MSTU options for parks libraries and emergency services
What the county recorded
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The county’s agenda for Board of County Commissioners, Oct 17, 2017
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The county’s minutes for Board of County Commissioners, Oct 17, 2017
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What was said
Machine transcription of 2h 31m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 68% of 679 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
The board had asked as part of the budget process to look at different ways funding avenues They either segregate or pull out either more parks, libraries, part of our public into different ways to fund them versus just leaving them in the streets and then the general fund. So what what you have really is kind of a a menu of options to look at it consider so you give us more direction as we go into the
end of the year and then to the new year because the timeline starts to happen if we want to adopt anyone or an option of these we need to know uh which direction the board would like us to go even though final adoption everything wouldn't be until the final vote setting any any rates or any assessments wouldn't be until next September. There are things that have to happen between now and then on a timeline to make these happen. So we wouldn't start The discussion now, get some guidance as we move forward into the new year. So I will but Bob
start, and then we will work our way around the table and we'll have other
presenters as well. Very good, thank you. As Mr. Biles uh mentioned, we'd had a few requests for information on alternative funding sources for a few of these uh projects, and in particular this morning we'd like to talk about uh what. Is an M MSTU to define that just so we're all on the same page. Uh go into a little bit about why we're asking for an MSTU at this time, and then I'll turn it over to our folks in the departments in the parks, libraries, and public safety to talk about their needs and how they might use additional
dollars from a MSTU if that were to happen. And so as Mr. Miles said, we have some options for you here. We want to give you plenty of options from which to choose. First, an MSTU is simply a county is able to provide municipal-like services to residents who live in unincorporated areas, and the an MSTU would allow the county to charge residents for those services. So, for example, we have an MSTU now for our fire department, and that's about a 1.8 mils, is what
they charge for that. The millage charge for the municipal light services is different, is a separate millage cap than the millage for the countywide services. So the countywide services cap is 10 mils, and there's another 10 mil cap for the MSTUs. The MSTU is different than the MSBU in that the MSBU is an assessment-based. Collection method MSTU is advalorum based. The advantage of
the MSTU is it provides an alternative funding source for some of these uh programs and uh as we're talking about moving forward for our uh moving into the third exemption, third homestead exemption, we were looking at alternative ways of funding some of these items as we're expecting a decrease or decline in our Uh property tax revenues moving forward. The drawback for the MSTU, of course, is that uh you cannot include the municipalities in the MSTU unless they agree to be part
of the MSTU. So for Pasco County, that's not as big as an issue where we know that 99% of all of our customers live in unincorporated Pasco, but for those 1% or less than 1% of residents who live live in the cities and municipalities, we would not be able to charge them the uh MSTU millage without their consent.
I think it's ninety-one percent, not ninety-nine percent.
All right so he just said ninety
nine. Thank you. So why are we asking for uh MSTU at this point? Uh there are two reasons. The first
sir. Are you you're asking for one or you're giving us you're giving us the uh if I look at the agenda correctly, you're we're asking for one. Hold on, let me finish your career. We
are
recommending
an MSTU, but we'd like to present you with some options and allow you to make that decision.
Giving us options and what it would be
exactly.
Presentation of discussion of options of options.
Why are we asking for consideration of an MSP?
Thank you. Why are we asking for consideration of an MSTU at this point? There are two particular reasons. The first is, as I mentioned before, the third homestead exemption, which we see no reason why it won't pass. That will create a decrease in revenues, property tax revenues in both the fire fund and the general fund. And so this would allow us to move some of the expenses out of the general fund and find an alternative funding source for those particular. Projects. Moving forward, if an MSTU were to be selected as an option moving forward,
we want to make it clear that we're not expecting a one-for-one reduction. So if we're moving dollars out of the general fund, say if we were to move $10 million out of the general fund, we wouldn't expect that general fund miliage to decrease by $10 million simply because there are other needs, particularly public safety needs, that are going to be needed in the future. Particularly the sheriff in the past two years has asked for eight million dollars per year. We're going to be losing eight million dollars, at least eight million dollars through this third exemption. I expect the sheriff to be asking
again for at least another eight million dollars per year. So we've got to find alternative funding sources. The second reason is, first reason, of course, would be the revenues. Second reason is to by creating the Premier County. If that is our goal, I think something livability, quality of life is a strategic advantage, particularly in the area of economic development. We know that people like to grow and start businesses in the communities in which they live. They like to relocate businesses to communities in which they work. Like
to live, and so creating a community which has a high standard, a high quality of life, could be a strategic advantage for us moving forward. As we can see here in our resident or citizen survey that we do every year, we see the quality of life in Pasco County is kind of plateaued around the 65 percentage level, which is not bad, however, it is below the benchmark level of around. 70%, it's about 68%. So we've plateaued to that level. How do we get how do we kind of jump started? How do
we get above the benchmark? How do we increase the quality of life amongst our residents? And one of those areas might be to increase our investment in some of these amenities that are important to residents. In our survey, in that national citizen survey, a couple of indicators. There are eight different characteristics of a quality for life, and they use 40 questions to measure those eight different dimensions. One of those is to ask residents their view of recreational opportunities
in the community. On the one hand, we could look at this and say, well, it's increased from 46 to 49 percent. On the other hand, we could say that half of our residents are not satisfied with the recreational opportunities within the county. How do you think? If you look at the on on the bottom right, they see the overall connectedness and a sense of community amongst our residents has been declining significantly from seventy-one to sixty-three percent, then fifty-four to thirty-seven percent. And both of those, by the way, are both charts, all those numbers are below the benchmark.
Thirty-seven is a very sad number.
And it's quite a decrease from fifty four percent.
Yeah.
As part of that survey, they ask uh how well does Pasco County meet the needs and expectations of its residents in a qu in in these four particular areas: County Parks, Recreation Program, Recreation Centers, and Libraries. And you can see on each of those, the first three there, that we've we've seen a decrease in the past couple years, all those are below the benchmark communities. And as far as public libraries, you see public libraries has been Going a nice job and increased from 73 to 79%. And that is equal to or similar to the benchmark
community at 79%.
So we've asked again during in that same survey, we asked citizens what what is a premier community? What what amenities does a premier community have? Of course, number one on the on that wish list every year is public safety. So if we take public safety out of there, we see the third area is parks and recreation, and a little bit lower down are libraries. And so these are two areas that are important to us. our citizens when it comes to defining a premier community. And you can see going
back to the same chart, we look at How would they judge the quality of services provided by parks, by libraries, and et cetera? And we can see parks and recreation libraries has been doing a very good job with the resources they've been given. They're almost up to around the 70% for parks and above 70% in libraries as far as satisfaction with those services. If we look at the budgets for these programs, particularly libraries, parks and recreation, we can see that although they started out in 2003
at about the same point, eight point one million dollars. You can see after the recession they've steeply declined. Libraries is pretty much plateaued there at about six million dollars. And parks and recreation, although it's increased the past few years, that increase is primarily due to our uh to your investment in the uh capital deferred maintenance of parks and recreation?
Well that you know the telling Graph I think would have been to put the budget against population growth.
Yes.
And so the cost per person going towards each one of these or the the amount that's going per capita is the big number.
And we'll look into that. That's a good point. Here, this is a number chart we showed in our previous discussion. Look at the change in the number of full-time employees. You can see those areas in red, those are funded through either the general fund or the municipal fund. You see those areas that are not in red that have increased the number of employees to allow them to meet the demands of citizens. Those areas are, for the most part, have a dedicated revenue source. See PARCS since 2011 has gained five
employees, and libraries has actually declined two employees during that time. And you can see once again going back to 2003, you can see the the graph showing the number of employees at one time. Parks had a hundred and sixty-two employees down to one hundred and twenty-four and and a similar decline for parks and recreations.
And and again you're not comparing this to population
growth. Exactly.
Which is the important thing. Number.
And so with this, I'd like to turn over to Keith Wiley, who will talk about the parks and recreation and the possibilities there.
Alright, so I get I get lead-off. What you see on this on this slide right here is what you get for the current level of funding at approximately 9 million. So you get 11,000 acres, you get four community centers, three rec complexes, 35 parks. We can all read the proposed MSC. MSTU proposes an annual funding of $28 million. That doesn't mean that we're going to expend $28 million, it's just that's the actual revenue generation from the proposed MSTU. It's anticipated that the actual expended budget
would still hover around, you know, 10 and 10 to 13 million. In terms of the MSTU package, as we put it together, what you really see ultimately, this kind of mirrors the master plan that the board adopted. You see improved operations, so it's kind it's current operations but enhanced because it has actually increased staffing levels to address positions that were lost in the downturn. You see a recovery in deferred maintenance. You see a replacement and expansion of existing facilities. And then, of course, there's the
last component, which is the new facilities, which is a part of the growth element of the park's master plan. Just to highlight a couple things again, I think the purpose of this is to maintain existing facilities, really talk about the long-term improvement of replacement of some of this infrastructure over time, and then make sure that there's an a an equitable distribution of facilities in all the market areas. If you recall the master plan. and focused on a needs assessment by market area at the time. And it was a pretty thorough, pretty thorough, I think, evaluation of
what the community wanted in each market area specifically. Why is this important? It's important because the county made a significant investment a long time ago, not that long ago, but um And it's time to kind of reinvest because what we have here is we get a letter from a young lady that's wanting to use the Starkey Playground Park, the main pavilion area, and it's actually been under construction or wrapped around in construction fencing for about eight months. So this is really
not about Having more facilities or or ultimately prettier facilities, it's really about just kind of right sizing the budget so we can replace on a more consistent frequency the facilities that we do have.
Here's just some vision stuff that's in the in the master plan to give you an idea of ultimately what we're thinking. So obviously we're we've been talking about boat ramps, so we're hoping that more boat ramps look like that with a lot of boat trailer parking, fields that are well maintained, new playgrounds, and of course different amenities that we actually don't have in the county already. Uh this this slide really kind of breaks down the meat of of the MST options. And again, it says current, but I want to focus on improved because not only is it current, but it's actually enhanced. Again,
it has addressed where we have emergency issues where for other contracted services where we need money, we have to come back to the board in the middle of the year to ask for $200,000 to replace playgrounds that wasn't originally in the budget. So again, it's it's it's I like to call it improved. What you see in the first line. Ultimately is current operating expenses. That's you can compare that to the nine point approximately nine million dollars we have now. The second block is your replacement schedule for existing infrastructure. This
this is going to be the stuff that you know is capital in nature within the existing facilities that we already have. So the expansion of Conerton, Starkey Ranch Park, Wesley Chapel District. park, things like that that are capital in nature. Uh parks deferred maintenance is all the stuff that's underneath 50,000. That's like fencing, resurfacing, tennis courts, uh, you know, dugouts, netting, things like that. This is just an example of actually the replacement schedule and total. So this is a list of all the capital with
the total cost. Again, the actual annual cost over the five-year period is approximately $4 million.
This talks about This talks about the premier option. So this is the growth element that's in the master plan. This is where the master plan addresses ultimately where we need to be to address the growth, to Commissioner Starkey's point, talking about looking at that population, you know, line trend that goes upwards. So that's what that's that's basically an estimated cost of 7.8 million per year. And what we did is we broke it down both. options. We have really the the current operating expenses with enhancements, right?
We have the deferred maintenance, the replacement schedule of existing structures is really the first, is the first block. And the second one is Premier. We call it Premier because that's talking about addressing the long-term vision as identified in the Parks Master Plan. The total cost for that is sixty-four dollars and eighty-eight cents per household.
And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Library's much more colorful slide presentation than what I had.
So you don't have the parks master plan um report, you know that we we I think we've done two master plans and never initiated either one of them. You don't have any information on
well so Yeah, so so the MSTU models were built off the elements that are in the in the parks master plan. So in the parks master plan it breaks down exactly the one slide I showed you where it's talks about improved operations. improved maintenance, deferred maintenance, existing expansion of uh you know existing of facilities and then the growth model. So each of those subcomponents in the parks master plan had an appendix. And in each of the I don't think
Commissioner Oakley was elected when we went through the Parks Master. Parks Master Plan, so he has not seen it.
And
I just think it would have been beneficial to show what
we were
That's what we're doing. Some of the sponsor go to it. So
we could provide all that information, obviously. I can get with you and show over there. Absolutely, sir. So the so it's yeah, I mean it's that's a really good point. It's not something that was fabricated. It was actually out of an adopted plan that we have. As far as the deferred maintenance schedule, staff's really worked really hard over the last couple years to develop maintenance or facility plans for each site. So each site, instead of every budget you're sitting Back and going, well, what do we got to do this year? What's the need? Fencing, this, that. We actually took a 20-year plan, right? And we broke it down and we said, Here's our
deferred needs, deferred maintenance needs, and fencing and netting, and refer resurfacing tennis courts, and all that, all the little stuff, and then you compare that to the capital. So it's kind of like a blend between the all the elements identified in the master plan and then just the real-world day-to-day. operation of routine maintenance that we see all the time. That that's that's what was used to kind of put these numbers together. So we can definitely provide that list for commissioners.
So I have a lot more questions, but do you want to wait to the library's question?
We can if you have, but I got one real quick question or statement. Um the the board gave you some direction uh sometime last year to um go out and do have community outreach. And um I personally feel we're and I mentioned this yesterday again that we're jumping the gun here, even having this discussion, because the the This board gave you direction, go out to the community, have a discussion, bring back a report to see what their
words and the what they feel their needs are, and if they have the stomach for seeing an MSTU on the ballot be a referendum.
No, no, an MSTU is something we put on, we do. So I can
I can speak to that, sir. Go ahead. But that was their but that was the direction from this board.
Right. So the board a couple meetings ago approved the contract with consensus communication. We've been working with that group. We actually are real close to finalizing the actual questions that will be polled, that will go out for polling. And we plan on bringing, I think um Bob's gonna talk about that later on in the presentation, where we're gonna bring back the information from that polling sometime in November because of the storm. We were a little delayed on the contract, so they got a late start. Um but we have every intention of providing that information. We also originally it was it was to be a parks and recreation,
I think, polling question. We rolled libraries into that to make it relative to this discussion. Um and we we expect to have that sometime in no mid-November.
So how would you have that quick? I thought there was supposed to be this big, huge community outreach. We're going on to the community. and having meetings and and not just doing polling. Was that not the direction that came from the sport?
Well
and that's why you were hiring a consultant or a firm to do this. Not just do a polling question. You guys can put a polling question up on the on the website.
It's not that difficult. We well we c we can do both. I mean the the the
what was the direction from the board last time?
The direction of the right-of-way.
It was
to get it it was to get community outboard. Okay.
So why are we having this discussion today?
Well because we're having that discussion today because we're trying to bring forward some funding options to find out what the board wants. We have some that have been interested in hearing this subject, so that's why we're here today.
Uh again I go back to what the direction from the board was was that that discussion wouldn't happen once again after this process was completed.
I I will get to you
in a second. Having a conversation here.
you know the the outreach these slipped because of the storm but the right the statutory time frames that we need to work towards to make decisions didn't change at all. And so this is not just a parks discussion. This is we're talking about parks right now. Right. That's the discussion we're having. Right. So I just asked these questions. Well when when we want to have this discussion we want to make sure we include all the elements as part of that going out and getting the outreach We will do and bring that back. It's that slipped because of some of the events that happened over the summer. And so we're
going to get that and bring that back to the board. But we need to have this entire discussion to look at all the options because we need some guys as to kind of what we need to start working on through the budget process because some of these things need to, if we're going to do them, have to happen pretty early in the year. And
I understand that. But again, going back and I'm gonna keep repeating myself, the direction from the board was to do the community outreach and see see if it's this is what the community wanted. If it was what the community wanted, then bring it back to us and then we're gonna have that discussion, decide if and when if it went to referendum and what year it would go on the ballot for referendum.
We were planning to have all that information to you before we vote was gonna have it. So that's why we're doing that. We're bringing it to you to now just to to get the flavor if this is even what the board wants us to go forward with. And then we were going to have those before a vote came through, which is why we're saying November, December. Come back with those figures.
I think there was a concern that we've run out of time.
I'm gonna go to Commissioner Starkey, but again that's not the direction this board gave you.
Okay. I don't recall that. What I I I recall that we had a discussion about the in during our budget process about getting rid of the sixty dollars D and the agreement was if we were gonna take money from the parks, we were gonna put money back in. Um, I think it's more than appropriate that we vote ourselves to fund the parks and libraries. We are again 60 what third out of sixty-seven counties. So um we're sitting here building Starkey Park and um If
we have to build it and then shut it, it it's not gonna be a happy day for the people on on our side of the county who this is the first you don't know this, but this is the first ball field that will have been added west of Collier Parkway since I've lived here. That's 25 years. The ones that we're building in Starkey Park. Starkey ramp. And we're not even gonna be maintaining them. If we didn't have an agreement from a developer to maintain them, they would never have been built. And all our park impact fee money would
be sitting there um and Sun West. If that contract goes away with the park manager uh I would be voting to shut some of us because we have no money to maintain it. So We're gonna have to step up to the plate here. Because we we have to give our parks department a a budget to work with. We can't have slides falling apart and swings falling apart. I drive up to parks. I've been hitting the parks in in my district
and um I I've noticed you know I was at Key Vista, we did nothing for that park. You drive up, the parking's a dirt pit. There's old benches. There's not one Premier thing in that park except the view. And we have let we have just let our citizens down by letting all these parks fall apart. I think some of those numbers are high because we're lucky enough to have the Starkey Wilderness Park. Which
is a gift from Swift you know Swift Mud and in our family frankly and we get it from Swift Mud for one dollar and because of the nature of that park it's not that expensive to maintain. Um and we do get a little revenue from it, but um but I can tell you we're gonna have to repay those those those trails uh and the bike trail along Sun Sun the Sun Coast. We're gonna have to repave that. And we keep going down this path with everyone kicking the can and letting our parks department
have the budget of a very small city. Instead of a half a million people. Everything's gonna be shutting down before you know it. Because the the the cost of keeping everything up safely of what we just have now W we won't be able to do it. And I have been contacted by constituents in Trinity just this week. About A little ink field. Does anyone here know the last time we added a ball field for Little League in in the west side of the county?
Um start uh the new one.
Not the side of the town.
The one new one you just opened. Did you do did you do a uh ribbon cutting last week? For ball fields.
No? Where?
Didn't you still bring the park? No. It's gonna have ball fields.
That's softball, not baseball. And there are no fields because there are no base there's one little softball field, but we don't have the money to maintain to build and maintain the softball complex, so that is a it's a picture on a piece of paper right now. But the last little league field that was Opened and west of Collier Parkway, I believe, Jack, you're gonna have to correct me because I'm not sure what's up in your area, was Holiday Wreck, right?
What there's Pine Hill, what other Little League field is there one up in your district?
Up in Hudson you get some? What was it?
And they're
and they're busting at the seams. And when was that built?
Long ago. Before or after
Holiday Wreck. Because Holiday Wreck, I believe, was built thirty years ago.
Well before. We actually had a plan to go build uh eight baseball fields up there. Uh we had seven soccer fields that could have been added across the Engle Park uh when it first got elected with that demand that was out there. In O five we bought the land beside Engle Park. We own fifty two acres of land that sits there doing absolutely nothing.
Nothing. This what you have to something that's different about us than most other counties is that we don't have a big city that has all these parks and the park budget. We are a county having to act like a city. And um we I believe are letting our citizens down. And I think That we should just go ahead and do the SMS to you. I don't think we should be waiting all these years. I think this is ten years past due to fund our parks department and our libraries. And I I would
roll that into one. I would add some culture into it, because you know, we we have very little culture in our county, and we have we have a a constituency here in the last 20 years that have moved in that a Appreciate those kind of amenities and um I don't want to see our parks closed down. I wanna see us improve the parks that we have now and I want us to add more capacity for the thousands of people that are moving in monthly. So
So you Commissioner, I'm gonna go to Commissioner Oakley apologize and I'll go back to we talked about parks or um um baseball fields.
Uh so Mr. Chairman when we were looking at the sports parks project many, many years ago, um the first project they picked was they picked a land over by Heritage Springs that was kind of the five baseball fields and the two uh tag football fields and a soccer field. And when the community down They're erupted to say we don't want it here. The actual site we actually looked at next was in Starkey bubble on me.
five baseball fields for softball, five baseball fields for Swallsplex to run. They would share the fields if they had a tournament coming and there was gonna be seven fields that would be split between Trinity football The Trinity Cheerleads we've actually have a spot there to play. And the in the soccer group that's over at Mitchell were gonna be a sheriff. That didn't happen. Um and it's where it went. So that was like there was a Two opportunities that could have been done on the other side of the counter that didn't happen. Um I've got to tell you for you to make a comment
about Sun West getting shut down if the wind doesn't work out.
What where's the own
energy? And I'll tell you what, you talk about people going out to a certain area. I mean we are very fortunate that the Starkey family donate what they did to create the park and create that amenity. It's a great amenity. But I'm going to tell you, for you not to take a look at what's up there, I just talked to the sheriff yesterday. He was just up there the other day when he brought his family up there. It was so crowded with the buses they had up there, his family didn't even stay. Now, had there been another parking lot that was paved out there, which could hold 600 people, which already has drainage and lime rock in
there, maybe if we put that parking lot down, he might have been able to stay there with his family and you could take more in. Maybe the second bathroom could have been done and gone through. Now I will tell you the agreement that's out there with him, he pays us peanuts going in there. And the whole mantra when this whole project was coming in was we don't have the money to run parks. We can't do it, so we gotta find an agreement. He did not want to run that park. He wanted to run his wakeboard operation. We forced him into that position. And I will say he was ill prepared to run that. From the get-go
and still struggles with it. And if you go out there right now, it is not in first class condition. Period. To me, that's a default in the agreement. What I think we should be doing up there, and the sheriff actually mentions something like this as well. We should be taking and staff we've talked about this before, before Dan was just getting in here. Is let's go look at that whole agreement. Let's go take and study that whole thing. Because you can get a commercial guy like a Peter Boss to come in here, put like a Jimmy Buffett's restaurant or his sister Lulu's restaurant along the beach like they do have up at Merrima up in Destin. Let him go
pay for that building to come in there, let him go put a hotel right in the complex right there. Don't put a conference room up there and make something happen without there. That's a jewel waiting for people to have. And you know what people like Lime Rock Shields, they like the lakes? What we've got is something completely unique. You've got a lake that's been brought down, shaved out, put white beach sand in with a foot around it. You can mark that thing out and you can market that. And I would think that our tourism guy who I haven't met with out on site yet, but that's a destination. Something that will help the whole region of
the area as well as going forward. So please, when you're gonna make a comment about the park.
What I'm saying, Jack, is we don't have it in our current budget right now, we do not have the operation maintenance to maintain any more parks. We're not maintaining the ones we have now. So that is, I think I don't I think Sun West is a jewel. So it's not that. I think all of our parks are jewels. It's just that we don't have the We don't have the money to maintain them in a safe manner. Never mind prestige never mind Premier. That's that's all my point is. So And I think that's a travesty.
So Commissioner Oakley had his hand up too, please.
Deferred uh maintenance you have right now seven million, did I see, or yeah,
the the both the parks master yes fourteen million. So the parks master plan called it fourteen million and that's
we don't have the money for that. That's things that we need to replace right now to bring our parks yes to a premier status
or safety. Correct and the point the point safety to Commissioner Mariano by the parking lot. So not only do we not have the O and M, but we don't even have we're not even accruing the revenue and capital to construct the facilities when we have those opportunities to to take advantage of what's available. So the whole purpose of this is to create this to you know, again, it's a big number. I you know, I think we all we all understand that, but it's not what we're asking to to spend every year, it's just what we're looking to collect.
And if I can just add we're very, very grateful to the board um to approve one point five million for the last two years to help with these different maintenance. But it's still we're still not able to catch up. And I just want to say that, you know Parks and Libraries, we have a fantastic parks and libraries. We really do. We we know we need to be better and we're trying it. All this team is bringing to you today is an option of how to fund it. The only way we can fund it is general
revenue. Or an MSTU and if we're not going to go to general revenue, we're just trying to bring you another option. So whether you agree or not, we're just trying to be helpful here because if the general revenue isn't going to be there because the home's dead, we are gonna have to cut some stuff down. We we have no other alternative. So please I just wanna make sure you know we're just trying to be helpful to bring an
option. I'm gonna ask David Goldstein to come up just for a second. Oh you're not all up questions to that?
So by deferring all this over the years and fourteen million, we're not here today to try to figure out how we're gonna bring fourteen million in a year to catch that up in one year. But we need to have some tool that we can use. to pay off some of this deferred maintenance and continue these and bring them up to being premier like we want and like our citizens want. So we need to work hard at coming up with the issue and I know you bring this to us for that tool. I know if that homestead
comes in, we lose that revenue, we've got to look somewhere else. Again
Nothing against commissioners way before us, but they've been kicking that can down the road and it's up against the curve again. It can't be kicked anymore. Yeah the reason. So we've got to do something to start taking care of our parks and bring them up to what they need to be, libraries too. I've had people tell me about Maybe we should get rid of libraries because they do no good in our county or whatever, but I got news for you. If you'll look at the people that use libraries for meetings, you'll find out that it's full
most of the time. You don't have you don't have time to even get in 'em because our citizens are using 'em. And it's very important. They want them. They want us to help take care of them. Do they do our citizens want us to keep raising fees or doing things about that? I don't think so. I I guarantee I I'm with them. I understand. And it's hard on some people. But to be a Premier County, to have our parks and libraries taking care of we need to start taking You
know, I think that's a good idea taking a hold of what's going on with these and do something about it. 'Cause we we can't just keep Shoving it to the side. Every time we had a cut, I think in previous years, it's been against the parks and libraries. And they've took that's why they're so far behind the deferred maintenance. So we need to take care of that.
David, if you mind.
So real quick, let's let's talk about the Yeah, because he needs a microphone. Let's talk about the impact fee park impact fee dollars real quick and where that goes. We have west central um east impact fee dollars. We know there's um quite a bit of development going on in the central area going in moving into the western side now. So we're gonna see more of revenue obviously, more than we've ever seen probably in those areas come from those at least in the
central So you have the western side and we have more coming that we've recently approved. You think about Mitchell and and the new one the one and the new development of holiday, on and on and on. So they pay these park impact fee as
part
of the development.
That's correct. Um and the boundaries basically the Sun Coast for the West and then Central goes from the Sun Coast about to where Hancart Road is. That's the central and then east is everything kind of easy to hand cart.
We do get impact fee revenue. I I will remind the board though that when we brought the last parks master plan to the board, the the consultant recommended an increase in the park impact fee, basically that would have doubled the fee, and the board declined to double that fee. So Keith is correct, there is a deficit even on the capital side. And what I would say is that um the reason that's important is we have a project like Connerton that would actually maintain the fields for us. They said they
would, but we don't have enough money to build fields for them to maintain.
We do have enough money to build some fields. Some fields,
that's correct.
Correct. Some fields, and as more development happens, we're going to continue to build that build that those funds up. Right. So that so I guess my point is and just and asking these questions, that's a that's a perfect example of working together, like we did in the Starkey area, of with the developer that's willing to come in and help with the O and M on the side of things. So you talk about ballparks on the west side. I again maybe commissioners you're having conversations with parks, I
don't know. Maybe you are, but maybe it's time to if you haven't yet, have those conversations. If you want ball fields, look at taking some of those um Western impact fee dollars and p and put them towards building because I you know, and I know a lot of us have volunteered throughout the years in different in different different um maners when it comes to youth sports and things like that. My experience is, when I and I've coached about every sport we can coach, we w were the ones that draw the lines.
On the baseball fields, we're the ones that maintain the baseball fields. We're the ones that bring the clay in, lay the clay out, and smooth it down. We're the ones that water the the fields before and after the games. You know, parks mows the mows the grass in the baseball fields. Obviously our teams don't mows the grass, but they're there to do that. They're there at those at those parks on a daily basis, and we have we have teams that do it. So when you
have a youth baseball team, for example. Example. I don't know of any group. They do it a coyer. I know they do it a coyer. I know they do it in on 41. I don't know who's not willing to go out there and maintain their baseball fields. So when it comes to the O and M on those...
Yes, Commissioner Starkey.
Um I I'm very aware of the park impact fee on the west side. Um I've had meetings with parks um and budget folks to figure out um how we can continue to add the park add to the park at Starkey Ranch that's about fifteen years late. And so we haven't we do have an agreement with the developer. We're very lucky they stepped forward to take on the maintenance that doesn't go on forever. Um it ends in a few years. And um we the park is not being built all
at once like all the other parks were except I think Wesley Chapel we had another phase. Late lately now we we do parks and little dribs and drabs. So we're starting to look at adding two more fields, but again it's only it's the cap the park impact fee can only be used Capital, is that correct?
That's correct.
What does that do for deferred maintenance or any maintenance? I I don't even think we should have the word deferred. We should have maintenance. But I I don't know if you're hearing them say they are 14 million dollars behind in keeping up the parks we have now that are that we've barely added to in the last twenty five years. So if that isn't a big hole What you know what is so w we're not gonna take care of the we're we're gonna let our current parks that are old and out
of date fall apart. And we're not going to be able to build the new parks that are keeping up with the the growth of our citizens. And yes, I understand a lot of people live in nice C D districts that have some some parks in them, but a lot of people don't. And and you don't have little league fields in a s in a in a C D D district. So um if you're lucky enough to be able to live in one of those communities, Yeah, your your parks outlook is a little better, but most of
our cu our county doesn't. And I I just think that to be sixty third out of sixty-seven isn't something to be proud of. I wanna try and at least shoot for the middle. I'd like I'd love to be first, but I know that's not reality and uh but to have fourteen million dollars of deferred maintenance is should not be acceptable to any of us.
You you can and I'm listen, you're talking to the guy that's out at parks all the time.
Oh I wanted to add I wanted to add I've had twenty five years of being on coaching four kids you know all the way to Division One athletes. So I was chiliing coach, I was on the board of the Little League, I got the lights donated, I got the clay donated, I've striped, my husband's coached every sport all four of our kids in every sport. So
I
said I've I have been there, I've been on the boards of these organizations. And um and yeah, uh it we are way behind any other county that I can think of.
So I I know you
want
to say something, Keith, but I've got to go to Commissioner Mariano. So
I think it's time to really take a look at what we're what we've done. I mean we've we've cut those park fees back, uh with the the parks funding and libraries back twenty nine and thirty percent. I voted Again, a budget for two to three years. Well, that one principle alone. Never mind the fees, which I'm so glad this board finally got rid of the athletic fees as well as the two dollar fees in there. So it would make we like we're heading the right way. But it may be time to really go take a look at those impact fees. And maybe they do need to be doubled, like they're saying. Because if we're going to talk about looking at you, but listen, if we're going to talk about going to get our
citizens pay more taxes in these, they're going to say Well, what about the growth coming in? Should they pay more of what they're doing? Because you get a survey that told you it needs to be more. So if the board wants to get strong to say, look, you know, the previous boards didn't want to go fund it, etc., and that's led to all the deferred, then so be it. But if we're gonna go make a state and we're gonna make that move, then we probably need to look at that impact fee increase to what the survey says as well.
I would agree with in increasing that part. impact fee but I don't think we're gonna be able to escape an MSTU. I don't I
I
agree with
I agree that the question is what's looking at all angles matter of fact the libraries
and maybe she should actually go take a look at uh bringing up something to go take the the old penny for Pasco money for the Elamp money maybe it's time we actually take a look at what we can do better with that money through our thousands of acres that that we don't do anything with, that we could do something better with, such as maybe building some trails.
Well, I I my my main goal here today is is to be able to um I want to get rid of that deferred maintenance. And I want I want the parks that we have now To have some amenities. I mean, is there a restroom at Keith Park or is it a an outhouse?
There there is. There's kind of looks like an outhouse, but it is a restroom. Um so I don't know if I Chairman, can I respond real quick? So uh a couple things. The O and M to your point, I mean we do have agreements in place where certain leagues do participate in maintenance, and that's great. I don't think when you actually go back and look at the The breakdown, the O and M is not really the issue. Uh, when you're talking 250,000, we're talking Starkey Ranch Park, we're saying after year eight it's 460,000 a year. It's it's getting back to the replace
the rate of failure of the infrastructure, the rate at that it's occurring is exceeding our ability to replace it. That's just the reality. So we're here, we're here trying to tell the truth about what's really going on. At the end of the day, not it's It's not about that we don't have enough people to take care of what we have. It's really when you have a playground that's 25 years old and it's not safe for children to play, we need to have the funding available to be able to pull the trigger and say we're play we're placing it this year. When you have four concession stands that are 30 something years old and there's wires and sparks and you know
the leagues that are using them are you know calling us because they don't want to use them, it's about being able to go week. Can in this year replace three concession stands, not looking at the 1.5 that we get, which we we graciously appreciate, and making a decision that no, we can't do any of those concessions. We're gonna do, we're gonna rank and prioritize on public safety, and we're gonna do seawalls and playgrounds and things like that, because that is important. That's the position that we're in as a department. So I just want to be clear. When we bring up O
and M in this presentation, it's to be mindful that we don't repeat what we did Well, I know this is maybe a sensitive subject. We don't want to get in the in the position where we're asking for capital money to build infrastructure and not building in the background of the O and M component. So we're just trying to be responsible with what we're presenting.
So we so to that point we talk about capital in it and we talk about impact fee, impact fee dollars.
Yes sir. Would a concession stand not gonna Into that road.
It would. The problem is, is if you look at so again, I keep going back to the master plan because that's our baseline document. So you're talking about $134 million, right, for growth and things like that. The the credits, the impact fee credit, or not the credits, but the impact fee dollars to generate only covers approximately 40-something percent of it. So to your point, Chairman, we can use the impact fee to basically get to that infrastructure, it's gonna take it's gonna take us a really long period of time and we're probably never gonna get there. So the
other thing about that is when you just lean on the impact fees, you don't have the O and M component built in because the O and M component can't impact fee can't be used for that. So it's this is about
if you replace A concession stand. Right. The O and M doesn't change. I if anything's
because you have a more modern building. But you can't replace existing you can't replace and you can't use impact fee to replace things that have failed because of MAC.
You can't pay for the
expansion of the facility.
So another another good example is we talked about Connerton. So Connerton, we just had a meeting the other day and it's it's great. We have I think roughly two million dollars. We're probably gonna have just enough to maybe Bring in some fill and do a field and a half. And that's what we have available to us in funding. Now the the the development's ready for us to pull the trigger on this whole conceptual plan so we can have those amenities available. but because we actually do not have the capital sitting there for our use, We we can't take advantage of the opportunities that
are being presented to us. So
I know we gotta move on because I know we could libraries again, but I'm I'm just listen, I'm going back to the conversation that we had as a board and we sat here we sat here and all agreed that if we were gonna do something like this it would go to referendum and the voters would decide.
I I didn't agree to that. I'm I'm ready to make my decisions.
That's how that's what the majority agreed on. Yeah.
Did
you? And I don't think Commissioner Oakley was he may or not power here
on
the
Chairman M there was a conversation which occurred in June at a workshop by this board that indicated they wanted to move forward with MSTU. MSTU too
that's what we thought about. So we so we apologize. We were delayed. We'll bring that information at least for at least for my department, we'll bring that information. information back in November.
Won't we find out when they do the polling and bring that polling back in here that what they're presenting today probably will support what we're talking about in the MSDU.
Okay, and I'm gonna move on but again and
then
I think
we'll find out
at one time when we sat right here in the dias we talked about letting it go to the referendum and letting the voters decide after we had the information back from this consultant that everybody wanted to hire to go out there and and do um
study.
We're gonna get to that. Whatever. You know? Because any any listen, it's not that hard. It's not difficult for any legislative body that go, we're gonna tax, tax, tax, tax, tax 'cause you can buy what you want to. Right? But at the same time, I mean when it comes to something like this, and the same with libraries and whatever, this is gonna be a choice of the I to me it has to be a choice of the people. I can't make I'm not gonna make that decision for them. Let them
decide.
If that's what they want to see, they will let us know. And you put it on the ballot.
Mr. Chairman Mariano.
We went back and forth with that over and over again. And that's what I thought we agreed on. Go ahead.
And let's face it, things have changed a little bit in since then. Um now I will tell you I'm a little A little concerned that part of your polling that was gonna go on didn't include the presentations before the polling was gonna go on. Um I think that's a big misstep. I mean you can't sell from an empty shelf. You gotta show the people what they're gonna get. Uh I think it's a critical step forward. I think now that the legislature's made their move as far as a referendum going on, as far as it's gonna cut out revenue dramatically, it may change what we do and it may take not going
straight uh to the voters, but it may take a bo voter out as far as what we're gonna go do. But regardless of that, the presentation's gotta be made to the public. They gotta see what they're gonna get. They're gonna see what they're gonna pay for. Uh And and let it go from there. I think one thing would be important for us though, if we are gonna look at change that impact fee, that the voters need to know that before they actually get the presentation. So that may be something to come sooner as opposed to later. And let's remember this. For the West Side, I think it's the next eight years or projected
eight years of impact fee are gonna go into the starting part, not anywhere else. Correct. So that's something to remember as well. And I'm not sure what the number is, but David probably does. Yeah. Well
you go ahead and I don't want I want you to get libraries in before we break because but at the same time we can't vote on anything today, it's gonna have to be on this right here.
You know.
And I and I wanna remind you all there is an outhouse for a restroom facility at the Suncoast and fifty four trailhead that um has been there for years.
Porter Potting or not?
Porter Potty. Porter John. Porter John. You know, you try using that on a nice steamy Sunday Saturday morning. See if you think we got a premier town in trip.
Well you can listen, you look I'm gonna go back to the game. You can tax, tax, tax and tax and buy whatever you want to.
That's anything easiest thing that a government agency can do is Tax, tax, tax is and buy, buy, buy. But there is a
ability to have minimum standards. You gotta have a there is a
and that's why we talked about bring it to the voters
and let the voters decide.
Let the voters make that decision. All right?
We don't think our voters want a toilet that flushes?
Oh my gosh, you're you're way over the top. Way, way, way over the top. Way over the top. Move on to libraries. I had we had a great river cutting yesterday.
We're almost done with the Sunlas Bathroom, but remember that comment. You got it
toys that flash is at
Sunclass.
We don't at Starkey and at Sun Coast of 50. And it's been open for twenty three ten fifteen, twenty years.
Okay. Uh Sean McGarvey Libraries Administrator. So to key off of what the Commissioner Starkey had requested earlier about the per capita with the income level, I'm sorry, not with the income level, with the population level. We do have somewhat of that data for libraries at least. The state average for libraries is approximately $23 to $24. It might be a little higher. Currently the Pasco County residents have a $12.52 rounded up to $13 per capita. So
that is what you have for the libraries. Now we also understand that this is an investment, ladies and gentlemen, that we're asking you to consider. So we want Wanted to say what we are doing currently with this budget. We currently have a national first in the nation robotics team. We have seven locations, three makerspaces, Monday hours again, which have been restored at two locations. Thank you very much. And staffing for those locations in the current uh foreseeable
future. Uh but we do have current and future needs. At this point in time, we have this is the National Florida Library Association averages for what should be present in the state. Our current averages are in the middle category, the standards are on the left, and as you can see there's variances on the right. We are short according to the state average, 130 70,000 square feet, 40 full-time employees, only five public access computers
that are accessible by the public, and we actually have a surplus of items available for the public. Now we put these two up here to show that the money that the board has has graciously given us through the years, we have been good stewards of. We have been using to the best of our ability. Which we like to think contributes to the fact that we have a 79% approval rating still, so that we are making the right decisions. We also decided to include some pictures of our facilities in
the mid-90s as compared to our current facilities now. In most of these shots you will see that the only thing that has possibly changed is the color on the computers.
Uh This is our Hudson Library, which is our largest square footage library. It's 32,000 square feet. It holds our administration. It has the most reference collection and items in the system.
As you can see, this facility is relatively the same as it was built in the nineties. So, our current and future needs also. The state average for operating expenditures is 26. I apologize that's a little short, and we are currently at 13. Branch renovations and deferred maintenance plans. What we mean by that is updating the facilities to the 21st century. For instance, the board is moving towards the Connected City project. There's a lot of improvements that can be made within the building within the building for maintenance and
faster technology, for instance higher speeds on internet access, newer technology. Light sa I'm sorry, energy saving technologies and stuff like that. These buildings were built thirty years ago. The facilities master plan indicates library space is inadequate in all areas. This is the current facilities master plan that was completed in 2014. And it recommends increasing that space by about 45,000, hopefully by 2019. Our next branch that is scheduled to open is the Starkey
Ranch property, which is scheduled for 2022, I believe, at this point, or maybe within that range. So What will these benef benefits get? And we want to be clear too that MSTU or funding benefits in general. New reorganization of space towards a more collaborative environment. A lot of movement is going to creating collaborative environments and not just the old stacks that you all saw in those pictures straight down that you all remember from every library ever. Putting
these locations in more of an area where the public can interact with each other. Also, more interactive technology that allows you to search and find the items that you want very quickly. Maker spaces. And finally virtual environments. Now, these four were featured for a separate reason too is we are already starting with the resources we have to investigate these, but it is very um It it's limited by budget and ability. We've been reorganizing the space
we have. We've been including new technology. As you know, we've been very uh forward with the maker spaces, reworking the space we have, and working with the virtual environment, actually partnering with parks and other organizations to create virtual tours and such like this. Also, speaking to Commissioner Oakley's statement of About nobody or about people saying why do we have the libraries? As of last year, as of this year, we've currently had over 150,000 program attendance
and over, I want to say two million items checked out total. So we are continuing to increase services, checkout, and program attendance. So that actually finishes to this. We have three options for our library MSTU requests. The option one basically takes standard library funding, increases it to answer all deferred maintenance requests, and funds the operations and maintenance for the
Starkey Ranch Library. The second option does that and then offers the ability to create two new branches. The third option. Does that and then adds two more beyond that so a total of four new branches. As you can see the prices are included on the right bottom category for what it would cost MSTU wise.
Well's the Chapelman.
What was the last uh a library added in the county? What's the newest library?
Uh if it's not Starkey Ranch, all the other
No, no, one that's open and existing.
Open and existing. Uh the two newest would be considered the remodels which were done of Lando Lakes and Regency Park Libraries. I believe they were completed in two thousand six, ma'am.
That's not new though.
That's not new.
What's the last library we built?
Literally they were all built At the same time in ninety five with the bond issue was the last one.
Yes.
The what?
All seven moves.
So the latest was ninety five? Yes, ma'am. So twenty two years ago? Twenty two years ago. Twenty two years ago?
Twenty five twenty five Starkey Library comes on
line. So um for Starkey Library, do you have the money to build it now?
Uh impact fees were taken and set aside. We do not have the money to build it. I believe I will look to Mr. Goldstein, uh because that is coming from the school board, sir, correct?
Yeah, we're actually splitting the cost of the library with the school board. Um so any money any library impact fee money we receive is earmarked for the library.
And um that has the black box theater attached to it. Right. So um and I've spoken to some of you, I'm not sure if I've spoken to you, David, but w w you know, I think library also is kind of maybe an old fashioned word. And I see these maybe more as calling them community centers or or something else so people understand there's a lot more going on than a collection of books. And I think if you I think that's a definition of library. I know I haven't looked it up. But um and I think we have a great example here
in the one coming in Starkey Ranch to make this more of a cultural center than a library because it has this theater that's gonna be attached to it. So I've been visiting some libraries as I've traveled and the one that really sticks in my mind I've spoken to you about it before is the one in Fort Myers. Um it's I think it's two. Stories with beautiful meeting space outside that the community uses for all kinds of events. Um, it has all kinds of rooms inside for say jewelry making, painting
classes, um, all kinds of things that benefit the whole community, not just someone going in to check out a book. All kinds of meeting spaces and a lot of and then a lot of technology. for citizens who can't afford to have that technology at home. So I think That You know, a lot of people say, What do we need a library for? You can get any book on you know, from your from your iPad, but that's not that's not how these function anymore. And um And When I go into a lot of the libraries in my district,
they're very sad, frankly. And um and you guys are doing a great job. But again, we're we are twenty or fifty percent below the average budget, right? It's twenty-six and we're at thirteen. Yes, ma'am. So Again, we're in the bottom twenty-five percent of the county, of the state, and I wonder what those counties are. Again, I bet it's Waucula, Jefferson. I can't even think remember some of those counties that we're probably lumped in with. And that's
not something that we should be okay with.
You have anything else on that? No, sir. Um because I want to make sure fire gets in here. I don't want them to have to stay after wait around for an hour and a half because they obviously have a lot of work to do. You know, I mean we'll we'll just let's move on. I think we're in the it's in the same boat as what we talked about previously. I don't know if we do it we do it by referring to me combining the two.
So real quick before um Kevin and the and the Chiefs come up, um we are not here to discuss Hurricane Arma right now. That's gonna come back to us in December. We need to focus on what he's talking about and that will be brought to us in uh December meeting.
Just making sure.
All right, uh good afternoon again, Commissioner Oak Kevin Guthrie, Assistant County Administrator of Public Safety with Chief Scott Cassen and Chief Black Asano. Um we're here to bring you an emergency services MSTU. We have conducted a community-wide threat hazard risk and vulnerabilities capability assessment. It is an ongoing living-breathing document on a day-to-day basis. This uh coupled with a strategic plan that we have just uh produced with the fire department and emergency management aligning with aligning ourselves with accreditation models is how we
came to this point of needing to bring you a potential MSTU for specifically for the rescue side and emergency management 911. With that being said I'm going I have a couple more comments but I'm gonna go ahead and let uh Chief Casson get into actually it's emergency management first, I'll go ahead and start with that. So with the emergency with the emergency management side of the house, the governor underneath Hurricane Herman issued an exempt an emergency exemptive order requiring that all the system living
facilities, emergency homes and others, which currently in Pasco County are 136 licensed facilities, must now require, must meet new requirements. in in association with ACA to produce plans. We must produce those plans as a form of a website and we must ensure that they have generators and so on. This is going to be a new burden on us at a local emergency management level that we had not anticipated having with this new executive order. I know that three of you have contacted me independently
asking about that and what are going to be the impacts as we move forward and We are working with the individuals and I want to be a Premier County and I want to be a Premier Emergency Management Organization. We think we have something that will truly be a national best practice when we get ready to roll it out. Again, I'll provide more of that information to you at our December meeting. With that being said, I'll move on. Next one is mitigation grant match. I know that this is something that has been uh big for many of you when we bring you supply. uh repetitive loss and
severe repetitive loss properties to buy. We make the homeowner as it is now bring up 25% of that match to this board. Therefore we do not have a whole lot of people wanting to participate in that program. As of today we have in Pasco County over 500 properties eligible to be bought. But we do not have, but for example, the last year, eight people that want to be a part of the program
because they have to pay out 25% of their own monies. So we are looking at a situation where this money would help offset that 25% match to where we could actually buy some of these for federal lost properties. It could also be used in conjunction with uh infrastructure projects. If we choose to go down that path versus buying properties. In other words, help an entire community by putting in, utilizing 75% of penal money along with 25% local match to put in a new spine system, for instance, in the Iron
Bark area or down in an Elfers area, and so on. Even to uh Commissioner O Chairman More, you have the property out um in your area as well, uh the uh home part that continuum. constantly floods every time we have rain. So that talks about the repetitive loss, a catastrophic reserve to relieve pressure on the general fund reserves. For the first time ever uh Bob did put um manage to get twenty thousand dollars into our budget this year for an operation spending account if you will for the the a
pop-up emergency. Um I've been at Tallahassee In that acting role as chief of staff, and I can tell you we're looking at right now a $3.3 billion storm, not in Pasco County, but statewide. Our portion right now is estimated to be close to $100 million. If we get our if we have to put our normal match out, that'll be $12.5 million that we have to put out this year. I don't believe we have that in reserves. So that means we have to cut out the proof. Programs. So the state
is leaning towards a model of building a catastrophic, or the state already has a catastrophic fund. This would be we would have a set aside of this MSTU to provide for a catastrophic fund so that when we do have these major disasters, and I will remind everybody that we've had Hurricane Hermeen during this budget year, 16 weeks of fires, 12 weeks of sinkhole responses, or I'd say sink Coal response in the state's largest sink coal over the last two or three years and Hurricane Irma. As I move on, that eliminates
I bring you an option. If I'm going to ask for something, I'm going to give something up. I propose that we would eliminate the hurricane mitigation fee that is for first-time builders in evacuation zones A through C, which is currently set at 200, roughly about $248. Right now we require every homeowner that is going to build a home in those zones must pay a $248 fee for the purposes of maintaining and shelters. But I would also argue, as we saw this last year, we shelter
people from the right across the entire county, not just for A, B, and C. So that we truly have a catastrophic sheltering. Problem. Set aside fund for emergency generators and sheltering, hardened retrofit. I could go today to the Florida Division of Emergency Management and get all the pigtails, pigtail emergency generation connections for every school in Pasco County. But what they will not cover is generators. You all saw firsthand, you all went to shelters
this year, saw shelters, schools that did not have generators. This would help us fund generators. A couple per year until we can get ourselves up to us up to a certain point. The only other thing that I will say is a part of our MSTU is once we hit some of these benchmarks and we have generators on the schools and we have these repetitive loss properties. Uh built, or I'm sorry, shouldn't say built, but either elevated or we roll them um we we purchase those properties, we would come back to you and say we're ready for a rollback
because we've accomplished many of the missions that we want to accomplish here on a day-to-day basis. Next thing I want to talk about is emergency 911 communications. Our 911 communications center is within years, and when I say within years, two to three years of being in a catastrophic situation where we do not have enough room. Um we attempted to go with a split system this last year as a part of a catastrophic collapse
of our 911 system and we found out that splitting our center into two different centers is n we we lost 20% productivity by doing that. So it was um that was not something we want to do in the future. So our our communication center and our emergency operations center, we've talked about the bigger safety operations center. We're going to run into some problems The next two or three years. Again, we did all this as a part of a community-wide threat, hazard, risk, capability assessment in line
with our accreditation standards that are set for our individual organizations. So this is not, we're just pulling it out of our pulling it out and putting it, presenting it to you. All of this was methodically brought to you today. So we're again for the non-one communication. Center, it will maintain maintain a funding source with uh which has been decreasing. Uh we didn't have this problem as you see. Go ahead, Bob. If you go ahead and go to the next slide for me, please. Or I'm sorry, Chief. For our 911
tax revenue, um, you notice that in 2009 we had a huge decrease. Back in 2009, we were able to do um we were able to make maintain our funding level. But in 2009, the state legislature made a change to where we were not getting that 50 cent fee anymore, but now we're having to share it with many other organizations. So we now get about 25 cents.
So maybe that's something we need to talk with Ralph about and a lot of your legislators is say, okay, stop taking our funding away, stop taking our money away. You're getting tax dollars yourself to run your own budget. Start stop trying to take ours away to run your budget. So you know, that's that's a that's a novel idea.
The number one benefactor of that that shift in funding in 2009 was the actual the wireless companies. The big wireless companies. Because They argued, and there
is
some validity to their argument, so they must they have a requirement, FCC, to provide 911 communications. So they needed it for their infrastructure. But it did cut our funding from 50 cents down to about 28 cents on the city.
Private organisms of private companies.
Under understood, but again, we have been lobbying unsuccessfully for the last four years to return that funding back to 50 cents.
Change that add that to our priorities, Ralph, Commissioner Mariano.
Yeah, Kim, what exactly do the private companies have to do to Provide the nine one one.
They have to maintain the the backbone system. They they are the ones that maintain that system to ensure that your wireless cell phone gets to our nine one one circuit. Because at the end of the day it's a radio frequency. I get an unlimited calling. It's it's supposed to connect me anyway. At the end of the day, this is a radio frequency. Right. I think
the towers are there anyways no matter what. It doesn't matter if we're calling 911 or I'm calling my wife or something.
Yes. You're not there's no special system that they've enacted for for 911 centers on the towers. Right? That is it that is correct. Okay.
Yeah, well with the exception of GPS now the GPS triang triangulation for I would want phase two uh locating of a the the GPS side of the house, yes they had to upgrade their equipment to do that.
They do that anyway. Right. I mean these phones they have more tracking that's information that's everywhere. So that's that's that's not even part of the mix either.
Again, I You'll you won't get any argument for me take money away from the the big telephone companies, but at the end of the day, we've been unsuccessfully lobbying this in numerous organizations through the through the Florida Association County, through the Slim Cities. We have been doing this for years.
This has been on the fact agenda every year.
We need we need resolutions from all the all the counties in all the cities to actually get this back in. So if you would devise something like Like that. Right now I think with everybody looking at you and the position, the great job you've done for this county, I think it's a good time for you devise a letter for us to sign and let's get it out going statewide. Write it out. Restore
it. We want it to
be restored. That's it.
Understood.
Thank you.
So we'll take that away and get that done for you guys for the uh next possible meeting. And then again there's right now in our communication centers we did see a part of this last uh hurricane season and active season that we've had with uh not just hurricanes but wildfires. We have an inadequate training space, inadequate office space, no dedicated space for personnel and an inventive activation uh activation for uh sleeping, showering, no commercial kitchen. at all. Next slide, Scott. We've already talked about the funding and the increase of funding and how that happened.
So then I will now turn this over to Fire Rescue.
Good morning and thank you first of all for uh letting us go this morning because we have uh negotiations with the IAFF this afternoon for the next uh contract. Uh as you can see at the top there it talks about public safety current response vulnerabilities. I know we've come to you guys before uh to the board about uh these these very topics and typically what we've done we've brought to you two to three years prior um the current response vulnerabilities. We're kind of switching that a little bit in that we had uh some direction from Kevin
during the lengthy off budget season of about seven days to uh establish uh a a true gap analysis to where we currently are today and where we would be in a typical uh uh emerging market county as such as where we want to be in In terms of premiere. So we looked to see what those gaps were. We we looked um uh throughout the organization and we established this particular list. Now, this list is gonna mirror some of the stuff that we've already talked about, so some of it's
not gonna be a surprise to you. And I'm not gonna spend a lot of time really going down into the weeds because this really isn't a particular meeting for that. But uh we wanted to uh point out the fact that right now. as it stands we believe we're somewhere in the vicinity of about fourteen million dollars. Short of where we should be in order to meet the current response uh vulnerabilities. Now this is all in accordance with the uh insurance services organization and uh NFPA as court and as well as our accreditation model that
we've been following. And uh above and beyond everything else, we if nothing else happens, we at least want to establish the MSTU because we want to divest. Fire rescue portion of the general fund out of that for a couple reasons. One, obviously, we compete every year against the entire county for public safety dollars. Just as important, they're competing with fire rescue for those same dollars. So again, you know, it comes down to the parks, you know, and the and the decisions that you have to make. You know, do we do
we fund replacing all the diving boards at the pools because the rust. Or do we put an ambulance? And those that's a competition that's occurring. So by divesting at least that portion out and having its own MSTU that eliminates that that conversation. But I'll I'll run down through this list five seconds on each one or more. The ready reserve apparatus fleet, you probably aren't aware, but right now when a fire truck breaks down or an ambulance breaks down, there's a whole process that has to happen in order to Get a new one in its place. It's kind of similar to like an airplane. When
an airplane breaks, you just don't have them laying around. We do have spare units, but it it takes time to swap those out. They're not stocked and ready to go. And more importantly, whenever there's a major disaster, as we just uh experienced with Irma, we have to actually stock these. We have to go into our spare fleet and stock them all up with the equipment. We don't have that capability right now. We should. So we've identified a program that we're gonna at least have five engines and five rescues all ready to go stocked at any point. If there's a major disaster, we can bring people in
and put them on those trucks and deploy. Fire station diesel smoke evacuation system. What that is, is that you know, of course, as time uh has has been going on, we've identified a lot of things that are killing firefighters besides the job. There's um there's carcinogens in the air. That we breathe inside the base just from simply starting up the apparatus. You know, every time you start up a diesel truck, it bursts out a big pile of all kinds of nasty bad stuff, and we're breathing that. And then over the course of a career of doing that every third day, you know, they're they're seeing a lot of cancer.
So one of the systems that's employed throughout the country is a diesel exhaust system, essentially, is a giant set of tubes that come out of the sea. Out of the ceiling, and those are all pumped out and they're connected up to the exhaust pipe. They automatically release. It's a really interesting system and foolproof. Hazardous materials response team. You may remember this from a couple years ago. We established a special operations team that has been up and running since uh February of last year. It's been highly successful so far, but there is only one, and there's only one team
right now that's being deployed county. So the response times are pretty lengthy depending on where the call is. So, and this was part of a long-term plan that eventually we would have at least two, one on each side of the county, to minimize that response time. So that's where that is. EMS field accountability officers. You probably might recognize that under the common name of EMS supervisors. You remember we've pitched that the last three years, you'll see it coming up again for this budget year, but that's what that provides. program is. The Platform Ladder Truck Company, another example of
something that we brought to you before. And again, we were successful in this particular budget year of implementing that program, but it's the first of three. You remember the first of three units because again one truck in an entire county is is impractical, especially the size that all right I'm going to kind of turn it over so you don't have to listen to me the whole thing. time and we'll let Chief Cassano who's also here to speak to the remainder of the list.
And Chief, I'm I'm I will say um try to go as quickly as we can as I know Commissioner Moore has a couple of meetings stand by downstairs.
So
almost well first I'd like to say um thank you for uh the effort and the support behind this current budget because it did uh Give us a B12 shot towards the things that we needed when we when I was hired on here. I was an accreditation manager and a deputy chief in Broward. And a lot of these items are aligned with an accreditation model and it will lower ISO rating. The Battalion 6 is just a methodology to drop us to less than 150 square miles per battalion chief, and it will also cover the hazardous materials
and special operations certification. Station alerting, we currently are building fire stations, and the system that's currently in fire station is uh fairly archaic with regards to current methodology for how you would alert a station. Um, so when we when we put these in new fire stations, we also want to look at a retrofit program for fire stations we know are going to be inhabiting for quite some time. Emergency. Scene rehab response unit. Speaking
to Kevin's point about elongated emergency response scenes, we currently have no real methodology for how we maintain a rehab on the scene for firefighters. So they literally just sit on the curbs or they sit on the back of a rescue truck. There's no way to assess their vital signs through. route this time if they're in a rehab status and this would be a uh a truck that would uh be placed on all sorts of emergency response scenes, whether it's wildland fires or uh hurricane response
and and we would be able to have a true rehab for firefighters. Uh firefighter command and control for rescue uh lieutenants is basically a program that says that if you send a crew around the back of a structure, what we call the Charlie Delta Corner, which is out of sight, we need to have an officer with that unit so that they have the skills, qualifications, certifications that go with uh fire officer one basically. Um the improved Patient care reporting platform. We currently are
using a program that it it when it goes out of service it drops offline and we lose the ability to track patient care. We have to do that in a manual form and then go back later and and and place that information in a database.
200 calls a day when that system goes down, even for a few minutes. We we have trouble tracking that and maintaining a record. This system allows us to connect to the hospital so that we get patient records and allows us in an encrypted form to be able to have a dialogue with patient records that are in the hospital base and it would improve patient billing as well. Currently, under the driver operation. Mm. We have a minimum staffing of three people on a fire engine.
Every time that there's a fire in at least half of our fire stations, we take one of the staff off that fire engine, usually the firefighter, and we place them on a tanker or a brush truck, and we send them in a separate vehicle to the scene. So now we move from a three-person fire engine with a quick response. into the interior of the firefighting building. And we actually have to wait for a second unit to show up because now we've split the team because we needed to move a separate apparatus to the fire scene. So
we would look over the next four years to strategically look at the stations that are the busiest with tankers and put a fourth firefighter at those stations so they could drive the tanker to the scene. And the last would just be logistics supply. support staff for an enlarging department.
I tried to do that as fast as I could.
No, I appreciate it, but at the same time you gotta we gotta get rolling here on the if you don't
mind
Chief,
I'm gonna take this real quick. So this right here is it gets to the the impact of where we're at. We have eight communities currently not serviced with adequate response. So I I do wanna let that digest in real quick. That's the biggest bullet point I wanna make on this slide. We have eight communities, eight of your communities, eight of our communities that are not serviced with an adequate response today. We need to build seven fire stations today.
Now Yeah, this is I'm gonna cut you off real quick. You guys might need to come back because this looks like something we're gonna have a long need to have a little more extensive conversation than just giving you ten minutes to talk about this. I don't know what other the other board members agree, but I'm wanting you guys to get back to work, but I'm just telling ya. I think this is gonna we need to have some discussion here.
Understood I don't have a webspeed yet.
I do. I have two.
I got one too. You know, and I got people in a boardroom in the boardroom downstairs. But they have them come back. You know. I hate to bring it back, but I don't know. Yeah.
Doing this in ten minutes. I think
I have some boards coming.
Is that appreciated? No, we appreciate that. Yeah, and I'm sorry that it needs time to be able to go through it all. But we do have to kind of somewhat stick to our schedule here, so
hate
to have to bring you back,
but this is a
good
one. Not uh I can maybe leave Chief Cassano here. I have uh wage negotiations with the union this afternoon. Can you come back? Sure, absolutely.
I don't know this
doesn't sound we should rush for it.
Are we off the right?
No. Yeah, we're done.
No I'm not one
thirty
it's one thirty.
All right, welcome back. Welcome back to those watching us at home. We're going to continue on with our workshop. Um if you weren't here for the end, we are going to continue on speaking with um fire rescue. So chief
Hi, good afternoon. Um so the next section we were going to talk about was um current response vulnerabilities uh specific to the functioning uh fire station locations uh and the need for uh fire locations in eight communities uh currently not serviced um with an adequate response. And um you know when I SAN adequate response, one of the things that we look at is what we call an assembly time for an effective response force.
And as we develop a response matrix that aligns with an accreditation fire response model, what we do is we look at the individual building types and it's given what's called an OVAP score or an occupational vulnerability assessment profile. And then based on that, we have personnel that need to be able to assemble at that particular type address commercial occupancy within so many minutes. So we use all the surrounding
stations to come up with that matrix for how long it takes to assemble the right number of folks there. And because so many of our stations across the county are at or above 30 to 50 percent utilized, we have to move uh further out from that location to meet the assembly requirements. So that's why at this time We're really eight uh fire stations behind as far as communities that should be serviced for the fire station in their community. Um
when we look at a um a next seven-year plan from fiscal year eighteen all the way out through fiscal year um twenty-five. The way the current plan is structured, we wouldn't be seeing station 47, which is Starkey, until 2025. And there's already homes in that area. So when we were asked to put together where we really stand for
current response vulnerabilities, we feel like we're eight stations behind where we need to be.
Uh the second portion speaks to rescue. Right now, nine of the 24 response areas across the county are above the 30% utilized mark. That means that 30% of the time they're out of service and unavailable to respond to another call. That's the borderline of what's industry standard for
utilization of a rescue truck. But we're at 35 to 50% utilized, and it isn't just one rescue, it's one rescue that's right next to another station, well not right next to, but within five miles of that station that are also being utilized too, anywhere between 35 and 50 percent. So when you have a concurrent call within any one of those zones That's happening at anywhere between 15 and 18 times a
day. The second rescue is coming from more than five miles away. Now sometimes we fill that second response for the fire engine initially and they're an ALS response. So we're able to kind of put a band-aid over it, no pun intended. But a lot of times that engine is also part of the initial EMS response to the first call because those rescues are only staffed with two paramedics or sometimes a paramedic and an EMT. So the the fire engine that's also ALS
in that area is not eligible or able to respond to that call as well. So you can see that on a busy day, and they happen almost all the time now, two or three to four calls are hitting within that three to four station range, and there's no response. except for maybe two stations away. So Commissioner Mayor. Would you would you
explain if you have a emergency service calls and you just need the ambulance going out there, do you send two people or do
you send five people? Well, you know, that's the dilemma in the fire service. You know, a lot of you know the state uh minimum is an uh is a two-person unit of a paramedic and an EMT. But about um Well, 70% of our calls are what they call advanced life support. Of that 70%,
about 70% of those require more than two people to go and stabilize the patient initially. So all your strokes, difficulty breathings, chest pains, unconscious, end up with a both a rescue and a fire response because we don't have three people. People on our par our paramedic units. Most of those calls would be handled with a single unit response if they were three person units. But if you need to put three on, you could. Yeah, you'd have to
hire. Well what what I mean is if you have let's say you get five people that run for a truck in an ambulance together and you get an EMS call that comes out for stabilization. You could have two people in the front of the truck and one in the back and they could have three people in that truck. Yes.
But if you're talking about doing it from the same station now you just shorted your fire engine.
I I I understand, but I'm I'm I'm trying to understand this utilization part as far as if we're gonna have thirty percent, fifty percent utilization, but I'm take if I have five people going out there, well then I'm gonna be utilizing a lot more than I otherwise would need to. But if I do it just 'cause you wanna keep everybody together, it's a different well scenario.
Fo So on the nine one one side of the house when we intake the call there are certain nature codes that as as we ask those questions and that's why we ask so many questions I know that you guys uh all of you have filtered complaints about there's so many questions that they ask me. The reason we ask all those questions is because there are some nature codes that we have. For is example a general assist, the person's falling out of their bed and they can't get up. That'll just be a two-person rescue unit to go and handle. that we don't roll an engine and a rescue unit on that. We roll we we are very concerned of what we do. However, if
somebody's life is on the line to the point the chief was talking about, it's a stroke, it's a cardiac, it's something that we have we cannot determine. Then you know when we went to that you and I went to that fire department uh thing down in Tampa, they said that it takes five people to run a cardiac. It takes five people to run that stroke. So um that and that's why we do What we do.
Well Adam, let's let's let's go back to when we did the the testing we did. We went we went down there and you could utilize Two people you could use three people. If you have five it kinda helps you and it's kind of an intense scenario that's good that goes on. Once you have that patient stabilized, now you could actually pull back.
Right, and that truck goes back to the station.
Yes.
Every time. And that's the way we do business today.
And that and that's most of the calls are treated with a five-person response and then two people going to the hospital. And then if the patient isn't stable or that we feel that the patient won't remain stable, then we'll bring an extra person with it and that drops that fire engine to two people. So for instance in station twelve zone, the holiday area, uh very often That rescue takes a person off the fire engine to go run a rescue call, and until that rescue's back
in service and back in 12 zone, we basically don't even have a full fire response because a two-person engine company doesn't allow you to do two and two out rule to and that's why um you all added rescue 34 for that particular reason: a two-in-two-out rule and that. whole area that area of the county.
Right, and then looking at the efficiencies on the on the ride-alongs I've done, sometimes you can then now you go through, two guys are going off. to the hospital and now they're waiting to get processed. Sometimes they can wait there for a long time which I know we're addressing. But a lot of times if you did have that shortage, if it was a emergency situation, maybe you could take that extra guy that's there just waiting while the other guy's processing the paperwork. And if you needed him you could utilize him that might give you the difference of joining with another engine that's sitting there, with
another engine for another station to actually go to one spot. You bring two vehicles, only be able to run one of 'em. But at least you could better utilize. Do you do you do that type of thing?
Well, I I mean uh I would say that we are managing like a one-handed paper hanger, to be perfectly honest with you. I don't think we could take the current staffing model and do any more with it than we already do. And we're as probably as flexible as you could possibly be in the field with managing the resource. re-explain what I'm what I'm trying to look at because
I don't know if we do have this. I understand exactly what you're saying.
Okay.
On the hospitals that we can do that, the engine actually follows the rescue unit to the hospital. So if they're going to be within what we call um the next end, the first end, first due, second due station, then that fire engine will follow that rescue unit to that hospital and put that person right back on the engine so that they're fully capable Again. But if that if that rescue unit has to go to Florida Hospital, Tampa, right. Or Tampa General, then that's not gonna happen. We're not sending that engine that far to pick up that one ride.
Yeah. Okay. Because even if it stays as just a two person unit in in a zone, it's still able to respond to a call. Right. So we'd rather not follow to the hospital if it's a long distance to the uh to Heaven's Point. Um So
I can see that I mean I've seen that firsthand where you needed where you needed those extra hands there.
By the mere numbers, you know, Chief Cassano is from Broward County. They run twenty-eight stations in Broward County. We run twenty-seven.
What? Yes. Well well but wait a minute. There's the city of Port Lauderdale. That's right. There are all these cities.
Again, and the Broward County the Bry I'm sorry, Broward County Fire Rescue Department is considered a large department. At twenty-seven agencies or twenty-seven apparatus Ladies and gentlemen, we are considered a large department. Okay. We are. By by the mere definition, we are a large department. What's Broward's population again?
Two point five million.
But but the cities have their fire departments.
But there's eighteen municipal departments within Broward County also running ALS, you know Fire rescue service.
So let me ask you something. What's the amount of um fire expense, I don't know what the right word is, per capita in the unincorporated Broward County?
I don't know the answer to that, ma'am.
I'd like to know that answer. These uh these are the numbers that are good for us to know to benchmark us. Um it's not always you know the dollar amounts what we do with that dollar, but it's certainly a discussion point to benchmark us against other places per capita. Well suppose telling.
Unincorporated. Unincorporated population of our argument, yeah.
It doesn't matter 'cause it's it's still the percentage.
No, I'm just curious. I just wanna know. Yeah. So we have twenty nine stations for a population of
It's a mixture because in in Broward, uh, a number of the cities work out a um a contract for service. So a number of those population bases are within municipal departments, so they're not considered unincorporated, but we're servicing them through one of those uh twenty seven
stations. Okay, so they're contracting you to service their cities. Not So similar, you know, separate hills, for example.
It would be like if we have
a service.
Our rescue shows up and transports, right? Which is gonna
be the next bullet point. But what I what I was trying to get to is you I've worked for a a a city that's very large, 1.1 million people with 52 fire stations. And and I think we would all say, man, that's a large department. But by the International Association of Firefighters, the uh League of Cities, the uh the associated counties, all of them would c classify Pasco County today with twenty-four career service stations and three volunteer stations. We by our definition are considered a large agency.
Well we've n we are now a large urban county too. We passed five hundred thousand. Wanna go ahead and you go to the rescue side of the house.
Um so that's where we're at is at the rescue side of the house. Um where I was speaking is that we have uh nine out of those twenty-four response areas are well above the thirty percent benchmark for utilization. Um so the proposal would be to um put a second rescue into those service demand locations across the county.
All right, and with that, um so we there's actually there's two options here listed for the the the emergency services um MSTU. We do not have numbers in front of you for um the fire department MSTU because we As you saw two two slides ago, there was a lot of things the fire department would like to do on the fire department MSTU. However, and Commissioner, well, since you were
not here, I will back up to that slide just so you as I summarize it, you can at least peruse through that. We do not have that in your today for you to consider. That's something that we will we already have a fire MST. We will bring to you with the budget this year if we want to increase that and what that increase looks like. But those are some of the initiatives that we're already talking about. But specifically for the EMS MSTU, there's two options. Option one
is just to fund the emergency services department, which is specifically the 911 deficit and some of the deficits that we have. And to do that it would be at a cost per household of twenty twenty-three dollars and I'm sorry, just the emergency service department which is nine and one would cost us twenty-three dollars and forty-two cents. And and
could you recap what that gets us? That's Commissioner Weightman
Uh so nine one we have a tremendous deficit in our nine one funding of currently
That's emergency management N911, Kevin. The ten million.
Okay, I'm sorry. The ten million there would get us thank you, Bob, is nine one one in emergency management. That would offset the deficit that we have. And uh I just I got information just before we came in here that at our current spending rate we will um have gone through all of the reserves that we have from the nine one one services fee by the end of twenty nineteen. So again, that's what we're looking at. And we would um I believe it's around 2.4
million, yes, 2.4 million for 911 is uh what would this 10 million we go towards or a portion of the 10 million we go towards the residual we go to emergency management and specifically those um programs are for mitigation to uh help buy out uh properties or elevate properties in our affected areas. Um if we could utilize 75% FEMA money, which I'm glad to report to you today that we've uh we will be getting seven million uh dollars
in uh hurricane uh mitigation funding from FEMA for hurricane hermean just hermine alone and that will allow us to do Lot of either buyouts or infrastructure projects, but we have to have the 25% match put with it. Yeah. This would fix that that that portion. It would also allow us to get catastrophic funding built up. That's what it gets you, catastrophic funding. And then as I've always re also reported on the public health planner, I know that's a big issue. I will follow
up with you guys in December on that as to what that new OCA rule looks like. Like and the new executive order by the governor looks like. And then lastly, we start fixing our generated problems on our schools in that we can start getting those properly generated on the 27 schools that we call shelters today. That right now we only have three schools that are completely generated. So we want to get to a point. Now that deals with some Hurricane Irma stuff, but I will bring that back to you in December after action as well as the governor's executive order. So
that's what that gives you. You're asking for 1.75 $1 million, for a match for this for the $7 million.
Yes, sir. And if we don't have that match, then um i for instance right now we have homeowners. We go back to Tropical Storm Debbie, which was the last situation we had, we had enough money to buy out twenty homeowners and we only had eight people participate in the program. We all we got we got right at two million. We're talking about having three and a half times that amount this time.
Which would save us all so much heartache and headache.
Okay. So that's what this would do for you. The tier two response gives us the emergency services plus the EMS rescue that uh Chief Cassano just talked about, uh offsetting that eight point four million dollar um stop gap that we have right now. And again, as I as I told you beforehand and from Commissioner Weight's um edification and and so you can hear it straight from my mouth. One of those MSTUs that I will sit here in front of all of you today and promise you at some point in time when we get the
generators on the schools and we get the homes bought out and we get the infrastructure fixed. This is one of the MSTUs I'll come to you and say we're ready to roll back that MSTU because we will have generators on our schools, we will have those homes bought out, the infrastructure will start to be replaced, we will have a catastrophic fund built. Yeah. When that time comes, ladies and gentlemen, I'll come back to you and say we're ready to roll that back.
Mr. Shark can you have something?
Uh no.
I'm okay.
Anybody else at this time?
Oh well I'm sorry I did. That that um that c Money Funk uh Hurricane Hermeen I I've uh was at a meeting at FAC and And I think I texted you that some of the commissioners were saying their money was in, but it's in Tallahassee was not being released to the county. So it's just
checked ready to be released. Let's not confuse the pots of money.
Okay.
We were awarded seven million in Hurricane Hermine mitigation funding, not our Cat A through G reimbursement expenses. That they were talking about two different types of money. They were talking about being reimbursed for the money they had paid out during Hurricane Hermeen, Hurricane Matthew. Completely separate topic. What we're talking about here is we've already been advised that we're gonna be awarded seven million dollars in hurricane mitigation money, which is that three to five-year program historically. But I will
tell you, Miles Anderson at the State Division of Emergency Management has already turned One program or project around in less than a year. That's unheard of. Usually this program takes three to five years and he's already turning things around in less than a year. So we're ready to start rolling on that. We've got a staff ready to go and we're ready to start. We just have to s we have traditionally bought properties with this money.
God, if we can buy out those houses on Alphers Parkway. Yes, ma'am. That is a home run.
Push your balls.
And I apologize I wasn't here for the whole thing, but I did talked to my secretary and she kind of brought me up to speed on one ride, especially with this. But and I had an opportunity to ride with Chief Romanowski a few months ago and I I did see it firsthand where we went to go to a fire that that house that was closest to it, the the firehouse couldn't Couldn't make it there, they had to send for somebody else down the road. Luckily there was nobody in the the dwelling and everything was fine. I mean obviously they lost everything, but it was so I saw firsthand with having to shift and use the
time was probably how many minutes more than it could have been. Going back to and just remind me cost and maybe you do or don't have the information but I know a couple years ago we talked about the out of county transports I know we have an agreement with the company that I can't think of the name of that company, but how much is how much does that make us in revenue a year?
So here Well, I don't know what the dollar amount is in revenue that that makes us Commissioner but I will tell you this we as a unified front stand before you and say we want Medfleet, we want Sunstar, we want any other ambulance company in in this county that services this county to take those interfacility transfers. We want them to. We want them to be working in our county, we want them to be um involved. We will give out C O P C Ms uh like they're like it's raining certificates
to get them to to trans do those transports because honestly for us that is not a revenue moneymaker if I'm correct. That that is a flat fee that we're gonna get charged for that interfacility transfer and it ties up the rescue unit that does the advanced life support for your communities. That it has to go now all the way to Tampa General.
Well that's what I'm saying. Like if let's just say overnight we stopped it. What does this bring your number to? You know, it's gotta be a lot of time. Our guys are being spent outside the county for hours. What is
it? Two and a half calls a day.
On average. The uh the long distance ones that we're doing is j it's only two and a half calls a day, but Again. But it's
still what four or five hours that they're not at the station where you'd be able to run calls in the county that would lower this number, the thirty-five percent number. I'm just trying to see if it's gonna make that big impact.
Yeah, it doesn't make that big of an impact to be honest, because the the interfacility transport is uh a fifty minute transport down to Tampa General. Um and and it happens twice a day. Um so but we would Still rather those that go from a hospital to a hospital, from doctor's care to doctor's care, to not affect the E911 system and the emergency response of local communities. So the problem is that they quite honestly, the performance
is so poor at the private level going to those inner facilities. Transports because they happen so infrequently that they end up changing the status of the patient to emergent status and it ends up coming rolled over to the E911 system and we end up getting the call. I mean that's the that's the truth of the matter. So they make a pitch to the privates to make the make the transfer. As soon as they see any delay, they pitch.
I would like to add one more thing, Chairman Mariano. Um the I guess in essence the last thing I want to leave you with is, you know, we talked about, you know, everybody's in the budget competing for each other. And you know, I I do have a good working relationship with the sheriff and the colonel and the men and women of the Pasco Sheriff's Office. And I I am definitely not speaking for him right now, but I I think the Board should be ready for the sheriff to come to this board in the next budget year or the budget year after
that to say we need more officers. We need more, for instance, District 4. We're already putting a strategic plan to develop a District 4 radio system, which will be installed this next year with capital funding so that we've got the infrastructure ready to go to a District 4. That is going to be uh, if you will, another captain, at least I'm thinking a half dozen lieutenants, same for sergeants and personnel underneath that. And um, you know, again, I don't speak for
the sheriff, I think he would give me his support here, but that could be upwards of fifty to seventy-five more officers in one budget year. So um as we compete for the public safety dollar as Well as the general fund dollar. Um that's why we did our analysis, we did our community-wide risk survey to come before you and say this is how we can provide both the public safety side of the house underneath emergency management, fire rescue 911, as well
as continue to support the sheriff and everything that he's trying to do on his
side. Um one of the other things we did down in Broward that I've brought up here is the utilization of automatic aid agreements to create a closest unit response model. So we're in negotiations right now with uh East Lake and Tarpon Springs and Hillsboro to utilize joint response efforts in a lot of those areas we built into the radio system and interoperability uh radio system so we'll be able to communicate. So that wherever we can find, to your point, sir, places
where we can stretch the personnel to cover calls, whether it's East Lake and Tarpon coming up into a holiday area, whether it's us going down and covering one of their calls one mile, two miles south of the border, either way. But it's really on the fire response that we need the assembly time, we need the effective response. force, so we're working diligently with them to create those automatic aid agreements and we'll be bringing them back before you soon.
Have we considered I know Dan we spoke about it briefly, but like a public safety referendum that this could be included in?
Well
as well as you
know, there's a difference between capital costs and the long term O and M cost. It's on the on the fire and even on the rescue side, the I think the capital cost is actually a little easier to deal with than the long term operational cost for a rescue unit because that's really a general fund expense. And it doesn't come out of the fire M STU. And so
Just asking.
In in this group it's actually a little easier, the funding's a little a little better on the capital side. We can get the equipment, it's the putting the people on the equipment is the challenge.
Um you may ask i the question may come up is well Kevin, why don't you just combine all this with the firing STU? Um and and I do agree with Bob's um statement at the very Very first slide is to how all of the MSTU is designed. But these three things: 911, rescue, and emergency management are countywide activities to include the municipalities. We provide their rescue service. You even though that
yes, the city of Zipper Hills, the city of uh New Port Richey and Port Ritchie, all have their own nine. Yeah. 100% of all wireless calls come to the Pasco County 911 Center. Of those 100% of those wireless number one calls, 80% of them are ours. So we we are taking anytime you pick up the phone from a wireless call, it is going to come to our center first before it gets transferred to one of
those other ones. So again, that's why we say that this is a countywide to include all of those municipalities. Um and that's why we separated it distinctly from the Fireham STU because fire services are duplicated, but these other three are not. Mr Starkey.
Um, I wasn't on the board when they did the fire MSTU Commissioner Mariano, were you on the board then? No, no, yeah.
It was done in the it was done in the seventies initially.
The seventies. Oh, because I thought Commissioner Schrader was a big proponent of that.
Well the the FIRE MSTU the historically is they started with taking over volunteer fire departments. And why they did it as an MSTU was as they took over each volunteer fire department that came into the county, they drew the MSTU around that same area that the volunteer fire Department was handling. So there were eight, nine, ten over the years, volunteer
fire departments that were sucked into the main MSTU. And now it's a system of Sort of bringing in develop as as new development comes online, they get added into the MSTU and we provide service to them.
So if we didn't have that MSTU, where would the fire department be today?
Um
That's a very good question. I we we'd be you know, it it's hard to say, you know, I I think the the board would have done in the best interest of public safety, most likely would've increased the millage on the general fund to accompany accordingly. But you know, way back when I think they did uh the foresight of that board was to say, look, you know, if public safety is the number one priority, which it which we understand it is, is how do we carve that out so it's not competing and Other people are not competing against those dollars. But uh again,
and and historically the board way back when was faced with hitting the ten mil caps on on general revenue. They were at nine something. Yeah. And that was I think the more the driving force was they had to get revenue someplace and so they created an MSTU to to do it.
So um so and that was part of that slide. If you if you seen that slide where our MS that our ad valorem was up at the nines and then they rolled it all the way down to the fives. So our citizens We're used to paying when I first moved here in the nines. And now we're in the seventh somewhere. Um so
Okay. Well that was kinda.
That completes that completes our presentations out of this and I know that Bob's got one more slide at least. So
just a timeline slide.
Time light size? Okay.
Timeline uh today we started the conversation today in November. Late November as we talked about the public awareness data will be available. We'll make that uh information available to you. January first is a deadline if the MSTU is not going to be the entire unincorporated area. So if you were to say carb out a small piece of the county to make it the MSTU, then we would need need a decision on whether or not to create an MSTU in December so we could be ready for that January one deadline.
Let me stop you if I could.
Now when you're talking about MST this is the timeline for everything. The parks, libraries Yeah, so
are either or any. Yeah, and you just
this is just a generic MST timeline. Is there anybody else that's gonna come up and ask and for an MST today that I'm not aware of? I didn't see now I just want to make sure because it seems
like every
department is
on board here, so we talked about the menu of options because this is these are different things the board has talked about over the summer as we went through the budget to look at these different things. That's why they're there.
It's not a all or nothing.
And when we did our budget, we looked at doing the parks MSTU in July, but we found we had too we were too late, so we could not put do the parks MSTU in July when we tried to.
But I can tell you and I'll go back and look at the minutes of that meeting. I know myself and I remember Commissioner Oakley was in favor of referendum as well. that meeting. I know for sure and I think I believe how Commissioner Chairman Mari feels I didn't realize we're going forward in MSTU. So I and again I wasn't here this morning my secretary kind of filled me in.
It's just a discussion of what the how
how can we get enough? Because the idea with doing a referendum was to get community outreach from all over the county to see exactly what folks want, what level of service I know we discussed it from the image up here to here. How can we do that? We don't do anything in two months, I'm sorry. Right.
this entire county involved. in two months to tell us what they want. And again I my my the I haven't changed. I mean it's it's parks and libraries that worked back when my dad was a commissioner when they signed the referendum for parks, we've got great parks. Do we need better parks? I think we can do a better job of but what do the residents want is what we need to look at. Um
Well these the a decision in December is only For the small if you're gonna carve out a small MSTU.
But it's not small, I mean it's still we're looking at I don't know how much money is it total for every every resident
no geographically if you're gonna carve out a small geographic piece of the county to form an MSTU that decision needs to be January and that's
but it should be countywide
if it's countywide their decision is by it's July 1st and so But I would
be kind of curious what do the residents want and the residents would rather have a referendum and I know we talked about I know we talked about public safety referendum and I get all that but if it comes down to me it's It's not what I think, it's what the residents want. If we so we show in all these reports that parks are used the number two thing or the number three thing, then we need to take their work for it and put it out and let it put the referendum if that's what they want. Um not do an investigator. So I just like want to make it clear on where I thought we were last time and I again we can go back and look at
the minutes, but I know I brought it up and I like I said I the only one I know for sure was Commissioner Oakley.
So I wanted to follow I got a follow up then I have Commissioner Mariano and Commissioner Starkey wants to jump in. So I was I was doing some numbers a little while ago and I have a question for you, Bob. Um off the top of your head it's going to be difficult. What is the average household uh
It's uh hundred and seven thousand dollars is is the average. I want
to know what they're actually saying.
Oh what they're actually paying? Yeah, I can figure that out for you.
Do you modify uh You need to go? No, sir. I was gonna ask for permission to update um Chair uh Vice Chairman Wells on how we came to the Yeah, can
I get this let me get this number first and we'll do that number. Go ahead. It'll be about four hundred and seven dollars. Four hundred and seven dollars. I'm gonna do some math reports for it. Okay.
So Let's just generalize. That's
just the general
That doesn't include the that doesn't include any the MSTU, fire MST, which one? No. Four hundred seven dollars. Yes.
So at four hundred and seven dollars If you look at all the asks from staff today on the parks, library, and fire that comes to them, I'm going to round up to $140. Hundred and thirty nine thirty seven. On the tax bill of four hundred and seven, you're asking for us to increase our residence taxes by thirty-four percent. Well
there's three
the these without the MSTU. Yeah,
so these are three different
options. If we would add them all together with the top tier, the top options, that'd be an increase of thirty-four percent. Well It's it's a fact. Okay. That's a fact. Never. Ever in my life will you see this person raise our citizens' taxes by 34%? That's insane. It's insane then. Yeah, I wouldn't ask you to. I well that's what the ask are today.
If you take all three together, that is the ask.
If you want to implement fully these different items.
Well that's that is the
ask. Well no, it's a
Okay.
Well you this is what you guys want to do. You're bringing
it
to us. The discussion was You know what does it cost to do parks at a premier level as defined by the master plan and so we outline the different things that go into that the the replacement schedule for existing infrastructures the the deferred maintenance and we say okay these cost this if you want to do that we
can
and fully fund it
skin a cat however you want to that's what the ask is today am I not Well, uh that's what the Ascars.
What did
The an it's an answer to the question that was asked, which was, what does it take to to fund our parks at the premier level? The ask in the budget was not this. That was not what we put into the 18 budget. You know, so the question was, what does it take to fund our parks at the level that was identified in the you know the community-wide discussion of the master plan that was put into the board? What does it take to take care of deferred maintenance? What does it take to to
Meet the national response times on fire rescue, what does that cost? These are those costs.
Mm-hmm.
So what we're doing is just putting in front of you what the costs are if you want to go to that level of service.
So
nobody
wants this from the staff perspective? Nobody wants it?
No, this is answered the this is the answer to the question. What does it cost to get to these different levels of service and Show us the tiers so we can see what it costs to do those things. And that's what this is what this is the answer. Yes. I mean this is this is the answer to that. If you want to reduce your rescue response time and cover those gaps, this is what it costs to do that. Now that that's what the ant that's what the answer
will give it to you. You know, we're not even in. We're just starting the budget cycle. So we're not into ask at this point. This is a discussion of you showed me a cat you showed us a calendar sometimes of when things need to happen. Because if if we had this discussion and didn't show you a timeline of how we had to do it if you wanted to move forward. We we wouldn't you need to understand the timeline if the board decides they want to move forward in one of these things. But but all we're doing is a asking answering the question if we want to
be premier, if we want to implement the master plan, whether it's parks or libraries or on the rescue side, what does it cost to do that? That's that's the answer we're giving you today. It's not an ask. We're not in the budget process. This is a a this is what it costs to do these things.
Well, I'll agree and disagree with that because can you put that timeline back up, Tom? Scott Lee, um
I'm sorry.
He's got the clipper. It's got switch back.
What we're being told right now by Bob, we're just told if if certain people on the board would like to do something, this is when it has to be done. We
have to meet if you want to do it in the 19 budget cycle.
And I need to go to Commissioner Mariano because but before before I do, I will I'm gonna go back again and when it comes to the park. Yeah. Hire the consultant consultants here right now. They're supposed to do community outreach. That's where we're supposed to get a report back. How we're supposed to make a decision on this before that report's back. Commissioner Mariano.
Yeah, I I don't think there's any chance of January. Um I don't particularly like those small segmented MSP MSTUs anyway, so I wouldn't vote for that period. Um but I think we're really our timeline is actually gonna be to the July if we're gonna go that way. But at the same time, the community outreach is going to be key as far as what what what what the people want. And I know we were doing that primarily for parks and libraries, not for these other apps that are out there too. Uh I don't mind you bringing it forward to us as soon as we look at it, because
frankly when you look at all the MSTUs, fire EMS is actually the better of them in the sense of at least part of it. Whereas it's it is fully county wide as opposed to the c county itself taking a bigger burn.
Yes go ahead. So I'm gonna ask David to correct me if I'm wrong, but
this point for purposes of disclosure, um the decision if the MSTU is not to include all of the unincorporated area January first The other kicker to to the July first date is if you're gonna do it countywide, you're gonna need the buy-in of all your cities, correct,
David? If they're gonna include the municipality, correct. You can do all of unincorporated county.
Without without without doing the without and that's that's not considered the January first date? No,
that's the July 1st. Okay.
You have until July 1st.
Which
is why we missed it this July 1st. That was a discussion last July. So you don't so we don't need interlocal agreements with the cities unless we're going to go into those cities with the MSTU. Correct.
Less out those cities participation through the general through the general revenue. So if you're collecting general revenue now, they're paying it. If they're it we if you go to the unincorporated only model, they won't pay it unless we get an interlocal agreement. Right.
We could we could add it by interlocal agreement any time if we You only have to worry about the January 1 deadline if you're going to do less than all of the unincorporated costs of the town.
If you want to include the cities you have to do it by
In our local ring.
Um so I'm having them put up um something from our website and I know Kelly's not here, but um I know that I have sat through two I believe I've sat through two parks master plans Um I think. Um who's been here long enough to say when I know we just did one with um A Ecom. When I first got elected? And then there was one before that. Is anyone here to re recall this stuff? Okay, David, speak
up.
So there was one in two thousand two and then another one in two thousand fifteen.
What did we do on the two thousand and two master plan recommendations?
Well we adopted the first park impact fee in response to that first park master plan. So that was the first adoption of park impact fee in Pasco County was in two thousand two. And then we built some of the district parks.
But not all.
We did not build all of them, and there the ones that we did not build in the two thousand two plan were rolled into the two thousand fifteen planes.
Thirteen years later.
As additional parks we would need to build.
And then we did the 2015 Parks master plan. So we did hire a consultant already to go out and and look and see what we needed.
So here's the chart of um this is go back to question 19. One one back.
Uh I have a different chart than you. I have maximum amount of additional property taxes respondent households. That's on Q nineteen for me, but even that other one was okay. We've already asked our citizens if they're willing to pay more for parks and the vast majority are saying yes. And in the last uh consultant that we hired to talk about our parks, um I did the math here, let's see. Uh fifteen percent are willing to pay th uh
twenty to thirty-n uh dollars per year, fifteen percent forty to fifty-nine per year, seven percent sixty to seventy-nine per year. eighty to ninety-nine per year, eleven percent. So if you add up if you add up all of those, a a very high majority of our citizens have already said that they're willing to pay more to help our parks. So how many times are we gonna hire consultants to tell us what we already know? My thought when we were hiding this consultant was to go out and talk about
where the money is that we're gonna collect, how we're gonna spend it, and how they're gonna benefit from it. So um I mean I'm ready to go on the parks. We 'cause this is years behind. And um Commissioner Weightman here to hear that we have fourteen million dollars in back Um what's the word called? Deferred maintenance. Deferred maintenance. 14 million dollars. Our total budget for parks is nine million dollars. We've talked about that from the beginning. That's right. So I mean how long are we gonna every year that's gonna get worse and worse.
And you know, I sit here and I get so frustrated because how many years Did the previous commissions not face the music? and and and not do anything and that and here we are. I mean when I came on and and we had the the the um potholes you weren't here when it was taking sixty days to get a branch. out of the way of a road and ninety days to fill a pothole that was really damaging cars. And and it took us two years to get that extra five cents. And thank
God we got that extra nickel to um to to fix the roads. But and I and I hey I don't wanna raise taxes thirty four percent either. So we've gotta figure out some things. But we have already already kicked the parks can to where that can cannot not hold water anymore. And when you have a year when you have fourteen million dollars in deferred maintenance on a nine million dollar annual budget and your citizens have already told you they're willing
to pay more. Why don't we figure this out and go ahead and take care of it?
Easy answer.
And then leave the ballot for some other things.
No, you just said it. You said this you're saying that you in your mind the citizens are willing to pay for it. Put it on the ballot and see if that's true.
I I I am willing to carry that weight on my
shoulders.
No,
back it up. Put it on the ballot and see if that's true.
How many things you gonna put on the ballot?
I don't know. Have you put anything on the ballot? No.
No, I I think the ballot's gonna be quite full. I think some of these other things may need to go on the ballot. We have never questioned our citizens about some of these other things. I'm saying we've already hired consultants. We've already done this work. I I I just I thought that consult was gonna go out and explain what we're doing. So we've already asked them if they're willing to and they've already said yes. But if you want to hire if you want to keep keep asking over and over again, are we gonna hire a consultant for the are we gonna hire are we gonna
hire a consultant for the the every single one of these MS it was your
suggestion to hire the consultant for the first place.
I wanted him to do outreach in the community to explain how we're spending. I
remember that meeting we were kinda on the most of us were kind of on the edge of doing it and you push for it. And we agree with you to let you do it.
I have always been for an MSTU. I have never been for this going on the ballot. I am willing to take for the political risk. We follow you
for the consultant.
You cannot have fourteen million dollars in of of of um deferred maintenance gathering and getting larger and larger every year. When if we're gonna build these docks and the these boats Well, who's gonna maintain 'em? How are we gonna maintain 'em? You know how many calls I got when we had quarter potties at Anclo Park?
And we're already as you know we're working on things there and I think it'll work out to where we're thinking outside the box with other partners makes sense um with the Bo Rams. Now I can tell you Commissioner Starkey there is I know you're passionate about parks. Trust me when I tell you I am. Um I remember when there was no parks and I remember having to go out and cut the fields to play soccer the next day. And that's what my dad said. And I bored back then. The voters want it, let's put it on the ballot and let them vote on it. Now I can tell you after
he got out of office the board and I did the numbers. It I hate to talk about the past, but there was money taken out of parks. A lot of money. Okay, so it it is what it is, but there is nobody on this board that wants parks more than me. No, I I
can't fight you for
that. But I can't stand to see, you know, some places in Shady Hills and Holiday, the kids have nowhere to go, the neighborhoods that aren't designed like we do now with the mudarum or it's set up for the kids. Uh but again it comes down to the whole idea we wanted to hire this consultant, which again and I I think it was you, was to Get the bring public awareness so we can put it on the ballot. That's where it originally came up when Kelly was here. That was so that tells me you were in favor of it. I'm not saying you were, you weren't, I'm not gonna take word. But if
the residents want it, which and the number they're using was a little number. of the percentage of, I think it was only a thousand residents that took the survey, not even that many. It was a small number. So it wasn't like we took 30,000 people from all over the county and they said they want better parks. But I feel confident if we put it on the ballot, we do it right, the residents are gonna vote in favor of parts. We just gotta figure out what the number is. Do they want premier, do they want Better than it is now. I think it's the right thing to do to put
it on the ballot and let the residents decide what they want. And trust me, I want the parks, but we've put enough on the residency
last year.
That's not that's not us. But if we do a good public.
But
I'm I'm will I'm willing to go ahead and make that vote now. But if you guys aren't, you know, so if it's just me, Then it's just me.
Put the parks on twenty twenty.
Or you can put it on twenty nineteen. I know there is some expense to it, but that might be the way to do it. That way there's hardly anybody on there and we can put it put on there be successful. I I want this to be successful. I feel pretty confident the residents are gonna vote in favor of bettering our parts. For sure. I'm I don't think it's gonna fail if we do it right. But we owe it to the residents to put it on the ballot and let them decide what we're doing.
Safety has to be a little bit more.
Okay, so I I get it. So let me go back to Commissioner Mariano Hennessy and then I know Kevin has to jump in on something too for Commissioner Weightman's benefit. But let me go to Commissioner Mariano. He's been patiently waiting.
Because I I will tell you, I mean I voted against the tourism plan the last two times through because I think we're blowing money on signs and trails that we shouldn't be spending money on. I'll take it to the appropriate. I want to see what you want to spend the money on here. When I hear things of Sun West Park is gonna get help and help and gonna finish the park up. Hasn't happened yet? Well I want to see where that money's gonna go before I'm gonna do anything, whether it'll be put it for the ballot or even get behind it later on. So I do wanna see the plan myself to where the money's gonna go, how it's gonna be, and then We can decide how we want to set it up. Do we want to go put something
in for across the county like we did for Penny for Pasco where every constituency is kinda like looked at and gone through and then put it in front of the voters if that's the case we decide to go. If we decide, you know what, we're just gonna do this anyway 'cause we think this other thing's gonna pass and our budget's gonna get whacked by the state referendums coming up, then so be it. But I'm not even ready for that discussion until I see the plan and I think the people need to see the plan. See we need to get their feedback. We need to get their feedback. So again, I'm disappointed that that wasn't laid out, but that is what the first step should be.
Thank you. Ms. Mr. Duffery.
Um Chairman Wells and I I know that or I'm sorry, yes, Chairman Wells. I Vice Chairman Mells. Is getting public well for the case. I think Power Works So I I apologize because I know that this as well as all of you, this particular portion of the MSTU caught you off guard. But I want to let you know how this came to be. We were originally going to bring this in December, but because of the timelines, we had to bring it forward. Uh and I hadn't had a chance to meet with you on that yet. But the how we came to our assessment On the
fire EMS, specifically the emergency services side of the house was we are we are conducting as a part of an ongoing program, we do a living breathing document that is a community community-wide threat, risk, hazards, vulnerability, and capability assessment that's a part of our day-to-day operation. We align that with our accreditation models that govern our business and we We're in the process of becoming accredited both as an emergency or as uh if you will a trifecta of emergency management, fire rescue,
and our 911 center. We're all ready, we're heading in that direction, and they should be done by somewhere around 2020 2020-2021. We should have all of those done. Um, but so how we came to the today to bring the news to you today, sir, was it was a part of that comprehensive analysis. that is ongoing that we do on a day-to-day basis. And those figures that you see in front of you are based on those things. After of course the fact that we've responded to herme, uh wildfires, uh sinkholes, and another hurricane
in Irma over the last 12 months. So that's why you see the document in front of you that you today, and I know you weren't privy to that earlier today, and I want to let you know how we came to those numbers, how we came to the Plan of what we're trying to do and accomplish here today. That's how it was done.
Do me a favor, and I've said this over and over again: don't bring this to us without meeting with me while I'm on beforehand. Now I would say it's up to the other board, but I would think they probably want to know too, because it's going to give you a better idea of what to bring to us. They we we could all again, this is different than the parks and libraries. This is life and death. This this is a different scenario than than what I'm talking about in the parks and libraries. So I, and again. And me riding for a day and seeing it really open my eyes because you know, you I you hear about it, you guys tell us, but when I was actually out there riding and and seeing
it And you know, your team, you got a great team. You're
retired
team.
And that's why I wanna publicly apologize to you because we I know that you and I have been trying to get together for quite some time now. I thought I had until December, but you know, while I was in Tallahassee, Bob's passing me an email saying we gotta get this done this time, so that's why I'm here. And I just want to let you know. Thank you, Chairman
Mariano. Anymore thank you, sir. Any more questions on this before we move on? Just one question.
I think it
is
a good idea to get with each one of us ahead of time because these things could be tweaked or set up differently and and set up rather than going through this debate where are you gonna say something that maybe is gonna make someone mad. But I think if you do brief us ahead of time, when you have it to this level And then what you do is after you have a meeting with the with us, you can kinda say, you know what, these are the hot points that are good, these are the ones that aren't gonna fly, and maybe you can adjust your presentation from that point to make it a little bit easier to get it to run.
I don't think they're paying I don't think they're just speaking to you, Kevin. There's it's I think this is going to in general. You see no, it's just general to all staff and all team members in the workshop come to us first.
Yes, sir, and I and I take that construct criticism and if if you go back and look at with all your your admin assistants. I was on all of your calendars, but this little thing called Irma Hitler did get
there. So sorry. No worries. So yes Commissioner Oakley.
If we're asking for this amount of money to come to us and uh put it on the ballot for a referendum, what are we gonna ask for? I mean we're gonna ask for the premier and that's all of it, or are we gonna ask for a certain portion to over a few years?
There's an
cover cover the deferred amount. But that's something we gotta talk about to this once we get there. Okay. Up there. So but I I'm for that it's it's fine um and I'm willing to vote for it. So I mean I
Vote for the
right-of-way. I'm willing to vote for an increase to get parks and libraries out of that deferred maintenance so that maintenance get back. I will vote for it as a citizen. I will I will put it on a ballot so the citizens out here can vote for it. I'll go out and speak for it. Why it should be done to the public, I'd have no problem with all that. But I think we're gonna have by the time we put it there we've gotta come up with a number so we present it right by July one. We
need to present it right of what we're asking for public to vote on or if we're gonna actually vote on separately.
When does the winner Are the timelines for a referendum the same as ST is that what we're talking about when we say M STU timeline is a referendum timeline? Is that the same thing? No, no. Okay, so what's a referendum timeline?
Off the top of my head, it's July as well. It I'd have to confirm with a supervisor what When the last point you can get ballot languages, but I can recall from previous years when we did the panic panic stuff, it was he wanted it in July ish, maybe as late as August, but Oh. I thought I thought we were working on the same timeline, so it's but it depends that that assumes the November ballot. Not the
not a
primary ballot.
And sorry for being um asking stupid questions maybe but um since I've never been through this. Um do what are we asking the people to pay out vote? What do you what do you ask the people to do? How does that work? To vote on what?
Well this would be what would be known as a straw ballot because it's not required under statute. Um so you'd set up a I mean because you have the power to adopt an MSTU, it's this is not your typical referendum question where you're required to go to referendum to bond millage or There are a number of things that are required to do a referendum. So you would just be putting out there a
yes or no on would you be willing to to support a uh MSTU to fund future parks and recreation services or
But it would it have to be specific to a number?
Well, I'm not sure how you how you get to a number unless you want to Bind future boards in the in the in the text of the ordinance because your millage is established every year that you conduct your your hearings.
You know, it's easy in a bond issue because you're saying I we're going out for twenty million dollars of bonds and we want to pledge two mills to pay those bonds off. in in this scenario it's really the it's really the generic question I guess of are um is the public willing to pay for um
an MSTU to fund an additional millage to fund the backlog in parks, libraries, whatever whatever the the question ends up being.
So we so we have to We can't go to find that out. We have to put that on a ballot. We c that's the only way to find this out.
I mean we've hired a guy who can't go out in the community and take the the the feeling of the community. I'm gonna
suggest that's not a question posed to your attorney.
It's just a little frustrating. But you know we're we're here for a reason.
Can I can I just add to what Kathy Kirk said though?
Okay, because Kathy's Ms. Pearson wants to say something too. So
just as a follow-up. If you intended to borrow any of the money though, do some of this deferred maintenance quickly, that you would have to define a specific amount because that you would have to actually go borrow that's a b like a bond on it. So it depends on when you want to borrow some of the money you would be implies the MSP right.
If you want to get done quicker, you wanna you wanna bond it instead of waiting over a period of time, there's your answer there. Right?
Well we'd we'd have to vote on a dedicated source of income before we can bond anything. Well
direct the source would be your MSTU.
They're not willing to do an MSTU. No, but they are
if it goes to reference.
No, it'd
be a bonra.
No, the only thing they're gonna ask Okay, they're not voting on an MSTU at referendum. They're asking do you want to Do you want the county commission to establish an MSTU?
But but David's point is, which which I had touched on but didn't didn't come out as clear as David is, is that if you wish to bond the this deferred Maintenance. You wish to go out to the bond market and get twenty million dollars to pay off the the the arrears and and do that right now. you can float that question and say it will be paid by an MSTU that
will be levied at two MILs up or down.
That's the way that you would use
But we still have to wait 'til twenty eighteen.
Yes. Yeah.
No, you would still be waiting until twenty eighteen.
We're waiting anyway.
You you're yeah,
you're either
waiting
for the them to
vote
in November of twenty eighteen or if the commission went through the ordinance process and established it, it would be part of the budget that becomes effective October one of twenty eighteen.
into the FY nineteen budget or really into the FY twenty budget if it's on the ballot right.
And my only point was if you're going to go to a referendum anyway and go to that expense, you might want to consider just borrowing money, because that requires a referendum. That was the point of terming.
Mm-hmm. So before Ms. Pearson may I say one thing. Yes, to make sure nobody had any other questions for David though. No.
I appreciate all your comments and we are all we are hearing all of them. But I just want to say, whether you wait for a referendum or not, we still have a problem. Yes. And I don't see how we're solving it. We're still bringing we're we're whether we want it or not, it's not we, we have a problem. We're bringing that problem to you with some solutions. If we can think of some other solution, I'm worried next year if the homestead gets passed, eight million to ten million dollar budget, that's going to affect
us. Right off your general revenue. So again, where is that going to come from? We thought by this way, at least we can ship some general revenue dollars to help with. Any of the other good sheriffs or whatever that needs to come by. But please, I'm trying to all to get all together here, what can we do to solve this? And so it's not what staff wants, it really isn't. It's we're bringing you, it's our duty to bring you the issues that we're facing. And that's what we're doing. We're bringing you the deferred
maintenance, we've come up with a little bit of a solution, whether it goes to referendum or not. We still have an issue and if it doesn't get passed, then what do we do? And so that's all I wanted to say is that we are trying and and we're here with anything else that we can do.
And I I also think there was talk of taking away the ability to do MSTUs. I have not heard that, but maybe you guys have heard that. I I heard that last year.
Ralph? Yes, there's something.
Is are is there anything in the works to uh limit our ability to do an MSTU? There was last
yes. Yeah. Take the way local um uh lo um it would have to go for the house and pass the house in the Senate, am I not correct? If a county wanted to enact any type of additional tax besides a normal m millage, was that right, Ralph? Yeah.
So we can set up go ahead and set up MSTUs so we've got them done and we're grandfathered. No. Um but one thing. Excuse me. We can set up an MSTU Like we ha we have other MSTUs or M S B Us set up. We just haven't Um Put a number to them. But David Can we set up MSTUs like we were going to do in July, but we were passed a deadline for the Parks Department?
Um,
that has zero mill
it's
okay. And that might be in a good insurance policy for us because W like when the downturn happened and this and our county rolled the millage back so much we got caught, you know, with the pants down, maybe Maybe uh we should set up Armus to use just in case things happen that 'Cause then then what do you do? You're at your ten mil cap? And you and we and you can't do anything. I don't know I don't know how you do it.
Well can I
you had to come up though, David, forget on the microphone. Sorry.
I think even if you set it up, I don't think it stops the legislature from taking it away unless you bond the revenue. I mean, I'll be honest, they can't take away if you've already bonded that revenue, I don't think the legislature can impair those bonds. But if all you do is set up a a shell MSDU, I'm not sure that you I don't Jeff unless you have a different opinion.
They could. The legislature traditionally exempts existing ordinances when they do something drastic like this. But but yes, you're right, they'd have the ability to to pass a law that that did not carve out existing MSTUs. But if but if they they did that, it would affect the firing STU as well.
So then your what is left for revenue sources for paying for anything?
Well
depends if they take away MSBUs too. I mean there's and there's been legislation to that effect as well.
So they take away the MSTU MSTU and they take away the MSDU and they add another homestead exemption. And so where are we? Where are we at then?
Well to be clear, if they take away MSPUs, that's the fact that we're taking away PVAPS too. That's that's that that's those are special those are basically little MSPUs. So you basically would not be able to levy special assessments in the in half of the gallon.
And you might be able to argue your stormwater utility as well. I mean it it
All depends on what they're doing.
Yeah, it all depends it all depends.
And then if you would still have the opportunity to go in front of them. We gotta move on, guys. Right. Thank you all. We are moving on. Cop plan, Land Development Code Rewy.