Point Distillery hand sanitizer purchase

1:28:14And That's all I got. That's it? Okay. Uh Mr. Biles. Well actually one more thing. Sorry. Go ahead. I I touched on it earlier. Um I was with um stopped by a a place called Point Distillery the other day, uh to to visit with him and he said he wanted to talk to me, so I I went in and had the talk with him. And when covet hit, uh we were all looking for people to to kinda go out and a lot of breweries

1:28:45Brilliantly strepped up. And they started making the uh

1:28:50And these guys were no different and the the vats that they have are like phenomenal. So they went out there and they invested heavily. They went out and bought thousands and thousands, they ended up giving many much of it away, sold the rest of it at cost. Uh currently this sitting on uh twenty I believe it's thousand cases of material taking up about a third think of this, a third of this storage space. All big cardboard boxes loaded up. They says, Jack, we made this stuff. We made it with the best ingredients possible. It's eighty percent, which

1:29:21is great for sanitizer. It's not like sixty percent that doesn't work for you. It's eighty percent. It's the best material. He says, I really would like to see if there's any way we can try to find a way to sell this, promote this, and get it out there. I says, well as far as I know, we're working on so many things with care, spending money on trying to protect our community. Everybody, I believe, agrees. Keeping your hands clean is the number one thing. If we're going to keep on, especially with this ordinance a little bit further, uh, I think we should reach out to these folks that have done so much for the community, put themselves at risk, and again, a

1:29:51small business in a sense, uh that's really been hampered by the doing the good work they did to protect our citizens. I think we should go look at the CARES money. And I know Mr. Bowles. We talked about it just briefly, but I got word that maybe we were only gonna buy fifteen to twenty cases from them. So I wanna have the discussion about buying all that they've got and finding a way to get it to the community to protect our people out there. So if you would, let's talk us.

1:30:14Do we Uh my understanding before that we had a pretty good stockpile, I thought, did we not? Already doesn't

1:30:22FOSA have a pretty good

1:30:23idea.

1:30:30distiller about what they need to buy and then try to work through with the purchase. I thought we had a lot. That's cause I was trying to get it out

1:30:36to some businesses too. So

1:30:37Yeah, we have a I think we have a decent amount of supply. That doesn't mean we don't ignore. I don't know if we need twenty thousand cases. I asked Andy. My expert on that in our supplies on our PPE to get with the point distillery and work through our purchasing process to figure out what we needed and buy what we needed to buy. to have it in our supplies.

1:30:58I just want to make and I appreciate I just want to make sure we're not buying what we don't need are spending dollars on a product that we don't have a need for. If we need it, we need it. If we don't, we don't.

1:31:11emergency management involved because they're the the ones that know how much we need have and need right now. Okay.

1:31:16Mr. Chairman Mariano.

1:31:21And only just few minutes before did I get the word that we're going to buy fifteen to twenty cases. If you look at every single school look at every single business that's for trying to protect everybody around here. I've got a company that actually spent their money put the thing out there to go protect people and now they're stuck with a stockpile. At the same time we're saying This COVID is so severe we're gonna keep this mask mandate still in place for another couple of weeks as we look it forward. Every single school if you could probably

1:31:51put enough in there. You could probably fill every school up with one for every classroom. It still might not even be enough. You could take every restaurant that's already struggling and suffering that has to try to protect their employees and their people that are out there that put them in there. We can go buy it all and we can go give it away to our citizens, our businesses that are here, our schools. That's why I say so let's I don't want to wait I didn't want to wait two weeks to come back in this conversation. I want to go have us to go find a way to go buy all of it and then let's go find a way to get it out there. And I think schools alone, I had someone reach out to me when they when

1:32:21I floated this out on Facebook. Uh they says, Well don't forget the schools. Businesses says well don't forget us. So between both of it, I'm gonna tell you it's only seventy thousand dollars when we got all these Millions of dollars are out there. I think we should go do it, do it now, get the word out there, and let people go start protecting themselves, especially in the situation we're in right now.

1:32:39Mr. Chairman Mariano Commissioner Weilson. No. It was like a lot of people. It was your lawyer who had to respond to that last comment. So there are lots of Well I understand the what the commissioner is raising with the point distillery. There are lots of distilleries that find themselves in the same Position. and you are still constrained by the laws of

1:33:10the state of Florida on competitive bidding. This is not something you can say is Not ava I mean when when nothing was available We could waive procurement to get there. But now that there are others that are available, I'm not so sure that you can just say We're gonna buy we're gonna buy this particular vendor out of the problem that they're in. You may be able to, but I don't know that it's as cut and dry as just

1:33:40buying all his inventory, because there are others that are in the same position.

1:33:46Well and again let's go look at it. Um again for them to say they're gonna be f now if gonna tell me you you can buy fifteen to twenty but you can't buy seventy, what's the difference? I mean if you can do it one one step, you can do it the next step. All I want them to do is to go to go find out. And if there are other if there are if we have other people in Pasco County that went and and built the stuff and built a good product as well that's out there. And they're sitting on it as well, and I've got to have my own people go out and buy it. And I've got CARES money that's supposed to go help me to go protect my community. Then I would like

1:34:16staff to go out Find a way, if you if there's a way possible, at least make the attempt to go find a way to get it out there, find out what's out there, and get it to whether it be schools or businesses, but get it out there in the community so people can protect themselves more. Mr.

1:34:29Biles. So uh we are I mean we are providing PPE to people who ask. Uh I will say that um It appears that the state is supplying the schools. with the PPE that they need with and in to include hand sanitizer and those kinds of things and so The other thing we can do is have REM send the contact information up to the state and so maybe they can do a direct procurement as well. So that may be another way to solve that. Um so we we know what we need. We

1:34:59will will continue to buy to keep our stock supply going through the process as the county attorney outlined. Uh in the And so that's that's kinda what our plan is in I don't know what that final number is and we are always gonna be continuing to buy 'em as we need it, but you don't want to build up too much of a stockpile either.

1:35:17Let me ask you this. PPE?

1:35:25I don't know if we included hand sanitizer in the list of things we were reimbursed. I think we did, but I don't know off the top of my head.

1:35:31If it's considered P PE and if someone comes to you and asks for you for it, you're gonna give that to them?

1:35:38So f the small businesses we had a PPE grant process where they were submitting applications and that is still available where they can submit an application. and we can reimburse them for what they have bought, that that's still available.

1:35:52Do you remember the theory of that what that was? The theory of why we did it that way?

1:35:59Let me tell you what let me tell you what Mr. Cronin told me. The reason we're going to go do it that way instead of people just going out and uh going a different way just applying and give it to them, because we wanted the businesses to be able to make money as they were going to go get it. So what I'm telling you is we've got a situation where a business that actually went out and got it built it because we needed it, we said we needed it, is now stuck with it. So for the same theory that we're trying to help a businesses out by making people go out and buy that so it helps the economy, I am telling you we had a local business right here that went out and did the right thing

1:36:29to try to protect people, and they got 70,000. Uh seventy thousand dollars worth of Product that's out there? That they can use it. And I will tell you, I will load my truck up, up and down, and go up and down every single road, every single restaurant, and I guarantee you, if I offer it to the people that are out there protecting people with hand sanitizer, they will take it and you will use it. I will even be do the distribution. But that's how many people I think will want this thing.

1:36:59Yeah, I I I guess I I don't not disagreeing, I think it just we wanna find out how much we have Now,

1:37:07I don't know the total number of what we have in our stock off. Andy has said he's needed and he's reached out and he is trying to procure that amount from him. It's not the whole thing. It's not 100 percent. So let us work through the procurement process, let us work through the planning process and do it the right way.

1:37:24Let me let me ask this question. You you said that if people ask you for PPE, you should you provide it to them. So if you get enough calls to say I want hand sanitizer, that would change the amount that you would actually need.

1:37:36Yeah, again.

1:37:37Okay.

1:37:42That is part of the P PE program is hand sanitizer and businesses have a process to get reimbursed.

1:37:56Anything else? Commissioner Oakley.

1:37:58No sir, thank you.

1:37:59Okay, thanks.

1:38:00Commissioner

1:38:00Oakley. Mr.