Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the budget meeting for the Board of Shot County Commissioners. For August 19th, 2024, let the record reflected all commissioners are present. He would please rise for the pletiful legions. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God and indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you all very much. With that, we will go to public input on the agenda items anyone wishing to speak during this course the board meeting must fill out a card, state your name for the record and state which agenda item or items you'll be addressing. Your marks are limited to three minutes max and shall be addressed to the body as a whole and not to individual commissioners and there is no discussion at this time. Thank you, Juth. Our first card is Jeff Lustick. Jeff, good to see you, sir. Hi, I'm Jeff Lustick and I'd like to talk about our sewer system. Personal experience. I know that we're having problems with the brackish water that's emptying into our beaches and during this flood, last flood, several of my friends, septic tanks, overfilled. So I went down to the water department and I'm at El Myra Boulevard and I asked if we were, I went to the nice ladies at the Water Department and they gave me the website to go on to to see if I qualified for the sewer system. And I got in response the next day. Unfortunately, I'm not. But I just was very impressed at how streamlined the project was and how great the workers were. And I hope that on September 10th, you'd vote for me to be part of the construction industry licensing board so I can see what the other part of the equation is on how you deal with things. Because people ask me a lot of questions, and I like to learn about permitting, and how well the city's run. So our sewer system, city to sewer, is very important to keep our beaches clean. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Mr. Kaelin, speaking to the budget. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you for having this meeting today. I wanted to just address a couple of records. David Kaelin, Charlotte County resident, Pongrode area. First I'm going to ask you guys this year, all of us are facing some tough times. Bydnomics has been a little rough for the last four years. So I'd ask you to reduce that mileage rate sooner than later. Give us all at least a a little bit more time to prepare next year what we need to do for as local business owners, as well as residents. Next item, affordable housing in our taxes. Many of our residents don't know that our businesses and our rental properties. They do not get to save our homes or the homestead, which definitely drives up the cost for rentals, which is oftentimes our lower income families. We need to look at a means to be able to possibly to charge it county because our businesses well do not get those tax benefits of save our homes, which puts many of our business owners again dealing with bi-dynamics, puts us in that position to pay the higher tax rates. Additionally, when you're looking at your budget being over $2 billion, consider a fun fact. There's 23 nations around the world that have a smaller GDP than what this budget is. Thank you, gentlemen. Have a good day. Mr. Kessler, your next. Good morning, Dave Kessler, for the record. Charlotte County government needs to tighten its belts just like the rest of us. Just because you're not raising the milled ray doesn't mean you're not raising taxes. You get an automatic tax increase with increased assessments. Must cut it drastically to actually lower taxes. Property taxes are already higher than Lee and Sherr Soda and the regular folks in Charlotte County need relief and they need a lot of it. For years the commission has harped on growing the tax base. With all the new people coming into our county, individual taxes should at worst hold where they are if not decrease. That hasn't happened. Instead, you've found new ways of spending. I imagine much on special interest projects where there's all the additional money going. $2.3 billion budget is outlandish. There's ways to cut and I'll give you a few examples. Reassess code enforcement. There's officers enforcing farmers as though they're in an HOA. If you don't do things like that, you can cut down on the staff. That'll save money and you can cut down on the, for this extensive code enforcement, court costs. These folks grow our food. Cut the millions of dollars for new sidewalks at Sunseeker. This not only costs taxpayer dollars, but adds to the length of time that Sunseeker will remain as a CROA and with Holtz Taxes generated that should be going into the general fund we need to get Sunseeker on the tax rolls. Don't give any more tremendous impact deals on for big businesses like Sunseekers that got motel rates instead of hotel rates. I don't know how we're making up for that loss. Lobby to cut commissioners pay and Lobby to make retirement for elected officials optional instead of mandatory. Cut the $30,000 for cornhole competitions. I was just at a restaurant and they held a cornhole competition and I didn't ask them but I can assure you it wasn't anywhere near $30,000. And the money stayed in the business and the community. And instead of going to an out-of-state company and we didn't spend a penny of taxpayer money for that and cut the $50,000 subsidizing for a boat raised tickets. I know on good advice that the fleet can be cut quite a bit. You could cut or reassess at least the $750,000 added last year for extra employees that do nothing but gravel for federal funds. The excuses that if we don't get it, somebody else will. Well, the federal government has no money. They only print more fiat money for states and county governments, the more money they print, the higher prices go up on everything for everybody. It isn't greedy capitalists that cause inflation. It's government. And there is no money. go up on everything for everybody, it isn't greedy capitalists that cause inflation, it's government. And there is no money. The money we spend on income tax doesn't even pay the interest on the debt. So people are already leaving, housing markets crashing, and you'll probably see a lot of unfinished projects pretty soon. But please, I ask you to find ways to cut spending, lower taxes, cut this budget, and cut the milled economy's not getting better. We need to find ways to be self-reliant. Let's make this county more affordable and inviting. Time is up, sir. Any other cards? Thank you. Does anybody else wish to speak at this time? We will allow you the three minute opportunity. Anyone else wish to speak? Okay, seeing no one, we will move forward. Mr. Berger. Good afternoon commissioners for the record Gordon Berger, Director of Budget Administrative Services. First item on the agenda is the Capital Projects Fund to come back bring that back to you. This is what we're going to run through. Just a cash flow for the capital projects fund. Specific projects that are identified there. Want to make sure we look at the ad volume reserves and then some options we have around the tentative milled rates. So just to remind you why we're here. When you set the tentative millage rates on the 8th, this was the rates at which you set them, or we had proposed to you. And tentatively, we had proposed minor changes in the county wide, reduction to the sheriff's millage and reallocated to the general fund and the capital projects millage. And then downated to the General Fund and the Capital Projects Millage. And then down below you'll see that reduced millage rate to the Sheriff's MSTU. Now at that meeting you also had discussion, you tentatively adopted these, but then also had discussion about leaving the Capital Projects Millage where it was at, indicated that the reduction to the MSTU was a good starting point, but that you wanted to see more. And so that's why we're here today. So in terms of the capital projects fund, commissioners, we have a couple of handouts in the packet. This is just from the 17th reminding you the amount of revenue that went up in the capital projects fund from the previous year was about 6.4 million but the additional expenditures and this was primarily to offload the expenditures for capital equipment from public works to the capital projects fund and that left us with a shortfall for that particular amount. Now remember this is a one time purchase. These are were purchased in this equipment up front. We're going to lease it back. So this is not an ongoing expenditure. This also was presented on that day. And it gives you the overview of the capital project's fund. So the dotted line there is the projected actual revenue, but also the projected going forward. And then color coded for each of our capital maintenance elements. And remember the capital projects fund primarily we said we're going to take care of what we have before we build new. And so all of the capital maintenance aspects come out of the capital project fund at 1.2 mils. And so you can see each of the components across time there. The one thing we did was we went back and added for the current year or the question or the current year's budget 25. We added what we call the discretionary projects. Those are the projects that are included in there. And so those are there and you can see a little bit of a shortfall in this current budget. However, if you look forward, that gap between the bars and that line is the amount of money that you would have available each year for future discretionary projects. By discretionary we mean things that aren't subject, don't qualify for impact fees, are not sales tax projects. Those are our primary sources of revenue for capital projects. Now, our proposal at that time was that those discretionary amounts be kept and basically saved up to be able to be used in fiscal year 28 because if remember federal government has said, FEMA said we are going to receive $120 worth of hazard mitigation grants. Our match on that is 25%, so $40 million we're going to need by fiscal year 2829 in order to match those grants. So just to lay the picture out there, the other thing I wanna make clear on this commission, this is not at the rate that you tentatively adopted. This is at the old 1.2 mil, this is at the current 1.2 mil, yes. So that kind of capacity is there before we increase the rate. So you have in your packet two handouts the first is a five-page document that's taken right out of the capital improvement program. And what we did is we went through and highlighted all of the elements that were to be funded from the Capital Projects Fund in blue. And then so you could see that and compare it with what was in the Capital Projects Fund. Then we did a one page summary that is just those elements summarized onto one page to show you what's in the Capital Projects fund that's designated towards CIP projects. I've duplicated that on this slide with one addition. You'll notice this lines up with the handout in terms of in the middle of the page there. The capital maintenance programs, parks, facilities, bridges, technology comes down and it totals up to that $25 million. All right, and that puts with the page that we have in there. And then below that, what we're calling discretionary projects, those projects that are designated for funding out of here by projects that have come individually to you, and that's about $4.5 million. The most significant of that being the Charlotte Harbor Conference Center C-Wall, at 3 million. What's also on this page, because they're not capital improvement programs, but they're monies that we've committed out of the capital project's fund, is that top section. And you can see again, that biggest chunk is that one time payment to purchase capital equipment for public works and then we'll lease it back over time and those dollars will come back into this fund. The other piece of that, of course, is the debt service on Murdoch Village of $3.7 million. So put all those pieces together and that's what we have budgeted currently coming out of this fund for 2025. Also just want to plant the seed in the back of your mind we have a lot of variables and unknowns. You know we're still we're still putting the county back together. We still have Hurricane Ian Recovery Expenses. Those are coming out of the hurricane fund, but they're going to have to be settled up down the line. Land acquisitions. There's been talk about, you know, we're not making any more land. So if a section comes open for a park or for a fire station, having the ability to purchase that land when it comes available, and this is the source of revenue that we would use for making those purchases. The one Charlotte, one water implementation plan, as that comes to before the board, there's gonna be elements in there that are gonna be capital elements and land elements. Again, I already talked about the match money for the grants, that's gonna be $40 million, but in addition to that, the buildout. So in these grants, the projects that we have submitted and are still being reviewed by FDEM, but in those projects, there are a number of what we're calling safe rooms. So for instance, a safe room for public works that would allow them to operate, manage during a storm,, right after a storm. But the grant is only paying for that shell of a safe room. So any programming that we do in there, off the space, whatever it might be, we're going to have to pay on top of that. So just keeping that out in the forefront there, those costs until these projects get approved, we've not factored those costs out or even what they would be. Then the Babcock infrastructure, Babcock is paying for the shells of projects through their impact fees, but we of course need to pay for the costs of buildout. And then just We keep hoping inflation is going down, but but the inflationary factors are still there in terms of capital So that's that's a broad overview of the capital projects fund and what's in there? What's coming out of there as you can see most of it is capital maintenance or one-time expenditures But I'll stop there if there's any questions before I go on. Mr. Dordy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just saw a clarification more than anything Gordon had a conversation this morning. I went on one with Hector and Emily and Jeanette. And on these capital projects, the ones that are committed, I think it's slide eight. If you can go back to slide eight just for a second. Here you go. We have that other handout that shows more specifically what some of these projects are, same totals, but just more detail. And I think it's going to be important. We have a workshop coming up, Hector, help me again with a month. It's coming up. We were planning a, at least a sales tax update in October and then we get into the new year we go through the our normal CIP process and review with the board. Right, that's right. So it's coming fairly soon. The opportunity is sit down and drill down on some of these projects. Although they're committed, I think we're going to have to be very, very careful after what we've seen with some of the bids and some of these other capital projects to make sure that we can afford some of these committed projects when we get further down. They're scrubbing right now the budgets to look at that and have better information for us when we get to that. But I think we really are going to need to really get in more detail in a workshop environment on some of these committed projects. Make sure we can still afford more of their sales tax funded or capital projects fund, we need to make sure we're not wasting money on something because of the environment we're in right now with the inflationary increases. But we'll have to look at those and probably eventually provide some guidance to administration as to what kind of thresholds they'll be able to look at it automatically approve. Thank you Mr I just wanted to bring in up Good Thanks, Chair real quick We can go back to the graph on six So the 40 million that you're programming in as the match. I get that. Correct. If the funding doesn't come, that's not money that's like, okay, well we got the section of money we built up reserves. We have a problem, right? Because we don't have the hurricane mitigation funding coming in. We have a huge bill. Is that what that's going toward? No, what FEMA has said is we will receive $120 million. What they have to tell us is what we've submitted a listing of approximately 25 projects prioritized by the LMT in terms of what they might. Total amount of. Well more than 120 million. Well I know. Yeah the top the top the top nine or ten make up the 120 million and then of course in addition to that we're on the this is this is our portion of that the 25% match. So they've just taken the top nine drawn the line so far and said okay we you're going to get this money you just got to see what it's for and how it's programmed and we still have to pay our 25% for the total amount that we owe so we're we owe 160 for those bills but they're going to pay 120. Right. What about and do you have this one writing by the way? Um. Okay. It's in writing. I'm not sure it's signed. It's been decreed. It's been issued. Um, the money's been allocated. I'm not sure we have a signed document now that you asked that. No. Further, I'm like, Deputy County Administrator. No, there's not a signed document. What there is is an allocation. Anytime there's a natural disaster, there's a certain percentage that is set aside at the federal level for hazard mitigation grants. So it's a separate and aside from our FEMA reimbursement process that we go through for projects. This is comes from our local mitigation strategy. So we have a work group that works all year long on projects that can increase resiliency for the community or projects that can harden facilities that are critical in the time of disasters. Those projects are what's submitted to this grant program and this is the funding source for any type of projects. We don't always get HMGP. Unfortunately, when you have very large events like Ian, we have a lot of funding and we over-submit projects because there are communities that have allocations that they can't spend all of their allocations too. Right. So it's allocated. Correct. Not appropriated yet. Right do they require appropriation language or legislation? No. No it's already authorized at the federal level. Okay. What the process is though is we have to go through projects they have to screen each one of our projects and make sure that it's going to meet their requirements and we have some projects that we can negotiate on what scope and size were allowed to build with this type of funding. It's vetted through the Florida Division of Emergency Management and FEMA together. It's just such a big piece of the puzzle. I just wanted clarification. You have to budget for the match because of the dollars come available. You have to be able the match because of the dollars come available, you have to be able to match it. Got that point. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Okay, Commissioner Zyra thing we're going to do is make sure you're cognizant of the impact that the adjustments to the military has on our reserves. So you're on the left hand side there is what I presented to you back on July 17th, and that was based on current military rates. And you can see the bottom line there, 74 million in reserves. Both the contingency and cash carry forward within our range of 5% to 10%, the fiscal stabilization reserve target there is 15%, so below that, in terms of the tentative milling rates when you set those, it does reduce our reserves. So again, keeping those contingency in cash carry forward above that 5%, it drops the fiscal stabilization reserve down to about 5.5%. So low on what the target is there, but still significant reserves. Especially when you consider we went through EN and we've depleted reserves in the past two years because of the dollars that we've had to advance there for the hurricane fund. In terms of the tentative millage rates, what we heard was it was a nice starting point that you wanted to see more. So we brought back some options. The first one is simply where the tentative millage rates are at right now and we're gonna compare these side by side. The next one is if we went with what you talked about on the 17th of keeping the capital projects millage flat not not increasing it by that reduction that we took from the Sheriff's Department or from the Sheriff's Operating Budget. Option three is we went back and looked at it a couple of years ago you reduced the milling rate in the lighting district. Again, because of the significance of the increase there, we feel like there's potential there to reduce that again. And then the fourth one is all of those combined. So just to show you that, how that looks in terms of the numbers, the way the options line up, option one, again, the way what it is right now based on the tentative rates. Option two, you'll notice the only difference there is keeping the capital projects millage rate flat, not increasing it. Option three increases that back to where it's tentatively at, but reduces the street lighting district down to .254 three mills. And then the last option is accumulation of all of those. So you can see the bottom line there, you know, about 11.77 mills. Thank you, sir. Commissioner Delic, I think Commissioner Constance. We have a lot of money that we're anticipating to get from FEMA. Will any portion of that money- Hopefully all of it. But any portion of that able to be allocated towards picking back up the reserves. No. Okay. I didn't think so. Simply reimbursement of what we've already put out the door. Thank you. And on the reserves, I guess what would have been a nice little tool on any of these examples is another line that would have said reserve, just the dollar amount of the reserves. So with leaving everything the way it was, it was $74 million, and that sent us $63 million, but it would have been nice with each option to see how the reserves would have varied. Because I think we're all kind of focusing on that as the wild card that we're, because God forbid, we don't want to see another Ian forever. But certainly not in the next few years and, you know, we need to be ready because, you know, if you get hit back to back, it can't be every 18 years. It may be a lot sooner than that. So that's the thing that I'm kind of, the X factor that I'm kind of thinking about, because, you know, a lot of what we've looked at, the actual increase in the dollar amount of what we're seeing, and we had this conversation, sidebarges before the meeting here, that it's a lot of the properties that have actually come back on. That one slide that you showed last time was actually we should have spent 20 minutes on it, because it's so important. It's properties that weren't taxed because they were damaged. Now they're back on the tax rolls. Brand new properties that were adirt and now they're a pretty sizable construction item that is now new tax dollars at the new rate and the changing of hands of properties which takes somebody who's had a house for 30 or 40 years at a super low homesteaded rate and now they get reassessed at the actual new market dollar rate and now they may get homesteaded but they're at a much higher rate. All of those things have nothing to do with increasing taxes. It's paying for things correctly based upon value. So you know I want to make sure that we have solid reserves. That's my final statement. Thank you sir. Thank you. know, I want to make sure that we have solid reserves. That's my final statement. Thank you, sir. Thank you. One thing I will say about reserves because we did put that slide together and then realize it didn't matter. Here's the thing, the capital projects millage by reducing that millage, that's that doesn't factor into these reserves because it's reserved for future capital. So that's why it doesn't impact this. Right, and if we don't have it, then we're just not gonna do those projects. It's not gonna affect maintenance and operations types of stuff, but that's a good point. Thank you. Mr. Sir? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Gordon, I know you've mentioned in the past about the cash flow, and when I look at these reserves, with reducing the reserves to a lower amount, do you still feel the cash flows are adequate? Yes, yeah. And the cash carry forward, again, where the cash flow is an issue that first three months of the year before, you know, we were expending money from October to December, but revenue really isn't flowing in. Taxes aren't flowing in until December. So we need that and that's the 5% that's there. The other piece of it is more like for instance with the Hurricane Fund right now. That's more the bigger, that's a larger, that's really the pooled cash of the entire county. Now I can't go on forever, but it floats us. Yeah, with the cash carry forward, I know it appears in the budget, the spending is up, but you've booked all of the sales tax projects in advance. Isn't that reflective of that in the budget? In the, for those projects that have been brought to the board, so tier two, no, tier ones ones anything that's gone out to bid We have to budget for it in that year so that you can go out to bed whether we've actually spent it or not correct Yeah, cuz it could be deceiving a lot of people look at the budget and say oh look look at your budget It's way up a lot of those are non-reoccurring expenses that are going to drop off as projects get completed. If I can add, except for the fact that what started in 2023 that gets carried to 2024, gets carried to 2025 shows up the same amount every single time. And so it's hard to follow. Yeah, I mean, some projects may take two or three years to complete and they're just sitting in there, but there's going to come a point where they drop off and you might see a big reduction although inflation would all the infrastructure we're doing you know because what I've heard from constituents is you know they want infrastructure and I think our budget's reflective of that you know when you look at the capital number that's infrastructure and that's what we're delivering on. In terms of outstanding insurance so I know we talk about FEMA, we talk about money we've used for things that are self-insured. How about insurance monies that are still outstanding, are we still wrangling with our carriers? Where are we with that as far as bringing that money back in that we're due? Yeah, there's about, I wouldn't say we're wrangling with them. They're very, very cooperative. What we are having to do is do the documentation. So we received up front, if you remember, they did about $12 million worth of projects that they call turnkey projects. In other words, no money came out of our pocket at all. They came in, they did the project, they paid the bill. Those were mostly smaller projects. There were another 12 to 15 million that we received in initial settlement payments when they came in. Now what's happening is as we finish these projects up, get the documentation together, we're going back and filing supplemental claims for the difference between the replacement value and what the initial settlement was. I don't remember off the top of my head, but that's somewhere around $25 million. Now again, we're in the beginning stages of that. The stadium is the very first one that we're going through this process on. But you don't anticipate any issues, things are going smoothly with the insurance carrier? So far I haven't heard them say no on anything, okay? Okay, that's good that's good to hear. Well, I mean we've heard horror stories out there with people with their own personal insurance You know, and I know we've had issues too with You know obviously with FEMA You know trying to get things covered projects approved and also we have insurance carriers to deal with as well. And I just want to make sure that they're working with us on these projects. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioner Dordy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just wanted to clarify, again, the heading, add Valorum reserves. That's just the add Valorum, which is where we get the most flexibility on July 17th, or when we had our budget workshop, slide 46, the total of reserves is like 580 million. So we cash flow wise, we're in really good shape. So we can do this, but you're right, add Valorum drop. We have the most flexibility with these dollars. Others would be more difficult, but yeah, contingency alone alone all the total contingency where you can see here and add Valorum it's only go down to 25 million it's 151 million if you take all the different funds and all the contingency accounts so we got he's got money to work with to move around if he has to correct secret so yeah that was that was my question about the cash flow that's why that's why the other piece of that of course is around if he has to. Correct? Secret so. Yeah. That was my question about the cash flow. That's why. The other piece of that, of course, is what Commissioner to Sale alluded to in terms of our capital projects. We have a large amount of money sitting there in reserve for future capital. It's designated. It's going to get spent. But as you said, could be two or three years before it gets spent. You could move around if we have. Thank you, Commissioner Constance. Yeah, and I was going to reference, again, at the July 17th, you know, spectacular slide show, slide 39 is very clear about operating versus capital. And that, to Commissioner Seo saying is that, you know, we have our operating levels have been fairly steady and it's just large capital projects and you know, some of it now has to do with e-nory construction. So when you put all those things together, that's why things have jumped up so much but they're one time spends and they sit there until it comes forward. And if bad stuff happens, we have cash there. We don't put those projects forward yet. We deal with the disaster and then we'll forward from there. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. We wanted to, because one of the options impacts the lighting district, we wanted to bring this back to you. Make sure you're here where why we're comfortable with doing this because of the valuation increase. This, again, it's advalorem, even though it's an MSTU. Because the valuation increase, obviously, the revenue is going up there too. And so we're very comfortable that there's enough room there to do this. This is, and I think this is what you asked for the last time to kind of see a comparison of the percentage increases. So if we keep the millage the same as what it was last year, we would have had a $45 million increase in revenue. Option one, which is what the tentative milled military that you passed on the 17th drops head down to 37.7. So about a 16% reduction in the amount of revenue that we would be collecting. Option two, which is what you discussed in terms of keeping the capital military, capital projects military the same. That drops it down by another $4 million and we're talking roughly a 25% reduction in the amount of revenue that would be received. Option 3 is keeping the capital projects knowledge where you tentatively have it and reducing the lighting district. That's about a 19% reduction and then option 4 is the combination of everything and that's about a 27% reduction in terms of the revenue that would have been allocated out on that floor. You don't see or have heard from any of your folks that there's any other avenues for savings. I'm sorry, you have not heard from any of your staff members or you have seen any other opportunities for savings. I'm sorry, you have not heard from any of your staff members or you have seen any other opportunities for savings. No, I mean. A couple questions. Yeah, no, I just think this is what we're comfortable with. Yep, right. Yeah, very good. Thank you. This is the impact on a homestead tax bill. So for each of those options kind of showing you where it is in the current bill, 2023 bill, and where it would be for the 2024 bill. One thing I want to point out here because when I first saw that something's got to be wrong. Is that top one? The $100,000 valuation because there's a $50,000 home set on it. Yeah, it's it's only half and so if you were to go with option four, you would actually be reducing everyone's tax bill for this current year that's homesteaded except except for those in that bottom level that $100,000. That goes up slightly, you'll notice about four bucks. Everybody else's would actually go down if you went with option four. It's kind of counterintuitive. I made Francine, check it. So those are the four options we brought. Again this just lays them out in terms of milled rates and commissioners what we would like today is, you know, we're not voting but I'd like four or five head nods as to which option you want us, I would much rather build these in, bring them back to you at the first public hearing and have them ready for you to go rather than adjusting at that meeting. So what I'd like to hear from you today is which of these options you would like to go with. Good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Option four for me. Basically, I'm looking at it not only are we reducing all of the relevant milled rates that we can comfortably reduce, which I appreciate the efforts by the sheriff and staff here to do what they could do. But it actually resulted, you know, except for the $100,000 homestead of the guy, the 200,300,400,000 valued homes, with the assumed 50,000 homestead, they actually will see an advalorem tax reduction, which is pretty good, guys. So I think I'm all for option four. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Sowe? Yeah, I'm also comfortable with option four as well. Is there a point where on the lower end you said the hundred thousand it's a four dollar increase? Where's that threshold where it goes up is like 150, 125. There's a point where you see a savings and then there's a point where it's almost a push. I mean $4. It's almost the same as last year, but still, there's probably a point where you see an actual dollar reduction on the lower end. Yeah, I don't think we calculated that. But we can certainly do that. But that's OK. It's somewhere in between. It's somewhere in there. But yeah, I support option four. If we can do it, I know at our budget meeting it was a great concern of this board to come back with these options to see what we can do. I feel really good about the comments about our cash flow. I feel solid with that as well. So, you know, gentlemen, I think we can do option four and the new people that came in let's not forget apply for your homestead this way you get the benefits of the homestead you know reduction so you know the caps I'm sorry the caps so that is a one-time deal for people who are reset but going forward they will get the benefit if it's their homestead of property not an investment property of locking in and getting Commissioner Consus. Yes, I'm also in favor of option four very good. I think I'd like to add a little bit to that I'm in favor of option four and I thought it was extremely important that we look at all of our reserves which they did very detailed I want to go on record is I'm not comfortable with reserves, but I do support the reduction. I absolutely do. We have to continue to be diligent as we move forward because we know we could be susceptible to a storm at any moment in time. And so we may have to take a future project and shelve it to utilize that money. So just, we have to be willing to accept that tough decision down the road, but I think it's the right decision to be forced with because there are things that we could move to the side that may not make people happy, but if we have to do something different to keep their taxes down, I think they'll be for that in the long run. So I support option four as well. Commissioner DeWitch, any comments? Yeah, I've come. I'm on okay. I was in my same comment, you know, in the past I feel my biggest concern is the reserves as well because of the unknown. And we've never hit the top or been real high, but we've been pretty good on it. And that's why I asked the questions I did about the reserves. I think that's critical because one of the reasons in addition to our staff and our preparedness is we had a pretty decent reserve as we went into the hurricane. So that's my only concern but for I think we're all in agreement with. Thank you. Commissioner Dory. Any vote on? be proud of when you look at all the different factors that we've had to deal with with inflation, delivering on these infrastructure things projects. I think that's really big to have that done. So I appreciate the work of staff to help make it happen. Crunching those numbers, I know a lot of work went into that and thank the board for looking at opportunities to really get some savings back to the taxpayer. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Gordon, Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, to tag on that for historical perspective. We lowered it in 2022. We weeks of the next week, Ian hit. We didn't do anything in 23. We didn't raise it, but we couldn't lower it because we were in the middle of a mess. But now that we've had some stability, we can lower it again. So I think a great point. Thank you. Thank you. Our next item, utilities. Mr. Chair, if I could just before we move on to this, I'd mentioned that the trim notices, truth and millage, those go out later this week on the 23rd. They will be reflective of what the board discussed at the last budget meeting. So it's option one, so we'll make sure that everyone's got the right talking points if we need to do any messaging that the proposed millage for the September 5th and 24 budget meetings will be the based on what the board kind of gave us direction today, lower milletrade. So, right. But as as of today still those notices accurately reflect the last action we took so we won't be able to officially lower it until the first budget meeting in September so they're accurate it's just we're going down from there okay. Right can't exceed that number right you know right agree agree. Hey good afternoon Dave Watson Charlotte County Utilities This is just a little bit of an update on the K-Pays Project, the SEPC SOUR Project. It was discussed at July 17th quarterly for utilities. There's been a couple of developments since that time. I know the board had asked for some additional information. We had been working through that. But going forward, the biggest item that came up, we've been working with PW as far as a timing issue with this project, because they have an MSPU out there and we're trying to get our project done as well. The clarification came back from the attorney's office that their money has to be spent by the end of 2026, not on the books by 2026. So with that timeline, we cannot do this project at this point in time. As far as completing the S-2S. So in looking forward, we currently have Western Michigan under contract to look at both the KPays area and the Lakeview Midway area. What we are proposing is to have them put together a plan that will look at ground water levels and get some additional flow information for both areas. We have Johnson Engineering, which has been selected as an oversight for the KPA's project. We still propose to get them on board. Have them take a look, confer with Western Michigan, come up with a good plan and work with Brandon as well to put some information, some base information together for KPAS. Our recommendation would be to get that base model information down for probably a year or two. Get some good information and then take this whole project and shelve it until the time when the paving is completed and been in place for a while before we go back and take a look at these roads. So that's kind of where we're at. I wanted just to get some board input on moving forward with Johnson. They are currently not under contract for this project. We are intending to go out for a separate contract for the Lakeview Midway. It just wasn't included in the verbiage for the overview for Lakeview or for KPAS. Very good. Questions, comments? Support? Yeah. Couple of things. Thank you. So total number of properties. Was it a hundred? It was just shy of 300 I want to say. And I can't recall why it was pushed to the top. Is it proximity to the to the waterway or because it was the age or was it a combination of two? Primarily proximity to water. And that may or may not change when we get the updated sewer master plan in December. And have we been doing specific studies in that location to see how much bacteria and nitrogen or, you know, if anything, what is actually coming out in that area? So from the Utwii standpoint, no. There are some studies that the state of Florida has done, or through some of the universities. We have not, this would be our first foray into that area with actual data. Okay. Well, I mean, I certainly agree with the plan. I don't like putting in a road to rip it up to put it in again. We discussed this at length. I'm glad everybody worked the model to see if we could get it done. But obviously the deadlines are the deadlines. So I'm an agreement. We can't get it done right now. There's certainly, it's not like it's all it's left. We have plenty of other things to do. So I'm appreciative of moving things around and picking the next appropriate site. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see Mr. Elias in the back. Catchers, is it all right? Ask him a question. Reload to the paving. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon. For the record, Johnny Lies Public Works Director, you're more than welcome to ask, I may not have the answer. I think you will. Required to complete by 2026. So obviously I agree with utilities that we don't want to go in there and start tearing the roads up. Are we looking at a minimum delay on septic dissuyer of maybe 15 years or 10 to 50? So what we tried to do with this one, I'll try to, it'll be a little bit more of a complex answer. It could be potentially 20 years before we pave again, but so when you would wanna do that after we do this paving, Dave and I had extensive discussions where we were trying to figure out the type of sewage that they were doing if we could do some of it outside of the paving so we wouldn't be tearing that up. Talking about low pressures system, I think, with the recommendation from the consultant. Yes, currently, yes. But the challenge is, as we move through these projects, and we've talked about this extensively with Admin group, that we're going to now run into these projects where we're right up, thus far we've done the low hanging fruit. Now it's a little bit more complex So the reality is we're gonna be trying to pave in there before 2026 because that's what we're statutorily required to spend that money If your question is wins the next time we're gonna pave Basically it probably probably 15 to 20 years, but in theory we could coordinate that Sooner or there might even be other options again working with Dave's team that we could get in there and do some of this without turning on a. I have some kind of a rough idea for the board that we're looking at a delay of septic to sewer for somewhere in the vicinity more or less of 50 years. Probably correct. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Good, sir. Thank you, Ms. Chair. Yeah, I'm in support of Western Michigan doing the water quality study to understand what we have, but we have an active FDEP permit for other parts of Charlotte County, so I want to work within that framework of that basin to prioritize. At some point, we have to pick where we're going to go next. And while septic dissuuer, this particular K-PACE project scored on the initial environmental scoring system that was done, I think in 2016 or 2015, when the plan was adopted, it was in there, but there was no groundwater studies that we did specifically for that. It was based to your point commissioner Constance, on age-oceptic, density and proximity to water. Those were basically what was used to determine, the variables to determine what areas got colored in red for high priority and not. But yeah, I'm OK with pushing this one off and moving ahead with Weston, Michigan, to at least get the data for next time. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioner Consum. Thank you, sir. Can I ask an interesting question of legal? Could something be put on the ballot for the MSBU to say, shall the Board of County Commissioners extend the MSBU for an additional two years so that the Paving Project can be evaded while the sewers go in and then get paved. I don't believe you can do that because it's case law that provides that. I'm just asking because that would be a way for them to weigh in and go yes of course we'd rather do that. Okay thank you. I would also tell you I don't think the roads will hold up. They're not in very good shape, but they're in several areas. So I would suggest that that, even though it'd be interesting. It could be a year or two at most, but it's right. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. It's Mr. Eliza, have you been out there? That you could comment on that? Because it's going to be accelerated deterioration here. I think very quickly. Wasn't going to sit down again for the record. John L.A.'s public work instructor. I agree with your assessment. The roads are definitely a bad shape. Thank you. All right. I think you understand that you've got support at this point. Do you need anything on Johnson? No, not at this point. Okay. We're good. Very good. Thank you. All right. We're going. Very good. Thank you. All right. We're going to go to item three, which is accepting the resignation letter of day gains. Mr. Chairman, move acceptance. Second. Motion to second. Any discussion? Hearing none. Is there any other discussion that passes unanimously? Next, before we go to the discussion on an interim director, I'd like to go to public input for a public hearing. This is a public hearing as it's providing for emergency ordinance, which also will require a four fifth vote. So with that, if you're hearing anyone wishing to speak on this item may come forward, state your name for the record and you have up to five minutes. Anyone wishing to speak? Well, good afternoon commissioners, county attorney and county administrator, everybody in the chamber. Considering what we all just went through with Hurricane Debbie. Sir, can you hold, stop for a second. This is about the emergency ordinance and in reference to the economic development position. Are you familiar with that? No, I'm not. Okay, it's not on any other item. It's on this is a public hearing on this item. So the emergency on development? Emergency ordinance as to the economic development director position. Okay. Well, let's let's continue on that. I was quite shocked to be informed that Dave Gayman filled in a resignation. Matter of fact, I have a new hashtag. It's hashtag clear for takeoff. And I personally have been in this chamber for seven years. Matter of fact I've spent more time in this chamber than any other resident in the entire Charlotte County in the city of Punta Gorda. And frankly I know more the way this city and county is operated. And I am really shocked. All the development? All the development that's happened in the last eight years. You know, what I think should be put on the emergency list is what Mr. Richard Russell brought to this chamber years ago. Matter of fact, I took my mother to get her hair done the other day and she knows something I ran into a former city council member. A lady, I won't mention her name, but she's a very smart lady. And we started talking about all the flooding in downtown, in the flooding in Sarasota, in the flooding in Manatee. And you know what she said to me? You know Tim, that man at the chamber in you, they need to stop the building. That moratorium you've been talking about, about not issuing any new building permits, any new economic development either. Our county is suffering with traffic and over development. You know what else this county is suffering from? Inflation and bad government, especially when our legislative delegation thinks it's better for those guys to take care of 67 counties when they can barely run the damn state or the country for that matter. I miss this meeting by 30 seconds. I'll tell you what we need to find in our budget is the $25 million. I've talked about. This is a public hearing and reference to the economic development emergency ordinance. Well, my topic is fresh drinking, bathing, and cleaning, and healthy water. And that's the number... I have to stay on topic, sir. That's the number one priority in this county in state. And I was out testing in pirate harbor because I was called to go test another algae blimp, sir. Please stay on topic, sir. We to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. All right, I'm going to go to the next floor. All right, I'm going to go to the next floor. All right, I'm going to go to the next floor. All right, I'm going to go to the next floor. All right, I'm going to go to the next floor. All right, I'm going one else rising moves close public hearing. Second, motion to second close in the opposition. Hearing none that passes unanimously. All right, it's to the discussion as to appoint an interim director or not. I'd like to bring up a few points at concern. Mr. Chairman. Yes. Can I give some background information on the emergency ordinance? You can. You want to go back that way? Okay, just for the general public by way of background. Under the charter, there's three direct reports to the commission. County administrator, myself, and the economic development director. If you want to make a change to that structure, there's three ways you can do it through the charter review commission, through citizen initiative, or the BCC can adopt an ordinance that you put out for voter referendum in a general election. So if you want to make that change to the economic development office and take it out from underneath you and perhaps move it under the county administrator. According to the supervisor of elections, she would need the ballot language by the end of this month. Since you're on recess, this is the only meeting that you have to make that change. So you would have to act today. This can be done through the emergency ordinance, which is attached, which waves the notice requirements and places it on the November ballot. It does require a four-fist vote. Yes, sir. Mr. Chair. I'm sorry. What? I'm sorry. I was in. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I just wanted to piggyback onto what Ms. Nolton just said. All of you know, historically, I actually participated in the original. I was one of the authors of the charter back in 1985. I went voted on by the public in November 5, 1985, went to effect January 1, 1986. The charter, as Miss Nolton said, has three provisions for amendments. Historically, except for one time in 1988, where an ordinance was passed by the Board of County Commissioners to define how the county administrator would be terminated, which was not in the original charter. It's always been done by a charter review commission. I was chairman of the every six years there's a charter review commission set up by the Board of County commissioners. In 2009, late 2008, I can't recall exactly when. The Charter Review Commission for the 2010 election was formed. That's where I believe I met you, Commissioner. Constance and you, Commissioner Deutsch. You were running for office at that time. Basically, I was chairman of the Charter Review Commission. I attended all of, as you know, they break up into different committees. And I sat and then all of them as chairman of the charter review commission. I sat at all of them. And the administrative committee was one that was very interesting. At that time, the Economic Development Department was a department under the County Administrator. Well, we had the interview of the economic development director at that time. And I was on the economic development council as a businessman in the community asking questions as to how are you doing on this? How are you doing on that? Well, I'm having problems, you know, quite honestly, at that time, Mr. Darty, we couldn't set up certain meetings because we couldn't set up certain meetings, because we can't, as department heads, the charter prevents us from directly communicating and getting direction from the county commission. And vice versa, you can't directly contact me. You have to go through administration. All I said, well, good grief, we gotta change that. We gotta get rid of the middleman and make this streamline because the investment community was coming to town wanting to have people that want to invest and wanted to have a direct line to the decision-makers Direct line of communication. So I said okay. I proposed what we have today I Didn't think about another option at that time. I just wanted to solve the problem that we had in 2010 It went on the the other committee members agreed on the ballot, the voters agreed to it. Well, we've had, I think, three economic development directors in the last 12 years. Four and four, I know of three. So I've been thinking about it since the last charter review. Do we have a system problem? Do I need a structural problem? How do we solve this thing? Because I don't want to get rid of that ability to have direct line of communication with economic development. The accounting administrator and the county attorney are involved with this organization's risk management and operations. Economic developments are totally, it's like apples and oranges. They're trying to look at investments. It's basically somewhat a risky thing. So it's kind of a different situation. So I could see where the dynamic took place back in 2009, where there was a problem. Just it was, economic development was subordinated to other things that were more important at the time, I think. That's the least the story I've heard. I think it's been substantiated by others. It might not have been quite as bad. But anyways, bottom line, what I've thought was a solution. And I brought it forth to administration, talking to Miss Nolton about it, is that if in fact, we create under the County Administrator, an Assistant County Administrator for economic development. It's just like we have now with the Deputy County Administrator and the Assistant County Administrator. We have a direct line of communication. We're talking to Claire or Emily. We're talking to Hector. Vice versa. But then it's under the administrator. I think it's streamlines. I think it's more efficient. I wish I had thought about it 15 years ago, but I didn't. So here's where we are. So I do recommend that we do take and adopt this emergency ordinance. The voters may not agree. The voters may want to keep this in place. It's not our call. We're all we're doing is, I don't, by the way, I want to thank the supervisor of elections too for, this is an addition to her ballot for November 5th, that's somewhat cumbersome. But if we decide to do this today and we do get four votes for it, I support at least turning it back to the people that the people vote on it. And then we try to educate why this, I think, would make it more efficient for our organization. That's just my personal opinion, gentlemen. I thought it would be worthwhile giving a little historical perspective. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Mr. Gleisch. Thank you Mr. Chair. I agree with most of that and let me because I saw it was a little bit aware of some of the things that were happening and I remember seeing you in action and you did an exemplary job for the county. And you're definitely our county expert on that. So I appreciate that. I counted four economic development directors that I recall just to correct us. I believe Adon was here in the group. And then we went to Patton. I believe Adon was here in the group. And then we went to Patton. And from Patton, we went to Louisiana. And then we went to David. So I sort of remember four in that time period. And I remember when this issue was discussed and I wasn't involved in the decision making, but I came to a couple of those meetings where you guys talked about it. And you almost impressed me back in those days, and your perspective and the way you talked about sort of kind of what you said here. And I think there are other things that we want to take into light when we consider this. There was a reason you made that decision. And I think it was a good one. And I've questioned it in the past. And I questioned it probably about four years ago. We had a situation where I questioned it again. And at that time, administration shared with me they were sort of happy the way it was three, four years ago. As I recall, that decision that was made was made by the community. And again, my memories, it's not perfect, but it's certainly better than a lot of other people we see in the media. And as I recall, numerous were very much supportive, just about everyone I recall, that I recall in the business community, like the idea of focusing on economic development, because in a way that's providing stability for the future of the community and takes as we have some economic development and it takes pressure off all of those people who are paying residential taxes because it's another base that helps us balance and face the future. And it did go out to a vote and I don't I was gonna it, but I'm sort of alone upstairs, so I've been catching up on a whole bunch of trying to keep busy and get stuff done at the same time. But as I recall, the public strongly said we would like to see that individual department off by itself and somewhat removed from administrative operations. Nothing against an administration, but thinking economic development is key to the future of our community. And particularly, some of the people that talked about development here, it's key to the future development of Schala County. I think that's something that we have to bear in mind. And in addition to that, and I sort of want to tie the two things in together, because we took them a little bit out of order. So I'm going to run on for another minute or two, because the suggestion that I would like to propose to consideration is that we have someone that's been in that office about 20 years. And in the past, they were in from director. They were in from director, I believe, when Don left and probably also when Pat and the left, now just when Don left, okay, so I sort of kind of remember that. Thanks for that, I had not. I appreciate that down left. Okay, so I sort of kind of remember that. Thanks for the head, not I appreciate that, Kate. And really, somebody's got to be holding that place together right now. My suggestion, I'm not in favor of putting it back under the County Administrator. I think administration has a lot to do. They don't have a lot of free time to take on another load. You know, I don't think is necessary. And my suggestion would be that we would appoint K. Tracy as an acting director for one year and evaluate and watch what K-Duns. We need some more because the nature of what's evolved and I think we're all aware of this although we haven't talked about it before. We need a couple of extra people in that office right away. This on routine operational things in that office that have to be done. And my suggestion and thought would be keep it the way it is, that we would consider appointing K. Tracy as an interim acting director for one year, plus or minus, and evaluate, maybe it should be 10 months because of our whole budgeting process and what we do. And evaluate performance with the thought that, you know, that she might be the person to be our director. But I think that it's important that we get some people in there right away. They've got to keep that place running. There are things that have to be done. And we all know what the process is like to go out and hire someone at that position and that level. And some of us are dealing with it now in EMPO and it's tough and it's tedious and it's time consuming because we want to do the right thing for the community. So wrap it up, I'd like to leave things the way they are. I don't, I think the communities, we heard their voice loud and clear about 10 years ago, but I also make the suggestion that we would pick K in that position, put her in it, acting for 10, 12 months, whatever would tend to work out with everything else. So I'll offer that for some discussion. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. I don't want to conflate the two issues. We have two issues to discuss. The ordinance is one, which was what we were really on. But since you have brought it into the other aspect of our conversation, I'm going to go ahead and go there as well. I disagree, Commissioner Doich, that we should have anybody as an interim right now because she can't hire people. If we don't have a director in there, nothing can really happen unless something can happen in administration I don't know about we need to be able to hire people in an interim director I don't know what their budget looks like I don't know how that operates I don't think that's the right way to go I also have known K. Tracy for a number of years and started working with her prior to ever being a commissioner in this county I was also at the charter conversations of 2010 and Englewood when they were at Bay Harbor Ford. The importance of this decision today is huge in my opinion. We have a department that is in shambles. We need direct oversight. We need somebody who can rebuild it. We need somebody with institutional knowledge and we need certainty at this point in time. A year from now doesn't create certainty, it creates uncertainty. It does not allow the opportunity for people to come into that department with confidence that they're going to have a leader in the long run. So from my perspective, I want Miss Tracy to be our next director. That's number one. Number two, as to the ordinance. Different conversation. I'm not in favor of it and I am in favor of it. Let me explain why and you somewhat did that. We've had two issues that this is dealt with. The issue in the beginning was information flow is not taking place. And now we have a situation where I would say team play wasn't necessarily as good as it could have been. And so either decision we make today can put the other back in play unless we can do something else in the management of the economic development director and we do our duty and we do our research and we interview the team members that this person works with we can hold them accountable. If we don't want to do that then we can go with this ordinance but we have to create a direction and a system. This board does that tells administration exactly how that department is going to answer to the board of county commissioners because we have to know what's going on. You can't do all this stuff, have potential businesses coming to this area and that's not having any idea what the heck's going on. And then we get it, we're all blindsided by it, and is it a yes or is it a no? Well, they've gone down the road and spent all kinds of money. We've gotta be engaged in the beginning and how we establish that today is extremely important. But if we do not put certainty into that department, it's not gonna work for as long as we don't have certainty. That's my opinion. I've got Commissioner Constance and the Q. Sir. So my recollection of 2010 was, and it was born out. I mean, are the administration as Roger Bolts, in my opinion, as an outsider, I felt he was kind of weak. I don't think he was responsive to the commission. And I don't think he was a good manager of his directors, vis-a-vis, over economic development, because the commissioners couldn't get a straight answer. There were half million dollar cash deals going out for boat hull guys. And so I think all of that was a reaction to how poorly managed that was, and I think it was an overreaction. I think the hope from that commission was, hey, you know what, we can't trust our administrator to do the right thing so we want to be doing it. Well, before the vote was even taken, Mr. Baltz was out of office, or out of his position, and Ray Sandrock stepped in and did a fantastic job for a decade. But the die was cast, the vote was made, and it, you know, sitting in these seats, it's very hard to have all five of us directing one-on-one, unless we want to sit in the room and have just an economic development director meeting, and the problem with that is a lot of this stuff is, you know, there's NDAs, there's non-disclosure agreements. This is privilege information until it gets out on the street and it can affect those business deals. I think it makes a lot more sense and I really like the way Commissioner Dordy has couched it in that, look, first of all, the voters are going to decide. If they want to change it, they'll change it. If they don't, that's fine. We'll deal with the situation at hand. But I think we kind of get to have the best of both situations. It's under administration so that Hector or the person in his position can manage economic development and all of those deals with legal and do it in the way that is very well crafted behind the scenes so that folks can we can get that economic development stuff going on. But we can also have a direct report if it is a specific either hat that one of the assistant administrators wears or if it's an actual additional position. My recommendation is creation. Well, and that would be done. I mean, this would happen if the voters allow this, then it happens, then we sit in here with the administrator and say, Hector, we want you to create a position that is another person on the fifth floor that we can all interact with one-on-one and give direction to. So I really like that idea. That was my conversation this morning at 8 o'clock. Yeah. OK. So for me, that kind of checks both boxes. It allows for, and actually augments what is happening, because it allows for that good autonomy to be able to craft deals, get legal involved, do the whole thing at one time. That's always been the issue with a lot of the Mardak village deals with all the things that we've been doing, even whiskey jose, even a lot of these other ones, things were being done independently and then legal was kind of finding out or administration was finding out and the coordination wasn't there the way it should have been. So again I think this was done because you know an all name the name, Don Rute was a cowboy and he was out there doing what he was doing. Roger wasn't pulling him back and the commissioners had no way to direct him. So I think it was a reaction and probably an over a year for 14 years. I don't think this is a bad idea. I think let the voters decide if they like the way it's been going on. Great. I don't want to make this choice, but I think giving the voters that choice, and then if they decide, let's move in a different direction, great. Then the administrator and the five of us have a discussion and decide how to move forward from there. With regard to the position, I think I would probably have K as the interim for a while because it's just easier, if this passes, then it's a whole new ball game. We don't want to hire somebody and then cuff hector's hands or maybe we do, I don't know. But I'm understanding of the fact that we've got to have somebody running the show over there and she certainly has put in her time. I remember going, when I first got elected down to Fort Myers, we did a field trip on a potential brewery that was going to move up to Charlotte County. A different one came up instead, but she was, and she has done, as everybody everybody has noted very good job on business retention and expansion here. So she certainly knows where the bathrooms are and I think that's important. So thank you, Mr. President. Commissioner Duitsch. Thank you. Just for my clarification and everyone else's, the reason we ended up the way we are right now is because the community did speak and they did come out and they did voice their opinion and vote. If we want to give them an opportunity to do that again, I think that's something we can vote on. What I'd like to do only because I don't want to waste six months and not have anything happen in economic development. So I'm going to suggest that let's separate and let's talk about what we want to do with Kay and you made your comments. Separate. You are separating. The Chairman put in order. The Chairman skipped over those and went right to the public hearing. Let's figure out what we're doing with this home role ordinance, this emergency ordinance, and then we can finish up. We still haven't addressed B&C on the other. Okay. Okay. So you want to put it off? Ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance, ordinance I just again, you have more in the ordinance. What's that? You have more to speak on the ordinance. Go ahead, I've got the floor. I think that we had an opportunity for the public to speak on that in the past. And as I recall, I don't know Chris, your recollection is, but it was pretty, pretty of it, at least the business segment of the community felt very strongly. And I thought at the same time, I should did as well. I don't think it's necessary. I don't think we have to do it. And I don't see any cry from anyone to do it other than the fact that I think, Jeanette like the idea because she presented it to me and at one point at one point I wasn't fed over that so those are my feelings. Thank you Commissioner Dordy. Yeah I have a commission to which I have received some people in the last week or so in the community very influential. They do support changing it putting it under administration but my what my conversation was this morning with with the administrator and the attorney was I will only support this emergency ordinance if and only if he would commit to creating an assistant county administrator for economic development that would be directly, someone that we could directly communicate with, and effectively, it would not change the dynamic of our communications with economic development or the outside world coming to economic development and coming to us. Because their administration, when I talk to Claire, I talk to Emily, I'm talking to Hector. That's the bottom line. It can't be a department head. It needs to be an assistant administrator under the charter so we have direct line of communication. If he did commit to me this morning, Mr. Flores, would you agree? Yeah, he did commit. Yes. So bottom line is we have to sit down though, we have to understand too. The voters don't vote on this till November 5th. It would not go into effect till January 1st, 2025. So if the voters do decide to approve this amendment to the charter, we have from November 6th to January 1st to figure out the mechanics and get a commitment, the details in other words. So I'm good with the ordinance, with the commitment I got from Mr. Flores this morning. I'm good to go. Thank you, Sue. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So my concerns with the ordinance specifically is the timing. Presumably to the statutes, it's if there's an emergency exists, is the emergency that we have an inconvenience right now because the economic development director is gone. I mean, what specifically is the emergency? The emergency is actually stated in the ordinance. Yeah, I was reading. The emergency is that if in the ordinance. Yeah, I was reading. The emergency is that if you don't act now, you have an issue now. If you don't act now, you have to wait till the next general election. And you have to act today if you wanna get it on the ballot. Okay, when I think of an emergency, I'm thinking of a hurricane. I'm thinking of an earthquake. I'm thinking of a tornado. tornado, not that we have to wait four years. So are we doing a disservice to the public by passing this today? We literally help. How are we going to get it out to the public and educate them on the measure? Typically these measures are in advance where people can kind of, you know, read it, understand it, whatever, you know, we go through, just like sales tax. We go through a year to educate the voters on what those projects are. We have public meetings, we have public discussion and public input. You know, this was put on the agenda. I understand for timing it's legally sufficient. But for something like a ballot amendment or ballot initiative, I'm sorry, to go through this process, the fact that we have to wait if we don't do it now another four years, to me that's not an emergency or two years two years you know I think that's a disservice you know you you know to do it in that fashion I really do I just don't think it's enough time that that's that's the thing and are we gonna damage it because people gonna look at it and go what is this about had we just waited two more years we have the ability to do an interim right now and what I'm hearing is the same name K Tracy. We can still do that and go out and do a process. You know, let's say it's an interim but we can still decide to go out and do a search and Mrs. Tracy can put her application in like everybody else we can go through them all and then make a selection and then if we still decide you know during the next two years or the next year that hey we still want to get it under the umbrella of administration we can always do that and that and it's not creating a new position I think people are misunderstanding we're just taking a position what we're proposing is the economic development director, and just putting him under administration is what the whole purpose of this is. It's not to create another salary and another addition. It's just to put it in a different department. Because I can tell you, I've only been here since 2016 and I've been through, well, two, three. Wait. Was Tom Patton here when you were here? No, I knew about him before I came on board. But two, and one of the weak spots I find in this position is the autonomy. They're in a different building across the street. They have five bosses they have to report to. Now, because of sunshine, we cannot talk. I have no clue what is going on in your discussions with the economic development director and my discussions and the questions you ask them. So, and I've noticed that and I think it was discussed, the efficiency and effectiveness of not being able to communicate with administration. These deals that are put together today are very complicated. They're very dynamic. And if you do not have the communication skills and the ability to bring all the right players into the same room and get on the same page, that is a problem. And that's what I've seen over the last several years that I've been here. I've seen not just Dave, even the prior. Doing things on their own, you have to have the right kind of person to be able to do that. And I just find it seems like the history of these economic development directors from the History Commission or Conscious. You just said that consistency has not been there. You call it the Wild West. And I've seen that. Now administration, I think, you know, I like that oversight under that umbrella, because they will be there to work together at the inception of these deals with the proper staff. So not creating a new position, but the concept of moving it, I do like. But I have an issue with the ordinance and the emergency and jamming this down with two months to go. I think it's too much. Thank you, Mr. Conses. Well, I get what you're at, but the emergency really stems from the fact that we're shackled by the Sunshine Law in trying to do economic development deals. And you're right, that's a problem. Is that the economic development director starts to take on this autonomy. He or she doesn't talk to administration or legal kind of puts these deals together and just hands it off and says this is what we're doing. And they can be one-on-one with each one of us and kind of sweet talk whatever angles they want. But at the end of the day, we're not, I'm sorry, we're not getting the full story sometimes and it's hard. That's not the emergency in the ordinance. Well, that's what we're voting on today. But the emergency is the timing. Well, that is. And it is timing. If we don't, we're now in a situation where it's happened again. Commissioner, it's happened again. So do you want to repeat the same behavior and hope for a different outcome? That's called insanity. We need to try to correct this process and here's an opportunity. You're right, we don't have a lot of time to educate the voters, but at least it's an opportunity. And if we think it's an ideal to do it again in two years we can or we can wait for the charter review group to do it if it doesn't pass. But I think it would be a mistake to not give the voters an opportunity because this is – we're all sitting here realizing, at least most of us, that this would make the most sense to have the economic development director on the fifth floor under administration being able to report directly to us but having that oversight with administration and legal to have a cohesive representation and movement on these deals. And I think right now we're in a very bad position. Actually we've been in that bad position for 14 years. Give the voters the opportunity. We have an option here. Give them an opportunity to change things. If they think it's a bad idea, it's going to be voted down. I just think it's an opportunity, and I appreciate Commissioner Dordy sort of thinking about it, and that twist was not what I was thinking about when I read through this. So I was kind of like thinking, well, you know, we're going back to the old way, but we're actually not. And this is this, I think, is an advantage, and I think he's right. If had he thought about this 15 years ago, I think this would have been the conversation of the charter review and that would have been pushed back actually on the commissioners to say, hey, put economic development on the fifth floor so you can actually direct them yourselves because they're now administrative not just the department head. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Flores. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanna expand on that commitment from my perspective, our team's perspective. I mean, it would be that continued commitment. That's been our role is to support, to vet through anything that comes to us. I mean, anything that I bring to the board, positions, resource requests. First thing I check with is, is it legal? And then like we did earlier today, check with Mr. Berger and his team, is it doable? Check with public works, utilities. Those are the core groups. So we have those processes in place, placing a priority on any deals that come through, permitting rapid review team. So you certainly have that commitment from me from our team. Mr. Chair, I can ask. I believe in your heart that you could have better served Charlotte County over the last 14 years had that position been on the fifth floor with that kind of oversight so that you could have been involved with the deals earlier on and legal as well. In some aspects early and often is usually the motto that I go by. So with some of those things if we could have been brought in early, some we were at the right time, we were able to have those conversations of, hey, here's what we can do, here's what the parameters are. So whether it would have been better, I think again, it's just those opportunities to have those discussions earlier and often the parameters are. So whether it would have been better, I think again it just those opportunities have those discussions earlier and often where we needed to. Thank you. Commissioner Constance if I may answer that question also. Good I ask you too. As you are a legal counselor I would say absolutely. I think Commissioner to say I said it well when he said working together from the inception. I think that's the key. And also just to remind you all, the Hector, the county administrator is the executive director of the CRAs. And that function has already been moved over recently. Remember from economic development to the county administrator. Another question for legal. Is it possible that if this passes that we can direct Mr. Flores by resolution to have that position in administration? I don't know that that would be necessary. Just direct him as the five of us. Yeah. Okay. Follow up to that though. But would it be necessary at some point in time, when Mr. Flores decided that he's calling it quits here and moves on? Yeah, how do we memorialize that? I want everything memorialized in perpetuity. So it's got to come back to the board. Any change or modification to how we're doing this for the future, this board needs to be able to have eyes on that and make decisions accordingly, because again, we're not trying to handcuff economic development. And quite frankly, you can use terminology of the fifth floor, but you're not moving everybody over here, in my opinion. It's a theoretical concept that people can wrap their head around. So I just wanted to kind of get that clear. So I think resolution is probably a good thing. Commissioner Dory. Yeah, I just wanted to try to shed some light on amendments of the past for Commissioner Desaio and the timing concern. You've got, I respect that. I really do. I was a little nervous about this too, doing it this quickly. But in reality, I can't remember exactly what our cutoff was at various, I was on half a dozen charter review commissions in the last 40 years or so and whatever it was. And bottom line is I think it was early summer, it was like July was our cutoff to get the amendments to the supervisor elections. And so we're really, we lost maybe a month from what we historically have always done with amendments. Sometimes we would have half done with amendments. Sometimes we would have a half a dozen amendments. The public would have to plow through. This is a fairly simplistic amendment. I mean, you know, they can, in two months, they can wrap their heads around this, I think, very easily. I'd be willing to go talk to groups if necessary about, you know, helping out with the educational process. But quite honestly, it's not far off from what historically we've done in the past. I just wanted to share that with you, sir. I respect your concern, but we do, just as it's been said, we have a problem with all the turnover that we've had in the economic development director's position. One of the main things is a former businessman, you know, and people coming to invest in Charlotte County, stability and predictability, extremely important. Right now, that department, that section doesn't look stable. I mean, it's not predictable. So unless we try to do this and give the voters the opportunity to review this again, and over the next two months, and decide on whether or not they want to change it, I mean, I think we're doing a disservice. We're not making the change. We're just giving the voters the opportunity to make that change. That's all. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Commissioner DeCalle. Oh, I'm Commissioner DeCalle's next. I'm sorry. Good. Thank you, Chair. I want to touch upon a couple things and restate you are the charter review expert as far as I'm concerned. And we all know a little bit about economic development, but I was an economic development director and a community for about three years. And this isn't as simple as we want to think it is, unless we'd make some major changes. Often came before me and I know there were times and I'm sure we all know this, that prospective businesses come and talk to an economic development director and by nature of their business and their operation, they want to keep it confidential. And confidentiality is a key part of what happens and what the economic development director has to do. There are non-disclosure agreements that are specifically set up that the economic development director signs agreements that he doesn't discuss his discussion with that perspective person with anyone else. Now there may be some modifications that could be made there and it may be modified that it could include administration but then does it include an assist in a administrator. I know and we all know this, because and I know I did this as an economic development director. There were times where our economic development directors talked to us about concepts, but never mentioned the specific company because they weren't allowed to. And they have to maintain their integrity with perspective people interested in coming to the community. I think that makes that a little tougher and a little bit more complicated. I'm also, and I, you know, it's scary. Joe and I agree on too many things lately, but, you know, I'm also concerned about the time, the time squeeze, on the time sequence. I don't want to see us up in the air for six months. K-Tracy can do this. We've got to get two or three people in that office right away, because there's things that have to be done on a daily basis in terms of interaction with other people in the community. And so I have a real problem with the ordinance and rushing it through and doing it like this. And we're going to have a whole bunch of stuff that we're going to have to be very careful with how we deal with and how we document because of the non-disclosure section of being an economic development director. I think we've got to consider that. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. So, thank you, Mr. Chair. If we appoint an interim director, they have the ability to hire for their department. They're the director, the acting director. So that solves the problem of having somebody in charge if we appoint somebody to at least get the staffing where it needs to be. The interim can start that process right now. But when I read the recitals to the ordinance, the emergency is basically, if we don't approve it today, we have to wait two years. That's the emergency. Now, there's nothing else in the recitals that says, whereas there's gonna be a complete collapse of the department, whereas if we don't do this today, we won't have any more economic development director, specific or economic development department. Specifically, it just says that the emergency is, if we don't do it today, we have to wait till 2024. That's the emergency. And it's specific to that on line 31. So, I just wanna make sure we don't use the word emergency too loosely when we do these ordinances because it's used for special occasions that I'm not really convinced right now they exist because by appointing an interim director they can hire and staff up and we can do that today. So I also think what we can do is a board if they're not working well with staff, we're the boss of the economic development director. They answered directly to us. As one voice, we can tell them, at the inception of these deals, you need to work with the legal department and with administration in a meeting and go over these deals and work closely in the same way they would if they worked under them. Nothing prohibits us from directing the economic development director to act in that fashion. So that can help close the gap on the communication in my eyes in direction of the board. In the interim, I think it's worth the wait because it wouldn't go into effect until January of 25, right? Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, another couple of months away. So I think before you know it, you know, two years is upon us and to me, I think the correct way to do it is just, you know, get it on the 2026 ballot. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Thank you. So my first comment is, I don't really care about the ordinance today as much as they do about this other discussion we're going to have. Okay? I believe that we can go either out here as far as the ordinance concerns is concerned and we're going to be okay. We're not going to be okay if we have uncertainty in that department. You put an interim in there who's going to be the director when somebody else gets tired. Nobody knows. What happens when people sell companies? It's the same kind of thing. There's flux. I'm getting text messages and emails. What's going to happen? Chanybro just told me, oh my god. What's going to happen? Uncertainty. I will not move forward in uncertainty. I don't care where we pass the ordinance or not. I will not move forward without uncertainty. What do you suggest? I'm suggested K. Tracy is a director today. I'll make that as a moment. I'll second it. It's out of order. It is out of order, but I'm just showing support for it. My bottom line is this. A lot of management experience, a lot of economic development experience knows this county inside and out, knows the business owners inside and out, knows the deals in process right now, and also knows that we have people coming in, which is the time they need the most support, and we're going to be in flux in uncertainty. I will not support that. Let's deal with the other. Commissioner Constance here in the queue. Thank you. You know, Commissioner, I appreciate all your points, but with all due respect, those have been the directions we've been giving, the last two economic development directors, work with administration, work with legal on the outset, get it all done. And they have failed. And they've gone off in other directions that we and you and I know have not been what I wanted, maybe what you wanted, but certainly the commission. You know, when you're one-on-one again, they will tell you what you want to hear. But you're not counting votes, they are. And they're sitting in the back going, well, I can get this person here and this person here so it'll sound like five commissioners want it when actually only one or two want it, but I'm going to push this and get it done. And lo and behold, they're able to manipulate this Board of County Commissioners. I'm not and I you know so for me it's it's a you're right it is the reason this is an emergency is timing but it is a needed opportunity for the voters to decide if what happened 14 years ago. And again, I will underscore, I will underscore that the reason it was done is there were two different people that worked for this county. An administrator who was weak and an economic development director who was a cowboy and did whatever they wanted to do. And there was no raining that person in. And we needed to change the charter. That was raining that person in and we needed to change the charter. That was the concept. Actually we needed to change the individuals and the direction of putting the economic development director by name, by title on the fifth floor, I agree. There's still going to be across the street or maybe they're going to have a small office over here, but the point of the matter is we need to do this so that there's an opportunity for us to have basically have our cake you need to do, have the autonomy of an economic development director doing what they need to do with the oversight of administration and legal, more closely associated, and we still have our one-on-one so we can give direction. So this will be a missed opportunity if we don't go forward today. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to say one thing right here. Thank you guys. We are all passionate. We're all very strong on this. We are all concerned and we're trying to work through it. And I want to thank you for your efforts. Commissioner to say. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I don't disagree with much of what you said about the economic development director doing a head count on things. That's why when I made my comments, I said, if the five of us give direction to the economic development director at the inception, you have to work with staff on these deals. And my issue is with the timing of the ordinance, not with having them fall under the umbrella one day of the county administrator. The other thing I think this board has failed to do while the economic development director has always been on our agenda for comments, only until recently, and I think it was Commissioner Constance who said, you need to be here and report out. We never, in this time I've been on this board, ever had the economic development director come here and we questioned him on these projects ever that I could remember. It's always been one-on-one. That's on us. I'm not blaming any one board member. It's all point of information. I put it on at the beginning and then it got lacks and said you know what you need to come every meeting because I'm getting tired of you tell me one thing and then all of a sudden things are different. And that's exactly the point. And is that the economic development directors fault or our fault? No, you brought it up a couple of months ago. I said, I want the economic development director here. I don't care if we has nothing to say. He's going to be here because he's on the agenda. And if we want to bring him up to talk about a project, he's been floating. He needs to answer to all the board members so we can all give him put because you made the point. I don't know what he's telling you. Can Bill, Steven R? I don't know because we can't talk because it's unshined. And it's been that way for my time on the board. And I think we realize it at the end. So, you know, again, I have my issues with the ordinance. That's not going to change on the timing. but I don't disagree on the interim director. I mean, that's next on the agenda and we could talk about that. We do need stability. If you do the interim director, they can start the process of hiring up, working with our human resources department, whatever we have to do, to get that office staffed up, and then open lines of communication. If K is going to be the person, she's hearing loud and clear what our expectations are for communicating with staff and what our expectations are for the department and the integrity going forward. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioner Dordy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, I'm pretty good with math being an engineer. This is not multi-dimensional calculus. I can count votes. This baby needs four votes. And I don't see it. Is there really anything that would persuade you gentlemen to understand that, I think, legally, it's definitely considered an emergency? I mean, it is. I'm okay with it. I understand, I respect your comments on timing. However, I do believe this is in Commissioner Constance said, this is a truly lost opportunity. Things are hot right now. What information is anybody made an emotion? Because I don't think I've heard one. I haven't. I have it. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I got to load it up, Mr. Chair. I don't know if you're right, you know. I know, but I can, I can, I can, I listen fairly well. I think it's important. And by the way, just so you know, I agree whether we want to call K. Tracy, the interim or, or just maker, the department head, the director, whatever, interim direct, whatever, it doesn't matter. She'll have the authority to do the work. And what needs to be done, staffing that office, I really, truly believe we won't change the dynamic of what we have. I know Commissioner Deutsche don't agree with that, but I've been a student of this local government for over, well, 49 years. 45 years. I don't look that old. I am. And the bottom line is, I think this is an opportunity. One of our goals is efficiency and effective government. We're not, this department is not efficient. It's not effective. It could be. And I think this is truly a missed opportunity. If we don't turn this over to the voters, I think we'll be making a very serious mistake. That's all I'm saying. Now, I respect whatever decision it made, it's made. But I think we need four of us today to decide today and let the voters decide that and then work with administration subsequently. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and with that, I'll move in emergency ordinance. So the Board of County Commission is the Charlotte County floor to proposing an amendment to the Charlotte County home rule charter to repeal Article 2, section 2.3, parentheses F and parentheses related to the economic development on the November 5th, 2024, general election ballot. Second. Motion in a second, Commissioner Constance, 2024 General Election Ballot. Second. Motion in a second, Commissioner Constance, you're in the queue. Thank you. And just to sort of put a bow on it, I think this is an opportunity to fix what was misguided 14 years ago and an opportunity to make Charlotte County great again. Like, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Come on, Mr. Doyce. I can't support it. And I think one of the real, and I'd like to echo your comments, Mr. Chair, about our discussion. But this is the only time we've had to discuss this. But I think assuming we're moving towards K. Tracy, she's heard enough that I think we'll see that change. And again, I have to agree with Joe that it's just too quick. And the only emergency I think is the time. And I think the discussion has been great. I'm glad that if we move ahead with Kate that she heard it and I think we'll see a difference. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead, Chair. All right, Chris. You make a compelling argument but I would say this, should the initiative fail does anything prohibit the board from putting it on the next time? No. I mean, it's a new cycle. It's a new election cycle. It's different from an ordinance that fails, right? Is that what you're looking at? Yeah. Can I ask a question of K Tracy? Yes, you can. Can you come up here, K? Hold on. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, commissioners. K Tracey, for the record. That's your week, then. I can answer that. I'm going to start it on. Start novel, bug. We'll different. We'll look for it. Thank you. The infamous K Tracey that everybody's been talking about, you finally get to make an appearance. So obviously you understand what's going on in the office. And I respect the relationship we have with our employees. And I want to make sure that we're acting on behalf of the public at a respect, you know, for the job our employees have to do. You've heard what I had to say about reporting to administration at the inception. Can you comment on that on how you would handle any of these types of projects going forward with that type of communication? Well, I agree. I think that from the very beginning, this office should have been, if they haven't, should have been in direct communication with administration and legal with any dealings that we have, projects, et cetera, and I intend, if chosen, to do the same. Okay, so whether or not this ordinance has passed, the ordinance essentially would bring the job back under the umbrella of administration, you know, if it's repealed. So that wouldn't make a difference in how you would act going forward, should you be appointed as interim director. You're still, whether this passes in November or not, you're still going to talk, not report to, but work with staff closely on these deals. I'm committed to the county, I'm committed to this board, I'm committed to administration and legal and the people of the community, so nothing would change. Okay, so that's what I'm hearing. So if the purpose of this ordinance is to get the economic development director to work more closely with administration and communicate, we're hearing that that's going to be done. And that's why I think this could wait until the next time around, give us more time to think about it more time to talk to the public. This may turn out to be a really good thing that we're having this conversation for the economic future economic development director. Now they understand what this board, what our expectations are because we've never had this conversation since I've been a member of the board. So I'm glad we're having it today. So I think hearing from Mrs. Tracey mitigates the reason to have the ordinance if it's about communication and goings on in the office. Thank you, Ms. Chair. Thank you. At just a point of clarification information, as long as we do our job. That's what it boils down to. We have to do our job, and when we see things go awry, which I don't believe we will see in the future, but as has happened in the past, trying to reel it in isn't easy. So we're going to have to have that conversation not today, but moving forward on how we make certain that we do that with legal and with administration. So we know when we're getting feedback, like I said earlier, if I'm getting feedback from administration, that man economic developments diving right in and they're working right next to our team members and they're getting the feedback from public works and they're getting the feedback from, and I know that that's going on and legal is all, yeah, they're working with Tom David's on the land use stuff and everything's going good. We've got a great team. We just haven't had that for a little while. And so I really think we can go either way with this. And again my, the second item for me right now is the most important. Ms. Nolton you're in the queue. Sorry. I just wanted to add one thing to for Commissioner Chaceau's comment about the emergency. The why it's called an emergency ordinance, the only thing it's really doing is waving the 10 day requirement. You know how we normally set some an ordinance for public hearing to be heard at the next board meeting. That's really all we're talking about here. The emergency really was waving that notice requirement. Okay. So seven days ago we found out that the office was vacated and now we've, that sort of percolated this up to the surface and we didn't have the 10 days to give the prop that notice. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Tracy, thank you for coming and thank you for answering my first question. So I fully support you as interim director. I don't have a doubt that you'll do a fine job of picking up the pieces. Let's just put it that way. Commissioner, again, this is not about personalities and that's why it went down the way it went down 14 years ago. Our personality and our administrator are now as wonderful. If she's put on as the interim director, she's going to be wonderful. This is great. But the rules, the charter, they're crafted for if we don't have good personalities, so that things can be done where we have better control of the environment. And that's really what, you know, I'm sure these guys are going to be here six months from now, but what if they're not? What if we don't have Mr. Floors? What if we don't have K Tracey? What if we have a situation where we're back to that same dysfunctional place? I think this is an opportunity and I'm glad that the Commissioner read it. I hope that it passes, but I just think that this is an opportunity again. We're not deciding. Give it to the voters, and if it doesn't pass, and we have to reeducate and put it out there in two years, or maybe things work out fine. But let's give the voters an opportunity. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Mr. Doich. I'd like to be able to support that, Chris, but you touched upon something which I think is a real concern. The reason we have a public hearing is to get input from the public. This has come up so quick. We don't have anyone here from the others. We don't have any business people here. My guess is very few if any people in the community know we're even talking about this today. And that's another issue. And I think, you know, we've had a great discussion. I think we all, and it's good that the perspective person has been here to hear here because she certainly knows where we're all at but it's just no way I could go with this press. The timing bothers me and I just don't think it's not scary and we've had no real opportunity for public input and I think we all like that and appreciate it. And the only emergency, and I appreciate the clock is running to try and do it right away. But that's the only real emergency. I think we can be fine moving ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else in the queue? You're back in the queue? Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. Public inputs call the voting booth, sir. They'll let us know. Thank you. All right. With that, I don't see anybody else in the queue, and I'm gonna call for a vote. Anybody in opposition of this motion? Aye. And no's in favor. Aye. It fails three to two. Three in favor. Passes two to two. Read it three in favor passes to it passes you know what I mean the ordinance was a positive It went down because we didn't have four fifth vote. Mr. Chair move K. Tracey's interim economic development That got commissioner Deutsche in the queue. I was gonna make the same motion. I'll second it all right I'm was that to a point or as director? No, no, what's for interim director? And I'm gonna speak against that I want to qualify that with anything I just leave it white open. Just interim director and we can revisit, you know, at any point. We have an opportunity to put it back on the agenda to. That's a bad move. I think we should have a time. Time line on it. I'm sorry. It it it's a bad move to not move forward with certainty. And you're not going to find anybody from outside that's going to be able to come into this community and ramp this office back up that knows the community, that knows the government, that knows the commissioners, that knows the projects, that knows what needs to happen in that office to make it function. I'll make the motion to a point that is correct. I have one and you may, you second it as interim. Withdraw your second. Okay now you're making a motion to make her the director I make a motion we point a Tracy as a economic development director. I second that Comments Go ahead thank Thank you, Ms. Chair. I've had no conversations other than today with Mrs. Tracey. And can she come back up again? I mean, I or an interview. Yeah. We're going to start to talk about salary. And I'm like, how do we negotiate a company? You can come back to that. We can come back to that. Why don't we just make her enter them and then bring her back at another meeting and and do some one-on-ones with her. I mean, you know, she's going to be interim for everyone else. I don't even know if she wants the job. I haven't even spoken to her about. Well, that's the thing. So I asked her to. Okay, well, I haven't. I don't know if anybody else has actually talked about, you know, future employment is director. You know, I had a discussion about the status of the office. I called her up. That was it. We did not talk about future employment and what it all means. So I'm really at a loss here. You know, I'd like to hear from Mrs. Tracy, like, where are you with this? Tell me what's your vision? What's, I mean, I don't even know your vision. It's a good question. My vision is to continue to create a healthy ecosystem, economic ecosystem for the community. And in doing that, we work on infrastructure, we work on investment, we work on diversifying our economy with targeted sector industries that are sustainable and essential to our community. So basically recession-proof types of businesses. There's a big difference between the businesses that come with population versus the businesses that we focus on. And we work very closely with our partners, our educational partners, to build a skilled workforce. We work with investors that are looking for quality projects. What would be the first thing you would do as Director in terms of staffing and overhauling the office? Higher people. I need a business development person and also a business recruitment, I mean a business retention and expansion person. We have so many new projects coming up through the ranks that those people need some assistance. So do you need, I thought you needed a staff of five, you're down to two. So do you need three or just two more? We have a staff of six, actually. Okay. And we need a marketing person to handle our website and other marketing initiatives that we are reaching out to. The perspective businesses and we also need a data analyst, somebody that can feed us information from the industry what's going on so that we can educate you and the public. So you need four new people? Just four. Just four. Right now it's her and the admin system. Right. That's what I understood it was down to two. So you need four new hires. Obviously, if you're approved today, you're moving up and your position has to be backfilled. Right. Okay, so you'd have to work with human resources. I'm sorry to go out on an application process to get people in. Maybe. Maybe. They've already been through a process that I asked her to get with legal to talk about that. That could still be utilized because there were recommended people. So that's kind of where I'm at a loss. It sounds like there have been discussions about, you know, what's happening with hiring before we had a, you know, a decision on who's in charge. So that's why I'm kind of behind the April here. Now half the months ago. OK. All right. With the former director. OK. All right. Thank you, Mr. Thank you. Good. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Can you back up a little bit and explain or fill me in on what you actually have been doing with educational partners. Okay, so in the ecosystem for economic development we work from the very low skilled personnel and working with them to build them up to become more productive in the workforce so that the under employed people can move to a more, I guess, a better position. So it gives more opportunities to our community that we do that. What are you doing? And so we're working with the universities, the technical schools. We're working with the State College to cover all of those types of positions. What is your interaction as the, I guess the moderator, between the business community and the educational community to get what is needed on the workforce to be taught within the high school system, the technical college, the college level stuff, I mean, you know, numbers. How many, you know, how many positions have we been able to create annually because of these efforts? Okay, I don't have a specific number for you right now, but I can tell you an example of that. So as business recruit, business retention and expansion person, I was able to survey our aviation and aerospace companies out of the airport from that information, from that data, we were able to determine there's a problem here in the industry as a whole that we needed technicians. So then we turned around, we saw the job growth grant through the state of Florida, we wrote that grant, we won that grant, we went to our school district, and they picked up that grant. And with the help of administration, they were able to get another appropriations. The rest is history, they were able to come up with the build the AMP program for the Charlotte Dickel. They're very much PowerPoint. But this goes back, this dates back to Western Michigan coming in with the flight school. And then that was another piece of it. And they left and we hung on. And we got the jet engine to work on and the prop and all those different things. So yeah, that's been a wonderful position. And there's a very high-paying jobs. But that's a few dozen positions. That's not getting into the schools or working with, you know, getting actual curriculum with businesses. I mean, you know, I think that's been the failing. It's one thing to plan your flag or go to meetings and say, hey, here we are. We have this land. We have this airport. We have this environment, you know, come and bring your business here as opposed to your, you know, your business retention and expansion. You must be hearing them screaming to you, hey, I can't get enough of these positions or these positions. What have you been doing to get sort of an understanding of what it is that's required now on an annual basis and get that into the hands of the local educators so that our kids coming out of schools have jobs ready to go. So what we do currently we see of void in the automated manufacturing industry. So there's we have a handful not a lot but a handful of manufacturers that are doing manufacturing automated. Some segment of their business is automated. So we've been in discussion with the school board that they're going to try to put together a government that doesn't happen overnight. These things take time. You know, it's not a sprint. It's a marathon basically. When you're talking about putting on new professors, new curriculum in the schools, it takes a while. So that's one segment. Another one is welding. Welding is a big, there's a big void in the community for welding. We need more welders. That's a trade. And so we're working closely with future makers and tradesmen's place to have that implemented into that organization. A high-paying trade. It is. You know, I mean, that's the point is that we need to properly focus on what what job opportunities are out there and not say, well, well you know what kind of degrees do you have paper? Honestly a lot of times is basically worthless. It's what is the job ethic of the person is coming in? What is their inherent intelligence level? What's their enthusiasm to get stuff done? And will they show up? Oh my God what a concept on time to come do their job and perform. So, you know, we need to be building that into the programs. But no, I appreciate, I know you've done very strong work in that segment. I just wanted to get a little bit more clarity about, you know, where we're at. And, you know, is it where I want it to be? Absolutely not. I don't think you could be doing any better. It's just unfortunate that we can't get that messaging understood. And quite frankly, as far as hiring professors, they shouldn't have to. The businesses should be making their people available to train so that kids can go at a certain point where it's the right age and they're legal to get in there and be training on the job and doing internship positions after school, whatever, where they can actually make money. And again, it's the situation where, hey, you're graduating next year. What are you going to do? Well, I'm already doing it. I'm already doing it. And I'm actually making money at it. And then they're it to be available. They've got to put in the skin, but it will pay dividends for them. And your office needs to be working on that, specifically where you've been, the business retention and expansion portion. And actually we're working very closely with FTCU on their internship programs as well as CTC. The other thing is that you're gonna see more movement in that direction. I think that because of our relationships, our strong relationships with them, the school board has hired a great superintendent, he is very business friendly, very, very flexible, wants to hear everything about the businesses in the community and what they need. So I think we're gonna see a difference in the momentum in that direction. Great, thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, as far as BREs concerned, how much have you been able to invest in that in the past say six months? In recent months barely anything. That I've been focusing in on business recruitment for the last five years. And to my earlier point, this is a reason we need to make sure we're moving forward with certainty. It really is because she knows what has to be rebuilt and bringing somebody in from the outside is not going to rebuild it. They're going to have to take six months to learn it. It's my thought. Mr. Dory. I'll come back to you, Chris. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, I was reflecting as everybody was asking questions, reflecting on the last time we went through this exercise, went through a national search and we ended up with the person that was in house. You've been there enough years, you've seen all the previous directors, you've heard us clearly today, I'm totally comfortable with you being director and I would support that's the current motion right directors and I would also like to amend that to authorize administration and legal to work with Mr. Tracy to negotiate a contract. Very good. It has to be approved by us, obviously. Right. And we, I'll second the amendment. The amendment? I think it's a friendly amendment, but I'll second the amendment. Any other questions? Go ahead. I mean, so how do we, you know so how do we negotiate that? Because it's not under administration's under us. So she's got to meet with each one of us to kind of talk about the contract, unless you want to do it here in public. She does, Chris, but they can start the process to make sure all the legal eases in there and then when it comes to this, because I don't think a lot of legal eases need to change. I've been through that contract a lot and less we can have, trust me. And I don't think there's a lot in there that needs to change. There are a few things and we have Ms. Tetrose all already aware of that. We need to get that document in line to come back to us. And then we need to have the conversation about salary. So that's an opportunity that we can bring in, you know, in either the first or second meetings in September to solidify and I would recommend that we also add then to the motion that she gets an interim increase up until that time, which is usually 5%. Well, I got commission to say, oh, sorry, I'll come back to you, sir. Well, if he wasn't done, he can go ahead and finish up. Well, I appreciate that. I forgot to mention the salary adjustment. I had a conversation with the administration this morning. And more right now, I know what her current salary is. I think an adjustment to more than probably close. I think, Jeanette, we said this morning Hector was a 10 percent. It's five. I know. I was going to suggest. The standard is the past practice has been 5% but it's at your discretion there have been some that have been more than that. Yeah and the reason I said this is a contracted position as opposed to a bracketed position and I looked at the other salaries of other department heads and so forth, and quite honestly, that would still be a 10% increase over her current would still be below most department heads, if not all, right, Hector? Correct. Yeah, correct. Yeah, so I think it's fair and reasonable to do that. That's all. Mr. Sail, then I'll come to you, Chris. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I understood interim to be a 5%, but the motion is to make her director. Right, not interim, so that 5%. You know, I guess how long does it take? What do we do in the meantime? Is she at her salary? The motions to make her director. Do you, you know, how does a 5% bump for interim applied as somebody's director? Well, that would've been my question to- You're tough to do whatever. We can do whatever percentage we want to right now. Okay. Or none. I mean, that's our choice. Well, I understand there's ranges of where economic development directors are throughout the state. I mean, I've looked at some in my self. I had never directed staff. But the ones around the state are not independent. They're under. Okay, yeah, so it would be under the county administrator. So I don't know that those are really comparable. But if we were to bring something back, if you're authorizing us to negotiate, we're gonna look to Ms. Tracy to provide the number and we just present the number to you in a revised contract. Would the, I have Mr. Gammon's contract here. Would it be very similar to this as a template? Yes. Essentially be the same, just the numbers would be different. There's a couple provisions that need updating, but it's essentially the same thing. Okay, I mean I went through the contract. I didn't see any anything in here outstanding that really jumped off at me that we need a major overhaul but there may be some tweaking around the edges on it. So yeah I mean I don't have a problem with with the motion to go back with administration but you have to get the number from us and how do we do that on a one-on-one basis? Or do we do it you you know, can we just? They're going to bring us the recommendation based upon the previous directors, you know, salary and other other information. I would assume and then each one of us will weigh in at the dies. We're going to have to do this. It's a matter of public record. I think Dave made $100,000. It is. It is. Mr. Amon was at 135, 345, 60, and Ms. Tracey's currently at 96,000 in change. 96, 470.40. 96 and 135, okay. Well, since Mrs. Tracey haven't anything she'd like to add to the salary discussion? I'll take what Dave was making. No problem. Okay. Well, where did Dave start? And I was going to ask what she was making because your guys are raising her 10% and I'm not even aware of her salary until right this minute. No, I had asked I knew what it was. I asked in advance and I don't have Mr. Gammon starting. I know he started in 2018. This was his salary as he left. So I don't have that information handy. I mean, as I recall, I think he was like 105 or something and then he's moved up as director. So just, I think I'd like that information. Yeah, I mean, I'm in the before we make the decision. With HR, they can make the information. But we now know a number. Yeah. So much further ahead, you know, staff has heard it. So I guess you can formally bring that back in the agreement with the number and then we can do our discussions one on one and then have a board meeting to make any final approvals. I'm getting a head nod from KTRAC itself. Okay. And can we do that at the first or does it have to the second meeting of September. We will try and get it to you the second meeting of September. I'm not asking for time certain, but if we can, I'd like to have it come back. It's the first meeting if possible. If not, definitely. For sure that the first meeting in October, we can do that. She would operate under the same salary she's currently making until that comes back to the board I would make it I would make an adjustment per Whether it's fiber 10 I'd sub the all I had Commissioner Dordard indicating 10 and For other directors that aren't contracted like these Positions are it's it's an automatic refresh me on the motion was that included in the motion? no positions are, it's an automatic. And refresh me on the motion. Was that included in the motion? No. No, the motion was to authorize the county attorney to negotiate the contract. And I'm telling you the way we would negotiate it is Ms. Tracy can have all the conversations individual, but she's gonna provide us a number and I'm gonna present that. I'm sure he provided it. Yeah. She already provided it. Yeah. She's kind of. Yeah. Can I just point of information or point of order? You know, okay, you got it. You can say you want to make a motion to make her director, but that really shouldn't come until you have a contract. So really the proper motion is interim director, give her a bump, whatever you want to do, but then when the contract is ready to go, the motion at that point is to make the contract for director. So I guess I'm trying, I'm not going to be able to support this because it really should be as interim director. We've talked about the fact that we're going to support it for director, but we don't have a contract. So I just think we need to do this correctly and follow the protocol we've always done, which is- Give me time certain on the contract. Whatever the- Give me time certain on the contract and then we'll bump up according to being an interim and- Second meeting in September. Second meeting in September. Second meeting in September. Okay. Then let's, let's, I'll modify my motion to interim director with a 5% pay raise and negotiate the contract. Okay. I'll second matter. Okay. Can we just withdraw all the first one? Yeah, that's gone. That's gone. That's gone. That's gone. That's gone. Everybody understand where we're going. Time certain, second meeting of September. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, is there any opposition? Hearing no opposition passes unanimously. Thank you all. Very important. Thank you. Thank you for your confidence. This is not easy to do in public, I mean. And that, but we don't have a choice. Thank you. All right. Okay, we have done that. We've done that. We've done that. We think we've done everything. Comments. Mr. Flores. None today. Thank you. Ms. Olden. I've said enough. No. Commissioner Dordy. Absolutely nothing, sir. Mr. Constance. Nothing, sir. Mr. Sale. It's just clarification on some public comments. Back to the meeting. We did discuss Sunseeker is on the tax rolls. I think it was discussed during hearings that it wasn't, but I just want to be clear to the public. They got on the tax rolls this year. There's also public comment about the commission spending $30,000 on Cornhole. And it appeared like it was coming from ad valorm dollars. That did not happen. It came from the tourist development tax, which is a bed tax. And the reason that tax exists by statute is to promote tourism in Charlotte County. It was $15,000, not $30,000 from the tourist development tax. $5,000 from the Florida sports foundation to make it 20. It generated over a million dollars in economic impact to Charlotte County. But I just want to make sure the public understands that did not come from your adve alarm dollars. It came from a designated funding source, which is the bed tax to actually promote the tourism development in Charlotte County, which the Cornhole Tournament did by virtue of the numbers and bed nights. Thank you, Mr. Doich. Mr. Doich, can I comment on that? Can you be on the side? He's got a comment on that. So, yeah, and we had our Tourist Development Council meeting on Friday, where we approved the budget and the marketing plan, and you're exactly right. Those are marketing dollars which brought tremendous economic development. So, I want to back you up on that. Yeah, I was described as a waste. I just want to make sure the public understands it wasn't a waste. Thank you. Commissioner Doich, thank you. You're good? All right. I've talked enough to. Poor jerk.