An Ordinance Creating The Road Rehabilitation Services Municipal Service Taxing Unit; Providing For Boundaries Of The Unit; Providing For Levy Of An Ad-Valorem Tax; Providing For The Municipal Services To Be Funded; Repealing And Replacing Pasco County Ordinance No. 22-64 And Ordinance No. 23-35; Providing For Severability; Providing For Inclusion In The Pasco County Code And Providing For An Effective Date.

14:43District two, Commissioner Weightman. District three, Commissioner Starkey. Aye. District four, Commissioner Yeager. Aye. District five, Commissioner Mariano. Aye. District one, Chairman Oakley.

14:52Aye. Motion pass 5-0. Move on to P47.

14:57Item P forty seven was published in the Tampe Times on May twenty-second, twenty twenty-four.

15:06All right. Good afternoon. Justin Grant, Director of Public Infrastructure, Fiscal and Business Administration. Item P47 is PIPFA 24-0326. An ordinance creating the Road Rehabilitation Services Municipal Services Taxing Unit providing for boundaries of the unit, providing for a levy of adorant tax, providing for municipal services to be funded, repealing and replacing Casco County. ordinance number 22-64 and ordinance number 23-35, providing for severality,

15:36providing for the inclusion of County Code of Ordinances, providing for correction of errors, providing for limitation of actions, and providing an effective date.

15:45Alright, so quick uh recap on the timeline. Uh pun intended, it's been a long road to get here. Um so quick uh quick review of some of the actions that we've taken here uh to go through this. Back in December uh we adopted uh ordinance number 2264, originally called the Local Road MSTU was established. Then in April of that year, after much diligence, uh we worked and realized that there needed to be structural and legal changes required because of uh you know regulations and law on this eight books, it required us to delay that by a year. And so we came back in September uh

16:15and and brought forth ordinance number 23-35. Uh we amended boundaries and provided free appeals process. Uh and then in January, as we really started digging into that. Uh and And then the former one there was a number of exclusions and smaller area that was targeted in what we were trying to do revealed a number of significant implementation challenges. And so now we're coming with what we hope to be the final revision to this ordinance, and we have a repeal of place ordinance here before you today. So, a quick comparison on what the two ordinances

16:46are doing, right? The form ordinance that we had and the numbers that were just seen on the prior slide focused only on local roads. So it was intended just to be a replacement for the PVASH program. And so there were multiple exclusion classes that were created, and when that was done, right, that created quite a few challenges to implementing that. And one of the big things that we noted is we require an appellate board to be formed separate from this board. To be able to process that. So when we went through this, our proposed ordinance now expands it to be applied to all parcels, all

17:16unincorporated parcels within Hasco County, and expands the services to arterial and collector roads, whereas before it was just local. It now also adds a provision for low-income assistance for select active PVAS parcels and removes most of those implementation challenges. that we had with the forward version of the ordinance.

17:37So, one highlight we'd like to state here is the PVAS relief assistance. And so when we went through and redesigning this, we wanted to make sure that we offered some kind of assistance to PVAS folks that are still in the PVAS program. And so we're working with community development to implement a process that would be effective here this coming tax year, should the ordinance be approved, that would uh would provide some assistance to families earning less than 80% of the area media income. and would be eligible for those uh those PVES projects within the current year of their assessment. And

18:08now, it's for the next part of our presentation, I'm going to bring up our public works director, Jason Mickel, and he'll talk a little bit more about the implementation process.

18:18Good afternoon. Again, I'm Jason Mickle, public works director. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I appreciate all the um support that you've given our programs. Uh we talked a little bit last last time about stormwater. Here we're talking we're talking about roads, road rehabilitation. Um do want to you know appreciate the guidance that Mike and Brantford um have have provided throughout this whole time and we work really closely with a lot of different folks to get here, including fiscal, including county attorney. So I don't want to leave anybody

18:48out, but our engineering team is here as well, and those guys have put in a lot of great work to get us here. So with that said, I'm I just want to give you a couple big picture things right right up front before I even get started. You know, this plan that we're presenting you today is as I stay here: right road, right time, right strategy. I'll talk a little bit about exactly what that means. But in the end, the big take-home message I'd like to give you now. I'll talk a little bit about it in the presentation and then I'll end with it as well. On average, every year we pave about uh reha rehabilitate about

19:1820 lane miles of uh roads through PVAS. About about 20 lane miles. What I'm gonna show you here today is gonna get us to about 130 lane miles, um which is a significant increase at a very um great cost. So um let me I'll walk you through it a little bit. If you have questions for you I'll stay. If not I'll turn it back over to Justin at the end for a recommendation.

19:42So as you remember, the PVASC program, that was a citizen-driven program. that we we had no input in what roads got paved. Citizens petitioned, they came to you, they got it approved, we went out and and got those roads paved. It's not the most efficient program in the world, it's not very cost effective, and it's not really based in science. It's who petitioned themselves and who wanted to pay the money and who was getting paid. Our new program is based in science. I'm going to talk a little bit about that on the next couple of slides. Very cost-effective. We'll

20:12get to all the roads in the network as well. That's one of the key things about this program. And it allows us to be able to plan. It allows us to predict and plan where what roads we are going to pave. So, how do you start? You inventory all your roads, you inspect all your roads, you develop what's called a PCI or a pavement condition index. You'll hear a lot about that. You probably already all know what that is, but I'm going to show you a couple examples of how we use that. After you have your pavement condition index, you

20:42then you have a database. You have all your roads within the database. Um, you want to maintain that database. software, you got new roads that come online, you got roads that have rehabbed, you want to bring that onto the database and make sure your PCI is accurate. You have a budget, you analyze your budget, you're able to predict what roads you want to pave by the amount of money that you have. Prioritize those roads based on the PCI and those other conditions, and then you look at what are your best strategies. So this slide, uh this

21:13is really just a big picture show you how the PCI breaks out. Okay? So the PCI ranks in these different categories. Good, satisfactory, fair, poor, and failed, right? And what I what I want to bring to your attention here is if you invest in these roads early on, right? So good, satisfactory, and even fair. If you invest in them early in the roads lifecycle. you're able to spread out your investment over a longer period of time. And I I'll just give you a quick example. If you look at a good road, which we could all imagine what a good road looks

21:43like, no potholes, smooth surface, nice asphalt, you could rejuvenate that road at less than eighteen thousand eighteen thousand dollars per mile. That's that that's not a lot of money to extend the life of a road by another four or five years. If you move on to the next category, which is satisfactory, you could spend about $70,000 per mile to microsurface that route. And then the last one I'll talk about is Fair. Fair equamillery surface. That's a little bit more expensive, about $350,000 per mile, but as you can see, each one of these categories

22:13is allows for to extend the life the earlier you get to the road. And I'll show you this on a graph. So here's here's the average life cycle um of a road. This is untreated 20 years. So after the first 75%, which is about 15 years, right, of the road, it'll drop about 40% in quality. Over the next two and a half years or so, it's going to drop another forty percent. So just in those first seventeen years, eighteen years, you've now lost

22:43about eighty percent of the road quality. But if you would have invested Not you specifically. But if we would have invested in the in the road at the right time with either rejuvenation, microservicing, or mill and repave, you could extend the road by at least forty more years. So you can get a lot more life out of the road if you invest in the right times. And by investing in the right times I wanna I'm gonna show you what we call the complaint line. So anything that falls below this complaint line pushes below a fair road. Potholes, alligator

23:14cracking, things that our citizens and our customers complain about, right? Things that our drivers um get

23:22They it's unsightly and safety issues arise. So we don't we don't want those complaints. We wanna keep we wanna reduce our maintenance, we wanna decrease our costs to invest in the road, we wanna keep our customers happy, our tours happy, our businesses happy, and keep those roads in the best shape we possibly can for the longest amount of time. So here's a tale of two counties. Alright, I want to say the one on the right is a county called, let's say, Lasco. Right? And the one on and the one on the left is we'll call that Bernando. Right. I'm just totally making

23:52those up. So those two that you look at, one side one side is one that has invested in their roadway network. And you could see. That's actually Joseph there, Park taking a picture now just kidding. But that's but you can that

24:07seriously is two counties

24:09in one road? Yeah, it's actually cities, I believe. It's not us, but it

24:12is

24:12a picture that a lot of people like you know us in public works show to demonstrate how an investment in a roadway network could pay off.

24:23So moving into uh the actual The program itself. So these are these are the lane miles that we have within our network. So as you can see here, about forty two hundred lane miles within our roadway network. Much of that is local roads, about 3,000 miles, or about 73, 75%, somewhere around there. Major roads is about eleven hundred. But what I what I did here just to show you, and this is a base case, this is these numbers are just numbers I use. You still have plenty of work to do on your end as

24:53far as um workshopping goes. But the $20 million that I used here, um, you could see how it would go about $14 million to local roads and about $6 million to major roads. And the way we did that is just simply breaking down the percentages of our roads. network.

25:12So PCI, I mentioned, helps us drive the process, but we do take all this and put it into a matrix with some other things as well. Safety's a big concern, traffic volumes, land uses are a big concern. We take all that. these various um criteria, put it into a matrix, and then we're able to build our plan. And our plan is going to look something like this. Now I know it's a lot of numbers and the table and it's hard to read, but what I want to point out here is this is a three-year plan, actual

25:42work that the engineers did using all the criteria that I talked about, using a $20 million base case, using our five different strategies. They're able to show, on average, we could we could rehabilitate about 130 lane miles roads every day. for you. And then what they further did was they took this and they broke it down by district. So they're able to show you what what we can get done per district over that three year period.

26:10And then real briefly, um the plan advantages. We're gonna be able to get a lot more roads rehabilitated for a lot less cost. Um we're gonna focus on the early strategies, preservation, microsurfacing, mill and repave. Through that we're gonna dis l disrupt our roads a lot less. So our our drivers will stay safer. They won't have a lot of inconveniences. We won't have a lot of downtime on our roads. As Justin mentioned, provides for a low-income PVAS relief program. And then finally, just

26:40to bring it all back, this balances affordability with miles paid. And I I'll stay up here for questions and if not I'll advance aside for Justin to do the recommendation.

26:50Any questions for the board? Mr. Chairman Mariano. Mr. Mariano? Jason, would you talk more about what the rejuvenation actually is?

26:58So we have um and if you if you want a little technical I could bring up either Joseph or Chris, if you want to come up? Give you a uh two minute technical on the rejuvenation. I think you would want to hear from from one of them rather than me.

27:12Yeah.

27:15Good afternoon, Commissioner Chris Hanning, Senior Engineer with uh Public Works. Good afternoon. Uh rejuvenation is It's kind of just uh It's an emulsion of asphalt uh that actually gets sprayed on uh in a pink color so that you can tell it's actually been sprayed on. And what it does it just kind of um brings new life to the uh asphalt that is there. Um so it's very uh there are certain uh instances that you can use

27:45it. Um it has to be you know basically less than three years old, about three years old or so, and uh really void of any kind of cracking at all. And basically it just kind of rejuvenates and um reinvigorates the asphalt that is in the pavement to kind of get

28:04be a longer time before it starts crashing.

28:07Will th would that be anything similar to you might use in a parking lot or is it Just a th a thinner s thinner material

28:14you spray? It's a much thinner material. It's it's uh it's about the consistency of uh of paint almost. Maybe a little bit thinner than that. What they y normally would do on uh like a parking lot is some sort of uh uh seal um with some much thicker um asphalt and it has uh like some some fine aggregates in it as well. But rejuvenation is basically just uh a really thin um emulsion, uh asphalt emulsion that they they pour on the road to

28:44uh affect the asphalt binder in the in the roadway.

28:47And you

28:48think it

28:48adds how many

28:49more years of life? On part?

28:51You think it adds how many more years of life for you? Yes

28:53sir. Yes sir. Um generally about three to five more years of life. We can extend it out before it starts dipping to where um little bit of cracking starts showing up and then that's when we come in with a little harder uh preventative treatment uh like microsurfacing. And that's that's closer to what a seal is, um what you see on uh

29:12so so what I see is the fact we're gonna attack the roads that are failed. We're gonna attack all of those roads. But you're gonna have those that are in a process of starting to fail that we're gonna attack with this system to lengthen that to three to five years. So we'll be on different cycles but we'll get the worst roads actually taken care of first. But then by using this seal to keep a road from failing then it rejuvenates of three to five and you move that through the process a lot better. Sounds like

29:43e exactly sir. Um I think uh we might not see the uh benefits of it in the next couple of years or so but I think down the line ten, fifteen years we'll really um see those benefits.

29:56The real benefits when we get all those failed roads taken care of. and starts in that cycle where we're doing this rejuvenation which is a lot cheaper and our cost to come way down and paving our roads. So which needs cheap.

30:11I think we're kinda going for the top to save the top and then we're gonna try to bring up the bottom as well.

30:15That's right. Yeah. I understand that. It's a good process.

30:20Okay. Well and and I would say we uh we we'll save money by not sending our pothole fillers out over and over over again because we know every time it rains those potholes pop up. So it's just taxpayer money going right down.

30:35This this program will help us reduce our operation maintenance costs.

30:39Okay. Sounds good. Yes, sir. Um another question. Currently I got a road, Dagon Road up in Hudson. It's a sugar sand road, not even lime rock, sugar sand. uh got some calls we're starting to look look about what what can be done to that road. to rebuild or to build that road is gonna be very expensive. Coincidentally uh j just the same as a a dirt road is gonna be more expensive. One of the things we talked about with a paving assessment, at least when you're doing that, the per person was on

31:09that dirt road or Sugar sand road or even a good road proportionally pays a certain amount of money. I'm a little concerned that if we do too many of these dirt roads we don't have enough money put in. that that can get eight uh eaten up pretty quick. And Just because staff may feel it needs to be done more so than another road. Um when we used to do pro uh program maintenance, the commissioners would pretty much dis distr decide or reference each of their districts where the money was gonna get spent. Um I've

31:40got a road called Coyote Road that would run Um in the northern part of Hudson, go all the way to Conland Road. it could be like an arterial road which would have extra benefit compared to a local road. So I don't know if we would address that and maybe that's something Justin will cover later, but those two issues of a little bit of concern. How it how we're gonna get picked and then You know. Is there going to be an extra cost for the people that live on a dirt road or a sugar sand road compared to someone who's on a finely paved road already?

32:07See that that cost is pretty much gonna go away like a P Bass was before. They're not gonna have it you're going into a fund, if I'm not mistaken, Justin. Uh this money's coming in a fine and they're not gonna do all those dirt roads at one time. There's no way in the world we can afford to do that.

32:23So I I'll I'll just um see if this helps. Uh we d we do have uh the B road program that we've you know been tackling now for years. Um our plan is to slowly Take those B-roads in, um put them under our maintenance and then you can see here on this chart um we don't have and then the bottom one is called reconstruction. That's the lane miles we anticipate paving um or or building, constructing and paving um over over those those yearly cycles. It's not a lot 'cause

32:54it's very expensive. So we we slowly want to bring them in. Okay, Commissioner Starkey, I'm sorry.

32:59Well, I've always voiced my little objection to this. because people who bought on a dirt road paid less for their property being on a dirt road and if if they w if their road's gonna become paved I think they need to help pay for it to be paid. And then they can just go into the maintenance program, but I don't think we should be paving pay the rest of the taxpayers of Pasco County should be paving paying For someone's road to go from dirt to paint. I think there should be a I

33:29thought we always said there was going to be a uh a one time some kind of assessment to go from dirt to paint.

33:35So just I'll transition over to uh Justin, but I just wanted to mention as well, um what our guys that that select these roads, what they'll be looking at um is some connectivity, right? So if these roads have some other public use, right, if they're if they could be used as a you know um you know another road that you can get to another major road, another arterial collector road, um then they have a benefit to the overall county. So that those are the ones we started to look at first as a priority. Um that if if that helps at all. If not, Justin

34:04Yeah

34:05right. Sorry.

34:06I'm not sure the answer's m answered what I was saying but

34:08Yeah, so so y you're addressing right in some cases, right, there could be roads that would call for reconstruction, which is what a dirt road or a sand road or something like that would call for, right? That they don't want to have it paved, right? And I go back

34:19or that well they may want it, but they don't want to pay for it.

34:22Right. So so and and we go back kinda to to the slide that Jason presented, right, that there's a multitude of factors that they take in in into effect. And so they're gonna go through and have a scoring process. Program and everything like that, and then you go back here and you see the vast majority of the lane miles are in the top three tiers of road uh conditions that Jason talked about, and that's where we're gonna be able to get the most of the miles. So when you talk about folks that say, hey, you know, I know there's been significant discussion over the past year plus, right, on how do we handle the significant higher cost, right? We saw you know that

34:53graph that had you know four dollar signs for reconstruction versus one. One dollar sign for the stuff that Chris was describing. Uh, that's essentially a clear code on the road. Um, those folks are gonna end up paying, you know. The the way the MSTU is designed from a legal standpoint is it has to have a uniform assessment across all the participants in it. So we don't have an ability to say, hey, you're in a parcel based on road classification, which was part of some of the challenges we had to go away from the first version, was trying to have different. Different types of assessments within one municipal

35:23service taxing unit than MSTU. And so the to try and answer your question, Commissioner, right-it those same folks that hey, I have a Dura Road, and when we look at how much more it costs and how little in comparison to total lane miles that we can do with the money that we're going to get over the whole whole road network, those same folks may end up paying in the system for anywhere from ten to twenty years before they ever see their road get touched. Whereas some of the folks that are have roads that are in good in good condition or better might see that attention

35:53of the program that Chris was talking about relatively soon, right? So that tries to kind of balance those skills.

36:08Get it paid?

36:09Yes. To answer your question.

36:11Yeah, so I think we should make sure we keep that option open. And second, I think we need to be very careful on what we're approving. Um Say for example uh the property we approved today um with the five that went with the five acres? So th because they so they put in a dirt road and then then the the taxpayers at Pasco County pay for their new paved road. So

36:35that's a private road.

36:37Well

36:37not

36:38if they deed it over to the county.

36:42I'm just playing devil's advocate here. And I just think we need to be careful.

36:45Okay. What

36:46were you gonna say, say, Jeff?

36:47There are some jurisdictions that taking roads from dirt to asphalt is a special assessment for the state. Yeah, I think

36:55it should be.

36:57Um much like you've been doing PVAS, but it but it's it's only to those conversions. Um yeah, and this what I was gonna say was this would only affect what we're talking about is only those that Jason is currently sending a great greater out to now as a dirt road, it would not be anybody who has a private road.

37:22Well

37:23I

37:23mean this

37:23is I

37:24look

37:24at Moon Lake.

37:27Those are those are county roads. In most cases they were dedicated to you by plot.

37:34Yeah. You've had those a long time.

37:36So I I can try and answer both sides if we can, right? So the first part is you talked about developments coming in on roads and trying to say, okay, great, if they're coming in, especially on a dirt road, or even a road that doesn't meet current county standards, like you mentioned, we have land development code that defines that. That bottom right corner there on this slide right here, substandard roads, right? There's a provision in our in our land development code that requires uh that department to go Go through and work with the developers that are applying and assess the condition of the road. And there are financial metrics that require developers to say, hey, if you're

38:07gonna add this amount of traffic, and it's all defined in our code, right? Of course, and if you're gonna add this amount of traffic and dilapidate a party road that is not yet county standards, there's financial consideration that has to be placed in that. It also ends up in here, where if those things are coming in and developers having make that uh payment into the process, Jason and see is his team have to take that into account when they're prioritizing roads. If there's going to be some major development that's getting built on a road that's substandard, we have to look at going, okay, great, developer's going to make a contribution.

38:37We also need to look at making sure that the road can get the standard to handle the anticipated traffic that's coming in. So that's the f first part of your question, I believe.

38:45Yeah.

38:47Well, I just think if dirt roads coming into paved roads, there should be a special assessment.

38:55Unless they're collector. Collector or arterial status.

38:59Yeah. There's no way a dirt road's gonna come in this new process and happen right away, being a paid road.

39:05I think Mike mentioned it and Jason certainly step in if I don't describe this adequately enough, right? We talk a little bit about B roads, right? And that the B roads are gonna be in process to come in, right? So public works and our public infrastructure brands have talked a lot about the strategy to bring that in. That's something That the county has dealt with for a long time. And those are roads that the county owns but doesn't maintain. It's an interesting classification that's been there. And so there's an overall strategy that's built into this to start filtering them in. That is not, Commissioner, you you mentioned it correctly, that is not an overnight process. There's

39:35a lot of mileage there, there's a lot of dilapidated conditions. And so, depending on you know the level of the board, you know, chooses to approve this type of a vehicle. To go through with this, then we go through and systematically try and tackle those and bring them into the system, and that's what public works is going to do. Okay. And then that just goes.

39:52Mr. Chairman Mariano the roads that are listed as private right now are not part of this assessment.

39:59No sir.

40:00But this will still facilitate a way they can get in. They've just got to assess themselves to go forward just like in old days with P VS. So at least th they're gonna be separate.

40:11So this ordinance applies countywide to everybody. Everybody. No. To everybody. Okay. Everybody be paid. You will not be maintaining private facilities with dollars that are generated by this ordinance.

40:26So those private roads are still out of the mix. Yeah, even though they're paying in. If if that yes. Okay. Because there are because this is we've moved away from the concept of this just dealing with local roads. This is this is the county wide network. So everybody is is part of the will get a tax bill for this MSTU. If in the and I don't foresee this happening, but if Okay.

40:59Private road. were to be Um the county was willing to accept it into the system and all of the V simple title was ga granted to the county And we and it was brought up to county maintenance standards. Then and you agreed to accept it, then this process could then take it in. But it's uh it

41:29would have to be part of your county road system.

41:32And then at that point what if we're going to take it in, can we have a pre-set up thing where they're gonna pay this extra number of dollars to get the road brought to the standard?

41:44Yes. The short answer is yes, but you're but you're but you're what that's a policy decision well away well down the road and not really part of this organization. No, no, but it's it's good to know

41:55where we're

41:55gonna go for these special assessments. You could as I said to Commissioner Starkey, you could you could do it as a special assessment process. Yeah. if and when that eventuality came and then take it into the system. But like I said, this this ordinance is not designed to deal with

42:15that contingency. And that that's important to get that because it was that's what we wanted to separate out. Now the other situation, just to be clear, if somebody is in a county maintained road, meaning we're maintaining the LimeRock, etcetera, we're spending the X number of dollars on that, but it doesn't as have asphalt, it's a lot more to repave that road than it would be a r a regular road to do a simple repaving. can we put an assessment on that dirt road compared to an a a regular paved road?

42:40Again, that's a that would be a policy decision that you should you should talk about when You're establishing rates but Legally, yes, we can set a process up that A road that is below a certain standard would still have a special assessment or a road that was a conversion from dirt to asphalt was a special assessment. But that uh again the the the

43:11process that this was designed to cover was the things that you that are currently Dedicated to you. and then to bring those B roads into the system because they've been dedicated to you but they were supposed to be maintained by a homeowners association. We didn't quote accept them for maintenance but back in back in the day. Um this is really designed to start bringing those roads into Modern

43:43times.

43:43And if I'm gonna look at a road and I'll I'll I'll give the name Coyote Road just to give you an example where it is. It runs from let's say County Line Road all the way down to Denton even to the south. I think it connects at Kitten Trail. Uh it's a road that would actually connect two arterials to go forward. Much like Hicks Road Division Road would connect from uh New York Avenue to Bolton. Again connecting two arterials all the way from fifty two to den now. uh when we look at those the way you have this set up we can give extra consideration to those to getting done even though it

44:13may be a dirt road that's got the extra arterial benefit to give it a break as far as what the people would get charged if they're gonna get charged something more extra.

44:22Sorry. So I'll try and unpack all those commentary, right? If go back to yes, Commissioner, you're absolutely right, all those things would be considered. So connectivity is one of the factors that's here, right? Does it connect to different roads? Um County Attorney described it very well. We've had a lot of discussions back and forth on how to deal with some of those things, and I'd be careful to say that the way the MSTU itself is designed, we're talking about uh separate assessments, those would be handled separate. From the the any millage that is chosen uh you know as a part of this

44:52taxing unit, it would have to be a separate assessment that would be done.

44:56All right, but let's get I just wanna forget the other two scenarios, just the last one. If I'm dealing with let's say a road that's gonna be a d a dirt road that's gonna connect our arterials, normally be charged extra, would we be charging it extra? Do we factor that into that road?

45:12Uh in and of itself, no. I think that goes back to the question I attempted to answer from Commissioner Starkey, right? Is that that odds are, right, and it may not be this case in every single one of them, right? But when you go through the prioritization and we look and we look at all these different factors, and then we go back to uh the slide that Jason presented a minute ago, and you look at the smallest percentage of total lane miles being done, is that reconstruction? And or FDR, right? The bottom two, right? You look at you know less than 10th, right, out of 130 lane miles being done are in that classification that you're talking about. Odds

45:43are because there's so little lane miles, right, they're gonna pay into the system for a significantly longer amount of time than folks that live in those top three that have better conditioned roads, they're gonna see results far you know sooner than that. So when you talk about the net input into the system. system in terms of taxes paid into this system, right? The hope is that in a lot of cases that comes out in the walking.

46:03So here's here's what I think is gonna be part of the key coming up. Um you know for for a long time, let's say four years ago we had trouble in the little road from fifty two down to Fox Hollow. Roads delaminating, falling apart. We did it it took a it took a lot of public outcry to finally get it done. We got it done, people were happy. We just did this section from Fox Hollow down to embassy. Down south of Embassy down to uh Ridge Road, we still have delamination going on, it's just getting started, same thing's gonna happen again. If

46:34you are a local commissioner and again Commissioner Bradford couldn't watch over it, so I was kind of pushing that road hard to get that done and thank you guys for getting it done. and had the resident commissioner pushed harder, maybe he would have been driving all the way to embassy from the get go but getting it done as quick as we could in the budget. But we struggle with that. Every commissioner is gonna feel differently about what road's important to his people, right? Well

46:59it's it's scientific.

47:03I don't think a commissioner should be pushing anything. I think it should all be science based. I am against the commissioner pushing things.

47:11Well, let me give you an example. If I've got a vision,

47:13then we're all just gonna be up here going like this all the time and I don't think that's healthy.

47:17I don't have a problem with it as long as I get my fifty percent of roots.

47:24So

47:25I I I it this has got to work by the It's

47:29gotta work by science.

47:30By science or I'm not in on it.

47:32And all of us share in the amount of paving happening during that year. We all share in our districts.

47:38Well and again we when we do

47:40Can't do 'em

47:40all at one time. And we do all these things, sometimes it's gonna get you you have an engineer making a decision. But you might have a constituency that says, you know what, I really need this road, it's got some benefits to it. Scientifically no it I mean a d all right, so tell me scientifically, I got a dirt road or I got a road that needs to be rejuvenated. And let's say obviously one's a lot less expensive. When does a trigger get pulled to get the dirt road done?

48:06But who how do they decide For transportation. Not engineering, just transportation. What road's most important to your people?

48:15Well

48:15so if I get a road that let's say I get Hicks Road, you get a kinda like Ridge Road before that was built, you get everybody coming down Little road cutting over, going back up, back and forth, used everywhere. Ridge road comes in, it freed up traffic tremendously. And if a district commissioner has got some roads that would connect our materials, freeing up the traffic from the materials, it's not going to show on their engineering, but it's going to show on my my my citizens what they want to see done.

48:40Well I'll give you an example. If you got if you got two different roads in in your district. One of them may be more important than the other. So that's what would should be shown and should be taken care of by pay. Well Commissioner Oakley.

48:53But

48:53they go you're going by

48:53engineer transportation.

48:55Mr.

48:56Cabal. I mean if I may, the the the selection criteria that the team have come up with actually, I think, Commissioner, really accounts for that. If you start looking at something that's important to the community, right, that's going to be a lot of people that are very interested in something. I think when you look at traffic impacts, commercial, residential, land use, volume and density, I think a lot of those things are gonna come out. Now, this doesn't mean that if you you have a tie and you've got uh you know a 70 and a 70, that there is some some subjectivity that may have to come in in judgment. There are probably opportunities for us to look at things from a judgmental

49:26perspective. But for the most part, you know, having an objective process that looks at the condition of the roads, and especially if we're gonna start talking about Reconstruction. Reconstruction is vastly expensive. Vastly expensive. And I think uh the the team here have shown that really we're putting a lot of the dollars into rejuvenation um and things above the complaint line, I guess. Um that'll keep those roads from getting there. And then we we work on those roads as we get to them, depending on the level of funding. I mean this is and and that's I mean

49:56they could Yeah, I can tell you our road problem in this county is probably over two billion dollars. So we're going to be chipping away at it for a very, very long time. But I do think that the objective criteria does have some of the things that you're concerned about. And you know, if if there are things that need to be capital programs or other things, we can have other discussions on those. But I think for this we really want to focus this on on maintenance. Yeah. Just my my two seconds.

50:18This program will improve over PVAS greatly than what we've been going through. And there were a lot of roads to be taken care of. And a lot of roads, I mean doing this this seal to improve that road to move it on down the road three to five years is much well needed and probably easier to take care of than uh doing a regular road, you know, from from ground up. So I think you'll see those things move a lot quicker and those those items are cheaper. So you'll move forward.

50:49And every year you're you're drawing money in this fund that'll be able to help take care of these roads.

50:55Well, as far as like in doing rejuvenation, I I'd say something we I think we'd need to really take a close hard look at is the spray jet paving. We've done that now a few times. That's gonna stretch I think every road probably at least three to five years anyway, just with the extra bond, etcetera. Don't know that just a state. Uh no scientific basis any more than rejuvenation, but uh that's something I think we need to work into this thing as well down the road.

51:20Mike said it qu very well. I just wanted to add that the this board has invested in that science. Um we have we have had third party vendors help us with that science and I'm gonna come back to you in the future and ask you for more money to invest in that science. So it's an ongoing process. Um what what you've already invested in has got us here to this point. So we have our staff that are working hard to to work with the science that we have and interpret that. and come up with a really detailed list for you. But we're we're not done. We're gonna keep looking at it. We're gonna keep coming back for

51:50reinvestment into understanding our road network on a on a you know probably a five to seven year period. We're gonna relook at that science. Um but but that that's an ongoing thing. So we'll keep we'll keep on top of our road network as it ages.

52:03Okay.

52:06Just one last thought. Even if a commissioner doesn't decide how the money's gonna be spent, I still want to see a transparent breakdown of where the money's being spent, district to district. I think we'll have that along the way.

52:16Yeah. How how will that work? Will you report to us every quarter or You know, well we

52:24So we have a um we have a plan for our website um to transparently have um every road that we plan on paving over the next three years um will be will be published um and available for our customers to be able to see. Uh if if it's the board's pleasure to come back and and report to you on our progress on a quarterly basis, whatever that um you know period of time you'd like to see, I'm I'm obviously more than happy Happy to do that for you.

52:49I I mean it may make more sense to do it as part of the annual budgeting process as well as you're setting it so you can see that in advance. We did. And then we can report.

52:56So we still have I mean we still have a say in 'em. But it is a science and we're gonna do it by that science and it's gonna make the program work. So

53:04We are, but Mike that's perfect comment because we've through our budget process we've worked with the Office of Management Budget to make sure that we are setting up systems that should this uh you know MSDU be enacted, we do want to make sure we can report on those things as a part of the annual budget process. Okay.

53:19Alright.

53:23Let's move forward.

53:24Alright, so that brings us to the the last and simplest slide, right, which is to accept public comment and adopt the ordinance that you see here before you that repeals and replace replaces number 23-35 and 22-64, and then also confirm this board's intent um intent to uh put this assessment on this coming year's tax bill.

53:46Okay. Um do we have anyone signed up to speak to this item?

53:49I have no one signed up and no one on WebEx for this

53:51item. Is there anyone in the audience wish to speak to this item? Uh-oh. You have the tax collector. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. How'd you sneak in the room?

54:04Name and address. Yes sir. Good afternoon, Commissioner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I won't stay up long. Um first of all I want to thank Justin for getting with us and uh speaking to us over the phone the other day. Um Whatever you decide that's up to you. God bless you. I'd rather be in my position than yours right now. But I want to stress to you that the tax collector and the property appraiser becomes the messenger. Have a message. uh

54:35the tax bill. And we would ask you that You educate the public. about this and the other one that's coming before you. Because when a tax bill is sent out, Uh they get it from me. They don't get it from you. They don't get it from the clerk, they get it from me. So I would ask you that the importance of educating the public about this before whatever decision you decide. I'm not here to oppose it

55:05or support it. I'm here to just ask you to medicate the public because Our phones will ring off the hook. Especially for those who already have a P VES. Now I know there's a program that's been put together wisely and I think will help some Let me let me stress the word sum. of those who have already paying PVAS that will see a double taxation on their notice. Our bill will re our bill, our ta our call center. We'll

55:35heed those problems. We'll hear from those who live in C D Ds. as to why they're being assessed. For maybe the roads are taken care of by the C D D. I don't know if that's been addressed.

55:51So that's less phone calls. But please educate the public. So my staff will not have to deal with it. And neither will the property appraiser staff, it becomes overwhelming. Because again, when somebody gets a tax notice He doesn't say Commissioner Mariano or Jaeger and Oakley or Starkey or Weightman. It says Mike Fasano. We planned it that way. Yes.

56:28So anyway, I would appreciate that. And I appreciate uh you listening to me. God bless you all. Thank you. All

56:33right. Thank you. Uh Mr. Chairman? Can I just address that? Huh? Anyone with a PVAS is not going to be affected by this, correct? While they're paying the PVAS?

56:44So first of all thank you to the

56:46program's covered all that, so

56:47I'm sorry, Mr.

56:48I

56:48said

56:49your program is covered. The PVAS are in action, they're already.

56:53Yeah, so so I'll first first like to say thank you both to the tax collector and the property presenter. They've been absolute professionals to deal with, and we've been working closely with both of those offices to try and address all of their concerns and make sure that we have a uniform implementation should the board elect to move forward with something like this. So uh thank you very much, sir, and thank you to um your office as well. Um to address your your question. Pas is still going

57:15to

57:15be in existence. So that was one of our biggest so when I say in existence, I mean active PVAS that is currently being assessed. And those projects that were elected by this board about a year ago, right, to continue moving forward that methodology. They will continue to receive their assessment. And so that is part of why we wanted to make sure we put that low income assistance on there. So that folks that are in a low-income bracket can apply for assistance, they can have their PVAS bill handled. Their MSTU bill would still follow normal millage parameters, and there are certainly other

57:45programs that can handle overall taxation on those individuals that they can apply through community development and such like that. But active PVAS would continue. We were not able from a legal structure to remove them as an exclusion from the MSTU. includes all unincorporated parcels in the capital.

58:01So someone's gonna pay the P BAS and this tax? No.

58:04Yes. Yes.

58:05They pay both?

58:06Yes.

58:07At the same

58:07time?

58:08Yes.

58:09Unless they apply for that rental program.

58:14Right. Then yes, they would have a P VAS bill handled through the through the assistance program.

58:19So and that that's part of the reason why this is a a paving MSTU. It started out as local roads, but everyone uses all of the roads. I that is, you know, and essentially you need to look at your your PVAS almost as a way of kind of getting to the front of the line in in this program, if you will. uh y you know, I equity was always a very difficult challenge I think for this board when trying to look at doing away with the PVAS program. And and part of that is is how it was originally structured was to have certain

58:49carve outs and those carve outs proved just to be unmanageable. You you could not you could not effectively um generate you know the the the dollars that it was that was needed to do the do the paving assessment. This this program here is pretty much how it's done. Uh it's it's unfortunate that it was never started this way in in a in you know in a county like Pasco. But I believe that the PVAS program, uh as many of you on this board know, is is it's it's unwieldy as well. It's a disaster.

59:20If we're going to tackle the roads, um there there will be there will be some issues. Now again, part of the the olive branch on on the existing PVAS was to look at those folks that were having a you know, they qualified to provide a program that which we could steer and and provide relief to those citizens. But yes, you know, for for a There was no legal way that we could forgive those PVAS loans using this MST. Well today's the first day

59:47I've heard that. uh they would be charged at the same time they're paying into this system. And I always thought we allowed them the time that they had left to pay on their PVAS, they would not be charged on this system until they were done. We're taking care of that.

1:00:04I I can try and unpack that. Under their the former version before this ordinance, before we transformed the taxation unit to expand and and like Mike said into all road types, right, local arterial collector to the entire road network. When it was just a local program, this board did give directive to say, hey, we want to try and give that type of an exclusion, right, for P BAS as we worked very closely with the county attorney's office, uh determined that hey, you know, there were too many legal challenges for us to be able to do that and cut out certain portions and not others. And so when we expand

1:00:34it, uh you know, again the county administrator uh stated it perfectly that All parties are benefited, right? So yes, those folks did end up getting their roads paved on you know and they're paying in assessments, but they've also gotten an immediate benefit for their local road being paved. Um our current mix of uh TIFF and gas taxes and other funding mechanisms that fund the road bridge department to reinvest back into our TR and collector roads is insufficient to meet the demand of what the road network is. And so this is now the balance of hey, let's expand the notion of what

1:01:04this taxing unit is to do is to also buoy that problem, right? And be able to invest there as well. So those folks that are paying PVS, yes, those tax dollars would also go to benefit the RTR collector. uh part of the network and at that point everybody benefits from the entire work.

1:01:19Can can I make a suggestion? And and we can use the money Fasano gives us back. Where'd he go?

1:01:27He's back there. He's restaurant.

1:01:29Oh, oh there. Okay. I gotta spend it for you. Um not all of it, because you give us so much back. Um can we um Think about And I think I talked to you about this before. Setting up a little fund. You know, we do it with our utility bill. I got us to we do that roundup and we help people one time a year who can't afford to pay for their electric bill. Um and we have some other monies. I w I wanna suggest that we set up a little fund for um

1:01:59income challenged people who may run into a truck trouble paying the two.

1:02:09So commission that's the one thing that this ordinance does do. Oh it doesn't that it will assist P active P VAS I missed that. That That are income ch that are that meet the criteria that you want that you'd use for

1:02:28Where was I? Sorry I missed. I'm getting there, yes ma'am. Right here, okay. Oh p the is it yeah.

1:02:34Right, we could legally do that. We we did look at seeing if we could just retire all the P VAS, right? The the idea was well we could take the first year's money, forgive those and and move on, but we legally We were constrained. We legally could not do that.

1:02:48Okay, well I think this is important. Make sure we have plenty of money to do that.

1:02:54Mr. Chairman Mariano. Yeah sir. So just so I understand 'cause you just that last sentence might have eliminated my idea. Sure. But to be clear. Can we eliminate the PVAS. Right now. And if we did that, I just want you to remember, those people that we're gonna eliminate their payments on are still gonna pay us just through a different mechanism, not an additional mechanism. Can that be done?

1:03:20That's quite a balance.

1:03:24Can you wipe out the P Vasses that are there right now and just let 'em pay into this new system?

1:03:28So a new tax. The legal opinion is you cannot that that the active P VASs that have already have gone to lean There is no valid public purpose to an expenditure. for to pay those off because there there's already there's already a lien on that property to repay the county for it.

1:03:56Well,

1:03:58we're not going to be able to do was defensible was the same sort of assistance that you would be doing for other low income

1:04:07How do we still have

1:04:08how do we still have some on the lean program? 'Cause we changed over to taxes you know on the tax bill versus the lien. That is that is

1:04:18that's that's lien is against tax bill.

1:04:27That didn't change the status of the specialist operating elite.

1:04:31Oh.

1:04:32I I mean

1:04:33that

1:04:33I thought we the

1:04:34the answer the answer is yes to what the county attorney said, but we do still have a few projects that are wrapping up the end of their terms. The general year we switched over was around twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, the majority of them switched over. We call that anniversary billing that are still on the

1:04:49So how much is left in that process?

1:04:52I have to get you an exact number on what's left in the the anniversary size then. Yeah.

1:04:58We have an approximation.

1:05:00Uh anniversary in terms of total principal looks like we have about four million dollars. Four four.

1:05:06Four million?

1:05:07In principle. That doesn't include university.

1:05:11With interest that number is around six point two.

1:05:15Mr. Chairman Mariano Can we wipe out the interest?

1:05:20Hmm?

1:05:21Can we wipe out the interest?

1:05:25I don't

1:05:26So I

1:05:26can't

1:05:30but I'm just gonna I really can't give you an answer on that. Um

1:05:37I

1:05:44So I'll I'll ask County Attorney, right. Um I do know that um in the anniversary billing that we've done previously, right, so Commissioner Starkey you mentioned that um those were bills that were not placed on the tax bill. We have done this board has elected to run a couple of programs. Um we d just did one, I wanna say it was three years ago pre-COVID uh that we went into it, uh an interest forgiveness program where it did offer an opportunity for Folks that were receiving those bills to within a specified time frame pay off the principal and get interest for

1:06:14given. If they were to do that, that was done within the PVAS program, not with consideration, obviously this MST was not in existence in that time. At that time, the board elected that measure isolated to the PVAS program. So, County Attorney, you haven't eliminated the PVAS program. Is that something

1:06:40There is precedent for you waiving interest in the PVAS program, um based based on that. I I do believe that the that the rationale was

1:06:55That those older PVAS would need to were likely going to be written off if they were not forgiven.

1:07:03So so yes, there were there was a a great deal of discussion around that that collection percentages in the anniversary program because they're not on the tax bill are significantly less. Significant amount of staff time you send a lot of that to collections, right?

1:07:19Expended projects. And so, yes, that is part of the rationale that was brought to the board to say, hey, this is why we think this program was a good idea at the time. So that that would still hold valid if you were to try and do that for any research projects, yes sir.

1:07:33Mr Chairman Mariano.

1:07:37Could the number of families earning less than 80% go up to families earning less than 120%?

1:07:47Commissioner Mariano, we chose eighty percent to be consistent with our position in Lit Local.

1:07:58Doesn't answer my question though. Well,

1:08:03if the if we are taking the position that affordability is a very important thing. below eighty percent and 120 is not that's why we we are we be we're being consistent with our position um on on general affordability and that is much higher than community development

1:08:27would I mean I'm just trying to find a way because one of the things that As Commissioner Oakley Chairman Oakley said, is we weren't expecting PVAS people to pay this on top of it. And I'm trying to find a way around this.

1:08:45Thank you, Chairman.

1:08:49You know, President Joe Biden forgave how much in student loans? And we're talking six million dollars and there's still gonna be taxed if we wipe it out anyway. And I hear Steinsteiner say illegal opinion.

1:09:05Commissioner Oriano is going Forgive. The current P Balls money sounds like it's less than ten million dollars even with interest. Wipe that out, immediately put those folks on this particular plan. I mean there's no easy way to transition over, right? It's a tax and taxes are uncomfortable. But the direction that Commissioner Mariano is going in in the scheme of things. It's a lot of money to those people who are paying it, but in the big picture of this two and a

1:09:35half billion dollar government we have uh we might be able to work with that. So I'm of the mindset wipe out Pivos. If we can. We have quite a bit of money in general fund. Add forgiveness to those folks who are on it and then add everybody on to this MSTU program and you know, just start clean. There's no easy way around it, but this is the future of Pasco County. You need quality paved roads.

1:10:05So one clarifying point I'll I'll make Commissioner Weight answered the former question I was speaking just to anniversary projects, which were projects that are housed on the PVAS program before it went on the tax bill. Uh the numbers the stats I've gotten from staff here were more in the neighborhood of thirteen to fourteen million that exists within the program when we include tax bills.

1:10:23Well if we pay 'em off, what are we saving in interest?

1:10:26So the interest is is money that is due back to us, right, for principal that we've expended.

1:10:31So it's I think if we were to explore that, uh I'd like to bring this back on six eighteen then and we can talk about that. Yeah.

1:10:40I think we ought to continue it to them because I can tell you right now I can I have a hard time double charging people for a road. So I I couldn't vote for it the way it sounds now. But I d before this day I didn't know we were actually doing that. And for items like this coming before this board, I want a one-on-one to each commissioner from from the group so everybody understands exactly what they're looking at.

1:11:12Okay. So so I get a motion to continue?

1:11:16Mr. Chairman Mariano and I would suggest you take public comment.

1:11:20Okay. Is anyone here to

1:11:22speak to this item?

1:11:26Come forward.

1:11:33Nancy Hayswood, [address removed]. I've got a dumb citizen thingy going on here. So this is gonna be taxing unincorporated Pasco? So um I'm assuming the roads they're working on are only in unincorporated Pasco, right?

1:11:55That's correct.

1:11:56Okay. That's my question. Also, just for your information, it'd be nice if you did find a way for those poor people to get around P VAS. Thank you.

1:12:08Okay, anyone else knows which speak to this item?

1:12:12And Mr.

1:12:13Chair I have I

1:12:14have no one on WebEx for

1:12:15the second. I

1:12:16do have a question.

1:12:18Question.

1:12:18I don't wanna miss getting this done, because I think it's really important that we get this done. How's our timing? Because I think we're getting close.

1:12:26So so we are. It has to be done by July first, right? And so if we wanted to move forward on this year's tax bill, it would have to be approved by July first. So I would ask directly to the County Attorney, right? Our public notice this is a public hearing. If the item were to be continued, would the notice that we have put out in the paper serve sufficient to have the item continued in that hearing?

1:12:45Okay.

1:12:45Yes.

1:12:47All right. Uh entertain a motion.

1:12:51Um I'll move to continue. I just want to make a firm further comment though.

1:12:56Mm-hmm.

1:12:57We were done with public comment. Public comments over? Okay. I'd just like to say uh thank you, tax collector for Sun for coming forward. You brought up a point that we were not clear on the understanding. I know that you and uh tax uh property appraiser wells work very closely with Justin and Justin you've done a fine job on this. Uh but it's a critical point. You guys all working together to make this work for the citizens is critical, but it's a very big, complex thing that Again, there's a struggle here to figure out what's the best way to make it happen. Right.

1:13:25Okay. Entertain a motion. Move

1:13:27to continue. Second. Move to continue to June eighteenth at one thirty or soon thereafter. Say may be heard, please.

1:13:33Okay. Got a motion and second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passed 5-0.