Sheriff budget, deputies and gap insurance
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Yeah we're Mr. Sherv.
I appreciate it. So separately then uh Mr. Fasano we cannot charge for services.
I don't know, what a business mo uh yeah, business model.
No, no. So um and yeah, okay. It's interesting, we always get that. Well you write tickets. We we did twenty thousand traffic stops last year and people say like, Oh, that money goes to you like to law enforcement. It doesn't. It does not go towards law enforcement. That's a big misnomer. Just
like when we approve a gas station that does not go in our pocket.
Well. So I want to thank uh I want to start with thanking Mr. Karbala, um JJ Murphy, I don't know if JJ's here, and um Chief Perez. So for probably at least six years we've been trying to get the TAC Med program, tactical medical program at fire rescue is partnered with SWAT team. For some reason it cannot get done. I mean it was just one block after another block. But finally we had graduation last week and I think we probably had at least eight, nine, ten guys from fire rescue that came over. So that was huge. But I'll tell you um and I'll get into
this couple scenes later on. But we've had major incidents going on where um you know Dade City there was a guy that was shooting at us. We had the guy um probably about a month ago with propane tanks. that was gonna blow up, uh wanted to blow us up, blow his house up, everything, and fire rescue was staging. So that partnership, um, it has never been like this. It's unbelievable. And at the first training center, you know, you can constantly find fire rescue out there all the time. We actually got them now linked up. So our Canine was the first one in the nation that will held out of a c have a Coast Guard helicopter. Um and
so and now we're getting with fire rescue that partnership. So That partnership has been unbelievable, so I I don't want to go unrecognized that. I want to thank him for that. Um So let's start off You know, hopefully if we can hold off any questions and I know one big thing is the MSTU. I'll I'm gonna bring that up, but if we can hold off it's gonna be part of the presentation, but if we can hold off on questions and talk about that until afterwards, I greatly appreciate it because um we got a lot of slides to go through because it's a lot of information. Like I know Commissioner Oakley commit consistently, hey how many deputies you got? How many deputies? So I want to get into
that and explain a lot of these things because it's critical and I get it. You got a tough job. deciding and making priority. So as you go along to understand those things. So here's a number, and I can I can understand Mr. Karbala and his team and or your team probably realize this. You know, Pasco County is serves one of the largest populations in the state of Florida. Um you know Polk County, Penales are right by us, but we still serve a larger population. Even the
you know Hillsborough Sheriff's Office is larger, but it goes down to one thing. We don't have municipalities. We have four municipalities. And you know, we're roughly 92% unincorporated. So if they want to annex, I'm all for it. Annexation is a good word for me. I like that they take things over, that's good. Because if you take a county like Brebar County A lot of annexation, Sheriff's Office is kinda comparable, but You know, when our budgets are the same, they can do so much more
because I'm relying on all because they have municipalities that have police departments and they are able to assist. I'll tell you right now, Wesley Chapel is uh it's probably one of the grass they won't it's not incorporated, but it's probably one of the fastest growing areas in the country and it could be a city on itself. If that was an incorporated area, the amount that it would take off of Your fire rescue, your services, our services would be unbelievable. So I'm not sitting there saying, oh, you know, start the movement, but I'm just saying these are things we look at when we look at Pasco County and we look
at the Sheriff's Office. So here's the budget numbers as you're aware of 150 million dollars last year and hopefully that will be our starting point this year. Pasco government's 2.1 billion and you know we're roughly 7.1 7.15% of all of it. But you know the whole thing is it's two billion dollars as taxpayers. I know a lot of it we had a good conversation with Mr. Karbal. A lot of it goes to roads, those type of projects, those big projects. But It's all it comes down to is taxpayer dollars and how do we use
it. So, you know, we're grateful for the 40% of the new abalorum, but when you look at the whole overall thing, when citizens are saying, hey, what's your percentage? We're at 7.15 of the entire budget. Um You know, this is the one number, and you know, I know the citizen survey is critical. We do the the county does it every year, and it always keeps going back to the same thing. It's public safety. They want to feel safe. No matter what else comes down to, public safety is always the number one issue. You can have the greatest
amenities in the world, but if people don't feel safe in those amenities, they will never go to them and it will deter and honestly I remember years ago. I think it was um Bill Krone with the EDC had mentioned that one of the biggest issues he gets questioned on is how safe is the community when people want to move here. Because they have to bring their families, they have to bring you know to the schools. They want to know that. So public safety is critical. Here's the agency profile is you're aware. 697 certified deputies. That is from the
newest member that just came in the door to myself. Detectives, everybody who has a badge. Six hundred and ninety seven certified, four hundred and fourteen civilian. So and you're gonna see in some of these slides know it's hard to see with the red, but it's a not provided by the county, and the reason why we put that is just so you understand that's not coming out of a hundred and fifty million dollar budget. So just one of you understand is that hey, look at this, look at that. Just so you have apples, apples, oranges, oranges. You understand what comes in and what comes out. You know, we're fortunate to get the citizen center, but you know, there's
still some issues with ADA compliance, the HVAC system, the security measures. So we have to get them get them addressed, and that was something we met with Mr. Carballo with yesterday. Uh, you know, the Grove Substation, they were able to get us some space that's provided by the Grove, Santa Bay Cream Outlets gave us space provided by them. And so those are the type of things that if it was Yeah, sorry, we shouldn't have gone red. Red does not have a color. No,
it's just that uh I've got the slide because I can't really read that, but the whole slide doesn't show up something.
Uh we're getting home. Um
Seth in technology.
So here's some common misperceptions. And I know the worst thing we ever have, and this is one thing we do in the Sheriff's Office, and I'm gonna start. I should have started with this. Like everybody say, being blessed to have a phenomenal team, and the women and men in this organization, I cannot be more proud of. And I think we're all blessed to have great teams. And the culture that's been created that you know what it's not just putting on a uniform, it's not just being a part of the Sheriff's office, but it's about being part of a family. And You know what, we all go to work for how many hours a
day, but we go home and we have other lives. And things happen as other lives that will affect your professional life. And that's why we built that culture around the Family Support Network about agency resiliency is the fact that if we do not make things good at home and help them at their home and their personal lives then professionally they're not gonna do a b they're not gonna be able to succeed. And I can tell you when you look across the nation, when bad things happen with law enforcement, there was probably something that happened in their personal lives that was never addressed and that's what led to major incidents and so that's something that we do as an organization.
But going back to the slides, the calling misconception. So the LISO program. So unfortunately, Mr. Biden is doing everything he can to get rid of the LISO program. If you're not familiar with the LISO program, so and I'll get into it, but agency helicopters. All our agency helicopters except for one that came from the state of Florida have come from the military surplus. LISO is the military surplus. The MRAP. the uh armored vehicle, it's um high water vehicle, recovery vehicle, came from the military. I believe fire rescue
has some LISO vehicles also. But all is that all is that all of that is going away from law enforcement. I believe it's probably gonna go away from fire rescue. It may not, but All you know when we have those storms and we're able to roll in there and save people and rescue people, once those vehicles are done, there's nothing to replace anything right now. So we're we're safe we're facing a major issue with that. Uh the helicopters. So I'll talk about the helicopters. I know oh hold on, let me make sure I'm right. I mean it's downtime. Yep, currently
we have six helicopters. So I I know sometimes there's misconceptions out there is that we have a fleet of helicopters They're all Vietnam Air helicopters. One Huey came from the state of Florida. The rest are all from the LISO program. The smaller ones are 58s, they're Bell Hel they're little helicopters, and they do cost a lot of money to maintain. So our plan is to the the Huey helicopters we want to keep. We're going to maintain them, we're going to keep them because they serve several
purposes. is if there's ever a big search and rescue and we have to go out to Anclo, we have to go somewhere to search rescue somebody in the green swamp, we can repel somebody down and get them. If we have to send people out to go so to a rooftop, we can send them on a rooftop. If there's God forbid a fire, I remember years ago we had the fired Starkey. Had we had the Hueys in, we would have been able to drop water. Now we're able to drop water and brush fire. We're the only agency in the region that has that capability Because the state of Florida was gracious enough to give us one and we got one from the military surplus. The
rest of them we're gonna be phasing out over the next several years as we go to a drone first responder program. We're one of the first ones in the nation to look at this. It it's it's a responder, so not proactive. We can't just fly over the and that's state law commissioner, I want to say I don't want to write someone else's time. State law will prevent prevent proactive, but it's it's reactive. So what we're partnering to do is, you know, having nests they call them over different locations, and if something happens that drone will go out first, look out for somebody and and um advance
that search and I could tell you it's critical. because and you'll see one of the slides coming up, we've had over a thousand people go missing a year. You know, runaway, suicidal. If we get those drones up immediately, then we're gonna be much better. That's what the helicopter is primarily for, is search and rescue. That's that's what do but we're gonna phase them out over time. But please note, more than happy to show anybody those fifty eights. One's usually cannibalized or two's usually cannibalized to get parts to put in the other ones. But fifty eight. V s Vietnam era helicopters that are all older. The Huey you'll know because it's the y'all the bigger
helicopter, but the other ones are the smaller ones. I think you went up in
Without any doors,
Molly
Ed.
So you can see we are we're not flying the most prestigious of equipment.
No.
No. Um So that's the problem that we're facing, is that you know these are going to go away in the future. Um, so many other things. So the Sheriff's Office has not had a purpose-built building facility since 2004. That's something you know, now we're able to the new administration and we have investigators in there. So had we not gone for state dollars, because of the growth over the past since 2004, we would have had nowhere to put anybody. So that's why. That first building, so getting those state and federal dollars have been critical to what
we do. Um, the first center training, as I said, it all came from state and federal dollars. Something that's unique about our Sheriff's Office: I think our deputies wear more hats than a lot of other organizations. So they're not just flying, able to fly drones, they're detectives. Um, they're not just able to be on a SWAT team, they're patrol. Uh, they're not just you know and our team besides being you know mental health um Uh cyber, they do multiple things. That's where first comes in. That's why with fire
rescue, it's so critical now that we're doing these trainings together, we at FEMA down. We I would say our first responders, because of the partnership that's being created at first, I put fire Pasco Fire Rescue and Pasco Sheriff's Office against anybody right now. If it had if something got we don't want anything bad happened, but if something bad happened, their teams are working so well together in such critical situations. I think we would be more successful than had we not been in these situations. I know we'll be more successful. So some other misconceptions. Ten deputies added each year through the BOCC. We appreciate
those ten deputies. But here is the issue we have and you'll see later on we're not keeping up with the growth. So since July the DOCC has approved 10,000 residential units in the past six months So roughly that's you know we look at the ratio the FDLE numbers if we want to go for two depth two deputies per thousand ratio that should be 40 deputies since July that should have been allocated with those residential and I understand that the residential it's not gonna go up tomorrow. It almost seems like
though with the way our county is grooming But and I'll show you the lag time. By the time these are being built, we still won't have enough. But I'm just telling you we appreciate tax redeputies, but it's not if only in the past six months we would need an additional forty, we are falling way behind the curve.
Um some other common misconceptions that canine. You know I know everybody's going, Wow, you know, so many canines, it's absolutely true. And you know what? We look at everything not for the fact that it's a public safety issue and we're saving lives, but it's a business model. And so All of our canines have been donated by local businesses and uh citizens. They've given us the money for the canines. And so they are force multiplier. So I'm going to explain very briefly how they are a force multiplier. So pick one of those
squares up there. And so in the middle of the square would be, I'm just going to use it, the Walmart at Little and 54. A little kid goes missing from that wood. Walmart in 54. Somebody commits a robbery at Walmart in 54. You set up a perimeter around the Walmart. So you have a large perimeter, deputies are on that perimeter, while that is going on, you're waiting for a canine. So if there is only one canine working the entire county, The probability of you finding that kid very quickly, that suicidal person very quickly, or that suspect
very quickly diminishes. The faster we're able to get somebody, the faster we can catch somebody. But there's a m monetary value to it also. If we have that perimeter, you have now deputies set up on that perimeter. Those deputies are costing you money because they're sitting on that perimeter rather than handing calls for service. People don't stop calling us because they know we're busy. I'll show you that in another slide. I mean it almost seems like we get more calls because we're busy. So that's the issue that we face is that from a business model we have to say get the get the suspect, get the missing child,
get the person who's suicidal as quick as we can. Hey deputies, appreciate it. High five, get to your next call. So that's where we see why canine is so critical to what we do. Uh the vehicles. So I know sometimes you go out there and you see wow there's a lot of vehicles at Atlanta Lakes on Central Boulevard and so good bless you. And so um one of the things with the Penny for Pasco is that the Penny for Pasco does not fulfill the amount of vehicles that we have, that we need. Why do we have Tahoes? The Tahoes are actually probably the same amount as explorers. The difference with the Tahoe
is the amount of equipment we can get into it. We have to give our members equipment. Think about they have to have shields for an active shooter. They have to have equipment to break into doors in case there's an active shooter. They have to have health equipment in case they're the first on scene for a medical call. Um someone on the dive team, so they have to have dive equipment. If you're on the SWAT team, you got SWAT equipment. Um a Dodge Charger. Cheving Impala would not fit anything. Like and so the other part too is there's a business component to it. Tahoe would bring back more money. at auctions. Now
I'm not sure compared to p s to explores what they're gonna be right now, but Tahoe's we're doing better at the auction. The other one too is you probably noticed that we don't put lights on the top of our vehicles. We stopped doing that several years ago. It's cause we were losing money at the auction because they were holes and you had to plug holes and everything like that and just people didn't want to have a car who had like four white holes on the top and then plugged in. So that's why we put everything interior so that we would get more at the auction. So those are things I want to make sure you're aware of, but it is actually a safety issue for deputies why we have those vehicles, but we actually return
them um we get money back at a higher rate back, but it still will not fulfill the amount of money needed at a penny for Pasco. So just going through some stamping ratio, and I know you guys probably hate the FDLE numbers. I hate these FDLE numbers. I get that, but look, here's the thing: I don't want to create numbers because then it's oh you create your own numbers. If you all create numbers, oh you create numbers. It's an arbitrary FDLE. We can't argue because they make their own numbers up themselves. They have their own formula and it's it it's not biased.
So Penelope's can't. County, one point eight eight deputies per thousand. Uh you know Hernando County, 1.28. And so if we were at the Penellus ratio, we would get we would be an additional 478 deputies. Hernando ratio, we'd have another 151 deputies. The Hillsborough is at 1.18, we'd have 96. And Polk County Sheriff, God bless Sheriff Judd. But um we had that same level of funding as him, we would have eighty-five. More additional law enforcement deputies. So
right now we're currently 63rd out of 67, and we're hovering right at that one deputy per thousand ratio. So, and I'll go to this later on. I'll tell you that the most important thing for me is to keep the salaries high. I remember I know several of you were on the commission when we had we had over a hundred deputies leave to go to Tampa. And so our salaries are critical to what we do. So I'll tell you right now, um, as we rose, so the other agencies rose. And so you can see, you know, Tampa, of course, is 68,000,
you know, but those are in the FRS. Penelas County is 65,000, Clearwood, um, Hillsborough Sheriff's Office, Polk Sheriff's Office is starting, you know, roughly $2,000 more than us. And even the Pasco Corrections officers are starting. more in the Pasco deputies. And the one thing is that they received gap insurance. And that's the one thing I will ask is that above and beyond our budget, I wish our deputies were treated the same as fire rescue and the corrections officers and receive the gap insurance.
So if you're not familiar with gap insurance, is everybody familiar with gap insurance is? Yes, maybe. When
they retire.
When they retire if they retire twenty five years, they able to go to thir they're able to get their retirement. So yes, they're on thank you. Thank you, sir. I listen. So uh so here's a this is m uh Commissioner Oakley, I know you always ask, hey, how do we compare what's our numbers like? So these are the numbers from 2019 to now. If you look at the population, so you know, 2019, we're roughly, you know, you could see where we were in the pattern. I don't have to explain this much. You'll see that the growth is exponential,
but the growth for deputies is not. And so we went from 1.08 deputies per thousand to in 2022 we're at 1.0 deputies per thousand. I wish we could have better numbers. But FDLE is usually about 18 months behind. But I looked this up as I was going through notes and just to put things in perspective: Seattle, Washington, which was anti-law enforcement, for they went crazy on anti-law enforcement, they're at 1.3 officers per thousand. And Portland, Oregon is
at 1.26 officers per thousand. So those are the type of things when we look at these numbers and we We look to our growing county, you know, how do we compare? So and this is a chart that I apologize, you probably won't be able to see it. Hopefully I'm not I'm not sure if this goes back to something that To me, where our biggest issues are lying is that we are a booming residential county. There is absolutely no doubt about it. It's been that way
for a for a while now. And I remember we had these conversations and I'll get into that a little bit later on about the zones. But when you look at the residential counties, we lose sixteen cents on the dollar. And so when you're losing sixteen cents on the dollar That affects not just the Sheriff's Office, not just the fire department, but anything but an enterprise. So that's the one thing that you know I just want to bring to light is hey, I'm glad we're getting Moffit. I'm glad Amazon is coming up on
board. But we are so far behind that lag, and then I'll get into lag time too. Catching up it's some serious decisions that have to be made over the next several years because this to me, you know, when citizens say what's going on, say look. Look, I understand priorities have to be done, but when there's so much residential growth, and I know a lot of things are out of your hands when you have to approve certain projects, but the projects that have been approved for over the past dozen years are leading us to the problem that we're
having today. So reality with residential growth and this is something I talked about um since you know July of twenty twenty-three those forty new residential I mean the the ten thousand units would be forty deputies and I know Dade City has been talking about I'm not I think they implemented it is that when they approve residential may when they annex they actually say how many officers are you gonna need to chip chief walter? And then they come up with that ratio and they give them that. So that's part of the conversation as people are approving
projects, they're saying, Well, what's this going to take? And I can imagine, you know, with us, Fire Rescue and other public first responders, that is critical to this conversation pieces. I have done that.
So here's the lag time, and this is what I want to explain if everybody's not familiar with it. And this is where it comes to us when residential growth comes in and how this affects us. So new development comes in anywhere in the county. In February 2024, somebody opens their door, like this is beautiful, I love my new house. Great. They don't pay taxes until January 2025. So then in January twenty twenty five, Mr. Fasano. Mr. Wells did his job, Mr. Fasano gets his money. Um then Mr. Fasano you
know goes over and it comes to the uh the board in October of twenty twenty-five. So One year and eight months after that person had moved in that house, that money is now dispersed to the different agencies. So the sheriff's office gets its money, fire gets its money, everybody gets its money. So then In October of 2026, I'm sorry, let me get so in October of 2025, we start planning ahead. Okay, we're getting we got the money. Hire, recruit, train. So now we're in October
of 2026, which is two years and eight months after that person moved in their house in February 2024. is now a deputy out on the street to handle that growth. I joke? But the reality is that, you know, That person still gets to call us, even though their money has not gone. And so that's the issue we have is we have two years and eight two years, eight months of a gap by the time we can catch
up, if the money's there. And that's the one issue we are facing. And then then it compounds in the fact that we're losing 16 cents on every dollar that came into Mr. Fasano on residentials. So it just keeps compounding the issue for everybody. So this is from Florida Tax Watch, I know, uh Commissioner Starkey, I know you like Tax Watch. Huh? You got it up?
I got it up.
So that's why we went to Tax Watch. So you can see per ratio spending per county. So you see Penelope said, this is for public safety expenditures. Hillsborough Polk does very well at 42. 42nd. So again, great to Sheriff Judd. Hernando gets 56 and we're a 57th. So you can see, even and Sheriff Needh does a phenomenal job and happy for him up there. And I know he told me the same thing. He's he's struggling with growth. So even
if you look at their number and like oh okay they're only roughly thirty there are thirty-seven dollars more, but multiply that out by our population. If you our population, I think theirs is roughly 180 to 200,000 people. Ours is what?
Seven. So if you look at that number, how much more would be in that in the ability for public safety? That is huge if we were able to look at that as a ratio. So You all know this one. Unincorporated growth. We are leading the way. 8.7%. Um Polk eight point one. Hillsboro, Hernando and Pinellas. So and and honestly, only soon enough before we pass Pinellas. We're we're going to be bigger than them soon enough.
So to summary the surrounding counties, you know Pasco serves the second largest population in the Tampa Bay region, our unincorporated Pasco is experiencing the most rapid growth of all surrounding counties. Annexation's a good thing. Pasco County has the lowest per capita public safety funding of all the surrounding counties. Pasco County has the lowest starting salary of the surrounding counties. Pasco County has the lowest ratio of law enforcement officers
per thousand of the surrounding counties. And with Pasco's continued growth and larger per capita budget funding by surrounding counties, we continue to fall further behind. The surrounding counties in regards to our capabilities. So here's this is bad too because mine's dark and this is dark. But I know up by the numbers. So roughly it's 177,000 calls for service in 2018, and I can tell you those costs for service have gone up 20,000 in the past several years. So
with the growth and everything, we can see it. 20,000 calls for service increase. And so the units, that's how many units roughly, you know, it fluctuates, how many units on call. I'll tell you all this right now. We sent two deputies per call for service. The reason why we sent two deputies per call for service is because when the attacks started on law enforcement, the ambushes, we had to make sure the deputies were safe. They have families, they have spouses, and we We do not want to be um putting them at any risk. And
so it could be a person that has uh dementia and saying something, we never know going up on that house, is that person have a shotgun waiting for that deputy? So that's why we go two deputies per thousand, because it's not worth a law enforcement officer's life because you know we are because we're far behind, but at the same time is there, I don't want to go to another funeral because we didn't have two deputies going to a call. So Mr Weightman, I know this is the part you've been waiting for. MSTU time. So I'll just tell you my thoughts
on the MSTU and I and let I appreciate if you let me go through I only have a couple slides left, but I'll tell you this is where I talk about the MSTU. I'm fine theoretically with an MSTU. I'm fine with the philosophy. I'm fine with the fact that and I to me this is if if I were in your shoes and looking for work, is that every constitutional has their own taxing. This is this is your taxing, this is your taxing. And then we come to you and say, Commissioners, um, I need 2% increase. And then you all decide
as the governing board to say yes or no. And so but we come forward and then you can say hey NACO, this is what NACO needed, this is what and this is what um you know Sorry Wells. This is what Mr. Wells mean. I saw you over there. But Mr. Wells is so efficient he probably will never need anything. Um so that that's how I believe. But this is my issue going forward right now, is that there is such a gap. We could not go to our citizens and ask them to fill that gap right now. That would be
probably one of the largest tax increases in Pasco's history. So that's where it goes down to priorities. Like figuring out in the next year. or two or three or four years. How do we stop how do we fix that gap? And I'm not saying we're gonna get up there a hundred percent. I'm realistic. I had a and I'll get in a conversation Mr. Karbala had yesterday about being realistic. I get that. But at the same time as We have to fill the gap before we can talk about an MSTU. So here's a something I want to bring up about efficiencies and
I got two slides. I got another slide on efficiencies later on, but one here I just want to show you. So this is about the county detention facility. And I was asked during a transition To hold certifications, law enforcement certifications for corrections officers. And I said no problem. I said I will, but are they gonna pick up the workload in the jail? Absolutely. They will pick up the workload, that's why you hold their law enforcement certification. I said okay, great. Between October 1, 2022 and September 30, 2023, there
were 2,763 calls requiring PSO at the jail. I have no idea why, and we've asked, but we get zero response back that is adequate to understand. They keep saying we're short-staffed. But we are sending deputies in for warrant services, drug possession, things that law enforcement officers are supposed to do, they're not doing. And so I don't know why we're holding certifications for people that aren't using. Using them? But
I will tell you, and first and foremost, I hope they use them. I have no problem if they want to keep the certification, but at least do your job. Um it's absolutely absurd, isn't it?
What do you mean? I'm on the same thing.
So, okay, so there's two types of certifications: there's a correction certification and a law enforcement certification. Right. As a correction certification, you can watch inmates, make sure they're safe, do that. As a law enforcement certification, You can serve a warrant, you can uh arrest somebody for drugs, you can charge somebody with battery. So we gave or like we're holding so the corrections can't hold the law enforcement certification. The sheriff's office can. So I was asked, can you hold their certifications?
It actually came from the board member.
Does that mean hold?
Like hold like it's under our umbrella. Like they can't under their umbrella, they can't. Have a law enforcement certification. They can only have a correction certification because they're not a law enforcement agency. They're a corrections agency. We're a law enforcement agency. So only law enforcement agencies can hold law enforcement certification. So we are like holding it for them, which means they have to go through certain trainings for us, they have to do certain things to uphold those standards.
just have a deputy assigned to the functions facility.
Okay. Hey, no problem. Will you pay for it?
Yeah.
So here's the thing, it's it's two thousand seven hundred and sixty-three hours, which is equivalent to one of our zones. So when I show you our zones for our population, it's equivalent to a zone, but it's not just gonna be one deputy because one deputy only works twelve hours. You have to have shift work, yeah, it's multiple so Or the jail can just do their job and And han and handle those calls for service.
You mean so have a corrections officer that also has a law enforcement certification?
And there's twenty of them that have it.
Okay, so they could already be doing it.
They can be doing it since October now October first of twenty twenty two. So, yes, if they would do their job, it would alleviate at least a zone from the Pasco Sheriff's Office. So, another thing that you probably often hear about is school threats. Our school threats have risen dramatically, uh, 340 in 2023. So we can't just take it through, oh, it's no big deal, it's not an issue. They are all issues, they're all influenced. That's somebody's parent, that's somebody Yeah. You
know, for resources wise, that's that takes a lot of resources. It's just like when somebody goes missing. It's a lot of resources. Um overdose deaths. Fentanyl, everybody knows fentanyl is the number one driver, 75% of deaths. One of the things that Major Crimes has done, our Major Crimes unit, and I give them a lot of credit, they've actually been working with the state attorney's office and I give a plug-in for um Mr. Ross. I know they're trying to get the axon program. So So it's $200,000, but it will absolutely speed up the efficiencies in the court system. It is something that is critical.
Um, acts on it's so basically what would happen is our information from the Pasco Sheriff's Office goes seamlessly right over to the state attorney's office without having to deal with paper, without having to do a printers, anything like that. It is an absolute efficiency, and I I'm not sure how many FTEs, full-time employees they would have reduced, but do I know that.
But it would absolutely make things more efficient. But what we do at the state attorney's office is we've actually been charging people with homicides. So we go out there for an overdose, we find out as quickly as possible where they got the drugs, our detectives, everybody starts working a homicide case, and we're able to make cases and start arresting people for homicide because arresting or charged. Possession narcotics, which we do a lot, is important, but when you charge a drug dealer with homicide, it makes a huge difference. And I know Judge Crane with drug court, what
he had done there and started and handed it off has been great. But what we need to do is try these drug dealers because the drug dealers are it's like the it's like the guy selling candy at the candy store. Unless we do something about them, it it's gonna keep falling, falling apart for us. Um here's some other numbers. So Trinity. Increase time spent on calls increased 20% since 2021 to 2023. So 20% more time of deputy is being spent down in Trinity. Land O' Lakes, I see an
increase and Wesley Chapel, Land O' Lakes and Wesley Chapel. An increase of 34% more time going out there. Increase in time spent on calls for service is due to increase in calls for service. Our call numbers, as you saw, that 20,000. And it's going up, and you're seeing a growth area. Trinity, Lana Lakes, Wesley Chapel. And I know somebody can say, 'Well, why don't you just move deputies?' And I'll get into that to our call and I'll show that on our screen. But you can't move deputies because nobody's left Pasco County. They've just come in. So it's not like the other areas where deputies were. The calls have gone down. It's no, it's just we're
seeing an increase. This is something staggering. I know for Commissioner Oakley and Commissioner Weightman. I mean this is critical to uh to you both. Uh travel time has increased 54%. That's our response time out there on District 2. Some from 41 over, trap think of just traffic alone. Getting from one place to another, that's how much a response time is slowed, fifty-four percent. So efficiencies, and I know Commissioner Starkey, this is big for you. You're like, hey, how do we find efficiencies? So our desk
officer program. What we uh we were able to do is they handle sixteen point two percent of every call for service. So if you're not familiar with a desk officer, they sit at a desk. Um they're not sworn, they're civilians, which is good because they don't get the high risk retirement. And so they sit at a desk and they type up the notes. If somebody says, Hey, I I think I lost my wallet or something happened, I need a driver's license, but to go to Mr. Fasano's office I have to have a police, I have to have a uh Um police report, they type it up and they send it over. The Sheriff's
Office. So we looked at other efficiencies. What could we do? So if we stopped going to a lot of the delayed property crimes, and some we were able to, but to for all of them, we would only save one full-time one full-time person, but the amount of negative impact for customer service would be through the roof. And so we said, hey, look, we just like you, we're all elected by the citizens. We have to make sure that they realize that hey we serve them and if we're not giving good customer service
Like our other constitutionals and the Commission w you know, they're gonna be upset. So we're gonna provide they pay taxes and so we're gonna give 'em services. These are our zones. So I apologize, I'm gonna get up real quick. Is that Chicar and Whitecroft? No I'm good. Oh that oh that's another thing. So I'm gonna show everybody this real quick. And I I know the Commissioners have seen this, because I remember um around 2013, 2014, I sat uh with Commissioner Starkey Commissioner Mariano. And
so with Commissioner Oakley, when you were coming in office, I was able to sit with you, and then Commissioner Weightman about a year ago, I was able to sit with you and explain this. So these are our zones. So these are the zones throughout the entire county. This is where people, you know, when deputies are assigned zones is where you go. Zoom four! So that's Gun Highway coming down over, so that's west of Gun Highway to the Sun Coast Express uh to uh US 41, apologize, US 41. Enzu three.
Used to be a lot of cow pastures. Used to be nothing really on the north side of the road. Now we're on the north side of the roof. Now we are our population has boomed over here. Because we've not been able to keep up with the amount of deputies, we can't bring these zones down to make it smaller. So cows don't bother us unless they get loose, which is very rare. But citizens call us. And hey, that's what we do, we respond to calls
for service. But because we weren't in the allocation when 10,000 residential units come up and that's going to need 40 deputies. We have fallen further and further behind. You know, for the commissioners on the east side of county. That's Yankee 2. Yankee 2 goes basically Bell Lake Road all the way up the county line. 41 over. That count that that zone is unbelievably huge. Going from one place to another. Yes, we have ships, so we have multiple people on ships, but
I'll get into this in a second on another slide, but when you see calls for service going on, so say a kick goes missing down in Yankee 5 at the outlet mall. We're converging Yankee units, we're converging Zulu but hopefully bringing some Zulu units over, bringing everybody we can. It's hard to fill those gaps. So that's the issue that we're facing right now. So actually oh this is gonna be quicker. So Let me show you. This is a typical I and I I kid you not. God is my witness. I looked at the call screen
while I'm out there and I said, hey, somebody take a picture of this. Because this shows what goes on. This is not seven, eight o'clock at night. This is two forty in the afternoon on a Wednesday. Where were deputies at? Suicide attempt in progress. Everybody was following that. Missing adult. Um Baker Act, Child Abuse Case, Stone Tag,
other suicide threats in progress, things were calling on, sex offense. This was happening. What was also happening was 32 calls were holding. Those are thirty two plus people. that were panicked, scared, upset, didn't know what was going on, but were being told, Sorry, we have nobody available, because we're tied up on a Wednesday at 2.40. This is the reality of what we're dealing with. This is the reality
of what we see, and that's why I beg you, you know, please, what is our priority as a county? It should be responding to those 32 plus 650,000 residents that when they need us, we can get there. So what do we need? Finally got this. Like Commissioner Oakley had enough. He was like, come out of here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what do we need? I will always say this: salary has to be the priority. I never want to get back to a point where we lose members of other organizations, because if we lose members of other organizations, you now fall back to the fact. We have to hire, train, recruit, and build people up. The other part too is we have members that, you know, inflation impacts them just like your staff, like everybody. We we may get a pay increase, but the federal government hasn't created hasn't created an
inflation problem. And so that's really the issue that we're dealing with. The second thing is deputies. We need more deputies to go out and patrol and handle those type of situations. The other one too is and this is what Mr Korval and I were talking about yesterday, Mr Murphy, is under Colonel Harrington. I would love to get to a point where Yeah, you know what? I know we're not gonna get to Penelope numbers. I absolutely understand that. I know we're not gonna get to Hillsborough numbers. Um I hope to get to Polk numbers at least. But at the same time is we have plans in
place to say, hey, how do we become more effective without a hundred you know, four hundred more deputies? Forensics. I would love to be able to just send forensics text out to delayed calls because forensics people are a heck of a lot better at dusting fingerprints. Then a deputy. Hands down. Um so I would love to be able to send forensics out to those delayed calls. Our analysts have become critical to investigations. I uh the analysts are not high risk, but I will tell you they are without without them the detectives cannot be as effective as they
are, patrol cannot be effective as they are. I mean to be able as a call is coming out to have an analyst telling the deputy this is where you're Going. Oh, by the way, this person has threatened to kill law enforcement two months ago. Oh, this is what's happening. Hey, we're looking up that missing person now. This is what's going on. They are air traffic control for deputies that are screaming trying to get to a call because it's a priority. Public safety liaisons. Um, I would like to get to the fact of us hiring 18 to 22-year-olds that are non-sworn, that can handle the thing.
That deputies don't shouldn't have to handle, like, hey, go to this store and go get evidence so that you know we can take care of it. Sending a sworn person to a store to pick up evidence is not the most effective use of time. I would love us to be able to get those liaisons to be able to do that, but we can't do that. First, we gotta get the money, then we have to get a ratio that's decent to cut those Yankee zones down, to cut those Zulu zones down, then move forward to gap insurance. Um I will say that is a morale issue. It's a morale issue and it to me it's personal too because
if it's good enough for Fry Rescue and good enough for corrections, it could be good enough for us. And it wasn't like that money was found. It was I mean it was found. It was as soon as the corrections went over, they got gap insurance. And our members go, Whoa, what happened here? Like why did they get it not us? And so I I think for The young guys, they have no idea. The young young women and men, they think retirement is like that's la la laying. Like that. But for those that have been here and have stuck with this organization when people left to go to other places for higher salaries, they've earned it.
Um and the other one too is a new armored vehicle. Uh I know it's one of those things like, you know, it's crazy. It is crazy, but with everything else we need, but it it proves the point. The LISO program's going away. Um, things are falling apart. You know, some of our equipment. If we had a new armored vehicle, right now we have one that's from two it's thirteen years old, it breaks down, we have to ask Hillsborough for it, we have to ask Hernando for theirs, we have to ask other organizations. We could have multiple targets at the same time that we're going after. We went
after a drug dealer, had multiple targets. We go after child porn, we go after people that have multiple Things going at the same time. For us to have a vehicle that really works would be very helpful for us. And so I just throw it up there because I'm just telling you, these are the safety issues that we deal with, and the calls for service, the threats against law enforcement are real. We see it. When people no longer give themselves up and they say, I'm gonna blow myself up like we had. That's a real day. This is really we had a threat, and I'm not gonna go into it publicly. We
had a threat against a major establishment here in this county. Had it not unraveled the way it did and we were able to by the grace of God stop this It would have been a horrific day in our county and that's what we trained for. It was those worst days with fire rescue and so um that's the presentation. So appreciate your time, questions, things Mr. Wells, anything? Mr. Corley?
Okay.
Oh, um let me see. Um available. Okay, I thought we figured out something on the gap insurance, but maybe that was something different that we figured out.
So I'll I'll have to look into that. The sheriff and I discussed that yesterday and uh we we showed that savings on our side of it, so I I just I'll have to go in and see you know how the numbers work on the sheriff's side versus versus ours. And
I to Mr Caval's point we did we talked we brought up yesterday and there was a misunderstanding that was going on but we have Emails back and forth. We want to we would love to have a sit down meeting with Mr. Carbala and everybody to say we know how you do it, but That's not what we see, so let's see how you're all doing it.
Was that our HR department working with his HR department?
Um a question for you, um and I I've never asked this question of any sheriff, um
Uh does anyone count for the number of deputies versus civilians? Is there a uh industry standard?
No, so that that's where so
you have six hundred ninety-seven to four hundred and fourteen.
And so we went we've we've gone over the years because it's I don't ever want to diminish um because salaries should not salaries and retirement. Benefit numbers should never determine the worth of a person. And so let me just say the worth of our civilians is astronomical and we are blessed by them. And I will say I'll put our analysts up to anybody. But for years we've recognized that for the amount of detectives we have, if we're able to force multiply the analysts, which are at a cheaper rate, that's
why you see so m we've been we've been adding to civilian ranks. Because we know adding five sworn is not as effective as adding twenty civilian. And so we would add twenty to analysts to desk officers to reduce those calls for service. So that's why we would do all those things because we're trying to become as effective as possible. And so that that's what it's a force multiplier.
So that's giving 'em better information when So they can have a case
absolutely
quicker, I
guess. Yes,
sir.
Okay. So um on the ten additional deputies, I thought that was a little bump on top of the money we were giving you for the depth. So are are you not, are you only so are you adding ten deputies a year? Are you adding more than ten deputies?
So so we're looking at the numbers and we'll get you 100% numbers. Talking about it earlier. So over the past five years, we think we've added roughly 70 deputies. The 10 deputies were two years. So the past two years you've been adding 10 deputies. We've added 10 deputies. So that's 40 and additional. We've added 10, they've added the you you've added 10 from above and beyond the budget, we added 10 from within the budget, and then 30 came from the cops bring. So we think in the past five years it's been seventy, but those
numbers are in in those ratios.
Okay, so you're adding if we keep this up uh if you keep um with the new money that we give you besides the ten, you take ten you're funding ten deputies out of that. So we so at this rate we're adding twenty a year.
And we would need forty just to keep up with the
Um I love that uh good we're gonna find out about these collection officers. Um what else? Oh on first. So do we know I mean has that You know, I always thought this was a great thing that we did when you came to us and asked us to do first. But um the revenues from first, we you know what are the revenues and how do we can we use that towards deputies?
So the revenu the re here's the thing, the revenue is not like it's um we're not uh I'm trying to think. We're not Amazon. We're not creating no separate revenue. Basically the revenues are going in and what we hope to do is just the revenues to Pay for the salaries of administration people in there. It's not that we're going to get, you know, we're not making millions of dollars. We're barely, you know, we're barely at the point now we're breaking even. But the reason why first is so important is because when you don't have that many people, you have to force multiply. And our force multiplication of having deputies go
into learn different different things has been tremendous. The fact that you know uh Border Patrol Tactical Operation Group. So you're not familiar with Border Tactical, so you're familiar with Border Patrol. Yes. So Border Patrol's top tier one level team. comes in to train with us. Um we have a partnership with SkyDio.
But do they pay?
Huh? Are they paying? No, because they we they're they're giving us equipment. They'll say, Oh here's some equipment, here's some tra they're giving us training for free. Okay. So they're training us for free where it could cost us tens of thousands of dollars for training, but they're training us for free. SkyDio, so I'll give you f we if you want something for free, SkyDio. If you ever come out there, you'll see SkyDio gave us a nest for free because we're tr we're learning a nest is where the drone will come in and z and zone and dock. And then we're learning how to use the we're lear we're learning how to utilize that, so that was free. Uh the the training
that we get from organizations coming in there, you know, for FEMA to come in, they don't charge us, we get free slots for training. So people will come in to train, and yes, there are money that we do receive. I mean, it could be five hundred dollars per person per class, and if the class is ten people, you know, it's five thousand dollars. But you know, we understand that goes towards salaries to for things. And that's actually a high number, $500. But where FIRS is getting its bang for its buck is the fact that we are Haskell Sheriff's Office is far and beyond where a
lot of organizations are because of our technology, our training, our ability. I mean, to have Secret Service come in and train our people on cyber. I mean, we all know these cell phones, being able to learn how to utili like Digital evidence is through the roof. That's where had we not have first and training centers, we would be sending people off to different locations to learn this. And that's now you're sending them off to heads and beds, other heads and beds. And we're bringing heads and beds here. We have people that are, you know, the last group that came in, we had a group from Sarasota that we were teet teaching
tactics to. They spent the week in um US nineteen down holiday and they ate here. They stayed here and so that's I
hollered. No offense.
I brag about it, but just you know, we we just have to be transparent on on the funding and the money because that's our responsibility. Oh no, I get it. And um at the end of the day we're gonna be accountable. Right. Um so I mean there's there's no doubt. I was looking at my Florida tax buying my batteries about tonight here. Um as I've said in the past, we're a cheap county. I mean the the total per capita property tax levies that we have that we raise here were forty
second. So um uh and I I hear you, I hear you on the residential issue. And I think that this board is really starting to um think twice when we're adding density. It's a real conundrum because people can't afford to buy a house because there's it's a supply and demand thing. So um when we have less density, then the price is gonna go up and then none of our deputies
and our employees are paying afford to live here. So it's a really hard balance that we have to find on on where where do we where do we hit that line. But I can tell you where we are We've pushed back more than any other board ever has on on the level development. So
But you'll find and I'll add to what you're saying and you're talking about a lot of residents coming to Pasco and building a lot of residential properties. At the same time we're doing that, we're we're taking in and doing more and more businesses than we ever have before. And so we're we're in the process of trying to change that to where people can live here in. Working and don't have to travel as much. And that's happening, even though we're taking a lot of residents, we
are getting a lot of uh businesses coming in, warehouses, and things of this nature, and they're they're just coming in roads. A lot of that's gonna happen on the east side. A lot of commercial business, a lot of a lot of them that's gonna bring Aboriginal taxes into the county that's gonna help change.
So and
as I say I'm not anti I I grew up in a row home in Philly. I know what it's like to live in a high density neighborhood. Like that to me that I get it. Um And so that's the thing, any anything we can do to sell this county, I'd be more happy to sell for more more warehouse districts, more IT. Yeah. We need it. Yeah.
And we want a lot of business and a lot of commercial coming in. Uh and then we'll have which also we'll need some affordable housing somewhere because we don't have places right now that are forward to these workers that are like to work in these large things. For them to live.
Well the the issue and a good point, Mr uh Commissioner Oakley, is that we have to it's a federal thing, but we have to raise the um salaries for affordable housing because I can imagine the majority of your workers and a majority of members for us cannot go into affordable housing because the numbers are so slow. But however, they're in a conundrum because they can't afford regular house.
Forty percent of the citizens of Pasco County and forty percent of our workers uh need affordable housing. And what they c some people call affordable housing right now in Pasco is not affordable housing. People cannot live in the places because they're but I know it costs too much.
I know what you're saying because we're getting ready to break ground soon I hope on uh um complex out out of banquet. And it's sixty percent AMI and our our teachers can't afford they make too much to to live in there unless they have a couple of kids and no husband. Um so um but but gosh they sure would benefit from being able to live there and walk to be able to get to all the schools out there. So um I don't know how those I don't know who changes those numbers, but that's my committee at NACO so I
will ask those questions.
Maybe housing.
Um it's HUD. HUD, maybe. I'm sure. So I'll I'll ask them if uh how often they adjust those and see if you can't do something. Mr.
Mariano. Thank you. Sheriff, thank you for the presentation. Um you know, for years I think that Commissioner Oakley were on with Commissioner Weightman, you kind of put something together with your previous administrator and kind of like set it up where we kind of like gave you the percentage of the growth we went on and you had a lot of flexibility too and and I'm glad to see all the innovative stuff that you've done and what what you've got coming up. Uh and we we never wanted to keep gap insurance from you, but at the same time if you think it's applicable to put in there, I mean I think it's a good thing. I
know we worked together very closely a few years back about a three year plan to get the deputies pay up again. And again this thing is skyrocketed probably time to take a Take another look at that. So we're definitely here to work with you. And you know, we we are the fastest growing commercial county in the nation as well. As well as like number three in residential, but number one in commercial. Um on the on the calls in the jail, that is something we need to look at because that was something that we talked about from the get-go that we wanted to certify them so we could take
those calls. So I'm not sure where the breakdown was. No, I appreciate it. We will we will jump on that. Uh and I I like your point about the drug dealers. I'm gonna get judged. If we got a drug dealer, they need
to be away.
Right.
Right? Uh just so generally speaking, we don't accept y if it's somebody who's just personal use kind of little tiny bits, that's one thing, but if it's somebody who's a legitimate dealer, they don't come in the drug code. Okay. Very good. Now
lane use, we work on that a bit too. Soning's tougher. Because they got certain rights that are in place that become you can't slow it down. Land use we do a lot of flexibility. I would and I know you've reached out to try to like get more involved in in the in that part and we've worked with I work with Chase closely and Alex before to try like get comments from you guys to be put in there. But I don't I want to I want you to I mean just take a strong stand within it every step of the way, every one of those landing Just comes in, we have flexibility. We can
we don't have to take it. And frankly, as we say, affordable housing. So we just went through Live Local. By the way, for the future, with Live Local, we can use your help up there too to make sure that we have the options so we don't get saddled. Right. We have like prime-prime development, so we don't want to go. Right. We want to keep the junk coming in. Um and I appreciate I really appreciate you showing us about the helicopter situation because that was I
know.
I'm sure you've got a lot of conversation too about what's going to go on, so I'm glad you brought it up to what you're doing and with the futures with the drones. I think it's phenomenal. I'll say the MSTU. So we looked at that probably 12 years ago, maybe 16 years ago. And what we found, and there was one gentleman made the company lived actually in Beacon Woods, and we were going that way. It looked like the MSTU was going to be set up years ago. But we found
that was gonna fall on the burden of just the county, not the cities. And we want everybody to share because you do right work together, so we need to share that in together. So just like we talked about parks the other day, that was my objection to taking everything over. Right. Um but as far as working that I think we can be a balance. Right. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But again that's the only way we're gonna get there. Um but again for for all the stuff that we're doing Um you know, car wash storage airs and apartments, we need to kind of shift away from all that. So that's good. And uh
again, appreciate you guys.
No, I appreciate it and and uh Commissioner Oakley I'll do one thing when those houses like when they're coming up and saying, Hey we have this many initially the only thing I would ask is the same as uh uh as they do in D City. Well how many deputies is this gonna take? If that's brought up into the conversation, that would be fantastic because then at least the plans are in place and people know, hey, w what's this going to take for law enforcement to address these issues. So yeah, that'd be great for us. Thank you.
Well I guess we've pretty well got that number of far as how many deficits it takes per thousand. If you know how many houses going on you'll know that pretty quickly.
And we go in the low end. We just go look at Yeah, I'm sorry, sir, I was gonna say we go in the low end of like for every two, um I know for every one, just say two people. And you know we know now that from handling culture service, there's multiple families living in a lot of locations. Yeah. Because they can't so we know those numbers are much higher. I would say our population is much higher. So that's something we uh
I think that's why the number of six hundred or
that's what we think of that. I think
we're up in the seven hundred thousand.
So
yeah.
Okay. Alright.
Wow, have we hit news?
Thank you.
On your last slide of your priorities, are those ranked in order from first to last? Appreciate appreciate you sharing that with us and giving us something to you on your budget time and appreciate your guys' time and chasing the team so
hang tough out there.
Thank you, sir.