Committee reports and commissioner updates

59:08So that takes the regular items and now we get to go to committee reports. Commissioner Oakley. Okay.

59:18Had a lot going on this past week. Uh I don't have any I didn't bring any pictures or give them any pictures to show, but on um Friday, March 3rd, we had the anniversary, 50th anniversary CARES Gala celebration over in uh Spartan Manor. Um Very well attended. a great great night for celebrating cares and what they do and we gotta really appreciate all the the work they

59:48do and volunteers are a part of that from year after year, but fifty years is a long time. So I spent fifty one years in my regular business and they've been a business of theirs is fifty years and so that's a long time. A lot of people involved, a lot of volunteers, a lot of caseworkers and social workers all were dealing with. with our elderly and our seniors. So I'm kind of a special uh feeling for seniors now. So

1:00:17since I w when I spoke I wanted to s I I wanted to say this but I didn't, but I'll say it today because Ms. Starkey's present. But I was going to say I'm the um I'm sitting on the Board of County Commissioners and I'm I'm the only senior And I think I'm the only veteran, but I wasn't sure if Ms. Starkey went to boot camp or not. I wasn't sure.

1:00:42In the military?

1:00:45No, a veteran. Being a veteran. No.

1:00:49I I no. I lived on military basis, but

1:00:55I'm just joking.

1:00:56Never was a paid member of the Mill

1:00:59of the Uh the next item was uh on Saturday I went to the um 112th annual Founders Day celebration parade in Zephyrhills, rode in a nineteen forty three army vehicle that actually was used by the French during the war, so um but I was in that vehicle when we rode through, so Two ancient pieces of equipment going together. But uh

1:01:29tell on myself. Uh also uh yesterday we broke ground and I'm not gonna say a whole lot about this because this is in uh Commissioner Mariano's district, uh the fire station three that we broke ground on yesterday on 52 and Majestic Boulevard. Um I'll leave a lot more of that for you to say. But it was one of those in field stations that cut that time of 20 and 30 minutes for service out into the public. to five and

1:01:59ten minutes, which is very well needed and and great great need that we have in the county and so we're really It seems like every time I'm turning around two or three weeks we're we're putting another st e either we're cutting a ribbon for a station or we're digging the ground for a station. So it's good signs. But a lot of good things. I got another one coming up soon. It's gonna be down in Zephyrhills. So Yeah. That's all I have.

1:02:25All right, thank you. Commissioner Weightman.

1:02:27Good, thank you.

1:02:30First uh first up just want to wish our legislative delegation all the best up to Tallahassee and thank them for all they've done for us to date and uh say that I think we can collect and say we're here to support them to support us and uh excited to work with them uh through this upcoming session. Uh next, I think we have some pictures still. We have pictures for uh Commissioner Oakley here. Celebrate Commissioner Oakley, you're appointed

1:03:00as chairman or voted as chairman at Tampa Bay Water. So uh pretty neat to have some strong Pasco rep uh representation on the board and wanted to congratulate Commissioner Oakley on being our chairman for executive year.

1:03:15And then earlier last week went and visited Swift Mud and got an award for representing Pasco over the last three years and watched Dusty Roland get sworn in as Pasco's new representative and wish him all the best and excited to work with him in the upcoming years that he represents us. Next. So I want to thank John Tillman and his company of Certified

1:03:45Services. So they they've adopted a couple of roads across Old Pasco and Wesley Chapel Boulevard. And he and his team a couple days ago for American Cleanup, the great American cleanup, picked up over a thousand pounds of garbage. And they cleaned up it was over 30 pounds. Bags and they absorbed all the cost and his team just went out there and started cleaning up and sent us a bunch of pictures of what was going on, abandoned, you know, homeless camps. So

1:04:15I wanted to share this, you know, the good work that Certified Services and John does for our community, but also reinforce the fact that you know we need to continue to fight these the trespassers and the littering and uh you know keep keep vigilant and figure out a way to combat this this problem. Um and again just grateful to John and his team for cleaning that up for us.

1:04:41And I can see that the landscape's missing on the left side of that photo as well.

1:04:48Commissioner Oakley Services do what's they do a

1:04:52series So John, they do a series of like maintenance for different industrial facilities. So kind of a from From cleaning, maintenance, painting buffering, John does, you know they I think they did business with Amazon warehouses and so they come in and they they provide not exactly janitorial services, but high level cleaning and maintenance services seemingly for the business. If John's listening, I'm sure

1:05:22he'll call and correct me. But uh he's got a you know seemingly growing business and uh do good for for our community. Next uh visited Pasco County up Baycare. Well wait before then so I don't know if if if we all got invitations, but we all got I got an invitation to go tour Pasco County Mosquito Control District. And um so they reached out and uh kind of looking to have a a a renewed partnership seemingly with the

1:05:52county and we talked about Coging Grass 'cause they have the people and They're out in the out in the world and try to come to a collaborative effort or try to find some synergies on how we can work well together to combat some of the environmental issues that we see out there. So they invited us out and took a tour and they have their third annual open house. I told them I'd share these flyers at their office off Marathon Road. And so I said I'd shared flyers everybody if folks were interested. So

1:06:22my plug for Pasco's Mosquito Control District. And then today Bay Care Wesley Chapel is officially open. So we took a final final walkthrough a couple weeks ago and Melod their team and They're they're ready to rock and roll today. Uh you can see their test dummy behind Andy, the skeleton. Hopefully that's not a sign of of things to come there. But uh it I saw it out of my peripheral and I kinda jumped as we were walking through. It

1:06:52it startled me. And um So it's kind of been a a running joke. So congratulations to Baycare, we're excited to have him and uh best of luck to Becky and her team as they they take care of the folks of Pasco County.

1:07:11And that's it.

1:07:14Okay, thank you. Commissioner Starkey?

1:07:17Um yeah, so if you're following some of the items that are of big news in the legislature this year, um and I'm so excited about it, uh Senate President Pasodermo has really taken up trails as trails and uh the home the uh workforce housing as her two big issues and um and I think her accountability Part in the house is right along there with her. So I'm very excited to see the film moving forward with

1:07:47the um Florida Wildlife Corridor and the um double double investment in the Sun Trail Network of what's the Coast to Coast Trail is a part of. Um and I follow uh when I do go on Facebook, which isn't very often, um I go I do have the Coast to Coast Facebook page. And one of the biggest complaints I see on it is the lack of signage. So this is kind of a shout out to our staff. Um back when

1:08:18I was chair of the uh tourism council, one of the things we talked about was uh signage and wayfinding along our trails so that we can alert people who come to our county to ride our trails where businesses are nearby. And you'll see this all over the country, all over the world on trails where you They have wayfinding signs to tell you what's nearby. So I just want to make sure we put that on our our plans to um to

1:08:48add signage to the trail and to help businesses around get some you know exposure. It is the county's responsibility to do the signage in each county, though there is a coast to coast logo. But each county is responsible. Then let's see. Um I don't know if you also saw the bill that's worked its way through that combines

1:09:18HART with PSTA, the two transit um agencies. I personally think it's a good idea, but you know we're not involved in that, but uh might make it easier as we work look to do a regional transit. Um plan that there's two agencies and maybe one day there'll be one for the whole region, uh, transit agency working on solving that problem. Um It came to my attention that uh Swift Mud is

1:09:49taking out the bridge over the Anklet River in the Starkey Wilderness Park. And uh I wanna um begin talks with Swift Mud and maybe our our county about replacing that bridge. I don't think we need to have a great big, heavy, beautiful wooden bridge that used to be there for a long time. But we do need some kind of access for hikers and cyclists to get from one side of the park to the other. And um

1:10:19so we we need to get that discussion going. Um Glad to hear you talk about Cogan grass because as I drove along the new fifty two it's all over the place. And frankly I saw it all over uh in the entrance feature along fifty two of um Maratha, so I called Kartik uh and let 'em know that they have sculpted into their beautiful entrance feature Cocongrass. And I

1:10:49am sure they are bringing it in. from someone who has cleared their property for development. And so we've we really gotta move on that um before we make it to so expensive that it'll be hard hard to tackle, but um they uh they're gonna try and jump on that. So I think that's uh all I oh no, I have some lovely pictures for you in my district in holiday. Wanted to show it to you. Um This is one of our my residence.

1:11:20You went.

1:11:21Uh yes. Yes. We have been dealing with this for a year. Um can you show the other picture so you really get idea of how they've expanded onto our road. So oh but how nicely they put a little warning cone to not hit their stuff um out on the road. Uh so Of course my residents are not happy about this and um we are So this the person that lives here has a mental illness. Um he while he

1:11:51has lots of possessions, he doesn't like to wear any of them. So he's frequently outside in his birthday suit. Um And uh I have a question for a county attorney. Um and we are working with the judge um on whether he's gonna be cited criminally or civilly because he was cited and he didn't do anything, so now we have to go to the next step. It's tough when you have someone with mental illness, but uh If this stuff is in the street, what

1:12:21what can we do with that?

1:12:24If it's within our right of way the public works can take it. Yeah, we can just

1:12:27So we own everything from the light pole to the left and we can go get that?

1:12:35Yes. I mean if it's within the right of way.

1:12:41Yeah, we can if it's in if it's blocking the right of way we can be dispatching a grappling truck

1:12:46out there immediately.

1:12:48And um and I asked uh the administrator, and I don't know if you had time yet, can you go back to the other picture? Um Can the health department get involved in this? Because that surely has rodents in it.

1:13:01Yeah, so I did reach out to the health department and there's some collaboration efforts and and we've already talked with public works about this particular matter, so

1:13:10It sure would be better if we could get a handle on these things before they get to this stage. But we've been we've been dealing with this for a year and Uh it's just mind boggling that when I saw this picture I I'm dro I'm driving it tomorrow. I I couldn't believe it. Um 'cause I this is uh just south of Mile Stretch, um, in Holiday, so I wanted to share that with you.

1:13:38Yours.

1:13:39Thank you. Commissioner Commissioner Bradford.

1:13:42Thank you, Mr. Chairman First of all, congratulations to the various uh awards and appointments that my fellow board members got. Uh I think it's absolutely wonderful the the bigger footprint that we have, the better. I was uh out of town a significant part of last week, so I missed uh several events. Um The one I really did not want to miss was the ground cutting uh ceremony of the new fire station. However I

1:14:13gave my word to a group of people. And I always keep my word. And it was about dogs, cats, food, delivering thousands of pounds of food that we collected through rotaries at uh a Toyota dealership and a Honda dealership and uh we were able to uh There you go. That's at the uh Taylor

1:14:43Dealership. There's a guy on the right you might know, some of our staff members, my lovely wife's next to me. There's me and my new Marine Corps haircut, which I was not in the Marines.

1:14:59So all the players we loaded up there. Next picture. So uh There's our staff on the uh on the left volunteers uh on the right uh some PR people from Toyota very exciting by the way it's uh forty-six thousand dollars for that Toyota forerunner. Oh yeah, six thousand dollars of food and then uh we shifted down to

1:15:29the uh Honda deal That's the uh general manager of Honda and uh thanked him for his service uh collecting more so it's in the back, it's on the side. Uh shout out to Honda as uh One of my daughters bought a car there so I started out with that. That kind of maybe helped. But uh so they picked up all the food yesterday and uh our uh

1:15:59code enforc or our animal control uh animal support services are be delivering that uh throughout the county for uh neighborhoods and and people who just can't afford to feed their pets and if they can't feed their pets and they turn 'em into the shelters it puts a burden on us and generally it you know, sooner or later if they're not adopted out, you know what happens. So That was my uh that

1:16:29was my commitment. So I I appreciate the uh I appreciate everybody stepping up to the plate. Thank you. Great job.

1:16:40Um go to Commissioner Oakley and I'll go back to Commissioner Starkey. Commissioner Oakley, another

1:16:43item? Um I've been here six years and I've been working on permitting issues and things to go through our permitting department. Raise your text. And for six years I've heard from many, many people that they would no longer do business in Pasco County because they can't get a permit through our department. Now I know there's issues that some people when they do their pre app they've come back and start doing their projects. And there's some information sometimes

1:17:14that doesn't get to uh our people, the staff, some somehow through The Acela system. The comet's been sent back and they're right there in the cellar, but they can't get 'em out of there. So I always hear how long it takes to get a permit is just continuously. And I'm just tired of it. I think it's time we need to really do something in that department to straighten it up 'cause it hadn't changed. I've been here six years tr working hard. I have even a quarterly meeting with

1:17:45the group so people can come in, contractors come in and work out their issues here at the courthouse. to try to get their permits moving smoothly. And don't get me wrong, some of 'em are the citizens that Don't put the right information in or don't give us all the information. I'd hear that. But there's something's wrong with with when they first have their preamp meeting for any pri small or large, whatever it is that they're putting in for a preamp meeting, We're not informing them or

1:18:15giving them the right guidelines to get through the system. 'Cause many times they'll come back, oh well I've been waiting three months. Well They've either put their information in and the staff is not picking it up or they've come up with these ideas that uh They just don't get the right information or they get more information after they put their information in. So it's just continuous. And I I'm just Tired of of dealing with it. The calls that we get I think y'all get the same kind

1:18:45of calls I get. continuously we need to have some changes. So it's it's it's gotta happen. Can't go any longer. I've been here six years with it. I don't want to go another two, three years or six more years with that. So I wanna correct it. Pasco County is gonna be a Premier County. It's got to deal With its public and and make sure they get the right information in. And if we're not doing a good job pre-app, I guess that's part our fault that we're not getting it

1:19:15right, but somebody's gotta give them the right information and of course we gotta receive. One issue was was staff's waiting on comments and they're in they've been put in through the cellar from the public side. And nobody on staff can read it or see it. Don't know where it's at. And goes on for three months like that. But that's just one example, but there's many examples just like that all over our county. It just needs to stop. Yeah. So I don't know what we have to do, but

1:19:45we need to do something. Uh Commissioner Weightman?

1:19:48Thank you. Yeah, I echo Commissioner Oakley. I I haven't brought brought it forward yet, Mr. Caval and the team, but I'm compiling a workable file folder of examples of what Commissioner Oakley's describing and steps within the process where they seem to be failing. Real life examples, not just constructive criticism that the public shares with us. So Definitely second Commissioner

1:20:18Oakley. And before we adjourn, Commissioner Starkey didn't mention it, but it's important, you know, she works very hard for us at the association, the counties, and wanted to recognize her for being appointed to the board of directors and representing Pasco at a national level. So I know you work very hard to get there and very passionate about the organization and I just think it's important that everybody knows. You've climbed the ladder.

1:20:43I'm not sure it was a good idea, but

1:20:46Uh so I thought you were gonna talk about permitting a little bit, but uh

1:20:49I just picked it up get

1:20:50going and

1:20:50move

1:20:51move

1:20:51with

1:20:51uh and Commissioner Oakley I I share your sentiments. Um my assistant Sonia she takes care of my calendar and I try to have her take care of permitting issues. It is such a burden to follow up over and over with these projects that are going on for different reasons coming in. Um

1:21:06we end up spending a lot of our time on on following issues like that. Yeah then. It should be right the first time.

1:21:13And and and and and the use of time and and money for the for what they do and I'm gonna bring up something to my my items and bubble license and maintenance agreement that it had to take forty hours of staff time. Over a simple piece of land that a community had been taken care of for many, many years and they wanted to change the landscaping on it. And they're gonna charge me twelve hundred dollars. Matter of fact, they're holding Mike's got a check in his pocket now for twelve hundred dollars because I didn't want them not to pay any money to get this resolved, but I'll be I'll be bringing that up. But uh I I've got a lot of

1:21:43faith that Mike is gonna jump in and and he's already started some changes, but it's something that's is near and dear to I think uh myself and I know Commissioner Starkey have been dealing with them as well, to get people through the process. Uh I don't know if it takes more people in the office to greet people. Maybe we need someone to actually take an application that comes in. Forget these pre-app meetings, because it certainly seems you'd be slowing things down. Get a person to take the application. Let's go take a look at it. And let that person then walk it through. and and set up some type

1:22:13of new system. But continually the things that are going on um I I give you an example I'm I was going to talk about later on. There's a LIX MPUD that's coming in. I looked at the data to what's submitted to the conditions of making it a full submittal. And six months later they still haven't made a decision that you have to go through the full submitted yet. And I'll I'll I'll talk about that in the mind. But I I think we do definitely need we definitely need some action.

1:22:40Yeah, I I have uh a constituent and I just sent some information to Sally, I forgot to do it yesterday. I've been trying to get his CO since October. Uh he is a c a pharmacy who uh is a task With uh I think it's Baycare, and he's got a lot of patients who need his prescriptions. And um now granted, I think he he moved into a building that wasn't suited for what he's doing, but I think he's worked real hard

1:23:10to comply with everything, and um that's been since October, so I'm hoping that we can see what's going on there and I'm gonna look at his timeline uh again. But it just takes too long. I mean, it's too long. Um I was gonna I wanted to add something um that I forgot and that is on uh on the 20th Of March Um you know, when we did our International Trade Day Um We

1:23:41had already invited the Belize folks up for that date in February, but we realized we just didn't have all our ducks in a row, but they already had their tickets to come, so we we went ahead and did our proclamation and, you know, did our um, showed them around. Um, but we are Gonna have our big event. uh at the uh Barnett Starkey Market on March twentieth and there'll be uh the businesses in Pasco County that deal with international trade. There um tourism

1:24:11will be there and um and our our commissioners are are all invited. You'll get an invitation and some of the administration there to come to the event. We will be having an auction, a live auction, and the proceeds will go to not a live auction. Uh there's be a couple baskets that the rotary some Rotaries are donating, I'm donating one and there's one other one. So

1:24:37silent auction.

1:24:38Yeah, silent auction. Um the bet the money will go towards um building uh uh a uh a kitty for our students in Pasco County who want to participate in the international program. You know, we have uh we have one with Germany where they send us students and we are supposed to send students back, but historically we didn't have the funds to send our students over and they need a little help. And the only one I am aware of right now

1:25:08is the one in Germany, but if anyone knows any others, um let us know. But that this will be run through the I think it's the New Port Richey. Because they they have a some kind of international program so um that's where the the money will end up but um it will go to help our students uh be involved in international events. So I hope that you might consider coming and you'll get an invitation.

1:25:34Okay. Okay, coming

1:25:36more thing on on what you were saying. I thought I've been meaning to bring this on for a month. It used to be that there was uh some staff over here that if people were doing developments on the east side, they could come in and talk to them, especially people like Denise. And so I've been asked, and maybe you guys have too, if someone could please come back here um and that there could be that opportunity for people who want to talk about issues that they're having over here and not have to drive all the way over. So I talked to Denise and

1:26:06she said she would be willing uh to like uh on the days that they have MPOs over here or meetings here that she

1:26:13It doesn't matter. They won't come because the fact of it is quarterly ever since I've been a a commissioner, I've had a quarterly meeting with business services. Sally's been here, Esther's been here, one of the inspectors, one or two of the inspectors. We've had them here and we have solved some issues. But nobody comes. But then they're the first ones to pick the phone up and tell us how bad things are. So I mean it it's just a never end ending cycle unless

1:26:43we change the way we do things on the intro of a new project and how they can get their permits done. Something just to be better to be easier for our people to be able to do their projects or get them started on permitting. Because I mean it just continues.

1:27:01Well Denise was willing to come uh you know a little earlier and have open time for people that had issues. One of the things I was hearing was the drive. We have a whole afternoon. Huh?

1:27:12We have a whole afternoon quarterly. Right here in this building. Right here.

1:27:16Uh and that's zoning? But

1:27:18I think what commission the commissioner is referring to here is an opportunity for Denise to provide additional customer service to folks and to be available. I think Commissioner

1:27:24Weightman.

1:27:25What you're referring to is a meeting with with development services that obviously is not bearing the fruit that you you think it needs to see. And

1:27:31she is one of the first people I call about any zoning issues.

1:27:34We need three Denises, I swear.

1:27:37If you know where they are, we'll hire them.

1:27:39Yeah. Oh, and um as we were talking about grants and and and working on the budget, uh one of the things that the uh the administrator has talked about and I just wanna reiterate it is that um and what other counties do is they have a grants department and I talked about with one of your staff members today. It's a grants department and a grant fulfillment within that department so that will be a budget hit. um in s some form or fashion. But I think the return on

1:28:09investment on that will be significant.

1:28:12Don't we have that already?

1:28:13Nope.

1:28:15I mean we have rant riders. I mean

1:28:18We're we're looking at realigning how we do that. How we do that business to provide more Focus, I guess, would be the right would be the right term to to make sure that we're we're aligned with goals, objectives of the overall county, making sure that we're we're pushing forward on those things.

1:28:33I did tour the mosquito facility and that that was an amazing tour by the way. And we're gonna hook them up with Amskills because they make you saw they make all their stuff. And um and they need skilled labor over there so we're gonna hook them up.