Committee reports by commissioners

1:28:20That will bring us to Committee reports. District one, Commissioner Oakley. Great.

1:28:29This one. Eighty eight.

1:28:33An eighty Yeah,

1:28:35this is when we uh okay, sorry. We went out to I

1:28:38didn't put my page

1:28:39Advent Health at Weston Chapel and uh cut a ribbon on uh the new construction for the sixth floor of the hospital. Um very nice improvement to the area and And of course, I think there was twenty four beds on that floor, if I'm not mistaken. But that was That item we did. And then uh last last the other item was the name of the and cutting of the ribbon of the Wilton

1:29:09Simpson Senior Center. And uh Here you can see it here. Wilton couldn't be with us that day, but Bruni um.

1:29:20gave it a lot of hard work and and thought in it to make sure this happened for our seniors in East Pasco County and uh A part of uh The Dade City area there. A senior center that we've needed for a long time and People are very, very happy that's that's open now and they're working. That that's all I had. Okay. Commissioner Weightman.

1:29:43Thanks, Chair. Bill's not here, but um staff folks were here. Very nice. Mr. Dyson is there. EDC party that thank the Phillips, um, 4G uh folks for hosting us, Commissioner, uh, for the EDC Christmas party. Very nice crowd at 4G Ranch. And again, just very appreciative of of them. uh selling a big chunk of their land for conservation easement in the wildlife corridor. Can't say it enough, but thank thank you to the

1:30:13landowners who choose to sell their land at a discount. And then coming up after the first of the year, wild that we're saying 2026. Um and thanks to Commissioner Starkey for bringing forward the the board's um farm share efforts. We're doing we're doing a uh farm share event on January thirtieth, uh twenty-sixth, twenty twenty six, um nine A. M. And uh at Life Church, uh between it's between Oakley

1:30:43Boulevard and Old Pasco Road, right at the intersection near Quill Hollow and Angus Valley area. And so as it it comes out, I encourage folks to come out and help us, help us uh provide food to folks. We chose after the first of the year in the January. Figure folks might be depleted coming through Thanksgiving and Christmas time and uh try to help them load up in the beginning of Q1 in January to help them help them bounce back after an expensive Christmas season. So as it comes forward, I wish everybody come

1:31:13out and join us and um and uh help folks. And that's all I have. Mr. Starkey.

1:31:22Oh boy, I'm I'm used to coming last.

1:31:25Uh uh.

1:31:26Okay. Um I went to the FAC conference in Tampa, and as you know, I chair the federal committee, um, where I brought up and we discussed the you know the FAC issues and we also take up the NACO federal issues, which I'll talk about in a second, but I also Um continued the discussion about the um Oh my goodness. The uh vouchers for the housing vouchers. Um and

1:31:57um I can tell you that a lot of the counties are very surprised it's not something they normally look at, but when you when you tell tell them that Pinellas County has over sixty percent of the voucher users are not from their county, it opens their eyes. Uh And then we also discussed the um oh gosh, what's the name of that? That um one that adds all the cost?

1:32:20Davis Bacon.

1:32:21Davis Bacon. So um uh and let them know we sent a letter and that anyone who wanted a copy of the letter they could get it from us, but we you know we're gonna try and move the needle on that up in Washington. Um I do think that's something we wanna add to when we go up to Washington and we need to plan on our time. Here uh sometime maybe I don't know when. But sometime And uh okay. So then I um Oh uh on

1:32:51on the fact Um they had a breakout on um discussion on um data centers. But unfortunately that's when I got a call about our legislative appropriation request. And so I had to miss that whole section session. And interestingly at NACO in Texas um

1:33:15That was a big discussion that we had at the Board of Directors meeting was the data centers. And I know we have some circling around here. And uh just I think we need to Get more informed. To be sure that if we do get some we strike the best deal and that was the conclusion from a lot of the commissioners there. A lot of them are in the dark. Some of them there's a county in Maryland, L or Virginia, Lowndes County, I think it's

1:33:46called. They have dozens of 'em. Um it's really actually messing up their county. And there's a a data center coming into North Dakota. It's two miles long, the building. Two miles long. I mean just even wrap your head around that. So um we've in Washington we're we've asked at the LED conference, we've asked for a special session just on data centers for for information gathering. Um

1:34:16let's see what else from NACO. Oh, I have the top ten NACO initiatives. I wanted to share them with you. Let's see. I'll do it this way. Okay.

1:34:34s were giving out the money. that they they pushed for the counties, large counties over five hundred thousand to get the money directly. 'Cause always in the past it went to the state and then you're at the mercy of the state to get your initiatives approved. So Um Nako continues to um push for monies that are coming down and they're trying to do some more with the FEMA to come straight to us. And these are in no particular order, it's just that um I couldn't find

1:35:04my other sheet. Did I say from there? Safeguard local revenue sources. I could not believe how many counties were having discussions that their states are trying to take away their property tax. Of course I knew about Texas, Indiana, Nebraska, Montana. Um Idaho. They're all having property tax discussions and they're um everyone is doing it differently. One state, I think Nebraska The county was able I believe

1:35:34to do a income tax. But everyone's freaking out a what over what that means to their state. So It's not just us. Very interesting. I'm sure we'll talk about that up in Washington again. Um, safeguard local revenue sources, advocate for a fair and flexible tax policy framework that safeguards local revenue sources and flexibility for central county services. And they're coming out with marketing material. And facts for us to be able to help tell our story. Disaster

1:36:05preparedness, response, and recovery. Let's see. Tried to do this one. Promote county priorities and local decision making and federal rulemaking around land use, environmental quality, and energy development. Um this one isn't what relates to us PILK which is payment in lieu of taxes. We don't have any federal lands in our county. uh promote better outcomes in behavioral health, homelessness and criminal justice systems. And that's kind of where That issue

1:36:35lies where if you get arrested And you go to jail? And you sit there for a while, you lose your health insurance and we gotta pick it up. And your whole family loses your health insurance if you're on Medicare or Medicaid, eight. So, um The farm bill. Uh flexib local flexibility to support economic mobility. Uh and uh access to technology solutions.

1:37:04Maintain election integrity and strengthen election worker safety. I think that's nine. I think that's nine. I don't know what the tent is. All right, I uh attended the Magnolia Oaks ribbon cutting along with a couple other commissioners. It looks great. Oh that's the uh restored county courthouse. They got the CO the day before our meeting, I just want to say. Um pretty cool courthouse building, right? Um It was freezing there. Freezing. Okay.

1:37:34Do I have a picture from Magnolia Oaks? Okay, so there we are at Magnolia Oaks. I think those places look great. I couldn't find the Magnolias anywhere. I did see some oaks. I think we should give them some magnolia trees. Commissioner Weightman had a good idea because they paid for those trees themselves. And we were wondering if they could give us a bill. Um we could reimburse them from our tree mitigation trust fund. And they can use that money to put some more landscaping in. This whole row of houses to our left. They back

1:38:05up to that boat and RV storage facility and they their backyard is a chain link fence with bob wire. So I'd love to see if we could, you know, put something there, maybe, you know Help them use that money to shield the Bob Wire view from their homes. Or um or Commissioner Oakley,

1:38:25the parking on phase two. What? Or could go help offset the parking on phase two, with the whole second phase to this.

1:38:32Yeah, well we'd d certainly want them to go for the tree mitigation money for um

1:38:37Yeah, the reimbursement.

1:38:38Yeah. But my gosh, these homes have Bob Wire in their backyard. On the left. I don't know if you noticed that. It's awful.

1:38:45Keep so

1:38:46keep people out.

1:38:48So is this designed this is this the considered private land or the right of way? Let's talk about

1:38:53That would be well this is a kinda condo, so I think it's they don't own these. This is owned by the Who owns this? The housing authority? The housing authority owns it.

1:39:06Right?

1:39:07Yeah. Um Uh I did attend the C D B G D R meeting at um Uh Ben Harrell, uh Commissioner O Mariano's staff was there. It was not real greatly attended. I was disappointed. Um And um So I that's why we're going back to Gulf Harbors and I'm gonna try it and let all my people know um who are in that holiday area that they

1:39:37can come up there. I asked Katie to see if she could find a heat map of homes that were hurt in the uh storms so we can know how to figure out how to target certain neighborhoods because I'm just worried we're not reaching everybody and I want to give everybody who has the opportunity to get some help to get some help. So we're looking for that map.

1:40:01I think it's called the Milton Map.

1:40:03Milton? Not Helene? 'Cause we weren't affected by Milton.

1:40:07But I think it shows where all the water was, doesn't it? Doesn't the Melton map show where all the water is?

1:40:16Are we talking like the aerials that showed? Yeah, I think we did I think we did both storms, but Milton brought the flooding, the unprecedented levels of flooding, so those maps would

1:40:25Okay, well I'll take both. I mean whatever maps there are, I I'd look at both. I know my Aristid house got hit by Milton.

1:40:31Well yeah, Hol I think Helene hit us first. That was a big flood.

1:40:34Yeah. Yeah.

1:40:35Though on the other side Milton

1:40:36Well no, I I got flooded by Milton and Aristid. From the Anklet River.

1:40:40So inland

1:40:42flooding, yes. Helene was a storm

1:40:43surge.

1:40:47We'll we'll we can pull those maps and

1:40:49maybe the other commissioners would like to see it too as they have their further discussions on how to help people. Um so uh I asked um the County Administrator my meetings with him yesterday about information on the hazard mitigation grant money we got. How much did we get? Not the C D B G D R

1:41:08It it varies. I mean you get an allocation, uh a proposed allocation from the state, but the state ultimately determines how much they they push forward. So for example, I think during one of the storms, Helene and Milton might have been around Uh there there's several million dollars that that can be there. These

1:41:23No we got we got like 164 million dollars.

1:41:27Yes, the hundred and I think it was 110 and we had given ten percent of that I think to Elevate Florida which was operated by the state.

1:41:35Okay, so um we have yet commissioners to see the list of projects that we're talking about because no one's presented it to us. Um but I'm hopeful that we had a discussion you're gonna show us what we're talking about. Um And I mentioned to you before that one of the projects we did with that money that Kevin Guthrie got us got for us last time. was they cleaned out parts of the Anklet River to allow for You know. evacuation of the waters in the during

1:42:06when it floods And I can tell you that the river From Little Road West is just a hundred percent full of trees. Um Gary Blackwell owns some property that we're working on buying with Elamp money and he told me y you could you could just walk all across the river up the behind him. We've we have got to get these rivers cleaned out. And that is something you can use the the DR money or the hazard mitigation money for it.

1:42:32Well didn't the Army Corps pay for Tarpon Springs to have that whole thing cleaned out?

1:42:36They're dred they're dredging.

1:42:37Okay, well,

1:42:39this isn't dredging. Well what we did um with this money was hire a con contractor who actually hired our inmates, got our inmates, some of 'em, and they have all this equipment and they pulled the trees out of the river. Sure. You can actually sell that wood. It's beautiful wood. Uh my son used to buy that wood and make chairs out of it in college for money. Um But We must bring back the flow.

1:43:07And I I think we should be approaching the army corps.

1:43:11No,

1:43:11enclose especially though, let's face it.

1:43:13Yeah.

1:43:14It's it's a disaster up there when it gets flooded. But again the Army Corps was starting down at Tarpon, we're supposed to come all the way up here. Let's bring 'em up here.

1:43:22Uh for dredging the silt. Yeah.

1:43:25The cleaning out the whether it's silt or whatever, whatever's in there needs to come out.

1:43:29If they have money, I don't want to wait though. We have the we have money. We can get started. It's choice. It's not expensive. It's not expensive.

1:43:38We'll find out what uh what the status of that is and you know if there's conveyance improvements that can come through that. That's that's what you're talking about.

1:43:45Okay. Um and then um I told the County Administrator, I I brought it up here before, but I wanna hear from our staff, what is the procedure to get these dark arterial which is a bigger collectoral arterial?

1:44:00Arterial arterial would be your thing.

1:44:02Is that like Little Road?

1:44:04Yes, that's county. Probably a county collector, but I'm guessing.

1:44:09Okay. Uh uh Trouble Creek. What is that?

1:44:15Well, we're gonna play stump the chump here, right? I just who needs

1:44:18to know at Trinity Boulevard. I mean they're pitch black.

1:44:25And I need him to come up with a big thing.

1:44:29I gave him a heads up. I was gonna ask him to come up and explain the process. Um

1:44:33Yes, there there you know there's there's currently and while Nick's on his way up here there you know currently in the CIP program there are there are methods that we we go to to light streets that are not lit, correct? So there's there's things that have happened. Nick and I have talked about more complete streets uh with with regards to to to future roads, even with with development. So I'd like Nick just to talk a little bit about streetlights, lighting and safety. improvements. So Nick if you could

1:44:59Yeah, uh good afternoon. Uh Nick Uren, County Engineer. So um Trouble Creek collector road. Generally speaking, if it's anything lower than six lanes, it's probably a collector road. Okay. Um as far as it goes. Arterials are usually at at their build-out, they they would be either busy four-lane roads or six-lane roads. Um that's rule of thumb. Um as far as street lights. As far as streetlights go, we are currently obligating developers who are constructing any of our vision roads, our arterial and collector roads that are

1:45:29four lanes wide or wider to include streetlights as part of the construction. We're also including streetlights on any capital projects that we're doing as a county, county-administered projects. Projects. So we're installing streetlights on four-lane roads and wider. As far as installing lights on existing roads, we are drafting a policy. And basically, the policy is going to look at three key points to prioritize the installation of streetlights. How busy is the road? How high is the crash rate at night?

1:46:00And how many driveways are there per mile? like driveway density, which is a surrogate for how many conflict points are you trying to negotiate in the dark. So It's a resource allocation question. We're trying to figure out where are the most important urgent needs for street lighting, and then we allocate dollars to put in the lights. There's a whole second conversation happening simultaneously about the type of installation process that we will follow. Three options on the table. One is we buy the poles and the lights and we just

1:46:30pay for power. We put them in, we own them. We pay for power, but then we have to maintain those lights and poles with inventory in our shop and whatnot becomes an operational expense for the county. But it's it's frankly cheaper than paying power the power companies to lease the poles and the lights. That's option two. We can pay a power company like Rec or Tico and say, you guys go out there, you put in the light poles, you run the wires between them, you put in the luminaires, the light bulbs, and whatnot, and we lease those items from you and we pay the power

1:47:01company to operate and maintain the lights along those quarters. Heavy operational expense, they amortize their capital costs. cost and add a profit margin on top of that. So it's the least cost effective way to do it, but it's the fastest. Third option that we're exploring, and I know you're gonna ask about this, so this is definitely on the table, is what about solar lighting? What if we just plop solar poles and panels along the corridor as a way of illuminating some of these streets? And and frankly all three are on the table. We're trying to figure out the most cost

1:47:31effective way to achieve the outcomes and illuminate the corridors.

1:47:35Okay, um I s and now that we're talking about power poles. I don't know how often you guys now go down Starkey to go home. Um but if you go down Starkey Boulevard First of all, There w the the wait don't leave because this involv this is gonna be an engineer question. Um They didn't Starkey Boulevard is designated as a scenic road. When John Gallagher was the county administrator, some Older people, now of which I'm one, I guess. Um

1:48:06needed some lights on that bridge because we were having accidents on the bridge. So they put some lights on the bridge over the encloped, but since there was no power there, they put poles all the way down Starkey and they did guy wires across to hold the poles up. Now that there's homes there in neighborhood four. They're coming in with these, you know, the giant ones that they're putting in everywhere. And they're still using guy wires, so I'd like to know if can we please get rid of the guy wires? But secondly, if you look at Longleaf. Neighborhood

1:48:38one, two and three. We did it. The power poles are underground. You get to Metro at neighborhood four and the power poles are lighting the In front of I mean, it's horrible. You can see the difference of of uh the the aesthetics of the community. Why do we not? And if you drive around other counties, they but they all require the poles to be underground in front of a neighborhood like that. I I get transmission lines. But why are we still allowing in this day and age those

1:49:08poles to be above the ground?

1:49:11So these are

1:49:11neighborhood they're not.

1:49:12These would be power poles that we were talking about. And and I think we do have a land development code regulation for residential where those things are buried. Um when you get outside of the residential to medium voltage and high voltage. There's there's an expense there. Sometimes developers will absorb that expense. Some developments you will see those distribution lines that are are buried before they go to neighborhoods. Um, you know, if it is this board's desire we could begin working on a policy or a change to the land development code to mandate that, but right now it is simply a

1:49:42a cost benefit type

1:49:45I mean d I think that Longleaf is the perfect example. Of

1:49:51So one of the things I I did do and I'm not sure.

1:49:54How Braces right in your face.

1:49:58I did speak with Dr. Bellis to see if perhaps there might be resiliency type money available because again that's a protection of the infrastructure. Um, you know, we're not talking high voltage, right? The very large transmission lines, that is very, very expensive to do that. But when you get along the collector roads and the arterials within the neighborhoods, that's what we're speaking to. And right now up Uh there's not a regulation to it to my knowledge, but if the board would like us to begin drafting something for consideration, we can certainly bring something forward. I'd

1:50:28like to see you bring something back to let's

1:50:30go see what others

1:50:31have done, how they did it. Yeah.

1:50:32Mm-hmm. Listen, we're just little developers our family. We're not big multi national you know, ginormous national builders and we were able to put 'em underground. So they can put 'em underground.

1:50:46No, I think we'd bring something back. I'm good with that.

1:50:51Anything else? That's it. Okay. Mr. Yeager.

1:50:55Hey. All right, so we went to I had the pleasure of sitting next to Commissioner Oakley. And uh across from Seth, but we did the meet and greet for the um with uh night at With Wilton Simpson. That was really nice. So they had um the Republican clubs there and Seth so graciously told anybody if they had any um questions to come let us know so uh so uh everyone was able to get their questions answered. Who's who's next to you? Oh that's Brad. Oh that's uh

1:51:25D Dr Zechy She went for the uh school board. Oh in for uh Dr. Legg. Okay, next one. I was at the two I was at the eighteenth annual prayer breakfast. Uh that was great. Um Dr. Leg was the guest speaker and he had a he had a great story. Um it it was very, very moving. Sheriff Knocko was there. Everybody, everybody was there. It was a great event. It was a beautiful,

1:51:55it was put on by the WIV. Then I was at the Pasco EDC Holiday Social at 4G Ranch. The only picture I took was Joanna and I. So that was all that was on my camera roll. I can't go to that anymore now that I have the board of directors meeting every first week of December. And then I attended the Magnolia Oaks ribbon cutting ceremony for the veterans' housing. So that was great. I love uh they have the one, two, and three bedroom options and uh what a blessing

1:52:26to our community. So they just need they're waiting for funding for the second phase. So very excited about that project. And thanks again to With Likucci. And uh Sunday I went to the PBA's Christmas party at um in Saint Pete, so that was very nice. The Police Belevan Association. And that's all I have.

1:52:49Okay.