Clerk fiscal year twenty-seven budget and mandates
What the county recorded
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The source document
The county’s agenda for Board of County Commissioners, Jun 18, 2026
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What was said
Machine transcription of 30m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 38% of 122 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
I am thank you. So my office budget for fiscal year twenty-seven was submitted on April 30th. I don't know what to put the night here. Um so a lot has happened, obviously, since that time with property tax reform, and there are a lot of unknowns as it relates to property tax revenue for the county currently. And the joint resolution has a couple of options. obstacles ahead of it, one with a lawsuit that's already been filed, those others talk of potential constitutional
challenges, and then you have the voter approval in November. So if passed, it will have a effect on future budgets starting with fiscal year 28. With that understanding, my presentation will focus on what we knew at the time. I submitted the fiscal year 27 budget.
Do I control or is someone else controlling? Okay.
Very good. So before I dive into my budget request, I want to quickly explain the constitutional statutory services that are funded by the county for my office. So the county related services of my office, which the county funds, are services provided to this board, to county departments, and to county staff. The functions of my county funded budget are not to the public. Okay. They are strictly provided to Pasco County Government. Those services are mandated
by Article 8, Section 1D of the Florida Constitution and Section 218.35 sub two B of Florida Statute. And they're provided on the slide. So, clerk of the board and county commissioners, the county auditor, custodian, and treasurer of all county funds, and other county-related duties. Other county-related duties are things such as my services to support the value adjustment board and 32 county boards and committees, such as the Planning Commission and the Tourist Development Council. If tax reform
succeeds, the county will need to make very difficult decisions about needs and wants. However, before you balance your needs and wants, you have to determine what must be done. The services provided by my office for the county are required by the Florida Constitution and Florida statutes. Many constitutional and statutory mandates. impose penalties or liabilities if the functions are not performed. For example Oh sorry, was there
a question?
As county auditor, the clerk has an affirmative duty to review expenditures for legality before payment, in addition to ensuring that expenditure is for a public purpose. The clerk is not simply a payment processor for the county. In a landmark case of a Latchua County versus Powers, the Florida Supreme Court stated that the clerk has the authority and responsibility to audit functions as a watchdog of the board in the case of pre-auditing accounts and determining the legality of expenditures. Florida law makes the
clerk personally liable, both criminal and civil liabilities. For illegal or unauthorized county expenditures. Another example: Florida law requires local governments to pay valid invoices within a prescribed timeframe when those requirements are not met. The county bears the financial consequences through statutory interest penalties. Efficient invoice process. Protects taxpayer dollars by avoiding unnecessary costs while ensuring compliance with state law. That's called the Local Government
Prompt Payment Act that we're all very familiar with. There are many other examples similar to the two I just shared. In addition, there are functions MOFIS performs to protect the county, such as ongoing efforts to protect against vendor fraud and other cybercrimes.
The county is also required to fund specific court-related functions of my office pursuant to Article 5, Section 14C of the Florida Constitution and section 29.008 Sub-1 and Sub-2 of Florida statutes. These services are listed on the slide. For clarification, communication services include telephone systems, all computer networks, systems, and equipment. The multi-agency criminal justice information system is also considered called CGIS for short. It involves technology, however, it is a spec to
court-related activity to ensure information sharing between local justice partners and reporting of information to the state. So now that I have explained some of the constitutional and statutory services that are funded by the county for my office. I will go over my office's fiscal year 27 budget that was submitted again on April 30th.
From an operational perspective. Our office continues to focus on efficiency and cost containment. As a result, fiscal year 27 budget is one of the smallest increases since I became clerk. For fiscal year 27, the Board Services and Multi-Agency Sieges component of my office's budget reflects a modest increase of 4.35% or around $436,000 compared to. Fiscal year 26. The proposed increase is a is primarily driven by teammate salary
adjustments and increases in operational expenditures. These increases are attributable to inflationary pressures beyond the office's control, including the rising cost. Of goods and services required to maintain day-to-day operations. This request is not about growth, it is about maintaining capacity. Last year, at the request of the Board of County Commissioners, my office submitted a budget reflecting a 3% salary increase. At the time, I requested that if the board elected to fund its or any other constitutional employees' salary increases above 3%, that
my office be given the same salary increase. I recently learned that the board funded 5% salary increases for other constitutional offices. My team is facing the same inflationary and operational pressures as other constitutional offices without a comparable salary increase. Inflation has gone from 2.7% to 4.2% in this time. While my team received a three percent salary increase. Therefore I'm requesting a five percent salary adjustment in fiscal year twenty-seven to allow my office to continue meeting its statutory
obligations without compromising compliance, service, or accountability.
My office remains committed to effective and efficient operations. This likewise a few enhancements and efficiencies implemented this fiscal year so far. The Florida FGFOA Award is the Florida Government's Finance Officers Association. I'm sorry, the Government Finance Officers Association Certificate of Achievement in Excellence in financial reporting. We've received that award for 42 consecutive years, and that carries a significant financial and reputational benefit to
the Board of County Commissioners. Most notably, it supports strong bond ratings as credit rating agencies view consistent, high-quality financial reporting as a sign of sound financial management. Transparency and robust internal controls. The Legal Resource Center, the Legal Information and Forms Education Program. In 2016, at the request of the Board of County Commissioners, my office assumed responsibility for operating the County Law Library, which was renamed the Legal Resource Center. As
Paso County experienced, Rapid population growth, the demand on legal assistance has increased significantly. To help meet this growing need, my office partnered with Bay Area Legal Services to provide free attorney sessions to self-represented litigants. This collaboration supports the county statutory obligation to provide legal assistance. Yeah. The electronic VAB applications. VAB stands for Value Adjustment Board. Historically, the VAB process has been entirely manual,
requiring significant staff time and paper-based processing. This past May, my office successfully developed and launched phase one of the electronic VAB processing project, which allows taxpayers to file petitions and submit payments online. Phase two will focus on automating hearing notices and electronically managing petitions, bringing the county closer to a fully electronic PLU process. Once fully implemented, this project is expected to streamline administrative workflows, reduce reliance on paper, and
improve overall efficiency and lower operating costs. The ops audit software has been into the term optro now. This is a comprehensive AI-powered audit management platform used to plan, conduct, and report the operational audits. This program will increase audit management workflow efficiency and enhance reporting capabilities.
So here are some future efficiency projects that are up on the horizon. Financial reporting fund consolidation. Pasco County currently has approximately 235 funds to manage its financial activities. Maintaining such a high number of funds requires additional time and resources for administration. Review, reconciliation, and financial audit. Our external auditor recommends and my office supports reducing the number of funds by using functionality in the financial system, such as using the sub ledger.
This will reduce administrative burden, improve Efficiencies and save time and cost for both organizations as well as the external auditor. E-recording for permitting customers. With the relocation of permitting services to the Citizen Service Center in Newport Ritchie, customers who need to record a notice of commencement, also known as an NOC, after obtaining a permit, must travel between buildings to complete the process. My office would like permitting customers to electronically record NOCs through Acela, which would transmit to the clerk's electronic
recording portal for electronic recording and then return the recorded instrument to a CELA. Allowing the recorded NOC to be attached to the online permit. This solution will support the county's mobile permitting events and allow customers to manage full permitting process online through a SELA application. E-Inventory tracking. The county's inventory management process relies heavily on manual spreadsheets, tracking, and data entry for approximately 18,000 inventory items, resulting
in inefficiencies and potential errors. My office is in the process of implementing a new inventory management technology that integrates scanning equipment with the county's financial system. Once fully implemented, The new system will significantly reduce manual data entry while improving the accuracy, efficiencies, and timeliness of inventory management across the county. Debt management software, a specialized software to support compliance monitoring and reporting, has been acquired and is in phase two of implementation. The system is now actively being used. used
to generate required post-issuance compliance reports, and efforts are underway to document procedures and expand access to the appropriate Board Accounting Commission departments. This will result in strengthening compliance with IRS regulations and GAP, generally accepted accounting principles. Improving audit readiness, reducing the risk of adverse IRS impacts to the tax exempt status of debt issuance, and provide system access and reporting to the BCC. Vendor onboarding services. To address the increased
risk of vendor fraud and unauthorized payment activity, my office currently relies on time-consuming manual verification process. to validate vendor identities, banking information, tax documentation, and other critical data before vendors receive a payment from the county. Moving to a third-party vendor with specialized fraud detection and verification capabilities streamlines the onboarding process while strengthening controls to prevent fraudulent vendors, payment diversion schemes, and other
financial crimes while improving operational efficiencies. As the volume of body-worn camera footage and other digital evidence continues to increase, the justice system faces the challenge of securely managing, tracking, and sharing electronic evidence. To address this need, the other justice partners, such as, The courts, my office, the county, IT, and the Sheriff's Office, the State Attorney, Public Defender, we're all collaborating to implement a digital evidence management solution. Future
investments in digital evidence technology will be required as part of the county's multi-agency sieges funding responsibilities under 29.008 of Florida statutes. So
I'm so yeah. As we look ahead, it is important to reserve funding for my office's constitutional duties. These duties include paying county employees, processing county bills, investing county funds, managing county debt, auditing county departments, and preserving the official record of county meetings. The clerk is a constitutional officer with responsibilities mandated by Florida Constitution and Florida statutes. Funding the clerk's office means funding legal
mandates. If property tax reform passes in November, my office will need to understand what changes the county plans to make and how those changes will affect my office's workflow.
My office remains committed to being a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars. Before budget reductions are considered, we must discuss the services required by law, the liabilities, penalties, and risks of reducing those services, and any county operational changes that will impact my office's workplace. I am confident the balance can be achieved, but it will require open dialogue, careful planning, and partnership, and I look forward to continuing those conversations
with you over the coming year. Thank you.
They
can have a button. Uh ne discussion or we're just keeping our closure presentation? I plead the board.
Mr. Wait, yeah, thank
you Barsley. Um it was nice to celebrate the improvements made in the in the software platform for VAB, which we just had. So congratulations to you and your team. And um and same with the property appraisers team and trying to work together to keep unnecessary applications coming in, which just drive up cost. Um question for active Amy here. So
It sound like a broken record on this. Our unfunded mandate list. Right hopefully that's growing. That way we can share that with folks. Based on the legal definitions of the statutory language, uh what's the unfunded mandate that is required to fund the clerk's office. What I I would like to know what that number is.
That way we can see it in the list. I think it's important that we break it down instead of having the Total lens, but corpse unfunded mandate obligation. Mr. Corley's unfunded mandate obligation. As well as unfunded mandate obligation, of course, and R and Sheriff and and so on. That way we can show those. Um and then after we identify those, I think looking towards the the future here, I guess this
is a question for the clerk. When you go to page
Four
Yeah.
Five. And then we go to page six. Um these are all important duties of the clerk's office, but I'd like to understand uh that these are uh unfunded mandates that the clerk has to comply with that poorly, uh versus um I guess put that kind of in the once bucket, so to speak, of what just makes better customer
service. uh more efficient work platforms. That way we can separate those out by not saying they're they're bad thing. I think it's just important that we understand you know boilerplate of what's mandated, what's not, and then we understand These additional best management practices that the clerk is using are just based on how the clerk chooses to do the business of the office. So
Mr. Chairman Mariano.
So
um Commissioner Weightman, that's exactly what I was hoping you would say.
I was hoping
that that because I think it's important first what is what are mandated by the constitution and statutes. We we need to know that clearly from all of our organizations. And then what's going to reduce cost if we if we implement efficiency so you're right on um what i was what what i was hoping would would come out of this so i greatly appreciate that i look forward to um providing this information to you from my office and continuing the conversation because we need to have a clear picture of what those things are
because we certainly don't want to have any sort of liability Penalty or increased risk for cutting an area. We need to know fully what what what decisions we're making. So I greatly appreciate that. Thank you.
No, I understand onto I think these efficiencies that you're going to put in this road to the permitting part as well to touch on a separate subject, but those efficiencies, I think if we there's some way to relate those to what the benefit is for the citizens, that would be good.
Absolutely. Um and adding on that, is there a related reduction in FTEs that you can uh provide for when we do more automation?
Do you do you break it out
like that? So we can estimate, but until it's it's in a cycle, I won't be able to know for certain, but I can I can estimate. Yes, I think you've
done some already. And so maybe you have some idea of some of these other ones that you did.
So for for example, um some of these efficiencies that I spoke about were because we're drowning right now and it was just to allow us to have s capacity um for example whole Commissioner Weightman talked about the value adjustment board. We have so many petitions now in the recent years than we had just three years ago. It's been crazy. And it took us through May, through May to get through last year's. petitions and it's
just there's such a high volume and we all have limited resources and staff to be able to process that so that improvement is to allow my team to have more capacity so that we can process Process these items even quicker, you know, within a good amount of
time. And on the legal resource center, is that something statutory we have to have? Because now we we do have to you have to provide law
library services in pursuit of statute. I can get you all the statutory references, but yes, um what we did is in two thousand. and sixteen we entered into an interlocal agreement because um I have a community of scale, so I was able to run it in the black. The county was running it in the
other model.
I just wonder
if we in this day and age if we still have to have it when there's so much information online. Is that an efficiency that
so that's why we call it a legal resource center now? Because we moved online. Books are very expensive. So we changed it from a library because the idea when you think of a library is you think books. maybe changing the same age, but we change it to Legal Resource Center because we provide mostly everything is online legal resources.
So you have a person there that help one person maybe? Yes. In the in a room that helps people when they come in? Yes. And helps them do research. Yes. And
if you would like to come and visit, you can be more than welcome and then you can also do it.
I I actually used it when we had a library for some personal uh things. Okay. Back back when it was was the old style books. It was helpful. Right. Okay, those are my quiz.
Yeah. Okay. Mr. Whitley again. Yes. So to add color to the clerks comment about VAB and the petitions, what's what's happening was driving up staff time and cost and what's led to the the platform correct me wrong on this but the synopsis of it is we're just having uh
People are just filing petitions for the sake of filing petitions. And most of the time they don't show up. What's the percentage that show up? Virtually remind me, please. So we have problems. Probably would you come over, please? Yeah, so maybe just I think it would be good for the board, because Commissioner Oakley's in here, but explain kind of what's driving the staff time, the cost, and related to the VAB, since the clerk's responsible for it. Uh and it's
these folks legal right to do this. So when it comes it's um I'm I'm bringing this in because of the unfunded mandate list and that way we can Truly understand some of these uh points that that are driving staff time and and and cost. So I know we're a little bit ahead of schedule, but and if you would name a position for the record
value office. So what we have in regards to the volume, uh what we're really talking about. is tax representatives that are typically representing investment companies uh and they own thousands of property
they own thousands of properties these investment investment companies and the tax reps they
He was telling me about this how it how they just thousands. They play games. In years past, uh we were looking at two, three hundred maybe. Um the past five or so years, we're looking at thousands and three thousand.
Presented itself and that is a company that basically says any individual property owner can save on property taxes if they use their services. So and they don't charge anything unless they they actually do save you something on the property. Unfortunately, most of the folks that follow, there is no adjustment to be made, and that company typically just doesn't even present
evidence, doesn't show up, and you've got hundreds, if not thousands, of clients that they have petitions, but then And we, because of statutory changes recently, we have to provide evidence, prepare evidence ahead of the hearing automatically. The clerk has to prepare their side of things, hire the magistrate and um and there's a minimum fee uh just
to have the the magistrate that day. Four hours, right? Yeah. Four hours minimum for the magistrate. And and and then they don't show up. And that's that's a a serious issue. And part of the issue, uh part of the reason in my opinion Like that happened.
uh the teleconference or by telephone video what have you
it's required by statute
right so there you go um so that motivates a lot of different tax reps that used to have to fly down from Texas or something like that uh to just hey I can do it over the phone Winnerloop. we don't really spend any money. Yeah. But if they have to actually uh spend something because there is merit to their petition, they have to show up, different ballgame altogether. They won't file or if they file they withdraw. So a lot of different things that have caused this issue, but
definitely it's been very costly for us and for the the clerk for sure. So I'm just a person.
Yeah. So have we looked at legislating what we think the changes should go back to or to modify the
change happening here in the afterlife?
Um so definitely there's an opportunity to look at the uh some reforms the statute and everything we typically saw from putting so much emphasis on on investatory changes um because they think oh well you have a vested interest your conflict of interest so but we should we we probably should have more emphasis on potential uh change in folks like you know the clerk and yourselves obviously because ultimately if you do pay uh
for the VAV services um and the magistrates um we do definitely have all of us essentially have a vested interest in making sure we can change step or make those statutory changes so that we don't have these problems and it's a recent phenomenon and we need to recognize
Legislative we can work together and work on these unintended consequences that are taking on. Mr. Stark.
Um I'm checking here with NACO
with
my contact at Montreal, but um there
was
a housing bill going through in Washington that would require large institutional offices in 75 best. Mm breakers.
Um ring of the right-of-way. So that's one thing that we need to track. Second, are we allowed to charge a registration fee for anyone going and still okay the two chambers have reached an agreement on the language. The Senate should pass it to speak and the House now. Next week. Um so are we allowed to charge a registration fee? With this and we could say if you're successful your fee comes out of it. If
not, then we need to get going on our our reg our rental registry because that's where we can recoup some money to help pay for this.
Sure. I mean yeah that that's how that I'm not sure about the registration fee.
Um the only thing that's authorized by law is to file to charge a petition fee.
It's called okay. So we could charge the fee and we don't we do no no we do. Is it enough to cover no do we have the ability to raise the petition fee? Uh on our
own, not necessarily. No, it it's it's in it's in Florida statute. We have to um go to our legislators and ask them to increase that
and then it actually would recently from fifteen dollars a petition to fifty fifty dollars a petition. Um
it's recent.
I don't recall
and so those those large sorry those large institutional buyers pay the fifty dollars per it's not per paper, it's per per petition per petition. So for each residence they own it's
worth it to them.
Well I don't
they all they repr they represent others uh other Landowners, other homeowners as well. So they're representing well, they'll go down the street and just re have people sign up. But it's fifty dollars per address, I guess like questions.
Right, per parcel. Not
perfect. It's
one petition, one parcel.
So if you do the math, if the magistrate has to listen to one. You're looking at about half an hour to an hour of pay through the manuscript. I think it's 160, 180, I forget the number that we've got. I don't
know that off the top of my head, but
they are fifty dollars for those folks to pay you know on the petition, but if you pay a hundred dollars to the man.
That also does not include your office's staff time in preparing for the quasi judicial matter and the clerk's time. Right, absolutely.
And you're
a
volunteer on the
wind.
There are there are members that you can prompt maybe enough to be on.
There are both. volunteers that are on on on that board uh too uh
and the the cost of the um value adjustment board my understanding part of it comes from the county and the other part comes from the school board
But in seven years they won't um at least the large ones they won't be able to to uh I can't remember.
that it's it's really become a uh a drain on staff time and um our meetings are really the same amount of time and these folks are not showing up. Quite frankly it's it's pretty doggone rude and um it's not fair to the working staff andor the taxpayer to have to fund, you know, these fishing
expeditions that that these groups uh are going on. And it you know, you compound it statewide, it's a lot of money.
Yeah, and the only uh possible immediate solution and I don't know whether it's a statutory issue or not, but a fee they don't show.
That is not um allowed. I mean that's not provided so you can't charge the fee. So that's so you we would a possible solution.
Right, that's another idea. Well I think that needs to be on our legislative Successful aspect.