We're waiting to order. Welcome everyone and we'll get started with approval of the agenda. We'll move on to the agenda. Is there any comment to the agenda? Seeing none, all in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, like so? All right, we'll get started. The first item for discussion is the fiscal year 25 budget development department review to. And Madam Chair, the we like to change order just a little bit. Go ahead and start with my departments with the animal services, court service community support services and seeds. Mr. Crosby is running, we still expect them to arrive, but he's at checking on his mom right now. Okay that's fine. Yeah but he should be here. So we're gonna start a page. We're gonna start a page 19. Up well should be on. I got 46. I see what's the toilet. At least the pack. Oh 36. 36. 46. 46. 46. 46. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay. And Mark, when we let you know that the document camera is working, so it is available if we need it. The first department of animal resources and a couple of things about animal resource and care. You see the revenue that 128, 450 expenses at $5,000,000 and $57,945. There's only one budget request, and that's for an FTE dispatcher position. Animal resources has one dispatcher right now, and one dispatcher's not able to cover totally for their staff. And so a second dispatcher will make a great difference there. There's $33,000 that's going to be added to the manager's budget for replacing washing machines at the animal resources. But that's in this county manager's budget. One area, of course, is a new facility status. We're still working with the University of Florida and the leadership out there to get the term lease agreement done as well as get a MOU done with the veterinary medicine department and making good progress on that. Our legal staff has been reviewing what the university has presented as far as the lease agreement. And now it's ready for staff review. We got an email from Tommy just yesterday for us to go ahead and review it and then get it back to him, and get it back to him and get it back to to legal and to the university. So we're hopeful now. There's been change, as you know, change of leadership over there. And so that I think that has caused some delay but we're moving forward. So that's pretty much animal resources and of course we have Julie Johnson here in case you have any questions you want to ask up her Madam Chair. Madam Chair could I just make one comment? I have found a mistake that I made so I'm gonna credit myself for that. The animal resources did ask for a Van bus which is included in the financing package. So that is also another ask, but it's in that financing component that we're going to bring forward. And I'm not driving that bus. I'll take care of the dogs. And the purpose of that bus is to do outreach. I assume an adoption event and things like that. Correct. And it would also assist us when we're doing some large-scale cases because it does have exam space in it as well to be able to do exams on site. So that will be helpful when we're doing some of the cases that we do in the field. Very nice. Okay. So we couldn't use the Cusco Willa bus for that. Probably not. Probably not. If I get a little loud. school will have us for that. Probably not. Probably not. If I get a little loud. We're physically responsible, but we're not basically phrasing it. Okay, Commissioner Cornell, will you? Sure, thank you, Manager. So how are we doing on the managed intake? Are we still in a managed intake situation or are we not? We are. Yeah. We are always in a managed intake situation. It is, as you know, we had a great summer love and adoption event on last Saturday. We adopted out 35 dogs and 50 cats. We were closed Sunday and Monday after the event. And on Tuesday, we took in 18 additional dogs and we had just stopped it out that you know 35 and then on Wednesday we took in another 8 dogs. So we have almost set net zero for our adoption event already in two days so it is a constant management take situation. Okay so what I was looking at the thing that aren't being funded as requested, I saw three kennel technicians. And it seems like perhaps we can't afford three, but I would be in favor of finding some funds for at least one or two. But I want to hear kind of how that would help. It seems like that would be a huge benefit for the staff who are constantly it appears to be over working stress does I don't know if you have any thoughts about that or if you want to talk a little bit about that and we could kind of put that on the maybe to discuss and horse trade later. I can't say that we had been using temps. Tamps, you're right, temporary help for the Kenneltex. And so maybe having an additional kenneltex, it just one might be helpful, I'll let you be responding. Now from that, from just a financial perspective, I would say, if we looked at how much we spent on 10 last year for Tommy, and then that may justify one or two positions. So that think that's great. But from an internal cultural perspective, I think having another responsible party, and I don't see the need going down. I just heard as successful as we were this weekend, we're back right back up to the manager's day. So to me, that's commission one that I kind of saw and the things that are funded that I could sort of. I did, that was when I had my hand raised. I mean, it was that. And I have a couple questions for you too. They're related to specific data budget, but it might be. But yeah, I'm with you 100%. I mean, I guess I feel like we've spent a lot of time and energy and talking about animal resources and the goal is always that we're moving animals as quick as we can in and out. But we also have to think about taking care of animals that are there and a lot of them end up there for long periods of time for whatever reason. And I just feel like we can keep bootstrapping this, you know, even though we have, and these people are probably, they would be up to speed, so we have the new, at least a couple of them, so that when we get, start building a new facility and removing animals around, like having to not staff up so quickly when we have a new facility and having people that are already trained and already know our policies and procedures and being able to and have some of them now and then some of them ramped up when we get the facility seems to make a lot of sense. So I'm with you on that. I also, I guess I had a couple of questions for you regarding sort of this managed intake because it's definitely something that I'm, you know, I'm hearing a lot of the community is like people feel like they can't bring animals to animal resources. And so I guess I'm trying to understand what is it that we expect the community to do if we're full? Right so we have a complete found animal guide on our website that explains to the public what we are asking them to do. We do bring those animals in and give them vaccines and full intakes and get them in our system. And then we ask them to wait until we can get a spot for them so that we can guarantee them a spot to bring that dog right back in. I'm supposed to do in the meantime, like I'm not going to keep a dog I've done on the street. I have cats and kids and like I'm not gonna keep away them dogs. Right, right. And so we do ask that people look around the neighborhood to see if it's just a neighbor's dog that got loose. Cause I mean, the data shows that most dogs are six houses away from their original house. And we do get people that don't know their neighbors or don't really want to talk to neighbors and things like that We and we take these all case by case everything is is really truly a case by case So we know there are some emergencies where we have to take those animals in and that's always the that is always the Juggling act that we do on a daily basis is making sure we have a couple extra kennels open because we know we're gonna have either an emergency from the field side or an emergency from the public side. And so it is constantly a balancing act of trying to manage to that. And you know that gets challenging at times, very challenging. But we do try and accommodate as much as we can and we do the people that can help us. There's a lot of people that help us. We've got 15 scheduled this week. Yes, and we have 15 scheduled this week. And so these are people that have found animals in the community and are holding them for us. So we give them the food, the crate, the supplies, the bowls, we give them soup to nuts. Yes, we give them everything to try and help those animals. So I guess my only question then is like, you know, I see kind of text that I know that our real need is like inside the facility, you know, but I haven't seen in the entire time I've been here, demand for new field, you know, for field. And I guess I'm just wondering, like, would it be helpful maybe not this year, but maybe this year or in the future to have somebody who in the field's job isn't necessarily going and picking up the animals but helping work with people who have found animals to find their home, like, to do that work. Because it seems to me that that's also a challenge. Like I get a fair number of calls or texts from people who have tried to call animal resources and are closed or were busy or we can't get to the call or were full. Like, you know, so it feels like we're kind of busting at the seams on all fronts, field front, you know. And I know that's got to be a really stressful situation to be in. And so I'm just worrying where we can put people that would be helpful to sort of like help our public manage expectations, but provide them with the support that they need to do what it is we're asking them to do. Because I mean that's a big ask. If I found a dog on the street, there's no way. I mean, I would try to find it at home. I would do it by bath, but there's no way I would take that animal into my home just because of all the other responsibilities I have. But I wouldn't want to just let it go either because then it's somebody else's problem. So how do they get help finding it at foster? And are we doing that? Are we already doing that? Yes, we are. We're calling all the shelters, we're calling all the... Right, so we have a rescue coordinator that handles all of our rescues. And we have a foster coordinator that handles all of our foster parents as well. And those are kind of new positions. Yes, well yes, that we actually focus them solely on those positions, yes. And so we went through that process. The dog that they found and we don't have room for it, that that foster coordinator will help them try to find its home and then try to find a foster at least try and find the foster for it. We also our front desk staff spent an enormous amount of time looking on the pet finder pages. There's multiple and forchling gains bill now they've exploded. And so people think when they're posting on one it's seen by all and so that's always been a challenge because everybody wants to run their own group the way they want to run it and so there's all these multiple pages and so our staff try to navigate through those pages with them to see if somebody's missing that dog. Obviously scanning for microchips is huge and again if people would chip their animals we could get them home much faster. They would never need to come to the shelter. So, you know, we do try and hit it on all friends. And of course, our shelter does offer microchipping for the public. If they'd like to get their dogs microchipped, we absolutely offer that service. And it's very reasonable. It's $10. So we are trying on multiple fronts to get those animals back home. Our new license tags has a QR code on them where they can get those animals home right away if people are complying with our licensing laws and that's been going very well. And as far as speak back to the Kenneltex and the staffing that we have, we have to bring in temp force quite often. And the concern is, is that there's a lot of turnover with, you know, with not training. Correct. Correct. I mean, they could work in a restaurant one day and then us the next, you know, so it is very different work. So that is the challenge there. And that was some of the thought of asking for the three originally was to replace the three that we're always asking for from that service on a regular basis. But they have been, I think we've had them for three months now so far. And then we have them earlier this year as well so it is a constant. And also one thing we learned that straight dogs, street animals are usually not far from their home. The studies show that their six houses away. Yeah, six houses away. So if there is a way, and maybe it's educating the public, but also educating our officers, our staff, to look around the neighborhood a little bit and see if we can see where that dog came belongs Versus taking a dog out of the neighborhood and then trying to get it back to them Right and that is in our Found Animal Guide online and we did talk yesterday as a matter of fact in our Committee meeting on Commissioner Wheeler came to our meeting yesterday our animal welfare advisory committee meeting that We can do a much better job of getting that posted on our Facebook page and pinning it to the top and then also getting that Seen more visibly on our website. So we are actively doing that as we speed And also looking at our website the way it is currently how can we make that more friendly well I'm certainly in favor of us hiring people and training them over using temporary employees so we yet do that analysis and see where we can shift some funds around from 10 to permanent that would be fantastic yeah I agree with that as well Commissioner Rehler I did go to the meeting yesterday and it was an amazing group. They're working really well together. I was impressed. The Sheriff's Department, Mr. Cone, is the chair of that committee and would did a really nice job of managing everybody through the meeting. It was there for an hour and a half. And in addition to your media lists that you're trying to upgrade to, we're talking about having someone also who could make sure that grants that are coming in can be addressed because it's time consuming. And so one of the down the road, we're talking about maybe another employee who could actually handle the public outreach that you're talking about as well as the grant, which would not take away from their staffing on the site. But again, the microchipping is only as good if somebody is going to record it. I've found that out too. I've worked with them with some of these dogs in the last year or two. And the process, they're really, really wonderful about trying to make sure that this is getting out. But the word is getting out about how to handle the dogs in the community. But from what I understand yesterday in the meeting, a lot of folks are coming in, I rate already. They don't want the dog. They don't want to be bothered with it, they'll just drop it and run. Right. You know, so it's overwhelming. There are a lot of issues that are coming from the public as well that, you know, are not the problem. Right. Shelter. Exactly. That's what you're saying? Because I think that that's the challenge we have people who are overwhelmed by this responsibility of a creature that they care, that they want to be cared for and they don't want to see suffer and the concern for safety in their neighborhoods if the dog is running stray and it might be a hazard or you know, but then on the other hand not wanting to, like they've got enough of whatever responsibility. He's in their own lives and not wanting to have this additional thing and feeling like it's our responsibility to do it because you have animal resources, you do it, you know, but then we if we don't have the people to help her to do that. So that was my that was my question. And it but just to clarify, any any animal that is aggressive, sick or injured or anything like that. We go out on those calls immediately. Those are immediate priority calls. So we don't wait on that and we don't ask people to hold that. We go out on, we respond to that immediately. What happens on those calls on Sunday and Monday? There was a, I got tagged by a citizen who had a, was a dog, I think, in a Latvia who was, couldn't be caught in really, really, really bad shape. And a Latvia County Animal Services was tagged on the post, but nobody could get them on a phone call to do something about that. So that's CCC that goes through our sheriff's office. CCC is notified of our on-call staff. Officers are staff 24-7. We have officers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And so they call 911 and they call 911. Well 911 is what they should do. Okay, because I did not know to call 911 in that case. Okay. If it's a serious case, it was a pretty serious case. 911 for non-emergency call. I'm not advocating that. No, no, no. It was it was it was pretty bad, but I assume it made it to you. It did. Yeah. Well, I was impressed. I enjoyed that I did not, I did not know my mouth. I just sat and listened. No, I didn't give any secrets away. One way or another, but I was impressed with the camaraderie, you know, the the of willingness of those agencies to work together and make sure that everything was spayed and neutered in the camp. Yeah, I get tagged on Post all the time from folks that's like I was turned away from animal control and they tell stories that aren't really true about what happens in your office and so it's it's very frustrating about what's being talked about in the community. So I've been working on trying to figure out a canned response. Here are the five things to do. But I did not know we had that webpage on if you found an animal what to do. Found the animal guide right on our website. Yeah, I will be linking to that a lot. Well, the social media builds on all of that too, and then it didn't build more. I know, and it's not good for explodes into this awful stuff. It does. I do think, see, I mean, I know we're not, this is an policy conference, we're supposed to be a budget conversation, but I do think that some maybe there could be some additional training or retraining for our CCC deployment folks and for our sheriff's deputies They've had a lot of turnover. They have a lot of new people and I have found that Like they've been like that's animal resources. That's them. That's that like they don't know who to deploy And like then the sheriff goes out and I'm like oh that's an original resource. No more resources is closed. They call our way. Like things they I think that there is some situations where we're we're having like a thing so it may be and that may just be that at the sheriff's office like adding the training around animal resources into their new cadet or their new deputy training and things could be useful and a re-arreariation of it during the CCC trainings and things like that for what we're doing because they've also made probably some great upgrades and changes to how that response happens that they may or may not know about over there at the CCC. I don't know, but I'm just throwing that out there is something that's possible if it hasn't already been done. We'll have that discussion with the sheriff Madam Chair. I don't know, but I'm just throwing that out there is something that's possible if it hasn't already been done. We'll have that discussion with the sheriff Madam Chair. All right, yeah, thank you. Because policies aren't any good if they just sit in the book. Yeah, okay, great. Anything else on this item? So we're just making it known that we think it's a good idea to add another FTE or did you want to take action on that? Okay. All right. That sounds good. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much for the work you do. We know it's hard. It's stress. High stress. I'll just say one more thing. Thank you, the commissioner Wheeler. You've leaned in here, really appreciate it. And kind of have taught me that actually the last place that we want an animal as great as our shelter is, as great as it is, is a shelter. So the work that the foster coordinator and the rescue coordinator and really our community has done in the last two years is recognizable for this commissioner because it's the best it's been in ten years and I really appreciate that. My budget item is just how can we make that place better for in the unlikely event or a portion of that that wouldn't be end up there. How hard is it to utilize one of the scanners for a a what do you call it the microchip? You push the button and you scan it over the entire body of the animal as a microchip scan move. And so you scan the entire body of the animal a number will pop up. And then you plug that number into a microchip look up and it won't give you the owner information right then and there. It will tell you who to call to get that information because some people don't want their information public which is fair and so then the microchip company will call that owner and let them know that we have their pet or so-and-so house or pet. I was just wondering if there was an opportunity to have those microchip readers and software at other places around the community. We would love that. I mean, the part of the problem is they are pretty cost prohibitive. There was three anywhere from three to $500 a scanner. So there's not an inexpensive item. There was a company that had worked several years ago trying to get that free for all so that all fire departments and police. That's exactly what I was thinking. Yes, could have the microchip scanners. That went, I think that was one and done because they didn't realize how fast they were going to blow through the money with that. So, it is a thing we can look at possibly getting some grant funding for. I know that a lot of the grant dollars right now are going to keeping pets in homes is really what the money is going. But if we had a scan, we had scanners of the first all around the fire department. That's what I'm thinking. That's what I'm thinking. That's what I'm thinking. And if we got a few more, I don't know if Shera has any, but to put in deputies cars that they tended to play out. Right. At least in the outlawing communities. Right. You know, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, let's think about that too. I think that's $300 is a lot, but compared to the cost of a whole other person, it's actually pretty cheap. So yeah. OK. It's actually pretty cheap. So yeah, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being back. Shira, and I thought with you as you're talking about being involved, I heard recently from someone who was here to observe our court services to do any evaluation and what she said was really interesting because I think it relates to the shelter too. What she said is that jails or shelters are not for people that we don't like. They should be for people we are afraid of. And the same thing, you know, the shelter, not for dogs that we don't like, it's just for animals that we are afraid of. So it's interesting that we could cut down on the population in both places, if we don't incarcerate animals or folks, because we don't like them. I thought it was an interesting perspective. That's right. Thank you, Angie. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. On to the next item. Yeah. The next item of course is community and strategic services or sometimes refer to the seeds and of course that's being reorganized and the manager is going to be coming back. Either the next meeting here in August or the first meeting in September with that reorganization plan. But you can see the revenue that 74,000, the expenses that $752,017, and budget requests of $307,059. Of course, the economic development and tourist development offices are being reorganized and combined, merged together. Sharma Clinton is here in case there's any questions about that but I think overall there's going to be a reorganization of that particular office and you'll be seeing some new new strategies and new efforts coming out of it off and going into FY25. So the numbers that we're seeing here do those take into account the move or those assuming what's today? Those were what were in the county managers budget. So when we do our final budget they'll be all reorganized. Once the manager organized for that one. She tells me where everybody's going then I can move a better route. Okay, catch it. All right. I was looking at the budget book and then at the budget request and I noticed that there was a couple of positions that weren't funded for this department and I, you know, I, I just want, I know that we're doing a reorg so those positions may come later once the reorganization happens and we realize like, oh, we need another person in economic development and we need another person in sustainability or we need another person in economic development. I mean, we need another person in sustainability, or we need another person here or there. But I just want to encourage, like, this is the department that's often responsible for holding our strategic goals, because our strategic goals are overarching. You know, and so it's like economic development, sustainability, resiliency, equity, like, those are the values that we're layering on top of the entire county. And we're asking all of the departments to think about those things, right? From growth management to animal resources, like how do we think about sustainability, equity, resiliency, like, you know, those are the things were an economic development. And so I think they end up with a lot more than we realize, because all the departments need their help and their expertise and their input on different projects as well as their own projects that we're giving them to do that either don't fit anywhere in particular or that are specific to those concepts like the Climate Action Planets. I was excited to see the Climate Specialist that's going to focus on that Climate Action Plan to support Betsy, but I feel like taking an outreach coordinator and saying like the Climate Specialist is like we're checking that box like that just actually plan to support Betsy. But I feel like taking an outreach coordinator and saying like the climate specialist is like, we're checking in that box. Like that just doesn't feel right to me. Like an outreach specialist, you know, when we do, we have engagement, which I think we're beginning to do a really amazing job at. I feel like all the departments have really owned that and that is about the department themselves like taking up the idea of reaching out to the appropriate communities and people to get input on their on the issues but there's also outreach right and that's about us going out into the community and talking about what we do what resources we have what projects we're doing and helping the community understand who the county is and also recruit people to participate in things that we're doing like being on our advisory board or participate in engagement for things that we're doing, like being on our advisory boards or participate in engagement for things that we're doing, etc, etc. And so I just I just want to like ask that as we're having the conversations and reorganizations that we really think about that outreach piece for the county as a whole. And I think I think some of the conversations we're having about community health workers could be really powerful with regards to that outreach. I think some of the conversations we're talking about community health workers could be really powerful with regards to that outreach. I think there's other pieces and places where that could fit. But I just I don't want to lose that idea that we need that community outreach piece. And I understand why it was in this office. Like I said, because it's so far reaching across our organization. And so I'm not saying we need to necessarily wait right this minute, but I hope that as soon as we get that reorganization kind of figured out and it comes back to us There's consideration about additional positions that are needed to support the teams that are doing these cross departmental and cross kind of issue type of work Absolutely I think we've made a lot of improvements just on that. Yeah Madam Chair, unfortunately the budget doesn't stop. When we do the county manager book, we are still fine tuning. Also some of the initiatives that were brought up when we cut it off. Deadlines make us do it. So I wish there were days that it would stop. But it doesn't. So part of those initiatives, I think you're going to see come back through what kind of managers talking about in her real work. Awesome. Thank you. Appreciate that. Okay. Next. All right. And next we have community support services. Claudia Tuck is our director. And you see that we do have some some some requests here. There's basically three budget requests totaling 494,651 dollars. One is for Crisis Center Enhance Telephone System and already Bids are under review now and there's a couple of placeholders. One is for the Street Outreach Program. The National Alliance to Inhomelessness has been reviewing our outreach program and they're preparing a report. But the report won't be ready until after the budget has been adopted. So I think Claudia is, we're expecting to ask for an extension on implementation of that. We know a couple of things. One, we've learned that the City of Gamesville is probably not going to fund street outreach. We also learn that the Grace Marketplace, in the case they have enough funding left at this point to go two or three months over, extend two or three months in doing the streetout reach. And that will give us more time to get that report back from the National Alliance in homelessness and then come back to this board with the proposal for streetout reach for FY25. Certainly, we will be involved in the street out reach program. And either we will be taking it over and running it or we'll be working in partnership with a great market place in order to do the street out reach program. Madam Chair, can I? Yes, I'm sure. I'm excited for that report. I think we need it. I'm really interested to hear. I mean, it's a great group. And I think it's going to be really powerful to hear what they found. I've already talked with people in the community who were interviewed by them who are really excited about the questions they were asking. I have the feeling what it's going to do is raise more questions, as well as providing some answers, but I want to say that I'm not sure that the street outreach team belongs with us. I actually think the street outreach team belongs with the continuum of care. And I think we could fund it, but I really think that the continuum of care as a team should be kind of overseeing that street outreach team potentially and I would love to hear Claudia's thoughts on that if she's the expert but I feel like the continuum of care is a group that's supposed to be coordinating all of that the entry and thinking about all of the people and so I feel like that team might be the home of and I don't even know if that's possible but it feels like that's where it might should live. So you don't think it should be at the emergency shelter anymore? No, I do not. I don't feel like one of the entities that's doing sheltering should be responsible for street outreach for the whole county. We have lots of organizations that do that. So I do think bringing it to the county level makes sense. I'm just not sure if we should be the ones overseeing it versus the continuum of care overseeing it. Okay. Claudio. Chair, Claudia Tuck, Director of Electric County Community Support Services. Those are some of the questions that we've asked the National Alliance to look at and respond to us. We weren't necessarily advocating any one aspect. It's just for awareness, the homeless continuum of care was moved in July from the United Way of North Central Florida to a new entity coming out of Broward County called the Task Force for Ending Homelessness. They are not believed in Broward County. They are an outreach service provider, so they are certainly intimately involved in outreach in another area. They have hired staff locally and continue two of the positions from the former agency, three of the positions. And they have also hired someone who you know from the past, Michael Blessing, who was in this area before with Lutheran Services and DCF. He's now the manager of the continuum of care locally. So they were all interviewed and we're looking forward to the recommendations. Great. But this is just a budget holder to be able to support that street outreach. Sir, yes, that's – and we did. I had communication from John DeCarme, the director of the Grace Marketplace. He does have money left from this year's contract to carry at least two months into next year because he's been receiving other funding for outreach as well. He asked if he could do that. I brought that to OMB's attention. They're looking at that now. And he's Mr. DeCarmonis also looking for other ways to fund outreach. Okay. Good. Yeah, I mean, having more than one organization doing outreach as long as they're coordinating may not be a bad thing. But I don't know. Madam Chair, making sure it is countywide. Yeah, that's the big question for me. It's going to be a loud and one. It's coordinated. You know, I think that them tying to the coordinated entry component and like really being connected to those. And I'm not saying that they aren't through grace. I guess my point is, is that there's so much more, like, graces and entity that has a set of goals and strategies. And, you know, and I know that in the past we just funded that program, so it was the only one that existed, but now that we've had a chance to fund it, and we have a chance to think about it more holistically and that may need to be coordinated through the continuum of care versus just us or just grace or just one of the entities that's part of the continuum of care is my thinking. I agree. Yeah. Can I ask a clarifying question? The continuum of care, does their outreach go beyond the street, homeless population to other homeless populations? Chair, the continuing catch-up. The catch-up. The catch-up. The catch-up. The catch-up. The catch-up. The catch-up. The catch-up. The catch-up. The catch-up. The catch-up. The catch-up. The catch-up. The catch-up. The catch-up. The catch-up. the state through the emergency solutions grant, the temporary assistance to needy families as well as the state challenge grant and all of those are for the most part targeted to street homeless but there are components for homeless prevention. So that is able to assist households to pay their rent utilities to remain. I wanted to make sure because I'd refer to a couple of people that direction. I wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing. And our continuum of care covers four counties. So we did receive a HUD grant through our continuum of care to serve outreach in the four outlying counties because our push is also our advocacy is to make sure outreach is available in those counties because otherwise the individuals will just automatically come to Alachua County because of the services. Or sometimes just be dropped at the county line by certain people, yes. The Commissioner President. Yeah, while we're on this we'll click I just I looked at when I was looking at the Capitol Improvements budget I didn't see the budget end of the Scottish like I didn't see anything other community support much. It was in in previous year or because it's grant funded. It's not there. But I guess I'm just wondering where the funding for all of that and the new. Those are considered renovations rather than capital. OK. And because it's already granted underway. That's OK. OK. It's just general fund ledger. OK. Budget in is the state grant and then the Scottish Inn we are using e-watt money. Okay, e-watt. And is it still early 2025? Is that still the... I'm not sure that we're looking at September of 25 as the deadline. Both grants require the completion by September of 25. We're currently in the late stages of architectural and engineering so hope to have those completed and then have the RFP out for a contractor for both. Okay, and that's also the modular pilot or that's... Sure, that's a separate contract that we've got out. We have one that we did as a pilot for a container home. That was awarded to a local agency. We've asked them to build it, but hold it until we're ready for delivery because we want to make sure that we've got individuals on site. We do have security 24 hours a day, but we want to make sure there's more activity before we put one out there. And then if, once everyone comes to see it, if everyone approves that design, the model, the concept, then we will put an RFP out for that construction. And that is also being funded under US Treasury Emergency Rental Assistance Affordable Housing Component. I did want to just throw out there while we're, like, quickly. And this is, I don't want to undermine that project because I think it's a really cool project and I think it's a really great thing. But the conversation we had yesterday about Tuesday, sorry, all the days are blending together, about sunrise really got me thinking about the fact that like that corridor is zoned pretty high and the highest invest use to parcels like the one next door discussion might not be individual modular units, but might actually be something that we construct that would be make use of the zoning and allow us to have more units. I just wanna put that out there, not that we shouldn't do the modular stuff. I'm a completely different year. Locations or other land where we could do that. And I know we've already kind of laid out what's possible and things like that. So I hate to like throw another wrench in the works, but I just been thinking like we want the heights and best use of the maximum amount of units that we can possibly get for all kinds of housing. And again, I've been thinking a lot about the families and that our focus is so often on individuals because that's just they're more visible because the family is kind of tuck in. They don't want to, you know, and so there's a lot more of the families that still need those houses as well as the end of the Jules and turning to think about how do we begin to address that issue too. And so I just want to throw that out there as something to think about as we're having those conversations. Mr. Corda, quick comment on that. You know, from the family's perspective being really close to services and in an area where they can get food. Right, I mean there's a bus services. Yeah, so I, I, part of the reason I kind of like that location was because of what we're targeting together. And I'll say that I'm in a complete agreement with that. That's one of the reasons though. I particularly like this model of housing is because we can pick it up and put it where we need to do that. And so if we wanted to provide 10 units in some unused land behind a school, for instance, we could do that for temporary housing for teachers, even if there's so many places those could go. Because they're nice. They're nice housing. And so there's options there. And that's what it is, too. Church property is a long land. If we open that up as a zoning option, sure. I mean, there's a lot of places they could go. And so they're not a one and done kind of thing. And the biggest cost with those is putting in the infrastructure to the utilities. And so one of the things that I you know I've talked about using those in other locations is there are you know are there ways we could look at how we connect things that meet safety and other requirements that might be just a little different than what we're used to in terms of how we can sewer and water and things like that. But it sounds to me like what we're saying though is that the street outreach goes county-wide or at the continuum of care. Yeah. Yeah, but that's a good conversation. Any other comments for questions for Claudia on the housing aspect? No, just that you have so much I feel for you sometimes I'm like I don't know how you all do everything that you do so thank you I know thank you anything by myself there is a team that I know I don't know how all of you do everything that you do and thank you all very very very very are there other introductions you would like to make Claudia if you'd like me to do that I think I'm chair whenever I don't I don't know you've got the mic, Claudia? If you'd like me to do that at the time. I think I'm chair whenever you'd like. I don't know. You've got the mic. It's a mic. You've got a couple items. One is on the budget request. They're centered from the nonprofit excellence expansion. And of course, we got a placeholder to cover the cost of that expansion. So that's not a problem. is a, uh, Claudia has a short presentation on housing. Yeah. The board has expressed your concerns about resources for housing, having enough resources for housing. And so, and we take that seriously. Uh, Claudia's put together a, uh, kind of a starch of a plan to do that. And I think we'll be coming back during a year with additional, with additional improvement, additional enhancements for the housing division. So I'll turn it over to Herb close. Could you do this, is there? I certainly want. Sure. As I call you, if you want to just stand, if you want to come to the mic, you're welcome to. Of course, you know, Candy Nexon. She's the Assistant Director of the Department. We are welcoming back very happily, Ralston, Riyadeka. Many of you know Ralston. He was with us 2015 to 17. He left to go to Flagler County and then he went to HUD and he's returning to us with a wealth of experience even beyond what he had before. So I'm really happy. He is the housing program manager currently. I'm super happy to have Relstrom here. He's in weeks and soaps. I knew Relstrom from way back then too, so I was very happy. I think it was excellent. Excellent recruiting. And then we have Kevin Lynn. He is the Strategic and Development Program Manager for the Infrastructure Sales Surtax. He has many, many years of experience doing housing development in large cities, New York, and I believe Detroit, Atlanta. No, not Atlanta. Okay. But many, right, large areas and brings a wealth of experience to us that we're really excited to have him. And then to Rome McIntyre, he is a program coordinator in housing and he is becoming our expertise in ship. So he's very happy to have him as well. You've granted a bang up to him. I'm working on it. I know finally! Yay! None are applauding more than Candy Nixon who did all the recruiting. Thank you, Candy. I just want to know what you had to promise him. It took a while, as you know. I know you were all frustrated. You know exactly. It's a lot for Candy, yeah. A board that really cares about what you're doing. That is a draw. The support that you give is a big draw. We're a tiny diamond, but we're still a diamond. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to share. Starting on the presentation, as you know, we did acquire the budget in the Scottishen, and I know all of you have been saying, when are we ever going to open that? And we trust trust me we feel the same way we're very excited to have those in the final stages of A&E as I said earlier and look forward to that really starting to pick up speed and moving. Which one do you think will be open for? I've been telling people I thought the one that we were funding versus the one grant funded by the federal money would be open sooner. But are they both about on the same timeline or? I'm going to look at Travis. Parker. For the architectural engineering, but I believe they're really close. Scott, as soon as a little bit behind. behind, but we have to go back to the state for every step in the budget in under the community development block grant CV money. So as you recall, we did get some delays on getting signatures on that. So as opposed to the Scottish in, we're following what's called the home ARP program, which OMB and facilities looked at. And we are required to make sure we follow all the steps. So I would think the Scottish in may start to move a little quicker because we don't have to go back every time to get the sign-offs, but I defer to Travis. We anticipate having the Travis Parker facilities director. We anticipate having it in front of you all, first quarter of 25, I believe the Scottish end is sometime in February. We should have all the architectural engineering done in front of you all. Great. It's the same company working both. No, it's not. It's Graham Heck is doing the budget in and Paul stressing is doing the Scottish and We're working together on some items, you know like you know water You know for fire flow and stuff like that. This was one of the projects to me where you know We have these giant engineering firms that do Sky's represent Atlanta or whatever. And this is something that a local architect or engineering consulting firm could have also easily managed. It's not rocket science engineering and architecture. What says the engineer? Says the engineer who did projects like this. So I just want to put it out there for future. You know, some of these things might could move along faster procurement if we had more leeway in how we acquire our architecture and sharing, you know, we work, I guess. Sure. For both projects, we had to follow guidelines. CDBG guidelines had to be followed. For both projects. For both projects. For both projects. For both projects. For both projects. For both projects. For both projects. For both projects. For both projects. For both projects. For both projects. For both projects. For both projects. For both projects. For both projects. For both projects. in the system, but we have to be able to substantiate to auditors down the road that at every step of the way when home ARP said you have to do this, we check that box. So both were put on the street through an official RFP process. Yeah, I just still feel like there should be a way around that. But anyway, thank you. I do appreciate it. The way that materials could be bought at the same time, you know, to save. I don't know if that, how that works or not. If they're working, collab, side by side, do you know that it would be ways that you walk in? Yeah, by 61, just 67 toilets and instead of 31. 31, you know, that sort of thing. You know, they share both development contracts will go out through an RFP process. We can't say now whether it would be one developer or two that would be selected. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. So it's just the A&E that's two companies that maybe the contractor and or the CMA risk are. Okay, well that makes sense. Thank you. One and what should be ideal? Thank you. Thank you. Can we bid them together in order to potentially get a one and what should be ideal. Thank you. Thank you. Can we bid them together in order to potentially get cost savings? I guess it's a question for Brookinger, Matt. Can we bid them together? Both would have to follow again the guidelines of engaging these. Right. It's still big. I don't know if they follow the guidelines. But could we release them at the same time? I believe both are going to be very close to the same time and I think that unless there is some sort of constraint that quality of you know in that side as far as meeting the guidelines. That we would be holding it up one project for the other one. I think they're probably about three months difference. But I'm saying we can't bid them literally together. We can't put them out as one bid for both projects. Yes, ma'am. One would probably have to hold up to let the other one catch up if that makes sense. And that doesn't mean we were answering about three months. That's what I'm saying. If we weren't concerned about the timeline, we could potentially put them together. I just think we'd get a a price out for whatever was done first. Thank you. That's something worth considering. I wasn't kidding. Neither was I. Did you really? Oh that's great. I love it. Okay continue on chair. As you know on Tuesday you agreed to the option contract to purchase the sunrise in. Our real estate person and public works, Perry Peoples, is actively working on the documentation with the County Attorney's Office and the title company to make sure everything goes through in the timeframes. We've already begun in housing, bringing Mr. Radhika as experienced with HUD and knowledge of grants. There are two out on the street right now that we may be able to apply for from HUD, so we will be actively working on that. And I would now like to invite Rolston Radhika up here. While we're waiting on that, Tommy is everything okay in your world? Things are state. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for asking. Welcome. Madam Chair, Rolston, Riyadeeka Housing Program Manager. So if you go, if you look at our current programs for this ship program, we have actually a notice of funding availability out right now. Applications are due this Friday and we generally provide funding to our local nonprofit partners for our home repair program. We also have down payment assistance for first time home buyers and also funding available for new construction development. We also have the Housing Initiatives Partnership where we partner with Latcher County Housing Authority and also with Family Promise. Right, temporary housing vouchers. As Claudia mentioned, we have the four blousing inventory list that was just approved on Tuesday. That list has been posted on the county website and the application will be available by tomorrow. So then for the sheet of properties and the housing inventory list. So the application will be like open. There won't be a closing date so it will be open. There won't be a closing date, so it'll be available. Yes, basically rolling for nonprofits to submit applications. And then we'll eventually bring them to the Housing Finance Authority Board and the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee and eventually to you all. We also have, we're targeting a community development in Block Grant through the state of Florida. It's the Florida Small Cities grant, and we've historically done pretty well with housing rehab. But there are other categories for the grant that's available, and that application is due October 17th. All right, so future developments, as mentioned, there's legacy property that's going to go before the board later this month. We also have the RFP that Kevin's been working on for the infrastructure cert tax program. And then one of the other ideas and initiatives that you've directed staff to is working to develop a community land trust and that can certainly work for the affordable housing inventory list and its sheeted properties that the county has. So we're going to continue to look at this idea and hopefully facilitate the creation and development of a community land trust, which is again a nonprofit entity. Do we have a timeline on when that rolling application is going to be ready for the infrastructure sometimes? I believe it's going to go later this month before the board. Okay. And again, that will be rolling. There won't be a specific cycle game. Yes, yes, ma'am. Great. I have chair. Yeah, commissioner. Have chair. Yeah, Commissioner. Thank you. I just want to reiterate, I think, Commissioner Wheeler and maybe you and I also spoke and chair at our last FAC meeting. But we had a discussion with Florida Housing Corporation. And we are off the bad list. And they are very much interested in finding opportunities to help fund applications with a local commitment that are west of Main Street. And so I was directly in touch with the folks that are making those decisions. And so when that rolling application starts and we start to see those come in, please know that. Okay, thank you. Thank you. So we'll also be bringing an update for a housing plan as the board is directing staff to basically establish priorities or tiers. And this is what we're going to propose in terms of affordability, inclusion, community improvement, and project financing. Also as part of the update to the housing plan, moving the funding from violations related to co-enforcement to housing initiatives partnership, which again with the housing authority and family promise. And this was a recommendation that came from AAC. You guys. May I ask a question? The priorities that are set there, is there any priority for families with young children? I know liquid services has set that up in other places where, you know, when they're looking for housing, they are targeting first those that have young children who are in daycare homeless or houseless folks that are in need of housing. To make sure that the home is stable for the children that are growing up there. I don't know if that's something that we could consider here. Chair, that is what those housing partnership vouchers are for. Working with the Alachio County Housing Authority and Family Promise, they identify the most vulnerable families. They also make sure they are on the wait list for a long-term voucher so that the vouchers we're providing are really local vouchers for up to two years. And that's what the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee recommended that we increase the vouchers from 100,000, which has been the past two years to 300,000. So that would provide for up to probably 30 families depending on the cost of rent. Thank you. Can someone remind me what TBB stands for? Ten at base faster. Ten at base faster. Thank you. Commissioner Prasya. Yeah, I just I guess I wanted to all of that to do up to all of that. The motion that we that I made last to this past Tuesday that we passed was to kind of refer family problems to them for the really for what Kevin's doing around this infrastructure surtax like call for proposals. I didn't know that that was going to exit quickly. I mean they could probably just come up under that but this idea that they they are interested in the possibility of doing some construction projects that would be specific for families that you're talking about that are workforce eligible or currently working and are need housing and are either currently living in motels or possibly in cars or doubled up with other families. So I think that's another opportunity for us to support those families with the entire. Great. Fisher Cornell. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I also want to just reiterate, hopefully the team saw our discussion that Mr. Chesson brought up about really representing the voice of the tenants that are getting these vouchers and having processes in place where we're checking in with, gives housing authority in Latin County housing authority and whoever else is receiving these types of funding so that codes are being followed. Yeah, requirements in the contract in terms of how we do the inspection. I think it's really just from my perspective it's really just we want to make sure that all of our partners understand our commitment to tenants that have a power differential and that they have voice. Quality housing. Quality housing. Great thank you. Moving on we are proposing restructuring you'll see some recommendations come from us over the next couple of years we were already moving forward multiple years but for this year in 25 we're proposing creating a housing division as opposed to a program we really feel like it needs to move in stature to be a division to recognize all the work that they're doing so with that we're recommending the division of housing and strategic development as the name and moving the current position of housing program manager, which is what Mr. Radica is in to a housing and strategic development director and then also to reclassify the position that Mr. Kevin Linn is in from a housing development coordinator to a housing development strategic manager. Again, recognizing the work level that's going to be done. We're also proposing currently the position that Mr. Radikazin has 100% general fund and the position that Mr. Lin is in and 100% infrastructure sales surtax. We're proposing a flip between the two positions so that each one has 15% in the alternate fund so that Mr. Limp can share all of his wealth of knowledge across the division if you approve it and also that gives Mr. Radica the ability to help Mr. Limp. I love it. I love it too. I mean I think that makes a lot of sense being given not just all the money that's going to flow through but all the projects that have a new division that can really focus on it and have our focus as well, I think is really, really important. I would move staff's recommendation to approve the Housing Program restructuring plan and propose the reclassification positions. Second. Okay, we have motion on a second, which I fully support. I think also having that greater autonomy to work on the projects that we know need to be going out there is important. Are there any comments? Just a one-question mentor. Sure. First of all welcome back. So happy you're here. Really really happy. You look like you've been here all along. You just want to be here. He really does, yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I know the folks at Flagler County, the great folks, and I'm so happy with the experience of HUD. So thank you for bringing that here. The one question I had is when we bring things forward to the housing advisory committee and the housing Finance Authority. What is the order? Does the authority get it first or does the advisory committee get it first? Chair, it just depends on the nature of the item historically. If it's more ship-related, which required by floor to statutory, then we bring it to the Feral Bowsing Advisory Committee because they do have statutory designated tasks, such as the annual report, the work plan, the incentive strategies if it's related to tax credits or bond financing, obviously that's the housing finance authority board. So I can't say that there's a specific order, but we definitely bring it to both boards through a few. Because it's really the funding source that's really driving that in the statute. That's correct. Okay. And under both of those, the policy of West Main Street has been followed before even kids to that. Sure. Yes. Given some special needs parameters that we would bring to you if there was a recommendation, for instance We had an elderly project that was considered Right, right, okay, awesome. Great. Thank you I think also the priority the other thing that's really being focused on at least at the a half level And I don't know so much about the housing story is the like a real target at 50% AMI that we recognize I mean we just keep getting it reiterated to us in different ways, like from the Schimberg Center, from our housing partners, from pretty much everybody that basically for every family looking, there's eight units at 80 and 120% AMI, and for every family looking, there's, I mean, for every unit, there's eight families looking at 50% of my envelope. So it's like a reverse situation, right, within terms of supply and demand. So, you know, we can, when we do these things, like what we're doing with our comp plan, and when we start talking about inclusionary zoning, and when we're talking about incentives, and using our infrastructure to our tax, I think our advisory committee anyway is really hyper focused on let's build the housing we need, not just the housing that's easy to build. Yeah, and I guess I'm just more really focused on that. You've got that, which I'm very grateful of. I'm just really more focused on and happy that we have Kevin who understands capital stacks and has done those projects. And you talked about that on Tuesday. And in the conversations that we have Kevin, who understands capital stacks and has done those projects. And you talked about that on Tuesday and in the conversations that I have with the Florida Housing Corporation, they said these rolling applications are a month, like they're happening and they're based on opportunity based on what the developer has that they want to submit monthly. And they're really dispersed around the state based on, North Florida is going to get a certain percentage of them. And so that's when the Florida housing finance authority locally sees those. And I just want to be proactive on the front end and understand how that's working. Because I think we're primed. We're just going to find that's developed or partner? Yeah, we're primed to capture some of those in the next couple of years, based on at least what they communicated to us directly. Absolutely. No, they were. She was excited. Yeah, I mean, excited from the standpoint of they recognized that, you know, we were on that list, but they also recognized that they really, from a policy perspective, would like to see more housing dispersed around the state in areas that are close to infrastructure and not concentrating in poverty. So, they took what we did and I think around the state are looking for other opportunities to disperse funding into dispersing poverty. So. And Neeter, that's been a tenant for new urbanists, designed for a long time to put housing where it's needed. And I'm glad to see that emphasis. Great. Thank you. I have one quick question for you, Rustin. When we talk about things like incentive for affordable housing for developers and things like that, are you going to be in any of those conversations? Is that going to be part of your per view? I'm Jerry. Absolutely. I'm not just going to. Well, I mean, you have a lot to do without getting into that conversation. So I just wanted to make sure you were part of it because I really appreciate your viewpoint and your whole department's viewpoint as we move forward into trying to work with developers and create the incentives that will be wins for both of us. I definitely agree. I'm fortunate to have relationships with Corey, the City of Gainesville, with Steve, with our own growth management department, because as you know, housing started off in growth management. Right. And so we work hand in hand, not just by which part by statutory, but as Claudia mentioned, there's the HUD program pro housing that's really a great opportunity a very competitive grant but it's really to remove barriers to affordable housing so absolutely. Well I can't wait to come sit in your office and let you bend my ear on all the new things. Good I thank you. All right. Let's keep going. We need to do public comment on the matter. Oh. We need to do public comment. Oh, yeah, we need to do public comment. I asked for public comment. I don't think I got any any public comment again to the motion. Yes, to this motion. Okay. So this this motion to reclassify the housing manager and development coordinator positions. All right. Seeing no further comment, all in favor of questions? Signify by sign guy? All right. Any opposed? Like so? All right. Quickly, Claudio, or manager, this, the application that was in our backup that's going to be discussed about another meeting right you guys are bringing back this Latvia County houses to be done. They're impressed with the application. That was most show and tell Okay, Tara that will be part of the discussion on the August 27th meeting But that is the draft. It's actually two applications in that. One will be the rolling application for the infrastructure sales surtex projects and then another is if we get the CDBG grant issued that would be what we might use for an individual home rehab. All right, I had a few more but I'll hold on for that meeting so we don't tie up this one any longer. Thank you so much. Madam Chair, the last department here is court services and we have four budget proposals totaling $706,863 for court services. The first proposal is for drug testing supplies, and based on increased demand from the courts, the demand has been steadily increasing for more drug testing, more random drug testing, as well as scheduled drug testing. And so that's the increase. Additionally, we're looking at three FTEs for first appearance. First appearance of those folks do first appearance. First thing in the morning, 9 o'clock in the morning at the courts, but also the interviews that occur prior to first appearance that occur at the jail during the night and all the research that is done early hours of the morning prior to the actual first appearance in court. So one pretrial officer and two court officers and then the third item is three FTEs for for electronic monitoring staff. The courts are increasing the orders to do electronic monitoring, and with the high level of monitoring, but it's very helpful to the courts to be able to, instead of going to jail, you're going home, but you're going to be monitored with the electronic monitor. And so it's a helpful thing. And then lastly, one FTE for community service complying specialist. And so these are the proposals that's coming out of court services and we have additionally we've had a three part director responsibility with court services lately and so Heather is here. Heather Ockpon is one of those and Claudia and myself. So we'll be glad to answer any questions you might have. A question or a question? I guess the first is when are we anticipating getting the results of the audit or the sort of research, whatever we want to call that, that was done of court services and recommendations for how to put that department back together. Heather Akban, interim court services director and HR director. I heard from them last week that they are almost finished with the draft, so we get the draft first. So I would say sometimes in September, it's probably reasonable to be receiving that. Okay, great. And at that stage, I guess right now, theoretically each of you is receiving special pay as this interim director. I, and that money would then get redirected back to a director position is so we don't have to budget for a director this. No, the director position is already budgeted. It's there. It's just there. It's just hanging out waiting. Okay. there, it's just hanging out waiting. OK. OK, on the budget request, I guess I'm interested to understand. I mean, I guess if the courts are demanding it, we don't have a lot of wiggle room in some of these instances. But I would love to understand what the drug test is. Why? There's such an increase in drug testing and what that's about. I'm really interested to understand that. Maybe that's a question I need to ask with the PSCC. I love the first appearance. It's a pretrial we need it. Badly, there's a desperate need for that and we've heard that again and again, both from people at the jail as well as, getting people out as quickly as we can if they do their first appearance and they're able to be released so that our jails aren't crowded. It's great. Our jail, just so everyone knows if you haven't been monitoring it, we're up in the 900s now and we've gotten over a thousand a few times like where our numbers are really high and I would encourage any and all of us to have conversations with our judges and with our state attorney and with our sheriff about how we can begin to reduce those numbers which gets gets me the electronic monitoring. I'm excited about that too. I think it's a great opportunity to release people who aren't dangerous and that we don't need to be fearful of it back into our community. So that they can make sure to keep a job. Right, so that they can keep their jobs, so that they can keep their connections with their families, so that they can continue to do the things they need to do while they wait trial. These people haven't been convicted yet. So, you know, the opportunity to continue their lives while they are monitored makes a lot of sense to me. The last one, community service compliance specialist. I guess I want to understand more about that, but I also want to ask that we please change the name. I think that one of the things, the culture of our, the culture of our court services should be a culture of support. It should be a culture of thinking about how to help people make the right decisions and support them in finding the resources and support that they need to be successful. Rather that's successful at the monitoring and doing the things they need to do so that when they get to court they have a good record for potential diversion or potential other things, or rather that's helping them to meet the goals that they have for community service so that they can successfully like finish up and check the boxes they need to move back into their lives. So I would really encourage us to change the name from compliance to support specialists and to really change this whole culture that we have have that our goal is to help people. It's not to monitor people. It's not that we're not the police. We're not the courts. We're services and support systems for the people who are dealing with the courts and who are dealing with law enforcement and our job is to help them navigate those systems and help them be successful at doing whatever it is that they need to do so that they can rehabilitate and get back into community successfully. So I just hope we can, when we're thinking about job titles and we're thinking about job descriptions, that we really focus on that support piece and that people have that culture because I heard it in Metamorphosis, like we hire all these people coming out of law enforcement and they have a very law enforcement structure and that can contribute to less success in those realms. And I think the same thing could be said, especially for things like community sport services. So I mean, community service compliance. That's my comment there. And I guess the only other question I have is, you know, we have the reentry program. And I know that we have a contract and we have the funding for that I'm a little concerned that that contract hasn't even moved there's been like we don't have any movement on that contract at all yet And so I just want to encourage us to be a little bit more timely and processing those contracts But I also wondered if there is an opportunity to think about reentry at the jail and like working from the time of booking and being doing things inside the jail and programs inside the jail. And I don't think this is a budget for this year, but again, it's a chance to really get the chance to push it. So I just wanted to talk about that as a something I'd love to hear in the future of court services is the idea of programming. Like we don't even have our GED coordinator at the jail right now. Like that position's been vacant for some time. And I don't know that it's ours or the sheriffs, but we struggle to keep these programs going at the jail and all those programs that sheriffs want to share with us. Like half of them don't exist anymore. The other half of them are run by community nonprofits that are randomly funded. They're not things that are funded regularly and consistently. As soon as the grant runs out, the program runs out and we may not even know about it. I would love for us to know that there's a consistent program running at the jail to help people from the time they get in, until the time they get out, so that they can potentially successfully reenter community. Let's get a little response to that. I'll have you go ahead. You have to run. I'm sure if I can speak to reentry. The reentry funding starts October 1, so we're not really behind in the negotiating on that. The contract is developed. Staff are incorporating the scope from the RFP into the contract and we will be working it through our system and meeting with the vendor. Why would it be our cover one? We budgeted that. We budgeted, is it a one year company? I believe it's a three year. Well, I believe we budgeted it last year and we awarded it three months ago. Why would it be in October? That's not when we awarded it. I don't think that that was the under... What was the budget? Okay, these budgets. We were working on an FY25. Yeah, it wasn't an FY25 contract. It's FY24 contract and it's already dragged. Like it dragged because it took a while to get on our agenda and then it dragged because of other issues and now it's dragging with contracts and so I just you know I mean we're losing monthly months and months I know that they're doing the services anyway because they care about community but we're losing the opportunity for them to use the funds. That's not going to be my next question because they're there so are they not being paid for the work they're doing? We were in a meeting yesterday with and they made it clear the releases are really working in the jail but they're not working in our direction and know they're not necessarily getting paid for their I get volunteering and doing that work and being and getting ready for when they are getting paid so they'll they'll they'll be just they'll be I did not realize that being paid no I understand her crankiness. Yeah kind of volunteering and she cranky a little bit and I would put in flavor. But I hear your point about contracts about moving Malong quicker I think is what you're saying and the process is taking a little bit too long and so we'll make that note and talk with the manager about that. See what we can do too. Yeah, it's not just this one. Like, I don't want to point. I mean, I know you all, and you will have like way, so I mean, you've got court services for goodness sake. Like, you've got so much on your play. It's not a criticism of the departments, but I do think we need to come up with some kind of a more strategic plan for when to get a contract negotiation started with the client or something. I know sometimes that negotiation can take a while because of the scope. And I'm not trying to push that piece, as long as that negotiation is happening. But I do think getting the scope to them and having that first meeting with the client should be happening within a month of us awarding that contract. There's no reason why it should drag on for months and months. I mean, I wasn't suggesting she was in any way inappropriate, but I asked a question about meeting whether maybe in the evening sometime at the jail, and she's like, you know, she's overworked doing it one person during the jail all day, so. Who are you talking about? What's that? The ET have released. Yeah. I can't take a nickname right now. Emily asked. Emily? Yeah. So, go ahead. And I think you're point about the drug testing. That question is good one for the PSCC, the Public Safety Coordinating Council. The judges are requiring and asking for more of the drug testing. I think that there's a lot of concern about opioids and other substances out there, that means, and et cetera, and so that may be driving it, but that's the good question. And this is Dr. Cason for people who are on probation or on parole or on monitoring? We deal with probation, not parole, but definitely probation as well as a pre-trial. So there's a number of drug questions going on. Okay, thank you. I'm wondering too what may happen with the drug issues if the marijuana is asked too and how that's going to affect the family. Right, so that's going to impact a lot of think of how we've engaged with folks. But in terms of the monitoring, are there any upgrades that you all know to the electronic device itself? It's really clunky and awkward and painful. Yeah, in fact, we were just talking about this yesterday and I think that one of the things that we want to do is go to RFP for we work with a company and We were talking about in a team meeting that there are some some issues with the monitors We couldn't figure out if people are deliberately sabotaging them, but then we think they're not because they keep being reused. And so some of the internal equipment is getting afraid. So we're getting a lot of alerts on these folks that their monitor is not working. So it is taxing them and our team. So we are considering looking at what else is out there. Right. Right. That would be, I think that's important because we're talking about people who really have not been convicted. They're just trying to be monitored. And it may not be that they even need that kind of monitoring if they may be certain criteria. You know what I mean? Yeah. We just need to be aware of that. Of course, that's a little bit of support, but it's not like a portion of the person is risked. But not always. I'm from the courts, but it's not like the courts, because they like it. The person is a risk, right? But not always. I'm in a risk though. I will say the sheriff does have the opportunity to do appearance. Like they can write a, you know, they can write a ticket for a parent. They don't have to arrest someone, put them in the jail if they can't make bail if they believe that they're not a risk to the community. They can give them the citation for a period. So I think that's another conversation with the sheriff. Are they using that tool to their their their broadest ability and you know those kinds of things? But I do feel like if they're unmonetoring hopefully it's because we're not hopefully but it's I it's I would imagine that it's because they are a risk I think they're doing that. Yeah, but then there are also other circumstances they could be a Person that's a pedophile or something like that right? Sure, they they want to keep that kind of control over them to make sure they're not near children At that kind of stuff yeah, they're or their domestic violence that they're not breaking their mental support. Absolutely, I guess so. No, I guess so. But you know, cell phones have tracking devices in them. And there are companies out there using cell phones now. And a first, sorry, an electronic monitoring staff can call anybody, or they can even be automated, a call, anybody on their cell phone, see them with a camera and know that that's who's got it. I mean, there's companies that are doing this working out. And I think the stigmatization of the ankle monitor and that, you know, that person's already a criminal kind of mindset that people have when they see an ankle monitor is, I see that as dehumanizing. Well, I'm just glad that you're looking at some different. That's it. Yeah, that's the response you're so, you know, anyway. And you know a design of a wristwatch or something. I'm like, Michelle, did you say what you wanted to say, Michelle Chesa, you had your hand up and I forgot. Yeah. In terms of the contracts and stuff, is there a need for more staff to make sure that they get done tightly? I mean, I'm just listening. We're talking about adding FTEs. I mean, if that's really critical, I mean, that's what you do. You add additional staff to make sure it happens and it happens quickly. My understanding in talking about contracts and is that it's not in the contracts department, it's at the individual department level because the individuals departments are responsible for developing the scope of work and they're the ones that are the content experts that are dealing with whoever the vendor is. And so I think the challenge is that every I think all of our departments in a lot of ways are understaffed when it comes to administrative support around paper working processing and those kinds of things. Like we tend to be, when you look across our organization, we're very light in administrative staff and we're really light in terms of that support staff piece, right? It's how we keep our budget small, Tommy. And so as a result, I think what happens is a lot of our program staff end up having a heavy administrative duties as well, and I think it can trickle. And so I agree with you. And from my perspective, I feel like it may be something we need to think about more holistically. But I think it's hard to figure out where we would add that staff, because I think it just depends on where the contracts are going a lot. And lately, poor community sports services had a ton of them dumped, you know, because of all the work we're doing in that area. And if I could just reiterate though, the fact that we are taking longer for contracts may be because we're spending more time making sure that the contracts are good and appropriate. And, you know, well, we're tracking making sure we know what all the parts are that need to be tracked. And so a contract administration, that's someplace that's a whole separate department, you know. Tommy. Yes, ma'am. Two points. One is that some of these answers will be answered as a part of the report as well, where we need to use and what functions we need to be enhancing or moving or shifting, shifting at efforts from two monitoring versus some of the other things that we historically have done as technology is better. The second point to contract management, the contract administration department facilitates contracts. I mean, that's really our role. We put bids out, we put scopes out, and then we work with the department who are the subject matter expert to develop the contract and we facilitate that process. The manager is an alignment with what I'm hearing and she's actually has provided some direction that procurement is working with some of the staff development and building out a way to make sure people that need to administer contracts and monitor contracts have been trained appropriately understand the deliverables that are in the contract. And it doesn't matter whether it is a court services contract or a solid waste contract or a facilities maintenance contract. There should be deliverables. We should make sure they're getting the deliverables before we're paying, the work was done correctly. And all of those things, probably an area of concern for the managers well. And so we've been working on that for about almost a year now and rolling out that effort to make sure if you need a contract to follow up with your RF of the year or your ITN or whatever we did, ArtBid, that you are prepared to then monitor that contract. I love it. Yeah, that's been something I've parked on since I was first here. So I love that. Thank you. I just want to make sure that it's heard that I'm talking about before the contract exists and the amount of time that it's taking us to go from award to contract. It's taking up to six months. I mean, we had a contract that went nine months, nine months from the time we awarded it. It was like two years, but it was like nine months from the time we awarded it to the time it got executed. And as somebody who's been a contractor with the county, and it's a small, we talk about these limited resource organizations we're trying to contract with and provide grants to you and the reimbursement only like small organizations can't wait that long you know like if if we want them to do the programming like they're staffing up because they know we're going to be doing this and they get the award and they think okay we got to stop up we need to they hire, like that's a big deal for these small organizations. It might work for the JIAs and the, you know, stress-pull stressings and the big companies that we work for because they can absorb that and and they know that that's the kind of thing. But when we're working with these small organizations that are essentially building programs to partner with the county, we need to be a lot more timely with the funding streams happening so that these organizations can continue to do the good work I mean it's sort of like what we talked about the hipoderm like being able to do that direct billing even I think that was a really great solution and something we could implement more holistically But I just think we need to be thinking about These smaller organizations were contracting with and how to make things like the timeline shorter and the expectations more realistic in terms of the scale of the organization that we're working with. Yeah, and just to push back a little bit, I don't disagree with you, but because I'm all about efficiency. I think sometimes though, when we're doing something new and it's complex, you just have to make sure we do it right. And so I think this release is a brand you think for us. You know, it's completely new reentry is a new thing for us. So I thought it was a pilot program. I thought we had allocated half a million. I thought it was for one year or two years, three years. It's like a thousand. It's five hundred thousand is sitting in FY 24. Four and it's a three year pilot program. It's a one year with two renewals. One year with two, okay that's right. So yeah, so I mean I hear you a lot of clear and your thing was an effect. We had never funded food. We had never, we started with a freezer but you were like no, a whole economy of food. So I hear what you're saying, but when we're doing completely new things, actually slow and correct, for me, is more important than fast. And I agree, but I just want to point out that Claudius team did an entire community engagement process to develop that scope of work. So there was a year of scope development and developing the deliverables essentially and what we wanted before we put out the RFP. But we didn't award it and then we had another discussion at the last policy meeting. Last month about maybe putting it back out for RFP. So on this one, I don't know, I think they're moving in the right pace because they didn't know this board was going to say scrap it and start over. But this board didn't. This board said last five. No, the after meeting where we awarded that contract, it was a five-o-vote to award that contract. At that point, staff had direction. For one, he was a no. And I wanted the staff to review what former pressure long and McDaniels had presented. I mean, we asked staff to look at that before we proceed. And I agree with you most of the times when we award it, let's do it. But in this case, I think staff was really waiting on us. I think this is our fault. I guess that's what we're saying think this is our fault. I guess this is our fault. My fault, you know, our fault, we resolved that a month ago. Mary, I don't think Mary was here for that meeting. No, I think I was on tier. Yeah, so Mary even missed that meeting. And then I think once that meeting was done, I think that has been supposed to be the head. And probably from the standpoint of a fiscal standpoint, he's probably moved that into the carry forward for funding it next year. Not shorting the time, but okay, now you have physically here for five, six, seven. Right, but like, I guess the other piece of this, I'll just say then, is like communication with vendors about that is like really critical. Like just, okay, guess what? We've changed our entire trajectory, and now you're not gonna get your actual contact until October. Like that's huge. They thought they were gonna, when people don't understand, especially these small companies that don't usually do government vids, they don't understand that you get an award at this month and that it's gonna, right, that's an award. They assume they're getting it. There's just some paperwork we need to sign and we're going to move on. And now it's like three months ago. And now we're talking about October. Like that's, well, I mean, that's month and a half. I realize that that's another month and a half of us not having staff on the ground doing reentry programming at the jail just saying, you know, so. Sure. If I can, we, that is the issue I didn't want to say it earlier, but we were waiting to make sure the board wanted us to receive, but the contract is now developed because we were also asked to work with Mr. McDaniel along, look at the process, make sure that it didn't need to go out to bed, and some of that was communicated. But we're, as I said, the bid is, the contract is ready, and Mr. Lipsey has been in touch with the vendor to say that he'll be setting up a meeting with her in a few weeks or in the next few couple of days. And that could be something to Commissioner or Chessas White in our contracting process that we're looking at. Maybe that's part of it is that the communication to all bidders that an award may take up to six months to get funded or something. Like that there's something in there that's easy and transparent that helps people understand that this process. The award day is not the day you're going to sign some papers and get some money flowing. Like there could be a longer process associated with being really transparent and clear with vendors about what that timeline is. And maybe even committing to a timeline so that if we don't meet it, then there's a chance for them to have a process to come back to contracting and say, hey, I'm waiting. Yeah, this goes back to kind of our cap policy, where if we are 10% of their budget, that's one thing. If we're above 25% of their budget, and if we're actually funding the program, if it's not a pilot, they should be employees. If we have organizations that are totally relying on county funds to function, then that- That's where you're just going to be like that. It may be. Yeah, it may be exactly like that. And I have no problem with that. But I think that's more of a, from our perspective, more of a policy discussion because, and we're having that at the children's trust right now, we've had a lot of small organizations that button out for that funding, they wouldn't exist. And so if it's that important that we're funding an entire organization, perhaps it should be part of our staff. And maybe not, then you're in the outsource model, but I think that we have to have organizations that if they're totally relying on public funds, then they should be part of our departments. have organizations that if they're totally relying on public funds then we should they should be part of our departments I mean essentially because that's what they are they're employees unless we're outsourcing that function because we don't have that expertise but if we're funding it completely then we need to have that expertise in house. I agree with that because yeah these are folks that are probably operating on a shoe string in a lot of ways. They don't probably have the good insurance and all the things where, you know, if they have two or three people running a department, they get sick. Then we lose that service, you know. I think that I think that that's a, I am now a way off of budget. Yeah, we are. This is worth a pause policy meeting discussion because I really do think that that's a dangerous again That's another pathway basically what you're saying is that every time we fund a community program That's what the small and limited capacity nonprofit. We should just take them over That's what you're saying Not necessarily but if that's if they are totally relying on public dollars to have an organization our public dollars Our public dollars and we should say, wait a minute, if that's a critical thing in our budget, then they should be a part of our budget. Well, to run a program. That's what we're talking about. This is a brand new pilot program. I mean, what I envision after three years is if this becomes, if this works, and that it either becomes part of what County does, or they do this for maybe seven other counties, And it's that it either becomes part of what County does, or they do this for maybe seven other counties and we're funding a portion of there. And that's the role we're already, I mean, we're not even funding them and they're doing the work. So we're not the only ones that are funding this work. They're getting lots of funding. And I think that's the thing is like, part of funding these limited capacity organizations or funding whole programs in an organization that's doing nonprofit work in the community, like any of them, whether they're large or small, is that we are working with experts who can do more than we can do, because they aren't government. And they are able to be more nimble, they are able to be more flexible, they are able to be able to, exactly, able to provide. And so contracting for those services is sometimes really important. And I don't know that, I mean, yes, in some instances, we are the whole budget of a program for a time because they're standing up a program in part as we recognize the need. But I don't think that means that we take over that program. So I would refer then, let's have a policy discussion after the budget cycle as it relates to our policy that we have for CAP, because that's what we're talking about. We're talking about... Let's cap and contracts. This isn't CAP. CAP and pilot programs. CAP and new pilot programs. I think that makes total sense. I have a kind of related question for legal. If we have somebody that we are in the middle of negotiating contracts with and they have a contractor for us. Okay, so the award isn't a promise of entering a contract. The award is a, right. Yeah, it's just saying who you're gonna negotiate with. Okay, just wanted to make sure because that seemed, if you, I mean, have, you know, private industry would not let you do that. We don't have a contract yet but we're going to come in and do the work anyway that would not be fine. That's why we're contacting with them because they do that work. I understand that. If we're totally funding that program would be reliable. There are no implied contacts with government. That's where it's different. Well I know but working with private industry I sometimes you know want to make sure But there are no implied contact government either have one or you don't have one okay and madam chair There are situations where we sign up Official volunteers for the county but they are not you know official volunteers for the county They were just already doing that work and it's continuing I just wanted to verify it's just like all of our small grants for the gun violence. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's so many. It's not just CAP. It's across our whole organization. And we're doing partnerships and contracts. Correct. That's correct. Commissioner Chesa? I just want to make the comment that everybody knows that government, it takes time with contracts or whatever if you're going to do any business with county government city government that it takes a long period of time because it has to go through different departments has go through the legal department has to go through budget finance departments so it takes a while and everybody don't work like that. It just doesn't work like that in a structure of county government, city government, state government. It just does not work that way. And that anybody is doing business with government knows that it's time consuming and it takes time. And then when you have people who just got elected and they come from the private sector and they've been working in the private sector So they expect government to both to work like the private sector. It does not work that way. It's a hard lesson though But I mean it's like anything else if you're going to go into something you research you do your research and find out What am I getting myself into and so that's how you I mean? I'm just not I'm just it's just it's just frustrates me sometimes that you should know these things that government does not work fast it's never has and even with developers and when they want to do their projects and stuff it it has to go through a sort of and I I agree with you to some extent and I think there are... It's slow because we have to do our due diligence, and there's slow because we don't have enough staff and people are overloaded. There's slow because of politics. There's slow for a lot of reasons, and I think it's important. Are you looking at me? We're all politicians. No, you pointed out the politics of that situation of what slowed it down. I was just pointing out to you. I mean, you're a Baltic fit. No, I know. I was pointing out the example that you pointed out that it was politics that slowed down that process. That's why I was gesturing you. For that, that was an example. You're talking about the politics of the things that slowed down. I'm talking about the con. But my point is that we are asking our staff now to begin working with the kinds of organizations we've not worked with in the past. We're asking them to work with limited capacity organizations. We're asking them to build relationships with those organizations. We're asking them to fund them. Yeah, you gotta be more fun. Yeah, we have to communicate with them. And then we do have to have some accountability on our own front. We can't just say, oh, work government. So it's going to be slow. Like, I'm sorry, but there are ways for us to be more efficient. There are ways for us to be efficient. And we have become more efficient. Yeah, we have some. And like, we have tapers. Yeah. Yeah. Did that quick? Yeah. OK. One request for staff, sometimes on policy discussions, we, you know, our policy was going to free range. On this one, I would like some data with regards to what organizations are we funding, say, more than half of their budget? Is that a good number so that we can look at that? I actually don't think that's a. See, here's, see here's, okay, I'm actually, no, I do not think we should do that because here's my thing. That's a perfect example where there's another situation where we're working with an organization. They are meeting their deliverables, they're doing the things they need to do, and then our staff come in and ask them for full financial reports and all this information about their, that's none of our business really. If they're meeting their deliverables, if we have a contract and they're meeting their deliverables and they're doing what they need to do and they're bringing us the things that we've asked them to do, I don't know why it matters. If we're to those public dollars, but they're doing the work and they're meeting their deliverables that we've asked them to do something. So I'll say, Commissioner, it doesn't matter until it's in the news and it matters. It doesn't matter until they're audited and there's a problem with the financial situation. And that happens. Yes, career source. Grace Marketplace. Grace Marketplace had an audit and it was a problem. It was a problem. And so. My point is now, I'm okay with us having that conversation about moving forward and having that conversation, but asking existing organizations to go in and pull all that data and provide that to our staff and our staff to go and have to deal with every organization they contact with to get their budget and what percentage of it we are in blah blah blah. That's a lot of work for both our staff and those organizations we partner with. And I just I feel like that's okay. Yeah, we definitely have to have a conversation for this. We'll have a definite conversation. Cause I you and I are not on the same page at all with regards to that. I feel like if they are getting public dollars, they are subject to the same controls and requirements that we ask of our county staff and if they can't provide that then they either need to get that community foundation training, get that expertise or become part of another organization that has that expertise. I mean that's all those things but those are not things that we've done in the past so those are conversations that we need. That's information that United Way for instance asks and things like that. So yeah, I would be interested in having that policy discussion. OK, after the budget. That's fine. Thank you. Yeah. OK, I think let's see what we're at. Tom Hicks just for me. Just, well, I don't want people walk away from the table thinking something's happening that may be a little different. So most of our contract, a lot of our contracts have language that allow us to request and have a lot of transparency across the board. Absolutely. Contraction contracts, cat boards, cat organizations, I don't know if people that we currently don't have that in place. We do have that in most of our contract. Our sports events center has that which is ordered and auto procedure now. So I just want to make sure everybody's aware most of our current contracts unless they're a direct hard bid for those usually do not. Those are usually buying a thousand gloves from somebody and I don't get their financial statements. That's not part of it. So there are a fees and we develop contracts. They usually have a lot of transparency in them. Yeah. Okay. Then it's easy then for us to find out which organizations were funding a lot of. Yeah. We can look it up on the new contracts page there. I didn't need the for us to get a contract. No, no, that's okay. All right. All right. Where are we now? Well, I think we're pretty much wrapped up in four departments, and we certainly thank the board for all of your support and your patients in hearing about each of our requests and supporting these apartments going into FY25. So thank you very much, Madam Chair. We have two more special budget meetings and two more. Probably not. No, I just wanted to point that out though. We have two more special budget meetings and two more budget items on our regular agenda. That's correct. Correct. All right. All right. Now we'll hear Tom and Martin. Thank you, folks. And thank you, Madam Chair. And mine is kind of twofold. One is about my specific areas of operations, but also in general kind of a broad look at the county in general. And so we have some fun balance in this. We follow the policies adopted by the board and they are also best practices by to find its officers association board has been very good to review our policy request and align them with best practices and follow them. Fund balances you'll see we have a we do have a 10% general fund minimum operating so what that means is our any fund ballots in the budget will be at least 10% of revenue to protect us for economic downturns things that we're not prepared for you will see a big jump in 22 to 23 that is the transition from the revenue recovery funds. So those are already committed. So don't think, oh, here we have a lot of money. That's how I've committed that pretty well. So those are projects moving forward. And you'll see those, go back down to a regular level. So picture we on by the way. Where are the 20? No, 30. I'm on 30, I'm saying about 36. I'll tell you what, did the whole thing do that? I'm on 30. I'm sorry about that. Oh, she did. Oh, thank you. Oh, little paste. 30 of 76. Correct. Bottom right. Again, we'll see the MST law enforcement. These numbers are also in your backup. You'll find them on some of your backup pages. All the little numbers of spreadsheets that it's kind of slow to use. So again, the revenue recovery is the main point of that. We have 5% policy in our MST law enforcement. In the next page, we have a 5% policy for MSPU fire that we meet and then in gas tax policy of 5%. Gas tax you see a bump. If you'll remember last year when we saw it had a pretty good bump in taxes the board said we want part of that to go to gas tax to support our initiatives. And so we have put it in the gas tax fund as opposed to capital because gas tax revenues are not keeping up and With the policy decisions the board made in terms of not using inmate labor and some of the other Costs that are driving as far as equipment cost go Gas tax revenue itself is not enough to sustain operations of the gas tax fund and what they do in road bridge So it's just costing too much The salaries are going up and always going up with the gas tax does our cover our department Correct and I have been Reluctant in the past I mean I have always been a believer and revolting out of that many conversations that you need live within what you have You know and he says, I mean, I can't if we're going to continue to move minimum wages up every year or continue to do some of the requests and the policy decisions that have been made. So that is 1.5 for those two years. This year, we're actually, so I don't want to commit a general fund transfer of just general taxation dollar. What we've done is we're asking, we it's not in our policy or our budget policy, but we're asking the board to now shift some of the utility tax that would normally just get split between firing general fund, take some of those dollars to start committing that to the gas tax fund. Okay. So the general fund. So there's a steady annual stream of revenue going in there to supplement gas tax dollars. So that's what we've done in this 25 budget. Are we still charging the maximum allowed utility tax for gary customers? Yeah. 10 percent. 10 percent. And other cut. Not just gary, floor power. All of the utilities. Okay. and other cut not just here you for power all of the employees. Okay so the next page is the is the reserves. Again not less than 5% of the operating revenue you can see how we we have spent reserves through the years some years we've seen more of the others 24 we right now have zero but the board just made a decision Tuesday to spend some money for sunrise apartments based on my recommendation. So that will come out of that and it's not unusual for us to have items come which is why we had the reserve there. Obviously we have did not take a big hit with the last storm, which is another way sometimes we use reserves and we actually have some fun set aside from recovery from power storms still sitting out there available to help us with something that like happened with the tropical policy. So the next page is countywide proposed budget information. Again, you see those policies general fund reserves, 5% of operating revenues, same thing law force, same thing of fire, general fund balance, ending fund balance, not less than 10%. So we are increasing the local government minimum wage to $18 per hour this year. I think we've been able to really help lead as a local entity on what we believe should happen locally. One of our challenges just so that you're aware is the state just passed along this year that eliminates our ability to require vendors to do it as you know that is in our policy or percare of policy. But we have to use to implement that. We're not rushing that forward for strictly the reason that we know the state has to be at $15, three years from now as well. So we didn't want to let them out of it and roll their people back now. We will at least want them to be at $15. But we do have to address that ordinance when it's required by law to do so. Yeah, Commissioner Quinnal. So I think that's great. I want us to continue to require that in two years. Are we do we have the ability to ask a question? Are you are you as your obviously the statement and what is 15? The counties is in two years 19. If that is the conclusion. Are you below the counties? Can we ask that question? Not asking. And for our opinion, I score. Are you below the counties? Can we ask that question? Can you ask them? In a phone call with an RFP? I think in an RFP. Let me do some research. I think you probably could in an RFP in a hard bid. I don't think you could put out. But we can definitely, we'll research that, work with legal income back with an answer on that. So by the time it's in two years, we can talk about them. But I would like us to hold the score. I'm pretty sure the loss as you cannot use it to not get that justice right. So yeah, so that's the question is can you you can't require it but can you still judge or have it? Right, and I think the answer is no, but I will find out. Okay. Thank you. We applied salary increases equally to all BACC and Constitutional officers, which was 6% this year increases. I have had a conversation with the sheriff. I think the sheriff has proposed in his budget a $55,000 minimum for his deputies. That would be a subset that would be a 10% increase and that's not something we could afford and we did not do that with our public safety officers. I have had conversations we've cost it out what it would mean to get to 55 for those that are not and not worry about compression and just say you know just a bottom part and that's still over $300,000 in cost to do that. And I think that he may, we can, I don't want to have a full discussion with him, not here. It's not fair to him. But he has been very clear that he's going to ask the board to consider it. So I just want to let you know that that is not in the budget. It is a six percent like everyone else. Commissioner Cornell. I just want to know from my colleagues that GPD has moved from just over 50 to 60. Yeah but you know that is starting salaries and that's causing wage compression across the rest of the organization, which is causing some issues. So I'm curious how that's all gonna play out. So we might wanna sit back a little bit and watch what happens. Also, also around the board that they have to pay substantially more into their retirement system. There's wages. Yeah, I'm not suggesting we go to 60, I just want, because the data point for us when we get to the sheriff's. Same thing with our fire, their fire make more, but they put more into their circumstances. Yeah, and I think the sheriff when he met with me was proposing that that just be for starting salaries, which would also cause a similar wage compression in our sheriff's department, which I think, you know, for recruiting, it sounds good, but I just, for the overall, I just have, I just wanna watch what happens with Gatesville to see. And I would, and remind the, you know, I will, again, the sheriff has to negotiate his contracts with his union, just like we have to negotiate our public safety contracts with our fire union. And there are times that we have worked on specific areas of concern within a contract, it's not just a standard, we're applying it to everyone. We have focused on times attention on our starting wage at to the expense of the senior people. We've also had times focused our efforts on education training or certification like paramedic serve and put more money there as we jointly agree as needed. So just because you put it as a blanket doesn't mean that's how you negotiate it. Right, that commission went on. I think this is a good time to bring up also the Grand Bargain that this board made with the previous sheriff, Sheriff's, which I think was just before Commissioner Wheeler was elected, and that was, we're not gonna touch your MSTU and that's you have to live within your MSTU and we'll just leave it alone whereas we have consistently every year reduced our avalorum so if what I would like to see in future budgets for the sheriff is that if this request is coming, that it doesn't come prior to us trimming, that it comes, hey, we need you to trim a higher number because that's their number. That is 55 percent? It's a big portion. 60 percent. 60 percent of their budget and you know we we trim when we trim we can never really go up we can always go down and so that for me during the budget cycle that's the time to have this discussion as prior to us trimming and if we had to increase the MSTU for law that would be the time for us to do it. So I just that's an important kind of data point for us all to remember that Grand Bargain because we made that and we've had great budgets since really since that time. One was that time. It was a 17th year memory. And later on that. Okay, so maybe you were 18th. 18th. I came on in November. November, 18th. Okay, so it would have been... It was when we transitioned. I'll wait away when we took the fire MSBU and we went to we rolled the MSU for an incorporated area into the General Fund and we eliminated those millages and we sent here's our millage and we increased the MST for law enforcement and now it's set because remember it was being subsidized with PST and CSD and all that so it was the year we did that. How is the city funding? Well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Well, I just, I have some concerns. I'll just be honest with you. I couldn't understand what the city did. I don't understand that. When you have budget problems, I don't understand. You get raises like that. But anyway, that's not my business. But it does put pressure on other agencies in our area and in our region. And so that makes it very, very difficult. But other departments are going up too. So they're trying to keep their officers and And then, you know, the thing that bothers me right now is that we just now had an issue that we had a lot of officers to leave the Sheriff's Department. And now we're getting some of the folks back. And now, some of them are leaving because now, at least the Sheriff told me the other day that they lost two folks to the city because of the $60,000. You know, and so I get that, but then he said they have to pay them back for the fee for training, whatever they're right. So I get that, but it's just a concern that I don't want to be in a position where later on we have to make that decision to give more money. Yeah, that's all I'm saying. So I'm just saying if it can be done next year or whatever or through some other funding, then great. But it's just that I don't want to get it in a position where we're playing catch up. Sure. For sure, Wheeler, and then I had something to say. No, that's, you asked the question. I just, I thought it was really kind of awful, that we have people in contract, that they contracted with us to stay a certain amount of time after the training. And then that can be boyded to go on to another agency and how the city could offer that kind of money in the situation that they're in in competition with us that we should be working a little bit closer to our chief and our and our and their directors should be working a little closer together to make sure that we're not cutting undercutting each other like in the city of Camille. I also happen to note on the sheriff's budget if I remember correctly that they have a bomb truck now But they have a new bomb truck on the list for 300,000 dollars a fire call which you know And a command they could fix that if they they could fix that if they wanted to so Once one time once recurring. Yeah, right. But so some of these the data items we're talking about just a couple of data points that you're aware of. Thank you. The previous sheriff committed to bringing up corrections officers the same as law for sure. Well, that's not consistent around the state that. So when you're talking about running your base up, you're not seeing a department of corrections. You're not seeing another jails around the county. So that's one area of cost that is more than the regional comparisons. some substantial improvements to our health plan this year to help our employees where the agencies including the Sheriff's Office are able to pick up quite a bit more of the family premium of the health insurance cost that is a bottom line in their pocket. I mean, you can find their checks. $1,500. Yeah, so that's another $1500 for competitive ability to compete. So again, I don't want to sit here. It's not fair to tell him how to negotiate his contracts, but there's nothing to pot to help achieve some of the goals, but it may not achieve all of the goals that he's trying to get to right now. And we may lag a year or two behind to get where we want to get to. And it may be exactly what Commissioner Corset Cormon just said, because we need to look at the MST for law enforcement into the future, make some better predictions on year two and three of revenues and see how that builds into a salary schedule and work with a share of foot front, way up front to see, are you asking us to trim a higher millage for long forcement millage? Or you know what specifically are your financial goals? In terms of the Mobile Command Center and the bomb vehicle, we are building those into, they're not directly funded through his office, but we're building them into a longer term borrowing some money, some exhibits of vehicles, those including some ambulance and fire apparatus. Oh, they're built into that whole thing. I didn't realize that as well as some gas tanks. The main reason is not only because there's cost of escalating, so rapidly is becoming very hard to keep up with on an ongoing basis, but the lead time as well. So while we're deciding on an ambulance for 25, and I wait until 25 budget in order, because that's when the chief has it, now he's waiting 12, 18 months to get the vehicle. You know, so that's another reason we're wrapping all this up and looking ahead a couple of years in the vehicle purchases and trying to roll those together. Yeah, I didn't realize that was rolled into that whole thing. That's good to know. Thank you. Okay. Again, the health insurance we just talked about, we made the changes to the FRS again as we're required to. And then we also don't forget we increased the health supplement by quite a bit to help with them to match the states as well. So that all should help with recruiting and retention of employees. Which was the purpose of it all. The countywide proposed budget information $806 million over for fiscal year 25, which is about $50 million increase. The county manager approved budget request, 706,000 operational, 7.5 million financing, 11.1 new money. Let me also remind the commission when we look at that ending finance number that we have just entered, now that we have Mr. Parker on board is our new facilities director and before that Mr. Whitcraft who had done a great job of setting that groundwork. But what is going to be required for this aggressive building program is going to be some debt. And so, which means there's going to be a debt payment annually and that number is going to increase and you're probably looking between the vehicles, of vehicles, the court building, the animal service building, the renovation of the old court, the whole master plan. You're going up with $10 million a year. That big, that's your mark that may be. So that's coming out of your off of the top when you're asking to fund operations and programs. It's going to have to come from that payment first. So how long are you anticipating that debt payment? Depending on the type of debt, so the large buildings will probably be 30-year debt. The vehicles will probably be more like eight years. So we will imagine to the useful life of the asset and also where the market falls in terms of long-term interest, versus short-term interest, we'll pay a back. Yeah, okay, yeah. And I know we always pay things back early, but just for planning thinking purposes about other things we might need to do in the future. It's the next. Yeah, okay. Reserves are a policy. You know, we've included a million dollars. I do think that, and I've heard it mentioned several times, and I think the board collectively I've heard will also commit a larger amount of the general fund dollars towards some affordable housing and the industry of the infrastructure depending on how we work out exactly what we can use on the infrastructure money for and what our target areas are. So that's something that we will commit to looking at in the near future coming back to the board with a plan of how this is all going to roll out and do we need to commit more dollars from the general fund in the future for the trust. I'm sure. Yes. Good short. Yeah, so to restate what what I stated on Tuesday, I really would like us to be more flexible on the infrastructure money first. Okay. Me, from a general fund perspective to the extent we can leverage the dollars to attract state federal dollars great, that's just where I am. And I'm not opposed to general fund money for howling because we've allocated a lot of it We need to continue but for me it's kind of like what we did when I came on the board in 2014 we were paying Half a million of general fund for roads right increases the two three four we got up the four but that wasn't gonna solve the problem We need a new funding source and the federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal, we're not going to be able to solve it with a general fund. We just aren't. But we can do some projects and we can provide some general fund for capital stacks. When we have the opportunity that we may not have had that opportunity. But if you remember the ability housing, that $20 million was a half a million dollar capital. General fund local contribution which then leveraged all those money so that's where I kind of am on general fund as opposed to spending four million to buy hotel I'd like it to be part of a capital stack that leverages other money. Commissioner Prisid? I would agree with you I think one of the challenges right now that well I'll say a couple of things I guess I would agree with you to I think one of the challenges right now that well I'll say a couple of things. I guess I agree with you to some extent. I think that the voters approved an affordable housing trust fund and I don't think they ever thought that was an empty bucket. Right. And I think that we have a responsibility to put money in that bucket per the voters ask. And so and I don't think that just randomly putting in whatever we happen to have left over at the end of the year or just putting in a million every year is gonna cut it because budgets change, interest rates change. We need to have dedicated money that we know we can count on every year. So I think much like cap or other things that we've done that are related. We need to decide on Okay, we're gonna put 1% of our budget in the affordable housing trust fund every year and then the voters know we're putting that money in every year. Staff know we're putting that money in every year. And they care about the budget. Yeah, I like that. And we have whatever it is. I mean, I don't know if it's one, two percent, whatever, we can have that conversation about what that is. But then we know that that's what's there. And then if we want a special project, we can do that. But I think the other thing is we've been doing a million and staff have been budgeting that million for special projects. Like we're doing Copeland, we're doing that voucher program. So it's not sitting there to do things like match for a project. Like that still has to come back to us and then we have to find it in general fund later. And I'm okay with that. Like staff just bringing us special projects and affordable housing projects and us finding the money and figuring out. But you're saying it should be a percentage. But I'm saying it if we had it and we were saying, yeah, and we knew every year we had this money and some of it is for projects that we keep doing. There's never a shortage of projects to do on housing side, but some of it is for this match and for other types of projects, but the infrastructure surtax can also be for that, because we could buy the land and that could be the match. You know what I mean? So there's a lot of creative ways to do this. And I think I'm really excited about the team we just got in there just to because I think that those folks are gonna put their heads together creatively and they're gonna be able to bring us back a lot more of what we can do with our infrastructure service tax and how we can leverage that to be able to get those state and federal monies as well as private dollars. I mean there's a lot of private money possible in affordable housing too. So I think I just want to make sure that we're not just saying like let's put a million a year or let's put this every you know or we'll put it in when we have it, but really committing to what the voters asked us to do and that's to put money into affordable housing and do that on the regular basis in a way that we can. So, cap right now is what percentage of general funding, Tony? 1%, 1%. And two million, two point two, five million. We're at 1.5 and then we're taking 250,000 off for peaceful past. Great. Okay. They can't just talk. But I agree with you. I like it. I don't think so. We can't just keep. Yeah. But a percentage and then we can talk about the percentage. Yeah. We have increases in property liability insurance, workers' comp increases which are normal. In a big year in property insurance, I think you hear that every year now. Every year in property insurance. So anyway, countywide proposed budget information, revenues, taxes about 270 million, permits a fee, 40 million, intergovernmental revenue revenue which are your transfers from the state and charges for services 103 million most of that is your ambulance program. Those are all charges of services and and judgment finds is only 500,000 miscellaneous revenue 27 million and another source is 319 million other sources is your transfers around and etc. Countywide proposed budget information personal services 128 million operating 204 million that's all your contracts. Cap Island Lake 127 million dead service 13 million grants and eight 30 million Other uses three hundred and one and those are the transfers out to the Constitution The next pages are your Constitutional judicial officers Property Fraser our shares 8.7 million The clerk and they had no budget requests the clerk of the court's 4.2 million when the budget requests tax collector 7.9 million with the budget requests the new request due to judicial 3.6 million they had a request for 1ft general magistrate the board of us to include. Supervisor elections. About $9 million, she had some budget requests. As you can see, those clear battle election audit system, an FTI for IT manager. The extra postage for President election going on right now, we're actually in November for the November election. Additional Sunday for early voting and eight sites and additional early voting sites. So we know we realize and the board has realized that there are a lot of demands on the elect to drive the elections in the last several years. So she's trying to keep up with those demands and this requires resources. The sheriff, I've read 32 million in expenses. Yes, for six FTE requests. And that revenue is MSC. That revenue is not that is in their SORN contracts or contract with newberry. That's like fees. It's grants fees MSG and is there general? Yes. I can push her, because she had a question. So there's grants in this. Yeah, everything. Contracts in this, and then there's MSG in this. The revenue they generate about the taxes we send in, not in. Not in the ST. Right. Not MSG. Not MSG. Okay. So, those requests again, the vehicles that are the two big items are not in his budget, but they are coming out of the money we're going to borrow. We are going to have to address the salary issue and we are going to next year probably have to address the salary issue and we're going to next year probably have to address substation issues and we have done a couple of or he has worked out a couple of places that officers can can go to to secure right without going all the way back and I think we need to look more at that and we'll work with the sheriff over the next year to identify what satisfies his need without building a new building program. Right, because there are places that would like to have in pressure cordills. So is the substation request a revenue saver or is it a service improvement? My understanding, again, I would like to have some time to speak with him more about exactly the goals he's trying to see. The goals I understood were the amount of time patrol or having to go across town to take stuff, then they could be away from their service area because they're having to deliver evidence or something and secure it back in their main center because they don't have a place out just or so. So Butler Plaza gave them a service improvement. Yeah. Yeah. And they can they have a place they can park a vehicle. Computers a little anti-room. So as you talk to them, I would love the data that shows how often they're out of the area. It's on. Okay. Yeah. I think I think I mean I really think we get a lot more data and information to be able to make a call about not only some need for substations but where best to put them so that that is optimized because and also the possibility of partnership with the private sector. There's lots of benefits associated with having a substation located adjacent to say your development, your park, your business, whatever it is. City. Your city. So there could be a lot of opportunities for parking. Right, exactly. So we have all of these facilities we're already building. They may be able to just put an office in or we may be able to add it to the community center at West End Park or you know like there's big fire stations things like that but knowing exactly where we need them and and how big they need to be in order for us to add that. I made Jonesville is where he was asking. Right so I'm in West End and I'm searching about space there. I'm sure Chaston. Yeah I just want to share with you guys. Last Friday I was down in Pinellas Park with the Regional Planning Council Board meeting. And they just go over their projects and stuff. But one of the things that came up was Pinellas County in terms of building a debt jail. And the cost of the jail is a billion plus. And the plus is if they add a mental health portion to the jail. And I'm like, a billion dollars, are you kidding me? You're gonna ask the taxpayers to pay a billion dollars for a jail. So then I was thinking about, well, a lot of accounting jailers say, bah, it's saying, my God, what is it gonna cost us? If it's costing them a billion, you know, it's gonna be close to a billion too. So there's some degree in terms of what we build. I mean, I'm just saying. So the cost is rising and it's unbelievable. And I don't think if you did a referendum for that, I don't think the taxpayers are making that. I wouldn't, I said, there's no way I would do that. I actually, I just wanted to ring that to y'all attention. No, no. It is a very expensive ability. It is. And I've actually been talking to a number of folks about that on the PSCC and another other places. And we need to have a strategic plan. It needs to be like an eight year plan. It's not anything that's gonna happen overnight. No, it's gonna, we need a public outreach. We need a team of folks to decide what that jail needs to be. And it needs to be more than just the Sheriff's Department getting into that conversation. There's a lot of people talking about it right now. It's not going to be a, yeah, it's, and not another hundred percent in terms of capacity like you's asking for either. Commissioner Prisate. Yeah, I mean I think the first conversation we have a conversation about a new jail is a conversation about how we get that population down. Exactly. And a conversation about what can we do to renovate what we have? Because, you know, yes, the building is in bad shape. It's old, and there are pieces of it that maybe need to just be completely demolished, but there are pieces that we could potentially renovate. Or has it been in evaluation? I don't know. I mean, I know it. Actually, there has been. an architectural evaluation of the jail. So we can look at that. I mean, I just think there's a lot of conversations we had before we start having a conversation on a new jail. No, I just bring it in here because it's so- No, I know it's extremely easy to do. They're bringing it in. I told you, I went to an architectural design conference on New Jail, just because this is something I've been concerned about for a while. And they said, oh, we have all the latest innovations. But I think this is why we need a strategic plan about it. We might be able to do something modularly in pieces. And really upgrade the experience of the folks that are in the jail so that they have time to deal with their own their own mental health time to learn, time to, private space, because right now as soon as you enter the jail, you have to like, because there's no privacy, you have to be on all the time in order to maintain your own personal safety, or at least that's the feel of the folks that are in there. Sure, are they, and it was Penelope County getting any state or federal funding for that? Well, they didn't get into it. They didn't get into it. They were just talking about the cost of what they're looking at. It's in decent, actually, in the state. It's in federal. Yeah, man. I don't know. I don't know. Okay. Tell me, I did have one question to the sheriff brought up the need for us to have a magistrate for the ticketing of the, for ticket processing with the new camera system that we approved for the school zones and that in order for them to process those, for them to have a process associated with that. Like, if somebody appeals their ticket, there has to be a process for how they appeal that ticket. And right now there isn have a process associated with that. Like if somebody appeals their ticket, there has to be a process for how they appeal that ticket. And right now there isn't a process. And so it's not in our budget, but I think a magistrate position is coming because we're gonna need some way for them. And I don't know what that looks like. If it's like an image that we already have, we add that to their docket or if it's going to be somebody separate but just bringing that up is something to flag for you all because I'm imagining by mid-year once they get the cameras pilots chosen and implemented. Well my assumption is and I probably shouldn't make assumptions but my assumption is that the revenue generated off the cameras is paying all the cost including any magic street costs. Right but I'm sure there'll probably be like a period of time before that starts flowing so I just pretty quick That's why they're appealing because they don't want to check so but well, thank you for bringing that up Yeah, it's just something to eat that's something that this year brought up Who's appealing? Who's appealing? Whoever's getting the tickets of being Oh, gotcha They don't want to write a jet I misunderstood Yeah, yeah They'll speed Yeah I don't want to write a jet. I misunderstood. Yes. It will speed. It seems to be running pretty well in other places. So into my area, specifically, which is of the risk procurement fiscal services, the revenue you see is strictly the cost of risk allocation. It all goes into our final one fund for risk from all the funds. So this is not outside revenue, this is just inside charges expenses of 17 million, which you're clean all your claims or request claims, your outside insurance as well as the five or six people we have. We are asking for an additional risk specialist. We have put a concerted effort into safety and to working with our workers comp people that do have workers comp claims and getting Getting claims process correctly and getting people that the help they need and making sure they're we're doing things like we're supposed to do it So we do need we're just overworked Is that enough for a new safety specialist? Yeah, 83 yes ma'am. Okay. Facilities, again those revenues are coming in from within the system. $48 million is what we have budgeted for. Not only facilities maintenance, but also our new construction that are on the books for next year. Projects underway. So I don't know that, well, I know you've met Travis at when his was confirmed, but he has stepped in and done a next-led job of picking up when Dan had started on the master plan and carrying it through. We'll say, I'll do Defer to Dan. He liked to be really aggressive on his timeline. It was like I don't think we're open in that quick. So we're trying to make sure we have realistic opening dates on things such as the courthouse, etc. But we do have the fire administrator rescue administration. The old armory is out to bid now. Correct? Come on up, tribes. We can tell it's a status of where these are. Yeah. Yes, sir. The armory is out to bid currently. We expect to receive bid responses in September. Is that for a CN that risk earlier? How about A and to stay any? It's a hard bid. Yeah, we've already gone through the A and E for the armory. and we're looking to start construction shortly after we get the bids back. That's great. Environmental protection. That was the move to the Wilson building. They are currently there and their move is am I correct on that? Okay. I apologize move I apologize in advance trying to figure all of the Flyersky building So once we are able to do the renovations in the EOC Fire Rescue Headquarters, that will free up the current Fire Rescue Headquarters, we will likely have to do a little bit of renovation in there to make that move. So that's there, you know, the Doe Cee Doe, trying to get everybody moving to the right place. But I think the armory is the the first part of getting everybody moved once we can get that renovation completed and fire rest you moved so the idea would be construction what for a year by the end of fiscal 25 I hope to have construction completed in the first quarter of 2026. It could possibly be the end of 2025. Okay, in the EOC. For the EOC. And then that space theoretically becomes available to CCC and Shera? No, no, the existing space. No, that's right. Okay. The existing EOC. The EOC, correct, will be Shera's space. The firebo correct will be Sheriff's base. The fire mood will be EPD. I'm talking about EOC. The EOC. The EOC. The Sheriff's base. Correct. Which they need, I understand. They've been needing for. Okay. And one other question, the field support building, where is that? And it's bid process. It's already moving along. The Christmas. Yeah. Okay. and it's a big process. It's already moving along with the... Christmas. Yeah, the... Okay, so the Lans project. Yes. We are currently working with Paul stressing on design. We provided Andy, I believe, a couple of weeks ago, some budget estimates. We've tried to take what we received as a budget estimate and scale it down a little bit to make it a more feasible project. But we are working now with Civil and hope to have something as far as A&E completed in the next couple months. Give a location for that yet. We do. Where is it? It's the four Before Creek's right? Four creeks? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I just know it. I think it's a third floor. On the conservation lab. It's on one of the conservation labs, but I think it's for Creek's. Okay, so Noah's 43rd Street. I think so. That's where I remember it. Okay. So you're saying that the budget that we have put we set aside where I would just too much. Okay. What a surprise. Construction. Well, part of the issue that we received was when Paul gave us the budget estimate, he had based it on the civil design and there were no parameters on that civil design. So I mean, they depict a barren on it you know and you know you came back with you know 50,000 square feet. Well it was just a drawing on the on the civil design. So we had to scale it all down to what it should be. So the 2.1 that we budgeted is enough. It is not enough. How far? I believe it should it will be double that Cost of actually a money we need yeah structure culture kill him is Right Space is mine for any of that field sport building is supporting all the wild spaces properties that we've purchased okay Probably need to have another conversation. I, the board committed to not using the old money for certain things. Right. And it's said, waited, waited, waited until we the new infrastructure like passed. So I think that is a board's decision to what excess funds we use. I think the old, the old ACF money, right? The old ACF money used for what? No, can we use wild spaces, public spaces, dollars to construct a field support building? Oh, yes. That is for managing all of our wild spaces. Right. So what we said was that the surtax is supposed to be used for the properties that it purchases. So you've got field support facility that will support not only those projects that were purchased under that surtax but projects that were donated, properties that were donated, properties that were purchased under the old surtax. So the question came up with kind of like what percentage could you put in on that? And this particular project was taken to the oversight board for pre-clearance as my understanding and was pre-clear by them. So if it's like, I mean, we have, I mean, that's an easy number to figure out. Like 10, probably about 10% of our properties or 20% of our properties don't have wild spaces money and them and we're just either donated or our partnerships with St. John's or something like that. But we're purchased under the old wild spaces. Certainly, we still have that money, some of that money too. So we could just do the percentage of that too. So I guess, so you need a determination from this board if we're okay with using that money. I think the old levels are being turned in. That it's eligible, but this board has a policy not to do that. So we would have to say that it is not, I do not believe it is a written policy. I believe it has been a discussion policy. Yeah, just direct, telling us when we do What the bees super positive, but we have we have a Fodding source. Okay. I think that's the discussion as it came out in this twice is what we thought So we're working at that to add on to that project um, the construction of the building and the warehouse that's associated with that building that that falls within that realm, but then you have to add the civil portion, you know, site work, ancillary buildings, structures, all that type stuff, turn lane, all of that adds into it. So that's where the number grew. OK, thank you. I'll dig into animal services. I think we've covered that one. Of course, last week. I would let me let you though that in the five year CIP right now, the only money set aside is the $3 million for the lease and $2.5 million for the planning design. We need to build, we need to build in the cost of actual construction and building into the five year plan. It'll be out the year, you know, 26. It's a half-architecture. I have architecture. Right, but it is not in the five year CIP and it needs to be added to that. We're hoping to have some private fundraising that. The Civil Courthouse Building. Right now we are expecting the CP, which is the Central Energy Plant, to be delivered, which is the main components of the plant in December. The building that it will be housed in and the structure around it is currently out to bed. So we expect to have that back sometime in September. Running concurrently at this point will be the parking garage. We are working on that contract right now with Finnfrock to get them contract that everybody is happy with and start construction. Their process is pretty basic. They are designed, these things all over the place. So the construction process as far as going through schematic design, detailed design, construction documents, they go basically from concept and schematic straight to construction documents. So it's not a long process. Permitting is taking a little longer, working through the city of Gainesville is just a time consuming process. 25, 26. I've got Parking Garage to start. 25. Yes, I think that the Parking Garage C, both start in the first quarter of 2025 in some capacity. And then parking garage, hopefully by the end of the fourth quarter in 2025, we're completing that. Same thing with the CEP. The court. What's up? Well, it's just going to ask your quarters, are you talking about calendar or fiscal? Good point. Calder. Yep. And then- In the inflation of 2020 sales. And then the court complex itself, the building. We are currently working with the LR, which is the AD firm, to speak with all the documents, to make sure that we're satisfying all the needs, and making sure that we're satisfying all the needs and making sure that we're keeping a building, we're being thoughtful in the design so that we're hearing everybody's concerns, you know, the building isn't big enough, but also keeping in mind that, you know, we have a budget that we need to keep it within all that type of stuff. So we've had to go back multiple times. We're approaching 50 million, I believe now. So I mean, this number keeps growing. And we've had some of the people that will be occupying the space have come back with surge about, amount of space, et cetera. And we have been working with the LRR diligently and meeting back with them about specifically what needs to change and where do we need to include space where we can, realizing that we can price this thing out of our ability to even build it. This was a- This is- This is right now at 32. We work and we develop that and we're getting the conversations we're having now. It's going to be closer to a 50 number. The number is growing large and cost construction is just there. I mean it's what it is and so we just can't tack on more space because space and and the users are they understand that. I mean I'm not they're just asking for cart blocks so we're we're spending a lot of deliberate effort with them to say, okay, this is the size of this courtroom. You're talking, do you say it needs to be bigger or can it be smaller? This is the size of your storage space, et cetera. I mean, we're really going into some detail with them to make sure we meet their needs, but it's not gonna be a building that's gonna say, oh, well, if we grow 20% over the next 20 years, well, you're right, that's gonna be a problem. And it's just, we have to have some physical constraint because the numbers just keep getting bigger and bigger. Can I ask a question, Tommy? When we talk about size, are we talking about occupancy and design size, are we talking about support footage? Because working in architecture, it's people like to talk in square footage like well my old court arm was you know, this big but we need to hold that many people. It's different from that amount of support footage. It's a design question. And we spent a lot of effort on working with the new technologies and how the new workspaces look. So, yeah, everybody's not getting off of us. But we also have to be cognizant of, where do we meet, how do we meet, how do we keep certain meetings confidential because of the nature of the work they're doing with victims and with people that are being charged. So, there's an, you know, an appropriation. And those are different from courtroom sizes. I just want to be there. And the courtroom, and again, they work with us very well. They're not asking for a lot of unreasonable space. They're just saying, if we have two more judges, where are they going to be? As the district is district eight grows, what are we going to do with them? Do they have shared space? Where are they gonna, where are their office? Where is the meeting space, et cetera? So all of that is in consideration and they're working well with us, but it is our biggest challenge. Can I ask two questions? One might be naive. If we're circuit eight, why are we fighting the bill for the entire circuit for the courthouse? Like our other counties that are part of that circuit contributing to the courthouse cost. If not, why not? I don't know why not. They have their own courthouses as well in their counties. So the ones that are right, so the circuit they get there, the judges go out. The judges travel not the... Right. So I got... to the circuit thinking that the judges go out. The judges travel not the right. Yeah. So I got OK. The courtroom and judges chambers in the other courthouses. But they're also going to get games was growing. I mean, it's far as it's a pop at least. Right. Right. I guess. So. And I guess my other question is, is it really like that difference is construction cost differences? or is it really these space differences? And if so, why were we so off from our original conceptual? Because as we had planned this, the construction park is just killing everybody. So it is construction. It's not. It's just unreal. It's also a courthouse. So I mean, some of your finishes are going to be different than your basic office space. There's finishes in the chambers that's different than what we'd have in the meeting space. But they're not really elaborate. We're not doing marble, and mahogany. And those days are gone or you use desk and all that. We're not really elaborate. We're not doing marble, and mahogany. You know, those days are gone, or you use desk and all that. You know, we're not doing that. No, it is like Tommy said, we're keeping it within reason, and they have been realistic. And to Madam Chair's point, we are speaking in both of those languages. So we're talking square footage, and then we're talking about how much space are you actually identifying people do you need in this courtroom? Do you need, down to the detail of do you need just five more chairs? You know, how much space do we need for that? And also to your point about square footage and that conversation is the current design has a basement that has that we've been able to carve out for some storage. It's just not really usable for office space, but it's sort. And so we're looking at, okay, so what if we, how much of that can we expand, can we expand that space? And is that a cheap space to expand, because it's already got cover, and so on. So those conversations are happening as well. To be good to do their news. And so you know, people talk about meeting at Bigger House and the square footage in the middle of the room is cheap to build, but it's expensive, there's a lot of things to do. So it's like all those questions like, I want good architectural design, but I awfulness in terms of space. We are happy with DLR, Designed Original, Courthouse and Metric doing this one, but they've also done, they're one of those experts. That's their area that they really focus a lot on around the states and they've done a lot. Yeah, they know. And we've really pushed them on the technology side. And we're pushing the users on the technology side. Good. The concept this board has from a county side has embraced still hybrid workspace or remote work or whatever we are now labeling it. But the fact is we've changed how we do business. My floor if we all come in I don't have enough space on my third floor there's no way we can fit there yet we do because we don't all come in we we use the technologies that are available to maximize use of space shared space and so we're pushing the user the core house to do the same thing. Where can we share space do you really have to have your own office as every time? Right. It's sadder. So we're working on those and they're working with us well on that. That's great. That's it. I was really hoping for free parking during the day but it doesn't sound like it's going to be a possibility for the parking garage. So I will tell you from my perspective and this is just Tommy's opinion, I have a very resistant to that. It's the more I open up for public use, the more I have a maintenance cost. And we're going to have to hire staff and bring on staff to clean it up every day or clean it up whenever they keep it secure. And there may be times and we've talked about this where we need people just a place to go for general parking that we can work on, but just having it open. Now the daytime, yeah, I don't think that's practical at all because it's going to be filled with judicial activity. The people that work at the courthouse are our judges and people that are coming to the courthouse for business. So it will be usable, but it's gonna be filled by judicial staff pretty much. Budgeted up, just operations, court services employees, other non-judge employees of court administration, jury duty. That's why I was thinking, free in the day, if those, you know, they're working there or if there are people, the folks that are coming in for you know whatever processing whatever it is that they're doing there it's really hard to find parking or building the parking structure. You're just saying it's not that it's free versus that. It's not accessible. I mean you know the folks that don't you know I just you know for people using charging. are we gonna be charging for I don't know I don't support charging I think we are designing it in a way to where We're trying to compartmentalize where people are because we do not want because we have safety of our staff and Administration staff so how we secure the those parts of the day Yeah, we don't want people just driving in now Right right it's kind of a controlled entrance I'll tell you this though I mean be totally frank with you like we have parking garages that are way closer to downtown and people don't use them people for some reason how you have here downtown yeah the city parking garage and the insurance parking garage people don't use them because we have the city tried free and people still like for a while it was free people still didn't use it the problem it's like I don't use them because the city tried free and people still were like for a while it was free people still didn't use it the problem it's like I don't think it's a payment thing as much as it's a people don't like parking garages. They also like I don't know what it is but park right in front of where they don't want to walk a block either right. I'm like it's just confusing to me like the we live in a community that's so suburban focused. I mean, when you go to the city, you go to New York or Atlanta or anywhere else, I know we're not anywhere near that, but my point is, you park four blocks from a place and you feel like you've got no winning parking spot. And now here, it's like if you can't park in front of the restaurant, you're going to, you're annoyed. And I think that, like, at some point, because I want people to have a convenient way to enjoy downtown because I want our downtown businesses to thrive. I mean, celebration point is everybody parks in those garages. Right. I think some of it too might be the cleanliness, the safety, to Tommy's point, right? Like you have to have garages that are well-lit, cleaned regularly that have security and are safe. And there may be a perception because of some of the challenges that we've had with safety downtown overall that like the parking garages aren't safe or they're not nice or whatever and I don't, you know, I'm not going to go into rather they are not but my point is with this one, I guess it's far they're away from downtown I don't see it being a public parking spot. It's a parking for the facilities that are on that site, but it's free for all of those people. It's just reserved for them. So that's what I was wondering. And it may be floors two and three are employee only and they are gated or they have interest access. And maybe floor one is for people that are going there, but they still need to get validated. They may be something to say, I went to the clerk to pay my whatever, or I went to, I had to go to court today, so I can get something, kind of like you do a chance, we can do a chance. Right, you little voucher. And so we have those conversations with FriendFrock, but I have resisted just a public, just this open, because I think there are causes so many problems, maintenance-wise, security-wise, et cetera. Are we having any electric vehicles charging stations in the parking garage? Yes. We are. We do get that. And there will be, which is positive, is there actually going to be a substation? Sheriff. Substantion. The wars. That will put the wars for the substation. It's not necessarily substation. What sounds there it's here? That's warrants. I think it's more of a substation, but it's going to be under the parking or the... Sally Corks. So they can go do their work while they're at the courthouse doing other things. They'll be able to continue to work. That's what I heard. Okay. Good idea. Always having a police presence helps as well as. Sure. Sure. Thanks. Okay. They can clues. Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Thanks, Jeff. Thank you. Not so much. That's a lot of it. You're welcome. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. Okay, so the next is non-departmental is under us, but we don't control this huge number. Obviously, it's where we record a lot of things. Just don't have a department number on them because they're general revenue, general taxation, etc. So only expense side is where we, with special expense, with our debt service again, just general and nature nature not departmental and nature. Capital improvement budget. So facilities is my other area of operation control and you can see our capital improvement budget for projects $58 million and then cap. This is $25. Could in 24. Okay, 24 is $58 million, $25 million, $65 million, but we know things are missing from 25 that we just talked about in full cost. The courthouse is not in the full cost of the animal service building isn't in there, and those are gonna be paid for with that issues. Back to the, the non-departmental expenses the debt service 37 million is that that is Different from the 12 million and that does service sorry under projects This is all that service so that includes that 12 yes, yeah, okay all that Whether it's parks whether it's infrastructure whatever's paid for that. I thought it was I just wanted to verify Tourist development. We have a lot of tourist about both the sports event center. Right that famous out of tourist development money in that's Okay And I would like to take the opportunity I think Todd covered it well during the comments about where we are during the financial report study, but I want to reiterate that we are a low debt agency and have been traditionally and manage it very well. And I would discourage paying debt off for the sake of paying debt off. One of the issues you ask about construction costs, if we try to pay go that, by the time we get there, the debt's costing us 3 to 4%. Cost of inflation on the construction is 8 to 10%. It's going to cost a whole lot more to build it. We're not going to have it. It's actually a deterred, or a detriment to 10 percent. It's going to cost a whole lot more to build it. We're not going to have it. It's actually the turn our detriment to the taxpayers. Yeah, no, I agree. And again, the idea that you pay as you go, those are getting the services as they go. Those people in the future that are easy. Clearly opposite of private. That's the way I always thought about. Exactly. Which is why I hope that we're also thinking about that for the infrastructure surtax and the affordable housing projects. We should be absolutely sure to end roads. End roads, end roads. Yeah, end roads. Yeah, all of that should be, this is, the challenge becomes again, being able to roll that many projects out that quickly. And with the staff that you have, that always becomes the challenge. You see that unless you want, you have the five year plan. There's nothing really a surprise on there. Nothing that you haven't seen and talked about. Won't go through it line by line. But because we don't have animal resources in here, like it's not even projected out, right? Right. So it's under facilities and general conditions is there It's got the 3 million and 24 right and then it's got the 2.5 Right that we need to add that and we also have to move up the civil courthouse Complex and the field support building yes Probably anything else We projected so far This was two weeks ago for agenda That's scary back This probably more like 20 I think the service building is gonna to be 20 plus million dollars. But we may be able to get some good grants. I mean, I do think there's some private dollars and public dollars out there. So I mean, if we start looking and talking, once we get that inked right on the lease, we should start those conversations. Yeah, I'm saying that ain't done. Okay. They're probably going to want to get the inked. So that's all I have? They can go more. So that's all I have. And you do have one more sheet in your backup cover. We always like to go over on it. We're able to go earlier just a reminder of the millis rate proposals. And where we are, we are proposing a reduction in the millis right again this year Yes, I'm six one eight And the flat and the best of you long course Even in color Thank you Madam chair. Thank you. Excellent. That's all I have, Madam Chair. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Any further questions for Tommy before he comes away? Okay. I see. We have one walk out of it. We'd like to bring up. I think there's a chairwoman like Shawn wants to talk about. We can get the overhead. This is the letter you put on the overhead order. I missed them. I missed them too. If the chair letter, a massive chair, a city of Newberry, making applications to the Florida job grows for a grant to build public infrastructure. So it's just asking that the county, the board of county commissioners support their application. No match, anything like that, just a letter of support. Sean, can answering any questions you might have without it, explain it further? Madam Chair, Sean McClendon, economic development in the city of Kansas County. This was for Newberry's Ag Tech Park expansion. This might have read some of the main street daily news stories. This is for approximately 170 or so acres and they project out over the next 30 years that it potentially attract around 1700 employees outside. Again, it's an opportunity to require a match from the county which generally are supporting most of these letters of support to grant applications. We'll probably write the letter of support and the benefit of the city of Newberry's application for funds. Second. And then. Motion, second. This probably would have been what they asked us to do at the joint meeting that we weren't able to have. Yeah. Had we had this? Yes. That's great. They need you to say it loud. I said I moved that we approved to write the letter in support of the City of New Bereaves application for the Florida Job Stroke grant. Second. Thank you. How much is the grant for? They were requesting $5.7 million, MapJer. Hopefully got it. We're just growing new out there. I was serious today and they have that whole area across the road from the publics is being compared to a wall one. Yeah, there's like going on. Amazing. Any other questions on the letter? Comments on Newberry? Any public comment? Seeing none, I'll bear with the motion. Say hi. Hi. any opposed looks like all right very good thank you for that Sean all right we'll move on then to public comment do we have any comment general public comment please come forward to the like I'm Derek Dunlop. I'm living in Gainesville and I guess I'm a K-diver with the NSS CDS. And so I'm here today just to talk about a property that has come to my notice, I guess it was a pet exit 399 on I-75 in the city of Lachua. It's the Terror West Force project that was going on, so it's about, it's 198 acres. They were trying to put in 523 single family lots. And I guess there's been a couple meetings that have attended at the commission meeting up there in Lachua. And I guess I was surprised that this came up for availability because as of 2020 I was working at Conservation Florida and this land was ranked as a high priority for this city or I don't know if it's a city or the county of Latchewet. Okay. To be acquired. And so I just I thought that was great and I thought it was kind of like okay Don't need to worry about that one anymore and I guess it's kind of come back to light That this is happening um And so yeah the development is directly uphill of no creeksink which obviously the cave is right there It's owned by the NSS CDS or we the CDS manages it the NSS owns it So I dove the cave but anyways that the cave isn't really important in terms of, that's fun for me, but the main thing is that water, and there's a study shows that anything that enters that sink two weeks later, it's diatrace to Horn's B-spring, obviously flows straight into the Santa Fe River. And I guess I would say anyone that has a weld between that spring, like all through the high springs area, would be suffering a degradation of water quality because of that. The developer, and I guess what I got from the gist of the meeting in Elatua was that they say, obviously these retention bonds will filter everything. And that the Swansea River's management had just spent a multi-million dollar project to put in that other natural filtration system right there. I read the report in that and it only shows that that that thing is only meant to treat 20 sublimation sites. It might be 2018 something like that. But in that area there's over 130 sublimation sites and none of those are affected by that what they just did in there. But they're going to using that as cover to say everything else upstream of that is going to be running through this system. And that's just not true of you. Like if they read the report, I'm not a hydrologist, but I mean the Springs Institute lady, the CEO, she gave a pretty compelling thing. I mean, there seems like a lot of science and a lot of like good people. I mean, I'm a biologist myself, but it just the housing, but just maybe a different site. So I guess I was just here to say if anybody can do anything with that, I guess there's a final vote on August 26th. Thank you. A commissioner, Prisya. I just wanted to let you know we actually talked about that on Tuesday and we are sending a letter to the city of a lot of letting them know that we would like to provide our support and help with the environmental components of that, and along with that, sending along a lot of the data and information of the dietary studies and other things that our staff and environmental protection already have to the City of Elatua, we don't have a say in what their ultimate decision-making is on that without getting involved in a lawsuit, which, you know, but we are imploring them to consider very seriously the issues and the environmental concerns and writing that letter to them very shortly. Okay, yeah, there's a lot of public outreach, and I guess the reason I was here was I was under the assumption that County has kind of an override on what the cities do. We do know what water perspective we are. We did have a try to buy that land though, and they skipped over, even though we had it as a priority, and it would have been bought by the county, they kind of skipped over us, and went to the private developer and sold. Mr. Real, do you know if it has actually been purchased, or it was purchased with the contingent on the approval. The developer was at the Alachvo meeting last time and it seems like he owns the property with cash. And I guess as soon as it's basically it seems like as soon as this meeting goes forward, if they approve it then I mean they're going to move as quickly as I can on that and I think B or Orton is the developer behind that but they moved the they moved the set backs I guess on the house I think it was like eight feet they moved it down to five feet to carry more houses on there what the code was but it kind of seems like everything code wise is great and I guess the developer is ready to move I think are there two I want to understand there are two sections of this. And the one that is closest to the cave or that's over the cave is the one our EPD's people have jumped on. Now we can outcheck and see. But I think that because part of that development is over the top of the cave, we have some ability to get involved in that through our environmental. We don't follow. So after and thanks for letting me speak longer than the three minutes, but the housing project is north of where the actual cave system has been mapped. I know the subsequent bit of that is like the commercial properties directly along 441 between where that tree line is and the pop-ies. So the cave goes from there directly underneath the loaves. And so any of those commercial properties would be physically built on top of the cave, and that is mapped. That's where we are going to be in public, according to Steve and our group, that that's where we will get to. Yeah, I guess the development side is just bad, because it's uphill, everything flows downstream directly into that, and then you're talking two weeks later that popping out in the sand. Exactly. Well our hope is that they hear our imploring and understand the sensitivity and nature of that property and that they understand that development of that property would be detrimental to the entire county and the entire watershed and that they'll reconsider so we don't have to get into a bigger dispute over the issue of that water. We blocked business there before. Yeah, I was, I mean, no, 10 years ago, the Walmart was on. I mean, we can get involved to that extent. I'm hoping we will have to. I don't want to either, but we are. Okay, but it's good to hear that. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure it was right. No, I'm glad to see being here. We are listening and we are concerned. Keep your eyes on it though, you know, and let... No, there's, I mean, I mean, there's said the last two weeks we've done meetings up in a lot of rooms with community. I mean, it's been kind of growing to where I'm going to be a packed house on that commission meeting. It's slated for the 26th. They bumped it from this past week, which I guess gives us more time to kind of game plan stuff, which we have. I mean, we've got a website in one life today. And kind of doing whatever we can to get outreach there. And we have, I mean, the main thing is just buying time to get PhDs, hydrologists, all these different people to read what we have and present. And then I guess the frustrating part is, I guess today was the final thing to get a 15 minute time slot to present. And I'm not trying to get these organizations to take a stance on it, but you have, a lot of them don't want to get involved politically. They just, but anyways, like today was a cutoff time for that meeting to get a 15 minutes lot. And otherwise you're limited to three minutes of time speaking, but the developers allowed to speak unlimited amount of time. And he's also allowed to show a video and all this other stuff. And I can't even show them a video of the cave or just anything. That's typical. And it's kind of just like, it feels like the deck's kind to stack against you on that. Madam Chair, can I ask a question? How would we become an affected party in that to be able to have that 15 minutes or whatever? An affected party means you have a right to speak as a developer. Is that the environmental? So Madam Chair, those are quasi-judicial hearings. So affected parties are parties that can show that they are more substantially and more directly impacted than the general public. And the county could certainly show up for that. We showed up for the hearings on the Walmart property there at the southeast corner of 441 and 75. I think what we have done is we've shown up and we've shared the counties concerns, the counties interest. Remember that these are land use decisions. And per our charter land use decisions within the municipalities are governed by the municipalities of planning code. What we did in the past is we brought, for instance, a quasi-judicial challenge, a cert challenge. And said, for example, you didn't follow your code, you didn't follow, you didn't apply the provisions of your code, you didn't protect in that case with significant geological features which were the map cave system that ran underneath that particular property and then we have also brought deck actions. In the last case, that was a settlement. So, we put our cases in the basement. No court said that they had to do that at that point. What I would suggest probably, I don't know if we have a board meeting before then, let's see. Before the 26th. Yeah, so I think, do we have budget meetings next week? We do. So we have directed, no we don't. We don't. Oh, we have one on the 22nd. Okay. 130, yeah. So we have directed staff to attend and share concerns. I know we have a cheer letter going, staff is gathering the data and the studies that we have regarding that area, including the die trace study and some others that I have in my file, but we have sent staff up to share those concerns. And then that has been part of the sport for us being an affected party in those cases. I don't know what you would want staff to say exactly. You know, they can certainly share what they understand about the data analysis. But I don't know that you would get that in today. Necessarily, we can certainly, I don't know if they have 15 months worth of a presentation. We thought that the property was valuable enough to purchase it, you know, that it was crucial enough to the safety system. So it may have gone through the LCB. And now we have an LCB report on that. And we had money, we had matching grant. Steve has given him a purchase. I remember with the LCB grants we're're not talking about, well, maybe they would do some evaluation on how the property impacts, you know, the aquifer and that, but normally it's the private property itself. Private wells too, I hadn't thought about that as a. But I mean, we'd be going up against the state I assume if they've approved the permit and they say that it's you know properly I'm not aware of what permit the state has I'm not aware of the water management what's what I would remind you is we used to hold up our Proveils for state approvals getting approved first But we are specifically preempted from doing that now We have to give our approvals regardless of whether they have their state approvals or not now they would have to give our approvals regardless of whether they have their state of approvals or not. Now they would have to subsequently get them. So I don't know personally where they are in the process. Staff can certainly speak to that if you want to have a conversation about sending staff up there. We've done it without your permission on occasions when it's clear that you've taken a position on something and we have to do it to protect your legal interests. I think we need to have somebody at this meeting. I would agree with that. Yeah, I mean, we don't have to speak for 15 minutes. We can speak for what we have. Well, I mean, we have, I mean, at a minimum, I would imagine we have the evaluation that stuff did for the property to put it on the active acquisition list. And we have information about that property and the natural resources on that property. That's what the dye study data that was done. I mean, there's plenty of data that we do have. And, you know, we can remind people of the point that the action that we took during Walmart. Commissioner Quarnell. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, looking at our meeting schedule, our next meeting is August 22nd at 130. Then we, that's a budget meeting the Thursday. Then this meeting is Monday, August 26th. We have a general board meeting on the 27th, which is a Tuesday. I would think that it would be wise for us to be briefed by staff on the 22nd, which is a Thursday and be added to the budget meeting, at which point we could then determine if we want to claim party status on Monday the 26th and direct staff as to what we would like them to do. So, right. But, Madam Chair, if you're required for their quasi-digital process to get in a party status request, at least for the 15 minutes, I think today, if that is true, I haven't looked at their processes. And I would ask that you direct them to it today. And then if we decide we don't want to, we'll just let them know. Yeah, I would move that. Second. And not only that, we've been approached now by people from the community to help. I feel like that we are compelled when we have folks like this coming, I'm getting emails, and we've had a whole packet of stuff given to us at the meeting Tuesday, right? So we've been invited into the conversation by our constituents. Well, it's been. I mean, it's a county resource that's invited into the conversation by our constituents. Well, it's beyond, I mean, it's a county resource. That's exactly what it went to all of us. Just trying to find every angle we can to be considered. I mean, it's really beyond a county resource. It's really water. It is. It is. It is. Do we have any further comment on the motion? Do we have any public comment on the motion? Do we have any public comment on the motion? Hey, Madame Chair, may I add that we ask our staff to brief us on the meeting of the 22nd to the motion? I find with that. You guys okay with that? Yeah, at the 22nd meeting yet. At the 22nd we get a, so today, the claim party is out as 22nd we'd be briefed by our staff. Thank you. party status 22nd would be brief by our staff we can then circle in with all of the information that's been presented. Sounds good. I want to confirm Madam Chair the graph letter is ready but you will be ready for your signature today and get it out. I think you'll pay the bill. Alright so we're going to copy that of the 20th like a copy of that circulated too so we know it. We get copies of it. Madam Chair the letter is being circulated we're going to copy that of the 20, like a copy of that circulated to so we know it. We get copies of it. Madam Chair, the letter is being circulated. We're getting it out as soon as possible. The data is still being collected. The data and our reports are still being collected. The letter refers that they should be expecting. A package from us. But we wanted to get the letter out as soon as possible. Should we add the value status to the poll? Potentially. Potentially, there might be a process for requesting party status and that might not be it. So we'll look at the results we get out of here. That's good. One other question, Liz. When we have quasi judicial meetings and you request party status, then you have the same rights as the developer. You have the same rights to question and put into the record evidence. It's not limited to 15 minutes. So there are different ways to meet the minimum requirements of due process. The ones that you establish, I think, are the best. Oh, okay. There. I do. Are there the same? I do not know. Okay. Well, at the 22nd meeting, if we can understand what right, thank you. Good point. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Further comments? All in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Like a sign? All right. We have a motion. Like to think that citizens are coming in and pushing us into this conversation. I did not realize they were meeting that soon. Actually. Yeah. OK. All right. No further public comment? OK. Any commission comment? Mr. Cornell, you have anything? No, I have nothing. Mischa for see? Oh, I did have one thing. It just it's a really quick. It's a really weird thing, but I Was interested in just understanding if somebody is arrested and they have an animal and there isn't a family member to care for that animal and we take that animal and animal resources what happens. Do we keep that animal? Do we foster that animal with an understanding that they won't be able to adopt that animal? That person is released. How do we handle ice from the interest of the underdain how we handle that situation? Yeah, Madam Chair, we can certainly check with animal resources to confirm but from path experiences Yeah, it depends on the situation whether that person's how long that person would be kept at jail You're they're gonna be getting out next day or two or whatever then they can return the animal to them But if not they make arrangements may make arrangements to have that animal adopted. Yeah, see, I guess that's what I'm concerned about. I would really hate for someone that hasn't been yet convicted to have their animal adopted while they're awaiting trial. I mean, I think we could hold that animal. To the past, we could hold them. Right, or we could foster that animal. But fostering with an understanding that animal is not adoptable so I just want to make sure we don't have a policy of it. How do you determine that? You should be fostered. Yeah because I know that at least in one case that an animal was a medical ADD you know medically trained dog to recognize seizures or something I can't remember what it was but but that happened since I was a child. I just didn't know. I just wanted to get, yeah, she can just send an email or update her like what we, or what the policy is, or if there's anything that, I just want to make sure that we don't adopt out animals that are owned by people who are awaiting trial and jail. I don't think we do either, but I just want them. Yeah. but I just want them. It just happened. Yeah, thank you for asking that question. Good. Thank you. Mr. Chessut, do you have anything? Yes, sir. Okay, I can make sure we look at it. All right. And no further comment from management, anything? No, just want to add, Mr. Hopsteader, they mentioned that they could include the land conservation report with the letter. We have that option. I think that report. I see Steve just walked in. Did you want to add anything, Steve? Oh, yeah. It's a flop. It's a flop. I guess it's a flop. We ran over here. That's all too. Madam Chair, Steve, hopstead House, I obviously missed the last five minutes or so, but I heard most of it then my computer froze. And they ran over here really fast. Yes. It sounded like I heard, you know, most of you we have a letter where it's going through we view now. We're going to request party status. Okay. I think it has to be today or. Yes, we're going that's gonna change everything. Okay, and then I heard you want to kind of an update on the 22nd, as the where we are, where they are, what's gonna happen? We'll look at it on the plan and then sort of the resource itself that's on the site, like what are the resources on the site that are at risk? Okay, we can do that just to heads up Stacey is running a spring's working group meeting all day on that day So I'm not sure Stacy will be here, but we'll make sure we we have that information available. Yeah, can provide that to you Maybe a lot of work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay Thank you for coming down All right, you know on that note I'll call the speeding engine.