All right ladies and gentlemen we're going to begin it is 501 pm I want to call the budget hearing for the Charlotte County Board of County Commission's on the proposed County budget for 2024 2025 sorry yeah fiscal year 2024 2025 our agenda says 2023 2024 but I believe that's a misprint. Is that correct? The attorney says yes. So we are now in session and we're not, we'll dispense with a roll call. Four commissioners are present. Commissioner Bill Trux is not attending tonight. If you'll all please stand and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God in visible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you all very much. On the agenda it states citizens input on agenda items. However that will come at each intercept as we start to move on each item for the budget. It will be introduced and then we will open for public input on each item before we vote on it. So you'll have many bites at the apple as we go through each component of the budget. And with that, we're going to turn it over to Mr. Berger, our head of our finance department for review of the 2024-2025 budget process. Mr. Berger. Yeah, no, I wear a spoke and Mr. Flores doesn't have any comments. You wanted to go straight to you, sir. Good evening, hi, I'm Mike. Microphone. Good evening, commissioners. For the record, Gordon Berger, director of budget. So you have a choice. You can speak really loud or you can pull it to your mouth because it's not picking you Good evening, commissioners. For the record, Gordon Burger, Director Budget. So you have a choice. You can speak really loud or you can pull it to your mouth because it's not picking you up. It's on. But you just have to speak really loud. Good evening, commissioners. For the record, Gordon Burger, Director Budget Administrative Services. This is our first presentation. This is our first public hearing for the 2425 fiscal year budget. Commissioners, just as a reminder, it's kind of two parts to this. The first part is an introduction or a review of the budget process and the budget where we stand at this point in time. And then the second part, which is mandated by statute, is very, very formalized, me reading into the record. The milligrates in the budget and of course at each segment of that then you adopting the milligrates and the budget and the public hearings. So just kind of review the process. Of course, we do a two-year budget here. And so it's a very ongoing process. We're actually starting the 26-27 budget process right now while we're formalizing this. So as for major stages, the first is establishing those broad goals, which of course is your responsibilities, commissioners, and you'll be meeting again this January, coming January, to set it for the 2627. So establishing those broad goals, then it turns back to the organization, and we bring back to you approaches for how to accomplish those goals. That then gets tied into the budget and connected to resources and how we're going to accomplish those goals. That then gets tied into the budget and connected to resources and how we're going to accomplish those things. And then on an ongoing basis, of course, we're evaluating making adjustments. And every two weeks, you adjust the budget in some way or another. This is the calendar for the first year, which of course was the previous year, and very busy. That's when the bulk of the work gets done is in that first year. The second year is much more scaled down. So in the second year, we basically, in January and December, we brought back to you an update of the levels of service, an update on the strategic plan progress in February by charter review. We're to do annual review of the debt and reserve policies. We did that with you in February. March and July, we brought back a series of long range financial trends to you. Specifically, the one that we were dealing with was, of course, the Transportation Trust Fund and the issues that we were having there. Then in July, once we got the tentative evaluations brought back to you, the tentative budget. At that meeting, you of course set the tentative milled rates. However, at that meeting, you also directed us to go back, bring back some scenarios and to reduce the knowledge further. And specifically, you wanted to reduce the knowledge further. Specifically, you want to look at capital projects. In August, we had a capital projects workshop with you. You gave us direction at that meeting. The direction you gave us at that meeting is what's reflected in the numbers that I'm going to go through tonight. This is the first public hearing and then of course at the second public hearing you will adopt the budget formally and then we also bring back the CIP ordinance which is our six-year capital plan after that meeting. Starting out with the millage rates and I always start off this slide this is just a graphic representation of the assessed value of all the property in the county. You know I always point this out because it's just, it's so stark is that that huge spike in a two year period of time from 2005 to 2007, the overall value of property in this county doubled. And then the Great Recession hit and we lost all of that in a four year period of time. Then it began creeping back up and has gone up very, very steadily over the last few years and that spike in this past year is very remarkable. In fact, it's a 19 percent increase and this is by break down by the jurisdiction and appropriate advalorum districts. And you can see there the overall variance about 19%, 20% for some of the districts, but very, very robust growth rates. Comparing that with our neighbors, because that's always the first question, yes, we had a much higher rate of increase, but if you look at it over the overall value increase, our neighbors to the North and South had much, much higher value increases in terms of the overall revenue they would actually be coming into their budgets. So looking at Sarasota, we had 19% they had 10%, but their valuation increase was nearly twice ours. Lee County and Collier County nearly three times as much as our valuation increase was. So while the percentage rate was higher, the overall valuation increase and the actual dollars that come to the budget are much lower than our neighbors. So translating that into revenue, those valuation increases, you can see what this is. Of course, the tentative budget from last year, and then the final budget, and by that, what we mean is that there is a value adjustment that usually leads to a final certification of the tax rolls and that's usually in October. So there's usually a difference between the tentative and the final. This year's tentative and the variance it increased. So you can see for the county wide ad volume in terms of the overall revenue increase that was initially projected about $31 million and bottom line about $45 million. Now, of course, that's not what it's at tonight. We went back and the tentative rates that you set reveal a $33 million, you know, because you reduce the milled rates to a tentative rate and tonight we're going to bring you even lower ones. The valuation impact on the Homestead Tax Bill and commissioners, I really want to emphasize this is a really significant budget. We brought you long range projections that showed you the one fund that we really were not in good shape sustainability wise was the transportation fund which of course is the main source of maintenance for our countywide roads and that that fund simply was not sustainable given that the only revenue it had was gas tax and gas tax just has not increased over the years. That was a long range plan to deal with that. This budget not only fixed that problem but you were able to also reduce the knowledge rate but in addition to just mucin knowledge rate for those of us who are home today in this county we actually will see a tax reduction this year. That's a pretty significant achievement. And then just we always show this, just to set the context of, you know, that those milled rates when people get their tax bills, public answer tax bills, they look at the tax bill. What we're talking about tonight, the portion of the budget that you actually control, accidentally equates to about 18 and a half cents out of every dollar. So when I pay my tax bill, about 18 and a half percent goes towards the functions we're talking about tonight in terms of the Admiral and Portion of the Budget. Now in addition to that, we'll of course we're talking about the Sheriff's Budget and the Constitutional Budget, Sheriff's Budget is about 31 cents and the other Constitutional is about four and then of course the biggest chunk of it is actually the school districts, and about 41 cents out of every dollar going towards funding the school districts. So this is the tentative milled rates that we brought you and the options that we brought you at the tentative budget meeting in July. And these are the scenarios that we always give you, keeping the revenue the same, which would result in a millage rollback to the current year, keeping the millage rate, the first one was keeping the revenue the same, the second one was keeping the millage rate the same. And in the past, that's pretty much what we brought back to as a recommendation. And then the third column there is the millage rate the same. And in the past, that's pretty much what we brought back to as a recommendation. And then the third column there is the Maxone rollback rate. And I always like to point this out because this is really the impact of save our homes legislation. If it were not for save our homes legislation, that right now, instead of bringing in that rate of $233 million, we'd actually be bringing in $357 million. In essence, that $87 million difference there is really what SAVE OUR HOMES has saved the taxpayers of this county, and that reduced military over time. By statute, in a supermajority, you could roll back to that rate. So that's been a very effective tool for the state and the savings to taxpayers. What was different this year is we brought you a revised recommendation. And at the July meeting, you set these tentative milled rates that are in the last column. And we reduced the overall county general millage and kept it the same at that point in time. But shifted some of the millage from the sheriffs, where we had an overage to the general fund in order to meet the transportation funds needs and also to the capital projects fund. The other reduction we made was to the Charlotte County Public Safety Unit which was an MSTU and a reduction there. use past these or set tentatively set these military rates, but at that meeting you told us that's not enough We want to see more and that's why we had the meeting in August and bringing back to you tonight the additional adjustments there reducing the capital projects fund Down to 1.265 four mills and Reducing the street lighting district down to 0.265 four mills and reducing the this street lighting industry Down to 0.254 mills. So an overall reduction there of an additional $4 million Now by statute we need to let you know the changes that have occurred in the budget Since the July tenet of meeting and they all relate back to that millage adjustment. So at that meeting you gave us this direction. So we have adjusted the millage, the lighting district millage and that's reduced down by basically a million dollars and then the capital projects millage and that fund is reduced down by $3.5 million. The only other piece there is because all of these ad volume rates tie into the CRAs and the tax incremental financing, we had to adjust for each one of those for each one of those CRAs. So the net impact of that was to the general fund of about $111,000. So total adjustments, since the July meeting, $4,430,474. So reviewing the ad volume, commissioners, what I wanna do is just basically one through each of the major ad volume funds and make sure we demonstrate that they are sustainable based on the military so we're bringing. But I always like to leave with this caveat because while this is a great budget and we're accomplishing a lot and I feel really good about the transportation fund and the future, we have an awful lot of variables that we're going to have to talk about over this next year. You know, we've taken care of the transportation trust fund and we're in great shape there now for the foreseeable future. But we still have the aftermath of the hurricane to deal with. And we're still cleaning up there, still not definite on what that hurricane is going to cost us. Still working with females, still working with the insurance company. Union negotiations coming to an end, but they're always out there. I brought this up at the last meeting and you'll see it in the capital is the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. Because we were so hard hit by Ian, FEMA came in and said, look, we're going to provide you with mitigation grants. And we've been guaranteed $120 million with mitigation grants. That's wonderful. We can get some great work done with that. Downside of that is we have to provide the 25% match, which is $40 million that we are going to have to come up with over the next three years once these projects are okayed in order to get them funded. Sunseeker, another ambiguous, you know, came online. It's in the tax rolls, but it's still in the CRA, where it ends up. Just want to make sure that we highlight that. Strategic land acquisition. We've talked about this. We're growing rapidly as a county. We're going to need more fire station sites. Parks master plan identifies the need for parks in additional areas, land, as the old adages, they're not making more land. So we need to be in a situation where when parcels come open and come available and then we can purchase them, we need to be able to have the ability to do that. And then the Metro forecasting population. This was, of course, we contracted with Metro forecasting to provide us with population projections and demographics over the next 10 years, well, actually, to build up. And it's great information. It's the first time we've had this information. Not only gives us population projections, but tells us where that population is likely to grow based on our vacant lands and zoning rules and building codes. So it's great information and we're going to be building this into the next budget process. When we come back to you in March, we intend to have not only a 20-year capital plan, but we intend to have a 10-year operational plan and a 10-year staffing plan. So when we lay it south based on these population growths, based on this amount of capital construction, this is the operational costs that are going to increase. These are the staffing needs we're going to have so that we can provide that information, be very planful moving into the next budget cycle. So out of those advolume funds, first one I'm going to talk about of course the general fund. You've seen this graph many, many times. This is after the adjustments we made, moving the transportation trust fund over, adjusting the millage rate. You can see again, one point out is how tight those red and blue lines are together, the blue line being the revenue, the blue line being the revenue, the red line being the expenditure, and that green line being our fund balance or our reserves. And you can see, you know, fairly stable there over the next few years. And again, you know, those out years 31 through 34, those are projections. You know, we know we're gonna have robust growth over the next two to three years. After that point, we scaled it down to a six and a half percent projected increase. We will adjust those as time goes on. Obviously this will never happen because we won't let it happen, but this is, you know, if I take the historical trends and just project them forward, this is what it looks like. So this is the general fund in terms of actuals for the last three years, current year projected, what our initial planned budget was for 2425, it was at 156 million and 500,000 for planned expenditures. And now 167 million, 763. And again, a big chunk of that being the transportation fund functions of engineering and landscaping maintenance coming over. And you can see that bottom line there. We've talked about this many times. We're showing a use of reserves, but that I'm very comfortable with that, as you saw on the graph. That doesn't happen, but it's a function of what the state of Florida requires less in terms of the way we budget. The thing I was like to point out is that less 5% Florida mandates that we budget our revenues at 95%. So we're automatically to be conservative taking 5% of our anticipated revenues out of the picture. Yes, Commissioner? Yeah, real quick. So, when we look at the column, we have three years of actuals, then the adopted budget is what we thought we were going to be taking it at $144 million and the project it is, well, September is almost over and that's where you think we're going to hit as closer to about $20 million more in revenues. Correct. Okay. Yes. And exactly my point. Yes. Because we under budget. And then on the expenditure side, we're very conservative too. You know, we budget at 100%. There's always a trition. So there's always, there's always some play there. And so we typically don't end up running a shortfall. But I can't tell you that that's typical for the last four years because the last four years has not been typical between cares I mean between COVID and the funds that came in from cares and the additional expenditures and then the R of the funds and then the hurricane hitting and the amount that we had to spend out there there just is not a standard to look back at in the last four years. Right, what I find interesting though is, you budgeted at 144 million and you came in at 20 million higher, you budgeted for 158 of expenditure, which is way more than you thought you'd spend yet you came in at 157. So certainly it enough to cover, but that's why you over budget expenditures and under budget revenues so you don't have a shortfall. Thank you. The law enforcement fund, again looking at that, again, just want to give you the comfort that the milled rates of your setting that we're sure that they're going to be sustainable for the future. So the green buyers represent the sheriff's submitted budget. That little blue piece on the top of it represents his facility cost that, of course, the county is responsible for, the jail, substations, headquarters, all those things. So those buyers represent the overall expenditures. The blue line represents projected revenues. Cell, and you can see we're very comfortable. The revenues are going to keep pace with what the sheriff has projected his budget increases to be. Capital Projects Fund, again, this is the one where we added expenditures to this, big spike this current year. Most of that was again having to do with the Transportation Trust Fund that purchasing their equipment out of the Capital Projects Fund and then essentially leasing it back to them over time. So it flattens out their expenses. And we could deal with that kind of a spike in this fund because of the nature of this fund. So the buyers being the expenses that are committed, most of this of course are capital maintenance plans, taking care of what we already have, making sure our buildings stay in good operation, our parks have taken care of, and then the dotted line being the projected revenue. Now what's the difference between the dotted line in those bars are the amount of funds that you have left over that you can allocate towards specific capital projects. And this is usually things that come up during the course of a year, opportunities or inflationary overruns, whatever that may be. Now, you'll notice over the next couple of years there's quite a gap there. And then that third year, that big spike. That big spike is that $40 million we're going to need for the hazard mitigation grants. Now, out of that, we're gonna get, you know, $160 million worth of projects accomplished. But we're comfortable that over the next two to three years we can build up or reserve there enough to cover that gap. Hey Gordon, going back to the equipment so you don't have large spikes and expenses, it's kind of like an internal leasing program, right? Absolutely, yes. Yeah, it's just a way of tapering off those expenses for the department, so they're not dealing with it in huge sections. And then the last one, of course, that we've adjusted the millage right on and want to make sure that we're good there is the lighting district. And you can see there we're very comfortable even with this reduction that we're in good shape. So moving on to the total county wide budget and again, a lot of this is required by statute. The total county wide budget for this current year is proposed was 200, excuse me, 2 billion, 227 million, 278 million, boy I gotta get this right before I start reading this. So, 10,939. The net county budget, and this is, I'll make this distinction in the next slide too. The net budget is 11,383,279,524. The other piece that we put on here, just make sure everyone knows, is that there's a budget carryover here of $405 million. I'll talk about this a little bit later, but that carryover represents the fact that we have a lot of capital projects. Those capital projects all have to get budgeted in the first year of the project, even though the project may take five years. And so that amount gets carried forward. And so that amount is actually from previous years that gets rolled into this current year budget. So looking at that graphically, that top line there, brown I guess, we probably mean to make a better distinction between our colors, the top line represents the gross overall budget, the total budget. And you'll see that $2.2 billion. That sounds like a lot of money, it is a lot of money, but it's a meaningless number. All right? The next line there represents that budget after we reduce transfers. And what I mean by transfers is in governmental accounting, we're required to not commingo funds. And people hear that expression. I say this more for the public. You've heard this many times, but you've heard the expression commingling of funds. We're not allowed to commingo funds with each other. So revenues that we receive from a grant, we can't put into the same fund as revenues that we receive from taxes. We have to keep those monies separate. So what ends up happening is we have over 140 different funds. Anytime we need to get money from one of those funds to another, we have to transfer the money back and forth. And we have to count that money that we're transferring. So for instance, we have the general fund where property tax has come into. That money comes into the general fund, it gets counted as a revenue. But then we also have a grant fund over here that we're going to send some match money in order to get that grant money. And so we have to transfer that money out of the general fund over to the grant fund, and it accounts as an expenditure. Then that grant fund receives that money. It gets counted as a revenue coming into that fund. Then it gets spent on the purpose it was intended for, and it gets counted as an expenditure. So we're counting as a revenue and expenditure in the general fund. We're counting as a revenue and expenditure in the grant fund. So we're double counting, we're counting the same dollars twice. Sounds funny, but it's governmental accounting. It's manned and it's by law. I promise you that's the way it has to be done. But when we ducked out those transfers in, because they really don't impact anything in the expenditures, then we've got the budget down to just over $2 billion. However, in the state of Florida, there's another thing that we're required to do, and that is we're required to budget for beginning balances and reserves. Even though we have no intention of using them. That is we're required to budget for beginning balances and reserves. Even though we have no intention of using them. So I equate this to essentially at home, most of us have a check-room count and we have a savings account. Our checking account is how we pay our bills and it's what we base our budget on. So that's our monthly expenses. We know how we're going to meet those. And then we have a savings account where we put money aside and that money is to handle emergencies. That money is to pay for tuition in the future. It's to retire someday. It's to meet those kinds of needs. We have no intention. We don't build it into our budget because we have no intention of spending it this year. In the state of Florida, for the sake of transparency, we're required to budget for those reserves and beginning balance, which is essentially like budgeting our savings come, even though we have no intention of spending it. So when we take that out, now the budget is down to $1.3 billion. Still a lot of money, but it's still not how much we spend. So if you look at our actual operating budget, what we spend on, what we fully intend to spend this next year on operations, that's about $600 million. Okay? And the reason for that is because in this county we have an extremely large amount of capital needs that we're responsible for. In the state of Florida, any area that is not incorporated is the responsibility of the county to take care of those capital needs, roads, bridges, canals, utilities. All of those things are our responsibility to handle in terms of capital needs. The only incorporated area we have in the entire county, of course, is Punnogorca, 10% of the population, 10% of the geographic area. So 90% of the geographic area and 90% of the population falls under the auspice of the county. So we have a much higher capital budget than our neighbors to the north of the south. So you can see our operating budget for this current year is 605 million. Our capital budget is 778 million. So our capital budget is actually higher than our operating budget. Again, it's all alluded to before. By law, we're required to budget for that entire project before we go out to bid for it. Even though that project may take five years to do, we budget for it entirely in the first year and then keep rolling it forward. So even though we demonstrate that $778 million, we will not spend that much in this year. Yes, Commissioner. If you could go back one slide. And I know that you said the difference between, you know, the top line, I guess, is brick, then orange, then brown. The difference between the orange and the brown is less reserves. So if I'm just looking at the distance between those curves, it looks like the reserves are slowly getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Is that because the budget's getting bigger and it's a percentage of the budget? it's a I mean that's all reserves so a lot of those reserves are actually encumbered for certain things like closing down the landfill and so forth. But can you speak to that because we don't have a slide showing the reserve like all of our reserves being built. We have some charts you know some some tables but we don't have that. And we also have a debt reduction slide, which is great. But I'm just curious about that. Yeah. And you'll see when we get to the one where I break out the reserves, not a not-backed graph by number, we'll see a biggest chunk of them as a growth is in future capital. So as I was talking about the capital needs, when we, you know, whether it's sales tax, impact fees, whatever it is that we collect the revenue for capital needs. And we budget for that in those first year. Those funds are again, cancels, mingle, they're reserved, and they are reserved specifically for future capital needs. So that's part of that growth that you see. The fact that we have such a large amount of projects out there that are in the in the hopper being done but also set to be started. So in the reserves is sort of I'm gonna say unassigned but not yet effectuated projects so if we're not spending money on it We got to put it somewhere it sits in the reserves until we pull the traders. Correct. Okay. Thank you. And in all those projects are designated. They just haven't been started. Right. Thank you for that. Again, this is just an overview of the budget. This is the FTE account for the county. And again, as you can see, as the county has been growing rapidly, we're attempting to catch up in terms of staffing. And so an increase in staffing this past year. And then you asked for this a couple of years ago, this is the blue bars are the overall authorized positions and the orange bars are the number of positions that are filled at a given point in time. And you can see we've added more positions than we've been able to fill. We're in the same boat with everyone else. It's very difficult to fill positions right now. Overall debt position, and this is over the last 20 years, you can see that debt gradually coming down. You know, a few months ago I would have told you that's going to go up, but we had a major project that we've set aside, and so it's not at this point in time we don't have that. So our debt position is very good right now. And then this is just how that debt is distributed in terms of what the intention of it is. The largest part is there being the utilities. Then of course Murdoch Village, the stadium debt and conservation Charlotte being the major ones that are coming off and will be tapering off over the next few years. And then that small blue piece on the top cap of projects, that tends to be cash flow type of funding to make sure you issue commercial paper but think it's paid back as the project moves along. Reserves, which is what you're just referring to, Commissioner. This is our ad valour reserves, and you saw this at our August meeting has come down as a result of these military rates but still looking at we're making sure we meet that target above 5% for both our contingency and our cash carry forward reserves. Again, contingency reserve speaks for itself. Cash carry forward is because our operations start, our budget starts in October, and revenues from AdVelorm don't start coming in until December. So we've got about three month period of time there where we've got the expenditures but we don't have the revenue. So those cash carry forward reserves are to cover us during that period of time. And then the fiscal stabilization is which by policy we strive to have 15% of the general fund. That's been reduced down greatly and I'll talk about that in a minute, but we're well below that target. And then this is all reserves combined and this is what Commissioner Constance was referring to. Yes, our reserves are significant. But again, if you look at that middle column there, future capital, you can see. You know, I said we had $450 million with carry forms for projects that were budgeted in the works, but not completed. So you can see of that $280 million of that is in reserves, but those are for designated projects. The other piece I like to point out on this is that some of these reserves are restricted, and that means, for instance, the landfill, we have to restrict reserves, have to have set aside for closure. The utilities, we have to have a certain amount of reserves set aside for bond disclosure So those are the what I'm talking about with restricted The other piece that threw in here is that that last line the hurricane at this point in time we have spent 90 million dollars more than we've been reimbursed. So we've spent much more than that. We've spent $150 million, $160 million, but we've been reimbursed some by insurance. We've been reimbursed some by FEMA. We anticipate reimbursement on most of this, but it will take years. So moving on to adopting the tentative millage rates and again commissioners this is what you set at the July tentative millage hearing and then we've come back and adjusted it. The additional adjustments there, whoops, additional adjustments there of course, being the lighting district, which we've dropped down to .254 mills, and the Capital Projects Fund Millage, which has been reverted back to 1.2654 mills. So that is what everything that I presented to you tonight is based on that recommended millage column. So at this point, we move into the formalized section of the budget, whereby state statute required to read into the record the millage rates and the budgets. The milled rates are red first, the budgets. Then there is a public hearing for each of these sections. And then, of course, you in order adopt first or pass first, the milled rates and then the budget. So. Any questions from Mr suburb? Okay. Okay. So I have a large version of what you have in front of you. I'll attempt to read this without mistakes, but typically I get tongue tied on something or transpose a number. And so again, for the public, what's gonna happen is Mr. Berger's gonna read his portion. We're gonna pause before a motion is made to hear from the public. I have 10, 11 cards thus far, and I'm just gonna take all the comments at this point. There will be other opportunities when we're talking about MSBUs and environmental sensitive lands, other portions of the budget which you can then come back up and anybody who comes to the microphone please identify yourself and then you'll have five minutes. So go ahead, sir. Right commissioners, this first section is strictly the ad volume county wide funds. The proposed county wide millage rate of 6.0519 mills is over the rollback rate of 5.4883 mills by 10.27%. For the general fund, First, the general fund is 4.7865 mills consisting of the Board of County Commissioner's Millage of 2.2142 mills and the County Sheriff Office Millage of 2.5723 mills for a total revised budget for the fiscal year 2425 of 131 million $4,947. The total countywide proposed budget is a milled rate of 6.0519 mills and a revised fiscal year 2425 budget of 354 million 800 and $2,500 Okay, so we have Speakers that are filled out cards. We're going to start with Kathy Cruz, followed by Sam Bessasse and Jim Kaufman. So if you just approach the front podium here, Kathy Cruz followed by Sam Basasse and then Jim Kaufman. Passing, thank you, thank you very much. Sam Basasse, come to the podium followed by Jim Kaufman and then Tammy Kaelin. Mr. Chair. Yes sir. A point of information I believe on a public hearing we have they have five minutes at this point and on the next one for public comment it's three so they have five on this one five minutes. I announce five minutes on a public hearing. Oh I'm sorry I must have missed it. No, yes sir. I'm sorry. Yes sir. All the jikes. That's OK. Good evening. My name is Sam Bessessi. And I just wanted to speak to a couple of issues. Mostly, well, they're all West County. We have that bridge, rotundable of our south that's been out for almost 24 months, two years. I know it's a big FEMA issue, and I know you guys are doing your best to get FEMA to come across there, but I just need to mention it. We have swale issues in West County, and we need to men'sy muckster to show up. We've got 70 miles of roads and lots of swales. I have a lot of rain here lately, so we've had a lot of minor flooding issues on roads and swales. We signed an MOU, the Rotunda West Association and the golf courses and the county signed an MOU about three or four years ago. A lot of things have happened. COVID and hurricane. Nevertheless, it's been about 14 years and some of those soils have been visited in West County. And there's a lot of growth in their trees, this big around. We have a, our paving issue is kind of coming up. We're overdue, but because of the bridge work that's being done, paving is being deferred, so that's okay. But it's on 20 years, kind of here in rumblings that there may be cost increases. So I guess the next MS view meeting that'll come up with that later this month. We got a return to park there that had some damage and haven't seen too much happening there, but I'm sure that the parks people are addressing that over the course of the next few months. We got six more bridges that are gonna be, they're actually on your agenda for next week or this week, and we already got four done, those six more will total 10, we got eight more after that, and then there's three gas tax bridges that are have to be addressed in 2025 or 2026. Some other obviously West County issues that's kind of not you guys but you guys can do something about it. River Road we've all seen it I don't need to say anymore but we need some help there. Street lights on 776 finally starting to be taken care of. That took a while. Yes, we're very interested in FEMA reimbursements with EN. I heard all the numbers and we can only hope that we can see that over the course of the next couple of years. That's all I have. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Next up we have Jim Kaufman, followed by Tammy Kaelin and then David Kaelin. Good afternoon. I'm a retiree of veteran and a property owner here in Charlotte County. And I hope you'll afford me the opportunity to be a little bit selfish. As I understand it, my property taxes are a function of millage times my property value. However, the income that pays that property tax, that pays that property tax, comes solely for me. It doesn't, there's a complete disconnect. My income is fixed. I'm a retiree. I have social security and modest investments. And when I got my trim notice, when I got my trim notice a few days ago, I looked at my valuation of my property, which is decreased, so my overall net worth is decreased. And I'm fortunate, I'm low seven figures. I worked from the age of 12 basically to the age of 62. impacted by the hurricane, the bear market in 22, and the horrendous situation we have now with property insurance. As in the side, I just talked to a friend and his property insurance is double, now 8,000, and these are all things that put stress on my income. And I was doing some quick numbers and I realized that what you're asking for, for me is about $6,000. Okay, $6,000. That's 30% of my social security benefit. And the millage increase that you propose in my trim notice is a fraction of, a fractional increase of a calculation. I'm just going to paraphrase here. According to my property value, it would be 5.4883. And you're suggesting a milligree increased to 61687 and the bottom line is that's about $400, $400 for a guy that's on a fixed income. That's a lot of money. That's a few weeks of groceries, that's gas. And I really want you to think about that. I mean, your county government's very complicated. I heard the actuary or financial specialist posing budget. But you have to remember the individual's perspective. You're getting your money from us. That's coming out of my pocket. And my strong suggestion is to make do like I may do. I'm driving in 1997 for a brain journey. I'm kind of proud of that. But I'm also a little bit disconnected when I see law enforcement, county service, etc, driving brand new vehicles. I'm making do and I don't see the reciprocity there from my county government. Now this isn't addressed to any individual according to paragraph three here, this isn't a discussion and I wouldn't wait anybody down with that things are what they are. But I would ask you to make do and I would ask you to stay out of my pocket because as a retiree, a hardworking guy, a veteran, a debt plates guy, I will give you my due but $6,000 is a lot of money and I'll pay that but the additional money. It's my time up. No one minute. Okay one minute. Like I said I said what I need to say but just just remember your money's coming from somewhere. And a lot of us have been hard pressed over the past few years. And like I said, I want to spend my income that I have in retirement on myself or the remainder of my life. I think I've earned that, I think I've deserved it. And I think when you deliberate over your budget, keep that in mind because I'm not one person. My name's Legion. There's a lot of great here out here. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Next up, we have Tammy Kaelin, followed by David Kaelin, and Kevin Davis. Tammy Kaelin from the Charlotte Ranchats. Taxation without representation, when the population is required or forced to pay taxes to a government without having any say in government policies was the reason the colonists started the American Revolution. Maybe someone can explain to me why my community the Charlotte Ranchettes is taxed without representation because this very same board abandoned my community. Yet we still pay taxes to Charlotte County, still have a proactive code enforcement and the county collects to impact these new homes. The ranch has no fire hydrant yet. I am being taxed at the same rate as communities that do. In a recent conversation, one of you had with my husband, it was acknowledged it was unsafe and even perhaps dangerous for emergency services to drive in the ranchats and would look into it to see what can be done and I thank you for your help. If it is unsafe or dangerous for our county and emergency systems to drive through our ranchettes, then why is code enforcement still out there? Are you putting your employees at risk? Of course, the safety and the services you are required by law to provide and maintain by the state don't apply to the men, women provide and maintain by the state. Don't apply to the men, women, and children in the ranchettes. I have watched people come to meetings pleading and even crying before this board. Yet not a single one of you seem to care that many people are struggling and have not recovered from the financial impact of COVID. Hurricain Ian and now the economy. Yet this county is on a spending spree with no respect to the people or the taxpayers. People are struggling to stay above water. My own tax went up nearly $1,000 this year, with one of my parcels being raised 1,300% that is not a miscalculation. And that rate is that. I know others who have had their taxes go up as much as $5,000 while being homesteaded. What this board and county are doing is taxing people, elderly families and children right out of their homes without any effort or attempt to rein in the budget. And I don't believe for a second any of you even care because you don't represent me. Anyone in the ranchette? And I questioned if you even represent the people of Charlotte County because we find ourselves with rulers who have been selected to rule over us. I recommend the people go check the Charlotte County Supervisor of Election website and ask why have all the detailed data of our local elections been deleted. Taxation without representation is that. God bless America. Thank you ma'am. Next up we have David Kaylen followed by Kevin Davis and David Kesselring. Good evening gentlemen Dave Kaylen, Charlotte County resident. I'm going to start with a neighbor, older couple, they've been in a home right down the street from 8 years. Nothing's changed on their property, nothing's been done on their property. Yet last year their taxes were $4,418.39. This year, they're $8,966 in four cents. I question what is happening here. I'm finding it across the board that when you go to the Property Represor's website or we start looking at our trim notices, so many of them have so many discrepancies across the board, including mine. My property taxes for my home parcel. the board, including mine. My property taxes for my home parcel. Many of you know I run a farm. All my parcels are still independent parcels. It's much cheaper on taxes that way versus a state lot. I'm agricultural exception. However, I'm going to give the numbers here from my tax increase for my residential lot. The general fund went up $48.14. The sheriff's budget went down almost $20. The schools went up $24, almost $25. Southwest Florida Water Management went down $0.27. Inland navigation, if we don't get our drainage fixed out there, I'm going to actually need some inland navigation. It went up 31 cents. And very many sensitive land went up $1.56. My fire tax, the one I came here to talk about last year, went up $815.50. I have less buildings on the property than I had last year. Agricultural buildings. Sanitation went up $11.38. That equals $881.12. That's almost $90. A year across my parcels that the taxes went up. That's the difference between a tank of gas or groceries. And I know we all here, it's just $20, $50, $100. Bidenomics has taken a toll on so many of us. If you guys didn't know, the numbers came out this week. The national average family has incurred $11,000 more in expenses with no additional services, no additional groceries, no additional anything. $11 more than $1,000, we have to lay out her family. I live in a community that has 38 miles of dirt roads. I chose to move out there. It's quiet, it's peaceful. However, in 2021, your board saw fit to relinquish maintenance of those roads with our MSBU. The community has stepped up and done the best they can with what they can. Our drainage was failed before you left. It continues to fail. Yet, we pay the same tax rate that everybody in the else in this county pays, but we don't receive the services everybody else in this county pays. I think you need to create a special tax district out there, so we don't pay the same rate, because we don't receive the services. Our storm drain on Burma Road clogged up this week, it took six phone calls. Now, granted, they had phone issues and they came out promptly today after two phone calls in a row. I give public work some kudos for getting out there. Our drainage is failing not just in my community but across this county. We need to be proactive with that. That's a wise use of our tax dollars. I know I've talked about my numbers, my properties, I know my wife came up here and gave some statistics. What I'm going to ask this board is I don't need a phone call from a commissioner. I don't need any of you going to a radio show to vilify me for my statements today. I'm kind of over that. Just to let you know, there are 23 nations globally that have a smaller GDP than this year's budget. I would consider really looking at what you can do, not just to reduce the military to get spending in order start reducing because I've done everything I can to increase my revenues but we are in probably the worst by the nomicacomany that we have seen since the 70s. We've got to pull together you tell us what we can do to help you. We got to work together here. Let's do the right thing for the folks here. Give us a break. Thank you. Thank you. Next up we have Kevin Davis, followed by David Kesselring, followed by Leon Moyer. Can you hear me? Yes sir. Yeah my name is Kevin Davis. I was born and raised in this county. That's where most of my life lived out in ranchettes. I just want to plead with you about the ranchettes. We got major problems out there, major issues. And I just want to know where my tax dollar is going. I know I guess the MSB you got voted out. That's what I'm hearing. But I come to talk to you, paste the face, and explain. We got people filling the ditches. We're flooding out there. There's people that don't even live out there, tearing the place up. I've never seen the state actually went by and it cleaned out the Cecil Webb ditch the other day. I never see the county clean the ditches out. We've got a major issue either. With the power, what was one of them? Appeals got that too in care of. navigate in, you know, my dad lives across the street over in Cleveland. County picked all his trash up. I had to pay for that. Like we're just left on the island and there's a lot of people out there now because I growed up out there. It's huge. There's a lot of people on a lot of tax dollars and I just like to know where it's going. You get the full ways you can't see because of the veg. Veg is over took. So now the country out of state, not taking care of their land, you got tribal trailers, tribal traders, part out of a tent and people with feces on the ground. No sewer, nothing. It's just trash on the ground. It's an disaster. That was a nice place to live when I was a kid. Beautiful place. And we take care of the roads. I'm not saying we want to pay the roads. I get that. It's going gonna cost money. I'm not scared to pay a little tax. Just for you to come back out there and take care of the place. You know, the roads are rough. People live out there, tear them up. Everybody works together as a community to take care of it. But you got people that don't even live out there. No police, no county officials, nothing. You don't see anything. You got people filling the ditch, the roads, and the numbers properties just completely flooded. I mean, there's ruin. Waste management going up there 80 mile an hour, tearing the roads up, it's just bad. Just a little help. I mean, that's all I'm asking. And I'm not scared to pay a little bit just out of the county back out to maintain the place. After Hurricane Ian, Charlie, go out there and grade it for us for a couple of times. So I don't care anything. It's disaster. Places turn into a dump. Trash everywhere. Traders everywhere. Travel traders everywhere. And nobody does anything. You know, my buddy was over. He had his trailer. A nice trailer. Had it fenced in. Had it septic. Had a sewer. Had water. Had electric. He was building the house. Y'all ran him off. But you go down the road. You see trash everywhere. You see tents. You know, so that's just what I come up here to say today. I just want to tell you how I feel about the ranch We could use some help, you know, I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, sir Next up we have David Kesselring followed by Leon Moyer And then James Fusilla Good evening commissioners. I have a few ideas on how to cut your budget. There's people up here that are struggling. And there's just, these are just a few examples. I'm sure there's plenty more, but I just have a few. If you cut your regulations and your regulatory staff, you could save a lot on payroll. It's much too difficult to open new businesses in Charlotte County. Just ask the craft beer guy. Stop building these expensive splash pads that waste water and they're only used by children during a short age span and those same kids will have to pay for it for the rest of their lives. They have to pay for waste like this for the rest of their lives. And there's people out here that you got 30% of their income going out to build splash pads. Come on. Get rid of the economic development department altogether. Save the taxpayers about $350,000 a year. Someone reminded me of Tom Patton who, when asked, couldn't mention even one thing that the economic development department did had accomplished in his time period. His successor managed to give a huge portion of Murdoch village away for free. Most recently, the commission has mentioned some cowboy that did his own thing without any accountability. And the next director also did his own thing and attempted to hire his wife for a high-paying position in that department. It's not the kind of thing Monty needs to go for when people are struggling. No level of government in America should be using taxpayer dollars to develop our economy in the first place. Picking winners and losers in businesses not a proper function of government in America. One man or a small group of within government shouldn't get to spend taxpayer money from established businesses to promote other new businesses that may be, they might even compete against the established ones. Doesn't matter which person in government gets to pick these winners and losers, it's wrong. This department is ripe for corruption which has been proven multiple times. One of the excuses for economic development, the department was their dealings with the school board and the school board takes a huge portion of our budget already. So allow them to spend their own money and resources to work directly with employers to provide the best education for future workers. True economic freedom and free market is based on the principles of individual empowerment, nondiscrimination, and free and open competition on a playing field untilted by government altogether. Canceled the projects to add more multimillion dollar sidewalks around Sunseeker, which I believe will extend the CRA. Everyone keeps saying you brought Sunseeker back on the tax rolls, but do you not have to end the CRA before you can bring all the taxes back into the general fund? Maybe I'm wrong but that's what I've always understood and if it's if I'm correct pay off the tiff loans and sunset the CRA so all the tax money comes that comes from those areas goes into the general fund won't happen until you pay off I guess the tiff loans but at what point have you sucked the tax bear so dry they can no longer live here? People are putting their houses up for sale, less are buying, your cash cows slowly dying down, yet you keep increasing the budget. Stop. Send the budget back for cuts. Lower the milled rates, please. Thank you. Sir, next up we have Leon Moyer, followed by James Fisillow and Crystal Stone. Good evening commissioners. Good afternoon. I am Leon Moyer. I wish to address the budget issue and I appreciate the opportunity. What astounded me was to see the two million gross, two billion, B billion. That's a astounding amount of money. The only valid purpose for government is to do for the people, what the people cannot do as individuals. We cannot individually build a street or road or maintain the ditches. That's government property and you need to take care of that. I see a lot of things that could easily be fixed with a little more manual labor. We don't see people patching potholes. They wait to do the entire street with a repayment job which costs millions of dollars. Nobody wants to do the manual labor. I do practice what I preach. I work as a volunteer down to History Center next to the library, Fully Weeds. So when I hear the pain tonight for the people, it hurts because they do have the option to use the system of government to protest your taxes every year. They can just take the assessor to a hearing. And if they lose, they can go to the state level. And I did that years ago and I won. But it's a lot of work. So maybe there is a way to make better use of the money, excuse me for being emotional. That was my main point tonight, just the stress that tried to limit the extent of government in our lives. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next up we have James Fusillo followed by Crystal Stone and then Stacey Ware and then I don't have any other cards if you wish to speak. Cards are available and we'll listen to you. Good evening. I'm for limited government, limited spending, and limited taxation. And quite frankly, I haven't seen a whole lot of that around not just within the past year or two, I'm going back a decade. It seems that the whole thrust of the Economic Development Plan here in Shalakown, he has been to put the maximum number of properties on the tax rolls, which you've accomplished to overextending, actually, because we have over development. That's another story. My point is, with all this development, especially in the mass of complexes that have been removed, we have tons of more taxpayers than we've ever had. The tax base has been increased, as you have said that it would, with all the revenues pouring in to the county coffers. But what has been returned to the tax payars has been the drop from the bucket. Not only is that a pretty issue, but the increased property valuations that have resulted from the improvement along the way in our property values, I saw Sky high at some point that people are getting the notices in the mail. Well, the insurance companies, the homeowners insurance companies, are using those Sky High valuation figures to set our home insurance premiums. There's nothing we can do if your house is valued, you think, at 300,000, and the county has it for 450. The homeowner's insurance uses the 450. It says you can't get property insurance, homeowner's insurance, unless you pay for the 450,000 dollars in coverage. I don't need to tell you or maybe I do need to remind you that homeowners insurance premiums have skyrocketed for everybody. It affects mainly those people, though, in the greatest degree, who are of lesser income. They can't afford to pay the premiums because they have on a fixed income. We already heard today from several people that have mentioned that. I also want to bring to light the fact that in the past all this money that's been reserved and saved because of dire predictions, I've come here and listened year after year about recessions that we were going to have. Well, they never transpired. Yet the money was retained by the county government and used for whatever. I really don't know. But it sounds like a broken record to me that all I ever hear is excuses why we can't put taxpayers ahead of developers. Along that line, in the past, I've come here and one of the issues I talked about was the overdevelopment and I was told we were proposed to build shallow comments on Peachtland and Veterans Boulevard and that was originally zoned as commercial shallot comments on Peachtland and Veterans Boulevard. And that was originally zoned as commercial. But I was told brick and mortar establishments were dead. It was not going to be much going on with them because everything was going to be purchased over the internet. So brick and mortar businesses were not viable. So it was converted to residential thousands of apartments over there now. And what happened after that? Carcline Boulevard. Have you ever been down there? The development there balloon did exploded after we were told that brick and mortar establishments were dead. As a result, the overdevelopment has helped the developers. It has not helped the taxpayers. The money has not been returned to the taxpayers. Our commissioners have not been aggressive enough taking care of the taxing. And with all the development that's going on, tax payers have paid the price. It's overly congested. We have increased crime on and on and on. The tax payers have paid through the nose to be even gone to the extent of approving the 1% SEALS tax, of which we really don't have a clarification where that money goes. I mean, there's no insert to our tax bill that shows exactly how much money came from that sales tax. And where it went. It might be something online to that effect. But when you're an older person, you don't know why not include it and with our tax bills and show us. And let's share something. Your time's up. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next up we have Crystal Stone, followed by Stacy Weir, and the last card I have is Cat Pelegrina. OK, so my name is Crystal Stone. I live in the ranch ads. I'd sure be happy to fill out a second card to get an extra five minutes because it's probably going to take ten. So I purchased a home, a new build, three years ago. So I get a notice, my house is $45,000 more and being taxed on. That's interesting. Nothing's changed. What's more interesting is that I pay taxes for lighting. I'm going to tell you what light is there in my neighborhood? There is not a street light on Vermont. Not a single light. Never mind a stop sign in the neighborhood. So I am paying taxes on a light that I don't receive. Crazy part is my neighbors. Have them show you their tax bill. They're not being charged for lighting. I'm being charged for lighting. Where's the lighting? The only light we get is from the sun, okay? So that's incorrect. So somebody can check. I live at Sweet and Boulevard, 6421. Make sure everybody double checks what I'm being billed for, okay? I'm also paying taxes on water management, paying taxes for South Charlotte stormwater. Well, I gotta tell you, again, I'm paying taxes for what service am I receiving. Do you know what the service I receive? Nothing. I have no issue paying taxes when new. I have a family, but I gotta tell you the justice that we do not get in the ranchettes We are treated like a third world country with not a single compassionate person sitting in front of me that cares Enough about the people that live out here and I am here to tell you this is not Acceptable I have already contacted NBC news which has reached out to you guys. This is not how you treat people that pay taxes. We pay more taxes than the people that live in PGI that are crying to you about a broken street life. We don't even get life. You want to talk about law enforcement? We in the ranchette support law enforcement. You know what's a shame? The lieutenant, a lieutenant for the Fort Myers Sheriff's Department. Can't even get home most days. Why? Because he can't get through the road. Because we have no drainage. To speak on that drainage. In the budget meeting, you guys talked about how you have room for employment in the office. Well, how do you feel knowing that one of your county employees, Victoria Pemberton, lives on Sweden? She intentionally filled her drainage. She intentionally built a wall and has her grass this tall and put orange stakes to water what won't drain off. I had to spend two hours helping an elderly neighbor get home because he couldn't get through the road. I would love to show you videos of this road that we have to drive on. It is unacceptable. If any single one of you would like to come, I'm sure my time's almost up, and spend a day with me. I would love to give you a tour on what we have to go through. If there's an emergency, the services we pay for, guess what? That ambulance ain't getting down the road. And we have to get our tractors out and pull these people out. Emergency services. We are entitled to receive. So you guys need to do better. You want to raise taxes, then give us a service. If you don't want to give us a service, then don't raise our taxes. Take away from our taxes. You guys want to pay? What are you going to pay for? What are you going to pay for that we pay into this count? We are human beings. We are families. There are senior citizens that can't even go up the road at all that depend on people younger my age That have to help them because nobody else cares enough about anybody in the ranchettes But us as a community whatever happened years ago was years ago You don't get to decide to treat us as if we are not human, and we do not have rights. Not a single person cares about any family in our neighborhood. You guys remember, you're all voted in this seat that you're sitting in. And if something isn't done, I can promise you everybody sitting here right now won't be serving again. I will take this as high as I need to to represent the entire community we have. We are not crap and we don't deserve to be treated as so. We deserve to get home safely every night and that's questionable every day. If anybody would like to drive home with me tonight when I leave here, well get ready because it's gonna take about 30 minutes to go half a mile because I can't get home. Thank you, ma'am. Next up we have Stacy Ware followed by Cat Pelegue. Good afternoon commissioners. I'm Stacy Wehrer, Finance Director for Roger D. Eaton, Charlotte County Clerk of Circuit Court and County Comptroller. I'm here in regards to our office budget request for fiscal year 2425. I'm pleased to report that clerk's office has successfully reduced our budget for each of the last eight years since clerk Eaton has taken office. This year the reduction is 0.3% for a total eight-year reduction of 12.2%. In addition to lowering our budget each year the clerk's office has returned excess funds to the board of county commissioners and our taxpayers each of the past seven years totaling approximately 4.8 million dollars. We were able to do this because our services have become more efficient. Our office and clerk eaten are proud to support the board's goal of an efficient and effective government through transparency and accountability, better for the citizens of Charlotte County. I respectfully request approval of our budget submitted on behalf of the clerk's office. Thank you. Thank you very much. Last up we have Cat Pelegraena. Good afternoon or evening almost. Cat Pelegraena, veteran. I want to thank that gentleman for serving his country. Thank you, sir. I'm so sorry you're having a tough time. So, wow. I've heard a lot of people, a lot of complaining, a lot of dysfunction. You know, with the money this county has, you would think you would take care of the priorities. And those priorities to me are keeping people in their homes, right? A lot of them are putting their houses up for sale, fixing the infrastructure, Inglewood is getting bad. We had that monsoon rain, whatever it was. And I had to drive around six abandoned cars because they were flooded out on 7, 7, 6, in like half an hour. It was like a river. You know, Penelope Calle is putting a more Toryman sub-building. They're smart. They're going to build smart. They're going to think about what they need to put out there for the people. See, my thing is, you don't really listen to the people. I don't see you having town halls. We've talked about that. You not have talked about that. Commissioner Pseo, haven't we? You know, people will work with you. They will, if you actually reach out and ask them what they need and not just do what you want to do. Builders, they're making money, hand over fist. They're not serving the people. You aren't serving the people. I don't think you really understand what it is to serve the people. I do. I serve for 24 years in the military. I volunteered to do that. I laid my life down for this country. I would do it because it's who I am. My family served. For my great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, my grandfather, cousins, uncles. I just don't understand, after listening to these people, watching what's going on in this county, why you aren't listening to the people. I really would like an answer. I don't think you really care. I don't think you're very godly people, because what you're doing, seriously, do you think God approves? Really think about that. Look in the mirror and ask yourself. Ask all of you. Ask yourself. Has God approving of this? I don't think is. These people just want you to listen to them. They want something done for the community that's right and proper. The money that you have in this county. Prior to it, did the budget down, cut the fat, prioritize what needs to be done. Listen to the people. You have household budgets. Of course, you have a lot more money than most people. It's a small percentage that has a lot of money. The rest of the people are retirees. You're going to be there one day. Think about that. Think about your legacy. What are you leaving? They're not going to remember you for being great commissioners. That's for sure. If you keep this up, I guarantee it. Thank you. Have a good evening. Thank you, ma'am. Anybody else wishing to speak now is your opportunity. Please fill out a card. Come forward. You can speak. Stay your name for the record and then we'll have you fill a card out. Yes sir. No problem. My name is Todd Raddick, T-O-D-D-R-A-D-E-K. This is my first meeting. I'd say, I'm not from around here, but I got here as quickly as I could. This is my first tax bill here in Charlotte County, and this is not your issue. Obviously, a praise is about, I'm just giving you this as an example. It says, my 2023 rate was $6,900 and the next year this year's rate will be $9,400 or possibly $10,000 if this budget goes through. That's a lot of money. We're well aware of Florida. We've been visiting here for 25 years. My in-laws live here, but coming to these numbers along with the property tax insurance and current insurance, I'm looking at over $25,000 a year. And I tell my wife, I said, if it was up to me, I would have sold the house six months ago and moved because we could afford a vacation, 25,000. I could go on a 14 day five star African safari every year for the rest of my life for this money. And what does Florida bring? I hear it's always, well, it's paradise, it's paradise. It's like an excuse. But to the gentleman's speakers here about the budget, I thought it was interesting that the gas tax hasn't been raised. I never thought I'd say I'd that the gas tax has been raised. I never thought I'd say I'd be in favor of a tax raise, but maybe that's an option to look into because you see the snow bird population come down here and my personal opinion is, rather year-round residents, we put up with the heat, the mosquitoes, the storms, and then just one of the weather terms perfect. You can't get a dinner reservation, you know, I'm in favor of like you know, 10% reserve for residents, but they it's like they come down here and ruin everybody's life, you know. Well put some of that tax burden on them, maybe raise the gas tax, at least they'll be paying a little more, it's not gonna stop them from coming here. And I don't know what those numbers are if it eases our burden on that end. So, and then this is no different from the state I fled to previously. It's all government how they do the taxes, it seems, but when I look at property value based taxes. It's kind of like the talk now of taxing on real, unrealized capital gains. It's like the assessor says this is what my house is worth. And if I had to pay it or fight it and I could lose it, but it's an unrealized gain. I'm like the one person and other also said like that doesn't mean that's what I'm going to be able to sell it for. We could have a major category five come through here in another month and maybe six months my house is no longer valued at that. So this is more food for thought for making maybe working with state legislatures. Obviously it's above our hands here in this room, but maybe there's a different way to tax the property tax on that. It just seems unfair. It's an unrealized capital gain. I'm looking at $10,000 here and I don't know why my value went up. I admit I put in a $10,000 fence, but I that'll see why it goes up. Damn, they're 52% of my current values. So that's all I got, just food for thought on maybe how, addressing the tax, the tax gas might, relieve some of the resident burden, pass it onto the snow birders, and then looking at a different way to tax, obviously that's at the state level, but away from the values. I don't think it's a fair system, but thank you for your time and thank everybody here as well. Thank you. Thank you, sir. I'm going to fill this out. Yes, please. And then just hand it over there to Tony and he'll make sure the clerk gets it. Thank you very much. And we also wish to speak. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes, ma'am. Okay. My name is Victoria Hooker. Can you just spell it? Just fill out the card. Okay. We'll have it for the record. Okay. Thank you. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes ma'am. Yes ma'am. Okay. My name is Victoria Hooker. Can you just spell it? Just, ma'am. Okay. My name is Victoria Hooker. You need me to spell it? Just fill out the card. Okay. We'll have it for the record. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. And so if I was understanding what the gentleman was saying about the taxes they collect in the budget, it seems to me that you always over-collect on taxes and then your budget is under that. So I know it's your guys' job to manage the funds, manage all of that and you got to make sure you have enough money. But maybe there's some room in between the overage that you collect and what the budget is to maybe lower that or maybe lower what you collect for the reserve or something like, so that you can give relief to some of these people this year, and maybe revisit it the following year, or as things get better in our economy. Because as we know, you all know, you got to pay bills to you too, you're feeling it too. You know the economy is bad. You know everybody is dealing with the situation. So maybe that's just one way that we can give some relief to people. Just reduce that a little bit this year and give them some relief. That's all I have. Thank you very much. Antonio will help you out right there. Anybody else wishing to speak? Mr. Chair, see nobody rise. Motion to close the public and proportion of the public hearing? Second. We have a motion second to close the public hearing. Is there any discussion? Hearing none all in favor, signal five by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? The public hearing portion is now closed. Mr. Chairman, it might be helpful just briefly for Mr. Berger possibly to restate, I know he did it during his presentation, to restate the fact that we had a budget meeting on August the 19th after the trim notices were prepared. So the milled rates and the ad valorem tax dollars that you see on your proposed trim notices are more than what we talked about. We reduced tentatively back on the August 19th. So you did state that in your presentation, Mr. Berger, maybe that slide that shows the add the Lauren tax and if you have a homestead and piece of property in a certain categories, you'll see that you'll actually pay fewer ad volume dollars with this proposed budget this year than you did last year. If you could slide 13. I think. Yeah, Commissioner Dory, I think somebody referenced their trim notice which is at 6.1687. That's the the old rate we lowered that in August. Right. 687, that's the old rate we lowered that in August. To the 6.0, actually, it was actually above 6.0, 6.0, 519, which is what it is now. Staff lowered it even further to come into compliance with the request we made on August 9th to lower the rates. That's correct. And I'm just saying, if they haven't had the opportunity to see that presentation of the work we did on the August 19th meeting, they wouldn't know. All they'd have is the trim notices and they think it's going to be these increases. So they could be helpful. Thank you, Mr. Furt. Yes, sir. I put this light back up there. So you can see for instance and administrative floor has identified this in his news purple article. For a home that's evaluated at $300,000 in this current year, the tax bill would have been $2,271 for the county general millage. Next year, it will be $31 less. It will be $2,240. Now that does not take into consideration the schools military, but this is the county general and the reduction in the military for those who are homesteaded actually reduces your taxes. And again, Mr. Chairman, just again, to emphasize Mr. Berger of the $1 of ad volume taxes, we are responsible. This board is responsible for about what, $18 or 19 cents of that dollar? $18.5 out of every dollar. Just go to the next slide. That's the dollar, yeah. I think it's important just to reemphasize that because there's so many other facets of the bill that they get that we have no control over. Correct. Essentially. Again, the bulk of it is the school district. Mr. Chairman, with that, I'll move a resolution adopting a tentative countywide, tentative countywide, Milagelebi for Charlotte County, for the fiscal year, 2024, 2025. Second. I have a motion. I have a second. Is there any discussion? Yeah, Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. I'm sure it's a good floor. There were a lot of comments tonight and it's gonna be hard to unpack all that at this time, but I would say this. In 2022, the Board of County Commissioners lowered the military. We lowered it again this year. And the county went back and we had a special meeting in August to look at lowering it further, which is where we are today. So in three years, we've lowered the military to try to at least keep taxes level and what the slide 13 showed is that you'll see an actual for a homesteaded property when you look at the general fund and this is where we get to the dollar bill. That's what we have control over is reflected in our general fund that 18.51% the county wide budget would result in an actual tax savings in most instances. So we are listening to try to keep taxes level we're reducing the milled rate and you don't hear too many municipalities and too many counties throughout the state of Florida that are able to lower the milledrate two out of the last three years. It happens, but we've been able to do it here in Charlotte County while keeping our debt growth of debt down in a downward trajectory, which is really, really important. So we're lowering the debt, we're able to low the millage rate at the same time. Obviously, the board does have a responsibility to produce a balanced budget every year by statute. And that's what we've tried to do this time. We ask staff to go back to the board and come up with these solutions with some of these cuts, which were outlined in the presentation earlier. So we are listening, we are trying to be responsible and deliver cuts when we can, and still deliver on the infrastructure. One of the things I've heard over the last several years is we need more infrastructure in Charlotte County. That's reflected in our capital budget. And if you just look at that big number, the gross number, you have to understand it. And I think Gordon did an excellent job of explaining the gross number compared to the net number and that we have to build in capital projects that are not yet completed, but we have to carry them on the books. So we really have to focus on that net number. So that's a reflection of the board trying to deliver on infrastructure, because that's what capital is. It's the infrastructure for the county. And so that was part of that earlier presentation. There was a question about the snowbirds coming in and perhaps getting them to pay more of a share of the taxes. One thing that the 1% sales tax does is depending on what study you read anywhere from 20 to 30% of the 1% sales tax that the voters approved in Charlotte County is paid by people that don't live here. So it's like getting a 30% or 20% discount on those projects and those are all capital projects. 30% or 20% discount on those projects and those are all capital projects So that's one way we're able to do that the gas tax you're correct. That's more of a legislative type thing But we are we are doing things like that Those are my comments, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Thank you commission do ich Thank you This on you. Thank you A couple of comments. I want to share It's I guess it was a few years ago, listening to some of the comments that I was sitting out there in another venue, saying the types and kinds of things that you folks shared. I have a couple general statements and a couple specific statements. One of the things you find out when you sit here and you have the responsibility of being in a commissioner position, we have the responsibility to govern. And it's not an easy one and it's not one that I don't think any of us take very lightly. And I'm frustrated because I grew up with an under 10 cents a pound, but four years ago they were three pounds for a dollar, now they're 69 cents a pound. But to give you an example, what we face, we could have run, let me make up a number to give you an idea. Four years ago, we could have run a mile of a water line for $10. Now we only get like a little more than half of that water line for the same $10. So we try the best that we can to deal with the responsibility we have to make sure that the county can be the highest quality we can possibly do by spending the least amount of money that we possibly can. And you know, every one of us pays taxes the same way everyone out here does. And it's a responsibility, it's a challenge, it's a difficult. And I think most of you know this and I've talked to at least 10 or 15 of you that I think you're a today on the phone at one time or another. I'm always accessible. You can pick up the telephone. You can make an appointment. You can come in and talk to me. And I think most of us are on that same page. I just want to spend about another 60 or 70 seconds on the ranchettes, because the ranchettes are a really unique spot. And one of the things that I found out when I first cut on the board, the people in the ranchettes didn't want the county to mess with anything out there. Well, the population of the ranchettes have changed over the last 12 years. And I know that several years ago, maybe it was three, four years ago, the county wanted to work with the people in the ranch house. We wanted to help put the drainage in. And most of you folks know this. You couldn't get four people on one street to agree. And we need your help there because we'll work with you and we'll do it. But we tried with the MSPUs. We tried the meetings, we had meetings and meetings and meetings and you know like if there were six people on the street three or four or five wanted to but we couldn't get everyone and you can't go ahead and do a swale and skip a piece of property. So I think I certainly tell you this I'm available and I tend to think, oh my colleagues are, if we can find out a way to try and increase those services and work with the folks out there, I certainly know I'm willing and I think we always be willing to do it. In fact, I think it was just earlier this week, David and I were on the phone and I said, David, you gotta get, he says, well, we're doing a lot of stuff ourselves, Steve, and I said, well, if you can get the people on the street to work together and cooperate, we'll work with you. And I think he'll acknowledge I said that, and we will. We'd like to. I want to. It's a challenge. And as I said, it was a few years ago, but I said exactly where you guys are. And I'm as patriotic if not more so than anybody else in this room. And I've volunteered and I've served in the military as well. And I spent a number of years trying to serve my community to try and make it a little bit better for our kids and grandkids. But I'm available. We'll sit down and talk to you. If there's a way you can do it, let's work together, let's be it. Let's be a team and let's do what we can to try and make some improvements at the ranch hut. But don't forget, don't forget we have a responsibility here and we've got the responsibility to govern. And there's a lot of things that pull in different ways and a lot of things to do. And I'm confident and I share that every one of us goes to the best of our abilities, whatever that is, but we try to do that. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for your patience. Thank you, sir. Are there any other comments? With the close of discussion, we'll now vote on the motion for the board moving a resolution adopting a tentative countywide Millage levy for Charlotte County for fiscal year 2024 2025. Is there any opposition to that motion? Hearing none that motion passes unanimously. Mr. Chairman move a resolution adopting a tentative countywide budget for the fiscal year 2024 2025 Second motion and second any discussion having a tentative county-wide budget for the fiscal year, 2024-2025. Second. Motion in second. Any discussion? Hearing none, is there any opposition to that motion? Hearing none, that motion carries unanimously for zero. We will now move on to the environmentally sensitive lands, milligrates, and proposed budgets, Mr. Berger. Commissioner, this one's a little bit different. It doesn't require public hearing because it was put into action by the voters. We do allow public comment, but it's not a public hearing. For the voted debt service fund, for the environmental sensitive lands, the series 2008 debt service fund, a voted millage of 0.2 0 0 0 mills for a revised fiscal year 24 25 budget of 8 million 999,447 Okay, thank you again. This is this is voted by the voters back in 2008. So from a statutory standpoint, we have to pay this. We have a debt that we're paying off. However, we will afford an opportunity for the public to comment. You'll have three minutes if you want to speak on this item. Three minutes. I don't see anybody rising, so we're going to move on. Mr. Chairman, move a resolution adopting a tentative series 2008 GOB Death Service Fund Millage Levy for Charlotte County for the fiscal year 2024 2025. Second. I have motion second any discussion. And I will say that in the beginning, I think we were having some problems meeting this back in 2008-2009-10, right? There were some problems. We've overcome that, and now I think this is even more revenue, so we may retire these bonds early, hopefully. So, hearing no further discussion, motion in a second second is there any opposition to that motion? Hearing none that moves unanimously. And Mr. Chairman move a resolution adopting a tentative series 2008 GOB debt service fund budget for the fiscal year 2024 2025. Second motion second any discussion? Hearing none is there any opposition. Hearing none that moves unanimously for zero. And now we move to the MSTU milled rates, rollback rates and proposed budgets in which Mr. Verde will read into the record. Right. For the municipal service tax units or MSTUs for the greater Charlotte Streetlight District. The proposed advolume tax for this district is 0.2543 mills, which is a 0% increase rate of increase over the rollback of 0.2543 mills. The total proposed budget for the greater Charlotte Streetlight District is $14,718,171. For the Stump Pass Dredging Municipal Service Tax Unit, proposed ad volume tax for this district is 0.1978 mills, which is a 18.44% rate of increase over the rollback of 0.1670 mills. The total proposed budget for the stump pass dredging municipal service tax unit is $19,845,400. For Don Pedro Night Island street and drainage unit, the proposed advol increase over the rollback of 1.2582 mills. The total proposed budget for Don Pedro Night Island Street and Drainage Unit is $4,390,000 and $47,000. Excuse me, let me read that again. $4,390,047. For the Manusota Key Street and Drainage Unit, the proposed ad volume tax for this district is 0.7798 mls, which is a 25.39% rate of increase over the rollback of 0.6219 mills. The total proposed budget for Manasota Key Street and Drainage Unit is $2,403,323. For the Charlotte County MSTU for Law Enforcement. The proposed ad volume tax for this district is 2.1449 mills, which is a 1.67% rate of increase over the rollback of 2.1097 mills. The total proposed budget for the Charlotte County MSTU for law enforcement is 142 million $982,410. For the Sand Hill Municipal Service Taxing Unit, the proposed advaloring tax for this district is 0.7062 mills, which is a 16.90% rate of increase over the rollback of 0.6071 mills. The total proposed budget for the Sandhill Municipal Service Taxing Unit is $1,284,630. Just chair. Yes sir. Yeah I think on the rollback rate, he used seven instead of four, it should be 0.6041. I think he said seven one. We're talking about the Sandhill Municipal Service Tax. Yes. The one you just read. Okay. Why don't you reread Sandhill one more time? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Yes. The point you just read. Okay. Why don't you reread San Hill one more time? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The San Hill Municipal Service Taxing Unit. The proposed ad volume tax for this district is 0.7062 mills, which is a 16.90% rate of increase over the rollback of 0.6041 mills. The total proposed budget for the San Hill Municipal Service Tax Unit is $1,284,630. The sub-total for all of the MSTUs for the post fiscal year 2425 budget is $185,623,981. Very good. At this point we will open the public hearing for the municipal services taxing units portion of the Advalorum and anybody wishing to speak will have five minutes. You can fill out a card Or come forward and then fill out a card for us. Anybody wishing to speak? Okay Which come forward and then we'll get your card afterwards. I'm going to fill out another card, do you say? Crystal stuff. I'm going to fill out another card, do you say? Or crystals, so. Yeah, crystal. Yeah, only because just so the clerk can keep it straight. Go ahead, you'll have five minutes, and then you can fill out our DM. OK. Thank you. So this kind of goes back to on the MSVU. So I guess my question again, so I am paying taxes on the stormwater. We're not receiving any service for that either. So outside of the lighting, which I mean, charts were, which I didn't, you know, bring up already, why am I paying in for the stormwater? There are no services being given on that. I'm happy if you'd like happy if you can pull mine up or I be sure to share this with you guys. Again, I don't mind to pay taxes, but I need to be receiving some sort of service. I'm being charged for it. Give me a service. The stormwater? I know that there's something that can be done to help with the drainage. Like we talk about, you know, hey, people in the ranchettes before they didn't want to do drainage. Well guess what? As a community, we can talk about it to neighbors, but I'm sorry, we can't make that one crazy neighbor that wants to pull his shotgun on you every time for filling his drainage agree to do it. And we shouldn't be forced to ask that neighbor to do it. We need somebody else to come in and just do it. Not make it an option. Now it's become a safety concern. We have roads washing away because of this drainage that we're paying taxes on. Nobody's dealing with. Well, literally roads washing away. We call into the county. You know what we're told? They're private roads. We don't maintain them. It's a private road. Well, what happens when somebody actually ends up upside down that canal and dies? Who's responsible then? The entire community that's a private community? I mean, there has to be some action for this. You know, people put in, you can be friends with your neighbors, but you can't make them do it. We're not asking for much, but this is a given. And hey, my neighbor, a streetover, look at their tax bill. I give you their address. They're not getting charged for lighting, but I am in their honor lights. These things are hand in hand. You need a light. You need drainage. Those are necessities. Shouldn't be an option. Again, please look at my tax bill. 6421 suite and Boulevard. Anybody want to call me? I'll put my phone number on here. I just want a solution. We shouldn't have to ask each other to agree for the solution. So if I need to talk to somebody, if you need my help, I'll help. Who do I call? That's what I need to know. What can I do to make you guys make this happen for us that are paying our taxes? Or re-evaluate us as a whole in the ranch ads and just write us off. Okay, you know what, we're not gonna serve you, we're not gonna charge you taxes, you know? Because that's the right thing to do. I work hard for my money, but all the retired people, I feel so bad for them. I have a grandmother that can't even afford to buy dinner. Her dinner is a can, a freaking soup. She's on a fixed income, and she's a veteran that served for our country. Do you want that veteran to go hungry or pay their taxes, or pay in services that you guys want to raise when they can't even feed themselves? And they are too afraid to ask somebody at the hands of people's lives that don't have money for all these changes. If anybody deserves to have the money, it should be law enforcement and emergency services. That's it. You want to have taxes on that? Absolutely. But let's be real. The school doesn't deserve anything. Half the kids are home school because it's not even safe to go. We need to really look at this whole community as a whole. And something has to happen. And I will write my phone number. And if anybody wants to call me, call me. Because we have to have a solution. Do I need to bring this forward? Yeah, tell me I'll take it from you. Thank you very much. Anybody else wishing to speak? Mr. Chair, seeing nobody rise, motion to close the public input portion of the public hearing. Mr. Chair. Motion second to close, any discussion? Yes, Mr. Chair. Well, let's go ahead. No, he has the closing. Sorry. If there's no discussion, is there any opposition to closing the public hearing? No opposition that moves unanimously for zero. Commissioner to say over the floor. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, just for the people who may be unfamiliar with the ranchettes and are hearing some of this for the first time, want some help out there. And I believe it was in the early 90s, 91 or 92 that a group of citizens who live in the ranchettes proposed to the board at that time they needed help with the rose. It is a private road community as opposed to other roads around the county that are owned by the county. We own the right of way, the public owns the right away, so we can go in at any time and do what ever needs to be done within that right away to maintain the facility. In their ranchettes it's unique. They have a publicly recorded easement that allows the public to drive on those dirt roads, but the county or the public does not own the right of way. Therefore, we need permission to do any work out there, and there are literally hundreds if not thousands of individual property owners that have rights, private property rights and it's a very complex issue that's really hard to explain in a few minutes but because the county does not own the right of way we can't do the things we normally do in greater Charlotte County in terms of the the lighting district I do not have a county light on my street either. It's for all the other lighting around the county that you use the other roads. Veterans Boulevard, you know, edge water, whatever the lighting district you're in, that money goes to the greater lighting district, not necessarily on your street. The only light on my street is an FPL light that's stuck to the pole. It's one of those little lights. Same with the drainage. So the greater stormwater drainage system isn't necessarily the drainage in front of my house. It's for the greater area. There's like a district map that that covers for all the other roads that we traverse during the course of the day on my tax. I pay into two different stormwater districts a greater Charlotte County District and one for me in my area. So there wasn't charge out in the ranch at some prior to two or 3 years ago when we did away with the MSVU. The board that created it back in the early 90s charged a fee to just maintain the dirt roads to kind of help the people to get these jobs done. And it was $100 a few years ago as what it was, I think per acre, I think was the charge. And it wasn't enough money to get anything done. That was the problem. So we went through an extensive review on what it would cost to actually have a real maintenance program out there. And it was in the thousands a year per lot. And nobody wanted to pay that. So we didn't own the roads. We had actually no control to do work in those roads if a neighbor objected and that was an issue. And then it was the fee. So you were not being charged, that fee was done away with when the MSB you went away. So you were not being charged at $100 that was used to maintain the roads in the ranchettes. So I don't know how else to explain it. We talked very lengthy about it a few years ago. We had discussion multiple board meetings that the county does not own the right away. So I hope you kind of understand that a little bit better. It would take every single owner in there to either bring the roads up to standards for us to take them over. And that would cost millions of dollars. But that's how it works for any private road community. All these other roads, we just listed in this motion that was made. These are all county owned right away. So that's the difference. I hope that brings a little more clarity to the issue. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir. Move a resolution adopting a tentative milledrate to be levied within the Greater Charlotte Street Lighting District, Stump Pass, Dredging, Municipal Service Taxing Unit, Don Pedro Night Island Street and Drainage Unit, Manasota Key Street and Drainage Unit, Charlotte County MS-TU for Law Enforcement and Sandhill Municipal Service Taxing Unit for Fiscal Year 2024-2025. Second. Motion in a second. Any discussion? Hearing none, is there any opposition to the motion? Hearing none that passes for zero and Mr. Chairman. I'll move a resolution adopting a tentative budget for greater Charlotte Street lighting district stump pass dredging municipal service taxing unit Don Pedro Night Island street and drainage unit Manusota Key Street and Drainage Unit, Charlotte County, MSTU, Law Enforcement and Sand Hill Municipal Service Taxing Unit for fiscal year 2024-2025. Second. Emotion in a second. Any discussion? Hearing none, is there any opposition to that motion? Hearing no opposition to that motion? Hearing no opposition that passes 4-0. And now we move on to the non-advalorem funds and MSPU municipal services benefit units. Mr. Berger. Mr. President, is this the last portion of the budget? Now your mic's on. Go ahead. It's on. It's on. Okay. The last portion of our budget is for the non-advalorem funds and municipal service benefit units or MSBUs. All applicable assessment rates that exceed a previous set amount for the following have been adopted in prior public hearings. So for the special revenue funds, non-MSBU, the proposed fiscal year 2425 budget is $570,203,332. For our enterprise and internal service funds, the proposed fiscal year 2425 budget is 812 million 813,324 dollars. And for the special revenue MSPU funds, the proposed fiscal year 2425 budget is 1,728,594,099. Okay, we will open the public hearing for the municipal services benefit units that were referenced. Anybody wishing to address this item, you'll have five minutes. And again, it would be helpful if you could please fill out a card, but if you speak first, then fill out a card just so the clerk can keep track of who's been speaking. I'm just killing. Welcome back. Dave, can I want Charlotte County resident? Hey, one. Go ahead. Can you hear me now? Yes, it's right. So we're going to talk about the MSB use because we still have one out there. It's the South Charlotte stormwater unit, which is supposed to maintain the Grove ditch, Strauss ditch, Burmont Road ditch, the East West ditches, the Pelican ditch, and the Alligator Creek area. We don't receive any of those services. Now we talked about stormwater and people filling in their ditches in the county having no authority over that and we are what we are. I'm going to read the State Statute for you all in Education. 298.66, obstruction of public drainage canals, et cetera, prohibited damages and penalties. One, a person may not willfully or otherwise obstruct any public canal, drain, ditch, water course, damage or destroy any public drainage works constructed or maintained by any district. Keep in mind the word constructed by. Two, any person who willfully obstructs any public canal drainage or water course or damage or destroy any public drainage works constructed in or maintained in any district shall be liable to any person injured thereby for the full amount of the injury, occasioned to any land or crops or other property by reason of such misconduct and shall be liable to the district constructing the drainage, work for double the cost of removing such obstruction or repairing such drainage. Three, any person who willfully or otherwise obstructs any public canal, drainage, or watercourse impedes or obstructs the flow of water, they're in or damages or destroys any public canal, drain, ditch, or water course impedes or obstructs the flow of water. They're in or damages or destroys any public drainage works constructed in or maintained by any district. It commits a felony of the third degree punishable as provided in 775.80 or 0.082. The reason I read this to you gentlemen. I have now had to hire a lawyer because this was originally constructed in the Charlotte Ranchettes by the Central Charlotte drainage district in 1967. It was approved by the state legislature so it is a constructed drainage system in a district. It now meets the 298.66 requirement. All I needed was Miss Norton to let the sheriff know that yes that is the law and yes the guy who filled in your drainage flooding your crops in your property committed a third degree felony and Burr-Pamel was more than happy to go arrest the guy so I could get my drainage fixed. But I'm fortunate that Miss Norton has given the direction not to go down that route. So just like your employee over on Sweden who has filled in her drainage flooding out everybody, south of her down to Maris, I'm flooded out as well. All we need you guys to do is step up and have Miss Norton, let the sheriff know when somebody fills in that public drainage because it was constructed by a district in 1967, let the sheriff handle it. Let the courts do their job. We're not asking you to do much. Just do the job that the state has set forth in the state statute so that we can get our drainage back. It's being destroyed because people are filling it in. And there's absolutely no recourse right now, except for the state statute. I ask you to please direct your attorney to start working with the Sheriff's Department to start forcing 298.66 so that we in the ranchettes can start receiving a little relief because I've now spent tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers and I'm waiting on a hearing that DEP's already said yes he's filled in the drainage he's flooding you out so we need to work with you guys. I'd be happy to sit down with you guys let's find out what we can do to work together so that our MSBU the Central, the South Charlotte drainage district can get in there, be more effective, so we feel like we're getting something with our tax dollars for those MSBUs. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Anybody else wishing to speak? I'm sorry. And please fill out a card if you could. Another card. For each public hearing. Go ahead. Please. So for the MSBU. So I understand We are still receiving the service Yes or no Just we'll talk after we can't answer you just ask all your questions. Make all right So that's a hard part like if I have a question how am I supposed to have an answer to that? So if we are paying into the MSPU I guess that's my question is why are we not receiving that service? In effect, you know, as far as again, it's going to go back to the same drainage that we have. I need to have an answer. So I need somebody to actually explain to me and I'm not that stupid. So I know that you had mentioned when you were talking about, you know, you have one light on your street. Well, I like to know where you live because I'm sure you have many more lights. It really comes down to, it doesn't matter whether it's MSP or whether it's taxes. We deserve to have something. It's not where you, you know, you tried and you maintained the roads. I understand that the MSBU money that was actually collected from the neighborhood was misappropriated. And the money was gone because instead of using somebody that was more affordable to make the funds be sufficient enough for the neighborhood it was just given to one place that had ridiculous pricing. Instead of seeking other sources it just went right out the window so I can sense the frustration of a lot of people out here because the MSVU like we're paying for a service but when you're paying for that service, you know, it is the drainage. It is exactly that. You know, and as Mr. Kaelin just talks about, let law enforcement do their job because I get to tell you, I don't know you guys, we have a lot of law enforcement that live in the ranch house. They serve for you guys and they serve for us every day. They have to drive in this. Again, I'm gonna refer back to the lieutenant that lives for Myers. He drives every day serves. He can't get home most of the days. He has a family and wife that can't get home most of the days. Why can't law enforcement do their job? We call the county, guess what? It's a civil matter. Code enforcement, okay, and do anything about it. That's BS. It's BS, and I don't wanna hear anymore that nobody can do anything that is private property because guess what? Obviously, there's more than just, you know, it's private property., it's private property. If it's private property, then it needs to be decided. It's not one way or this way. It is you will come out and reassess the entire ranchettes and you will treat us entirely different since we don't have anything in our, we should be taxed different. Or continue to tax us and start providing something because the answer to, well, we tried or this neighbor wouldn't, that's pathetic. Shame on you, Mr. Tisio, for your smug attitude about a bigger problem for an entire community that has grown so large. It's not 10 people. You have such a smug attitude about human beings in a community. You wanna do something? Go out there and get all the bumps, living in tents out there. Get them gone. So we don't have to smell their waste, water, crap that is going in the ditches that don't drain because you guys won't support MSB you, you won't support any laws, you won't support anything to even get a strainage. Would you like to wake up in the morning and have poop in your front yard? I don't think so. So do better. That's exactly what I want to say. Do better. It doesn't end here. I hope you remember my name and my address because every day, if it takes me every day of calling, I'm calling. You will not hear the end of me until there is a solution. And I might be one person, but I have an entire community, and I currently have three pages full of petitions signed from the ranchette. So I hope somebody is well prepared to start speaking. An NBC, I know you know they reached out. You had some comments for them. I'm curious to see how this will end. That's all I have to say. Well, who would like my card? Mr. gentlemen, right here. Thank you. Anybody else wishing to speak? I'm going to see no one else rising. Mr. Chair, seeing nobody else rise, move to close the public input portion of the public hearing. Second. Move motion second to close. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, is there any opposition to the motion? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. here. Mr. Chairman, move a resolution adopting all final MSPU rates as listed. Second. Motion second. Any discussion? Here. Hearing none that passes 4-0. And Mr. Chairman, move a resolution adopting the tentative budgets for the remaining special revenue funds, debt service funds, enterprise funds, and MSPU funds for fiscal year 2024-2025, totaling $1,728,594,000 in $9. Second. Motion and second. Any discussion? $594,000 and $9.00. Second. Motion and second. Any discussion? Hearing none, is there any opposition to the motion? Hearing none, that passes unanimously, and that concludes our business today. So with that, we are adjourned.