our projects. So the projects that we bring to you today um the sea pines project is actually three projects that will um be done in in sequence. We have sepines what we call the feet and what we call seines local. Each one of those addresses the sea pines's area. It's going to take um up to about 80 houses out of the flood plane um and several thousand feet of road out of the flood plane. When I talk about that, it's the 10year. So, we all know now we're seeing these 10-year storms happen every year, right? So, this is a very dense area. Um a somewhat low to middle income area and also um an area that was built before Perminate. So, there's there's lots of obstacles that that they face there. Um and flooding is just one of them. So this will take some of the roads out of the flood plane, take some of the houses out of the flood plane and give the folks up there some relief. That's Cines.

Madam Chair.

Yeah.

One of the things when uh Comm Senator Simpson, Commissioner Simpson now was in office with Representative Mariano, they worked and they talked together about getting every single home out of the flood plane. And it's been a long time getting through that point, but it's all part of this whole process. and we've been buying land and gearing up for this project for quite a while.

Um Randy and I both served on the swift mud basin boards back in the day. Back in the day when we had no storm water fee and we watched our our swift mud money being used to fund storm water projects in other counties and it was the most frustrating thing to me to but we didn't have our 50% match so we didn't you were with Swift at the time. I don't know if you remember Jason from Swift, might be Randy.

Yeah, I do.

So, um, so yeah, we've got a lot of we got a backlog of storm water projects in this county that we've got to work our way through.

And, and chairman, uh, chairman, just so you know, Joseph and I are working closely together on these projects. So, um, Randy Magentioned earlier, smartly, he doesn't want us going in and doing a project, then going back and fixing sidewalks after we've already gone in, already implemented them. So, we're working together on these to make sure that we're being as efficient as possible. Yeah, we hate seeing that. Um, okay. Any more questions for this one?

No, just the road. We're going to get to the road cost or no. Is that not in this?

Do you know Do you know what the road cost going to be? The road's going to be done, but I don't Is the road cost in this project or is it after the fact?

It's after. Yeah. I don't I don't have those numbers with me now. Um, we're we're here mainly talk about storm water, but I could certainly get any road costs that that you would like.

I saw somebody raise their hand. Is it was it 30 million? You can just nod.

Yeah. Okay. Can I

Yeah. I'm just going to point out some things. You said it was 229 homes. I went out and just did a quick and I this is quick math. I just grabbed like 10 homes that were for sale and if we gave them full asking price the on the average price it's it's less than buying every home there. It's like $32 million to buy them all and make it a park.

Can I say I have tried that and tried that on Parkway. I even got special federal money cuz this Elers Parkway goes they're literally in the Anklet River. Um, we got a federal grant that would let them, we'd buy out their house, uh, 25% down payment, help or something, moving costs, and we got like four people who were willing to sell their house. We cannot foreclose.

It's not foreclosure.

I know you you have to condemn them or find a willing.

We're not We're not allowed to condemn them either,

right?

We have these rules that we have to follow. So, they have to voluntarily want to sell and they they probably won't because they're living on the water and they won't be able to replace that.

There's like half of them for sale right now. I just I Anyways, you can do it over time.

I would buy all that that we could

it it seems like it would save half. I mean, that's half the price to buy them all. But anyways, I'm just

I was trying to condemn.

Well, I don't want to. So, that's a dictatorship and I'm not a dictator. I think that we we sit down and work with people and and tell them the problem that's that it's causing

and hey, their tax their taxes are going to go up when when we do this and it's going to go up to instead of paying $3,000 a year in taxes, you're going to pay 10,000 cuz that should not be spread across the county.

Th those costs should be spread across that area and no other area. And if you do that, they're going to realize they can't afford to live there anyways after you fix it. So you either you either work with the people up front and let them know that taxes are going to go through the roof, which is realistic. I shouldn't pay when I live in Date City for their issue on the water. And so I'm not sure we can do it like that unless we did we did a

MSTU for just that area.

BU

MSBU.

Yeah.

There's a lot of loops we have to go through legally.

I mean, what' you say?

You'd have to do it as a special

assessment. And I'm not trying to be leveraging people, but at the end of the day, I should not be paying

because I live in Pasco County for somebody who wants to live on a water and has septic leakage and it's it's ruining our aer and our waterways. I mean, I I passed a bill to to have this process go through and we put funding into those ecosystems to fix them. And so, I'm I have no problem doing that, but but you know, people should pay their fair share where they live.

Yeah. So, I wanted to clarify. I'm not sure what numbers figures you're using, but um the 229 the total project is 9 million. So that will give that will put it at about 39,000.

But then the road and and the the water uh flow and everything else that we talked about that was 29 million plus 30 million for for the roadway and then 9 million for your project.

So storm water I believe have some funding, right?

Joseph, uh

I don't want to go down rabbit holes. I'm just throwing out thoughts. Can I just just to clarify I just want to just say that the the project that you would hear in a few minutes on storm is more of a storm water project than a road paving project. Um that that project is and I I fully appreciate what you're saying. The the project does have a lot of water quality benefits as well um for any of the water leaving that site heading into the Gulf. Um there would be some water quality benefits there, but it's mainly a storm water project for three fairly large neighborhoods. Um, okay. So, we'll keep moving. Thank you. Yeah.

Okay. Beacon Square Flood Abatement.

Oh, this is Flood. Who Who's on this one?

Come on back.

All right. All right. So, again, just uh real quick, Jason Mikl, uh, public works director. Um, this this project is is part of those 15 that I mentioned. Um, we have three projects here today, I believe, that you'll be seeing and considering. Um, this is this one again, densely packed neighborhood. uh low to moderate income families. These these are areas that were built prior to any permitting. So, you know, the the the storm water systems in them don't necessarily um perform like they should uh given a new storm water system that would be a a post-p peritting project. So, these are areas that that see a lot of flooding. Uh as I mentioned, we have about $2.8 billion worth of projects throughout throughout the county that we need to address. The three that we brought to you today um as part of this process are three that are on the west side um that are currently have either no funding or only minimal funding for an early phase of them. Um and we feel that being on our top 15 list, these are three projects that we wanted to bring to your consideration. This one in particular has conveyance improvements um has roadway improvements to get get the road out of the out of the flood plane and then also has uh water quality benefits. There's some lowering of the storm water pond that'll allow some attenuation for longer periods of time for the water to let some of the um pollutants um attenuate and then also some of the swelles um will also give it some more time to attenuate. So that all discharges off to the Gulf um into waters of the state. So we think we can we can help flood improvements here and then also um water quality improvements with this. And if you if you are uh one of those people like I was going to say Commissioner Moore, what's a commissioner? Always a commissioner. Commissioner Moore where he likes to fish. This is the water that goes to where that big fishing hole is right there across from where my house is into the bayou right there. It comes right down that creek by uh Eagle Eagle Park and

Yep.

that's what's contaminating all that. And we know that high quality um fresh water leading to brackish water um helps with fisheries.

Yeah.

Yes.

Not not to this. I want to first apologize. I was not calling you a dictator. Uh Commissioner Starky. So if it came across that way, I did not mean it that way. I want I want to clear the record on that I could get through.

I want to clear the record, but go ahead. Sorry, that was it.

No. Uh no, but you know there's people choose to live in places where they shouldn't. poison

and then we all pay the price for it because we they have that option to stay and then our our first responders have to go in and save them when they shouldn't be there.

Put them in harm's way.

Okay.

Sure.

Any more questions on this one?

I was just going to recommend while he's up. Go ahead and do the other two.

Yeah, let's do it.

Cuz you have this is under no order so

you might as well go ahead or I can just see you keep running.

Thank you. Appreciate that. That's good. It fits my broader narrative. Um, you should have double hammock north in your in your list somewhere.

I'm not sure if it made it to your presentation or not.

No, it probably didn't because there were there were again, as Joanna mentioned, that matrix if if they weren't uh geared up or we had other means that we felt we could fund them or they were outside of the sweet spot of of where we thought appropriations would be. So, I think this is your last one for for public works. Jason, sir, thank you.

All right. Thank you.

All right.

All right. Do you Thank you.

Oh, and Judge Crane is here. Who's speaking on this?

Sure. Well, actually, I I I will start. I could have um uh Chief Judge talk a little bit about it, but this was uh this was brought up uh there are a number of security issues as we know at the uh at the East Pasco um uh judicial center as well as a need for for facility upgrades. Um and so those those come with a with a higher price tag. I I think and I don't want to put any words in Judge Crane's mouth, but I I know there are just some concerns perhaps over the timing of how this how this can be because, you know, this board has uh looked favorably upon potentially going to the uh to the public to seek general obligation bonds to construct an expanded criminal courthouse uh facility. And so um you know, there's there's some timing issues that that come with that, but we know that today. I know this board has seen security issues, takes that very seriously with the judges. Um, of course, if we built a central courthouse, they may negate some of the need uh for those. I I think that's what Judge Crane wants to wants to speak about. Nevertheless, we won't know that until October, November of next year as as well. So, uh, this this project would simply fix the security issues, but also provide some expansion as well as some renovations if this facility were to become a civil courthouse uh, in in in the future and and move away from criminal. So, Judge Crane,

no, I appreciate it. Thanks, Sean Crane, chief judge of the uh, sixth judicial circuit. I want to thank you all for your time and and for being here. Um, you know, being a lawyer, I'll just try to make this as quick as I can. Um, Madam Chairperson, um, uh, I want to thank you all and and specifically Commissioner Joerger for recognizing the security and the importance of security for judges. Um, we have, and this is kind of a precursor to what I think they're going to hear in Tallahassee a little bit about this as well. Um, uh, the threats against judges have increased, uh, significantly over the past few years. And I mean direct threats where people are showing up at judges houses um and things like that. And um uh they're they're doxing them. They're sending uh you know $350 worth of pizzas to their house in the name of Judge Salace's. Judge Salace is a judge from New Jersey whose son answered the door for what he thought was a uh FedEx uh delivery man was shot dead on the on on her doorstep. Her husband then came to his aid, was shot as well, but survived. And they're and they're sending away around all these pizza orders, for instance, just to the personal homes and judges just to let them know they know where you live. And um by the way, we're sending it in the name of the dead son. Uh so these people are uh we've had judges literally have somebody show up on their front porch after they made a ruling. I can speak of that case because that person is now in state prison. uh who uh did that in in an effort to uh uh do harm to that uh to that judge who at this point in time is single and she was in great fear obviously of uh of her well-being when the person showed up on her front porch. Fortunately, she was at a bar event and uh we were able to uh take care of that situation. Uh so yeah um I can tell you that it was it's of such importance that they uh put me at the end of the judicial conference this year the last spot before everybody went home which we all know is the great spot to have and the room was packed with uh with circuit judges from around the state and a Supreme Court justice that wanted to hear about security and I had the good fortune to be asked to lecture about that to those judges and the importance of that. I can tell you Pasco County and Penllis County ought to be very proud because we are the gold standard for security as far as elected officials including judges because we have what are known as threat management teams here within our circuit both and Sheriff Nako needs to be certainly praised for that. In other words, if there is a direct threat directed at as you all probably already know at an elected official or including judges, they will respond to that direct threat. And that is uh that is very very important. Threats inside the courthouse as well. I mean uh some of the uh events that have occurred within the courthouse, some of which I cannot speak of because they are still pending criminal matters. But be that may I can tell you that there are many I don't know if I should say many.

I just got a a text this morning from um from uh Captain Rock with the Pasco County Sheriff's Department about some incident that occurred yesterday over in Dade City. Uh so um it is it is a growing problem. When I asked about a month ago uh Captain Rock how many threats they've investigated against the judges, the number was, if memory serves, either 26 or 29 threats that were credible enough for them to investigate. And these are direct threats. We know where you live. We know where you work. We know where your wife works. We know where your kids go to school. And you know what? They're right about all of it. And that is a scary thing when they can say, "I know your kid goes to this school. I know when they go. I know they walk there. I know this. I know that." I mean, it is, you know, it can be uh a thing that certainly rattles rattles our folks to the core. So, increasing our security certainly in East Pasco is is a good thing. I think the timing and you know, this is going to come as a surprise to all of you that I'm I'm normally like, "Let's go go go." We may want to just take a step back. And the reason I say that is literally when I leave here, I will meet with a design team to build a courthouse including security issues in Penllis County. So I am going to learn one. I'm sorry.

Didn't they just get one recently?

Yeah, we we're fixing to build a brand new uh civil courthouse down there. Civil and uh civil and family courthouse down there at that new government complex compound right right there on Arton Road. And um so I'm I'm fixing to learn a lot about this stuff and I may be able to bring some pretty good value to you all because you're going to get it for free, you know. And like I said, literally I'm meeting with these folks at 10:00. The design people h the design people were going to design that courthouse today at 1:00 at the courthouse to walk through and talk about security and what security is kind of offered, you know, now as as we move forward, you know, what are the things that we offer for that. And let me give you for instance in when some of the presentations were made all of the lights in the new courouses and every in the new buildings are all LED. Well, if there's an active shooter, they can hit a button and it'll turn all the lights a certain color so everybody knows, you know, you you need to take this certain action because there's an active shooter in the building

and that and and you don't need to make phone calls. It'll shut down all the all of the elevators. I mean, all these sorts of things that'll do. If there's a fire, all the lights turn red. You know what you have to do because there's now there's a fire. I mean, little things like that. But, uh, I guess my point is I may be able to bring some real value to this uh, in the future as far as how that money should be spent and and and how it could be best spent, especially in light of the fact that we may be hopefully uh, building that central uh, complex uh, that central courthouse right here. right here. Literally right here.

Um, Judge Craney, if I could um ask you a question, just getting back to what this says here. If I'm not mistaken, you've come to us and told us that the judges and the prosecutors mix with the defendants because of the setup of our courthouse.

Correct. They're they're they're all together,

which is not

absolutely correct. Absolutely. That is absolutely true. And um you know, as I said, we've had judges literally turn out of their offices and run right into somebody who's on trial for first-degree murder.

So, part of this I mean, this would help fix those.

This would help fix that. And but but the difference is where I may be also of good value to you all is what we do in a in a family civil courthouse may be a bit different than what we do in a criminal courthouse just because of flow of inmates, for instance, and that sort of thing. things we don't need to worry about in a civil family courthouse. But I may still be able to bring, like I said, some of that. And if you don't think I'm going to be asking some questions about a criminal courthouse, you'd be way wrong uh to try to pick some brain for free.

But this is for the courthouse in Date City.

This is for Dade City only. Yes.

Um any Jonathan?

Yes. U Thank you, your honor. Um you mentioned uh the are your judges not protected by public the public records exemption laws?

That is a great question. And as a matter of fact, I'm in the process of presenting that to the new Supreme Court Security Committee and I've I've been on the phone with Lance Day who's the chief judge up in the fourth who's chairing that. There is a difference between rule 2.420 Florida rule of judicial administration and 119. And what what I mean by that is they are not necessarily consistent. If you ask the clerk, if if I get sued right now, which unfortunately as chief judge happens, even though I don't know anything about the case, but I'm the chief, um, what happens is I have to make a special request. They don't automatically take my my information out if somebody puts my home address on there. They don't automatically excluded. It should be, but it's not because what the clerks will tell you, and this is both in Penelis and Pasco because I've checked, we go under rule 2.420, not rule not 119 for that. Now 119 generally, but then specifically if there's a situation that comes up where the judge is listed, the judge needs to specifically ask for their name to be removed from the public record on that, which seems to me to be absolutely inconsistent.

So, we're going to be So, we're going to be kind of kind of working through that. I've actually got um uh a memorandum I'm going to submit to both the security committee and the um civil rules committee to uh to address that inconsistency.

So the so would the rule be so it would it just be a rule change versus a legislative change?

It it it could almost be kind of both to some extent, but certainly it would be I'm looking the the easiest route for me would be a rule change as opposed to a legislative change. Um, and that being said, if I can get that through and they and then the clerks will recognize that, then I'm going to be then we'll be good to go there.

Okay.

Represent.

Are you good, John?

Represent.

Well, thank you. I've been hearing about this courthouse since 2019, the day I was elected.

Well, it's been 24 years we've been talking about it.

Well, what bothers me about it is I've been hearing the same thing on safety. It bothers me that what since I've known about it, you can't solve. I understand we got to remodel. I understand all that. But you can't solve how inmates come into that courthouse that they don't want to mingle.

Well, and they don't want

It's hard for me to grasp as many doors are in that building. You can't build a cage somewhere outside. You can't build a cage somewhere to temporarily solve that problem instead of us always got to build a building.

It's it's actually the flow. It's actually the flow through the courthouse. It's that way.

There's got to be a way. There's got to be a way. I've been hearing about it since 19 and I have nobody's ever brought me a proposal that said, you know, here's what we need to do to fix it now to somebody's life. Only thing I hear is we got to build a new building. It's all I ever hear. We got to build a new building. We got to build a new building. But you know what? We got people's lives in jeopardy. We can't find a way to put that money to solve that.

We we've already been we've actually already been working on that. I think we'll let that. And then I have who did I have next? Representative Steel. and then after back to Mr. Joerger.

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

Andrew Baxter, facilities management director for Pasco County. Pleasure to be here with you all. So, uh, Representative Mangard, um, there are solutions and that is part of what we're talking about here that can be done to create basically man traps within the flow. And the chief judge was absolutely correct. It really is a flow issue within this building. When it was originally designed, there is only one corridor within the entire back side of the of the judicial side of the uh of the building. That is a shared corridor between inmates and judges. This is not the typical design of a criminal courthouse in today's uh day and age. In a modern courthouse, there are three corridors separate and distinct from one another. Public, judicial, and criminal. And they never inter intermix with one another. And so that is a limitation of the design of this building that will hopefully be corrected by some of these safety improvements that we're talking about.

Frankly, civil also has some safety issues sometimes, too.

Oh, yeah. Correct.

No question.

Yeah. Okay. Uh, Representative Steel,

ladies first. Right.

Okay. Commissioner Steel. So, one of the reasons I kind of wanted to see if we could tackle this was because that I believe, don't quote me on this, but it was like 232 million or something like that to to build the new courthouse. And I'd heard that it's always it's on the budget every year, right? And and to me, that's an elephant. So, I'm like, how do you need an elephant? So, um one of the things I thought of was just making renovations to make this safer, right? And if we could do that, then it would buy us some time. You know, when you're talking about Penllis and how they're going to do things, that was my my feeling on this. Let's let's let's keep the courthouse there. Let's help those small businesses in Dade City, you know, let's just make the improvements, make it safer. Uh my brother was a prosecutor. The death threats are real, the jail house phone calls, the gangs, all of it. So, um, I know just from a a family standpoint what that looks like and it's terrifying

and we're very very appreciative of that. And like I said, my my whole thing is maybe just to buy a little bit of time on this and we were and and just so you know the uh the court improvement fund. We use that. We we were told kind of by passports to save that money to pay for the furnishings and everything if we do have the new the new courthouse. So, so the new courthouse also would be obviously because just of the growth we have in Pasco County is is obviously significant and it'll extend the life of the two side courouses exponentially if we did have just one central like like like we said like they do in Penllis, one central criminal complex and it's like you all drove here today. It's it's not hard to get to the central part of the county if this is where we're going to have criminal trials and that sort of thing. we can get here. And once again, thank goodness for the Ridge of Extension

for that.

Representative Steel.

Well, it's more of a statement than it is a question. Um, I think we should change the law.

Um, going to your point, I think it'd be probably faster than than having some rule change. And then we can increase the penalties and fines for any threat, whether it's credible or not, for anybody that's in, you know, I I've gotten threats. So,

we had bombs. Our our address is not suppressed.

Um, and neither is anybody that's in.

It can be now, though. Well, yeah, but I think it's a little late. I'm not moving. So, the reality is it's out there. So, uh you know, and I'm talking about at my at my gate. I've had people drive into my yard and knock on my door. So, it's and I I live a quarter of a mile back on my own private driveway. It's not close to the road. So, um anyways, I think

No, your point is perfect. I mean,

we can increase the fines, you know, make it a make it a a tangible uh fine and charge so that they they're not they're not just walking around. They're in jail for what their threat was and then they they have time to think about the consequences of what they did. So

anyways,

yeah.

Yeah. And we had a case that's been resolved. I was threatened. We were threatened here. The I sent it to Hillsboro. The judge the defendant then threatened to kill the judge and his wife. It was then sent up to Hernando and eventually the case was resolved. But

charging with terrorism,

treason to the country.

Thank you. We're moving on. Thank you, judge.

Thank you. And by the way, repres I'd love to meet with you on this and and in any way offer any help I can as far as getting that taken care of.

I'm all about that. And the reality is, you know, I'm glad you guys are added to that now as well.

So, anything I can do and I can answer any questions I'd like to meet with you about anything about the courthouse. Any questions you may have without Representative Five years,

show it give him a tour.

Okay, we are on the East Pasco emergency shelter. Thank you, Judge. Yep. So, this is a a facility that would be done in coordination with parks um on the east side of the county that would serve not only as a recreation facility uh in coordination with Dade City with supplying some matching funds, but also serve as an emergency shelter to the east side of the county. this uh this multi-use facility uh would also house some veterans programs um and a few other county services, but uh really this would provide something similar to what we currently know as the Fano Regional uh emergency shelter uh but for the east side of Pasco County, which did receive so many uh needed uh evacuees during these last storms and it was really important that we uh that we bring this forward. Uh and it can by having it as a multi-purpose facility. It really brings a lot of functionality every day of the week, not just during a storm.

And and what's great is it's a a joint project between county and city. We already have the property. I know Keith Wley's here. Uh Representative Steel.

Um this is kind of like on task but off task. How many empty schools do we have in in Pasco County that we're don't have kids going to? We don't have any. We're growing.

Well, they're they're renovating some, so they move them to other schools.

Do we have anybody here from the school board?

I think there's two or three that are

I was going to say I know

that are not being used at all.

Yeah, was sold. Um, I can tell you we've been working with the school district to try and use some some

capacity and some maybe not school schools that were empty. um for a community or county daycare program and they don't have any because

it just it seems like you know that's a a waste to to not use it for something like this instead of selling it if we're going to put $50 million $40 million out for a building we already have something that meets those requirements.

Andrew, can you talk about the key differences between this shelter and what we would use for schools, special needs, etc.? There's there's some key differences. Your point is well taken but there are there are some differences.

Yes. So this type of a shelter and I do understand uh in a school environment when we do have a storm all of the schools become shelters and but this is a a facility that is purposed and with the with the knowledge that it would also support a park um a recreation center that is needed in the downtown Dade City area. Um and so this this dual functionality um that would be received in this facility is really specific to this area um where the need is. And so in Dade City there is a middle school and an elementary school um a block away less than a block away um from where this would be located. This would be uh in support of those community groups. afterchool activities could could be supported here every day of the week and then during an emergency it is centrally located on high ground. It really we already have the land so there's no land investment here. Um what we really uh would be looking for is a is just really it's more of gymnasium to serve the community uh every day of the week and then an open area to be able to support emergency operations and to support just a community relief during those emergencies. But these additional dollars would be for hardening against a a cat five type event. Unlike your typical school, except for your high schools, most of your other schools are not they're not category 5. And when you have a community shelter, similar to the Fano shelter, you're able to handle special needs folks which require additional space. They require additional support. And so a facility like this, the community portion, you know, the board is already we're already making progress towards towards trying to meet that. It's really the hardening of the facility against cat 5 and flooding. That is what the dollars would be used for.

And and we use um we use the Visano shelter uh that's the first shelter to open and the last shelter to close. And so we don't want to shut down a school u you know all the laws that are go what's Marcy's law.

Well there's there's tremendous pressure at the as soon as the as soon as the storm clears that we get the schools opened uh you know and get kids back in the classroom. That that's always it's always the challenge. Um, so yes, having dedicated shelter space and is is at a premium because we still

wait then more than Joerger.

That's fine. I'll answer questions.

Since Commissioner Oakley isn't here, what we learned I understand where you're going.

It's empty schools like

but what we what we learned just general comment with with the shelter. What we what we learned during the the storms especially the flooding on the east side

folks. So we had Wesley Chapel District Park that was open for a long the extended duration. Uh what we what folks were struggling with um to come and stay at West Chapel District Park was the district was the distance in which they they were away from their home and the time it took. So people in Trilby and Luchi or down in Crystal Springs, they didn't want to be 25 30 minutes away from from their home. They just weren't comfortable in it because of that. It it put folks in in in a rough spot. They were afraid to to leave. And even though we provide transportation, I mean, if you're going to be in a shelter, Wesley Chapel District Park is the place is really the place to be. But folks um were apprehensive to take advantage because of the the distance they were away from their home. And we learned that by walking and talking with folks in the shelter that initially there was quite a few folks there, but they were jonesing to get out and get back home and and and and be closer to to where they were. And so folks folks struggled and they they rode through a storm and it was it was a dangerous time for them. It was a dangerous time for our first responders. So definitely a community shelter type space further east east of of you know or 301 corridor is I think is is needed and something else whenever we open up the schools when the schools shut down we we discuss this means the sooner the schools shut down and there's always seems to be a push now with overpreparedness with schools that means lunches and breakfastes stop being served and that's thousands and thousands of kids who go without meals for however long period of time. And that that's just troublesome.

And also what we put in there is the folks who have you know uh the the um sexual predators are co-mingled at wire grass too

and that just creates a whole a whole thing. So sometimes coordinating with the school district can be a bit cumbersome even though they're pretty decent partner. But just something to think about as we look look for opportunity for a storm storm shelter on the east side. So, Madam Chair, if I can I interject real quick and I would Rep. Maggie, you might want to jump in on this as well. I think one of the important things to to point out here is that not only is this a a community shelter, a special community special needs shelter. This is going to be one of the very few that can be used by the state and statewide as well. So, you could have a hurricane on the east coast of Florida and we need to get people out of there. Guess what? This is a state facility, right? that Pasco County is utilizing and using. Right. So, there's such a I think there's only about four right now maybe um that could be used in a statewide

restaurant sports campus. Yes.

Well, I I meant as a statewide facility that's designated as a special needs shelter to be used statewide being one of them.

But, um Commissioner Weman brought up a great point. If you remember the past hurricanes and how they utilized those schools, you had so many special needs people, for example, Wesley Chapel High School.

Oh, that and that was a disaster. You had people from nursing homes coming from the west side of the county, right, with not enough staffing, not enough people. I was actually there helping them. My wife as a nurse stepped up and volunteered. I was out there when I was a county commissioner putting on Facebook, we need help to help these poor residents that don't have enough staff.

Getting 34 extra people out there, 40 people, you know, non-medical people that are being trained like that to help, you know, with ADLs and help these poor people that are bedbound. And um so it's again, just to reiterate, it's not it's not just a community shelter. It's something that can be used statewide. And one of the things that represented Maghard stress during this process last year was this. If there's a hurricane, I don't care if it's in the panhandle or the Keys or wherever it is, if there's something going on in this facility, there's a sports league or something while it's not being used, that gets shut down right then and we're moving those people in. So, I don't know if we would have

okay

elaborated at all. I think I hit the nail on the head, but

this has been a conversation of the senators and I for some time. It's always it was always crazy for us to be in the east have to ship people to the west towards the storm. It made sense. So we we have been ship them towards

we have been talking we looked at the old armory downtown date city. Okay since they're going to be moving to suffer hills. Is there a chance to do something with there? Well it's too small and the cost outweighed what it cost for us to build one. We tried to partner with uh Metropolitan Ministries wants to build a something like this around here, but where they want to build it is is where Wesley Chapel Park is. Well, I don't need another one there, right? They didn't want to come our side. Uh we've been looking probably since 20 about this. Where can we do? Where can we go? What can we do to do this to bring these in because we have a fairly large and you understand that 34% of yours is elderly. We got to ship them towards the storm. Doesn't make sense. So, we've been looking on this side for some time. We've looked at doing something at the airport. Uh but at the end of the day, it came up um um where this seemed to be most feasible for what we were trying to accomplish. And Mike was right. You know, we looked at this as a statewide center. Um, it's going to be sort of modeled after the fac. It's just not for you to come stay and sleep and leave. You got a if you got a need it, we're there to provide it for you. So, this is where this really comes to play. And actually, Danny and I have been trying to be honest. Cards on the table. Hey, we're getting ready to be seniors. We only got a short time to get this done. you know, so we're trying to get this and leave Pasco County with something to have after we're gone for our citizens at this area grow. We're still growing and and and the population is still growing and things of that nature. We talked about working with hospitals. How can we use a hospital, but you can't shut down most of the hospitals because they're growing. They're building on because they don't have empty sections. You know, Dade City at one time had a whole wing there was nothing going on with. Well, now they've revamped everything. they're full and they've got an add-on.

So, we've been trying to find options. So, this is what we came up with. Pasco was wanting to partner with us because we wanted it not to set empty the other times of the year. We wanted to be used for something. But the main point was when there was a storm, it was the states. We take it over and we let we need to do what we need to do. So, there was the thinking and mindset how we got here. And I think Madam Chair, one more thing if you don't mind. Some some other resources will be housed there as well, especially during the storms. Um that's important too. You know, when we have these hurricanes, there's such a need for, you know, for a spot for people to for permitting or veteran services. Um you know, all those things can be house housed there during the during those times where it's easy for those people to get to. Um, so I don't know if you want to elaborate on that at all about some of the other services that you talked about could be housed there for the community needs.

Yeah, I mean obviously making these centers as as flexible as possible. I know there was discussion of of VA or the veteran services was going there. Andrew, do you recall other other instances? Um, VA would be the only one in the building that we were going to consider. Um but we would have to relocate on the campus some of our other resources that we have on as other buildings on that same campus.

So true multi-purpose facility.

But ultimately it's it's a it's a building that is truly built. If you think about how the Fisano shelter has been used, you know, when we had hurricane Michael or Ian, the state used both the the Fano shelter in both of those events to help residents from both of those affected areas to come to Pasco. Um, and we housed them and we supported the state's mission there to to ensure that those residents that were in those deeply devastated areas were able to have a safe place. when hospitals in in those locations are unable to operate because of the features and functions in this special needs shelter um that we have in Pasano and then what would be here in Dade City um it would enable us to really support those type of functions if a hospital were to be unable to operate um this basically becomes a hospital setting and those are some of the special features and functions that are built into the building um that are really you know there's oxygen generation on site Um th those are those are special functions and features that are are necessary to be able to create one of these type of facilities.

Um comm Commissioner Joerger then we're going to go back to Steel then we're going to go to Jonathan then we're going to go to Mariana.

One of the things just for our delegation if you've not visited the Pano Center I would I would say that's a must before you like when you consider this project because like Andrew said there's oxygen I mean there's the there's critically

premier is there. Yeah, critically needy people. They have doctors, they have nurses. Um, right now we're working on a designated area for the deaf and the blind. So, um, when when storms come that there's a designated area for them where there's braille and and tablets and things like that. But also, the second part is like Rep. Kennedy called me. It was like 9:00 at night and she's like, I have 299 people that need shelter and they're all very high need and we were able to accommodate them. So, so this is also, you know, another another tool in our toolbox to help accommodate those those critically needy. But the Visano shelter, like I said, I encourage everybody to go to go see it because it's truly fascinating. I mean, it's it's a it's a it's a hospital and um the Department of Health does an amazing job hosting it. I can't say enough about them.

Representative Steel,

I appreciate it. I Everybody's looking at me. I'm I'm not I was just pointing at, you know, empty space and trying to open up opportunities, not not saying no to this or or sh, you know, being negative towards shelters. So, I just want to make sure I clarify that. Um when where is the land at that we're talking about? Um you you're local. So Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Okay.

Um that's basically where we where we're thinking right there.

Okay.

Where the old Jackson Memorial Hospital used to be.

And and when did when did the county buy that?

We've owned that. Well, Jackson Memorial Hospital used to be a county hospital.

Um so that entire block, that's a county-owned land that has been there for

decades and decades.

Did you want to see?

Awesome. And then just the capitalist in me are is there revenue generated when you know by by having this facility for different events?

I'm sure there is. I'll I'll ask my counterpart from parks and w to come on up and speak to that part.

You're doing fantastic, Mr. Baxter. Uh good morning, Keith Wy, director of parks, recreation, natural resources. um you know like with most park facilities there's going to be some revenue generation opportunities but it's not probably going to offset the ent you know the entire operation to be uh fully transparent. So you have your uh as Andrew said you're going to have your weekly your daily programs. There should be if the design if there's enough space you could design u a community event space to hold those community activities. Um but the mission of of at least Pasco's commission is to provide those to be affordable. So it's it's not like the primary mission is to make money necessarily. So

So some revenue

I'll ask you more questions later on. I don't want to take this place.

We mess we messed up and I I would say Commissioner Mariano was pushing for it. And I if I had been a commissioner at the time, I would have given you those two what? Two feet you needed.

Three feet. Yeah.

Three feet. If we'd made the roof higher at Vano, then when we weren't using it as a hurricane shelter, we could have had basketball and volleyball in there and really helped that community out. So, that was a real sad day.

That's easy to fix.

Yeah, we'll raise that roof. I was just thinking about that actually. We'll have to see how much that cost.

Can't fix it now.

Just just blocks.

Jonathan,

so uh represent I know you mentioned that there and there have been schools that are closing. I just looked up the proposed mergers for some. Well, the problem is they're all they're all on the west side of the county and with the growth we're experiencing over on the east side, I think. So, wire grass is about 140% capacity. So it it's it you are correct. Absolutely correct. There are schools that are perhaps with this merger I think it's cha Chasco Kousa although problem is there are in Newport they're a Newport they're on the Newport Reggie side. So

yeah there's some there's some on this side but and I and I'm I'm not trying to make that as an argument. I just was idea guy throwing out ideas. That's it.

No I love it.

So

all right after that I had Commissioner Mariano. So, in going through all these hurricanes for all these years and and last summer driving around Dade City, Zephr Hills,

driving taking my GPS that tells me to go here, there, and I can't go here because I got water on the road. Water on the road on the road.

Then with Helen and Milton coming in, uh, with all the storm water that's in area with Luchi goes what, a mile and a half out of its banks.

Mhm. So you get all those homes that while we're recovered, even on the west side now, everybody in the east side's still buried and can't get back into their homes. Having this facility would be a place where they can go and stay even after the schools are long open and go. And if you got people that maybe they can't live in their houses being gutted, etc., but you got some people that need extra care, now you get a place for them to stay. And if it goes along that way, it's going to be a much better life. And if anybody else in the in the region needs something else for the state, that's a great benefit, too. But the multi-use portion of this facility is great. I mean, it's Lazano is a a negative heartburn like it could be could have been so much more. We actually have a a team from uh Florida Coast football and a Tampa team that want to come up and actually introduce them into a soccer now that looked at it. So, we're going to work on that. But having this multi-use facility as well as taking these people that in case these flood banks get full again, you can't get into your home, they get a place to go instead of going across county. And it's hard enough getting people to go 15 miles, never mind going 30 miles. So, it is such a big thing. What I'd like to know is if from the from the reps in the room, uh side as well, how come this only got a little bit of funding like 25 grand and then nothing? I mean, what what happened with that up there? I don't I don't get it.

That was a placeholder, I think.

Yeah. I mean, when you look at that, when you you know, we had an interesting budget here and the 25 grand for us, right? And it doesn't appear that way to the rest of the world. Sometimes that's the bad thing for us with our messaging. We can't explain every move.

Representative Maghard, could you move your microphone closer, please?

Thank you.

Um, so the idea was for the 25 is to keep it as a placeholder since we wasn't going to get all the money for last year. It is easier for us as a state if there's money for the project when we go back. It's already there for us at whatever that dollar amount may be, right? So when you get down to the last 24 hours of the 101st day and you're trying you're figuring out where you're going to land, you we always try to leave something there to leave. I hate to use the word placeholder for $40 million, but a placeholder whatever the dollar amount. So when we come back this year, we've already got something staffing, right? Um so that was the point of it. No, the governor turned around vetoed it. Whatever. That's always out of our control. But that was a thought when we found out we could not get what we thought we were going to get because of the changes that happened in the last week and especially the last 24 hours. So the argument was can we get something in there as a place for us to have so it's so much easier for us on going forward this year. And that was the idea. And I I will say this was my 12th legislative session up there and this was the most peculiar session I've ever I've ever been a part of. It was particularly in the budgeting process. It was it was peculiar.

We'll leave things unsaid here. Um

G.

Yes. So, uh really good discussion. Something I want to add that I that I brought up last year was that um there's several things that are happening here that are kind of causing this. Uh I think Representative Maghred called this out. So the parks master plan calls for a recreation complex to occur in northeast uh Pasco County. The city of Dade City is also in the process of considering renovating the James Irvin complex. And we know we need a shelter on the east side. So uh this I think that the concept of joining all those uses is a good is a good approach to making sure that we're not pursuing anything that's overly wasteful. Um, and if we can get it right, like Commissioner Mariana says, we can we can have an activation plus also a weekday basketball program without any issues. So, um, and I I have my legislative aid, Katie, who's been working with the school district trying to find an empty school. Well, you wanted to say what's going on with uh the school we thought was empty. And uh,

they're shuffling schools around. So, while school's being renovated, it's moving into where Kousa is cuz Kousa dispersed. So, that's going in there. Um, there's another school and it's the name is skipping me right now, but they have plans for it, but they haven't announced it yet, so they wouldn't tell us what they were doing with it, but they have zero space.

And so, they closed Alers's Elementary and and but they turned that into a What is the program they're having at Alfers Elementary?

The mini pilock.

Yeah, mini lock.

That was a early education program that they were using half

something else in them. We're trying to get a school. Trust me, we're trying to find

some of the schools also, they said that they don't have enough room here over at district. So, they're moving offices and storage and they're just making use of whatever buildings they have. So, they don't have anything that's empty and available.

That's what we found. So,

did you want to I think part of the problem is is and I don't want to say it's a problem is they are moved into charter or they're moved to private before it's even an option for a county to have access to it. So, it's it's several reasons. I but there are I think there's a couple of them. I don't think there's just one.

We're we're continuing to

Yeah. No worries.

One more thing I mentioned that one one of the great things we did with the Fano shelter um and actually with five high school stores when we started allowing pets to come in.

It was a big move to get people out of their homes.

That's just another thing that can help with the people not have to worry about their pet know it's going to be able to be taken care of while they're rebuilding their lives. I have a favorite picture of one of the hurricanes um that Ray Gad sent me the photo of a giant pig at the shelter in the cage. I keep it in my favorites.

Remember that.

All right. Um we're moving on to Mitchell Boulevard and Starky. And um I'll let staff present this, but I have a few comments on this one as well. [Music] Starky Road is in Penllis County. Just want to say that

this is Starky B.

Good morning.

Yeah, Nick, you're right. County engineer. Um,

yeah, I don't know who created

same family. One's a road, one's a bull.

Sure. So, I I think the key to this from a state legislative perspective is we'd love to relieve congestion on the state highway system. And one of the best ways to do that is by constructing parallel connecting facilities that don't require you to travel on the state highway system. And this four-lane road would go between Little Road and State Road 54. We're leaving one of the busiest intersections, not the busiest, that's US 41 and State Road 54. And we have a plan for that, too. But one of the busiest intersections on the State Road 54 corridor where we can um alleviate some of that congestion by building this uh alternative facility. So, um I'm looking at the numbers here and I I just don't think this project is teed up enough yet, but um and we're not showing here the contribution from the two developments that are going to be on the north side and there'll be one on the south side. So, those developers will be required to build their two lanes um to the edges of their developments and then we're going to be responsible uh for the middle portion. Um, but I think I'm going to have to as as important as this road is to the west side, um, I don't think it's it's ready yet because the the those developments are not in for permits yet. So, this this wouldn't be a good project. So, I'm going to pivot to you can stay there. Uh, I'm going to pivot to two other roads and I'll work with uh Senator Hooper because I always talk to him because this is his district. Um and and uh Representative Joerger, we always work together, but my thoughts are to either pivot to um Trinity Boulevard or Rangeland. And where are we with rangeand? Rangeand is a big reliever for State Road 54. Uh on the on the west side of the county from the Sun Coast West, there is no other road that goes east west. So last year we had a a grease truck spill its contents on State Road 54. Shut it down all day. They had to bring trucks in from the other part of the state. No one in their businesses could leave. No one could could you had to go down into Hillsboro County or or up around to move around. So residents were stuck. No one went to school. It was quite a disaster. So rangeand uh will relieve will relieve that.

Yeah. We're we're concluding the U route study for that and kicking off design and should be ready to go to full design and then into construction in two to three years.

Yeah. So, so this one's pretty much shovel ready. Well, ready to go. Um and then Trinity Boulevard, we had that in our 5-year CIP a few years ago. Um we did a little restructuring of our tiff money which is our transportation infrastructure

tax increment financing

tax. Yeah. Okay. That's our money we get every year. You want to you explain about me?

Yeah. I mean in in a sense you you set a baseline value of properties and then any revenues collected in excess over that over that base value uh we set aside a certain percentage that to to invest into uh into transportation projects in a nutshell. But uh so we kind of redid that formula and sent some money over to the parks department because we don't have enough money for upkeep in the parks department. And the thought was that as the delta kept growing um that we would have as the money kept growing we'd have enough money to do Trinity Boulevard. But the road cost kept growing. So it has does not have any funding. Um, so I will be bringing back another road project or infrastructure project in my district for consideration, but this is not ready for prime time and I certainly wouldn't be asking for 40 40 $40 million. I don't

I mean not today, but if you have a map of where that is, I' I'd like to see.

Yeah.

Um if you uh we should have maps on all of these, but it it it's a road that is going to rangeand goes through Starky Ranch right now. It terminates kind of near Gun Highway. And this is a a road that's already got the we've already got the rideway, most of it. It goes at an angle to 54 kind of like this. It will cross over the Sun Coast and maybe one day connect to the Sun Coast. We have to make that vote here. Goes into Beexleysley. Beexley's already built Beexley Boulevard. Goes up to 41. Goes up to Aaron Cutoff. Goes up to 52. It's been on the county's map for construction since before I moved here actually. So it was called the by county throughway back then.

Is it using existing rightway?

It's the old railroad corridor. The orange belt railroad.

Yeah. Okay. So that's kind of it for me. You got a short one cuz mine's not ready. That one's not ready for project.

Okay. The last two are last two appropriations asks are um intersection improvements. Um we have a long list of ones that we're um we're looking at, but these two are the most uh shovel ready. So chair

y

so rep m this um oh never mind curly we'll go on island first conser the next this one and the next uh slide involve intersection improvements. This one is for the boulevard and cigarado branch uh and the intersection improvements involve also signalization. Um uh this project and the next project are on a very busy corridors. Curly bul uh curly road and boulevard are experiencing increasingly uh growing traffic because of the connected city and villages of Pasadena Hills development districts. Uh communities along those roads find very difficult to get in and out of their uh residences. Uh we also have uh complaints about uh speeding. So signalization is going to help through all those. It's going to help with the access to those communities. It's going to slow traffic and also they're going to provide enough traffic gaps for the upstream and downstream intersections to help also the other communities that don't get signalization. So uh we think those are very useful for the public projects and we you know we include them in this uh in these appropriations.

I' I've got a question.

Yes. John. Thank you. Uh, as as someone who drives on Island Boulevard in this area every single day, I I can attest to the traffic, but one thing I'm wondering, so between between Handcart and basically Geer, you've got four traffic signals already. Some the one on Dean Dair, Simon, and Geer, and Geer are about all three of them are about half a mile apart. and adding another one uh out in front of Silverado. How uh are you all going to link link them together with the signal?

They will be interconnected.

Okay. Because right now the traffic

that's sure the progression of the traffic. Yes.

Okay. All right. That was my question. Thank you.

Yes. Mr. Whiteman

and Red Mag this Curly Road and Chapel Pines Boulevard intersection. This would be such a fantastic um complimentary project to the sidewalk funding that y'all captured this last session. This would tie right up that the neighborhood coming out with the Safeway where the kids coming up to Wells and getting to the school complex. So just the the project that um we captured with this Curly Road and Chapel Pines Boulevard, they those two were were very complimentary to each other if there's an opportunity. So, we're basically just adding red lights is what we're paying for it. Is that right?

Yes. Go ahead.

I've seen that back up there. It's It can get substant.

Not as fast as you drive.

That's

You just go around there. That's why you wanted the bike.

We're not going to comment.

She wants the bike trail so she can drive on on the path. She She was the car that was stuck when they were doing the water on the grass. I was on.

No, my my car is my Porsche is four-wheel drive. I will

drive.

Um, I'll get with you on these.

Did I get

and get me more details on them? We'll have that discussion or give you either one. We'll certainly get that.

I got you.

And you get with Danny on that. Yes, sir.

Okay. Curly road.

We got

All right. And we are on to policy proposals.

Thank you. [Music] Okay, this this first one is a fix to Senate Bill 180. Um, is that arguable? Let's get to it.

No, it had to be a Senate problem.

I guess my I guess my first one pass.

I'm not sure it should be on our list. Um, because I think Ralph wanted to submit this to FAC so that it would become an FBAC proposal. It's more of a statewide issue than a Pasco issue. So,

I'm not sure why it's on our list.

I still think it's it's important that we we we potentially discuss it. FAC may may carry the water on this, which is uh which I think would be great, in which case we don't necessarily have to push it, but I mean, I think it's just important for awareness as to what the impact.

Yeah. I mean, I think this is an issue where um the law doesn't necessarily match the legislative intent. I would like to say that it's probably I'm hoping it was just an error in bill drafting. Um I do think that there was an intent by the legislature to help those properties that were damaged by hurricanes from more restrictive or burdensome regulations. Our board supports that. You know, we we were about to adopt an ordinance that makes it clear that we do not intend to impose any more restrictive or burdensome regulations on properties damaged by hurricanes. The problem is is the way the bill was drafted, it allows Greenfield developers to argue that they also should be protected from more restrictive or burdensome regulations. And so, for example, you all talked about the fire rescue impact fee earlier. Um, Representative Steele brought that up. We've had developers argue that we can't impose that fire rescue impact fee on Greenfield developers um because of the way Senate Bill 180 was drafted. So, I'm hoping this is just a a drafting error that the legislature can fix and that we can get clarified, but but the way it's worded right now, any of our land development regulations that apply to a green field developer arguably are preempted under this law. Don't think that was the legislator's intent. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the governor's intent when he signed the law. He's on record of saying that he intended to help properties damaged by hurricanes. Um, and so we're trying to get some help to make sure the law is clarified so that this doesn't become a get out of jail free card for every developer in the state of Florida. That's the short version. Madam Chair,

y when we were trying to help the people out, we didn't charge them, we didn't charge them permitting fees just to get their houses back in order. Yeah.

And we took a a lot of our money from that budget to go do that. So we're trying to help these people, too, just like we think the governor was as well. Representative Steel,

can you help me understand what we're what we're identifying as an issue? Like is it is it deleting lines?

So, the way the law was worded, and by the way, this was language was added at the last day of the session. Um, it was not something that was in the prior version of the bill. Um, but it it's very clear that for some of the preeemptions, like on moratoriums, it's only on regulations that would impact somebody damaged by a hurricane. But did that language was not carried forward to the preeemption for other land development regulations and comprehensive plan amendments and other procedures. So because it wasn't carried forward to the rest of the clauses, it creates an argument that we can't adopt anything more restrictive, burdensome on anybody for the next 3 years,

which which like I said with our fire rescue impact fee, we use those fees to help firefighters get equipment. And so if we can't and we wouldn't assess it to somebody prop with damage by hurricane because they're rebuilding their home, but arguably it it prevents us from assessing it to even a green field developer.

That's the problem.

You know, we've been when when was the last time we updated our comp plan? 2006.

Uh it's been I think since we did a major update to the comp plan in 2006.

A crazy long time ago. And so um anyone who's doing any development in Pasco County pretty much has to come in and do a comp plan amendment. takes a lot of time, costs them a lot of money. Our land our our land use attorneys are very happy, but it really slows the process and and um and costs a lot of money. We have to send it up to Tallahassee. They send it back. We've never had one had one rejected that I know of. Um but we're just about done with our comp plan revisions. We're going to be approving them in the next few months. But along with the comp plan revisions, we have to update then our land development code because they they go hand in hand, right? And so we probably won't be able to update our our land.

The comp plan is actually maybe the bigger issue because Manatee County and Orange County have already had their comp plan amendments rejected because of Senate Bill 180. Same same concept. Well, at least in Orange County, they had not done an update in a long time. They were going through their update. It was rejected by the Department of Commerce because of Senate Bill 180. Now, our approach is a little different because we do have a carveout for properties damaged by hurricanes. Orange County and Manatee County didn't necessarily do that. But we still it's still possible that Department of Commerce could reject our comp plan because because of Senate Bill 180 because of the way it's worded. Now, I can't speak to how you the reason you all voted for that bill. Um, but we have spoken to some legislators who believe that their intent was to protect properties damaged by a hurricane. So maybe you all can comment why you voted on it, but that was what that's what we think the intent was based on the way we read the the law.

Did it did it alter the comprehensive land use in the future? Is that I mean I'm trying to figure out.

So what it does is it preempts us from adopting any more restrictive or burdensome comprehensive plan amendment, land available regulation amendment or procedure on issuance of permitting through October 2nd of 2027 if it's more restrictive or burdensome.

Would that be our tree ordinance potentially?

That applies to

interpretation. It it it applies to almost an argument can be made the way and developers have argued this that it applies to any regulation we adopt comprehensive plan amendment land development regulation amendment and it was retroactive. So for the example of our fire rescue impact fee we had already adopted it. We were literally ready to start charging it when Senate Bill 180 got adopted and it was made retroactive to August 1st of last year. So it it covered our fire rescue impact fee. Now, our board took the stance that we were only going to exempt properties damaged by hurricanes from that that was how we were going to implement Senate Bill 180, but because it's subject to a contrary interpretation, developers could sue us and get attorneys fees and and we could lose,

right?

And so there are some counties that are not they're just not implementing anything they adopt because of Senate Bill 180. Representative, we can provide you the three sections that

if they're saying if there's something simple to change on it, that's easier to adjust than writing an entirely new bill to adjust.

It would be very easy to the language that they put in there for moratoriums. If they just put that same language in for all the for land development code amendments and comprehensive plan amendments.

So, this is restricting you guys from charging a higher impact fee is what I I'm just trying to

arguably. Yes. All kinds of things. Now, if it's limited to properties damaged by hurricane, no issue with we we're fine with that because we wouldn't assess an impact fee to somebody trying to rebuild after a hurricane anyway because that impact was already there.

Madam Chair,

yeah.

Can you draft the language for them so they can see what they

Happy to draft the language whoever if it's a if it's a delete, it's a lot easier to implement than if it's a a bill. I mean,

well, it's a it's we can add the same language in three sections that they used in one

because we're we're allowed to have seven bills in the House. Now, Senate can have 500 million bills. We we can only have seven. Um so, when you have seven bills, you have I've already got 30 on my list. So, um trying to get something like this if but they we also have in some cases where we can do deletions um where it's a correction to a law and it it's it's not counted against the seven. So that's why I'm saying it's something very simple um like that.

It is simple but like county attorney's broker it's an addition not a deletion.

You have to add language.

We could delete that whole those whole paragraph.

That ain't going to work.

But that's not going to work. I can tell you right now if it was it anyway.

You're doing what anyways?

Not charging them.

So So yeah,

I'm just saying if if it was in if it was in the the land use bill, um I don't think you're going to get that unchanged. Um

it was an emergency management bill,

right? But that

was a land use bill that was put into that. So I I you know there there and I wasn't involved in that. Um but some of those things you're not going to undo is all I'm going to say. And it's not by our vote. There's 120 of us and and um you know, anyways, we we I don't have no problem trying to work with you to try try to identify it, but if you give me what it's Senate Bill 180, I'll I'll ask um before you guys waste your time.

We'll give it to all of you.

Yeah.

I'm happy to draft the language. It's a simple change, but I need to know that there's some ability to do it.

Yeah. No, I don't want you wasting

I I think we should say it's not a change. It's a clarification.

No, we don't have clarification. What we need to do is take a look at the bill and see how it affects. The point of the bill was to protect a citizen

100%.

We did not see that around the state.

So, unfortunately, when there's a problem comes to Tallahassee, we vote yes. It affects 67 counties.

Yeah.

Right. I just can't say, can you attempt Pasco? It don't work that way.

Yeah.

Um, so if there was a problem with it, um, this is the first I've heard of it.

Yeah. um we just need to look at it and see if it's something we can tweak, fix or is it a problem or was they they meant to do that and so we can figure out what the problem is because I honestly don't know but the idea was uh we were trying to take the burden off of the citizen who just got demolished then were getting hit with everything else from locals to make it different than what they had and they just couldn't afford to do that right

and we were protecting them that's the bottom line of what we're trying to accomplish 100%. Panelis County was the biggest name for that. Was the sp was the Senate sponsor of the bill because his folks down in Penllis County were just tearing their hair out because of the

they're still doing

the delays that were going at the county in the county.

So, we'll take a look at the bill. We'll just call staff and look at the bill and and what I really want from you. Send me an email or send rep still an email and say, "Okay, here's our concern. This is how it's affecting us." Then we can get with staff with that and say, "Okay, was this the intent? Is this what we wanted? Is this what Nick wanted to do?" If he did, then we got to come up with a solution. He didn't, we'll try to come up with a fix. And that's about as honest as I can be because I don't know.

I can send you the same proposal we sent to FAC, which explains all this.

Yeah, it's delegation.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks, Dave.

Thank you.

Thank you, David. And he made a good point. The uh Florida Association of Counties has their policy conference next week. So, we'll see what comes out of that.

And Jack and I will be there.

Okay. Brian, thank you.

All right. Good morning. Brian Hogan, director of community services. And this is just a request for support for the CCE community care for the elderly program um in conjunction with FCOA, Florida Council on Aging, and BASK, Florida Association of Aging Service Providers. just putting forth this recommendation um to support continued funding. Uh would like to thank Representative Steele, myself, Kathy Pearson, and and Marie Winter. Had the opportunity to talk to him about our program uh earlier this year, as well as share some budgetary information. So, appreciate your support and initiatives. Uh just to remind the board, uh we're in our third year of operating this program, more commonly known as the lead agency. We are operating it from a revenue neutrality perspective. Um and things are looking good. to go over that information with our county administrator and our budget office every year during our budget hearings. Didn't know if there were any questions specific to this particular ask and support.

Seeing none, thank you very much.

All right, I think that's yours as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

Making up some time here. So, this is for misdemeanor probation. I know we talked uh previously about Florida State Statute 119 earlier and uh so this request is actually to include our probationary staff members. They are not sworn officers. We have had instances where there have been major safety concerns particularly uh we have had defendants show up at house uh houses and leave notes on vehicles of our uh team members. We have had instances in the office um where our team members have felt threatened. Uh our team members are working with uh individuals who have committed crimes. Um you know so it's important for us to prioritize their their safety. Of course, uh more recently, one of the things that has been concerning is uh we have had an increased interaction with federal agents, uh specifically uh ICE, um and other federal agents that are supporting ICE initiatives to come in and pick up uh illegal immigrants that do come in for misdemeanor probation appointments. So um with that increased interaction, there of course is fear of retaliation from family members um who are not deported uh as well as individuals who um maybe go through the process um because they are reassigned on probation and could potentially see that same probation officer conducting that initial appointment. So uh it was important for us to put forth the ask this morning uh to make sure that we could support the inclusion of probation officers in that statute. Any questions on that? Awesome. Thank you very much.

I had no idea when I became a commissioner that we we handle probation, but the county I would have thought that was a court sheriff thing, but okay. I think it varies cuz the Penelis County Sheriff's Office takes care of that.

Oh, let's give it back. Let's give it to All right. This is the last slide. These are just a few policy initiatives that not sure if there's much of an appetite with here, but wanted just to at least educate the group uh with raising the 911 fee, indexing local option fuel taxes, and uh anonymous code enforcement complaints. So, that last one may be addressed by fact. We'll have to take a look at that next week. Um we have Thank you. Hi, Amy Frell, budget director. Um, for the 911 fee, just to give you some perspective, for our local jurisdiction, um, the 40 cents that's currently being captured, uh, does not cover the full cost of the operations for the 911 center. We are subsidizing uh, roughly 8 10.95 million a year when we look over the next 10-year projection. uh raising the fee to 50 cents, which is what is being proposed, would bring that subsidy down to about 8.67 million a year. So, still doesn't close the gap. To completely close the gap, uh Pasco County would need to see the fee increase to a $1.46. Um probably not an appetite for that, but just to give you some perspective on the cost of operating the 911 center versus the revenue that this fee generates. Anyway, I think it's important to note too that Pasco County, we've consolidated all of the 911 centers across the county from the various cities. So now that is handled internally here, which provides more efficient operation.

Any questions?

Good morning again. Nick Uran, county engineer. Um, second item on there, indexing local option fuel taxes. I I'm sure you're all familiar with the uh state comprehensive enhanced transportation system tax. It's established by 206.41 section 1F. The legislature in 1990 had the foresight to index that state tax so that it would keep up with the cost of delivering transportation projects over time. Local option fuel taxes don't do that. Local governments have the ability to levy a 1 to 12 cent local option fuel tax. Pasco County has chosen to levy 12 cents. Um, as of 2014, that that's when we added our fourth our fifth uh the 5- cent second local option fuel tax. If that fuel tax had been indexed, we would have collected an additional 14.5 million over time. What we've essentially done is lost our purchasing power from the point of creation to today. And so we're struggling to fund transportation projects, which is why we went through so many appropriation requests for transportation facilities earlier this morning. So our ask is, hey, it was great for the state's fuel tax. We would love to see that same indexing process. The equation's already written into statute. Apply it to the local option fuel taxes and allow us to keep the purchasing power intended by those local fuel taxes.

Yeah. And currently right now that subsidy is just made up through your your tiff uh which which is used to fund transportation and public works operations.

And then we have the growing um issue of electric vehicles not paying for any roads, right?

That's really a different conversation.

Gas tax collections in general are are flat to declining anyway. So that that's a direct correlation of that. But indexing with with cost is is really what we're talking about and eroding the buying power.

This is a stop issue.

This is a stop gap repair while we continue to discuss the m mileage based user fee approaches that have circulated the legislature.

Uh represent steel.

Uh two thoughts on that. I mean, we can charge them an uh a larger tag fee, right, for those vehicles or or charge, you know, the electric companies a fee uh you know, for for the watts, kilowatts used to charge vehicles. So, I mean, there's two ways you can look at that, but target them only, right? Because it's the use of the the roadways they're not paying for.

Yeah.

But do you like the idea of indexing the local option? This is something that counties in fact has been after for years. I mean we're losing we're losing the you know

it's an inflationary measure. Yes. It's an inflationary measure that the state DOT gets to take advantage of but local governments do not.

I mean I don't know.

We'd ask money from you guys.

I don't know if it's good or I don't know if it's bad.

Yeah. We'll look.

So it's going to I just you know that's just we just have to run the numbers and see what itffects. I can pretty well tell you if it's going to raise something to the citizens, it's going to be a no. I mean, that's just how the House and the Senate are looking at it right now. But we're trying to take burdens off of the citizens, not add. So, if it adds anything whatever, and I'm not sure that it will or does or not, I really haven't studied that one, then I it will not fly. I can tell you that.

Yeah. I mean typically the way and and I and I look at this as a company um when a company is operating in the red um they have to make cuts. They don't they don't just go arbitrarily charge their customers more money. Um so it's it's the same concept here. We got to you should operate as a company and and work within the the means that you have available to you and not exceed that.

So and that's what we do.

Yeah. And I'm not suggesting you don't. I'm just saying in general terms. So,

okay.

Coke compliance.

Good morning. I'm J.R. Tamal, uh, CO compliance manager. Uh, so as you can see, uh, regarding Senate Bills or no, disregard Senate Bill, uh, the change to Florida State Statute 162 and 125, uh, we felt as a county and I think a lot of a majority of municipalities within the state of Florida felt the impact. um and overall call volume, but more importantly citizen safety. Um it's been a significant challenge. It's a daily challenge for our team in our office um dealing with disgruntled employees who are very ups or uh citizens who are very upset with uh the fact that they can't report these uh complaints anonymously. I think many of the board of county commissioners have faced that challenge with their own constituents. Um and it's a challenge we continually attempt to overcome. Uh but the more significant issue is not necessarily how it is written um but how we can make it operationally and administratively functional as a as a uh code compliance agency. So, a little history. Um, it was um they were able to do what? Let's see. When I first became a commissioner, it was you couldn't do anonymous. Then it was switched back to anonymous, which I 100% support. Then someone a legislator in South Florida either had a constituent or that legislator had someone doing, you know, multiple calls and and he got the language switched. He's no longer in office anymore. Do you remember who it was, Mike? I don't know if you know this one. So, uh, we we bring we brought this up at fact last year. Um, there was every single county but one was really hoping for this change to go back to anonymous. I can tell you I've had constituents who who've ended up in the hospital because um they had a drug house next door to them. They call they called it in and they got beaten up. Uh, 17 stitches, one guy in his face. Um, so what happens is they they don't get reported and neighborhoods go get degraded. Um, sometimes it used to be that we could call them in, but we can't do that anymore either. So, uh, I think there's some fixes so that there it's not abused. You could say maybe the name is public after a year or um there's a high penalty if you're if you're calling them in and they're found to be obstantiated. But something to um help these communities get their lives back when they have um neighbors who are misbehaving or or property is you know in real disrepair and and they want to call. So

yeah. Thank you. Um, I tell you this, when this law was passed years ago, I think it was one of the worst things the legislature has ever done to the people.

Yeah.

You get seniors out there, 34% of the population, they're afraid of what the neighborhood bully or druggie is going to do to them if they put a complaint in.

And we get we we've had place we got to go clean these houses out with all the trash that's out there that just accumulates and accumulates, causing more tax dollars to go to clean up a neighborhood. I had a gentleman, we're playing at the uh Sunwest, we had a sand soccer tournament. He's telling me about his neighborhood where he's got four houses where we got all these violations going on, but they're afraid to go turn the violations in because they're going to get attacked.

They get their cars keyed,

all kinds of things.

So, if we've got people that we're worried about protecting the judges, we're worried about protecting probation people doing probation. Why aren't we letting our people be protected? If you can call in a complaint for something for the sheriff's office, why can't you do it to protect your own neighborhood? We got code enforcement people out that want to get their job done. They can't get it done and people are afraid. And you even handcuffed us to even be able to put a complaint in cuz I'd go put them in.

You're looking at me.

No, I'm just I'm just scared.

I didn't run that.

You gave me the 34% from hang on that number.

It's it's when passed.

So, Madam Chair, I found it for you. So, uh, it was it was Senator Bradley. It was um um Senate Bill 60 and that was in 2021.

Thank my was that my freshman year or I was running for office then.

Yeah, I don't think you were.

I think I was running for office then.

Yeah.

Mr. We can fix it.

That's something easy.

The whole state will jump for joy. Um,

this will save a lot of people from getting um beaten up, cars crashed, keyed, all those things. Can Can I just ask a quick question? Yeah.

You know, what what kind of funding is going to be required to man those requests?

Nothing.

Nothing. So, there's no difference in costs. There's no difference in N

expenses.

You will save money.

Yeah.

Because instead of a neighborhood going down and getting worse and more trash and we got to go clean it up or wait to get reimbured later on, now all that goes away. Cuz now

how much will we save doing it?

Millions and millions of dollars.

Because we're Okay, then we're going to expect that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Quoting Starky. Millions and millions. Millions squared.

$1 million. Okay. What's next?

Billion.

That's it. Um I wanted to touch on something real quick and then I'll also let our legislators come back. Um I don't know if you knew what Commissioner Mariana was talking about with Davis Bacon.

Are you familiar with that? That is a federal program. Yes.

The Davis Bacon Act. Who is there anyone here who can speak to it better than me? If not, I will give a try. Come on up. Um, because you say you go to Washington.

I'm trying to fix this nationally, but my committee, I haven't been able to get this through because of the uh political makeup of the committee I'm on. Um,

what committee are you talking about?

It's at national level, community, economic development, workforce.

Anthony Thomas from the Office of Strategy and Sustainability. Davis Bacon really is a a fair and equal opportunity. um for federal funding. What that does is via the CFR 2000, it makes it to where wage acknowledgements when we ask these contractors and we have them and we're subcontracting them out to make sure that they're paying their employees a local wage that is within standard. So, we're not paying $2 for somebody that's pouring concrete per hour. You know, we have to maintain that. That's maintained by the federal government. we have to pull directly from them the wage tables that they have for Davis Bacon requirements. That's what makes some of these projects cost a little more is because when we do go through the bidding process, we do have to have Davis Bacon requirement. We have to follow the CFR 200, especially when we are getting federal funding that's coming behind some of those items.

It adds to the cost of a project like you wouldn't believe. We had this on our AMSKills uh remodel cost us a year at least a year of time. It is so difficult. You have to chase down every subcontractor and get every wage they paid to anyone who worked on the job

and they have to be posted on the site. It is a requirement. It's called Davis Davis Act.

Okay. I just want to make sure I had it right.

So, we're trying to modern it hasn't been modernized in decades

and it's and it's called out in the CFR 200 for

I have that CFR 200.

Yeah. Commissioner

and I've sat in the transportation committee for many years since when we tried to get Ridge done etc. So I' I've gotten to let know the engineers very well. Matter of fact, one of our reps now works for them. The cost of doing paperwork to document all these things is absolutely phenomenal. Never mind even the wages which people are going to pay competitive wages anyway pretty much. It's America still. But I'll give you an example just as she's talking about Amkill Steps to Recovery. Our veterans program we gave them $3 million to build 33 beds. um put in all sorts of facilities, take these veterans out of the woods, take care of them. And they've run this program for seven years. This lady started with her own pension, put the money forward to buy her first building, bought a few more, got seven buildings, and right in the area. She got this land donated, and now they're putting through the process. The federal money was about a $2 million match, $2.5 million match. And for that, they had to follow all Davis Bacon. Well, they engineered the prop. They engineered it to the best of their ability every step of the way, architects, engineers, etc. when they went through it, they get delayed months on it going through it and the cost went up because of some of the stupid things that had to be in there. And I mean that um raised the cost over $450,000 and just slowed the whole project down and going through

for paperwork

for just paperwork. But again, between paperwork and extra costs, this is a huge thing. And I I got to think that,

you know, so many I'll just say it. So many Senate Democrats do not want to change this thing. They want to let it go. Republicans. I I I just got to think with Trump in the White House that make things happen, if ever this bill is going to get looked at to be legitimate, to really get scrutinized to what the effects have been, you know, about slowing down and cost us money. It cost us money and sold

massive massive.

I'll give you an example, and I brought this up in committee. I didn't I didn't realize this CFR 200 process, but uh Elder Affairs was building a assisted living facility, and my my buddy does that for a living. builds them and owns them and operates them. He's got like 20 in in this area.

Um, for him to build the same facility, same size, same number of beds, it was $19 million. Elder Affairs needed $102 million.

Yeah, this is our world.

I get it. And and I I want to address it. And I think that, you know, maybe we do address this and, you know, have to get on on the phone with some of the secretaries of Trump's team or Trump himself and and have this dialogue. But, um, I I I get it. I fought that because to me I think it I I want to support all of our veterans and all of all all of them, but at the same time it should be within what's normal and reasonable uh to do the same function of work. So, and it's not like they're going to pay those people infinitely that same value. They're just paying them for that one job and then they're going to go right back down to their normal wage, you know, when they get the next job. So,

it's it's a money grab

and and but it's but it's the paperwork burden literally. They say the engineers, they say my paperwork, if I do a non-Davis Bacon, my paperwork's here from from the table to here and if I have to go through, I'm that much higher.

Do can you minimize which projects have to follow that process?

It's all anythingederal federal any CDBG grant that

sometimes it's not even worth going federal if it's a small sidewalk, right? Weigh those costs.

Yeah.

Um I've got another federal one for you. Um, I brought it up a few times and we had a workshop on this and this is not a state issue or a local issue, but it affects us all. And this has to do with our housing vouchers. And again, this is my committee at NO. We're going to be talking about this. We're going to be talking about this next week in um, is it this week? Next week in in uh, Gainesville at FAC. So that's the old section 8 vouchers and every county has a housing authority and it's a federal body, right? Um, so you can move to Pasco County and live here for one day and be considered a Pasco County resident and getting a h get a housing voucher and take one of our subsidized housing opportunities. Um, they have to advertise and this is what caught my attention a couple a couple months ago. There was an ad on the news. No, the news channel did a story that the Pasco County housing voucher list was open and anyone in the country could apply to move to Pasco County and get on our housing voucher list. Now, we have Pasco County residents that are on that list and they should be I mean true residents, not ones that moved here for one day. We should be able to take care of our local Pasco County resident needs before we invite people from all over the country to come here and take our subsidized housing. So, um it's called local options first.

Send send that to me. I I just sent that other thing to Trump's team. We'll get that.

So, uh, I believe and most of the commissioners I've talked to believe that we should be allowed to satisfy our list of locals first before we ask people who Frank, you know, may be need a lot of help in our society to move here.

About Floridaidians and then county, you know,

you you know, it's it's crazy. Then you live here for one year and you can take that voucher and you can move to another county, another state that will ex that has an opening and the sending county has to pay the difference. So um uh this is something that needs to be looked at. It it really does. And to say you're a Pasco County resident, if you've only lived here one day, that has to be changed, too. So

send that to me.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. So,

another thing you could Jason could talk about it, B could talk about it, uh, even Joseph, but the Army Corps's 404 permitting

slowing down every project. That's Cine's project.

You're going to see that speed up. We just I mean, Army Corps was there and and they're they're taking a different approach.

Yeah. Well, and tell I'm delighted that the the feds came down to talk with you guys is from the state level to see that perspective. That's phenomenal. Uh la last thing I want to say is um we've had great su great great success with the scholar season coming through. Uh Representative Maga, thank you for your help. Uh you were critical in getting that stuff done. Commissioner Simpson was very helpful with getting it done. And we're now going through some other improvements with restorations, uh sediment removals up and down the coast. And right now we're in a an aquatic preserve. Um Representative Basulo had passed it years ago. It was 146 to1 vote. The only vote against it was my daughter Amber when she was a rep. Um, and and what I was afraid of was is going to slow us down getting assessed stuff stuff done and it has but the bigger problem and I've talked to Representative Mul about is going to work on it for us but I want you guys to know about it because I might need your help coming up is it's the mitigation factors we charge like 13 to1 mitigation. One or two to one's normal. So it's very costly and very prohibitive to get stuff done. So, as you guys are dealing with things and you'll see things coming up. We're working with it right now. He's going to try to help us. Working with Jessica up in Fish and Wildlife. They're actually going to come down and look at some of the things we're trying to do. We're trying to improve our coast, improve water quality, and this here is actually supposed to help us is actually hurting us.

13 to1. That's huge.

I've got something that would probably help you. I'm working with an organization out of Tampa and it's a out of the box fix for a lot of stuff. Um but primarily uh coastal sea life um and it's we're they pay us to do it.

So

it's not coming from the state and it's not coming from the counties.

Okay. So I'll introduce you to the folks and and uh maybe we can get it maybe Pasco County be the first one.

I appreciate I like to say I I greatly appreciate this format this forum you guys coming forward so we can talk about the ideas. We get your perspective you get ours and we can like figure out okay how can we go together and work together to get stuff done. as I said it. So I I thank you all for coming out here means a lot to us.

I I would say so too. Um, Commissioner Weightman wants to say something and then, you know, anyone else who wants to have some closing thoughts

as the state goes up this session starts looking at property taxes and just having a general conversation. um talking with Bill Cronin and EDC and other economic development folks, if the state would be willing to take a look at tangible taxes and the benefit of modifying tangible taxes to business and commerce and maybe eliminating them um could really potentially have a real economic benefit to you know the taxpayer and businesses themselves. And um I don't know if there's any appetite to to incorporate tangibles into the this study. Maybe uh it'd be pretty pretty cool to to to see y'all talk about those.

Yeah, I I I wouldn't I wouldn't um be opposed to it. My concern would be around farming and a since we're having such a a major issue in the country uh for for a and farmland and farmers actually losing their shirt. In fact, you know, I'm looking at several farms in Georgia that are getting ready to close down because of that. So, I I would be reluctant to affect a and then so when you start separating businesses, which who picks winners and losers is, you know, is not very fair, right? So, I I don't know if I'd be on board with that. I would be on board with maybe increasing going back to putting the rent tax back in um which I think we just removed last session. um and actually helping, you know, people who have lived here their entire life versus people that that don't live here. Um but you know, the the the business tax concerns me. So,

um okay, wrapping up. Anyone have any wrapping up comments?

I think maybe just go to the rep.

Yeah. Commission. Uh Representative Mard.

No, these are always very good to sit down and talk. I mean, we this is the second time, right?

Yes, sir. and just be able to open up and have open dialogue about what's the needs. I mean, the bottom line is our citizens, right? All of them vote for every one of us. So, at the end of the day, that's what it's their money. It's not ours. And we need to always remember that when we're spending their money is that where, you know, can you write a check for 12 million or can you write a check for a million because somebody people here are and I think we always should be cognizant of that. Um, I think I can just tell you from the House perspective, and I think the Senate on some the same way, we're probably not real big fans of the property tax. Uh, we think there's a lot of other ways to help the people other than that at the end of the day. Um, um, but, you know, going forward, we'll see. I can just tell you as of today, I don't think we're big fans of it. We weren't big fans of it last session. Um that's why you saw some of the things um that you did especially from the house side u sales tax and things and loans of it natures. Um but you know the good thing that came out of last year you had three organizations trying to figure out how to give people back their money and that was really the bottom line. We were trying to give you money back. We just couldn't agree on how to give you money back if that's crazy enough. Um um but you know that's what the main takeaway we like to have coming out of that with all of what happened. At the end of the day that's what we all were trying to accomplish um going forward. I mean we really we know we just you know things have changed. Um the house is been shifting things. We just got our committee assignments yesterday. A lot of things been shifting. A lot of things are still being shifted. We don't know until October 5th. right now at the moment, what's really going to take place and what we're going to be doing and where we're going to be heading. But the budget will always be number one, I can tell you. So, u that will be the topic of conversation and our goal is to make sure we bring back much of the taxpayers money back to this county as we can that they've paid into the system, right?

And that's what our goal is and and that's what we try to do as a delegation. I don't know a member doesn't think the same thing. and but you know you got 40 senators 120 house trying to do the same thing. Um so u that's our goal going into it. Um bills that come up that we pass you know there's no perfect bill. I've learned that and we find out that we'll pass a bill and we go didn't see that one coming. Uh but we can come back and change it and we will do that. We'll take a look at it, Dave, and see if there's a problem there with that. We'll find out what it is. It shouldn't be hard for that. Um, and then we can get back with you on that one. That's something we can turn around, come back on. But, um, you know, my thing is continue to have these. I mean, you know, it's anything in life, marriages or whatever it is. I don't go down this road. Communication is the key is when we don't talk, we have a problem because then we start assuming.

Yeah.

And it never is assuming the good side. It's always the bad side, you know, the sorry dogs are because and it could be cleared up cause a conversation. Um the good thing I hope that y'all you understand is the county y'all have our cell phone numbers. Just we're a call away. Just call. You got a question? Just call. Same way for us. We should be able to call and reach out to you. Why? And it doesn't mean we're attacking. Doesn't mean we're trying to change the world or whatever. We need to know something because we have constituents calling us. So the more open dialogue we have, the better off we should be. So thank you.

Thank you. And I wanted to share something with you that I think you can be very proud of. And this is from the Florida Department of Revenue. Um in Pasco County, so we're the 11th largest county in the state. Are we still 11? Did we moved up to 10?

It's hard to keep track of population wise. We rank 30th on the um per capita county government property tax levies. So, we're well below the state average.

We're just below OK. We're just below Okobee. Just below OK. We're not even halfway.

Come on, man. I'm going to end with a good note and then you go and do that. Come on.

Go ahead. Representative Steve.

Yeah, let's be at the bottom of that one. Um,

that's a Taylor that that's one of those things you want to be the last uh not not in the middle. Um, I I appreciate this meeting. I came in here not knowing what to expect and you know, I'm I come across as abrasive and sometimes it's just me talking and I'm not trying to be abrasive and I'm just trying to get a you know, some thoughts out and if I don't get them out, I lose them and so sometimes I just I'm diarrhea of the mouth. Um, but I think if you unite all of us in making decisions, you're going to have the best outcome for the people who live in our community. And I think that's the most important thing we do. we sit down and actually communicate and figure out what the best pathway is. And it's not a matter of manhandling uh or uh kid glove handling. It's just a matter of sitting down and ironing through the the ins and outs. So, um I I look forward to helping uh on some of the things I wrote down. Um I'm going to I'm going to look into seeing if we can fix those pretty easily. I'm waiting for the the documents that you guys want to send us so we can see if we can address those bills. But um going back to what what uh Rep. Maghard said is, you know, these bills come across our table and and when it's coming from the Senate, it probably was a House bill. Um the House bill went over there one way and the Senate changed it to fit something they want. Sort of like that um that bill last year. I stood by you guys. Um

Oh, live local.

It's not live local. It's it's steel land and and change change the future of it. Uh but yeah, live local. You can call it live local. Um I I was against that bill. I'm still against the bill. They even actually ran something uh this session uh to help live local better. Uh which is worse for us. So um those things sometimes are out of our control. Uh and it's and it's not a matter of us not wanting to say no. We do say no. Uh just there's 120 of us voting on that, not not just two of us. And so or four of us. Um but we're here to support the community and the the residents first. And so that's that's where I come from. I come with that mindset like how can we make this better, cheaper for the residents of of Pasco County in the state of Florida. So thank you guys for inviting me. I appreciate that.

Um do any of the um aids want to speak for want to make sure your your um

they better not

your reps and senators are well represented here.

Okay. Um,

Madam Chair, too, I wanted to let you know that um that um

Andrew Khalil has been online. There was a technical difficulty earlier, but he's online listening right now.

Excellent.

Okay.

Um, County Administrator, anything else?

No, ma'am. Other than I just want to uh thank all the elected officials for attending this workshop. I I agree. I think it's the more we communicate, the better uh we're the better we're going to be because at the end of the day, this is about the taxpayers and the citizens of Pasco County. So, thank you for that. Uh thank you to our lobbyist team uh Joanna and our legislative team and our team members too who who worked very hard to bring this information uh to the folks here to make to make good decisions today. So I think we have uh we have enough that we can move forward and bring a legislative platform back to the board for for consideration. So thank you.

Okay. You know we we um okay I'll end it there. I I will contact each one of you separately and we thank everybody and uh have a safe drive back home or to your