I'd like to call to order the Allatua County Board of County Commissioners budget meeting for April 1st, 2025 at 133 PM. And our first item first is to, I guess, do the let kin participate. All right. Move to allow. Move to allow. Can't participate. Pay. Okay. Okay. It got emotional in a second. Those in favor of the motion vote by the sign of I. I. Those will vote the same sign. Motion carries. Thank you, God. No problem. Next item is the Budget Development Financial Policy Budget Guidelines for 25-dare-00227. Chair. to approve the agenda. Oh, I'm sorry. We do that. No, I'm sorry. I'm rushing. I'm rushing. Second. Okay, got a motion of second. I'm sorry. We got you. Trying to get out of here. We got you, Chuck. Okay. We got a motion of second. Those in favor of the motion will be signed alive. Those opposed. Same sign. Okay, we got a motion in a second those in favor of the motion will part of sign alive Those opposed. Same sign of motion carries. Okay, there were no citizens here, so you didn't see me to do public comment. Unusual. Okay. Mr. Chair, I'm the cross-discist of County Manager. It's up to you, Mr. Cullier, here today, to kind of start off the budget with the board. Obviously, we are in preparation of the budget. The manager will produce her budget in June. Just for a minor in the calendar, we have had to move a few things around based on the different reasons. So today on the calendar today is going to be we're talking about the guidelines. We're going to go over our budget financial policies, historical trends, and then our department this year to do the deep dive is solid waste. Depending on how many questions you have and how deep you want to dive into any of these topics, you know, we'll have a factor on how long we take. You can see that in March, our departmental requests are already due. They were done March 11. Judicial andal officers, the boards already passed the resolution for them to return their budgets by May 1st. So they'll submit those by May 1st. And then we will prepare the budget. We are giving the judicial and constitutional officers an opportunity to speak with the board on May 6th at 130. We're reminded the board is really just a lot for you to hear from them of what they are proposing in their budget. Obviously you can ask anything. You want to ask, but we haven't even, we won't even had an opportunity to vet it to know what the requests are and what we're going to recommend in terms of funding. That'll all be in the manager's budget. June 2nd, we'll get preliminary property value estimates for the property appraiser. June 10th, the manager will present her budget or proposed budget to you at 5 p.m. July 1st, we'll get the preliminary tax roll. We'll be certified by the property appraiser, so we'll mix the final tweaks to the revenue side. And then we'll come back to the board on July 8th, where you will set your proposed millage and set your proposed or set the initial assessment rates. So those are things that are happening. One of the things that will really cost you this year especially, I don't have to tell you, but just the public say, We think going on to Tallahassee, a lot of those could impact many of the things we're talking about. So we know there's a lot of taxation issues, assessment issues that are on the agenda from the legislature and the governor's office and so they're working through those issues. So as that rolls out in the forms of pass bills and law, then we'll know if we need to make any adjustments to the manager's budget. We'll be making it the last minute for her budget because the session doesn't end till the end of May. But anything that we need to bring back before the July meeting will let you know, make sure you're aware of any impact those bills may have on your ability to determine bill of direct assessment rates. So we'll let you know. So with that, we'll get through the summer. And while we're doing a deep dive today, we are taking a little different approach in our summer meetings. We come back in August. We are instead of just talking about an incremental budget of new requests, we're going to be talking about really diving into what they're asking for in totality. Not just assuming prior appropriations need to continue on, but actually looking at back at those and working with the department's own supporting the need for that level of delivery of service. One of the things also about the board that we're doing this in conjunction with, with, you all are working on a strategic guide, a strategic plan coming forward in that in June. You will actually meet on that. That team is doing a good job of kicking those efforts off, meaning with departments, going to meet with the community and citizens to bring you back information when they meet with you individually, and then collectively on June 4th, they'll be a meeting to look at your strategic guide. That strategic guide will actually be the foundation for our fiscal year 27 budget. That's our goal is that you will have that strategic guide passed in the early fall that we would then provide to our department heads to build not only their budgets but their performance plans around. around so that they align with your strategic guide and that everybody's in sync and what we're trying to accomplish in the resources we have to accomplish it. And so that'll be your 27. So those were kind of running parallel to each other. Our goal for 20 this year, you'll see in our guidelines we're looking at a one year budget again. Our goal for 27 is going back to a two year budget projection. So as we align that strategic guide, we should be able to build a 27 and a pretty workable 28 budget. It would be our goal to come out with for the board. So as everything seems to take longer to implement, just the nature of work now is probably appropriate to try to have a two year look into the future to allow things to actually take place and to happen. Because I know there can be frustration when you believe something's going to happen. And it just, three months go by, five months go by, and you're still waiting on things that you thought you passed in the summer. And you know, well, the budget has some highs for waiting for this. Things just take a lot of happen. So, hopefully that's probably a good approach to look at for 27-28. But in the meantime, we'll work on the 26th budget and get it back to you. Have it kind of put the bed ready to go. We did. Usually we have our first meeting, public hearing at our first September meeting. Well, the school board this year actually took our date. So, school board gets top priority on picking dates for public hearing. So, we get second pick and then everybody has to wait for us to get through and they do their years around us. So, they're doing it on the night. So, we're going to the 16th. So, you have actually a special meeting on September 16th just for your first public hearing of the budget And then the 23rd will be your next meeting Which will be a regular meeting and also public hearing for the budget I'm sorry for laughing, but Michelle and I were I We're looking at your bracelet that says book with Jesus to I assume and we were thinking we should have bracelets and say Wtd we were thinking we should have bracelets and say W-W-T-D. What's up with Tommy Doe? I think that's what I was working out a lot for you. I think the first one would be a lot better in response. So... He hasn't stopped listening to me. I need to encourage him with myself. He's there for my encourage. He's the last person to meet. It's never mind. Curd. You know, it's my face in the. So with that, we'll go into the budget guidelines. I tried to read all of this to me, but I couldn't. That's fine. There's nothing that should surprise you. We do have a couple things that are hot points that we need to talk about that I believe are pertinent points of discussion this year. Again, I just went over the calendar dates for you that we just talked about. So again, ending on September 23rd, it will be our final budget hearing. I'm a BuzzGear discussions, May 6 for Constitutionals. Again, August 5th and 7th are compartmental reviews. August 14th are final review and finalized in their public hearings. Right five and one. So our budget guidelines. Most of these are the same. We're going to maintain our five percent reserve of operating revenue for general fund. It missedU law enforcement, MSPU for fire and gas tax, assuming we're legally allowed to have an MSTU or an MSPU, we'll see how that goes from the legislature. But that's what we're planning on right now. So those would say the same. We budget a 10% minimum of operating revenue as estimated ending fund ballots in the general fund in 5% in law and fire and gas tax fund. So those are for economic downturn or disaster recovery to absorb those. Also the goal at the end of the years to actually have at least two months or 17% of our expenditure set aside for early liquidation that's because taxes don't actually get collected until December. So we have to operate October and November without any ad warm taxes coming in. Internal service charges and indirect costs will be budgeted by us for all departments. Inflationary factors, changes in population, and I have economics efficiencies will be considered in preparing the budget. I am comfortable with modifying that. I think there may be a misunderstanding of what we mean by economic efficiencies and what we really mean is just inflationary factors change in population in comparison to our capacity to absorb. All we're saying is is we know that service levels change if you have inflation and they change if you have changes in population. What we want to look at that first is can we absorb that with the current staff before we start adding staff? That's all we're really saying is what is our capacity to absorb those increases before adding cost? So if you would like us to change that and the guidelines we're happy to make it a little clear of what our goal is. I think that capacity to deliver services makes more sense. I think it's clear for people to understand the economic efficiency and more that. Okay. All right. Agreed. Main chain, the current funding allocation for law enforcement. That's from the study several years back. And we support that study. We had the Clark's Office, Tax collectors office. We all worked together on developing it, and we got support from the Sheriff's Office and as far as providing data to us. And we're comfortable with that split. Having said that, we realized that the, because property values in the cities and corporations are so much of our property values, the intercorporate residents are paying, are pretty big. They're paying $3.567, an additional millage for this service. If you roll that into your general fund, it would be about 1.4 mils on a county wide basis to generate the same revenue. Just want to look at the consideration of it. I'm not we're not asking to do that. We we mentioned it to the manager and they would put you at about nine mils is really where it puts you which is pretty high. We've been walking the general fund millage back for so long. It would it would be on face it would like you just jump it back to nine mils. Even though we would have eliminated a couple of MS to use along the way but having said that if we could get it down below nine I would like I'll bring back to the manager exactly what that looks like in terms of cuts because it would require us to cut somebody to somewhere and to find out what types of services that would require to be either reduced or how we would absorb that. So we're going to present that to the manager for our consideration in our G10 budget. But I wanted to go ahead and put it out there for you to be thinking about it. A lot of conversation about where we rank. If you'll remember two years ago, we did a bunch of presentation and I kind of addressed why we rank where we do. And either way it wasn't as bad as people claimed that it is. We don't rank nearly as high tax wise as a lot of other counties were down in the 15, 17 range. This would put us even lower. This would help us improve our taxation part, if you will. As long as the state and the University of Florida have all of these exempt taxable values, which is every 50% of our property values, which other counties don't have to absorb. Not only that, those property values aren't like a national forest where there are no services. They sit in the middle of our city where we supply services without paying taxes. So that makes it, that's always gonna be a challenge is to be considered low. We're never gonna be in the low-quarter into tax action. It's just not gonna happen with the values off the way they are. But you can never get into a discussion of why your taxes are where they are. That's a low process. not a sound a sound bike. So we work very hard to reduce our millage. We have, successfully for eight years. But we want to look at, is this plausible? Is this something the board wants to consider? So we'll bring this back in June where the manager brings our budget. Just wanted to play at that seed before your July millage, before you set millages in July, we can talk about it then in June again. And if we need to have another special meeting in June after June 10th, we can just talk about millages and assessment layer eggs. Because that will help us to know where you're at. Smith. Oh, good to proceed. Yeah, I guess I would be interested to know how those bills are moving in telehascet or not moving in telehascet, regarding to MST is because we may not have a choice. But how are we doing in terms of sales tax revenue because infrastructure surtaxes, is it on track on target for what was estimated or? Yeah, it's pretty much on pretty much pretty much on the track. I'm quite on target. OK. I was just wondering if it was generating excess if there was capacity to sort of shift around some of the general fund. No, I pushed back on my staff quite a bit. And I probably would, and should have listened to them a little better, there were a little more conservative than I was. And we were just probably a little below the mark. They'd like to remind me of that than I'm just a spin through. But, so, you know, we all play a little bit of catch up to get back on track, but we're pretty close to all track now. Okay. Okay. Manager? Yes, and I would note that that in the future is going to depend on consumer spending, right? somewhat. And so to the extent that consumer spending slows, our sales tax revenues will slowly. Commissioner Cornell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Tell me thanks for that overview. Happy to look at stuff. I would note that the two areas in the state that have significant properties of the tax roll, Leon County and Alachua County has no appetite in telehassy for any consideration by the legislature to do a situation of payment in lieu of taxes for those major universities and those major areas that are off the tax roll. And so it's something that if the legislature does move forward with some of their initiatives that perhaps we can look at payment in lieu and then follow that with some of your recommendations. But we can look at it off. Just wanted to make that point. Mr. Chair, I think that's a very good point we've talked about in the past that pay no little taxes, especially in the when you hear conversations about the state wanting to move towards using their abundance of certain taxes that they have versus our property taxes that aren't going near the rate. So if that is ever a consideration to be that kind of subsidy in terms of not allowing us to do things with our taxes, our property taxes, the state we're ever willing to consider that, that would definitely be a valid conversation to have and try to push. I mean, I think Tommy, one other thing Mr. Chair, Tommy's point about just kind of the South of the tax roll doesn't make it the same. The O'Cala National Force is very different than the urban center of the University of Florida or the University of Florida State. You know, there are major services provided to these urban centers that are off the tax rolls. And the Al county and allatRa county have to have to deal with that unlike some of the other large tract of land that are off the tactful so thank you, Mr. So we'll come back again if we need if the bills come through we will work on scheduling a special meeting between the internet and the July meeting in that month window to kind of go back over with you where we are from a revenue stream and any. We're going to maintain the current funding allocation of sales tax revenue, 90% after we pay off our debt obligations, 90% general fund, 10% to the MSB for fire that helps support their non-fire assessment eligible costs so all these things do that's why we put some money into that assessment fund because 100% of their fund is not fire based there are some things like paramedic payings and things that are fire assessment eligible so we find other revenue sources to pay for those. Some of that sales tax the other one is our PST so we split that between General Fund and Fire at 6040. Last year we we did this after the fact so it's a change for this year but it will be consistent with last year. The CST used to be the same 6040 split last year because the gas tax are just not growing rapidly enough to keep up with the inflation on an operational basis Support that fund and Ramon's efforts operationally we started splitting our CST last year 40% general fund 40% fire and the 20% that used to be in the general fund now going to road maintenance That's about a million dollars. So that's kind of we boosted that fund by about a million dollars And then again this year will continue to present a one-year budget. The next probably largest controversial issue that we probably need to discuss, the chief was prepared, I can discuss it. consultants that work on our, that created our fire assessment study that came up with the splits based on the legality of how you have a fire assessment and the purpose of protecting property, it has to be done a certain way. And the splits have to be done a certain way. One of them, if you'll remember when we did this, it was a different model. It's like it used to be. This is more of a standby model and where you're waiting. So in that model, 30, you can, we can recover up to 70% of our cost recovery from the assessment. 32% needs to come from the availability of services. So that's your tier one. That's every parcel gets that. That's your, I'm sitting by waiting to save your property. That's availability of services. Then the 67% has to do with the value that we're protecting. So that's the EBU. So for every $5,000 of EBU, you have a certain rate that you pay. So the tier one rate currently is $90.69 for that parcel only. Every parcel pays that no matter if they have nothing on it or if they have $40000 home on it. Tier 2 is $8.31. So because of the way taxable values and property values of escalators are rapidly keeping the percentages or keeping the tiers where we had them has skewed that percentage. And the consultant says to make sure we stay in legal compliance and that we don't risk of being challenged by our assessment of being legal, that we need to re-address the tiers and recalculate the tiers. What that means is going to the proposed tier. Now everyone's going to have $132 for every property and only and reducing tier two to $728. The total revenue stream, not counting growth for values, but just the toe, if things stayed the same, the total revenue stream would stay the same. But it's going to shift the assessment burden from those with more expensive homes, so those with less expensive homes, or no homes. So we know that is uncomfortable at best, not where this board traditionally goes, but it is something that we believe needs to happen to stay in compliance and it's the nature of protecting the property. So I know there's some questions about that in discussions and you can see the impact to the far right of $41 increase for personal only $8 Increased $8 a two cent for someone that has $160,000 a dollar home in a parcel and a reduction of $40 per $400,000 home. So it's you know kind of aggressive in nature. So I'll let y'all have that discussion and I want to make sure you're in a way of this stuff. The Commissioner of Christianity. Yeah, I mean, you know, to me, this is like the opposite of what we want to do in creating aggressive taxes that are putting the burden on the people who can least afford it. So I understand that this is something we, quote, have to do be able to do this, but I do think it's a, I guess I'd like to have a further conversation and I don't know if chief is here, is he online or okay. Well I think that we need to have a conversation about service levels at that $132 mark. Like what like really analyzing those service levels, what are we providing at that level? Can we reduce the expenses for our overall service level of the unincorporated or the areas that are, you know, so that this becomes a little bit more fair because it just seems at this stage that people who have less to protect are paying more and people who have more to protect are paying less, which just doesn't make sense structurally. So I would love to you know just ask them stuff to take a look at this and kind of really analyze it dig into it and come up with some suggestions and rather that's shifting this away from this structure altogether or rather that is coming up with a different tier one, you know, cost that's reduced level of service or We have a master plan coming back should be We have a fire master plan coming back which has a lot to do with level of service I know it's already and the chief's not gonna tell me what date I know that he's playing on bringing it back I'll look yeah, it's not far not far in the distance. So that talk about level service. You have your comp plan. Make sure you look at that on your level service that provided it talks about ISO levels. It talks about response times levels, etc. Remember, this is focused on fire. This is part of this equation we're talking about. On the surface, which you're talking about mainly if you'll remember we went from an MS to you to an assessment so we went from a ad war and tax base that have, they have certain protections in there for things like home state exemptions, there's certainly residential exemptions at two and assessment model. Also, there are more than one assessment model. We went to this assessment model, the availability of services, born to ask strictly to do with values or about being protected that probably focuses more attention will be shifted to commercial and away from residential as well. So there are other models we can look at as well to go back and doesn't have to be this model to support. So those were a couple of things we can look at off the top of my head, but we would prefer to come back and Again, depending on what happens between the end of the session and you setting assessments We may have some advice already by then, but if not we may ask you to set an assessment and then in the August meetings Dig really deep into some of those things you want to address and talk about in us Figure out if we can approach it this year at least at least it will be available on your strategic eye for us to approach it over the next few years in 27-28 budget. Okay, can I start? Alfred? This is a completely nerdy thing to ask but is it possible to get the legal background to this that makes this so? You know what I'm saying? I'd like to read the background material. I think it is in the study itself. It's in the study itself, okay. I think. I think it is in a methodology. I remember that. It's in the methodology, okay. But it's the legal. Right. So how is supported by law? Right. Because it's based on the stand, the fact that the standby rate is what everybody pays. I remember now. Right. And so to make the. So the standby rate and the justification of the amount that goes into what that standby rate is, you know, our costs have increased. So now that standby rate costs more. Right. I remember now. I remember now. I'm liking it then. But I mean, I think it's that conversation of like, we've increased the number of staff we have. We've increased all these benefits to fire rescue. And I get that like we want people to be well paid, want to be able to recruit good people we want to have a good level of service But I think there's a balance to be struck between that level of service and with a really getting because if you have a parcel You're paying hundreds of dollars. So if somebody was a 400,000-dollar house With a fire you're gonna have to fight it like that just seems to be totally out of luck We're asking them for more to, we're asking them to do more out in the community with the community health. You know, so we've expanded the services. That's a good point we are asking we are providing more services but still. Okay I think Ken has a... Ken I can't see anything so I don't know. Oh oh Mark okay. I see Mark where he's standing. He's over here though I think here, really. OK. I'll just raise my hands. OK. All right. Commissioner Cornell? Yeah. So I'm, I'm texting Mark when I have my hand up so he can help. So Commissioner Alfred kind of hit the point I was going to make and just to ask you all to go back and look at how we implemented this plan when we did, because we looked at a lot of other fire assessments around the state and the country. And really this was the least of the regressive kind of methodologies. And I know we were looking at doing this with the increase in causes. We've never actually increased the base cost. And I know we were looking at doing it last year. We elected to put it off until this year. But just speaking for our fire personnel, I really think we've got to address it. We probably should have addressed it last year. But I too, like Commissioner Prisya, wanted to be as least reg as possible, but it already is. And I think we have to just kind of realize that since we implemented this over five years ago, costs have really increased and we've held it, we've held it flat. So thank y'all for just going back and looking at that history. And I think you'll, we'll see where we end up. Prissy. Well, I was just going to say, I mean, I think that it could be an MSTU, which would be less progressive. I mean, it would mean that it's a tax versus an assessment, which changes the conversation. And I understand it may not be popular, but it might be less progressive in the long run. And it gives as time-arrangements and protections to people through exemptions and things like that. So I don't know that that's popular, and we may not even be allowed to implement MSTUs who knows. But we do still have. Got away from that, Commissioner Prisky. That was out of the master plan. There's a good history on that. Yeah. More later. We will bring more information back again. We have enough information to bring before July. We would rather do that so that you can have good information going into setting assessment rates and milligrates as opposed to later. So we'll do our best to get that back to you in any options if you will in solutions on the revenue side. Okay. Yeah, it's good. And then, here. Commissioner Wheelhouse. Have we ever figured actually how much revenue we lose with the footprint of the university? Do we ever have seen a number? Yes, ma'am. And I'll resupply that. Yes, ma'am. A couple years ago, when we did the presentation, we probably needed to update it any way for more current data. But we have all those exempt values on the tax roll. That's how we know, and which we're not getting, if you will. I was just curious. And that is hard to not emphasize the point enough that we are building. We have to build infrastructure roads that are large enough have capacity enough to bring people into the University of Florida. That's part of your cost of infrastructure. There's roads that have near the capacity if that footprint wasn't there So that just alone is one of your huge infrastructure issues not counting Sheriff responses and things that they happen on campus or because there is a campus and Housing etc. You know, I'm sure the city of games. Well has the same issues. They're responding, you know the UPD, they have UPD but I'm sure they all work together and they all respond together when needed. So, whatever those services are that we supply, criminal services, all those kind of services, the rest don't campus, they end up in our jail. So, those properties are not paying for that service. So. Tommy, Tommy, I would say at a population of 50 to 60,000, we essentially have a small city four times the size of our second largest city that is not on the tackles. And we'll be the first to. And Commissioner, if you think about it that way, think of four more latches in the center core that are not on our tackle. That's the discussion with Tallahassee when they start talking about the latches. I agree. So that's our budget guidelines. Other than the one change I recommended that was we discussed if you're comfortable with where we are, that's kind of how we'll implement our budget that's how we'll work with the manager and make recommendations and refer to bring you back about our budget junient which is obviously our goal. The next thing the only action item today is our budget policies so there's a lot of paperwork and less to do with what it actually impacts. But the main budget policies we will look at are which ones move. So the budget management policy and again again there are nothing substantial changes in these. These are more clean up than they are anything else. I hope you had a chance to look over them. Again recognizing the 20% that we go to road maintenance now as opposed to the of the CST that goes to road maintenance. We did delete three to five years of recovery of our reserves. We just pissed off. opposed to the, of the CST that goes to road maintenance. We did delete three to five years on the recovery of our reserves. We just, that's not practical. We never have done that. That's been in our policy a long time. We already recovered the next year. We come back to you every year with a clean year of 10% any fund ballots and 5% reserves regardless of what you spent the prior year in reserves. Trying to rebuild it every three to five years just as a practical because it straps you for the next couple of years. That was put in place. I'm going to put a Francie. So what you spent the prior year reserves trying to rebuild it over three to five years Just as a practical because it straps you for the next couple of years That was put in place The chain she I'm just referencing the chain sheet. Okay, page 60. Okay. The summary of policy changes out apologize No, that's okay It's the clip notes There's a red line version a clean virgin and then there's a cliff notes. Yeah, cliff notes. There's a red line version, a clean version, and then there's a little summary. OK. So the three to five years I want to imagine is before my time was put in to do things like when times were very difficult, fun amounts was very low. And they were trying to get by. We have got put ourselves in a pretty good financial position. So right now, depending on what happens if you use reserves, we just build it up in the next year. We come back to you with a full reserve again. So we added in the page 4, 3E, which is we added the MS-BU for storm water management. We've done it a couple years, we needed to add it to our budget policy. If you go down the health insurance, we changed to 180 days from 120. We just felt like now 120 is the minimum. We felt like 180 days is more best practice and standard base. So we we are doing that. We have added some things about recovering budgets into that fund and we work with the clerk's office on that on a regular basis to make sure we meet our goals. We can't go too high either, like everything else, like fund balance. We can't carry too much. We don't want to overtax our citizens or over charge premiums to our employees for benefit. So we kind of have to balance that into a reasonable amount. We are. We have been adding some money that is stashing it for a pharmacy. So we're hoping to add a pharmacy that should include brands, not just generic. So that should help us save a lot of dollars to our health insurance plan. But we need to build the infrastructure out for that. We've been negotiating on that for several years now. We're not there yet. But we are working. working we actually renovating a small space to do it initially We're looking for a larger space over time Little we'll have a drive-through so if that works out if we can get there with them It's been a challenge working with a bank but Buying from a bank how about that? Not working with a bank. That's a bolt over it. So what yes, it. So we're working on that and hopefully that will come to fruition. In our capital budget and financial plan, we're just adding the facilities management director to the Financial Oversight Committee. Our debt management plan has no change. Our financial management plan. I will tell you, and this is plans. Yeah, so first our replacement funds have never been able to afford to replace what they need to. Even though our best efforts, the vehicle cost of skyrocketed way beyond what we had set aside. And so we're always robbing Peter to paypal. And so the funds just not where it needs to be. And also, in my opinion, and this is kind of why I push this agenda, my recommendation to the manager is, is that those dollars need to compete. And I have people that want to to compete because it's easy to say, well, we need vehicles. Well, yeah, we need a lot of things and they should compete in the budget. And not saying that we should not replace vehicles when they need replaced, and we should have a claim to replace them. But they should be in a line item in the budget that this board considers every year in coordination with everything else that you have to do. is we do a lot better effort and this is definitely not knocking our fleet department. They do it. Inc. in in coordination with everything else that you have to do is and we do a lot better effort And this is definitely not knocking our fleet department. They do an excellent job Gerald did and the new and John does currently in Fairly assessing the need and what needs to be done And what we need to replace it with so we may be get a request for a much larger vehicle than we need to be using for something And we cut that back but the cost of our large equipment is, well known, it's just skyrocketed. Amulets, fire apparatus, public works, vehicles that, a lot of things, gusts needs. Those costs have just got rocket away past replacement fund. And so we're building that in the budget. I guess I do have a question about that because I saw that and it was one of the things I had a little question work next year. I think most of the rest of the new and I attended about offline. But this one I guess is interesting to me because I get the idea of these like specialized equipment, like things that are going to increase the level of service or that are programmatically related like a brush truck or a new fire truck, you know, but then there's also just like fleet vehicle like just like the car you drive from point A to point B and the computers you use on a day-to-day basis, which we know in general how much those cost and they aren't necessarily skyrocketing the same way that the other things are skyrocketing. So I wondered about the idea that all of this idea of this replacement fund was going away versus just the ones that are more about specialized equipment that's related to their operation of whatever it is that department does. Okay, so the special as equipment is the one driving cost obviously all the other equipment just as it does not really impact much at all in terms of even justifying a replacement fund. Other thing happens is we have some departments based on for example a lot of EPD are grant funded and they can't put into a replacement fund anyway sometimes and there are other grant funded things that can't put into a replacement fund so they have to wait and buy it when they need it anyway out of that current year funds and so some departments have the advantage of I've built up a replacement fund and I have somebody set aside from a accounting theory financial theory standpoint that I operate under and I think Cornell, we've had these discussions about taxation and future costs, et cetera. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with having taxpayers now set aside money for future services. You try to, I know it's good business planning to make sure you can afford your future costs, but the same time kind of like issuing debt for buildings which I always encourage because the debt the taxpayers and the future will pay for the services are getting provided out of that building instead of people currently paying for future services. So if I'm a taxpayer and I'm moving next year, I really don't want to pay for your building for the next 10 years. So from a theoretical standpoint, this is not something I've been overly comfortable with since I've been here. From a practical standpoint, I think costs have gotten to a point to where they need to compete. You've got a lot of tough decisions coming in the next few years. And it may be, we need to, you need to live in that car another year. You need to live in that truck another year, and we need to keep putting it together. Now, Fleet says, I'm putting a new transmission in every six months. This is to cost, this is not cost effective. Then we need to do something about it, or it's not safe, or if it's not practical. Computers, on the other hand, the whole concept is outworn as concept, because computers used to cost $10,000 a piece. So that's why we created it. Now computers are almost like supplies. I mean, $1,000 a piece. So that's why we created it. Now computers are almost like supplies. I mean, you know, $1,000 to get you what you need in a laptop or whatever anyway. So that's just not really conducive to a replacement fund anymore. That's why we did that. So that's kind of why we've done it. That's why we chose to take this path. We think it's the best transparency for this Commission to make policy decisions and budget decisions in the future. And the concern always is, which is why they're created. We don't want to sacrifice when we need vehicles. We need to plan accordingly and we agree. We need to build out budgets that do have vehicles in them every year that don't get behind on our place of. And I know that's the part of head concerns and I get it. I don't blame them. I would be concerned too. But that is it. Isn't a reason not to do it is because of concern. We need to be practical about it and approach it from a well, we're going to present the information moving forward and why it's needed and why it's necessary. And then the board that makes a policy decision of well we understand but or yet we agree we need to move forward. Yeah, I mean yes I agree with you but I and then the board then it makes a policy decision of, well, we understand, but, or, yeah, we agree, we need to be forward. Yeah, but, I mean, yes, I agree with you, but I have the same, we're not usually doing line-in and budgeting at the board level. Like, we're not usually like, oh, yeah, they're gonna get a car this year or they're not. But you have to rely definitely on the manager to make those fundamental colleges, she does on FTE requests, et cetera, to say, yeah, okay, I understand, but this is what we've got to do this year to make this budget work to meet the priorities of the board. So yeah, I agree I understand, but this is what we've got to do this year to make this budget work to meet the priorities of the board. So yeah, I agree with you, but the management team does look at it online by line, and we do have those hard conversations. And I don't always win this conversation as unfortunately. I try to, but I don't. Directors will tell you what I do, but I will tell you I don't. So anyway, so that is there unless U.S. wants to change back directions, that's kind of where we're at. We did add some language and when we met offline at Bak back remote and that is some language that we added to, I'll let Mo explain what the language is. On the public purpose. What we found with public purpose was under our code, in the procurement code, if you fill out a public purpose form, it exempts you from purchasing guidelines and rules. And that was not the intent of what the form was supposed to do. The form is to meet the certain criteria that has been established, yes. But it's not to circumvent how we procure whatever we are procuring from that perspective. And then the other question was related to the meals. Now that we're doing more public outreach, we're not say come to dinner and we're going to give you the whole meal. It's to make sure that we have the water, the coffee, the cookies, as a supplement to why they're coming to the public outreach from that perspective. Sometimes they need a meal. And we evaluate those. There's a few that they get through. We ask people to come to a meeting at 6 o'clock in the evening. It's going to last for two hours. We kind of have to. Right. And we take all of those into advantage. But the goal is in looking at it, Fiscaly is to say what options do you have and again, what are you serving and what venue are you looking at it, fiscally, is to say, what options do you have? And again, what are you serving in, what venue are you doing it in? That makes sense. And I guess, I just saw my board knows I brought up, and I think it's important for us to understand, for me, we're trying to do more public engagement, we're trying to get more people to come. And as we all know, especially those of us who've done community engagement, like, food brings people, like they want to come together. And so it's an enticement to get people to participate. And so it's a public purpose in not just in like, we're feeding them because it's dinner time or we're feeding them because they're keeping them all day. And it's lunchtime, which that is a public purpose. But also because it's our sort of like carrot, we're asking them to take time out of their day to come spend two hours listening to government talk at them about what we want to do and solicit their ideas to come and spend two hours listening to government talk about what we want to do and solicit their ideas and input. And like we're not paying them for that expertise or that information or their ideas or opinions, we're just basically providing them a meal and ideally some child care as well that would allow them to be able to participate. And so for me, it's like I get, I get the idea of saying we want to be careful about this and I want to be physically responsible about it but I want to make sure we aren't percolating people. able to participate. And so for me, it's like, I get the idea of saying, we want to be careful about this, and I want to be physically responsible about it, but I want to make sure we aren't precluding people from thinking about it. And I also hope that we're thinking about it from the perspective of, we're also trying to drive economic development with our local businesses. And so I don't want them to be perfuring this and then end up with pub subs off of a tray instead of using the local caterer. Like if we're gonna spend our government money on something, I want our government money to be spent on our local businesses with our local people that are employing local people and keeping that cycle going and and living our values, right, using local food and healthy nutritious food and those sorts of things as opposed to just like getting some Chick-fil-A boxes and calling it a day. So I think I just want to make sure that this policy doesn't then become the benchmark by which we make those decisions that also have to be made from more of a policy programmatic decision versus a budgetary decision. Sometimes I think the idea of economic efficiency becomes the end-all-be-all for our decision making rather than thinking about like how is that dollar going to get spent and make an impact longer term? And I know this is really small amounts of money versus a lot of the other things we spend money on but every bit we spend makes a difference. So agree. So it is I mean with this policy I mean that will be the standard we use so I mean that's what we're doing policies today so we need to do something different you tell us because that's is the benchmark we use. From a perspective standpoint, understanding the policy discussion from a financial responsibility standpoint, and where others look upon us, such as whether it be those or whoever, where other people are looking at how we spend things, we do have to be very careful on food. Throughout my entire career, the subject comes up at every agency. And you will see that the gamut of none, when I've worked in places that it's like, no, my food, no. And to, oh, we're going to have huge events and like tie catered events. It's like, I don't think the guy working hard, or lady working hard to play their taxes, wanted you to go have a really good, nice meal at a big gala on the taxpayer dollar. So I mean, and that's a game. So we have to find that balance. I agree with you. And we also want to make sure we are meeting the boards, objectives, and goals in terms of local providers, and vendors, and food, et cetera. So we're completely on board with that part of it. We are pretty critical, give a pretty critical eye at what we left through in terms of who we're feeding and why we're feeding them and if it is a Foxtrot grandparents is a great example. That's part of the grant. So we actually we don't ever say We don't have problem with it. Yeah, that's part of the grant. They're volunteering, you know Yeah, I mean it's a least we could do to show them support and appreciation for all they're doing So we get a lot of the volunteer stuff. We get a lot of them. We're asking community to engage in a process, that after hour, after they worked out day. And we're trying, so we get that. And we're okay there. But when it's a, this is a group, an important group of people in the community that we're not paying not paying for you, you know how many, you know. So, I mean, we have to, and it's not always easy to find that balance and have those conversations to figure out exactly where you're trying to accomplish with this and who are you trying to accomplish this with and is this the best way to accomplish it. So, we get that and we can appreciate that. This is something we battle constantly and it's not a lot of money in and the scheme of things you're right, but the perception of it is a big deal. People look at that and this first time It goes sideways We will be the one in the headline or in the news of can you believe a lot of counties pay for this? Right, and that's we so we try to avoid that Vividly, so I guess that's what I have a problem with way this is written though is this is about public outreach and and engagement this isn't talking about like Muckety Mucks like the you know sitting around with the Chamber of Commerce having steak dinners this is talking about like you know I mean not that the Chamber would ever do that I'm just throwing out ideas you know we're like some like random like you know like some group comes in a town and we're winding and dining them like this is time community engagement. And I think that's why I have a hard time with it. Because it's saying community engagement is designed to inform the community. No, it's not. Community engagement is designed to get information from the community. It's designed to ask them to come to us and to participate and to give us information and ideas and to like listen to what we are talking about doing and then tell us rather than they think that's a good idea or not and why. And from their perspective, is that going to be a good set of services or not? And so to me... into what we are talking about doing and then tell us rather they think that's a good idea or not and why and from their perspective is that going to be a good set of services or not and so to me feeding them is an important part of that. They're taking the time of their day to your point. They're like coming up for work if they we don't feed them and they're probably going to choose between us and like going home and cooking them meal for their kids, right? So if we have food there then they're like, oh well I can my kid can just eat there and I'll go ahead and go but if there's no meal provided then they might be like, well I can't Oh, well, I can my kid can just eat there and I'll go ahead and go. But if there's no meal provided, then they might be like, well, I can't come because I need to get my kid better. I need to get home. Well, just like all of our Easter lunch with counting out, right? Right now, I believe they're providing food for a lot of those meetings. If I'm not mistaken, I don't know. I guess I just want to... I'm not sure I like the wording. I don't have money for you, but I don't. No, they're not only only one. One that we had in the morning. Okay. I guess I just want to, I'm not sure I like the wording. I don't have money for you, but I know they're not only only one one that we had in the morning. Okay. Good to know. And a lot of those are, that as well. Things are recurring. I mean, if it's a, we're going to go to here and have a community outreach in this area for a certain reason, and we're trying to get them here. That's one thing. going to be an ongoing every quarter. Not feeding every two weeks to come out. You know, that's not things. It says engagement that's more, you know, that's one thing. This is going to be an ongoing every quarter. No, we're not feeding you every two weeks to come out. That's not the citizen engagement. That's a little different level of engagement, if you will. So. So you're talking about exchange of ideas rather than? Yeah, I guess I'm just saying. I think that's just a matter of semantics at this point. It is. I just think it's just the way it's worded. It's just very, it's just basically saying like everything should be minimal and everything should be the least it possibly can. And what I'm saying is that I think there's more programmatic considerations there than that. And I would hope that they would take other things in consideration. like how important is this event for us to get a good turnout. You know, like they're getting ready to do the strategic planning. I hope we're planning on feeding people as we're asking them to come. like how important is this event for us to get a good turnout. Like they're getting ready to do the strategic planning. I hope we're planning on feeding people as we're asking them to come and put input into our five year strategic plan, or 10 year strategic plan. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So there's things like that. Like what is the level of the event? What, what, what, it sounds like they are doing that? but it's not in here anywhere and so I just want it to. So, I'm... A lot of time on a little topic. I did like your point though about the... De... but it's not in here anywhere and so I just want it to. So, I'm a lot of time on a little topic. I did like your point though about the definition of public outreach engagement. So do you think we should clarify that a little bit? Because we do ask for, we do a lot of community engagement to get information from the community. So I just want to make sure that that's. So maybe this would help. Maybe I'll offer this up as an opportunity to. It feels like this is really the only policy that has some issues probably should be worked out to a better line with which your goals are. So why don't we, if the board wouldn't mind adopting requests of the board to adopt the other policies, and then we will bring the publicpurpose policy back. We'll try to tweak it some of the better to find some definitions and what that looks like and then we'll bring that back to you before our fiscal year starts so we have a clear understanding of what it is. Okay, that works. I move we adopt the additions to the budgetary policies for FY26 and my public purpose definition I'd like to come back to us. Change is not. Change is, sorry, updates. Change is updates. Yeah. Second. Got a motion in a second. Any further discussion to the motion? Commissioner Crenale, do you have anything? No I'm good thank you. Okay. I'm motion of the second okay we'll go to public comments and public comments. Don't see any so thanks to the board those in favor the motion vote by the sign of All right. All right. All right, those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Mr. Chair, we provide every year the historical information to the 10-year trends. I don't know that it's sort of a big purpose for all to sit here and go through line by line on that. Were there any questions that the commission had on those trends that you wanted us to research and come back with or address during the budget process, there's some areas of growth, obviously, that are out there that we need to address and talk about during the budget cycle, but if there's some specific areas you want us to look at and come back with more refined answers. I think we have to do. I guess my only question was given the financial uncertainty of where we are and the fact that we went through a similar period of financial uncertainty back in the 2010s that might be useful to look at a 20-year versus a 10-year background just for those of us that didn't live through that here in government to sort of see what it looked like. So I mean that's a great point. I don't know if it's useful or not. I just I don't know how useful it would be just because pass, you know, like an investment says, pass trains don't reflect. But. You know, no, if it's useful or not, I just want to say you have your opinion. Yeah, I don't know if it's how useful it would be just because, you know, like a investor says, past trends don't reflect. But this year feels eerily like 0708. Yes. You know, we had two, three years of double digit property value growth. The legislature stepped in and made all types of laws about rollback rates and millage rates and capping them and actually made I believe made the counties do some millage reductions at the time because of the rate of increase and then immediately the crash about 708 happened. I'm not predicting that. I'm not only about you here to be say that. I'm just saying we have had a couple of years of really big because of inflation, inflationary has been driving property values which have been driving and rightfully so we've tried to take care of employees because their bills have been going up and they've had to pay those increased bills. And insurance. And insurance. And now we're in a session where legislators are talking about reduction in taxes and reduction in assessments and while counties need to reduce their level of expenditures here's the same thing so I'm hoping that it's right that doesn't happen again but we are definitely cognizant of that concern I believe we have we are building our budget on any much more conservative property value growth than the value. So we're using a 5% growth and property value as we're building our budget around instead of a double digit or even a 8% or 9% we're looking at a 5% growth. Which remember that is off of December 31st numbers. So that should, were pretty comfortable in that. Still waiting for the best barometer is the schools. FEP calculations, their first one usually comes out in April to kind of predict and they predict property values there by county and that'll help us look at where our crystal ball is if you will. So we're looking at 5% there and so we're basing all of our inflationary numbers kind of on the same thing into the future of what we can look for compensation increases, what benefit increases, etc. So we can happy to do that. The problem I'm having in my own evaluation is even the 10 years not helping a lot. Only thing that's really helping is looking at COVID and going forward. So when you go back to prior to COVID, that kind of changed the mark. If you remember, we went into a quick dip, but then things just skyrocketed. Things got bottlenecked. The federal money came pouring in for a year or two and then everybody is kind of spent those dollars out and but the consumer market and property values have just shot up, especially in Florida. So it's been a challenge to actually I'm looking at mostly five year data. So 21 through now is most of the data I'm looking at to see the growth rates which are concerning and expenditure side Most of those are driven by compensation issues, which is another concern because there's our ongoing cost But happy to look and see if it shows any bearing if we can pull any Extrapolate any good data for you it. Don't spend too much time on it but if it looks useful that I just was curious if it would be useful. Okay the only there are positives to everything nothing everything has a silver lining. We're going to through the hard years. One of the hard years we had? 1% cost of money. You know, you could borrow money for nothing. And we've had those conversations at the meeting of when it's time to bond, when it's time to borrow. So, you know, things that just like in the real world, I call it the non-governmental world, you know, there are people that get rich during the pressions. You know, there are times to borrow money and get access to money, and they're not right now. They will be more so in the future as things as rates start to drop. So as money becomes cheaper, our ability, as construction becomes less expensive. You know, those have also torn off through the roof. And as long as, um, the tear of some labor is going to cause that to go down. So, um, when we went through this in our 708, I'll speak from a historical experience, um, and I was over facilities maintenance. Um, we could not find electricians, plumbers, concrete, because the residential market and commercial some markets were just paying them, they were, you know, a lot more money. And it was, we got to pay more, we had to pay more, we can't compete, we can't compete. When the crash hit, they were lined up knocking in our door, happy to take what we paid with the benefit package and some stability of knowing that we're going to check every two weeks. I'm happy we all got to through that again, but the market is the market. It's not necessarily set. Prices can go down in construction. They won't go back to what they were, but they can go down. They can slow down. And so hopefully some of that will transpire as we see markets mature in some counties in South Florida already we're already seeing How's the sale of the market a lot longer is becoming a buyers market over a seller's market already so those things are already happening How that transitions into us is yet to be seen But it's never my goal to always I mean personally always behind cell. That's why I have to keep working. But hopefully, in the government world, we don't do that. Hopefully we're building a market that is more affordable to build and more affordable to borrow than made to build. So that's kind of our goal. So we keep on that as well. And I think right now, we just need to get through the legislative session and see with the next few months, I mean, federally it's just been a kind of a wait and see, watch see what happens every day until we kind of see where the things settles a little bit. We're in the treasury settles, we're the market settle, we're housing and Florida settles, we're the legislature settles. So some of that's to be determined, but we are keeping on it and we will definitely bring, rather relevant points back. If this board, and I don't have to bring David back every time, one of our financial advisors is always an economist by degree. And he always does a good job of keeping this board up to date. He's happy. David James is happy to come in and talk to this board anytime. We can use somebody else if you like. He's pretty good at what he does. He's pretty accurate in what he sees things there at. I think last time he told you all, he was in a tale of two cities. Remember that? Yeah, I remember that. He seems to be coming true, right? Richard getting richer, getting tougher on the little man. And it seems to be happening, right? inflation to be hitting hard on those people that are trying to help. So he's happy to come in and talk economics over time. And we can always send him a schedule and become in and talk about how to rather do it again in the summer when things are a little settled down. So see what's going on. Happy to do that. Thank you. Thank you. I guess my only, can I ask one more question about the overall flow? I'm sorry to install things a little bit, but I guess I'm interested to understand. I mean, so you talked a little bit about it. I guess the cost of money would be less. Potentially the supply chains and labor shortages are going to sort of temper that cost of money a little bit, unfortunately, I think. But, you know, we have a lot of eggs in the sort of facilities bucket right now, right? Like, we've got a lot going on with the dosido plan. I guess I'm wondering about that. If there's a need to examine that, why? Because I think there's some efficiencies to be gained right as we all, if we consolidate in the civil courthouse and maybe there's some cost of efficiencies we could gain there with less buildings to take care of, less facilities to manage, but then there's also the cost of renovation and construction. Have we done any or are we planning to do any evaluation of that and sort of how those cost efficiencies might help us in this? So I think that we did and we initially created the plan of what was, you you'll remember, I'm trying to remember how far back it was. But initially the courthouse wasn't even on the schedule. Right. Right, we were just gonna build a new building for a court services, a court service building. You know, then we talked about and worked on what the cost of not moving the courthouse, the doubling, not doubling, but having a lot more bailouts, having a lot more cost by having two courthouses. And so we're pretty far down that path, to reevaluate that path. Animal services, I think, are just a nature of needing a new building. I think that's more of a nature of needing an updated facility more than it is anything. Where that question in my mind we haven't talked about this publicly a lot but I think we're that's going to be a big question is how we address a jail eventually. That number is going to be huge before we do it it needs to definitely have some factor of ability to operate at a lot less cost if it exists. How we build it should create a need for less staff, you know, if we do it the right way. I think that's probably the next biggest question. I think the things that- You can get the job up there some time. Thank you. Amen. So, you know, I think, you know, the ability to deliver those services differently, other than just incarcerating and holding individuals is a key factor to that need to be in for sure. So, that's probably, I would say, the largest facility. I'll need to have those discussions and really bring in experts in that that can help with that across the board. Not just what happens while they're incarcerated, but how do we keep that down? What factors, what alternatives do we have? Work release was one quite frankly. I was so glad to see his clothes because it's just As an effective tool and with the other things they're now available in terms of Electronic monitoring and some of those things The cost is very cost prohibitive. So if there are other alternatives, I mean obviously there are times where you have to have a jail Unfortunately, you have to have people incarcerated But if any opportunities to do other things other than that infrastructure cost, I agree with. So I would say this, your next big target, I think the smaller jobs that the DOSU they're playing, if you will, just they're not a large financial impact. I mean, renovating facilities, the growth over there, moving, renovating the fire. I guess I was thinking more about speeding up that process. That's like, actually trying to borrow money and move that process along to gain efficiencies of, like, for example, if we... Yeah, I don't think it's a cash flow issue. It's not. It's just a time, getting architects, getting them to get through their process, getting a review, getting goods out. because the courthouse we're available, we're ready to pull that trigger any time to get money. So it's not a... getting them to get through their process, getting a review, getting vids out, because the courthouse we're available, we're ready to pull that trigger any time to get money. So it's not a cash flow, it's just a amount of time it takes to get something that project off the ground and get all the permitting and all the everybody aligned with what you want to accomplish. So Bowie are definitely aware of that. I agree with you. One of the things that, from a facility standpoint, our continued. I agree with you. One of the things that, from a facility standpoint, are continued flex work schedules. Some of those things. I was the manager. I've talked, you know, we moved to the third floor. And when we moved there, I said, look, we can't all sit in here at one time. There's too many of us. But with the schedule that we have, and we're effectively what we do, we're able to fit in the space we have. I'm not sure how the counties are just bringing everybody back in the space that they have with the growth that's happened around the state. There's just a lot going on. It's a lot of infrastructure needs to house people. And that can be very cost ineffective. So, it includes maintenance and increases, air conditioner loads and increases off kinds of things. So anyway, I hear you. We agree, we do evaluate this thing as we go forward as we come back to the board. Those are all the things we're thinking about. Okay, thanks. Okay, for our discussion. The last thing we have, Mr. Chair, is saw the Wases are deep down. Okay. We have Mr. Almost here to going through that. The part of this I think, guesses prepared to talk about the debris where we are on debris. Yes. Well, to kind of clear that out, that was a little bit outstanding. Really issues outstanding issues please that we are updating you on that as well from last year. We are as that. We are as clear after all of the next page 1858. Thank you. Oh, one of these. He's the last but not least. Not just 60. 160. Okay, got it. Thank you. Good afternoon commissioners. Go so almost always director. So I guess it's my chance to give you the deep dive on garbage. Okay. Okay. Okay. So here is the mission statement of our department. I mean, you can go ahead and read it. I would highlight the pictures. The pictures at the bottom kind of give you a very succident version of what we do. Put the trash by the carpside. We have contractors who won't pick it up, take it to our transfer station, and from there it gets consolidated and goes to New River Lanfield. That's a few most beautiful picture of a landfill ever. It is a great picture. Actually, if you had the chance had the chance to go to the New River, laugh it lately. If you don't know you're in a landfill, you can tell. They run a flood notch operation over there. So this is a very linear picture of what we do, and of course we want to do something different. Our vision statement is of move away from that linear approach and embrace the circular economy. You know we want to use the BOR approved zero waste plan, we want to use the kind of waste management hierarchy and get out of that stream linear approach. So how do we fund our department? We get our funding from four assessments and tipping fees. the Fund 148, that's the Universal Monetary Corp. Collection Monetary Assessment. That gets assessed to all the people in the only corporate part of the county that live within the monetary area. And I'll go into a lot of detail later on that. If you live outside that box, then you pay for the rural collection assessment. that's the people who primary are supposed to be using the five rural collection centers that we have in the county. Everybody in the county including businesses they pay for the solute-weight management assessment and that assessment provides county-wide services and how it took about those services in the next slide. And then we got the tipping fee, our recycling fees, those are the ones that we collect at the transfer station, and those are paid. The tipping fees are pretty much by all residents in the county and all businesses. And then the recycling fees are paid by those cities and those businesses that use our recycling facility. Not everybody does. Use us. So every time I look at this diagram, I see something that I would like to change, but I think I can explain it. So 148, that's the a mandatory curbside assessment. So the money gets collected to your tax bill, and we use that to pay for the waste hauler, in our case it's GFL, and to pay fund for 100, which is that transfer station tipping fees for the management of the Ways and the recyclables. Fund for three on the right corner, that pays for the management of the rural collection centers, and there also should be a arrow pointing back, again, to 400 because they also pay for tipping fees and recyclables. Fund 4 or 5 is the one that is assessed countywide and that pays for countywide services. And those countywide services are the Hustlers Waste Program, the Waste Alternative Programs, the landfill compliance, that's where the five closed landfills that we still have. And then the rural collection centers are typically used for people in the unincorporated area, but they're available for everybody in the county. So they pay for a portion of the service as well. Just to give you an idea, the currently for curbside collection, we have the pay as you throw systems, so the smaller container, the less you pay. So the range right now is $204 to $330. As an assessment, if you're just a rural collection center, customer you pay $132. And if you are for the county-wide solar waste assessment, the range is between $ and 25 and that depends where your curbside or recollection customer Performance measures, you know the thing I wanted to mention and this one is that we last year we upgraded all of our performance measures pretty much I mean we had a lot of stuff that didn't mean much to anybody but us. So we kind of looked at the kind of questions we got on a daily basis and we put that as our performance measure. So hopefully they'll be useful for the public on our customers. Can I ask a question about that? I guess I'm interested to understand. I mean, I see recycling on there, but I really, I guess I feel like our primary performance measure should be reduction of waste. Like how much are we reducing waste? Like that's our goal, right? Zero waste. Our goal is zero waste, which I know is a number, it's all verceding, and we're never going to get there. But like, I would feel like the reduction of our waste stream is our number one priority and our number one goal And I so I guess I Confused why that's not a performance measure. That's a number that we can easily put as a performance measure Honestly, he's not gonna change that much, but it's still a waste generated per capita that that is a measurement of Right, I guess if Potentially, but as our population increases, things change and that may not be a reduction of waste, it may be. Oh no, it's not going to be as our population grows. So as long as that should be, salt waste going down per capita is a decrease of waste, although what we generate is accounting. I don't know. Like for example, I mean like organics is like a number one target, right? It's 30% of our waste stream or more. Right. And so if we could get rid of organics, we would drastically reduce our waste stream. In order to see any kind of significant change on the per year tons of waste transported to New River, yeah, we need a significant change. Something like a big organic, which we are getting, hopefully. So we need some significant projects to get any kind of change on those numbers. I know, but I guess that's my point. It's like that should be our goal. And then we drive our economic development office towards that, we're driving your office towards that, we're driving our policy conversations and the command plan towards that, like if that's a primary goal, I guess it's a strategic plan conversation. But yes, I mean we got this number so we know how much wages we take every quarter to every month, every day to New River, so we can put that as a performance measure as it will be difficult. Mr. Chair. Yes. I think the point Mr. Prisogist made is that we talked about earlier. That's why we're really putting a lot of effort into this strategic guidance here in St. Louis planning this year is because we believe that it needs to be a two-way street. We need to get citizen direction. We also need you to hear from the departments about, say this is what we have to do every day. This is why we have to do it, et cetera. But then that feed into what you are building. So then when you build out what you want in your goals, the department can build their budgets and their performance measures to make sure, hey, this is what you said was a priority for us to accomplish. And this is how we can accomplish it. But it may cost us $x dollars. We may have to reallocate, we may have to change direction or whatever. So we want to make sure at the end of this process, then we build 27 budget out that they're building performance measures and budgets out exactly with Trying to accomplish exactly what you're saying so this is the mission statement This is what we're trying to do because this is what we're doing now. This is how we operate So if you want to change how we operate we need to know that and we need to be able to provide back you Well, this is what it costs to change operation This was called cost that accomplishes goals and and how or how do we get to those goals? So I agree with you. I think that that's That's the alignment that needs to happen over this summer and early fall is that alignment? Well, yeah, I think to that point like a lot of these women are going to need cross department All right like in order to get to reduced waste like we need procurement on board And the early fall, is that alignment? Well, and it's, I think to that point, like a lot of these people are going to make cross departmental, right? In order to get to reduced waste, like we need procurement on board, we need economic development on board. We need a lot of pieces have to move. Like us can't do that by himself, right? Exactly. So don't expect you to read all the names and numbers in there. But to do what we do, it does take a lot of people. And right now we're a blue beach shy of certainly FD's at the department. And. So don't expect you to read all the names and numbers in there, but to do what we do, it does take a lot of people. And right now we're a blue beach shy of certainly FDs at the department. And these does not include the dozens of subcontractors that we use from GFL to pick up the ways and from GMI to help us run the materials recycling facility. How many total employees does that cost? 60, go and Oh, it's right at the top. I see a lot of 68. And we are not fully staffed. It's usual we have vacancies. So is that 68 with the vacancies or was that? That's with the vacancies. So just now it's like the quick summary of the different divisions. As you know, you know, the what I like to call the heartbeat of the program is the Vita Brown environmental part. That's where we have the transfer station, the Merf, and the Hasse waste facility. We also have satellite locations, those five rural collection centers. And then we have those county white programs, waste alternatives, waste collection, and we take care of the closed landfills in the county. So as you know, the transfer station, that's where the solar waste cone, we collect, I'm going to say 99% of the solar waste in the county, you know, we're used by all the businesses in the cities. And all this stuff gets consolidated and currently goes to the new river, landfill. I got this session called Next Steps, and this is kind of like the issues we're dealing with, or we're planning to deal with. By far, the biggest one with the transfer station is that our contract with new river is going to expire in 2028. So we need to make a decision. And now the start, the time to start making those decisions. And I'll have a slide about that later. If you recall a couple of years ago, we finally replaced the tipping floor of the transfer station. Now it's time to replace the roof. So we're looking at that. We're getting some prices. Last year we raised the tipping fee from 57 to 65. You know, we're just mid-year, but we think we have collected enough money, or we will collect enough money this fiscal year to be able to pay for that roof repair or replacement. Yes? I just want to take this opportunity to tell anybody in the public that maybe watching that if you've never visited the transfer station that you should go visit, I have yet to have someone go visit that facility and not come back and press, especially after visiting the materials recovery facility. So just if you're listening and you haven't seen it, please take a drive out there and take a look. Thank you. You're welcome. My favorite facilities. Yeah, and as you know, I mean, this is most of the buildings and instructions this facility are the original one from 89. So the next step, and there's gonna be probably not this next fiscal year, but the next one, is we need to do a pavement study and look at what needs to be replaced or repaired. So we know that's coming. Last time I was here, we were talking about they need to do a Western transfer station just because of the growth of the county. That's something we're looking at right now. I mean, we've been using the GFL transfer station that's located by Bear Archery. So whenever we get kind of back top and our facility, we have the ability to use them. It works for us because it takes pressure from our facility and the country we got with them, they do the haul into new rubber. So it's got like a double benefit. Also, we're looking at ways to maybe hold directly from our work-election centers to new river. So we don't have to bring them back to the transfer station. So long story short, we're not currently looking at the need to build another transfer station. Plus, it would be very difficult for us to find a suitable location anywhere to build a second one. The Merf, this is where your orange and blue beans go. And as you know, we have a dual stream system. We are one of the only two dual stream facilities in the county. I mean, in the state of Florida, it is a little bit more expensive to operate a dual stream facility, but you end up with a better product at the end And it's easier to market what we collect at the Merf We've been looking at ways to Modernize improve the facility reality is we don't have the space to add any kind of significant equipment Robotics AI all the kind of stuff post of that we read about We just don't have the space there. So any kind of major improvement, we're talking about building an infancy of the, and that's not something we're looking in the immediate future. So again, I'm just going to say to my colleagues, I think that's a really great example of something that I think is worth a conversation as we're looking into the future and that's the future planning process. Like, if our goal is less waste and finding ways to reutilize that for economic development and attract companies to come to our eco-loop, we have to have ways to split that stream apart and have a recovery facility that would allow us to do that sort of stuff. And until we have some of that technology, like, that's never going to be a reality. it's definitely something that I think, and the equilibrium was an idea before its time and it's really cool but I think if we want to make it, if we want to see that thing really succeed we're probably going to have to make additional investments in how we are able to divert different waste streams in order for those manufacturers and service facilities to be able to take advantage of them. So just a point for the future is not an in that conversation. Absolutely. So next up are the rural collection centers. These are like mini transfer station. We have filed them look at it throughout the county The two big next steps you're pretty familiar with when I least one of them so We are currently leasing or occupant space at the Fairbanks rural collection center. That's owned by Whitehurts. So we're finally working with them to purchase the property and actually purchase an additional acre to expand that facility. So as good news, we're currently going to the due diligence process. And then the other one that's been working for years is the Work Collection Center in the City of Newberry. Two, three weeks ago, the city approved the sale of the property, so we're doing the due diligence as well. And they're both moving forward. So they're gonna be bigger than our regular collection centers will give us a chance to do more stuff, like a bigger, reduced area, better traffic flow. So we're really looking forward to making changes at those locations. And as the other ones, we have the opportunity. Mr. Chair, may I ask? Yes. Gus, do we check to see or do we even worry about whether they're county residents using this or not? I know up in Keystone, they check to see if you're a member of that community, if you're a county resident that you have to show proof that you're a county resident before you can use it. We do not ask for license or anything like that. I mean, we do check the license plate of the vehicle, but no, we, as a policy, we don't stop somebody and say, show me your driver's license before you can use it. All right. Thank you. The other facility that's within the environmental park is the Hussar Swiss Management Facility You're pretty familiar with that program the big change that we're looking at it was to build a new one I mean this one like everything else is the original one is bossing out the seams. We need more space and and the board had approved a plan to get to a new one. I mean this one, like everything else, the original one is busing out the seams. We need more space and the board had approved a plan to get to a new one. And I have a slide about that one as well. On the engineering and compliance side, as I said, we have a number of close landfills that we still have to monitor for groundwater contamination issues like that. I spray routine work, the one that is given as issues is the Southwest landfill in Archer. We keep having an issue with stone water intrusion with leads to more cost managing the lead shade. So we have been working with UF and consultants to try to address that. And the other one is, the board directors to look at ways to repurpose these closed landfills. So one thing we're looking at is we need to have areas designated, predesignated for the management of debris from hurricanes. So right now, like for example, the E. colou, peace one events is empty because we're looking at having a permanent facility or permanent permanent for temporary use at the Old North East landfill. So you'll see that coming as a budget request. On the waste collection, waste alternative waste collection is the arm that manages the curbside collection program. And waste alternative is the countywide educational arm of the department. That's where we go to schools, the tours of the Livida Brown Environmental Park and manage our social media. The big next step for this area is one that I know you guys are very familiar with because you get a lot of about this. And it has to do with the mandatory collection area and the subscription customers. So that square box around the city of Gainesville does the mandatory collection area. At some point somebody determined that that was going to be the area that was going to be required to have mandatory collection. I'm not sure how those boundaries were determined, but I'm assuming you have to do with density roads, the kind of stuff we would look at currently. So if you lived outside the box, then you were intended to be using the rural collection centers, those five plus the six one in the city of New Berge. Over time, we have had development. And those blue subdivisions have been added to the mandatory collection area, even though they're not inside the box. So when we get new subdivisions built in the county, they can request to be added to the program. And if the roads are fine and the densities there, they get added. So right now we got this really by looking at an excitation map but this is manageable right now. The issue we have is there's a lot of people who are outside the box, outside those blue dots that for whatever reason they don't want to use in real collection centers, they want a curbside service and there's a lot of them. So just looking at the map, you can right away tell that we need to take another look at our current curbside collection area. And that's kind of like we're working on. The issues we're going to be dealing with is, you know, it's not only the density. I mean, you can look at the density, looking at the dots, the blue dots and the green dots, but it's also, we need to make sure that the roads to all those houses are accessible. I mean, we currently have bad roads within the box that we're having issues with. The only problem that anticipates is there's a lot of people next to those green dots that they're happy to use the rural collection centers and they're happy to pay only $132. I don't want to pay the $200 or the $300. So they are going to probably have a strong opposition for us expanding this curbside collection area. So we're just going on the first steps. Actually it was just a coincidence I was given a presentation to the rural Consulate Advisory Committee a couple of weeks ago on a to the opportunity to kind of talk about this and get their initial feedback. So yeah, they're interested but they had the same concerns of what about the roads, you know, what about, you know, I'm perfectly happy using the Royal Collection Center now you're going to increase my taxes. So those are things we're going to have to deal with. Guess I should have backed track. If our initial stop to address the situation was to remove GFL as the only way you could get curbside collection, you'll recall we were getting a lot of complaints about people complaining about the GFL service. And we said, OK, we're going to make it this open open market so you can pick anybody you want to collect your your garbage Unfortunately, I'm not aware of anybody was it being able to make that transition and the reason is If the other haulers get one call two phone calls, they're not gonna drive just to pick that one two customers Plus and I just find out about this you know if you're working within the city of Alatra, for example, you cannot come and go to the city of Alatra ways with that subscription customer. So you're back to just making a special trip for one customer. So that's why we haven't been able to get that going. So the only solution is anybody in the private sector, I mean, here's a business opportunity. I mean, you just have to have insurance and I mean to collect the waste and you could get being business. Or, and that, we need to be doing a serious analysis of how we're going to expand that box to fit our current needs. So this is the update on the Green Management. This line looks a little bit different than yours. Here's the update one. Thanks, guys. Can you see the slide on one? I see the disaster of the very management on the screen. So the update from the previous slide is I just got the final numbers from Hurricane Elaine so I wanted to go to here. So at the end of the day we ended up collecting a little bit over 208,000 cubic yards of the other ways. That's a lot less than we expected originally. The initial number was 350. So that's good. We collected 2031 hazardous trees and limbs and We're still getting the final invoices but the estimated causes five point four million dollars, which is a lot less than the initial SMA obviously because we collected a lot less yard debris So you recall we had a lot of issues during the process some of them them were internal, some of them were external. So we're looking at ways to kind of streamline the process for the next one, hopefully in 10 years, the next one. One of the issues we have was the piggybacking issue. We have a contract with a monitoring company and a collection company. Most of the municipalities in the county piggybacked to our contract. In the middle of the event, we found out that if that FEMA may or may not or was clear, they were going to do, they were going to honor those piggybacking agreements. So the county decided to take the whole thing under our wing. So we pay for the entire collection, order in the city of Gainesville and the city of Alachro. So the solution to this speaking back in issue is we're proposing to issue a new RFP to get a new monitoring company and get a new collection company. They may end up being the same ones we have now, but we want to go to the RFP process and add all the municipalities in the process. So it would be a joint procurement process, and then at the end of the day, everybody in the county will be using the same companies, but everybody in the county will have their own individual agreement, the way it's supposed to be. We had some initial conversation with the cities and they all seemed to be interested. So right now I'm trying to schedule a meeting to see how it actually will work and then go from there. I mean, no sure we're going to be able to get this in place for the next hurricane season. Hopefully we won't have a hurricane or next hurricane season. Yes, please. The other issue was try to get more of our local resources involved in the collection of debris through the event. So there are different things we can do in that area. So one, and this is one that we always want to do, is put it as part of the agreement. You will contact and you will try to secure local sources. And we have to kind of words meet the language because they were using local sources. We wanted to use more of the smaller local sources. So that's easy to do. The second step or the next step we can do is compile a list of those local resources. In the same way, like like before hurricane season we thought people, you know, start buying batteries, all that kind of stuff, we can make a list of who's available at that point in time. So when the company comes, we said, boom, here's the list, make sure you contact these people when you start working. And I'll say, I think that environmental protection has done a lot of training landscapeers around silver water quality. So they may have a list that you guys could start with, a couple who've been trained in extension as well. Right. And then the third step, and this is not something I'm recommending at all, is to have a dual collection system. Because basically you have somebody like in our case, it was Ashbrit and their self-subcontractors, and you will have the county and a set of local subcontractors. That would be complicated as to something we can kind of. and they're self-supcontractors and you have the county and a set of local subcontractors. That would be complicated as to something we can kind of look at it but that's not something I'm recommending right now. I'm recommending that we make this a condition in the agreement and we do the list of contractors before the event and just hand that to the main contractor. So the House Waste Management Building. I just was, when this yard debris is picked up from the storms, are we sending any of this out to GRU? Are we sending? No, that plant's not running. It's not running? No, all the yard waste that we collected was sent to a three different facilities and it's all being used for compost or mulch. Okay. We're not sending it into the area. Okay, okay. Thank you. So we're all gas out there now. That one plant just isn't running. Right. Yeah, we use two custom facilities and on one life-solve facility to do these mulch-y on the composting. So the Hust Ways facility. I could get asked by a citizen if we are mulching the hurricane waste, was there ever an opportunity to make mulch available to the citizens. Like, could there have been a subcontractor that we can have mulched at the neighborhood level and made stuff available to folks? So the yard debris that was collected by Ashbrit, it was taken to gas and the life source and they're just marketing that. I have more mulch than I know what to do with it. So if anybody needs mulch, please come to a transfer station and it's all available. Yeah, but that's the problem. The most people that need it have to hire a hauler to get it to them. So that's why they were asking, like, could this have been mulched? To deliver the your ways to them. I think just throwing it out there is it was asked, but I. It's kind of like compost. The more you move it, the more expensive it is. Yeah, right. So if it was mulched on site, because they have those mulchers that can be moved around, that was the question that was asking me. Maybe that's something we can look at when we're putting this list to get off local resources. Something to add there. Yeah, okay. You used to do that. You could request a load of mulch and they would bring it and just drop it. We can't still, that is some way off topic. But for another meeting, that is something that in the past, you were able to tell a of look at funding to build a new house for the House waste facility at E-U.P. You know, we have 1.5 million in the budget. At that time, our estimated cost was 3 million. We went to some preliminary designs. We U.F. The cost went up to 4.2 million. And at the time, there was a grant, there currently is a grant available through the EPA to fund this kind of facilities. The way the grant was written, they wanted to fund the entire project so we put a request for $4.2 million. Currently we don't know what is the status of that grant, we don't know if they're going to keep working with the program, we haven't received any news. So if we wanted to pay the difference, the 2.7 million difference, and keep on schedule for the Houseways Facility, we would have to get that money from the Solid Waste Assessment fee. That's the one that's paid countywide. That will increase the cost of $4 per house for the next five years. My recommendation is that we just kind of let this process play along, see what happens with the grant, and if it doesn't happen, I'll be back here next year and we'll revisit this. And then this is the big one. So as I said before, the expiration date for agreement with new river is December 31, 2028. The current agreement gives us the option for a five-year renewal, assuming both parties are in agreement. We have to give two years notice that we are interested in the renewal. So we're in that window right now. And the agreement has this really good provision that, you know, I mean, if we get into a new agreement the rates are going to increase but our rate has to be the same as their lowest member rate. They are right now looking at their own long term plans, looking to the future, same rates for the next 20 years. So it's a good time for everybody. We tasked Tetra Tech to kind of give us a desktop analysis of what's available out there as far as potential landfills besides New River. And the reality is based on distance and pricing, options are very limited. If we wanted to, we could try to include a trail rich in DuVolk County or the Department County landfill. They currently don't take out of County solid waste. It doesn't mean they wouldn't be interested. But the trend seems to be that people are kind of fencing in whatever capacity they have in their own lifeless for their own use. So the Tetra Tech recommended that we're not going to get a better option than New River at least in the next five years. We concur with that recommendation, so we're asking the board to authorize staff to initiate negotiations with New River. For the five year extension, we went up there, we met with their staff. Hasn't been dealt with the commissioner level, but you staff level. And they are interested in renewing for the next five years at least. I move that we authorize staff to initiate negotiations with New River Solid Waste Association to extend the existing agreement for an additional five years. Second. Second. You got a motion at a second? Any further discussions? Any further discussions? No. Thank you. Great job. They really do. Are there any public comments? You're back to the board. Those are the favorite motion vote by the side of I. I'm going to post. Any other motion carries. That's all I got. I'll be in questions. I think. It's my like a question is, what we've done to analyze, in part based on conversation. But we're to analyze the way that we call that way. It's like, have we looked at electric, correct some of the electric buses now that move people all around our city, could we do something to reduce the overall energy burden and costs of our trucking that much waste out of county every single day? So yes, we have looked at it. I don't see electric vehicles being an option at this point. I mean, if you call, I know the city was trying to get a contract to hold the waste within the city limits using electric vehicles and the technology is not there, it's even more far away for the vehicles we use, which are much bigger. So electric vehicles is not an option. One thing that New River has been doing for the last couple of years is gas. They've been collecting landfill gas and they're feeling that into the network. Like compressed natural gas vehicles? Yes, which is what we use to call, this GFL uses to move their vehicles. Initially, they were looking at the possibility of setting up a gas station outside the landfill. They're kind of backing away from that. They don't want to be into a business, but their partner, who was going to actually do and manage that, they're interested in talking with us to see if we want to participate, maybe build that one there, maybe build one of the E-Colub. I was kind of waiting to get this motion to a starting negotiation to start talking with them as well. Obviously that will be, we'll have to change all our vehicles. None of our vehicles is set up to run on compressed natural gas. But that's something we have discussed with our new free manager. How would that look? Maybe do one or two, let's see. Move from there. So that's the direction we're looking at. Thanks, Mr. President. Thank you. Mr. Wheeler. I'm a big fan. It's real user friendly. LeVita Brown is really user friendly. I'm out there quite often. And Keystone Elementary is bringing their children over to for a visit to a site visit. So I'm impressed that we are attracting kids out there for a field trip. They're kids outside of my door all the time. That's it. But my question too is, you know, we've been working on this eco-loop for quite a while now. And how hopeful are you that we're going to actually have something in place out there soon. So I've been burned so many times by the glue that I'm a little bit hesitant. I got you to talk about that being said we are right now talking with Florida Express Environmental. They were the CND company they were going to build a CND Merf. They won the first RFP. We're back at the table and kind of looking at numbers. The difference under current approaches, they want to build a CND transfer station and over time, transitioning to a CND Merf. And then we're looking at case, if they want to put it away, we would do kind of marker rates currently and give them incentives in the least as they move forward with the recycling part and the jobs part. So that's kind of where we are. I'm not going to make any promises because I've been burned twice already so. Is there anything specific that we have done or could do to make it more attractive to whoever it is we're trying to get out there? What are the blocks that you see? So I'm kind of jumping to going a little bit but one thing we've been talking with the advisory groups we talked with the Environmental Protection Advisory Group with the citizen climate and with ERAC just early this week is the option for the board to consider opening up the equal loop to businesses outside the zero waste recycling waste management more like a regular industrial part. So we got input from the advisory groups already. I what Sean we're going to talk about it and then put our presentation on bringing that back to the board. It just blows me away that the university would not have these young minds out there that could help us come up with a way to deal with our our waste you know that we could get them out there with some kind of startup that would help address some of those things. But that being said, the C&D that we're looking at down the road in terms of resource or a place for us to once the Florence landfill issue has been settled, you know, where do we go from there? Are we, are you all actively looking at sites now or solutions, you know, for where we go after? So right now there's two CND landfills of the county, Florence and Watson, and they're both open, and they have a lot of capacity. In addition to that, GFL also takes CND and they take that CND to Jacksonville, Wastebrook, CND and they take that CND to interlaken. And if Florida's personal environmental were to side out transfer station at the E.C.O.L.U., that CND would go to a color. So it kind of seems like the CND is leaving the county with these transfer stations. That seems to be the way we're going. I see. Thank you. Thank you for that. Mr. President. I guess I just mentioned it earlier, and I guess that what I wanted to say is, I think if you build it, they will come model for economic development, doesn't always And like, I think it's a good idea, but again, I think it's going to take, if we really want to be successful, I actually think it's going to take more investment on our part, both. I think now we at least have an economic development title that's focused on that, but I know Sean has a lot of other projects and things that he works on as well. but I think that like having either like a company that's helping us with recruitment of these companies and thinking about what those companies need to his point. Like we don't have optical sorters, we don't have AI technology, we don't have anything to be able. If a company wanted to come here and said tomorrow that they wanted to use some source of our waste stream, we don't even necessarily have the capacity to sort that of our way stream to be able to give it to them. So it's challenging to sort of have this concept and this idea and this physical location without all the other pieces that make it possible. You know what I mean? And I know maybe we were hoping we would identify the companies and then we would invest in the technologies or they would come kind of together. But I do think that there's, I am also disappointed that their university doesn't see the benefit of doing this kind of work with us out of the gate, but I do think that there are companies like this that do this, right? There's manufacturing companies that make stuff out of waste products all over the world. And I think we probably could attract them here, and they would be decent paying jobs and manufacturing jobs. It don't necessarily require a college degree, but I think it's going to take a more concerted effort. And I know that there's already been a big effort to some extent, but I think it's going to take a lot more than what we kind of I think initially when we started all of this we thought the university was going to be partnering with us and that's where we got that side time to that you know then what I don't know what happened there but I knew that they were at the ground breaking right there where we broke ground on that and they they were right they're involved. Yes. I was in the office. Commission of Cornell. Now that that was an old hand. Oh, OK. All right, sorry. I think any further discussions. OK, we'll move to closing comments with motion. Motion. We've seen the final vote on the negotiations with New York. I thought we did. No, we didn't. We didn't. We got the motion in second. No. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm jumping to gun again. Okay. Right. Could you restake the motion again? I guess. toosition staff to initiate negotiations with New River Solid. On the right-hand to initiate negotiations with New River Solid, waste association to extend the existing agreement for an additional five years. Okay, I thought we did. But okay, those in favor of the motion vote by the sign of i. All right. Those opposed, same sign motion carries. Okay, we moved to closing comments. Are there any public comments? I didn't see any public comments or public folks earlier, so scratch that with any commission comments. I have a question. I have a question. We've gotten an email from a citizen who's concerned about our communications using the X platform. I don't really know what that is. But Mark, are we worried about that? Madam Chair, our Mr. Chair, Mark Sexton Communications Director, I received that email. I've received a couple of phone calls from Miss Arington. Her concern is that X has become an overtly political platform and she's suggesting that we no longer use it. My failing on this is that we have 12,000 residents that are signed up to receive our information. We only put out factual information. We use it in a way that has integrity. And I would see no reason to stop sending out information on that platform to folks who use it to get our messages. We have very little interaction on that platform, unlike Facebook where we have a lot of reactions and a lot of back and forth. So I understand her concerns, but my recommendation would be we continue to feed information to folks who've come to rely on that platform for county information. Thank you. Thank you for addressing that. And I had one more question to that came from Ms. Rupert who was trying to submit information for the record. and it had not been included in the record, but it was because she had called in the information on the day on January 28th and each one of us had received the information but did not share it with the clerk. And so I've checked back with the clerk now if she submits it then it can be included in the January 28th but we were also talking about question she also had a question if people are not able to come into a meeting or they call in something and they have brought information in like she did could that still be submitted since we're, phonians now, if people are dropping off information for each of us to see, can that be submitted as a record if it's requested? That makes sense. You know, if we each have a copy, I'm trying to make sure I'm saying this right. If each of us have a copy of the information and the caller is asking that it be submitted For the record as that caller is sharing it The call will be recorded right the call is being recorded They're not included No, not in the meat in a general meeting. Tell them how regular meeting is when people are calling in. I just want to say we've had some discussion. We had to look into it. We didn't understand because we never got a document. I think from the clerk's office perspective, our concern is particularly how we accept it. Because she called in and said, I submitted something to commissioners. We have no idea if she did, was it email, was it in person, how did it happen. And I think our concern was more with quasi-digital zoning items if we're going to start to allow people because we're trying to keep an official record. It could end up going to court And if we're allowing people to call later and say, well, I submitted this to Commissioner Wheeler, we have no idea if they did. We don't know what it was. We don't know how it happened. This turned out, I guess, she met with each commissioner in private and handed you a document. But if we had searched for emails, we would have no way of knowing. Did they meet you in a store and say, hey, here's this, now I wanted in the record, did all the commissioners see it? We have no idea. And I guess that's where our concerns started to come in and maybe your attorney has some insight on that as well. That's where we kind of got, now that we're using phone calls. This is the first instance this sort of Popped up and we just had a concern with starting to just add records when someone said I gave it to someone At some point somewhere at some time So mr. Chair when we when a person comes into a meeting to speak in person They might bring a piece of paper, right? So you need the equivalent of that over the phone call. Not that they handed it to you guys, but they handed it to the clerk. We always say the clerk will include in the record the clerk would include. And that your public comment over telephone only happens outside of the quasi-judicial hearing, right? So we'll say to you, no that needs to be considered within the Quasi Judicial Hearing, and we have provisions for how we handle that, because it's exparte for you guys in those. So we go into your emails and we pull everything that we can find that may be some kind of communication with you on the merits of a Quasi Judicial Application, or they submit it to staff, and staff puts it together. It's part of like a zip file or a SharePoint file somewhere, and the clerk can pull those. If someone comes into a meeting with something, then they still need to hand it to the clerk. So the question sort of is, how do you hand it to the clerk? Giving it to you guys is not handing it to the clerk. So if we can figure out a way over the phone that they can hand it to the clerk, quote, on a handling to the clerk. Well, that's what I was going to say. If the commissioners have it and they want it in the director, we would have been fine. And Commissioner Willis said, I have the documents here. And you know, absolutely. We have no way of tracking down these documents or if you've really got them. We just, but she could have emailed it to the clerk and asked for it to be included. Could that have happened? Potentially that could be a solution, but we need to talk to the clerk about that. OK. About whether they're comfortable with that. I know, I think we don't have internet access from the computer that we use, that the clerk uses. And there we do. You do. We're now on the county network. We've always had some weird situations. We're sort of, we joke and say we're the redhead, step children to the county. We used to have some issues because it was our computer, but on your network and we've worked that all out. Now everything's maintained by the county IT. It's on the county network and we just pay a fee basically for that service. That kind of worked out a lot of. To take our notes. It's complicated. So it's a Clark's responsibility. It's a clerks responsibility to collect what is brought into the meeting, right? And the board documents. So it's a clerks responsibility to know that that is the document that they were speaking from and that you've received the document. So it has to be something that the clerk is comfortable with. It's kind of a new twist. It's never happened. And we thought we'd say we might have a little problem. Because we don't. I couldn't even tell you how to do it to you guys. There's no way for us, us and the clerk's office to now, what happened when she met with individual commissioners. We didn't even know if she met with individuals. No, I think she just dropped the papers off that morning because she couldn't come to the meeting. Each one of us should have gotten that. We did a packet. Right. Mm-hmm. I think that to the meeting. She each one of us should have gotten that. We did a packet. All right, I did. I think that was addressed to each of us. And I didn't follow through. I didn't know too. We just had it there. But then later, she was looking for it to be on the record that she had sent those to all of us. So I guess I would ask, and maybe we just refer to staff to ask to have a conversation with the clerk about the possibility of including a clerk's email address and our instructions for the online phone calls and then you have something to be included in the record with your phone call. If the clerk is okay with that, then it would get emailed to the clerk's email address. It doesn't mean that we would get it in a timely fashion. Like, I don't know that we can promise that we can like pull it up on the projector or anything because that would just make the meeting really long and complicated, but it would at least be submitted for the official record as a part of their comment. Mr. Chair, the clerk would be receiving things that you didn't see. So to the extent that you're accepting that public comment and making making decisions on that, you won't have seen it. Well they could copy that. They could copy. But if each of us had more and more complicated. And then in this instance, there were each of us had a copy of it. And she was talking from that could then one of us submit it for her. And this is what I'm trying to understand. If we have ahead of time that paperwork and that caller is talking directly to that paper, then we could pass it to the clerk. Sure. You could pass it to the clerk. Yeah, we would have accepted that. We just want to bring it up. That was kind of a clear, odd situation. And if we're going to start doing this more we may want to figure out something. And or I mean I guess it's like she brought it and she brought a copy for everyone of us but she didn't bring a copy for our attorney or manager or a clerk. Like I think he will need to understand that the clerk needs a copy. Anytime somebody is giving a copy to something in an official meeting like the clerk is going to need a copy if they want it to be part of these initial records. So maybe they just make an extra copy for the clerk and leave it for the clerk. I don't know but yes good conversation thank you to any further interesting any further commissioner comments I guess I just have one I keep bringing it up, but that is the traffic enforcement cameras contract. You know, the sheriff said the last time I reached out to them because we talked about it at the past two MTPO meetings. And so I reached out to them and they said that they were waiting for us to finish the contract for the traffic enforcement cameras. So I'm just putting that out there. Then I think it's like, stand on your list for Friday. Yeah, because I've got a list thing for Friday too. So yeah, so just it's, I think it's in our, the fall is in our core. I think because even though it's then that's gonna be doing a lot of it, we have, and they said they have their position and they're kind of ready to go, but we have to do the contract because we're the local government. So I think we're the ones that have to do the paperwork piece of it. So I think they're just waiting on us. And I just wondered if we could get an update on that contract soon. That's it. Okay. Mr. Cornell, you have any comments? Appreciate all the work. Thank you all for letting me participate today remotely. Hopefully I'll be back next time. Okay, please the court Cornell you have any comments? Appreciate all the work. Thank you all for letting me participate today remotely. Hopefully I'll be back next week. Okay. You feeling any better? Got work. Hopefully I'll be better by the next week Butterkin. Yeah, good. It will soon. Thank you. Well, if there are no more commission comments, then we are adjourned.