Pasco County Board Workshop – Emergency Management & Preparedness for 2025 Hurricane Season

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Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. So many times number 13's mom is here. Okay. Uh we are at 9:03. So we're going to get started at this time. I'll call to order and ask for the invitation. Second this morning. Good morning. Let's pray. Well, Father, as we've gathered to uh do some planning in case of hurricanes this year, Lord, we understand that we can't do anything about the storms themselves. We can't redirect them. We can't dissipate them. Only you can do that, Lord. So the best we can do is to make plans uh to prepare our community before they come to be with the community uh during and particularly be with the community afterwards. Lord, so give us wisdom as we've gathered today to be able to come up with some concrete ideas and plans as we look into this new hurricane season. And yet, Lord, we would be even so bold to ask that knowing that you can redirect and you can dissipate these storms, that you'll put your arms of protection not only around our county, but around our entire state, Lord. And Lord, we know that you are a God who answers prayer. So, thank you for your presence and thank you for hearing our prayer today in your name. Amen. Amen. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay. Can I have the roll call please? Commissioner here Mr. Mariano here here. Okay. So, our topics for discussion today, emergency management and preparedness for the 2025 hurricane season. It's already given me heart palpitation. I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, ma'am. Um, and and again, I want to thank the uh the team members for being here today. Uh, you know, as we all know that the response to uh to storms is multifaceted. Not only the the team members in this room that that play a critical role to it, but plenty of outside agencies, partners, private sector, not forprofits, etc. all play a role in this. Uh but uh today with the the season official start of the hurricane season being weeks away, we thought it would be appropriate uh for the board to have a conversation about uh about hurricane preparedness. And so the team will provide really a brief recap of some of the what's that happened. Uh more importantly uh you know as as our invocation kind of talks about planning talk about how we pivoted sometimes from our plans because we know things never really go to plan and then what we've learned from that to go forward with even better plans uh in the future. Looking forward to having the board weigh in on your perspective on on various elements of the operation or things that maybe you heard from your constituents or things that you find uh find important. So uh I'm just uh very proud here to um you know introduce Director Fauca. Pasco County has a great reputation in the emergency management field, often called upon uh to help out

other counties and so that experience is is great. We were able to bring that to bear. So, director Fosi will turn the uh presentation over to you. All right. Good morning, everyone. Uh basically what we have done in EM is we we want to give you guys a high level ICS 101 about what the incident command structure is like and what we will be um I should have gone with agenda first. I thought you were gonna do that. So, for our agenda today, um we're going to do the incident command system and the elected officials role. Uh we're going to do key takeaways and how we are evolving for future events. And I will say we did learn a lot this last storm season between Hela and Milton. Uh you're going to hear from media relations and communications and customer service, uh public works, sheltering, um 911, fire rescue, uh from comfort station and our pods, solid waste, and then build building construction services. And then I'll conclude with a brief uh PA reimbursement on where we're sitting moneywise, um where these pots of money are actually being used from, and we will cover all of that. So basically, ICS, incident command system, um it's a common organizational structure and it it's thoroughly accepted in the state of Florida and throughout the United States. I could leave here and go to New York and we're interchangeable. Everybody has the same information, same acronyms, same same verbiage. Um and it's manage uh management of onseen resources during incidents. So instead of it being just chaos when you go on Think you get on a fire scene, everybody's just running around. There's a reporting structure and it's a hierarchy. So orders come down to the field, the field fulfills those obligations and then the whatever happened responses come back up to the hierarchy and then they are they work through it and try to evaluate other ways or do we complete our mission? It's used in all kinds of incidents. It could be a very small incident from a car wreck um all the way up to a hurricane like we experienced last year. And it's also used for events both planned and unplanned. Gasparola parade prime example uses the incident command system and we partake heavily with them in that system. Sun and fun flying in Lakeland same way they use the incident command system. I send team members over there to help them during those those uh events. And it can be scaled to size of the event. Incident command could have three people or it could have 43 people in it, but it always is a restruct structured um uh structured command. Um the chain of command uh refers to the orderly command and hierarchy within the incident management. So like I was saying, it flows from the little guy at the bottom all the way up to the incident commander and also can expand horizontally for section chiefs. Um the unity of command uh basically means that each individual reports to only one designated supervisor and that's one of the biggest things that we

look at during a hurricane event. PE words can get crossed and one employee can be told the same thing four different ways and from four different people. So that's why we try to keep it that they have one person that they report to. Um the principles it clarifies reporting relationships, eliminates confusion caused by conflicting instructions and enables the incident managers at all levels to direct the actions of their personnel under their supervision. Whether it be law enforcement, whether it be fire rescue, whether it be sheltering, whether it be pod and comfort stations, they all have one supervisor that they report to. So this uh structure right here is basically uh how it reports within the the uh administration. So basically the county commissioners which are our elected officials uh basically go to Mike the county administrator. He is party of the executive policy group which in turn tunes up uh the county administrator emergency management the district school board the health department the pasco sheriff and the county attorney. So, as the elected officials are getting information from the community, they can turn around and feed it to the county administrator. He brings it to the executive policy group and then we make decisions off of that and then it funnels down to me being the IC and then we push it to whatever branch we think it needs to go to. Um, the battle rhythm, this is basically every day during an activation is the rhythm that we follow. At 7 o'clock we have a weather call with with the NWS and Noah. Um 8:00 we have a command and general staff meeting. That's usually the IC with all the section chiefs and we discuss you know what happened overnight? What are our plans today? How are we going to what are you going to implement? What are we going to change? And then at 9:00 all that information comes to the executive policy group and we discuss it there. And then we know what resources we need to get. We know if we need to start getting ready to order an evacuation. are we going to open shelters? Um, does the sheriff need to start upstaffing their their their personnel? And then at 10:30, all the information that has been done comes back to me at IC and I go back to my folks and we have the county coordination call and that's all the other departments, public works, utilities, solid waste, and we make that phone call to say, "Hey, you what do you guys need? Are you guys prepared? Do you need additional resources? do we need additional manpower? And then at 11:15 is our state call and that's usually done with the Florida Department of Emergency Management and it's usually done with Kevin Guthrie or Ian Gutachelli who is a search chief and all 67 counties are on this call and they will brief out they'll give us a weather update. They will give us hey you know if you need

resources order them now because in 48 hours all resource movement is going to stop. So we have that call them, we report back. Um, usually our unmet needs, I, hey, I need ice. I need, you know, water. I need food. Um, I need additional personnel for shelters. That call transitions at 11:00. Once that call is over at 13:30, which is just something new that we actually implemented last year, um the elected officials call that gives the you guys the chance to voice your opinions, voice your concerns, see what you need, what anything you want us to change or do or look at and we work it through there. And then at 14:30 is the stakeholders call briefing I should say. And that includes all the municipalities, all our NOS's, and that's basically me reporting out on what we're doing, where we're heading, and what is going on. And then at the end, we usually field questions. Um, and then at 4:00, it's something called a sit. It's a situation report. It's basically prepared and disseminated out and that basically says where where we are right now at that time. What do we have going? What's moving parts and items like that? And then at 5:00 we have another cert call, the evening call. We get another weather update. They brief us out. They'll, hey, Andy, you order 25 Hleman pens. We can only get you 14 right now. The other 11 are on order. We'll get them to you. And then at 7 o'lock um the incident action plan is delivered. And what that is is the incident action plan is what is our plan for that usually at night that night if we're doing 24 hours ops. If it's not, it's usually for the next morning at 7 a.m. And that's basically our bible that says here's the incident objectives. Here's all the branches. Here's all the equipment. Here's the medical plan. here is a safety plan and it's all encompassed in that AP and that's written every day both morning and night if we're doing 24 hours. And then also at 7 o'clock we have our evening weather call and that's usually starting to narrow down the counties that are will be affected from the storm or whatever event that might be going on. So the role of the elected officials, it delegates authority for the county administrator and the incident commander to make decisions. You guys empower Mike and myself to say, "Hey, we trust you guys. You guys can start making decisions on your own." It activates specific legal authorities. Um, it helps get the local state of emergency going if we need to do an evacuation order and other proactive measures whether it be uh we want to stop liquor stales after a storm for recovery or we want to enact them or do we want to enact curfews. So we bring all this information to you. You either say yes or no and then Jeff will d Jeff will draft up a document and it gets signed by the board chair or whoever may be the one signing it and then we move forward with that. It provides support and guidance to the county administrator. Uh by doing that

you're empowering Mike to come to me and the incident commander and then we'll pass it through the EOC whatever might need to be done or don't want to be done. Um, you guys actively participate in the elected officials call. That's the most important call of the day when it comes to county administration. That's the things that we get to hear. What's your guys thoughts are, concerns, what do you want, what you don't want. And then it also your role is to share official county messaging to ensure we're all speaking with one voice. Every storm, I I don't care how perfect the county is. I don't care how disjointed the county is. If we don't share the same message, it's going to cause confusion and chaos within the county and especially to our our citizens and residents or customers. Um, Commissioner Waitman has a question. Yes, sir. And so, thanks for coming, Mr. Spina. Yes. Uh, Mr. Spina is here from Councilman City Zer Hills. Is there anyone else? So, what's I don't see in this in the program. What's our commun strategy, a plan to communicate with our cities, our partner cities, because they obviously they'll come up against it, need support, resources, and I don't recall last year hearing them really at all. Maybe I missed it on the storm calls, but I think we have some level of dialogue between I'm sure there city managers or other elected colleagues. So, they're on that same call. Yeah. So, the stakeholder briefing is the biggest one. They're always on there. And then we myself I have numerous comma conversations with Billy Poe. Uh back when Chief Walters was there uh we communicate with the city of San Chief Fish with Newport Richie Chief Poloccastry with Port Richie and we always communicate back and forth and if they have resources or needs we ask them to put it in web EOC. It'll come in it'll hit the board with our logistics section and they'll look at it one of three ways. Can we just get it inhouse? Can we buy it from a Home Depot or do I need to go to the state for a resource request to get it from the state? But those lines of communications are always open to them. So you have to make that request on their behalf. Yes. Okay. All right. So um the executive policy group um that was the the other slide I showed you. They're basically here we're here for resource support, school closures, shelter openings, and evacuation timelines. Um this ensures transparency throughout the process. Um and the collaboration established and maintains Pasco County government as a trusted source of information for the community. So we're the very high level 50,000 foot group that is the one that are sitting in a discussion discussing all right I spoke with Hillsboro I spoke with Penllis they're going to order their evacuations in 72 hours which in turns if they're going to evacuate in 72 hours I got to evacuate in 48 hours because if they evacuate before us we were gridlocked it

happened was a prime example was Irma 75 was basically shut down because of all the traffic trying to move north and we were trying we got the ice hockey rink for a shelter of last resort. So we work collaboratively with that and then I report back to the executive policy brief the decision- making process um it's based on a lot of data sets. It's not just me and the executive policy group saying okay we're going to do this now we base it on the National Hurricane Center. I have phone conversations with them. They give us updates that um some that are privy that go out in in the weather bulletin and some that aren't. They'll tell us extra things like, "Hey, that surge is going to hit and when it's going to hit, it's going to come in fast and hard." Um the National Weather Service, Noah, uh Florida Division of Emergency Management, Dur Meteorology, they they are top-notch when it comes to weather briefings. They actually break it down to the county timing, wind speeds, and and they've been very very accurate over these last few seasons. Herovac modeling, that's a program that we have that basically we can the storm would be plotted out on the computer and we can do whatif events. We can do worst case scenarios. We can do what if it decides to turn and go left to Albuquerque? Uh are we going to get any effects off of that? So, we're able to use that program and it gives us storm surge modeling. It gives us flood inundation. Um, it's a very good program to use and historical events and past events. Um, what's happened in the past, we learned a very big lesson this last year with Milton. We places flooded that never flooded before. So, now we know in past history that it's not it's going to help me, but it's also going to help storm water. It's going to help public works. It's going to help solid waste. So, we know that, hey, we're going to get water in these places because we got it once and it could happen again. And then what are our surrounding counties doing? Uh, are they actually planning an evac? Are they just sitting back and waiting? Um, I know the counties to the north of us, um, they didn't even want to plan evacuations until we had a conversation saying, "Hey, look what you're going to get here." and they finally said, "Okay, maybe we should evacuate." So, we communicate all together, especially the Tampa Bay region, region six I should say, um, which is Pulk, Pasco, Hillsboro, Penllis, Hernando. Um, and we all communicate together. So, we got a very good structure going on with that. Uh, Pasco County Emergency Management, very fortunate to have a trusted and valuable partner with the district school board of Pasco County. Um over the last two years, our relationship with ship with them has been fantastic. Uh they come to the table ready to go. Uh we've been working with the new administration uh with their school security. Um so we know opening a shelter is our priority to keep people safe, but we also know after the storm getting the shelters closed is a

priority also so we can get the kids back to school into normaly. But we won't do that until we know it's safe, when we know we have open roads and there's no threats from debris or anything like that. And that that is one little sticking point that we have with the school board because they think we can just open the schools now and everybody can go back to normaly. Well, you can't if number one if you don't have power. Number two, if you had trees all over the roads, the buses can't get through. So, we want to make sure that we have clear paths to the school and they are safe to enter. And then FEMA reimburse it, one of the biggest things. So the moment that we activate, we start tracking numbers and monies so that way we have accurate counts. Um, it's important for the county to be good stewards of being fiscally responsible in emergency events because I've seen other counties, I'll give you a prime example. Um, Hurricane Michael in Bay County, um, they got an I can't remember the exact amount. was an astronomical amount of money. But two years later, that money got deobligated and they had to pay all that money back and that was because of poor fiscal management. They didn't have receipts. They didn't have the items they needed to pass the FEMA audit. So, they were deobligated. I think some of their their government kind of fell a little. Yes, that included. So, we don't want that here in Pasco County because we have big monies coming to us now. which I'll discuss um later on, but we track it so we know we're eligible for reimbursement. Will some things FEMA say will not be reimburseable? Yes. Unfortunately, that happens. But I would say 90% of the time that we apply for reimbursement, we've always been approved. We've really never had anything be obligated or no, this is not going to be acceptable. And with that, I am going to turn it over to media communications. Thank you, sir. Good morning, commissioners. Tamry Lane, media relations and communications. We are very proud, our small and mighty team, as I like to call them, to be a trusted source for life safety information in Pasco. Um, it's something that very proud of the team. They do that very well. So, we are going to take a look here at our traditional media coverage. So, this is your television, radio, and uh and online from these traditional outlets. And you can see here that um we pushed out 95 news releases and handled more than 250 media contacts during Helen and Milton last year. So that resulted in um a I can't see that from that far. So I'm going to open up my slides here. 477 million was our audience over traditional media outlets during those two storms. That breaks down to 17 million on television, over six million on radio, and 454 online. And what that means basically is that we had 11 million in publicity. And Pasco County was mentioned in traditional media outlets um almost 4,000 times. So, next we'll take a look at our

website, mypasco.net. Essentially, what this shows you is that nearly 30% of all traffic to our website in 2024 was during the 3-week period of heavy messaging for the storms. So, this peak here that you see on the screen coincides directly with one we activated for Milton on October 6. So, for social media, we message on several platforms. Here on this slide, we're f we're focusing just on Facebook as an example. So, we posted more than 150 times in September and October. And this is what's interesting. When we're messaging, it's it's working and people are paying attention. We continually let people know that this is where you get the trusted information. You can see that we reached over 300% more people during those two months than we did before the storm, the two months preceding the storm. And we saw a nearly 600% increase in content interaction. What does that mean? They liked it. They shared it. They commented on it. They clicked on the link. So, this is messaging that people are taking action on and it means something. It's meaningful. Our social media platforms, in case you're wondering, are two-way communication tools. Here are just a few of our customers comments. During activations, we review all these comments. We also review direct messages. Customers tend to also send us direct messages on our Facebook platform, for example, and then we respond as appropriate. After the storms hit, we continue messaging to our more than 514,000 followers across all of the county's platforms. And really what we're trying to do is highlight the recovery work of, you know, everyone else in the room, all the other county departments. So, you can see some of the highlights here. We've got Pasco Hope, we've got Receding Maggie Valley, um you know, the pop-up permitting, all of that. So, we're continuing to message to show the community how we're helping and to continue to provide them ways to reach out to us if they need support. So, as Andy mentioned and Mike alluded to, 2024 required some pretty innovative approaches to messaging, which we learned some great lessons from and we're going to continue moving using forward. We'd be remiss if we didn't mention our amazing GIS team. They've been a collaborative partner for us for years. We create maps and tools showing things like debris collection, our interactive evacuation zones. To our knowledge, it's one of the only ones in the area, I believe, where you can actually zoom right into your particular house and figure out what zone you're in, which is really important when people are being asked to leave. Um, if you take a look at the chart on the bottom right corner of the screen, this shows the spikes in visitors to our evacuation map. They are directly related to the day that we push out messaging. In fact, in 2024, we had so many hits to the servers they crashed just telling you that the

messaging works. People pay attention. We also used, thanks to Joanna, some LED trucks. We were able to put slides and audio. So, these LED trucks are like digital billboards driving around neighborhoods sharing uh life safety messaging. In fact, video of one of the trucks going through a neighborhood went viral because people thought it was such an interesting way to get the messaging out. We also, as you all know, had to create some flyers to present um complicated information about really unprecedented situations for us in Pasco in a very clear and concise way. Um, and this was all thanks to the graphic designer position that we were able to recently add onto the team. Then I want to talk about our website popup. I'm sure any of you that went to our website during the storm saw that when you went to the homepage, there was a popup. So, we had challenged our team and our website vendor to create this one-stop popup on our website for all emergency resources. The feedback was incredible from from our customers internally as well. Um, Commissioner Waitman, to your point, we also have a joint information center embedded into the EOC where we have PIOS from other cities. Uh, is gracious enough to lend us a PIO. So, they're working with us, too. They they get to see the information in real time. Um, this website, Popup, was a place to put all of this information. Um, not only did our vendor step up and create this, but they thought it was such a good example of how to blend creativity, content, and functionality that they submitted it for an award on our behalf, and we won a gold award for that. So, we're really proud of that, and of course, we will continue to use that moving forward. Very quickly, I'm going to go through some customer service information for you. During September and October of last year, customer service answered 66,000 calls. We usually answer 17,500 a month. To give you an example there of the volume. Oh, sorry. How do I go back? There we go. Our average monthly call abandon rate is just 3%. So if you look at that, we were not able to answer 13% of all the calls in September and we missed 29% of calls in October. So essentially the volume of the storms far surpasses our ability to quickly answer them. We also see a pretty big spike in online chats. You can go to our website, you can chat with customer service if you don't want to pick up the phone. We handled nearly 8,000 in September and October. We usually handle about 1,700 a month. So, what did we learn? Of course, sir. Yeah. Um, on the chats, yes. Are you are we using AI or can we get to use an AI? That is an excellent question and the answer is we are about to. We are working on it right now. Yeah, that's going to be really helpful and it's going to it's nice because it's going to be tailored to the website. So, all the

on the website that's updated will be included in the chat. Nice make sure nice clean messaging. Absolutely 100%. Yeah, we're finding a lot of ways to use it in communications. So, thank you for that. Um, moving forward, we're working to make sure that other Pasco customer service team members, meaning team members who usually interact with our customers, are trained to help answer calls during emergencies. And then we'll incorporate those team members into our activation roster. So we're not just relying on Lisa's core team, you know, to go 40 days, which is really not sustainable. And then finally, we'll make datadriven decisions about when to open the resident information center. We find that sometimes um you know, we open up on a Saturday, we stay open late, and a lot of those calls coming in are blue sky day calls, not emergency related. So we'll be making data driven decisions about that. The next thing I want to bring up something that the board voted on many years ago looking at billboards transition from electronic billboards are from reg and they always push that they would help us with messaging etc. Yes sir. When we did our negotiations we negotiated very strongly. We didn't get a lot of transition. Do you think if we were able to have more bills, especially on the 19 to put messaging out there, you think that would help get the word out if people could see it? The answer is emphatically yes. I can show you some crazy statistics of how well our digital billboards work when we're sharing messaging, especially if we're driving them to our website. We can see a direct correlation between putting the message up and the traffic to our web page. Yeah. And I was just When we were talking about the the digital LED trucks, I was thinking just in those senior communities, those low line areas, the one thing I found out was they don't know to go to the you know what I'm saying? Like their phone is their worst enemy. So like maybe driving those LED trucks through those through those neighborhoods to get the word out because if we weren't knocking on doors or getting calls at 9:30 at night, hey, can you get to this place? These people aren't evacuated. Um I think lifeaving to some of these seniors. Yeah, I think that's a great suggestion and also it's worth noting that it's very important that we message to everyone in the county in the way they want to be messaged to. And to your point, it's not always going to be the same. So, we have, you know, we have the customer service center with the phone number. We have for our media partners, we're open 24 hours with a direct line that they can call our public information officers. We have all different social media platforms for all different age ranges. Um, so there's and of course our web page. So, so if you are looking for information, it is not hard to find. You know, just as an example, there was this lady and it was it was a language barrier thing and they

were like, "She's not doing anything. There's stuff all over her yard, you know, whatever." And I knew a little bit of Spanish. So, I told her, I was like, "A storm is coming. Like, you you know, you need to move your stuff." And she had no clue. So, just making in other languages and we do Spanish messaging. Um we we we when we have a when we have a news conference for example, we bring in a sign language interpreter. So we do sign language. But yeah, so our life safety information is pushed out in in both languages. But yes, to your point, they would have to know go to the social media platform to see it. And I will say we have an excellent relationship with Telmundo. Um and if you just humor me for one moment, I will say thank you to Andy. We by far have the most accessible EOC in the region. Meaning our media partners get on demand interviews with Andy, Mike, any one of our subject matter experts. Rarely are our other agencies offering that type of opportunity so they can get in and get the information they need. We offer interviews in Spanish on demand. Um, building on what these two are saying, um, I think it's smart to park those LED trucks on 19 um, ahead of the storm and direct people to places where they can get information like send them to I don't know if you send them to our app, send them to our website, but do it ahead of time. Yeah. So they get they know where to go ahead of time is also good. Do we have the ability to send out the text messages? Yes, ma'am. Yeah. And so um but we have to where do we gather those phone numbers? Everbridge. So yeah, so it's through Everbridge um they have the client database for every county throughout the United States with cell phone numbers, email addresses, whatever it may be. The issue is with Everbridge is the messaging that we send out has to be either proactive in response to imminent danger, reactive to imminent danger or basically um I can't send a message out saying, "Hey, go to Pasco County. Ww.mmyasco.net and go there." Uh the uh the feds frown on that. Um, we've had a couple of instances where other counties uh use their Everbridge for sporting events saying, "Hey, um, this is going on." Oh, yeah. And be here at what? And you get fined, you can lose your license. You should. So, but we we're very proactive with ours. Um, we do have a complete database. Um, there are little flaws with it. And what I mean by flaws is um we'll sound send out an Everbridge me message like for a test and somebody that used to live in Florida that now lives in New York is still getting that message because we don't know they moved out of the state. So they contact us and then we remove them. But we were very proactive during this storm last past storm season sending out me for evacuations and sheltering and items like that. And as as commissioners, when you're speaking with your constituents, let them know that that we have a lot of different ways to get information out to them. When we put out a news release, it's not just going to our media

would we would probably want to try to channel it through through Ralph. What are we what are we pointing at, Ralph? Oh, you're distracting me here. So, uh you know, I I again I I think I think we just need to we need to use judgment because there will be there will be times where where it does where it does make sense. But I think officially, yes, coming through me or through Ralph is is probably the right thing to do. And if it's urgent and it can't wait for these elected official type calls, you know, that's I won't I won't fault you for reaching out if there was if there was really an an urgent matter. So I I would say if it could wait, you know, or it's not time sensitive, talk to your about it and um or or save it for our elected officials call. Uh but if it's if it is a matter of urgency, if it is a matter of something that that can't wait, I personally we have good relationships with our assistant county administrators in the organization. We all sit and we talk and and that is that information gets back channelneled. It it did not create and this was probably the most chaotic storm that we've ever had. Um really didn't create a whole lot of chaos. We managed to make it we managed to make it work. So I think the preference is keep it keep it through the chain uh unless you really feel that it's it's crazy and you can't get a hold of us. Mariana, let me just give example. There was one time out there was picking up one lady was very distressed with a big boatard and she's like the day before I see her the next day and she's talking about how she's got some refrigerated food sitting out in the front yard that pick up the trash didn't pick it up. sitting there. What do I do? I go pick stuff off the truck. Do I need to call Mike for that? I don't think so. Call for that. I don't think so. I call John Batista truck. He communicated with them so we could set it, get it picked up and get out of there running suspension somewhere else. And so I think we've got we got to use that judge because you got five county commissioners and you got that up sometimes and I don't need to bother you with that. So you got to give us the flexibility. It may be a great system and we can use it at the appropriate times but if you get those instances that going on we got we got to be able to make those decisions what we think we need. And again, I I think I think I'm I'm fine. We we've exercised good judgment, and as long as we continue to exercise good judgment, that that I think it won't be a problem. I'll let you know if it becomes a problem. You know, one one of my biggest stress points, I haven't seen the whole thing here, was all the debris sitting on the side of the streets between storms um that we thought was going to blow into the water. Um but we learned a lot in this last storm because not one thing moved. Nothing moved. I don't know if it's because it was wet. I don't know why is a shocker that between Helen and

Milton all those piles of stuff in the front yards just stayed right there. Um so I'll be calmer about that next time because I was so worried that the one street into G Harbors is going to get blocked and no one will be able to go in. Wait a second. We're not having another hurricane. So that's right. That's right. I think Mr. He gets to put my house back together. Sure. I just want to add something. One of the best things or decisions made by Andy and and Mike and and the AAS, I guess, is when they pick John Power to do the pickup. Oh, yeah. In Pasco County, he'd done it before. Yeah. I mean, you couldn't have picked a person with the right expertise in doing something. He'd done it before and it made it a lot better for everybody. Madam Chair. Yes. You know, John, the whole The pickup was great. The coordination that was done with our local providers, the local guys who were picking up the stuff did a phenomenal job. No, Commissioner, we had there's a bunch of trash that's in the canal still. Yeah. So, I think they threw it in there. That's what I heard. Well, anyway, so anyway, so so picking that stuff up out of the canal is so much more cumbersome. I think we were right to be excited about getting it done as quick as we did because I think it saved a lot. Some of the stuff stayed and a lot of it did, but any bit that was in the can that was a big issue. I mean, refrigerator, chairs, tables. We still haven't picked it all up yet. I do I do have my do my dock table is in the water with some of my furniture. No, I think it's I think it's good to keep the way that time was coming. I think the team handled fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. All right, let's get on to public works. Yes. Thank you, chair. Good morning, commissioners. Good morning, Mr. Carbala. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Uh my name is Barrett Go. I serve as the assistant director for the public works department and uh excited to share our portion here public works. We'll just jump right into it. I'll try to Oh, that way. Okay. All right. Thank you, Ralph. So, uh we've all seen this, but we thought it would be a good idea to just show again our wersheds and flow paths. We all became very familiar with this during the storms. Um you could see the the areas on the east side that we became familiar with Duck Lake as well as you know some areas on the west side as well. Again we thought this was important to show. We know you've all seen this but this is the 100-year flood plane. Unfortunately some of these areas that you see here did experience uh flooding to this level and then some. So moving on what happened? This is Curly Road adaption and action. So I am actually uh proud to announce that all of the the roads that were blown out are now open. So traffic can now come and go. Um just working on a few punch list items and then those projects will be closed out. But uh we had major roads blown out um on the east side.

Unprecedented um very costly. You know what what we're going to do though in the future is monitor these areas and uh monitor the storm water uh watersheds associated with uh the areas that got blown out. Um we haven't I'm sorry. Go ahead. I have a question. Should we replace those with concrete? Does that does concrete wash out? Like so what we what we've done is a lot of the pipes that were um under these roads is what really caused the problem. It was it was a bottleneck and they were they were old um older infrastructure uh maybe some corrugated pipe but a big part of the cost was to actually replace the storm water infrastructure as well. So we wanted that's been done. Yes, that's done. So we had to start there and then build the road back up. So no, these these roads are in good shape. But as I said, as now we know that these areas could become a problem area in the future, we're going to keep a special eye on these on these locations. So, we went through a lot of sandbags. It was very busy for us. We went through close to 400,000 and this is for all of the storms combined. Okay. Proud to announce though that we did not run out of sandbags. We had plenty to spare and as director Fauca mentioned u we did receive some web EOCC requests from our municipal friends and we were able to help them out as well. The same can be said with sand totals. U shout out to our technical services division. This is a map, one of seven maps that they've created for our different sandbag sites. One of the things we identified is that we needed to improve our efficiency. As you all know, Maggie Valley is what you see here. Our sandbag site can become very busy. So, we've established some checkpoints, locations for staging. Um, and things we're doing in the future, you know, improving our staffing there. U we are looking into getting a sandbagging machine, having some sandbags already pre-bagged. Yep. Working on that. So, we're excited there. We've actually had a lot of um really great community input, too. We've had an Eagle Scout project comes to mind. Just decided for their uh for their final project um came in and created some sandbag fillers for us. So, it was very cool to see that. Yeah. Um another thing I want to point out is and and kind of give our technical services ops team and and solid ways to plug for is that we had to adapt quickly to the DDMS site set up here as well. So, our staff in conjunction with contractors, Kevin and his team, we were able to still maintain the sandbag site while while still having the DDMS site where the the debris was uh temporarily stored all kind of going at the same time. A lot of traffic coming and going, not to mention just the regular neighborhood traffic there. So, we consider that definitely a success. And, you know, we're we're able to adapt when challenges like that come before us. So, we all know that the storms are unprecedented and we had to ask the state for several different assets to help us out. And I'll kind of get into the why in a second here, but 140 pump

trucks. These are the 4,000 5,000galon tanker trucks came and helped us out in areas. I think I think my battery went dead, but it's okay. Talk loud. Thanks. So, especially on the east side of the county, we have a lot of closed basins and where in other areas we can hook up our pumps and lay flat hose, uh we have natural outfalls and areas where water can drain naturally. Unfortunately, um specifically on the east side of the county, a lot of closed basins, a lot of bowls. So, we had to call upon the state to come in with these tanker trucks to help us move that water to one of these three discharge locations I have at the bottom. Um, I will say that of the other items, the traffic cones, barricades, light towers, etc., we are working with the state on moving forward and uh with other vendors and and filling in those gaps where we needed some of those resources and some of that inventory to help out. Moving forward, our strategy, the goal is to abate flooding. We understand that we cannot eliminate it, but there are several tactics we can follow to help ensure that we do our best to try to abate the flooding. So, continuing our maintenance plans, investing in infrastructure, uh developing and updating our watershed management plans. We have a lot of data from this past hurricane season and we're going to go ahead and implement that and consider that in our storm water master plan which will be coming to you in July and we have two workshops coming up in June, the 3rd and the 10th. So moving forward, what have we done since our last storm season? We filled 24 positions. Each of these positions is going to have a role whether it be at the sandbag site in the EOC. Um, everyone coming aboard public works knows that you know it when we're activated they are they are part of the team. We have a new pump and as I said we're working with the state to acquire more pumps, more hoses. We've replenished our sandbags and and this is key. We've gone ahead and we've bought a lot of material uh in an effort to rebuild roads to make them temporarily passable should we have any other major blowouts in the future. Um will we have to have contractors or uh you know we might have to to have someone else come in after the fact, but at least with all of this material we can at least make sure that our key roads some of our key roads can remain passable. We're purchasing ConX boxes and five storage sheds. We're going to keep these at our sandbag sites. U just areas we've identified that uh it can improve our efficiency. We're working on uh purchasing trailers. This is going to help out with our emergency response friends as well as Pasco sheriffs. We were um charged in helping set up some command centers and uh blocking of course with our with our barricades blocking roads as the the rivers started to rise. So this equipment will help us be more efficient. asking for a new vac

truck, some more full-time employees. Again, we've identified these are some areas that can improve our process. Again, storm water master plan. We've been working with our consultant and we are considering the data from this past storm season. And again, there are two workshops coming up on that, June 3rd and June 10th, I believe. And then we are bringing the storm water master plan to you all uh in a July meeting. This was huge for us. The coordination is continuing with other county departments, regulatory agencies, municipal partners. I feel like we've broken down a lot of silos with our our municipal friends. Um we've had several meetings with their staff. It's gone very well. Um we've identified each other's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, definitely some threats there. uh but leveraging these relationships to improve, you know, not just improve our knowledge of of the wersheds and and certain flooding areas. We're tapping into their institutional knowledge as well. We have also worked with several HOAs and CDDs. Uh worked with some of you uh commissioners on this and that's going very well. Uh, as some of you recall during the the hurricanes, we identified that there were um certain privatelyowned assets um that were compromised or in need of maintenance. We've identified those and again those are those are privately maintained by HOAs or CDDs, but we've started those conversations with the HOAs and CDDs. Those are going well and they're in the process of bringing all of their infrastructure up to where it needs to be before the storm season. More training of course is great for our team. We're doing that now. And as I said, we're filling in gaps where state resource resources were needed. Again, moving ahead, uh this was mentioned, we have a new normal established for areas that could or will flood. You know, we have our before this past hurricane season, we had a list of of known floodprone areas on the east side and the west side. Unfortunately, that list has grown. Uh but should the worst happen again, we'll be more ready, more prepared. We can be more proactive and get ahead of the flooding, have pumps deployed, have uh pump trucks deployed. Yeah. I want to stop that right there. You're wrong. I want you to think about this. Leisure Lane, Jasmine Lakes, Hills, Timber Oaks, Iron Bark, Ray Burch, and now with the work you did, Arberdale Gnome, you guys have done a phenomenal job preventing flooding that would happen. and especially Ardale was something we couldn't do. What you guys have done out there especially is going to keep them from flooding. You guys mobilized quickly before Debbie came in after Debbie came in and what you did even after the fact those people in that whole area 500 homes are now going to have a way in and out because of the great work you did. So you have mitigated tremendously. So take credit for that. Thank you. No, I I appreciate that commissioner and I'll I guess I'll

kind of go back to a sports analogy. I forget who exactly said it, but you you remember your losses more than your wins. And uh that's kind of where we're concentrating on. I I appreciate what you're saying. I'm telling you, you should be proud of what you've done. You so many people that were flat out year after year in event after event, we're not in the news nearly as much as we used to be just because of that. Sure. So what you've done has been great and just keep doing the great work you're doing. Well, we've had great support from the top. So thank you all for that. All right. Appreciate that, sir. Um we have done we have established some areas that we need to improve internally on call process sheltering plans. Um some new SOPs we're establishing a deeper bench for the EOC. Um we were in there what 30 plus days. So we've established that we need uh a C-shift and you know to help prevent the burnout factor for our team. um always improving sandbag site operations, but you know when when I first came aboard uh you know Branford had helped set the table and we had a great framework and and we've just built off of that. We're improving our coupe plan. Unfortunately, there are times when we might have to get up and and leave uh due to unforeseen well due to extreme circumstances. So, we're we're working on that. And then one thing that's really cool I want to point out, we're improving our postevent aerial documentation. We have a licensed drone pilot now. Um I remember in the EOC, you know, a few days after the the event had the main storms had passed and we were scrambling to get out there to get aerial footage. Um we're able to do that almost immediately now. And our operations manager just happens to be a helicopter pilot. So we're uh we're able to get, you know, eyes in the sky quickly with the drone or with um a pilot. We had great cooperation with mosquito control. I think Andy, you were you were up there as well. So, that's just a recap uh of where where we're at and where we plan to be. So, I think it' be very interesting to see some of that drone footage. We've never seen it. I don't Yeah. So, I I think it would be great to show it to us and to the public. I think it would might open their eyes. Um Barrett, you and I did a drive through around Trinity and we're not out of the woods in Thousand Oaks and Trinity Oaks yet. Um I know the sheriff and others in the state when they're evacuating people. Um uh do you found that some of the ponds in was it Heritage Springs? Yeah, Heritage Springs. Correct. What was your findings? uh just that nothing too extreme, just that some swailes needed to be redefined and some of our assets as well. Um everything was relatively close to being in compliance. We did find one area where they they need to reestablish some of their rip wrap and it has kind of created a choke point, but our BMPs are storm water gates are looking good. Um as I said, the the HOA and the CDD um buyin has been excellent.

They've been in communication with SwiftMUD and their their communication with Christine Parker um who was out there with us has been great. Um they're they're moving right along on on those repairs. We I'm going to get a full report to you here later this week with the map and and so forth, but we we really didn't see anything too critical that that needs to be taken care of. Just some basic upkeep. Jack is our resident storm water guy. Um if you drive along Trinity Boulevard which you do that and you look to the right south at the Heritage Springs Lakes and some of them are on the north they're full to the brim all year long and then others around them are dry. They go up and down but those ones never go down. So we have there there is a mix of of retention and detention ponds over there. When we were meeting out there, I was initially thinking like these are all these these are all connected. So yeah, this doesn't look right. Um upon further review, some of those are actually meant to hold some water and our water table's been really high. So that could kind of explain why some of them were down and some of them still remain up. We're going to keep an eye on those, but some are intended to hold water and they aren't all connected. So I was mistaken there, but uh is there any way and maybe it's not worth the effort to get them ready big storm to hold more have more capacity. The ones that that are full before the storm comes. We could we could start those talks with them. That's that's definitely an option. Um they would have to go through their own temporary pumping process which I see Amber's here and maybe we could have a a conversation offline about that and how it's worth it but definitely I mean it's it's it could only help. So yeah, we could certainly pursue that. Um, you know, after they perform their maintenance, it would seem prudent for them to to go ahead and create some more capacity just like we do. Um, we have our Trinity Odessa Leadership Council meeting tonight. Heritage Springs has been coming. Spok's going to be there tonight. So, excellent. This is going to be a topic. Okay. Yeah. So, playing at the Heritage Springs, I've noticed the water is actually a lot lower to the end of this summer. So, in the courses, the ponds are lower. the ponds are much lower. I do think it's probably capacity all of them. Those ponds put a plan together to take some of the filtered in to take it out to create that capacity which we need but for the most part they are draining a lot. If you get a chance drive okay all right um any more questions for Barrett then you guys have a big job obviously we're get hopefully we're getting more pumps. Yes, the uh the pump is in for the Gulf Harbor Lake. Yep. And I I just I I'd be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to the our whole team, but the operations team, especially for what, you know, on the the west side, the storm surge that came in, as quickly as it came in, it went out really quick, too. Uh and that's a testament to Larry, his staff for the for the maintenance and upkeep.

You know, water didn't stay trapped on the west side. It all it all drained back. Except for the Golf Harbor, certain certain areas, yeah, there's it was unpreventable, but for the most part, um, you know, with with your support, Mike, with your support, Brford, of course, um, you know, we're able to do our thing out there, so to speak. No, and knowing that you guys have our backs is huge and we could do our job and know that if we need new pumps, new new equipment, um, that we have your support. So, we thank you. Um, I do have a question about FEMA reimbursements. Do you want those after? We actually have a presentation that um at the very end that covers covers that and it'll cover the one pager that I sent to you yesterday. The storm water team that were great to communicate with. I'm going to tell you a quick little story about Larry. Larry is uh out in the field. We've got a blockage, a pipe that was replaced, but there's a blockage. The water's not flowing up to try to find out where the water's flowing up. Larry actually gets down in his shirts, lays down the ground, reaches under for a pipe to see if the water is flowing and then he's blocking it right during the storm. So that's the type of dedication up there. Okay. Um, sheltering and housing. Good morning, members of the board. Brian Hoben, director of community services. During an activation, I have the distinct honor and pleasure of fulfilling the role of shelter operations chief. So this morning, I'm going to walk us through sheltering and housing. All right. So, as Andy previously mentioned, um we have a strong partnership with the school board, and that's really where our pre-landfall um activation begins. Uh so during a activation, our incident commander in conjunction with our partners at the school board, they deem based off of the size and the scope of the activation, what shelters are going to be necessary. And of course, as information changes and the size and scope um change, per incident, we adapt um and open shelters accordingly. Um we do have BOCC staff at every shelter. I'll talk specifically a little bit about um our special needs shelters here in a second, but we have staff at every schoolboard shelter. We make regular communication with them every shift. And we do so from the EOC to really act as their liaison, their point of contact. And this is the beginning component of us gathering information pre-landfall into the activation to really prepare us for recovery, housing needs, and case management on the backside. We communicate regularly regularly with them every shift to understand what are the needs at each specific shelter. It's also very important to us because we find out about power outages. We find out about special needs citizens that may have shown up to a regular shelter. Um, we're also very uh informed and adept at kind of reacting to information

specific to neighborhoods and areas where these citizens are sheltered. So, it's very imperative that we keep that communication up. Uh, we do have two special needs shelters um under a large scale, but always one special needs shelter. Of course, that's the Fano shelter that's run by the Department of Health again in conjunction with support from BOCC staff. Um and then Wiregrass Ranch acts as the east side special needs shelter if uh the operations deems it's necessary. Um the activations in regards to transportation, Go Pasco does transport our special needs um citizens to the special needs shelter. Also, citizens can get to the shelters via their own personal vehicle, um Uber, however they can get there safe. So, I know our information goes out early and often to try to encourage citizens to get to shelters while the road conditions are still safe and while Go Pasco can remain on the the road, which is right around that 40 mile per hour wind mark. Um, and then of course, all of our shelters are pet friendly. Have to, you know, give a plug to animal services. They do a phenomenal job. You know, during last year's u major incident, we had over 1300 pets in those shelters. We'll talk a little bit about some of the grants that they've been seeking to continue their operations, but this is the imperative information as it pertains to uh pre-land and how we're starting to prepare our shelter operations. Go ahead. Um so maybe this maybe Kathy could help with this this question, but um I was talking to one of the school board members and I was wondering if you could use any of our CBG whatever money in these in these shelters if the school board has storage for them because like I've worked shelters like I worked during my head and um very eye opening because you have people just dropping 84 year old people off at the curb with nothing and you know it's heart-wrenching and I remember this one story about this granddaughter saying oh yeah yeah I'll come back I'll give her you know a blanket or a pillow or whatever and she was so old and in diapers and she was just laying on the ground So, um, is there any way maybe we could partner to see if they have storage even if it's for the elderly, but you know, just so they're not on the floor is one question I'd like. And my Okay. And then the second part is, and I I don't even care if I do it like if I ask the girls to do it for our area, but one of the things that I noticed was in these mobile home parks. So, they they're not on the call list, right? have no idea what the call down list is. They don't know how to get on the call down list. And that was really eye opening for us as well. So is there any way like even if we call those areas that we know that are that have the possibility to get flooded saying, hey, if we talk to the um administration there, the manager and say um hey, if you could get this message out to everybody, see who needs a ride from

Pasco, meet back at the park and a to pick you up because I was thinking, you know, instead of being reactive, let's be proactive. Absolutely. And instead of sending Bill Pasco out there three times in a day, just say, "Hey, let's have this is your time to pick up." Yeah. And we'll take one trip to the shelter. Just throwing it out there. Absolutely. Andy, do you want to address the cops real quick? I I saw you making So, I don't I do not believe the cops will be eligible under the CDBG money. Uh we have talked with the school board in the past about getting CS at our shelters. The issue is as you have mentioned is the storage because like I'll give you a prime example with what with uh Wire Grass High School for this other special needs shelter. Um all that stuff is kept at the fac. We have to transport it all the way over there. And we we're working with the school board if I'm correct. Um they have a storage facility over there. I don't know how much we're going to be able to put in it, but if we can get the special needs stuff moved over to that side of the county and see if we can procure some some CS to utilize, the state's pretty good about sending them to us when we ask for them. Okay. So, they go get a storage like even a storage shed that we can stack them. We'd have to work with the school board and see if they have our property that they we can use. So, but yeah, absolutely. It's a viable idea. It is working with the board in the state to see if the state's willing to give us more cuts. Because I will tell you, they say they're a Red Cross shelter. Red Cross does not come in and train those schools on how to be a shelter. They give them a binder and say you're a Red Cross shelter. And being one of those people that, you know, had had to work, um it's basically like, well, you're not allowed to help the the people up. Are you are you kidding me? You know, we're going to help these these people you're not supposed to. It's a liability thing. But when they're being dropped off and they don't even have a place to sleep other than a floor, I just think, you know, any way we can help do cops or something would be great, right? Yes, ma'am. And I know our our shelter staff here in Pasco County are trained in how to pick up people when they laying on the ground and help them up and get them. I'm talking high school, things like that. I am sure we can find places in this the target. that's empty. But Commissioner Mariana, I was going to say, how many costs did we have this past year and did they all get used? Was there any at the end of the end of the storm? Did any go anywhere else? Where are they? Remaining are sitting at the right warehouse shel if you wanted to put a container or two. That I do not know. I have to talk with Andrew Baxter about that. plus do the department of health um both shelters two and one have store

supplies for special needs for wire grass. Correct. That's correct. So if we I don't know if Andrew Bash would have room to put a conx box out there container or something that we could store them in there. Um my preference you know what CS especially is that they stayed in some kind of climate control because if they sit out in the heat You can get conxes with climate control because we have that. Yes. So, let's go back to the the shelter though. So, the shelter's got a ton of room in there. If you needed to have storage partially, it depends on the how much we're going to take up because during Milton, we use all three shelters, one, two, and three. So, um is there some wiggle room? We have we'd have to get with uh Andrew Baxter and his team and then with uh Train and her team because we got You had to figure out the semantics of where to store it. If you set them up where you could store them there, the storm's coming. You're getting ready for it. You're going to take them from there. Fes up your space. You need to lay them out and they go to location. Yes, that's possible. Just to clarify, when when I was talking about the Red Cross shelters and you said the staff was trained, that's at those shelters, but the ones that are schools, they're operated by school employees. So, they're not trained to help people or anything. It's just basically on a volunteer basis. So there's a little confusion on that because there's both school staff there and county staff there. School staff there are for the operations of the school. They'll send a principal in. They're maintenance people, kitchen people if they need to cook. Registration and dormatory people are county employees. That's who they're supposed to be. Now if they're mixing and matching, I do not know that. But the one of the agreements we have with ourou with the school board is they provide the staff for operations. We provide the staff for the c for the customer citizens residents. Um so I know every year our staff is shelter trained. So we do a review with all of them that are involved and that has changed over the last five to 10 years. Wasn't that way? No, it wasn't that way. Actually, it's been two years. So, since 23 is when we've made that big change. Great. If I could just remind everyone to speak into the mic so the clerk can do the thing. All right. I'm going to go ahead and continue here. Um because now we're really looking at transitioning to the post- landfall information and the beginning of the short-term recovery actions. So, after landfall, what we typically do is we start to demobilize the schools. And what that looks like is based off the information that we have and the citizens that are at the schools, we really start a condensing process where if the areas are safe and citizens um can return home, roads are safe, uh fire rescue has made sure that there's no power outages and citizens are safe to return, they start to demobilize and go back to their homes,

they start to look at their own recovery journey and utilize social services as needed. Um but what happens to the individuals who can't? they start to condense down to the facano shelter and that becomes the hub really of our short-term case management our resources and how we um gather information from our citizens how we develop a uh short-term and into a long-term recovery plan. So as citizens condense down to Vano um we typically have a lot of partners there. Uh the Red Cross is typically there, the Department of Health is there working with our special needs citizens. Uh under the last activation we experienced um state case management coming there. The human services team operates their case management out of there. Localized partners come and then of course FEMA once that's deemed as an eligible option for us. So really the facado shelter becomes the hub where we're working with citizens on an individual basis on an individual need basis um to develop their care plan and to develop their housing. And then of course uh last year presented us with a very unique opportunity. Um I believe it was first of its kind when we uh initiated the opportunity to uh launch a shelter recovery operation in the middle of an activation with Pasco Hope. So Pasco Hope was something that allowed us to pivot and create recovery opportunities. Um we had a co-located Basco Hope both at Grand Boulevard which housed our pallet homes, our single uh individual um units as well as trailers that could um occupy up to two individuals. And then at Youth Lane, we also provided uh a ton of uh sixperson family trailers there. There were there were 14 of those provided over there with additional ADA compliance trailers provided over there. Are they still there? They are. They are still there. I haven't seen those yet. Yep. Yeah, they are still there. And uh, of course, this really transitions into uh our long-term recovery and working with FEMA um and and how we provide the citizens the shelter needed, but also the recovery opportunity through case management. So, I will say that Catholic Charities has been a phenomenal partner uh over at Pasco Hope and has been working to not only help the citizens recover but also rehouse them as well. And that really ties into our our partnerships, right? So even through um our case management plan and our hub really located at the Fisano shelter, we did utilize partnerships with the United Way. We utilize partnerships with community development for short-term housing, hotel vouchers, um for um housing in emergency situations. Community development provided a uh process for us to be able to house individuals and continue that case management journey until we figured out what was the appropriate uh methodology for citizens to be able to recover appropriately and get back to where they need to be. Emergency management also contracts with a long-term recovery group after each activation. Um so Fresh Start is the uh long-term recovery group that

we've contracted with after the previous two uh activations. And what do they do? Fresh Start, Fresh Start. They um they do the long-term case management. So, anyone who was storm related damage um they have a monthly meeting and they have a network of not forprofits, faith-based organizations that get together. And so, they've typically done the mucking gut. They've connected citizens with resources. They help individuals get through their FEMA application. Um they've been kind of the go-to which allowed the human services team to transition back to their day-to-day tasks after a couple months in the shelter. And where where do they meet? So they meet virtually. I know they've used the uh EOC as their their main hub. I believe that they come in there, but they they cast their their meetings virtually for not for profits. Jan Martini. Yeah. Oh, Jan Martin. Okay. Yep. But so but doesn't have a different name? Well, in other counties, isn't that what M Cruz has been trying to set up here? A VOAD. A vocad. Is that acting as a VOD? in a lot of ways. Andy, I know there's there's subtle differences when you use the term. Why don't you explain the the the subtle differences? So, our long-term recovery group um basically uh goes out and helps with the uh homeless uh low moderate income families, uh housing, uh food stamps, and and they work with these families. The VADS during an event basically are volunteer organizations that to assist. It could be I use this one all the time, the Cajun Navy. Um, they come in your other volunteer donations are all hands and hearts. Um, those are Boaz. They come in and do volunteering, volunteer work for us. The long-term recovery group is more focused on homelessness, getting people up and running, special needs, and and and housing. So, that's the basically the two big differences. So they work under you or do they work under you? Go ahead. Moads are their own thing. They usually work in conjunction with the long-term recovery group. Currently we are we are putting together not trying no more. We are actually putting together a tri county boad which will encompass panelis Pasco and Hernando. Um so Laura Wiloxin has been working on that. I do not know where they're sitting as of right now because this is really in its infancy. Um but they are moving forward with that. Sir, yeah. When you say homeless, is it people who've become homeless or is it the general homeless population that we So they've actually worked with both people that have become homeless from posttorm and they actually work with homeless people that actually live out on the streets. Okay. And there was a little um you know, some players in that field that were causing disruption during the recovery last time. Yes, ma'am. Yes. Okay. Um, are you done yet? I have one more slide, but Clifer's not working. I do have a question. How many do we still have at Pasco Hope from the storm? Yep. We have 51 citizens uh currently over at

the uh Youth Lane site and we have 38 citizens total over at Grand Boulevard or excuse me uh that's reversed 51 citizens at Grand Boulevard, 38 over at those. Yes. So what are we doing to get them into permanent because they now they would have been there for months and months and months. So I will say we've already transitioned um you know around 10 10 to 12 citizens out of those shelters. So, they're working with our housing navigator specifically from the county. Also, Catholic Charities is working with them. Um, but there have been placements um and citizens that have been Yeah, that's something I want to bring up and and we're looking at everything, too. You know, it's it's not just, you know, that the FEMA checks. you know, some of these individuals who um specifically ended up there really need long-term care. Um we we have an older population of seniors that are mostly comprise our youth lane population over there. So, we're looking um at, you know, case management for them and is it appropriate to um help them transition to assisted living facilities or or what are their best options? Um may not be our place, but for that Do we have people or organizations we want to help them to through insurance? Is FEMA helping them with their potential insurance claims if they lose their home and become homeless or who's who's helping? Are they just waiting on That's that's standard for us when we do the intake. You know, we ask them, are you a homeowner? Have you contacted your insurance? Have you made a FEMA claim? Like that that's standard right through the basic case management. I will tell you that the majority of the people that we are serving um are not homeowners or don't have insurance. Um, so we're just working our way through the process and trying to cover every basis from a case management perspective. Um, and then going of course through our not forprofits and working with, you know, some some have state benefits, some don't, but we're working each individual case trying to maximize the opportunity for these citizens to recover. I just That's good. I just take that the insurance company's jerking somebody around for what are we nine months now? If that's still the case. Okay, fine. Thanks. Yeah, I would be remiss to say that with the Pasco Hope again, we could not have done this without uh our utilities, our public works, our um road maintenance, our facilities. They did all this during a storm. All of them come together. We're all in hectic with our own lives and they made this happen. So, I can't say enough thank you to that. Hi, good morning everyone. Triangome, health officer at Department of Health in Pasco County. Um, thank you for having me here today. I want to talk a little bit about our special needs shelter. Uh so during response I work with Brian and under the direction of the EM manager to operate the special needs shelter and this is a really a

shelter for individuals with limited um medical needs specifically oxygen dependent. Uh we're lucky I know we know that we're all lucky that we have our regional shelter here uh the only one in the state. Um and I do want to point out that with uh with having a shelter in Pasco. We about seven years ago, we were able to procure our oxygen generator and this is at our shelter and um this last year it was able to operate for four weeks uh non-stop which allowed us to have the capacity to house those residents that are oxygen dependent um without depending on a vendor to come and fill those needs. Did I hear you say this is the only shelter in the state regional. Yes. Yeah. What is everyone else doing? So, real quick, sorry. We get visits to that shelter every year. We'll get seven, eight, nine counties that come down or up and want to see it and want to build one. Uh the hinge point for all these counties, we were very fortunate and we got grants to help with building the facility. Uh that's their pinch point. Uh and plus ours is a is it lead or lean? Lead lead. Um very efficient. Um and other counties, they just want to build a building that's something that resembles ours, but they want to see how it functions. So I we have not heard anybody breaking ground to build a facility like the one we have here in Pasco. Do you remember how much that cost us? Okay. Curious. Should have been two feet higher. That's all I'm saying. Jack try. Could believe. And so, um, I'm I'm just going to talk a little bit about what we've been working on and what we continue to work on. So, we always try to engage our community partners specifically rel related to the operations of the shelters, our client caretakers. So, this year we're taking an extra effort to work with our EM um to engage our long-term care facilities and home health agencies to provide support so that they understand their plans and should they need to come to the shelter, if there's um if they're going to be bringing their patients there, um that there would be additional support. Many times, especially home health agencies, uh they will bring their clients to our shelter. Um and then the caretakers will either go evacuate or somewhere else. Um so just engaging them a little bit more and working with them to see how we can support each other. Um I have a question on that. Yes. Um should we not have like contracts with those facilities? Um, I know we hired one to take help take care of my in-laws when they were in their assisted living facility. Um, did they provide some kind of rotation with their own staff during something like that? Well, contract. Well, and Andy probably can provide a little bit more, but I understand that especially long-term care facilities, they have a plan that gets submitted to the state every year um on the what their plans are to to be during an activation and the shelter

should be the place of last resort. So, they should be transporting to another sister facility and what have you. um just because we it depends on our capability and each county has different medical capabilities. Um and so there we review some of those plans and the state reviews some of those plans but the shelter should be the place of last resort just for the safety of those clients. Correct. It was or Ian where they just dropped them out the door and ran. Is that Yes, ma'am. So, the long-term care facilities do something called the SEAP, which is a comprehensive emergency management plan, and it has to be submitted to us every year for review. So, we review it and the thing that are supposed to happen when they storm comes is they are supposed to contract with another facility, whether it be a sister facility or another or another facility that's willing to take some of the residents in. Unfortunately, all the moving parts of that never really fall in place because the first thing they got a contract with is private ambulance providers like AMR or MedFleet. You look at any SIM for any of our long-term care facilities and every one of them are contracted with medfleet that have maybe seven ambulances in Pasco County and their staff is our staff and they're probably activated through us, right? our firefighters that are driving them. Some some of them are. So, I'll give you a prime example. A long-term care facility in St. Petersburg sent their residents to the Greek Orthodox Church on Little Road to to house there with their staff. That's never supposed to happen. It was it's borderline illegal for something like that to happen. they're supposed to follow their their their their SEM and go to a registered facility and if not they start looking for hospital beds and hospitals if they're available but unfortunately some of the times we end up trains group ends up getting them brought to them and they have to house them and sometimes they go to the school like sometimes they show up at schools. So we have one one facility here locally in Pasco that tried to book the Hilton an emergency to put their all their clients in a Hilton hotel. A shelter? Yeah. No, a long-term care facility. Oh. Oh, nice. Okay. Interesting. I didn't um I had a call you I got a call from the um one of the future speakers uh Jennifer Kennedy that they had 200 people on a bus for wire grass ranch and they were all medically needy. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Coming from another county. Yeah. They were from St. Pete I believe and then got routed to Pulk and then they couldn't get P couldn't service them and then they couldn't get gas in P to try and get here. But again, 200 people, they needed to make a report last minute. So, we continue to engage them and work with them um just so that we were prepared

beforehand. Uh also on the same lines of community partners, we are um very fortunate to be able to work with our EM and our facilities folks to reduce our setup time for wiregrass. Andy alluded to it earlier that all of our supplies for wiregrass is at Pano and it takes five 26 box trucks to move that equipment over. So in the past it took us about 12 hours to to be able to set up back and forth. Um and thanks to Brian Corly's group and uh the school board, we were able to move all of those things and set up within four hours. And there's a little picture of what it looks like fully set up. Yes. Um we are also working on uh building our capacity. So we have about 160 employees but only 13 of them are are medical staff. So when you're talking about capacity and able to take care of the residents that get there um we're looking at 20 uh per nurse a ratio of 20 clients per nurse. And if you break up my nursing staff to four shifts, you're looking at three to four uh medical staff per per shift. So in the last couple of years, we've we have contract personally with uh medical providers. Okay. And traveling nurses or something. Yes. Traveling nurses. So last year I think we got up to about 18 of them. Um and then with Andy's help, we were able to get some LPNs as well from the state. So that that not only allowed us to uh help the clients that were there, but once we closed or once the storm passed and my folks have to go back to work to open up offices, this allows us to continue to operate the shelter as well. And next slide. Oh, I got uh Oh, there we go. And I think everybody got a a copy of the matrix. Something that we worked on last year. So the state doesn't really give us clear guidelines on what special needs. It all depends on the county and what's needed in the county. So something we worked on really hard, my group did was try to define what special needs is. So we created a matrix. Um now this is very fluid. It still depends on the situation and obviously our community partnership. um we don't want to be so stringent that we only have a few people and there's more people at uh the schools that really can come to our shelter. So it it can be very fluid, but it gives us a little bit more guidance on what is special needs and what our capabilities are. Um this is going to be used for our nurses. We're going to engage with the school board and the county to um allow dialogue to talk about what what qualifies as special needs. Um and it it's really just a a partnership that we're trying to make sure that we're working with the community but then um meeting the needs of the most vulnerable population as well. And then I just want to uh address posttorm while uh some of the things that we have in our toolkit that we'll continue to build upon is uh public health support letters such as debris removal uh mosquito control letters of support advisories

sending those things out working with Tamar's group to make sure that we send those things out. Those all come from the state and the state's working to make sure that we have a toolkit that we can readily access post storm so that we could communicate any public health messages in a timely manner. Any questions? All right. I appreciate you having me here. Try I have a question. It says here with caregiver So, so two people come. I thought because I thought you were providing some nursing. So, I'm trying to figure this out. So, the requirement is that they bring a caregiver, but our ratio to clients that come last year, I think at Dana, we had about 250 270 clients. Um, and we probably had about five caregivers or 10 care caregivers that came with each client. Um, so you know to address that we try to build our capacity and we're trying to work with our community partners so that they understand that it is a requirement for them to bring a caregiver. So do the do some of the caregivers come and go? Yes. Just like Commissioner Joerger alluded to, they will drop them off and pick them up later. This last slide just rounds out sheltering and it really just is a depiction of the grants that animal services was awarded in 2025 and those grants specifically are for shelter operations as well as uh equipment specifically um kennels. I know that there's always a need for kennels. So I just wanted to round off sheltering with that last slide as we transition to 911. So touched by a lot of all right 911. So I am covering 911. Okay. Oh you play that service. So this is an audio recording. Sure. Tell me exactual. I'm sorry. I'm trapped in my house. My animal. When you say you're trapped in your house, tell me exactly what happened. The water is up to to my knees. Okay. I don't go on the couch. I can't open my front door. So that's just one. Tell me exactly what happened. That was a little confusing. Okay, so that was one of the many calls that 911 received um during Helen. U we listen to a bunch of them and it's just jaw-dropping what these what our citizens went through but this is very brief. Uh on average uh 911 receives about 11,500 calls during a normal operational week. During both hurricane weeks they average about 16,000 calls. the night the peak of Milton um it got so hectic and the 911 center that we have a bank of phones that is not in 911 that actually lives in the EOC it's on the back wall. Um they started ringing and I just happened to turn around and look and I'm like why are those phones ringing? So somebody went and picked it up and it was a 911 call. So the system got taxed so hard that it actually did what it was

supposed to do and dump it into the EOC on that phone wall. Those are there for um specific reasons. We also had the Day City 911 center stood up and it was operating as well. They were working an Alpha Bravo shift uh during Milton and the Bravo shift was working. So, it was at night. It was around probably 11:30, 12:00 when this all occurred. It got so busy that they had to go in there and wake everybody up that was sleeping, working for 911 to grab a phone so they could start answering calls. every station in the 911 center was being utilized to answer calls and all six phones in the EOC on the back wall were being utilized to answer calls. What makes it even harder to work with the people in 911 center, they're on computers typing these calls out live. the people that were in the EOC had to use pen and paper and then run that paper back into the EO into the 911 center in order to get the call out through dispatch if they were even able to respond at that time. And I know um from 8:30 that night till about 2:30 in the morning during Milton, operations were shut down. Nobody could respond anywhere. So these calls just kept stacking and stacking and stacking. So, um, kudos to the 911 folks, Eric Selzer and his team. Um, they really busted their hump to to make the citizens and answer the call service. Uh, was a good job. So, building forward, uh, he learned a lot off of this, him, him him and his team. Um, so now they're doing a, uh, countywide calms down drill to ensure readiness. And basically what that is is the computer system goes down, how how do we answer calls? You'll still get the phone call on their headset, but they can't input data. So, now they're implementing forms and and and going through that in order to streamline a process that we do not or we don't drop calls of service. Can we not um instead of writing on piece of paper, can they not write on a tablet or something where you write it turns it into text and send it? That I do not know. That would be something you have to speak with. and Eric. Yeah, I think the point is is to uh you know get as low tech as possible to ensure you can still provide service, but those are all depending on we don't know what's going to happen and I know Captain Selzer could probably speak more to that. We'll have him get back to you on that, but and radios, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's all part of their part of their um their drills. Uh so, request some maintenance on equipment prior to hurricane season. So, now they're going to have it come in to make sure everything is up and running properly. Don't need no tuneup. don't need those software upgrades. Uh readoff training and hurricane general order review. So now all their supervisors and employees and 911 review the go that was sent out for hurricanes so that way they have a fresh in their mind and they're ready to work. Open both centers 247 to ensure continuous

service. Uh we did that during Hela and Milton. uh it does take off some of the burden off one center and kind of uh deviate out to the other center. So they double up on their staff and like I said an alpha bravo shift. They open the incident command channels and those are usually to the battalion chiefs um the EOC uh both law enforcement and and fire rescue and they open open the tactical channels and those are for the boots on the ground. So say when we were doing water rescues during Helen, they were operating on on different TAC channels. Holiday might have had one TAC channel. Hudson was on a different channel. So that way they weren't overlapping and confusing each other because me coming from fire rescue and being on a a scene with multiple channels going it you can lose your mind really quick trying to figure out what's going on. And do I have any questions on 911? I can answer. Yes. You want to try to keep it simp? Yeah. I wrote down cascading levels of low tech, right? And so we may not need to go to paper immediately because maybe it's only comps. But if you lose everything, then maybe that's your last resort. So, we'll certainly discuss that with Captain Seltzer and the team. And I'll pass the baton. Sir, morning chair, everybody. Ryan Glenn, Pastor County Fire Rescue. Just to reach back into dispatch for just a second, one of the things that we realized um as U director Fossil was describing that the call volume kind of stacks up a little bit while we're doing our emergency response with some other things. And um what we've learned is that in the past when we put an individual inside the dispatch center that can help triage and prioritize some of those calls, oftentimes dispatchers don't want to take that liability on. So we put that back on ourselves. And um during the first hurricane, we kind of had a delay getting back out and and clearing those calls out, but I think we did a lot better job. We were on the second one because we realized that that was a mistake and we uh fix that immediately. So, um, adapting, you know, we have a collaborative partnership, uh, a joint training with PSO. We've been working on that extensively. We've had a training, uh, on, um, the 29th of last month with them. We actually have a 36-hour tabletop exercise that we're going to go through at the end of next month as well, and we're continuously doing that. So, um, you know, we encountered, you know, we encountered wind, rain, flooding, electrical hazards, fire hazards, etc. And you know, those are some of our main concerns and that's what we're continuously always trying to to figure out on how to improve on. Helen, we had a a 36-hour operation period with roughly 200 rescues. Milton, we had, you know, almost a twoe uh operation period with over a thousand rescues. And, you know, 1,200 rescues between the two hurricanes. It sounds like a lot, but I say it's only 1,200

rescues because as has been said many times, you know, to my left, the consistent messaging, I think, uh, each commissioner took turns putting up messaging. Director Fauca, um, Mr. Cabala and Tamry seems certainly put it out to evacuate and that's all we had to rescue was 1,200 because we got the message out and thankfully people listened. So, uh, that's a a benefit and a something we should all pat ourselves on the back for. So, building forward, um, during our first two operational periods, we only had three swiftwater boats. We now currently have six, uh, which is double our capacity. We have also seven Johnboats with some motors and a couple larger sea arcs. We've also, uh, recently taken delivery of our large 35 foot aluminum um, fireboat. I I hate to say that if a hurricane hits, so hopefully at least it'll hit during the daytime maybe, so we can operate a little more effectively. But um some of the things that we've realized is that when we're tra we're traversing these flooded streets during this water movement, and I know it doesn't seem like the water moves very fast, but we watched it while we were operating, you know, for a few hours literally cross uh 19 and then traverse back. So the closer you are to the Gulf, the faster that water is actually moving. And we can't see anything out there. The comms was low, uh lighting was low. we didn't have any type of um um additional lighting on our our apparatuses on our boats and our radios don't work work really well in 8 ft of water as well. So, we've worked through that problem. Um we've also ordered the two high water vehicles which unfortunately won't be here for this hurricane season, but will be a huge asset when they do arrive. Additionally, we've uh taken um possession of a heavy equipment team. We are one of only three in the United States to have this type of a team. This consists of four skid steer tractors and two excavators that are used for pretty much just clearing roadways and making emergency access paths. I know we were worried about debris being in the road and blocking um responders. We kind of put together a makeshift team last year because we knew this was going to be a situation with public works and sheriff's office and we were running around and pick up trucks but it was very ineffective and very laborious. These will be much more expedient. And of course those come with the trailers and the and the trucks to pull them with as well. So question on those family have tractors for many years. You don't use them they fall into disrepair. So how are you going to use them if we don't have we well we're technically allowed to use them in county for whenever we want to. We use them for training. We've um got with um Keith Wy and his group to find out a few opportunities that we can utilize them and help him out with some of his just daily operations as well. So, it's it's additional training for us as well as the equipment. If um other

counties have need of this service, can we contract with them for your team to go there? We can. That team is actually fully refundable and deployable. Um we're expected to deploy. And on that note, um, with recent conversations through the Florida Fire Chiefs Association and around the state, um, and with Miss Julian Rice, we're kind of up in the air on what we're expecting as far as federal responses during an emergency. So, the state's considered that we're going to be expected to kind of hold our own. Uh, Pasco County has become a little bit of a powerhouse as far as special operations and deployable assets goes. So if the hurricane doesn't hit here, we're probably going to be expected to supply significant resources. So but we get reimbursed. Yes, ma'am. Yeah. So talk about it together when the storm hits. Wait, wait. The contract says the state could take away our toys. Yes. Mhm. Yeah. Did we buy them with state money? No, no, no. They were given they were they were given to us by the state. Oh, these tractors. So, they're basically Okay. on loan. All right. Well, I'll They're on loan. Yeah, they're on loan. We have to maintain them. We're allowed to use them. If we break them, we buy them. But, you know, but but they're getting used. And it's it's a good I like that they trust us to correct. Yes. House those kind of the the trucks were given directly to us. the trailers and equipment is still a state asset that's can be called upon when needed. Okay. Um and then of course building forward um last year we had um 90 special ops members and when I say special ops those are the ones that have the individual training the um you know we have the the line crews as well but we transition to a a response package of we leave our majority of our firefighters in the stations to handle the additional 300 calls that come in on average a day and we call in our special ops teams because they're the ones with the swift water, the high water, the high angle um all the specialty um certificates that you need to kind of deal with these type of incidences. Last year we had 90. This year we've staffed up and trained an additional 110. We have roughly about 200. And then we've of course um added in another 80 personnel with our ramp up with the DHIP which gives us a a larger surplus of individuals that we have to call in. That's pretty much where we're at. working with the sheriff's office 2400 rescue. I want to just ask you as earlier far as messaging goes and you talked about different things about shutting down utilities, shutting down electric. Oh, absolutely. I I think that what we did um last year was was phenomenal. That's why I say we had, you know, 1,200 rescues, but it was only 1,200 rescue. So any additional is going to be super beneficial. Brit situation. Yes, sir. We have that correction. Did all the um did all of

our electronic billboards on 19 give us opportunity to do messaging or did we need to work with them? Yeah. So, how many did we have? So, we had um Sarah, correct me if I'm wrong, but we did we do the life safety information on our billboards. So, we do the evacuations. Nice. And then following that, we did the where you can get help, which was directing people back to the website. But the evacuations absolutely. But do you do you remember how many billboards we had? We had I think we had two different designs. Yeah. So, one pre-torm and one post. How many different billboards will be on? I'm so sorry. So, yes, working with Clear Channel, we have six around the entire county. Nice. Just did we utilize, you know, the the electronic, you know, where it says road work ahead, variable message boards. Yes, those are perfect. We utilize some of those. Um, in fact, we utilize a lot of them when it came to directions to the comfort stations, the DRC's, the pods. Uh, we also use them. I know Barrett's group used them for detours and whatnot, but we we do put them out. The bad thing about it is it's preferred to use them post storm than pre-torm because you have to pick them up and if you don't grab them in time, you're not going to find them afterwards. Yes. And we did utilize the LED trucks as well to advertise our comfort stations and things like that. And um, you know, Ampskills has some messaging um vans that I'm sure they would be happy to park out on 19 with messages. Did we contract with those um with what's his name? And there's another company. Did we contract with those guys? Is that how we got those mobile messaging boards? Yes, ma'am. And how many did how many of those were there? Does anyone remember? Three. I like those because they can move around very well. Yeah, those are perfect and then they're not there all the time destroying them any worse than comfort stations and pods. Yes, ma'am. Comfort. Good morning. You didn't wear your crown, Sean. I was told I was not allowed to, sir, by the MRC chief. director. Probably good advice. Yeah. Good morning, commissioners. Uh Sean McGarvey, libraries director. Uh comfort station and pods. So, first off, let us split the difference between what a comfort station and a pod is because uh and we'll discuss it a little further down. What we discovered is is that these two do not mesh very well when held on the same location. Uh a comfort station is an area for citizens to achieve basic levels of sanitation and kind of home services. So for instance, washers, dryers, bathrooms, showers, hot showers, those types of resources. A pod or point of distribution is a service center dedicated to providing basic uh support functions, eating, drinking, ice to keep what you have cold. So the

logistics of both vary depending on the actual location and needs. So what we did this year, so we distributed over a 100 pallets of food and water at our comfort st or at our pod locations. We delivered over two tractor trailers full of ice. And we also had 12 locations having washer and dryer locations, restrooms at 10 locations, showers at 10 locations, and charging stations at 12 locations throughout the county. These sites were distributed, as you can see in this next slide, along areas that were heavily impacted by the storm. So, we attempt to locate these stations as close as we can to areas that have been heavily affected, but there are some requirements for these stations. Uh, they've got to meet a minimum sa uh space and code requirement that's established by both FEMA and state regulations. They also, as we discovered, need easy access both in and out. If you try and get these directly into disaster areas, what you end up doing is bottlenecking citizens who are also trying at the same time to remove debris, to remove damage, and also potentially evacuate. Uh we also discovered that they need the closest thing of is a sewer connection because they all generate gray and black water which needs to be drained out into the proper receptacles and not just vented. Uh, I cannot thank enough Barrett Doe and his team and public works for giving us complete and easy access to um transfer stations and other areas where we were able to quickly and easily dispose of these gray and black water locations. It provided uh faster turnaround for all of these locations and made them function much much better. So what we do for the comfort stations uh and I'm sorry this text is very small so I got to look over there. Uh we order these through webc which is the state system that allows us to request resources and we put in these requests in advance where we know the location. So post storm but pre-actual standup. So probably within 24 to 48 hours after the storm. Uh these are supported by vendors mostly um duty calls which is out on 52 and other vendors uh throughout the state. Uh we also provide security that is also ordered through webs. Sometimes it could be the sheriff's department, sometimes it could be vendor provided security. And finally, we keep staff at these locations to make sure that citizens requests and needs are met. These are usually staffed at comfort stations by various departments who have available staff and are able to properly assist at the location. Pods are a different setup entirely. So these supplies are ordered through webc same way, but they're ordered in a bulk unit. So when you order a pod, you are given, for instance, a tractor trailer full of meals ready to eat and another tractor trail trailer full of portable water. So these are operated by parks and recreation. Their outdoor staff are designated for this service and they go and create these locations and assist. The state and the uh national guard can

sometimes be able to assist in these locations unless they are called away to higher priority areas. So for instance during some of the events they were here for a day or two and then parks and recreation took over the running of these locations post that. I have a quick question. Yes ma'am. Um, so when you have requests, is there any way to request laundry soap or no? That's because I know that we had some nice people donate in the community to the comfort stations, but is there any way we can provide that? So, I'm not 100%. I will look to director Fos shaking his head. No, unfortunately. They just give us the basic setup when they sent when they send the unit over there. That would be put on the onus of the county to purchase that if we wanted to supply it to the to the res. citizens for customers. Okay. I know that was a thing. You know, their house got destroyed and then they had to try and find laundry soap. So, I will say to your point, Commissioner, the citizens who were not affected in Pasco County were incredibly generous and donated laundry soap and detergent and honestly children's toys and clothing. So, almost every site had a lot of other resources available through the generosity of our citizens. Um, so the as I was saying about pods, the guard assists with staffing these locations, uh, as well, but they are primarily staffed by our parks and recreation outdoor teams. Uh, finally, these refills are also requested through WEBOC and the state and they supply as they can make resources available depending on the necessity of other areas within the state. So for instance, we could request ice, but if another area was at a higher priority level, we would get it when it became available. Same with MREs and water. So how do we plan to adapt in the future? So beforehand, emergency operations and myself are working to identify locations throughout the county for potentially affected areas. So we will have our closest locations available identified in advance. uh we will create that master list so that once the the event uh becomes closer, we will be able to quickly target locations and deploy resources after the storm. We'll also be pre-ordering web EOCC supplies in advance of the storm in a much greater rate than we normally do in past storms. So that's we're going to have stations on call and ready. We're going to have pod distribution points on call and supplies ready. So, we're also going to stockpile supplies as well, such as portable water and MREs, things that have a large shelf life. Uh, these will allow us to deploy these resources in a much timelier fashion. Uh, but I will state that we managed to get these resources out very quickly uh to our citizens and reach certain locations that were very heavily impacted. What you do not see is a slide in here, which is also something that Commissioner Weightman brought up earlier, which is assisting citizens with applying for aid, working with their insurance companies and other things. Those are

called disaster recovery centers. Uh we had three located within the county. We had one in Zephr Hills at the um at the city ch uh city council chambers. We had one at the Dade City one-stop shop for cooperative extension. and we had a third one at the Hudson Library. So, those sites were staffed by a variety of state and federal agencies, uh, Alphabet Soup. They saw over total 60,000 residents of Pasco County and assisted with that. I was a customer. Yes, ma'am. Uh Hudson Library recently just ceased being a location for them for the Small Business Administration which was doing loans uh recently and talking with citizens as well as the Elevate Florida uh program which was there recently. So these sites were the primary way that uh citizens were also provided aid. What we discovered is uh putting comfort stations with DRC locations such as we did at the one-stop shop and at Hudson Library provided good benefit because citizens who were damaged and affected could start their laundry, go work with the representatives from the agencies and then hopefully do the services and get the things that they needed while they were in the location. So, we worked to try and identify those locations in advance as well. So smart. Yes. I want to say you did a phenomenal job getting out there. As quick as you got them was amazing when we got the ice, you know, when people don't have power and they just need to keep food that's going to be safe, whatever made a huge difference. And living with those trucks would go like sometimes we location beach was ground swell of support. But I can tell you that it wasn't I know it's a library as well. So, I think your speed was great. So, what you did was like we've never seen before. So, great job. Thank you. And as as uh Barrett said, uh we can always do better and we plan to make uh make strides in that, God willing, uh or god forbid if we need to again. Okay. Solid waste. Who's that? Solid waste. Good morning, Madam Chair, commissioners. Kevin Pisca, director solid waste. I also have John Batista and Tim Treshler here with us. So, I'm going to step through the first three slides pretty quickly so we can focus mainly on slide four. Uh, so as you know, two storms very different in nature. Our early projections were 1.4 4 million cubic yards. When we had our consultant do the survey, we bumped it up a little bit. So, we did come in pretty accurately. We were within 99.9% complete by the FEMA deadline for reimbursement. So, uh we, you know, did a good job getting it done on time and safely. Um, as you know, Helen, West Coast storm surge about 400,000 cubic yards. Milton, you know, countywide a lot of wind, river rain, flooding, and that was a huge vegetative storm, right? 900,000 cubic yards, mainly on the east coast. Adaption in action. As you all know, county crews were out fast and early with surveys and actually doing debris pickup. Seines

0700 48 hours after the storm, crews were out there. That provides many benefits, right? we're actually picking up debris, but also it's out there where our customers, our residents are seeing us. So, you know, we jumped around different communities because of that, right? We want people to know we're coming and that we're out there. That also sets the tempo and the expectations for our contractors. Hey, we're out here. Where are you? Get out here. And we'll get into some good news on that line item or that topic on slide four. We established 16 zones um west to east, north to south. Uh that helped us prioritize our response really based on health and safety first and foremost. And then we got into some efficiencies, economic concerns, etc. Straddling the storms was extremely stressful for our entire team, for our customers, for everybody involved. Uh the team did a great job. I know when we were in between storms just trying to get through certain communities like Gulf Harbors was a mess during the day. So John Batista and the team working with public works, what do we do? We spin up night operations. We ran that for five or six nights ahead of Milton. Right now we're talking about what else can we do? Right? We got the storm coming. We got a bunch of debris at Mag Valley DDMS. We have to get that out. So, we get all of that stuff out to at least lessen some of the concerns from that neighborhood and get it to a safer spot. And then, as you all know, we got creative. Uh, and we got over 24 small haulers signed up. Uh, that was remarkable the amount of work working with county attorney's office, purchasing u figuring out how we can do this, how can we be creative. um we have a lot to learn around that and there's a lot more opportunities but it certainly was impactful. So five nights, five days we ran there was about 24 haulers involved. Five of them did half the work. So that's something to think about too as we go forward. There were some that were just much better equipped to be impactful, but they did 10,000 tons right in front of Milton, getting it out of those sensitive areas uh right west of west of 19. So they moved a lot of material in a short period of time. Going on to the next slide. Uh you know, we already talked about the rapid mobilization needed. Uh next, novel solicitation. If you remember, we were losing contractors to other communities. Um, so working with Andy Fm County Attorney's Office and purchasing, we figure out how can we smartly go and make some amendments to our contracts that will allow us to hold on to what we have. Yeah. So that we can get the work done on time. Right on top of that, also we had an underperforming contractor that we had to replace. again, county attorney's office purchasing. Uh, how do we do this? Tim had a great suggestion. Let's flip the procurement on its head and say, "Hey, we're going to tell you what the price is. You tell us how much debris you're going to remove. This is a productionbased solicitation because we need the stuff to be gone. Don't tell us

the price." Uh, so we learned some things there as well. We ramped up uh debris management sites. At the beginning of the storm, we had four. We jumped up to six by adding two more on the east side. We had one private um which was on River Road and then we got Voyette. Uh and thanks to the parks department for loaning us that property during that time. And then also we were able to reach out to other state departments. Uh Department of Agriculture allowed us an open burn permit on the agricultural zone, the private property. And that was a big deal. Um, we had no complaints and about 400,000 cubic yards of debris was reduced using that. We still repurposed about 500,000 cubic yards of vegetative debris by mulching it. Yes. But these tubs, these, you know, grinders, they were hard to find. You know, we're we're all the way from Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, uh, all of these communities, you know, after these types of resources. So that did help out significantly. So building forward, um, a lot of lessons learned here. Communication, I think, uh, solid waste, we probably could have done better being out earlier in the public. Right. The GIS board, the map that we we got up and going was a huge success. Yes. A lot of hits. It told us where we're working, what's next, when we're going to be in an area. but we were probably a few weeks late on getting that up and running. So that's an area that I think we can be prepared better for the future. Um leveraging it to make really making good decisions but also that same information having it public facing so our customers our citizens know where we are and where we're coming next. Tim is uh working with GIS to take 16 zones and giving much more granularity based on population and neighborhood, right? Um some zones were huge, right? Especially especially on the east side. Uh 15 and 16 were mammoth zones. So it would be nice to have more granularity to neighborhoods and when we're going to be there. Um we will open up the self-reporting tool to our citizens earlier. So, after we do our phase one cleanup, our first pass, we will open it up and that's when people go in and self-report. And then, um, when you say self-report, you mean ask for a pickup. What do you mean by self-report? Um, it's it's essentially saying we've done our first pass and if if you still had stuff in your house or you didn't get everything done, you can report it and then we get it on a route after we complete all of phase one. That was that was very important to the citizens because they were calling asking when you were coming. So we I did reach out to some and let them know and and of course John Power helped him too. So he let people know when he was going to be there and they had their all their rubbish and everything they had out on the street but they had it there ready and they got it picked up and we're very thankful. A lot of citizens thank us for letting them know you were on the way. I I recall at the meeting in Date City

that you guys had some different challenges than we had on our side because because of all the trees that were down. They couldn't get the other debris to the street. There's no place to put it, right? So, it was a different different animal on the Yeah, some of them. Yeah. You saw on deck and on in the circle uh with debris stacked up. So, yeah. Um and then lastly with technology, we need to get GPS and all of the county vehicles that are doing routes and and whatnot. And that can be as simple as a cell phone, right? And having it linked to the GIS map so we know where our our people are as well. Talking about debris management site selection, you know, there was a lot of tension around one site. Um, I think the team did a good job being out speaking in the community. Barrett, I know you and Tim were actually out speaking to the neighbors. About Maggie Valley. Yes, ma'am. So, did any damage occur to anyone in Maggie Valley? Everyone was afraid it was going to blow into their homes, break their windows. No. Yeah. I So I think the experience might that it didn't happen might calm people down. And it's still a sensitivity that we're looking at going forward. There are other locations that may be more prime that um you know we're thinking about especially West Coast. you know, the efficiencies, the the importance of having a quick turn means so much, especially on the west coast because of all the traffic. So, DDMS location something going to get a a lot of attention from us on how we can do better there. Yeah. To give you an idea, we've got the storm water project that's out there. There's a lot of fill that's all around that's going to be taken out. I think if you went around to where that site was and put some giant BM kind of like they do a reunion. Oh yeah. Kind like buffer it. Buffer it. Put a big giant B all around the whole front. Put some palm trees on side. Palm trees up. Dress it up. Then you did need to use it. Put lipstick on a pil. I agree. But but you could do a lot of that and you've got all the fill that's right there that's usable. But every time you take it out, you're actually improving what's around it. Yeah. And they need to keep it on site anyway. So, it's you're helping if they don't mind looking at that firm instead of the park. It's it's right now just Yeah. But it's better goes there. Just at least for now, it wouldn't cost other than just moving the dirt to make it all happen. Okay. That so that dashboard when you got that up and running that Wonderful. I thought it was smart how you um and I appreciated it where you were doing a little in each neighborhood. I mean, you didn't go clean up one whole neighborhood and then move to the next because um everyone had some hope that you were coming to them in the next few days. I mean, you and I, I mean, we got just got inundated with calls. Why are they coming on my street? Um, and I I'm wondering

if if we could message that out to the say HOA or civic association heads um when you're coming, what streets and then you know people can be know what's coming because the I think the uncertainty of when they're coming is part of the anxiety. So if you know you know then you can even be more prepared. I mean, I I was so busy helping other people, I didn't get my stuff out for weeks, weeks. And um so, uh just it's good it's good to know, I think. Yeah, it's a it's a balance of being conservative enough, but not too conservative. And then if we get there two weeks early, you know, sometimes that sounds like a good thing, but potentially it's not because people weren't ready. So, understand that. And we've gota we got to figure out how we narrow in and get accurate information out as soon as we can. Yeah. And um I also don't think we um citizens did a good job of separating the material and can we can we educate the citizens better about how you want your degree piles organized and in Gulp Harbors they were putting them under the power lines that go to their house so then they you couldn't pick it up at all. So, we need to um educate our citizens on how better to put the debris out. Yeah, that is such a struggle when you've got a house that gets 5t of water in it. Everything's out there. It's taking up all the front yard. Anything in the Hudson area, C P the lots are so small, there's nowhere to put it. It just had to go. So, it's hard to do on a major major event. I want to say that uh You know, you and I were getting phone calls everywhere and it's like we knew and I tell you, you guys did a phenomenal job keeping the balance where always hope that yell for one. Sorry about that. So, you guys did a phenomenal job. I know the stress that we was just going on was amazing. But I'll tell you, there was one guy that uh I met up there doing the grapple truck and at one point he says, "I've worked 57. If I got to work 57, all my people do it." That dedication I think rank up the whole organization was just it was such an inspiring moment for me. So, so watching it all go and what you guys did was just incredible. And I want to say something a little bit tricky. You had some when we finally got those smaller contracts, the private ones, which I will touch on that later on, but those smaller contractors did a phenomenal job. These are all local people and you kind of gave flexibility. If they wanted to clean their neighborhood, their friend neighborhood, you let them have that flexibility. And the that was done when they were done the small guys was so immaculate that people were like blown away like like it never happened almost type of thing. That's how phenomenal they were. So I know we're going to work with FEMA trying to like get some grounds we can do this easier instead of having that big tier where you get the big contractor and then you get the middle guy who's from somewhere else as well and then we get to the little guys where they can't make any money. They

did so much better and did such a better job pick and I'm looking forward to changing that. I'm glad FEMA was actually receptive to the conversation we had up there. So hopefully that's going to keep on moving forward. But again, just what you guys did was absolutely phenomenal. And I I thought when you switched to the night time, especially in G Harbors, I don't know if you did that in other areas, but that was a brilliant move. Brilliant. Brilliant. That was really good. Yeah. Um I had something else on that, but I I can't remember. But I just think you had one of the hardest jobs. No, we did. No doubt about it. Um and high stress job, right? Um and I was just so proud that our county did it so fast compared to because you know my son lost his house in Penllis and we were all cleaned up and they hadn't even been to his neighborhood yet. So um we just did an amazing job. Well, we did set precedent when we started using the small contractors. Uh I thought Si Beach or one of them used they did they follow suit with us. Oh, after. Yeah. So, we were the first in the state to actually pull the trigger and actually do it because we had some hesitation on reimbursement and stuff, but as soon as the state said we're going to get reimbursed, I know everybody started following suit. Panelis, Hillsboro, Fernando all started hiring the small contractors and I'll go after you. I remember. Ironically, it was the county that got the first approval to go and you jumped on it and went for it and we executed so fast. We did because if they had done it first, they might have got all local people to go to work down there because there was a pull to do that. So your speed in getting that done, getting that work was phenomenal. And the money stayed in house. Yeah. Yeah. That's that was good. And you know, um I talked to a bunch of those grappling guys. I think maybe the ones from P&J or someone, the big black ones, I don't know who's those. Um the guy was said they minimum wage. what those guys were getting minimum wage. Um, at the beginning it seemed to me that the first trucks that were running were the ones who could get to Maggie Valley as quickly as possible and get back out. And so, so because they could do more runs and make more money, which was leave was leaving G Harbors out and others further south because it was a longer distance to the drop off. So, I want to make sure we have something in place that it's you know, how do you ensure that it's not it's not the the close ones getting picked up first because they can, you know, make more money? It's a good point. It it's it's a balance of our prime contractors and them subcontracting and subcontracting, right? You got a bunch of independents out there that are looking out for themselves and what that means is just efficiency. So, you know, right now we're still under contract. I do have some good news around that though, but going forward, we're looking at putting some tightening on the scope

and what that means and how we're directing and doing a neighborhood and doing a clean sweep. So, there's a lot we've got to work through um to address those types of issues. I also heard that some is it by weight or by was it by weight? Well, right now it it is typically by volume. Yeah. Okay. Um, but when we had our small haulers, we did it by mass. Okay. Because I heard some sometimes they were picking up the big things and leaving the little things because they could fill it up faster and get it over there. Yes. So, you know, capitalism at work, right? Well, that's it. Sure. Yeah. So, there was a time when myself and the CI civic associated president would actually with the storm coming and all out there, we would actually go take mattresses off because they were big and weigh and just brought them to the spent them just to get them out of the way so they could pick up more of the stuff that really mattered that they make more money. I actually saw residents of G Harpers vacuuming their grass with shopbacks to get the glass out. There were a lot of people vacuuming their I first time I've ever seen that. So, there's a um a couple more things I want to cover and then I'll turn it back over. um under policy uh potential ordinance change. We spent a lot of time figuring out and getting right of entry forms from private roads. Yeah. Gated communities. Uh there are a couple of counties that have within their ordinances uh I think it's Walton and Flaggler, Tim's been working with Andy on this and Tetratech that at the time of a um that disaster declaration you potentially could say under this scenario those right of entry forms would be superseded by some ordinance, right? that would allow the county teams to go in and collect that. Anyway, this is something we're working on. We'll get the language from these two counties and see if there is an appetite for the commission to look at it and obviously the county attorney's office, but we spent a lot there's a lot of inefficiency around that, right? Um, also, uh, small hauler utilization. Commissioner Mariano, you already touched on that with Tetratech working with FDM and FEMA. And then, um, likewise, we're going to use our consultant Tetrate Tech to reach out to the small haulers and do a survey about what they think works, what they think does not work, get their perspective on things, uh, with the understanding we have some, you know, concerns as well. Uh lastly on policy, you know, Andy touched on it very early on. You know, the chain of command incident, we we have to give our team calm, the solid waste team, and we we want to try to maintain 72-hour operational plans. Obviously, if there are safety issues that come up, we're going to pivot. We're going to adjust. Uh but we're going to try to work on longer operational plans that allows our team to really go execute. So, and I know there will be adjustments, but just

something we're working on. As far as um efficiencies, um we talked about us being out front early. Phillips and Jordan right now is having multiple tandem um lightning loaders is what they call them built. They are going to be housed at the 4G ranch. They may not be here in time for if we had a June storm, but certainly by the end of summer, P&J is going to have multiple pieces of equipment ready to deploy out of Pasco County. I think that's a great partnership. They've done a good job. What about employees to work there, right? Well, that they have tough they'll just pull them from everywhere. Yeah, I I I don't think that'll be the problem. It does take a long time to get these very efficient equipment deployed and in place. They understood when we met with them after the uh after the storm. We did a lessons learned and we told them we said look this is where we think you could do better and I think they're listening and they're reacting and they're investing. So that's a that's a good message from from them. Commissioner. Yeah. One thing that was going on and Jordan did a good job but they would some of our local haulers that will be in Pasco County and send them to Pine Ellis County. So, we lost some of them because they were not going to make that trip. They couldn't make enough money by going so far to to try to pick up. So, those local haulers we have within the county, we needed to keep them close. They'll get us picked up and they'll be probably willing to go further later in in the process. But the fact of it is trying to use them when you got all this debris around, you know, locally, it's hard to send them into another county, right? And they have to drive so far. And that was happening through Phillips and Georgia. So, because I knew some local that didn't join in because they tried it for a day and they were not making money. Okay. Thank you for the feedback. Yeah. Yep. So that small holler issue with being paid under that tier system I really want to try to change if we can and maybe it's what we talked about the amount of weight we get every every day using those numbers to kind of compare and not have to do all the extra monitoring everything else involved. You get some of the streets at least with you can go out there but those are so low that you can't you need the small guys to be able to hope as you kind of look at that go through it and I'm sure that comes some of your feedback but those big golf big streets down there these other small streets I don't think it works so well right so I think as you look and you talk that feedback and that maybe just help and then I got to tell you with all the stuff you guys had to deal where you can send people where they can't go, etc. Super super tough job and you guys were I know stressed to the max, but really kept your composure great. Just kept on moving things forward, get things done. It was it was

awesome to watch. Thank you. Yeah. The last thing is this is more forward thinking but you know potential uh interlocal coordination and I'm you know thinking Pasco Panelis Hillsboro potentially you know how can we maybe do a regional solicitation so we don't get into this fight on pricing right yeah and they started to do that right Mike you guys started meeting also um uh I I got calls from Penllis County asking if we had Actually, I think it was from lobbyists or anyway debris sites that other counties could use in our county and um and so did you get any cost from Pelis? They didn't have a place to put their stuff. I think we said no. Yes, you did. Yeah. Well, yeah, I I said no, too. Um but you know, there is that site on Trinity Boulevard that it's Podelis County utility site um that is just sitting there empty and I wonder if we talk about using it if we needed something in that area. You know what I'm talking about? Yep. Another one. Yeah. It's a great There's no houses around it. It's high and dry. Um so potential future site if we need something down there. It's far from Pel County to take stuff there. They end up using they use the Brian Brian Dairy Farm site. Yeah. Keystone and East Lake. I'm done. Okay. Building construction services. Another You guys are still at it. I still have my open for me. Few more weeks, I think. Um before I jump into to BCS, I just want to take a second to recognize a team that isn't here today, but was in at least two slides, uh and held probably four or five other departments. Um and that's the co- compliance department. Um, they were a great kind of multi-roll fighter as I I've kind of said over and over again from helping out with shelters to pods, they were debris monitors. Um, they did the damage assessment with our teams. Uh, so if there wasn't a thing that we asked of code compliance that they weren't more than willing to h and happy to do, worked a ton of overtime and kind of went wherever whenever. So I think they just deserve a special shout out here and it's great to have a team like that. inside the county to kind of help back fill when we need that. Nice. Um so by the numbers we've talked a lot about about the experience what it means to the home individual homeowner here is after the two storms we had over 19,000 damaged structures whether that was between flood or other hurricane damage uh whether structural damage roof damage we did see over 13,000 uh that we at least initially believed were flooded. Um, as a result of that, we also did 29,000 substantial damage evaluation inspections. Um, this will get I'll get into this in the next two slides here on the substantial damage evaluation, but there are two different damage assessment tasks that we're charged with doing BCS. One is preliminary damage assessment or that street level. Where's the damage? How bad is it? Give us the estimates because as fast as we get the damage numbers to FEMA, that's how fast we can turn on public assistance. And

then public assistance is kind of what funds a lot of all the operations we just heard about. Um without those dollars, um we would be spending a lot of money out of pocket first and before we can do some of those things. So, we always try to make sure that we can help get damage assessment done as fast as possible. The substantial damage evaluation, however, is a uh an evaluation that we have to do to be compliant with the National Flood Insurance Program under FEMA to making making sure that structures that are damaged by peril of flood or otherwise in a flood zone. Um we're evaluating whether or not they can be um rebuilt, demoed, or elevated under the the 50% rule, 49% Pasco County. As a result of those these those inspections, we did over 13,000 direct mail pieces to in at least three different mailing campaigns. Uh we did stand up a dedicated storm line which is different than our regular permitting line. Um that was specifically if you got a letter and you needed specific resources. One of our jobs was to kind of we created a whole wing of BCS that did nothing but help our sto our our folks that were affected by storm. Um, to date we have over 10,000 permit applications that have been processed. The great news is there's over 4,300 of those people have already closed out their permits. They're done with their work. They're restored and hopefully getting back to whatever normaly looks like now post these both disasters. 57 of those 10,000 are in progress. So, they've got their permits, they're ready to go, and we're only kind of hanging around about 400 that are are processing. One of the things that uh we were challenged with uh in the in the aftermath of the storm was the volume was so great and we're used to processing about 60,000 permits a year, but the volume was so great within the first two months. It was about 9,000 permits in that first two months and and our permitting timelines jumped up to almost two weeks. And uh you know, we were challenged to how do we how do we work on that? How do we bring those down? And I'll talk briefly in another slide about some of the great ideas that came together, but certainly it and creating a substantial damage questionnaire which significantly helped take our our permitting timeline from 14 days down to about 4 days for a storm damage permit. Um 344 residential demolition permits. I didn't believe that number when at first when I saw it last week, but it seems like we've had uh 344 demo permits go through. Um not not funded by us, just people choosing to to do the demo and and start over. We do see a lot of those um I don't have a specific number, but are being funded through increased cost of compliance under NFIP. So, we have a lot of follow-up uh compliance um letters that are sent out to to that that end. The big number on the board is $2.6 million in waved fees. So that if your home was damaged in a storm, even till this day, we're not charging you a building permit fee to to go through and make sure that your structure is safe.

And by our valuation, over $350 million worth of building repairs have been completed to date in Pasco County as a result of Hurricane Helena Milton. So you're getting that number when someone closes out the permit. Like you don't have mine in there, I would guess. Correct. Okay. Well, that'll go a lot in supply. And we also get it for commercial because that that's inclusive of commercial numbers. So we have commercial permits. We do do valuations based off of or permit fees based off of valuation. And we didn't change the model because we weren't changing the fees. Uh I think this map is really telling as to kind of where the damage is internally. I call it the masquerade mask. Um because you can see it was very heavily on the west side, but even still on the east side and and particularly if you overlaid the uh the flood flood map that Barrett had earlier, you can see where a lot of that damage that we're seeing was. And it it was very much the tail of two storms. West side, it was easy to do substantial damage evaluation. You go down one block, you go up the other. East side, you couldn't right half the neighborhoods you couldn't get to and then you had acres apart, you know, many sites. So, um, very different approaches to be able to to tackle both east and west. We are still doing some evaluations out east. Um, but we're doing that with our team now. So, a couple things that uh that we I think did well, worked well was rapid damage assessment. I spoke briefly about that. Um, that early shout out to code was allowed us to do 110 teams to do damage assessment. We changed the model in which we did that over previous years where we used to just have folks call in. We would respond to that dispatch request, go look at that one structure. Well, instead we we kind of adopted a grid-based structure. We go out, look at every property in a damaged area u to quickly get a windshield assessment of of the damage and that that helps us ramp the numbers up very quickly. Um, one of the things that was really great for us was we had a tool called 4Erunner kind of built out already prior to the storm, which we were using for elevation certificates. We were uh able to quickly turn that on and use the substantial damage evaluation tool that was a modification of the FEMA tool um which allowed us to move a heck of a lot faster on the SDE valuation. So, our neighbors to the south are still working through FEMA paper forms and we are done essentially with all the determinations that we're going to be doing. Uh, that's a it's been a huge help. And we changed the model from waiting and and and creating um a very detailed determination model to a what I call a we have a a a level of consistency on the the damage determination that we're comfortable with, but we're going to make it very easy for the homeowner or the property owner to appeal that number if they wanted to. So making that time frame very short eliminates a lot of backlog on the other end and allows folks to get their permits so much

quicker because we're not waiting for a perfect damage determination number. Um but GIS 4ERunner those two tools made that absolutely happen. I talked about the SIP questionnaire uh very briefly. Todd's team um particularly Jeremy and Joe worked with Savin in BCS to create a that 17page questionnaire that really if you didn't know what you were doing, you just knew you had damage, you would go to the third floor, somebody would walk you through the questionnaire. At the end of that, you had an estimate of what you could what what the damage to your property was that we were comfortable with and that FEMA would accept. One of the the improvements for next year is we think we can do that a heck of a lot better actually at somebody's structure because we had a lot of people that have come they didn't know what their floor plan looked like. They didn't have pictures. They weren't ready for this that the other thing. So we think after we do their their substantial damage evaluation we set up a time to come back and say hey if you would like us to do the the questionnaire and the estimate we'll do that with you here and that will make the permitting process go so much faster. Exactly. That's how I did mine. I I I I'll say I think everyone's going to be more educated on all this stuff. Take the photos, take the videos that, you know, we we know more what to do. Now, the three permanent popping popup sites were huge. I think uh you know, people not only saw us out in the community, they came to us. We were resource. Um we were able to to do not only some of the waiver signing there, but also get quick information and connect folks with the different agencies they needed to connect with. And oftentimes our permitting sites acted as anformational center. Where's the DRC at? Where's the closest comfort station if they didn't know where that was? Um and and I think that was a really good thing not only for for our department but for the county as a whole. Um big win for us here though was doubling the workforce through the 126 program with Tidal Basin. um we would not be able to get through the permitting process, the permitting center without being able to to double that workforce size for that 180day um time frame. One of our learnings is we want to make sure that we have our agreements in place. Similar to what Kevin just talked about, same model, make sure that we're not doing that through the state. We kind of control our own destiny and we can we can test those processes and make sure our vendor knows exactly what our process is going to be and we can move that much more faster. We did uh 12 community town halls. So there I don't think there wasn't uh anything that commissioner asked if if there go speak to this association that we said no to. And uh we enjoyed doing that. And I think that really helped kind of change a lot of hearts and minds when we were able to just talk one-on-one with folks about what our processes were.

JP I tell you what the way you control everything. You base in your toes anyway. I have no idea about my genetic but literally what you did go through it was phenomenal. The popup sites were great. There was one scene that we had a very hot guy who was a contractor living in a mobile was doing some of the site prep just saving his house and some neighbors and he was so hot so frustrated when he walked away. I grabbed him talked to him and then you and so on came and we looked at like three homes in an area and put them to ease to say you're going to be okay. Here's how you go through it. What you did all the way through the people as well as I will say sometimes we had people that would have their home protected. It looked like 3 ft of water outside and we needed frankly title basin driving by saying 3 ft of water 3 ft of water made an assumption it was inaccurate caused a lot of grief. So if they protected it was a couple it looked like 3 ft of water protection only like picture show etc. So I'd like to see us to try to work that because what what was happening was you have a super high number what the substantial damage estimate was and in certain situations it was all less and I think it took a lot of stress from the staff to try to get through it and if they didn't take appropriate pictures to show it just caused a lot of issues. I'm glad you went out there early. I think it was good, but I think the title base and set up caused you a lot of grief. I'm glad it worked out better later, but I think if we could really take a look at how we want to do that in the future, I think we make some improvements. How um how could you do how could you do the drivebys any quicker if they didn't do it like that? I mean, people weren't home to ask. Um so, so I want to be clear, we we don't do a driveby on the substantial damage evaluation. It is a title base of win. Yeah. And our team as well. We We we kind of both ran teams, but um it's a walk the street and knock on the door, somebody's home, we'll do it. Otherwise, to your to your point, um they would have to make an assessment based on what they could visually see if they weren't allowed in the home. Um we think the questionnaire piece kind of exactly addresses that. Now that we're using foreigner tool to do the mailings, we can after the evaluation is done, our flood plane manager will look at it, go, "Yeah, we agree with that with those numbers or tweak something, submit the letter, and in that letter have a if you'd like for us to come out and do a substantial damage questionnaire. Um, set up a specific time so they know that they're going to be there, be available, come out. We'll go through that whole process and then you're done with your substantial damage process because we'll issue a flood plane development permit which will then prevent them from having to pull OIC permits. And I'm sort of getting ahead of myself a little bit,

but um preventing from uh owner as contractor. So, so you don't have to pull it. You could hire your AC contractor, your roof contractor, a structural person if you wanted to. You don't have to pull one master permit as owner as a contractor and do all that work. you're just going to get a flood plane number that will reference all those permits. So, the permitting will happen much faster. And that you're taking the third floor setting off was a great thing. And I think one of the things that we had done was as you said the wave the permit fees so many times when people worried about what's the county trying to do it made it so easy to justify like we're not trying to make money from we're just trying to go through the process to get reimbured. It made it a lot more believable and a lot more I think confidence in what we're doing every step of the way. So I think it was great how you did it, how you pushed it across set up for a very tough situation. Again, it's a guy who just had so much on his head. He did a great job all I actually was at my house when at my house when tidal basic came and um I I believe I was the only person in that had water in in the house um because we're in the back by the river. So but I got a talk to them. Nice guys. Um, so I'll be brief because I know we're we're quickly running out of time here. Uh, key key lesson here was this storm season ch FEMA changed the approach. Yes. We would just do substantial damage when you came in for a permit. Um, rather this year I said you're going to go look at every structure and by by the way we're going to pay for it. So that's that's why we had to do what we did and do that on the fly. I mentioned the pre-rocurement and training of the vendors, the title base, and just to do everything we just discussed. Uh, great learning here. A screen doesn't replace great employees. Um, you can do all of this stuff electronically if if if you want uh if if you think you can, but by and large, most people we found uh would rather talk to somebody. They have questions. They want to be be helped through it. many of our residents um are on the digital divide. So, they either don't have a computer and I wrote your your quote down uh Commissioner says the phone is their enemy. Yeah. And I hadn't really thought about that, but particularly our senior population being um victim to so many phone scams, they probably don't want to deal with anything dealing with the computer. And that hadn't occurred to me, but we did see that um particularly our third floor was a lot of folks who didn't just just didn't want to mess with the computer or do any of that stuff. very stressful. Like they were actually having medical issues due to just the over feeling overwhelmed of having that. So them talking to a person was just they got all their questions answered. They're like here, you know, um and I just really appreciate you guys doing that. My heart we we talked about substantial damage

evaluation needs to happen faster. There was about a 45day lag from the storm before we actually really started doing that because of the mission request and contracting and then figuring out how that's all going to work. Um that delay is all but gone now as a result of of the new processes going forward. Yep. That is such an important thing because when you get your home saturated most that is such a critical thing the speed to be done. So kudos for trying to find a way to make that work. I know it's not the federal regulations but I appreciate you're looking at that real you were under tremendous pressure everything that I'll just touch one more time as you mention it when you open up the first and I have like three people downstairs. They walked it through and I think you know Sonia's always involved in the firm and stuff but the experience out there got so great that she was able to set people up bring them up and go and sometimes even roll their own and get it done. So what they did up there was phenomenal. All right, keep going because I um uh county administrator we're not going to get done till about 12:30. I think the uh the next slide that Andy has, you've already got it in advance, so he's only got two slides left and then we'll be done unless there's any other discussion. Well, I don't think JP's done. I'm going to skip to the end. How about that? Let's get to the last one. We're going to make the SDE process faster. We're going to instantly generate your flood letters. We're not waiting for the state. And we've added eight additional staff. And um we've already just by way of Senate Bill 180i, which I know I saw on the table here, we're doing nearly all of the things that are already in that statute. The only thing we are we haven't done yet is the inerson or the post- disaster permitting guide, which we'll be working on. And uh the good news that comes out of that is the cumulative damage calculation um is no longer legal statutoily. if the governor signs it. Um, which make will make our job easier. Um, but we probably need to make some or changes to the ordinance to make sure that that uh gets done cleanly. So, the Senate Bill 180 gets rid of the cumulative damage calculation. Oh, so so we won't have that anymore. Correct. So, every county will like one city is five years. They won't have that anymore. So, the whole state will be uniform. Yeah. So basically we would look at every permit uh is that over 49% or not? So every damage event is it over 49%. So you if you're remodeling your home and you're doing 25% of the value and the hurricane hits, are they still going to add those two together? No. Basically the cumulative at least without the RLS being done yet? And so I'm going to check um the cumulative calculation no longer exists. That's good to know. But we will bring that back into sort of some sort of ordinance language. Okay. Yeah. I just have just it's an overall question and I know I I asked during the

storm, but I'd love to see it uh broken down by department. Um in in a case of emergency, exactly what department is doing what alternate job? Like I heard parks and w they're running the stations. What is human resources doing? What are the What are the What are all departments doing during the storm? I can generate that. Okay, perfect. Yeah, that'd be good. Okay, let's go on to uh Helen and Milton public assistance. I'll do it real quick. All right. Yeah, this was uh this was you received an email a one pager yesterday from me. This is Did that come from who? It came from me. I I don't have it. I looked it's so it's under Carbal. Yes, should be. I'll look again. So basically our PA reimbursement um it's broken down into categories and I'll hit the major categories that we usually use which is CAT A of course which is our debris. CAT B is our emergency protective measures. That's our overtime regular pay equipment and hours used materials contracts and mutual aid or donated resources to offset a non-federal cost of emergency work. We use CAT C, uh, road and bridge. Um, we use CAT E a lot, buildings and equipment. Cat F, utilities. Uh, cat G, uh, parks and wreck. That is going to be going away most likely. Um, with with FEMA, um, they don't believe that that's considered quote unquote critical infrastructure. We're still waiting on the final rulings to come down from FEMA, but that's one of the areas that is most likely might go away. And then CATZ Z, which is our administrative costs. That is basically us hiring Tetrate Tech Title Basin, that's the administrative cost, and we only get back 5% on that. So, if it's $120,000, we get back 5% on reimbursement on that. Going to the next slide. Uh PA reimbursement percentages for Hela and Milton for the first 90 days of both storms. It was 100% reimburseable. And I'll get to that money amount here in a minute. Uh we were very quick to react. In fact, we were the first in the state to react to it and apply for reimbursement. Um and then after 90 days it breaks down to a 7525 split where the FEMA reverses on 75 and the county is responsible for that 25. There are instances and we're still waiting to see with the state that if they are going to do a cost share with us. So that in turn will be FEMA pays 75, the state pays 12 and a half and then we're responsible for that last 12 and a half on our cost. Um also our CDBGDR funds um for cats 3 C through G um they might be eligible as matches for any of the projects that we do through HFGP or any other of the other things that we do. Uh like I said, CAT Z is limited to 5% of the total project cost and that's on all eligible administrative activities. So going to the money slide, um our estimated cost for Helen uh was about 5.8 million. We have not received any reimbursements yet on that. We are expecting You haven't received any reimbursements? Not on that one yet. Um, and that was 1.3 million we're expected

to receive soon. But when FEMA put the hold on any monies being dispersed, that's where it really got us. Um, and you can see it's broken down into the categories for this amount. Um, the biggest amount was uh 2.9 million for uh, CATG, which was our utilities, I believe. I always get him confused. G says parks, recreational, and other. Okay. And then cat Z, which is our title base in Tetrate Tech. Oh, that may be something. Cat B was our overtime cost. Uh CAT E uh was the um Is this not Thank you. facilities. Cat E is buildings and equipment. Um and CAT F was uh public utilities. So, we're still waiting on the monies to come in. We keep checking with FEMA. They keep saying it'll be here any day. Um, but we're still waiting on it. Going into Milton was a much costlier storm. Um, we estimated total cost of 66.7 million. Our big money taker on that one was CAD A for debris because we rolled both Helen and the Milton and claimed it all under Milton for debris. Okay. So that's about 47.9 million. Uh and then our CAT B about 8.2 million. Uh majority of it that is overtime a big chunk of that. Uh CAT C um which is road and bridge that's about 2.2 million. And then CAT E which was buildings and maintenance facilities that's about 4.2 million. Cat F was about 705. And then cat G was 1.8 and then cat Z um was about 1.5. And those are our bigger contracts because with Milton we had Tetrate Tech, we had um uh Title Basin um both in here working with us. So overall where our projects look um for Helen we had a total of 41 small projects and two large projects. Like I said, an estimated cost of 5.8. And as you saw on the previous side, it breaks it down into the amount. And then with Milton, we have a total of 102.4 102 small projects, four large projects at that 66.7 million. Um, we have gotten some reimbursement on Milton already. I think it's about 23 million, I believe. Closer to 28. I think some of that was most of that was the solid waste but you need to remember that these numbers are not complete numbers yet. We are still doing projects and summary sheets and everything with tetrate tech. We are still submitting projects. So expect these numbers to actually go up a little bit more until we get finalized numbers. All right. Question. Have we paid all our subcontractors or do we have to wait to reimburse before we pay them? Yep. Then we wait for reimbursement off of that. We don't. So we paid our No, we paid Yes, that's what I thought. And all them? Yes, ma'am. So, we took this all out of our reserves. It's all That's why you have reserves. Yes. Okay. So, so any questions on the reimbursement? Let's send this sheet to our legislators. They want to know why we have We have a one pager. We can certainly forward that. Where's Ralph? Um I uh Are you going Are you skipping

all these? Yeah. So, I'm still waiting on my FEMA check for my house. I mean, I'm fortunate that I could, you know, do my remodeling and not wait, but I I have I know lots of people who are sitting there not being able to fix their house because they haven't got their check yet. So, and that's and that's because of that that hole that they had put in place. Well, what's the plan up there? I mean, I don't know. I'll call Kevin. People don't have reserves. I mean, who can we I mean, do we want to try and find out how many of our residents still haven't received their FEMA check? because I I'd be interested to know. I don't I don't know how we get the information, but it's not okay. I I will call the state and inquire with them. Yeah. And if they have an answer for me, I'll get it back to you. I watched that 60 Minutes Sunday where people in Russia and China are getting people's FEMA checks and I I told Dre maybe then maybe someone in China has our FEMA check. Is there I mean it's since September. It's crazy. I'm I'm getting to the next hurricane and I haven't gotten my check yet. And we were approved in October. So check. Yeah. We had a county round table talking. I think it's some school was probably seven, eight years ago. Yeah. County haven't been rever yet. Yeah. That's that that's not going to fly. You know, FEMA's got to get out. I saw something and FEMA's under homeland security and um and it's not functioning well under homeland security. needs to go back to being its own standalone and then maybe you have something else. No, but I'd be I'd be interested to know how quickly residents get reimbursed. I mean, for participating in the flood insurance plan. Sure. It's got to work, right? Okay. Yeah. I'd just like to say this is a great idea. Yeah. It was great to be able to get everybody's story after all the stress and whatever and just listen to going on in the future. So, I think it's a brilliant idea. So, thank you. Well, well, thank you. And I I appreciate the board's engagement and interest on this. Uh, you know, as we uh you know, part of this is just to convey to you and to the public and to ensure you that we are we are ready. We're we're battle hardened and and the team is is ready for the next step. And of course, as we continue to go on, uh Andy, you had mentioned the CDBGDR money. Uh you should have been notified this morning that our action plan is now posted. We we talked about that uh with you individually last week. So So take a look, encourage the public to comment. Um there's there's all kinds of great ideas out there on how we can uh you know have a better future really is what is what the intent is. And I just want to thank uh the team members and and uh that that put this presentation together uh and all the hard work that your folks have done uh both to help us recover from the past storms but respond and be ready for new storms. So thank you ma'am. I I have one more question. Um, and I think I saw it

in someone's notes and I don't know if it's the Andy or who it's to, but you know how we asked Duke to turn off the power. Yes. Versus Tika with with Pikuchi turning off their own power. Yes. And we we need to make sure Duke turns off the power and we don't go because if they turn off the power, it's a different process, right? Yeah. And we're I I want to relook at that. I I've kind of I've mentioned to the team uh the other day that I want to look at. We we had that electrical power waiver and there's there's a number of other things, but I think there's some communication things we can do with folks uh and some lessons learned in other counties to obviously safety is the number one uh is the number one thing. And we know that when we turn power on in areas, we saw houses Yeah. catch fire. Um but but how far do we want to go in that? So we we want to huddle and have some more discussions on that uh in over the next month or so. um if you were you know at the for those that weren't there at the our tri county meeting I think it was Panellis County mentioned that when they turned the power on the house burned yeah and and we did you know and and you know that waiver that we did come up with actually has kind of spread across the state uh we have managed to digitize it um so if if we were to move that direction again it could go a lot faster but we're we're still sorting through that one a little bit are you aware if there's any lawsuits of a homeowner who turned on the power in the house burned down are blaming the the power companies. I haven't heard anything like that. I don't know if it' be an insurance company versus a Can I say one last thing? Uh yes, of course. I just want to say uh between the the popup permitting sites, the small hall debrisers, um and everything that this we've done so much so fast, so quick. Uh we are definitely Pasco County is definitely the leader when it come I'm gonna say like when it comes to disasters. Uh there's no other way to really no better way to say it. But we we are we are extremely recognized with with FM. We're extremely recognized with other communities around us the surrounding counties for the innovative ideas that we come up with and we should be very very proud of ourselves. So Niko put together a sorry Jack Niko put together a um a task force on disaster recovery and you know I thought I raised my hand for it. I don't know if you did Jack but my hands my hands are too full. Um, but I think we have so much that we could share with the rest of the country. And um I I am going to say when I toured on the NAO board of directors meeting the California wildfire area in Napa, one and it's our current NAO president. One of the um people that he said you should have on on contract besides the disaster pickup companies is the that the estimators. He he recommended that you should have contracts with the uh adjusters. So um That's something we were going to talk about at NAO. Um, okay. [Laughter]

But but I'd like to add just one thing I think we could do this year. But I think you need to make sure that in the room that we have all the electric companies in the room. They need to be there was such a key part. They especially with the future was absolutely phenomenal. So I think they need to be in the room as we go through. We try. We put the invites out. I just came up with a new hashtag after you said that Pasco proactive # Pasco proactive and reactive for storms. There you go. Yeah, I think uh Wow. 1207. Great job. Thank you everybody. Good. Thank you. Thank you very much everyone. [Music] Grass clippings, trash, oils, and pet waste wash into gutters and storm storm water