Investment Plan for the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds Received via the American Rescue Plan Act - No Funding Required

1:25:03Move on to R seventy six.

1:25:07I think I'll hold the podium to present this one. Yeah. But it's only a hundred and seven million dollars, so I figured.

1:25:17So um back in March the President signed the uh new American Rescue Plan Act and part of that had uh a slice in there for local and state governments of which Pasco County uh received will receive over the next two years about 107.6 million dollars. And so as part of that, you can see the legislative text on there. I just want to make a couple points kind of before I get to the plan. But one is I think I mentioned to you before this the statute itself contained about 158 words. and when Treasury was done writing

1:25:47guidance and rules and regulations and uh reporting requirements, it was about a hundred and twenty pages worth of documents we've had to go through over the last sixty days to develop the plan uh that kind of conforms what we've talked about before, but wanted to kind of just Um kind of give you a perceptive a picture of that to go from 158 words to 120 pages with more to come because they actually haven't finalized their rule yet. So we expect probably ultimately the number of pages they write will exceed the number of words Congress actually approved

1:26:17in legislation for this piece of the act. So with that said, uh you know we've spent a lot of time, and I know some of you have spent a lot of time on various webinars and phone calls and seeing what other jurisdictions are doing around the nation and around the state. And ultimately um We focused really on the revenue recovery piece and worked through the Treasury guidance using the GFOA model built on the Treasury guidance to kind of project the amount of revenue the county lost due to COVID-19. Uh

1:26:48as a result of that, the the amount of revenue based on that model, based on that model, uh is actually exceeds the amount of funding we will be getting for the United States. from the American Rescue Plan. So we've backed off of that a little bit. Uh the the thing about that is in using that bucket um is that ultimately that there are fewer reporting requirements based on that and Treasury has asked what you plan on spending the money on, but not necessarily the same amount of reporting requirements. That said, On the plan as part of that the

1:27:18rest revenue recovery piece, several of the projects that we've listed on there to utilize that for actually would qualify under other criteria, whether it's infrastructure, COVID-related expenses, and and so forth. And so as you see the plan there in front of you, we've broken it up into three buckets. The largest bucket obviously being the revenue replacement bucket, and under that we've put some specific projects that we plan on. uh allocating that money to. Treasury has said we would like to know what you're gonna plan on spending the money on, but the criteria

1:27:48is a lot more flexible than under say the infrastructure piece. or the COVID expense piece. So we actually move those into here because it gives us a little more flexibility. So you see there on I'm just gonna walk down the list real quick. You see six items there. Um the lender utility acquisition actually would be eligible on its own. Plot under here actually allows us to requ acquire that system that you directed us to acquire a couple years ago with zero rate increase. to the county ratepayer as a whole. You know, the original plan You bought aqua, we were gonna buy

1:28:18Lindric over the next 12 months, and that would have resulted in a rate increase. Doing it this way actually eliminates the rate increase needed. The second one on there is the Wesley Chapel Library. Right now, for the next several years, the library impact fees are dedicated to the Starkey Library that just opened. And so this builds the next library that's needed as part of their master plan in Wesley Chapel. Uh on land we already own. in in in the fastest growing area of the county. The third one is the jail construction as we we're processing through the design

1:28:48of the jail COVID hit. We've made changes to the design to deal with infectious diseases, not just COVID, but infectious diseases as a whole. And that expense can be allocated to this, because it's actually in addition to the money set aside from the general obligation bond. Talk to parks, their number one priority from a district park perspective now that Starkey is effectively done. I know there's still a little some work still to be done out there, but effectively done from a budgeting perspective. Uh the next one on the list is

1:29:19VOPH superpark. You actually have the first MPUD in front of you in VOPH later today, but this will put a significant source of money out in VOPH superpark to build a large portion of that planned park. And that's the number one priority from the park's master plan. The next one is to, as we're working through the stormwater design on Maggie Valley, we've always tried to integrate parks into that and there's some money here then to put into the parks piece of that. parallel to or even before the stormwater project's

1:29:49done, because this is really on the upland keys that would not have been part of the ponds anyway. And so these are really ball fields, diamonds, triangles, or diamonds and squares to kind of help alleviate some of the the need on the west side. And then the last one is to uh seed capital into the dredging fund. The board's kind of directed us to look at an MSBU and an MSTU for the long-term maintenance of dredging along the coast. This would be able to seed capital into that so that once the board establishes it, there will actually be funds to go actually

1:30:19start work as opposed to waiting for that to accumulate funds. over the long term. So that's that list, if you will. In general, it adds up a little less than eight ninety-eight million. And we built some a little flex in there just because one It's going to take a few years to get that done. We want to make sure that we um manage and and cover some of the market conditions that are out there. The other two that I'll go through real quick is health expenditures. So to date, and I think over the next meeting or two, you'll see a budget amendment

1:30:49to move money out of the general fund reserve into our health insurance fund. We've spent about $3.4 million on COVID-related health insurance claims for county employees. Well, every member of our health insurance, which includes some of the constitutional officers in their offices. And so we will part of this will go dedicate to covering some of that cost. Some of that was covered by carers, but some of this will go to cover this, in addition to any future health insurance claims over the next couple years. And the third bucket there, if you will, covers

1:31:20public safety county operations. The main one I want to talk about under that one is premium pay. Um Yeah, we Have talked about, you know, that You know, the the governor and the state legislature approved premium pay for public safety employees and teachers. And it didn't make sense for one section of our employee base to get premium pay from the state and not deal with premium pay on the rest of the employee base. We also weren't necessarily We looked through the categories and we had some people we thought should have been eligible for

1:31:50premium pay from the state that didn't get it because of their criteria. And so we we are gonna develop a premium pay plan that is different than that that would allow them to get some premium pay. No none of us nor any of the constitutional officers actually shut down and suspended operations during the co during the COVID uh impact from the middle of March on. We continually operated, the constitutionals in the county continually operated, as opposed to some other jurisdictions that actually shut down and stopped operations while dealing with the pandemic. So that

1:32:21this is part of that as we continue to operate. So I'll just outline the premium pay plan real quick. Our intention is to if you are a county employee in the year 2020. So you started working for us in 2020 and are working for us today. Then you would get premium pay on the order of $500. Now, if you got premium pay from the state, you're not eligible for that. So we weren't won aren't going to double pay that. But there are firefighters that started working for us in April that weren't eligible, April

1:32:512020 and aren't eligible for the state funds would be eligible for this. if you started working for the county in 2021. We tiered it so in our working force today you'd be eligible for a premium pay of two hundred fifty dollars. So we we tiered it because of the issues we dealt with in twenty twenty. in the issues we're dealing with in 2021. Now that ends the date the local state of emergency ended. So if you have come and started working for the county after the local state of emergency expired, which I believe is on the eighth of July, but I may be off a a day or two.

1:33:22Um the premium pay doesn't continue past that. It's only for employees who are employed previous to that day and are still employed. So that's part A on premium pay. There's a plan part B or part B on that. is the county right now is about 50, county employees are about 50% vaccinated. And as you notice, our health insurance claim exceed eleven hundred dollars per employee to date. We've only had about ten percent of county employees actually test positive with COVID. So those ten percent have actually cost uh three

1:33:52point four million dollars in COVID claims. Our firefighters are actually vaccinated at a lower rate than forty fifty percent. We need to get that rate up into the 70 or 80 percent range. And so one way we want to do that is we've surveyed the counties and cities around us. Many of them are using what I will call negative incentives. Two Encourage people to get vaccinated, i.e. there are a couple of counties in the state who basically say if you're not vaccinated by a certain date you are no longer a county employee. Several

1:34:22counties are doing more on the if you aren't vaccinated then you have to test weekly. Um Mm and I think in some of the areas around us, you know, if you're vaccinated you don't have to wear a mask, but if you're non vaccinated you have to wear a mask and or subject to testing. on a pretty recurrent basis. Those are all what I consider negative incentives. And I would actually prefer to do a positive incentive to encourage people in a positive manner. I give them the carrot as opposed to the stick. So what we were proposing is a $500 bonus incentive premium

1:34:52pay for those of those that have been vaccinated and are fully vaccinated by a deadline that will be set in in November. What we're trying to do is get our rate up. Um we again We are getting Delta variance in county employees. We got more than 20 this week already. Those are gonna so it's it's less expensive actually operationally from budgetary perspective to pay people to get the vaccine that are county employees than it is to go pay for their health bill. Health insurance bills from a county so when you look at from a fiscal perspective to incentivize

1:35:23them to get the vaccination so that they aren't dealing with the public health issues or the health issues further down the road. uh makes good business sense in in addition to I think it's the right thing to do for our employees. A couple other things with that. And just from a vaccination perspective The effectiveness on those vaccines, the two-shot vaccines, are 95 plus percent. In addition, if you happen to get a breakthrough case, your chances of being becoming a hospitalization case are reduced by 95 plus percent. So each

1:35:53step of the way, there's orders of magnitude protection for the employee, which is why we want to incentivize our employees getting the vaccination. So that's Roughly the plan and so that is uh before you for approval to date. And so the goal here is we will present a report to Treasury next week that has that the county has looked at and reviewed the plan. It is not set in stone. We can make adjustments to the plan. We have four years to spend the money. Well, December 24, so effectively almost four years to spend the money. So there can and I

1:36:23would expect there would be adjustments to the plan. But we wanted to do it this way, one, to kind of so that we could let Treasury know that the board has reviewed and approved the plan, and two, that any major changes to the plan would come back to the board for additional adjustments in the future.

1:36:38Mr. Chairman Mariano. Um thank thank you, Dan. I think it's a um a great uh plan. And you know when when COVID hit Our residents were able to get outside. You know, we had the parks closed for just a little bit and then we opened them back up. and the parks and the trails were slammed and it I think it just shows you the importance of uh being able to get outside and recreate, especially in Florida. Um there is one item that um is missing I think from the revenue replacement.

1:37:09And that is um and David Engels here the the uh the project for nineteen with the two million dollar um Uh Redevelopment project, David. I don't know if you wanna if you could explain it real quick and then I wanna ask the Harbors

1:37:25area.

1:37:28Yes, and um and this uh these numbers actually add up to ninety four, not ninety eight. So there's there's room to add that on there. Um And so uh I'd like to uh move that we add the uh Harbors Redevelopment Loan Project or whatever we want to call it. What what would be the right term?

1:37:52It was it was part of the B PI list it really didn't make the cut from the general fund perspective.

1:37:56Yeah.

1:37:56Uh but makes sense to at least help incentivize and help leverage some of the funds to for small business in the Harbors Plan. Right. Which is where we're having a struggle with redevelopment.

1:38:06Yes. So

1:38:08thank you very much. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed like sign. Motion pass 5-0. Ms. Chairman Mariano. Yeah, sir.

1:38:18Um What would it be? Is there enough room to add the Green Key Road? into the project.

1:38:24Hmm? With the trail. I I have a feeling that road's a little more than two million dollars uh when we include the drainage and the permitting and the wetland mitigation we're gonna have to do to do to do the road. But uh let us go study that. Again, like I said, this is initial look.

1:38:41trancha the money until next spring.

1:38:45look at some of our estimates, see where we are, get some of the projects started and then kinda We are this is a plan that will be adjusted over time based on what happens in the market conditions and where we move.

1:38:57Yeah, and I'd I would encourage anyone to go drive that road.

1:39:00Yeah. And I think when we when we look at it, I mean people the number one and two reasons people moved to Florida or have been, COVID might have changed some of that numbers, but was beaches and fishing. When you have an asset right in the heart of the county going alongside there When we approved the Wiregrass Ranch, uh Commissioner Weight spearheaded to go get some of the money to go for the West Side for boat ramps, et cetera, and other things. I think part of that tourist development money would even apply if we needed to to say it's a good thing to add in Even if it's a trail part of the funding,

1:39:30whatever, to make that part of your funding source if you had a shortfall with what we're looking at here.

1:39:34I think we all do is we'll take that as an action item to go back and pull build a a cost estimate, a pro a project cost estimate, and kind of see the different elements that we can fund with various funds and then bring something back in the future.

1:39:54Really committed to the enclote. boat ramp, reorganization and parking project. And that funds that That ba basically I think takes that out if

1:40:06If I'm right.

1:40:07Well Mr. Chairman Mariano. Yes sir. I mean one possibility too, and again that we didn't talk about this before is Um If there's any additional funding, it could always I don't know if it's the possibility it can make up for some of the T D T loss revenue. It can. So that's a possibility as well.

1:40:24Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

1:40:26we kept it general and mainly focused on the general fund because that's really where we have the most revenue constraints. So that adds could add to the pot. Excellent. Yeah.

1:40:37And as we as the projects come in and they get completed and there's maybe um they come in under budget than what we put, there m there may be some More that we could allocate to the right-of-way.

1:40:50i i you know, you you've seen the building permit numbers, you've seen what's going on in this county, you know, the revenue projections we used in the five year budget that you'll be approving in next month. are very conservative because we use the state estimates after year one. And so instead of the ten point eight percent avalorum growth that we got in twenty twenty two, the estimate for twenty twenty three is like seven percent. From a because we use the state estimates past the one year, right? And so I think you will see the

1:41:21continual average loan growth in excess of what we have in our five year program, at least over the short term, over the near term.

1:41:29Okay.

1:41:30All right.

1:41:30Thanks, sir. Ms. Do

1:41:33you need do you need uh board action on that plan? Do you need a vote?

1:41:36On what paper? Move to I think you already have made a motion. Well I made a motion

1:41:40to add the two.

1:41:41We added the other, but motion approved the in the plan.

1:41:44Second. Okay, a motion and second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Mr. Chairman Mariano.

1:41:50And I'm going to abstain from the vote just because of the adredging concept that's in there. As recommended by my county attorney in an abundance of caution. Right. So call

1:42:01that vote again. He's abstaining from the vote that and he has the right he has the right to do that.

1:42:05Okay.

1:42:06All right. Call

1:42:09that vote again.

1:42:09No, no, no. The vote is the vote is uh

1:42:12I didn't vote for you already did it. Okay.

1:42:16Okay, gotcha. Thank you. Just to make sure we're good.

1:42:19All

1:42:19right,