8-14-25 Special Meeting @ 1:30 p.m. - Aug 14, 2025

The Alachua County Board of County Commissioners special budget meeting for August 14th at 1.30 p.m. We'll approve the agenda, Mr. Chair. Second. Got a motion to approve the agenda and a second. Are there any public comments to the motion that's on the floor? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. All at the same time, motion to be carried. Bring it over to Tommy. Yeah, I can just see if there's a few words. Okay, different answer. I'll go ahead and kick it off. This is our final... Did I say everything in there? Okay. Okay, good? Just making sure you have what you need. I don't think I do. I think I got doubles of one. I'm sorry. But that's okay. Oh, yeah, so there's three. So you might have got a two of one and not the third. This is the last one I need. Okay. Thank you. All right, you good? Okay, so this is basically our final meeting to talk about the budget before we have our adoption hearings in September. So there's some final things that Tommy and Mo are going to go over with you. But I did, you know, just looking back at things, because we've been going through some exercises, the board had made a motion asking us to look at, you know, what it would look like to do a rollback rate or what, you know, recommendations. I think that was a motion. Request. It was a request. So, you know, kind of going through that exercise, I wanted to look back at my budget messages over the last several years and just kind of take a look at what we've done. And, you know, back in 23, I talked about prudence and caution, and that year we did a, with a few exceptions, we basically did a continuation budget and decreased the millage that year. And then in 25, when I presented my budget, we talked about looking at our strategic priorities and how we had expanded programs and services over the years and looking to basically right-size what we were doing and maintain the programs and services we had without growing more and adding more to that. And I'm grateful that the board stuck to that for the most part because, you know, staff was working very hard on the programs and priorities that we were already working on. And then in this year, we talked about focus on core services and with upcoming potential challenges and that we needed to have programs not only that were sustainable but hopefully, you know, could become self-sustaining and managing expectations of residents and our other nonprofit partners and municipal partners. So, and I think we have done that with this budget. So, and I appreciate that the board, when we come forward with a recommended budget, and the challenges that we face, the board has been very receptive and we move forward with that and make very little changes from your recommendations. So, Tommy has some things to go over with you. We have provided with the millage rates. We've got, Tommy, what are all the documents you have here? Because I know we did the reduction in millage over since 2016 where we've done that. We did the rollback rate twice and we've reduced the millage every year since 20, fiscal year 2016. That's this document? Yes. I don't think there's many counties that could say that. It's 2017. So, tax year 2016. So, we have some information the board had asked before we get into our today's meeting. This is out of the annual financial report. I highlighted the yellows or something I added. Those are the two years we went to our rollback rate in the general fund. One year we did also in the MSTU. And this was year 21, the year after COVID, we went to a full rollback rate. So, you will see since 2017, the general fund millage was at 8.929. And this year, which is not on here, we're recommending a 7.6 mil. And, Tommy, if I could just make a note. I mentioned this, Commissioner, comment a week ago. But, if you go back to 16 and 17, we actually eliminated the unincorporated MSTU. Right. And so, when I think about what we've done, we've gone from middle of 9.5 mils approximately down to 7.6. So, not quite two mils, but a big jump with the rollback rate in two of those years, 2018 and 2021. So, we were asked, so we're going to talk about debt service today and increasing our capacity per citizen from $750 to $1,000. Just for a perspective, we are currently at $341 per resident. We rank 32nd out of 67 counties. There are also 207 municipalities that have a higher per capita debt than us, and 52 that have less. When we issue new debt later this fall, if you adopt this budget, it will increase to $590. That would put us at 46th if no other county has issued any other debt. The reason we bring that to your attention is we have big debt issues, and we're going to talk about a debt policy in a minute. We're going to request that you increase that. Just the way construction costs are going and the requirement of issuing debt for now any project is just putting demands on that going up. So, we'll talk about that during the debt policy, but that was something we had talked about earlier. Also, in your hand, let's see. We'll talk about the revenue first. So, we have a revenue update. Taxable values, we base that off of 25 final. You should have a sheet that says major tax revenues. So, the increase from taxable value, final taxable value to this year's proposed that was July 1st certified is $2 billion. It looks like this page. Oh, it's in our budget vote. Page 19. 119, thank you. We can make it smaller next time. Right. You know, use accounts. I think the next page, you can get, oh, maybe. It gets bigger on the next page. Next year, we'll bring a magnifying glass and provide it with your budget. I can't see as well, though. It's $2 billion. It gets bigger. The MS2 law has went up $800 million. The general fund millage was at 7.618. We are proposing 7.6, a decrease of .018 mils. The MS2 law, we are recommending to stay flat at 3.5678 mils. That is to fund the sheriff's operations and law enforcement, a portion of that. So, ad valorem at 95% will generate, and the general fund will grow from $169 million to $182 million, or an increase of $13 million. The MS2 for law will grow from $32.6 to $34.9 million, or a $2.3 million increase. So, ad valorem taxes will increase. Okay. Sorry. $202 million to $217.6 million, so a $15.6 million increase in ad valorem, expected increase. Public service tax, we're anticipating to go up $575,000 in lines with the splits between fire and the general fund. We are anticipating communication service tax to go down $395,000, which is not an unusual trend. I will also remind the board that last year we started including the gas tax into that calculation at 20%, and it's probably good since the legislature seems to be looking at what we're doing with communication service tax. It's my intent the next year to provide more of CST to gas tax funds if possible. We'll see how the property tax discussion goes next year. So, half-cent sales tax is going up approximately $4 million. You see a reduction in the general fund by $4 million, an increase in debt service by $9 million. That's for the debt we've already issued. So, start making debt payments based on all the construction we're doing, the fire stations, purchase the warehouse, borrowed money for about half of the court service building, and so those debt payments are going to start being made. So, the debt service is going up. Fire assessment, again, we rebalanced that, so there's a slight increase of less than 1%, but there is a slight increase mainly as the balancing between the tiers that we talked about, the rates that will come before you on the 11th. So, on the other side, on the right side of your page, you'll see a summary by fund. The general fund is proposed to go up from $190 to $199, $8.7 million. You missed to you by $2 million, $2.3 million. Actually, a slight reduction in fire, adopted budget. That's because of a reduced use of fund balance, a negative $169, a gas tax fund that is flat, a debt service fund that is going up, again, by $9.139 million. Our surtax, the legislation that passed this year, it had some impact on the general fund, but very small. It, however, has impacted our projections on the surtax quite a bit. When they took commercial leases out of, they don't have to pay sales tax anymore. Our share of that one cent will be a reduction of about $600,000, and that will be ongoing per year. So, over the next seven years, you're talking about, and we think that that number will grow. So, right now, it's about $4 million, $5 million. We think that's going to be quite a bit bigger because we're not quite reaching projections. So, that's the revenue stream. Policy updates. So, Tommy, I know I was the one to put in the request for the rollback, for the analysis of the rollback rate a little while ago. Is this the time to talk about that, or is it later? Yeah, let's talk about it later because we're going to do product five, final direction at the end. Okay. Let's get through our policies for Ken and our FTE. So, you should have this document in your backup. It should be in your presentation. It's a summary of policy updates. We adopted policies back early in this process. Over the summer, we have done some work that has changed our needs to make changes. We've removed some replacement funds, computer replacement funds, vehicle replacement funds. So, that impacts our policy. It should look like this. H20. So, we're asking for several updates, and they mostly focus around the vehicle and the fleet replacement fund. The front page is the updates that we've made. So, on the budget management policy, again, we're doing something. We're not having a vehicle, a computer replacement fund anymore. We roll those back into the departmental funds for them to maintain and ask for every year and compete. One, we weren't keeping up with the cost because the contribution wasn't enough. The way, like ambulances, the increased cost. So, when we got to buy one anyway, we still have to go find money because there's not enough in the replacement fund to cover it. And the second thing is, is we need to address these annually in the budget. There should be an ongoing need to replace on a routine schedule, and you need to see that as a part of your budget because y'all need to make those determinations. We are asking amendment to the adjustment, so budget adjustments. Can I ask a question about that? Tell me, I guess in that front, are you thinking that that would be like a separate setup, like the way you did the capital budget? Like it would be like a separate, like here's the computers, or there would be a department within the department? Yes, within the department in their line item budgets and their capital outlay section. And if I could add, I mean, we're still going to keep, you know, a general replacement schedule that Fleet maintains to help guide us there. But that doesn't mean that that's like the automatic, okay, it hit that point, we're doing that. But now that would be the point that we would look at it and say, you know, is it time? Is it needed? Correct. So, we are asking for a change also. So, in transfers, budget adjustments between funds, we are asking it to go up to $250,000 that can be approved by the county manager. Obviously, we're not changing the total of any funds, but we have come across more and more regularly where there is a need that is fairly routine based on the accounting of it to move it to $250,000. We, we were going to, we have put some limit on it. We would report that to the board with our quarterly financial report so you can always see what the manager has done and where she's moved money, what funds she's moved money between to and from. It just comes across sometimes when we're doing, we have money in a general fund and needs to go to a capital fund. The project was in a different fund. There's just various times in having to wait for the board process and going three or four weeks at a time. One of the things we're also looking at is the board, the legislature has changed laws about change orders. How rapidly we need to turn change orders over and some of those things. And so from an expeditious and getting work done standpoint, it would, it would greatly help us to have an increased ability to move between the bus. And I was only going to say, we are, we're, we're really not asking for any more than a lot of my peers in other counties because the increased costs of things. This was my question, Mr. Chair, is I, so this has been the limit since I've been a commissioner since 2014. I know this came up right after I got elected, so we actually haven't had this discussion in over a decade since I've been on the floor that I can remember. What, what is the limit that Vince has in Leon County, which is our best peer? I think it was, well, for, for actually, and this is moving money we're talking about, but his actual budget authority, I believe, is $250,000. Um, mine's $50,000, right. I can barely fill a pot hole for $50,000 these days. So, so that's for budget authority. Are we talking about that? It's, it's, it's the same. This isn't procurement. It's to, to shift money between, uh, it's to move money between funds. So we will be talking about procurement. Yes. And that piece of it. But it follows that same, along that same line because it's authority to do something with money without coming to the floor. And then we would still, though, every quarter get a report of what did you do. Yes. Just, um, and I think that, you know, you always come to us when something is a little bit, you know, different or weird, or you think we need to know about it. I think you'll continue to do that. So I'm not. If it's not routine, I, I always communicate with you all about this. Yeah. I, I, I'm not concerned about it from, like, a you perspective. I'm concerned about this as a policy perspective. If you retire, like, this is in here forever. I'm also concerned about the perception in the public eye. We already get criticism about, like, the amount of things we stick on consent and how many big budget items we're constantly flowing through. I know it's only $250,000, but it's a big leap from $50,000 to $250,000. I mean, that's, like, a way more than doubling, you know, right? It's, like, doubling, doubling, and again. Right? Five times. You know, thank you. Math. Math. I'm not. I can do that math. Clearly. I know. I'm, like, sitting there, I'm, like, again, again, and again. So, I, you know, I, I guess I just, you know, it's, I, I feel like, I feel really mixed emotions about doing this just because I feel like it all, I mean, not necessarily between funds, but definitely when it comes to procurement. Because I feel like there's an accountability level there that, you know, and between funds, I guess it's just, like, that's the difference between, like, a capital improvement or a, and it's, like, once they've done it, yeah, they give us a quarterly report. But it's done. I mean, I guess they could shift it back. Yeah. But it's. I don't have a problem with between funds. And the procurement one, I don't know how much of a problem I have. I, I think it needs to go up more. It needs to go up a little bit because, yeah, just because of inflation and the cost of things, you know, I mean, it seems to me. So, to her point, though, with the requirement of the state to get through change orders faster, that costs money. Change orders aren't free. And so, that, that's, I think, the limitation is having to wait for board meeting to move something forward and things have to get moved forward by. What if we okayed this and we increased the procurement to, say, 125? Would that be enough? Well, let's wait until we get to procurement because when we get to that, we're going to bring you a survey of what the other counties are doing and where their manager authorities are so that you can look at those and compare because, I mean, it just. . . Well, I'm looking at Leon County. That's the way I'm looking at. Okay. And I think the way I spoke is probably a little confusing. This isn't from fund to fund. This is within a fund. Right. So, I work on a living appropriation. Okay. So, if a good example that we frequently have is at a courthouse. So, there are two different functions at a courthouse. Yes, yes, yes. There's a five-zero-something courthouse general maintenance, and then there's a seven-judicial maintenance at the same courthouse. Yes. Sometimes we need to move money between its functions or categories. Okay, so it's within a fund. Yeah, it's within a fund. So, if we change the total of a fund, we have to commit the board by statute. This is within a fund. Category is the same way. So, sometimes we will, for example, personnel services are in a personal service category. Sometimes people will say, well, we need to hit some temporary services because we're not hiring right now or whatever the case may be. That's in a operating category, and we need to move money to the operating category. So, this is about capitalization thresholds. This is within a fund, within the authority of an adjustment. Any budget amendment that changes the total of a fund has to come back to the board. Okay. That's it. I gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes more sense. Okay. So, I'll clarify that. Okay. So, the next one is just changing. It says, during this mid-year, we deleted those words and added through. During the year, sometimes we run more than one budget amendment. Yeah, this is fine. So, it's not a mid-year budget anymore. It's a budget amendment. It's a budget amendment. We like to change the budget. Same thing with fund balance. We don't do carry forward mid-year budget amendments. We just do budget amendments, however many we need to do. Again, deleting mid-year. We did add stormwater fund to have a budget for reserve for contingency. So, we've added that. Same thing in 10-7-B, health insurance fund. The clerk's office has asked for some latitude to determine how much needs to go back in the health insurance fund. What we have set up now is we all, including constitutionals, when I say we all, all agencies budget what they need regardless of vacancies, et cetera. In the past, they would send their money back. So, what they budgeted for the health insurance fund, which is what we build our revenue on in the health insurance fund, didn't always cover it. So, a couple years back, we said, well, now any excess you have that you had planned on spending on health insurance will come back to the health insurance fund, not the general fund, which helps us not increase premiums very rapidly. But now, that number is starting to be pretty large. And we don't want to get over our 120-day limit and those kind of things. So, the finance director and the clerk's office has asked to have some latitude to make that calculation to either will or may. So, it may go back into the health insurance fund or it may go back into the fund from which it came. So, general fund, usually. Really important. Okay. I guess, again, those are ones where I'm like, why wouldn't it just say up until it meets, I mean, if it's meeting a threshold. Because that sometimes is calculated quite a bit late in the process. Oh, okay. So, we'll have to look at that sometimes in November, December. Gotcha. So, capital budget and finance plan. So, that's that one. So, in the next policy will be the capital budget and finance plan update. So, we wanted to add some of the conversations we've had over the summer. Then, whether we include something as an addition to an asset or if it's expended. And that's a constant conversation. So, if you put a roof on, are you extending the life of the asset to the point to where it needs to be included as an asset value, a capital asset, or are you just maintaining it to the point to where it lasts its original useful life? So, if you build something on that's extending its useful life, it will be considered to be included as the capital asset. Do we not have a minimum? We do have a minimum. And that's the other part of the policy. So, the minimum is very nice. I was going to say, I thought I saw that. Right. Yeah, there are minimums. This is just the changes. That's pretty typical in most corporate worlds. Correct. Correct. Again, through discussions of the official capital plan is really in your comprehensive plan. And growth management manages that every year. And I think they come in November or December and actually talk to you about the updates. So, we've had to clarify because there's statutory language about what to do with that. So, we've changed the name of this to a capital budget and financial plan. We've already talked about that. So, we're making the appropriate references in the policy. It's not just the capital plan anymore. So, our part is the budget, capital budget and finance plan of the capital plan. So, Chris Dawson handles, I think, the overseeing or Jeff does of the actual capital plan. Other considerations in developing the capital budget financial plan, we added assistant county manager for public works and growth management because that's Missy's title. And we've changed it. I'm sorry, that's what it was. Now, it is public services and community development. So, we've basically mirrored our title. And we've also changed the title of the senior administrative support manager to fiscal manager. Can I ask a question about something that doesn't have a change? Yes. On page four of the financial policy capital budget financial plan, the classification of asset? Yes. How is that, how is that used? Is that, that's used over time to justify additional expenditures? And, and who, who, who makes that judgment? So, that is, so that is the responsible, so facilities would be the director of facilities. Our roads would be director of public works. The conservation land or the, excuse me, parks and wild open spaces would be the parks director. So, that kind of, and then as we get into housing, if whatever we do there, whoever's responsible. So, one of the, the components is a, as a cost and evaluation, we need, you will also see when we get into the budget that we've added quite a bit. And we talked about this at the last board meeting, an increase in facilities, preservation projects. So, as we are going through jail being a great example, obviously there's a lot of work that needs to be done there. So, that is when it's able to be evaluated. Travis has gone through with the jail staff and built a list out of what's wrong. Okay. So, at some point, based on affordability, based on level of safety concerns, we've had to determine, is this better to replace this asset or is this better to continue to take care of this asset? Whether it's a jail, whether it's a courthouse, whether it's a fire station, whatever the case may be. Whether it's a road. You know, how many, when do we quit filling potholes and resurface? Obviously, there's a lot goes into that other than just condition, but that's who handles the condition. I guess when I've worked in places in the past, you know, sometimes things are real obvious. You know, a road full of potholes is obviously going to fall into inadequate. But other times, you know, where I've worked before, it required a team of people and someone outside of the department to sort of bless a decision about something that was of, you know, over a certain value that you were saying is inadequate. Does that make sense? To prevent, I guess, you know, abuse in the system or whatever. I was just, and I'm not saying that's happening here. I was just curious if we had any bills that built into this. So ours would be, the department is not the one that does it. I gotcha. So if the public works director says my building is inadequate, the facilities director is going to look at that. You know, the public works director does look at the roads. He is the final state, but there's no, there's no incentive for him to say why one's better than the other. If he hasn't made the management plan that has been done, I haven't helped him. Those are kind of the safeguards we build here. I just don't like my truck, so I'm going to say it's inadequate or whatever. You know what I'm saying. So, but that's the, but that would be. Same thing with constitutional. And same thing with constitutional. So the sheriff will submit their request of what they want. They don't determine whether they get it or not. That goes through the process where the director of facilities goes out and says, yeah, we need to work on this roof or whatever. Okay. Just wanted to see what the failsafe was. Thank you. Can I ask a question on the capital project adjustments that's in here, the new procedure for adjustments being managed through an internal procedure. And coming to us quarterly, is there a threshold on that in terms of like, you know, if there's a change order that's massive, you know, like suddenly, you know, we have. Where did you jump to? I'm on. It's not a jump. It's page four. Next page. Bye. Okay. You're not there yet, but okay. Oh, we weren't. Okay. That's all right. Sorry. I know. I just thought we were moving. Okay. All right. So. Move past it. Yeah. So one of the things that we're, we, again, have discovered or been working on with the clerk's office projects. We need to move project money around a lot. Yeah. I noticed. Okay. Well, that's, so we need to do that more expeditiously. I guess I just feel like there's, there's, there's times when I'm like, I can't, I can't, like, I can't believe we had to wait for a commission meeting to do that. It's like $9,000 or $2,000 or whatever, but then there's times when it's like $300,000 or $500,000, like we've had, like, you know, suddenly this piece of equipment that we thought was going to cost us one thing costs us another thing. And I guess in those instances, I feel like it's the board's responsibility to sort of ask, like, is this still the best investment or are there other technologies or is there other ways that we could do this thing? You know, like it's. 80% of the time, we're in the middle of it. This is a change order driving this. So, it's not really past the time of evaluating, you know, you're kind of down the road. So, there's not a limit because we're not going to exceed appropriations. It is between projects. But there have been many times, especially with the new change order requirements, that we're sitting around trying to figure out how do we get approval to get this done in a timely fashion. And sometimes it is big numbers. You're right. Yeah. Thank you. But I believe that I haven't witnessed an occasion where the board had said, well, we're not going to do that or we need to find a different way because you're so far down that path. You've got contracts already let. You're in a situation where you probably, if it's a road, you probably found bad soil or you found some compact. You found some issue that you've got to deal with and you've just got to deal with it. Deal with it, yeah. And I would say that that's not typically the issue with buying a thing. Right. No, it's more of a construction project. It's a project. It's construction or. I guess my concern, and I guess it will be done through this internal structured, internal procedure, is you have a contractor that you work with and all of a sudden it's like change order after change order after change order. And it's a way for them to increase their total cost. They bid the job at one thing, but then they keep change ordering. And, like, I'm not interested in, you know, I'm interested in calling that out and making sure that we're holding them to the prices that they committed to and the work that they committed to. And, you know, sometimes they bid it wrong. Well, that's not our fault. And, like, I understand there's issues that come up. But, like, is this an issue that come up or is this a game that's being played in order to increase, you know, total, you know, revenues generated on a project that was bid at a certain price? And so, for me, that's the issue. And it's like, so I try to flag those when I notice them and, like, when it's like, okay, we've had six of these on the courthouse or we've had, not the courthouse. I'm just using that as an example project. I haven't seen it. But, like, you know, we have had a fair amount on the courthouse, but they've all been for reasons. That's something UF has done a really good job of is getting hold of their change orders. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's like I just want to make sure this structured, internal procedure, like, I'd like to see what that is and that we have some procedure that we're reviewing them in some kind of way that when they start to add up in a job or a total amount, on a job. I don't know if Travis has ideas on that, but. And Travis has done a good job at that already. He's really good. We usually do construction manager at a risk that helps that quite a bit. But I'll let him address it because we have had some change order issues. We've changed. Scott trying to manage. Okay. With Scott's issue and budgeting. Yeah, Travis Parker, facilities director. Hi. So, yeah, we are working on that because what you're describing is something that we potentially can't see. And so I do negotiate those pretty heavily. They go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Enough to the point where if it's going to delay the project, I'm going to cost us more money. By delaying, then I'm, you know, we reach a point. So renovation projects, so like Budget Scottish, you know, you're going to see, you notice probably on those two, one was considerably larger than the other. Super red flag. But, you know, one has stick frame. You know, one is CMU block. They know a lot. There's a lot of different things that go into that that would drive those costs where they are. But we are buckling down on, you know, if we have architects and engineers, we're holding them accountable. You know, if you're not designing to that standard or you're missing those things, we are holding them accountable to that. Okay. So. Okay. So that will all be built into that procedure as you guys. For sure. Right. And CMU at risk, when we use that, explain how that. So I think the CMU at risk, so there's two thoughts there, you know. I think it's appropriate to use each one. But when you have the CM on board in the beginning, we should see considerably less change orders. And I can speak to that on the courthouse as we're working through all these documents, very large construction project. We probably have, I don't know, maybe 150 RFIs that are in the system right now that are saying, hey, this is Ajax, our contractor, saying, hey, please clarify. So when we go out to hard bid, no one's doing those things. And you would hope that the bidders, there is some bid risk for them, you know. And we are holding them accountable for certain things, you know. If you go out there and we have a pre-bid and we're working or walking through a renovation, you know, and you see that the drawings say there's, you know, half of these are tubs and then half of these are showers. And you come back later and say, hey, by the way, it was all drawn with tubs, you know. But there's risk involved. You walk the site, you should have had a, you know, pre-bid RFI on that. So we are trying to buckle down on that as well. And we did the public defender building with the CM on board, didn't we? Yeah, you were. Absolutely. Yeah, we did. And similarly, if a builder comes to you and says, hey, I can save you this much money if you make a change order, you always go back to the architect and engineer and ask, right? Oh, yeah. So all of ours are approved through the architect slash engineer, you know, and they're a signer on it before. Every time I've been threatened to be sued, it's because there was a change order and then they didn't come to us and ask about it. So I was off the hook, so it was great. No, we involve them first, so they're the first line. As the architect. Or the engineer. Or the engineer, yeah. And a lot of times the engineers are still about the architect, so they're both reviewing it. Okay. All right, thank you. I was just curious because that's a question. Okay. I have just a question for me. Do you all have any concerns at all about confusion by changing the name from public services and community development as to how it might be confused with community support services? And, you know, because it looks like the financial oversight committee that we're trying to, that it's more economic development. So we try to include on the oversight committee everyone that has something that's going to be under construction, if you will. So she's a part of the housing piece. Okay, so this directly relates to housing then? That position, though, but that's why they're on the committee. I got you. It's inclusive of everybody. That's the title of the ACM that we have. We've just gotten so used to hearing public works and growth management that I'm just wondering if when it goes to public services and community development that it sounds more like this. This is her title. But that's her new title. That's Missy's title. But that's Missy's new title. To change the department. It won't change. It won't change it. Okay, that's what I'm saying. We need to change the department. It better reflects what she manages. Gotcha. That's a great title. Because she's more than just growth management. Right. It's not changing growth management. It's changing the title. Okay, gotcha. Okay, that's because I was trying to make those words work in my head, and all I could hear was public works. That's what she does, public works. I know, and I know I call her regularly, and gotcha. That's exactly what I call the things. Okay, so it has only to do with the title and not the change of the department. That's right. Thank you all. Okay, non-capital equipment is basically your tangible personal property, which is equipment under a threshold of $1,000, I believe it is, for computers or desks or whatever the clerk's office is required by statute to keep track of, although they're not capitalized assets. Departmental responsibilities. So the Office of Managed Budget will establish procedures and work with the department heads to account for all property purchased with their departmental funds and for any property transferred to their departments. Again, this is under the same non-capital equipment. So we're trying to get a better handle on transfers of assets. Somebody gave somebody a desk that has a tag on it or whatever the ticket. You work in the U.S. I do. I laugh at that. Who? Scanning. Scanning of tags. Debt management, we have two updates. One is we have found there is a lot of conversation between my office and the clerk's office about we go borrow money because we need it and we're in the design phase. And the design phase now takes quite a while. So for, say, an animal service building, that's going to be a year design phase. Or for a courthouse, that's a year plus design phase. So we need to go ahead and advance those money through inter-fund loans and just put the money out. We'll do reimbursement resolutions so that we actually issue the debt. We'll pay ourselves back for that money. So it'll still be under the debt issue. But that way we're not getting into arbitrage issues. We're not holding money extensively and holding millions of dollars in a pot. And the federal government say, wait, this is tax-exempt debt. You should not put a dollar that long. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. So that's why it's there. Again, debt limitations, we like to go up to $1,000. Todd had supplied you during the financial report about where we rank. So I'll just clarify. We are currently $341 of debt per resident. We rank $32 out of 67 counties. And we're going to, if we issue the debt that's in the budget, we'll be at $590, which will put us $46. And while that is still under $750, we know that there's a potential for an animal service building. But a bigger condition is over the next year or so, as we get this infrastructure surtax money and all the planning stages go away and we actually start spending money, like we talked about doing, and we may need to leverage that in advance to get more roads done faster, to get more housing done faster, all that. So that's why it's there. Okay. That's good. Tommy, I have to ask a hard question. So at some point we have to think about a new jail? So we do have, in this budget, to do the study that was not funded by the state. Right. So after that, you know, everybody, we're all over the board and guessing what it would be. I would assume it's going to be north of half a billion dollars. Right, exactly. So hopefully we could get some help from the state on that. There's a lot of options we need to talk about how that operates and how we build it. I was just curious, you know, what are bases in debt by increasing this to a thousand? We can increase it again. We can, but I don't really want to. That'll probably be another $500 per resident. It's going to be huge. So we will have to address this again if we get you back here. Yeah. Because everyone wants to vote for that. Just kidding. So, no, it is something significant. And hopefully, you know, the study, with the study, we are going to ask them not just to tell us what it would be to construct a new jail and how would we pay for that as part of that. Because there's probably cost savings realized, right? Because you're not doing maintenance and if you can better construct it where you don't need as many staff, there's savings there. But we're also going to ask them to look at, on the other side of that, what is the minimum we need to do for, you know, if we renovate it and how would we pay for that. Right, and I think a big part of that also is, you know, working with court services and talking about do we really, what our capacity really needs to be. I mean, I guess that's the thing is, I mean, I hear you on this as a budget conversation, but, like, I'm not having this conversation as a real conversation until we have serious conversations with the rest of the PSCC about getting these jail numbers down. Our jail numbers are, like, bumping up against max numbers now and they're higher than they were way, even pre-COVID and during, like, you know, I'm talking about, like, before COVID when we had to clean up, you know, like, it's really out of control in a way. And I feel like there are a lot of things that we could be doing both with the judiciary and with court services and with our sheriff's office. And I think we have the right teams now, like, there's interest in those conversations when I've been having them at the PSCC. And I think doing that would give us a lot of space to be able to do more renovation and get more life out of the jail that we have. And from my perspective, it goes back to what you and I think Mary have brought out actually when you came on the board, which is putting funding into and addressing who causes versus civil rights. Right, I want to invest three quarters of a billion dollars in literacy and job opportunity and economic development and the things that make people not have to commit crimes to in order to add a desperation. Yeah, we can always build a bigger jail than we do. Well, and that's what I wanted to, you know, if we do that jail study, I'm hoping that, you know, as part of their thought process that they're creative in how they look at sizing and growth versus, you know, maximum capacity building for that. And the Central Receiving Facility is kind of the first step was kind of our, as a board, the Central Receiving Facility was the first step of that. Right. Of the root causes versus, yeah. Anyway, that was a segue. Sorry, Tommy. But I just was curious how that fit into any future. And that is not in our five-year plan. In that study, I guess one question I do have is, I mean, a lot of what we're seeing in our jail is a lot of mental health issues. And one of the things that we're hearing, again, again, both from the judiciary and from the sheriff's office is that, and from Meridian and everyone else, is there's not enough beds. Yep. You know, and so I would also love an analysis of, like, if we invested in more beds in our mental health facilities, like either with Meridian or U of Health or other places, so that we could actually, like, have the right facility for the right people as opposed to just investing in more spots in our, you know. So I think, if I could, Mr. Chair, so I think that would be something separate from what we're talking about, what we're really talking about. What we're talking about, right, what we're really talking about, the money we put in the budget that we were looking at, is really looking at the facility. We know the facility is aging, it has significant problems, and we are putting millions in every year. Right, but when they start talking about a new jail, they're going to size it according to kind of, like, our population and what our jail is now and what our jail population is now. And I'm just saying a significant portion of that jail population are mental health cases. And so if they weren't there, we would need a significantly smaller jail, which means it would be a, could be a significantly smaller cause. Right, or maybe, but that money doesn't mean that we wouldn't have to invest that money. We'd just be investing it potentially somewhere else for facilities that are necessary. It may have all new costs. Yeah. Yep, absolutely. All right, sorry for the second. Sorry, yeah, this is a total non sequitur, but. Okay, so the next section is our financial management policy. We have four requested updates that are related to the ones we've just discussed. Adding pre-debt issue expenditures as a part of the interfund loan policy and increasing it from $500,000 to $5 million. You can imagine we have about six architects running right now. So if they're not in construction level and we're doing this for pre-construction expenses, courthouse is a couple million dollars for the architect and permits and all those kind of things and pre-construction services. Same thing with the next fire station. Same thing with the next animal services building, et cetera. So it's just an interfund loan. It doesn't affect appropriations or expenditures. It would be in conjunction with clerk of the court's finance director and then either myself or the manager as needed. Was it Todd and Jess were involved in this? Yes, absolutely. The replacement funds deleted per our discussion earlier about the vehicle replacement fund and computer replacement fund in the earlier policy, budget policy. So they go away from the financial policy. And then the adding in conjunction again with the tangible property that that's under the delegated authority of the clerk's office and not our office. Okay, move adoption of the budget management fund. Second. Are there any citizens comments to the motion that's on the floor to this item? I'll stay on policies. It's just the policies. So votes? Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Those in favor of the motion vote by the side of aye. Aye. Those opposed same side. Motion carries. Thank you. Interruption. That's all right. Your next page should be the FTE page. Motion to adopt the FTE staff in charge for the county and consequences. Second. Got a motion and a second to the discussion to the motion. Are there any citizen compromises? I do have one question about it, though. The sheriff, did we end up adding the digital evidence coordinator for them? That was something they were really requesting, especially with those animal services and code. Yeah, I talked to the fourth, because I know they asked for seven. We approved. Was it three and a half or four and a half? Two and a half. I thought it was three and a half. Two and a half. It was two and a half. One is the property appraiser. Two and a half. We did sheriff, we approved two and a half. Okay. Yeah, now they only have a community services deputy, the mental health deputy, which... And a half unit. And a half unit. But that's for audio production specials. That's for my communication. That's not the digital evidence specials. Right. That's their next one down the list when we ask them for their priorities. And I talked to Tommy about whether we could do that at what is not now called mid-year adjustment. But when we get to that point, when we get to that point, when we get to, and so in that way, you know, it's not immediately a part of the budget, but when we have funds returned and such from the different departments to make that adjustment. When we get to that point, when we get the funds returned from them, I'd like to, I know that that was a big thing for them in terms of... Yeah, that's what I... So let me clarify. If we can do it, look at mid-year to see what recurring revenues we have as a recurring expense, I really don't want to use what they give back to pay for our salaries. That's not a good problem. Well, I guess my point is that either we do it with money they give back this year, and then we put it in recurring next year, or we just put it in recurring next year. But I'd like them to get it this year if they can, because I know they're trying to organize around animal resources, potentially coming in, cameras with codes, and then handling our data. Like, it's a lot of things that we're talking about, asking to add to that digital evidence. Correct. The new cameras that... Are they going to have all that evidence for, you know, the speed enforcement cameras? Right. Which is why I had asked, tell me about that mid-year point, because right now those things aren't yet in place. So by the time I think we get that, all of those myriad of things you brought up in place, the timing would probably be right as far as what we're adding to their plate. Okay. Okay. Any other comments? Those are the table of a motion. Both by the sign of aye. Aye. Those are closed. Same time. Motion carries. Okay. Do we have a fee schedule? I have some questions on that one. Okay. I don't know if anybody else does. Let me run it through. Would you like to just ask your questions? Yeah, I can answer my questions. I don't think we need to go all the way through it. So I guess the first thing was I mentioned at one of our meetings, and we referred to staff to look at being able to do hourly, you know, for at least for the community center type spaces that we have. But this still has, like, full days for most of them. So I know we're not there yet. We're not there yet. Yeah, that was just a couple meetings ago. But the other thing is, like, for, I feel like for the equestrian center and IFAS, at least, we should be able to do half-day rentals and not just a full-day rental. Like, full day is $1,600, but if somebody only needs a morning, being able to do half of that. And also, so that's a request, is that we have a half-day option for the equestrian center rentals and the IFAS extension center rentals until we can get to the hourly options. Well, I guess, you know, my question, though, is if we rent it out for half a day and part of our cost is, like, cleaning fees and all of that kind of stuff, it's not going to be half the cost. Half the cost, right? It's just going to, because we still have to roll all of that in there. It's not going to bring people in. We still have to set it up, open gates, provide parking, clean up the trash when we're done. All that takes the same amount of time, whether, or pretty much the same amount of time. I realize that. So that's, well, that's, so we're not there prepared to come back with that rate, I guess, is what we're saying. Yeah, they're analyzing that now. I don't, I mean, because we just, I think that was just a couple meetings ago, so. Well, I hear everyone on the whole, like, trash and program, but that's true of all, like, institutional spaces, but the libraries have figured it out, the city of Gainesville's figured it out, like, lots of institutions have figured out how they can do hourly or at least quarterly days or half days, so I just, like, I'm excited to get that back as soon as we can't, because I've been getting a lot of, and then the only other thing is that we, under the Ag and Equestrian Center for events that we, we have it, right now we have it as equestrian events are $625, they're half price, basically, and I would just ask that we have it be equestrian and agricultural events, it's an Ag and Equestrian Center, so that other agricultural events that are there, so, like, the fair isn't an equestrian event, but, you know, the fair should pay the Ag and fair, like, I feel like they should be paying that half price versus the full price, the $625, because the whole point was Ag and Equestrian, so, but right now it just says equestrian events. Yeah, I don't have a point. Okay. Okay, that's fine, except for that we'll probably drive the, the overall price may go up to have a half price, so the fees are scheduled to cover certain costs, we're trying our best to break even on these operations, so as we give discounts to certain people, Right now we're making money on the Ag and Equestrian Center. No, no, no, and the youth fair does not, youth fair doesn't pay anything, that was kind of part of why we acquired. Well, I mean, I imagine there won't be very many of them, I mean, that's a pretty big deal to be able to do an Ag event there, I just, the whole, I just noticed it's called the Agricultural and Equestrian Center, but then we have equestrian events are half price of everybody else, but not the agricultural events, so. Are they required to clean their stalls and all themselves if we have an Equestrian Center? Uh, no, we have cleaning fees and we charge them for the pay and the chips and stuff like that, so they pay the costs. Right, they do have to muck out the stalls though, I mean, but you still have to go in, we still have to have somebody come in and do a better cleaning, because, you know, when you're. Some people don't know how to muck a stall. There's still, trust me, as somebody who had a child that did that, you, you, it doesn't all come out when you muck the stalls, so we still have to have people come in and act. And actually, right, to make sure you're not transferring anything. Yeah, yeah, no, I, I totally get it, I'm just surprised that it's lower, I would think it'd be more. Oh, it's, the amount of cost to have and to dispose of the muck. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, I'm surprised that it's less for an equestrian event, that's weird. It's a lot. So, um, if it's okay with the board, we will bring that back as a part of the other request on half-tay rentals, et cetera, and so we can make sure we're covering our costs as much as we can. Okay. So, do you have anything else? Um, I don't think I had anything. Oh, yeah, I, I just wanted to make sure that the, under the metamorphosis in our court services, we, um, upon the working phase of the program, we begin charging them 30% of their net income. I'm assuming that 30% is considered rent, like, you know, 30% of your income. Yes. And that covers rent and utilities? Mm-hmm. Yes. Okay. I told new adoption schedule fees and ask that, um, we add the analysis of the ag piece. The partial days. Yeah. Ag, I'd say ag and equestrian. Ag and equestrian in conjunction with the half-tay and hourly rate direction. Second. Got a motion and a second. Any further discussion to the motion that's on the floor? Are there any citizen comments to the motion that's on the floor? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same time. Motion carries. And the supplemental fee schedule is separate, so could you adopt that separately? Yeah, we'll adopt from the supplemental fee schedule. Second. Second. Any further discussion to the motion? Are there any citizen comments? Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same time. Motion carries. Great. Now we're looking at the capital budget and financial plan. I paid it well. We are on, it looks like, the stock. It's $260,000. I don't know if you're saying. It's like all the way in the back. It's like very, very back. It's like the last five pages of the whole thing. All the way back. It looks... Keep going, Mary Ellen. Like all the way the last five pages. Like where you get those fancy colored pages. Where it really goes to $260,000 and not $240,000. Right. I got it. Thanks, y'all. So, one of the, you know, the board has been very active in all of the development, especially with the surtax funds. So, most of these are going to be by reference. So, if you've adopted the pavement management fund, there's no reason for us to try to rebuild it into this. So, we reference the pavement management plan. So, the parks and open spaces is in 2030 will run out the surtax as well, right? No, we're one year after that. So, we're getting close to running out the surtax. But parks and open spaces followed the plan that was approved by the board on February 4th of 2025. Housing projects, we do not have that adopted by the board yet. I know that's something y'all are patiently waiting on. Patience is wearing thin. I understand. Conservation lands, again, is a part of the program that are through the active acquisition list and that you've been comfortable with for many years. Facilities master plan, Travis presents on a quarterly basis and is phase one of the master plan. It is in the facilities master plan. Capital preservation projects, some of those have been worked up and rolled over from year to year. Again, at the last minute, I threw on my staff the extra $3.9 million just because we know we are struggling. Travis has done an excellent job. Our director of facilities has done an excellent job of trying to catch up and get a stronger response to the needs. And we know that there are a lot of needs around the jail, the sheriff's office especially. So, we've asked to increase that at the last minute. And that is in here. It will up some. It hasn't been split out yet. It will be done during the quarterly plans, the quarterly updates. And then, again, the pavement management plan is adopted by the BOCC of May of 2023. And there's a link to that report. On the next page, you'll see the revenue sources. Service tax totals of just a 26 of $40 million. Gas tax and public works transportation of $1 million. Transportation trust fund, which is money coming from the general fund, of $7 million. Park impact fees of $250,000. Boating improvement fees of $70,000. We're looking at $124 million worth of debt next year, currently. Capital preservation projects of $6 million. And then the animal services out of the 052 is our revenue recovery fund that we set aside, which is a general fund that we set aside money to get the architect going. And actually, that money was set aside to share with UF on the lease of their land, which we don't know if they're doing or not. But that money is still sitting there, available to get started with animal services. So, total of all sources in fiscal year 26 is $181 million. And then you see going out in the future years of about between $60 and $70 million each year for a five-year total of $430 million towards capital infrastructure. That includes roads, parks, land, and facilities. And tell me, on the debt issuance, could you just explain what is in that debt issuance? Sure. So, we have a fire and rescue services. We have two more buildings, animal services building, the civil courthouse, completion of that, including the parking garage, including the air-conditioned system and all the stormwater retention and runoff, et cetera, infrastructure needs. They go along with that. The mechanical plant is with that. And then the parking garage. So, the $70, $89 million just on the civil courthouse site. You said that correctly, right, Travis? Okay. Just one quick question. The fully on board with the extra funding for facilities, maintenance, preservation projects, there's a number of, like, renovation projects for the JL Repod. There's a kind of, like, air conditioning improvement on here as well for the JL. I'm just wondering, as you have this additional money to look at, are you sort of thinking about the possibility of how those fit into the projects that are in existence and we can get efficiencies working? Yeah, so what's going to happen is those were the numbers before. So, if that number increases, I'm going to change some of those things. That's what I thought. That's why I'm asking. We're approving this, but then we'll have to. Yeah. So, those pods, and that will come in the quarterly. So, those pods will probably increase, those pod numbers. We're probably going to do more cell doors. You know, all of the sally port doors, all those things that we can do with economy of scale, we're going to do those things. Okay. And that's in the six million capital perturbation? Yes. Yeah. That's what I was saying. I was going to say, we have, like, right now we're approving some projects, and they'll probably get adjusted. The premise remains the same. They probably expand. Okay. In size. Okay. Do we have a motion for the capital improvement, please? Second. We've got a motion and a second. We need further instructions for the motion. Are there any citizen comments to the motion that's on the floor? Back to the board. Do we have a motion? Vote by the side of aye. Aye. Aye. It's like opposed. Second time. Motion carries. Madam. Mr. Chair, if I could add, just to clarify on your fee schedule motion, I can, checking with staff, we'll commit to bring that back to you no later than the second meeting in October, but I think we can do it sooner than that, but I'll just say that. These fees actually don't go into effect until October 1, so most we're talking about 30 days into the fee schedule. I think we can do it by then. And just as a side note, I felt some empathy for Travis when it hit 100 degrees for about a week in a row, and of course you can believe that those systems are like, I quit. And so most of the air consumption systems, that's when they decide they've had enough. Yeah. And when you're trying to change, you know, 40 degree temperatures or 30 degree temperatures in spaces and in old systems, so you appreciate the help. I'm going to call. Sorry, boss, this is down. Sorry, boss, this is down. We're on it. Sorry, boss, this is down. We're on it. So anyway. And parts are... It took months to get there. I know. And so, right. So we prop them up as best we can. This is one of the buildings. The clerk's office was very patient. I think Todd had to bring a couple of changed shirts because it's pretty warm up there. So, but we've managed, but hopefully we're getting to not quite that extreme weather. Before we get a final settlement on the millage rate, the board requested, I don't know if we can put it up there, what would a rollback rate look like and what would we bring forward to get there? That's about $10.2 million below what we currently have recommended. And we have a list of what I would recommend to the manager, and her and I have talked about what this looks like. There's one component that I am wary of recommending, you know, how comfortable I am with you making that recommendation, and that is that we know what we're involved with in terms of property tax, what's going to come back during legislative session next year. So just because you preempt that move may not mean that you get credit for preempting that move, and you may be required to do quite a bit next year. One of the numbers we had, or one of the factors that we asked a property appraiser to run, is if Homestead exemption goes to $250,000, that will require a $47 million decrease in taxes. That will result in and look at. And we need to clarify that that's a $47 million increase to the general fund ad valorem revenue. Decrease. Decrease. Right. That's where that impacts, which today we said was, what, $217 million? So it would reduce the $217 million by $47 million. And if it goes to half a million dollars, it goes, that number increases to $57 million. So, obviously, there's not as many homes between $250,000 and $500,000, so that's why it goes to another $10,000. So that's significant cuts to services. I would be surprised if they allowed you to increase your millage to cover for that. You know, that's not how they operate. So it will be interesting to see what happens, but I just need you to be prepared for that. And the things that come out of that, because as you're aware, we have so many cordoned off funds that a lot of the things we do don't come out of that particular pot. That particular pot is, Tommy, funds in general the share of police that is not in the MSTU, like the jail and law enforcement, bailiffs. It also funds. The subsidy to ambulances. Ambulance, right. The general function of fire. Police safety. Right. And some roads are in that general fund pot as well. I just want to say that that potential reduction is paired with a potential increase in requirement for us to, or either to ignore or to somehow fund federal cuts for social services programs, such as food assistance, Medicare, Medicaid, you know, other things that we're going to be facing. So we're going to be hitting a double whammy because come 26 midterms, all those cuts hit, the midterms, of course. So we're going to see, if we see these reductions on top of those increases, really increases in need in our community, we're going to get hit with a double whammy. So, you know, my feeling is we stick with what we've done. I think Michelle and Tommy have done a good job of finding reductions and finding places where we can do the best we can to continue to reduce our millage every year in spite of increasing costs. And at the same time, sort of giving ourselves that buffer to deal with what we don't know is coming down the plate. Mr. Cornell? I don't disagree. And I thank you for kind of articulating it. You know, last year I said, okay, I'm not going to be the guy that pushes for the rollback rate because we did, we've done a lot over the last decade. When I saw this list, some of the things that I don't want to eliminate, I just want to go through the list so that you all can hear me, is the merit. I don't want to eliminate that. I think that's really important. The annual transfer out to the housing trust fund. I think housing is a critical need. The reduction to the road transfer, I don't want to do that. I think that's a critical need. The Department of Juvenile Justice for many of the reasons that we've talked about as far as root causes. Now, the discretionary piece, I want to wait to hear from you all on that. So, the only reason I brought this up in the past was because from the time that I made that statement last year to now, I've seen that some of our other local, you know, the city of Gainesville are looking at a big increase. The city of Alachua, the city of Archer, and so because of that, I thought maybe we should look at it. When I read this list, I agree with you. I don't think we should go to the rollback. I want to throw something out there and see if you all have any interest because if you do, then we can have more discussion. If you don't, then I'm fine just leaving it to where it is. But one of the things I thought about was from a homesteaded individual's perspective, you know, if we don't do the rollback, it's a tax increase. And it's really a function of how much the property values have increased. We can't increase more than 3% on the stable homes. And so I said, what if we did a 3% reduction from the prior year? And that would be about another fifth of a mil. So instead of going to 7.6, we'd go to 7.39. That would cost about $4.5 million. I would propose we do that from the one-time piece of fund balance and maybe some portion of either the general fund vacant, discretionary services, or the other one-time. If you all have an interest, we can talk more about it. If you don't, then I'll drop it. But I just wanted to at least – and again, I'm only bringing it up because I know across the street, more than half of our citizens are going to face a $1 million. And I just want to be aware of that. And if I could clarify the DJJ piece, that's actually money that we've set in there that we have – it turns out we have – has been over what we've needed to pay the last bit of years. So we realize that we've put more in there than we probably need based on what we've been actually expending. So I think we're pretty safe on that one, and it's not affecting our services. So I wanted to clarify that because you mentioned that one, and that one's a – So as we talk through this, my comfort level is – fund balance obviously is not where my comfort level is. So that's a one-time – because what we're doing is talking about lowering a millage that will be recurring every year, reduce taxes over time. So the absorption of – and we have that in our policy, you know, one-time uses, one-time sources. So that is the thing that I would be most concerned over from a vacancy perspective. We did not – we just did this across the board except for ACFR. So I don't know – these positions may be positions that have only been open a few weeks. They may be positions that y'all think are critical. We would have to evaluate all of them. So this would be a maximum. This wouldn't be a minimum. So we would have to – every time someone said, I need to fill a position, we would have to analyze. Is it – how critical is it needed to provide the services that you've asked us to provide? How long has it been open? You know, is it something we've been managing without for quite a period of time, et cetera? So I just want to bring those to your attention. I know road transfers and housing transfers are important to you. I will say on the road transfer, you know how many millions we have. None of this will come without paying. So just realize that. Obviously, we put this list out as we can live within this list. That's why we put it on the table. So I'll leave that as a policy discussion if you want to get that right or not. And we will come back then with actually some specified areas, amounts, and areas. And we will have to do that over time as well because, again, we have not evaluated all the vacancies. Well, I – go ahead. Go for it. Ken, I'm with you, man. I mean, I want to do as much as we can for taxpayers. But I'm not sure of the economy and what the future might look like. And I don't want to lower the millage rate and then we have to raise it again. That's what I don't want to do. I think we've been doing a great job of reducing it gradually. And I would rather want to keep that kind of momentum that we're doing. You're going to stay at 7.6. Yes. I would just be safe. I mean, because I don't know what the future brings. I mean, that's my problem right now. And I think that's where I was last year. And I just thought I needed to bring that. And I'm glad you did. But I think it's – but at this time, we don't know what the future is. Once we know what the future is, then I don't mind doing that. But it's just right now, I just – I'm going to be conservative. I'm sorry. I'm going to have to be conservative. I hear you. Yeah. That's what I was going to say also. I feel like there's just too many unknowns right now. And we're – I feel pain on my property. I mean, we all do. Right? And I just – I get it. But on the other hand, we've got to be prepared in the event of who knows what's going to happen. The economy numbers that, you know, are being reported over the last few days are not good. I think that's going to affect our economics here, not just the economics. I mean, to Anna's point, we could be facing a double win. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Well, I brought it up. You brought it up. I appreciate it. Yeah, I appreciate the discussion. I appreciate the exercise. But I'm real proud of the fact that we are reducing them again. I mean, you know, for however many years in a row we've done. Nine. Nine. Next year will be 10. Okay. So with that then, Tommy, I would move – You don't have to move anything. Oh, I thought we had – We don't want to adopt villages and budgets today. That's going to actually make sure I'm getting consensus. No, we do have to move something. We have to move this. Change from the final legend. No, we just need to go through. Oh, you just need to go through this? Yeah, we'll present it. Yeah, that's – We've had an official public hearing. We don't want to do that. Okay. I don't want somebody to say, y'all just have a budget meeting and later don't have a budget. I'll read page 265. Yeah, exactly. So we're – One thing, Mr. Chair, too, if I could bring up that Tommy and I have been talking about as part of this. Back in 2019, and I know, Mr. Chair, you and Commissioner Cornell probably remember this. The board had us go through an exercise of where are all the discretionary funds at that we presented so that the board could make informed decisions on, you know, where those could be if they needed to be. And I think with, you know, pending changes from a legislative perspective or potentially even a constitutional, state constitutional perspective, Tommy and I discussed that as we approach the next budget year, and I know we're just wrapping up this one, but as we tell you, as soon as this one wraps up, we take about a 30-day breather, and then we start all over again, building for the next year. So as part of that, that we would start building that out again to have those – to be prepared for those discussions for next year's budget. And I think it's a good exercise to do anyhow. Come on. So as of now, we are looking at a $948 million total budget and a 7.6 mil in the general fund and a 3.5678 mil in the MSTU law. So unless I'm hearing something different today, which I don't think I am, that's what you will see on September 11th at the public hearing. Okay. That's good. Mr. Chair, I'm done. Okay. All right. I'm sorry. We did add the $100,000. I'm sorry. It's going to be another $100,000 more than what you see. I apologize because the last meeting there was a $100,000 motion. It's not included in these documents, but it will be in the final budget. Okay. Are there any public comments? Mr. Mr. Chair. Yes, please. Come on up, Jim. Come to the podium. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not at the podium, but the microphone. The public can hear you. Yeah. This is general public comment? Yes. Mr. Chair, Jim Connish. It's indisputable that about 3% of GRU's electric meters are disconnected every month because the people can't pay the bills. And that means that they're sitting there with nothing. You have a very aggressive, possibly illegal utility tax program where the taxes are pyramided, not imposed and added, they're pyramided. It's questionable whether there should even be utility tax on the customer charge, which is very high, because it's not the sale of electricity. And the utility tax is a completely unsupervised, unregulated tax. There's only one I know of that's like that. DOR does not pay attention to it, and it's actually designed to be abused, to be quite frankly. But you're a leader in the field, and that's on top of the surcharges, which mirror the city utility tax, which is identical to your utility tax. And this is being administered by GRU, who gets paid nothing, I repeat, nothing, to extract about $20 million. The GRU rate bearers, they make all kinds of errors because they're not being paid to do it. They're flying by the seat of their pants, and they're taxing Keith Perry's church and a lot of other churches and synagogues and mosques because they're not staffed up to deal with the $650 billion codes, the late birth of taxes, surcharges, all pyramided. They're just overwhelmed. So I would like to see you acknowledge that it's not our behavior in our buildings, because you guys are stepping on already high bills to the tune of about an additional 22%. And it really wouldn't cost you very much to just face the facts and to back off on this. Another thing that I would like to see addressed in the budget is the septic tanks. An anaerobic septic tank is a mini sewage treatment plant. It has to be connected to power. You need an operating permit. It requires a quarterly inspection by a licensed contractor and a report. I have spent hours, and so has Missy Daniels, just to get one of these things inspected properly adjacent to Post Springs Park and Interior floodplain. They are not inclined to do their job. They're not funded to do their job. And they're being discouraged by Tallahassee from doing their job. And there's no point in forcing people to put in a $25,000 facility that's not going to be permitted, that's not going to be inspected, and no different than a conventional system when it fails, which it will, unless it's expected and maintained. You offered free anaerobic septic tanks out at Lake Santa Fe. Nobody wants them, because they just want to put it in a tank and never have to answer. So I would like you to really seriously study, taking over at least part of the septic tank permitting program, particularly in sensitive areas, where it is a very real problem. Commissioner Cornell? Thank you, Jim. Appreciate it. So I know we have this BMAP discussion, and we're going to be looking more into that when Stacey brings back the recommendation. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks, Jim. Further public comment? Are there any commissioners coming? Commissioner President? So we had, the Children's Trust had a conversation on Monday. On Monday about literacy. About literacy. And we had, Teresa Avicii gave a presentation about the framework that they're going to be utilizing for the action plan with the new Center for Nonprofit Excellence. And it sounds really exciting. I'm really looking forward to seeing that framework get built out. And I think she's coming to present it to us in a month or so. But there was also a discussion that, because of the changes in administration of the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, and the fact that it's no longer at the foundation, and it's kind of taking some time to spin up that nonprofit. We were sort of in an awkward situation where we've started school. School started on Monday. And all these organizations that are community organizations that are ready to go to scale up as a result of that action planning are, we're all, like, chomping at the bit and ready to go, lining up hundreds of volunteers and getting organizations prepared. And now it's, like, come to a screeching halt. And so my request is that we – I had made the original motion that we put our money through the Community Foundation's Nonprofit Center of Excellence, but now that that's no longer at the Community Foundation, I'm asking that we now move our money through Peak Literacy, continue the same $250,000, but have it go through Peak so that we can continue to make momentum on the work that's being done in the community and not lose time this year while Teresa continues to spin up her work, and then we'll continue to partner. Hopefully, in 27, we can allocate the same amount of money to keep going with the Children's Trust and the commitments that they've made to see through the literacy action plan. So I just wanted to amend the original motion that I made a couple months ago to shift the organization. I want to second that, but I want you to add something. Also, in that meeting, we had Commissioner Duncan Walker attend. We had a number of the city of Gainesville attend regarding – I think you had a lead – but the gun violence initiative. And one of the things that was discussed at the trust was that we were hopeful that even though the city of Gainesville has some budget constraints as reported, that at our next joint meeting that we ask that the trust and perhaps the county present what we are doing with this special complete on literacy and ask the city to join us in that match. At our next. At our next joint meeting. Okay. So I'll second your motion if you'll add that we just – Add that to the agenda. Add that to the agenda. Okay. Yeah, and add that to the city agenda. Yeah. Can I clarify? And I'll just say – All 250? Oh, I'm sorry. I did want to say I think actually that it might make some sense to hold back 50,000 so that we can continue for the Center for Nonprofit Excellence as they start to get going for this fiscal year. And then by the time they're up and running and things are going. So it would be the 200 would go now to peak and then the 50 would go to the Center for Nonprofit Excellence when they're ready. Or we could transfer that directly to the Children's Trust and then they can – And then add to the journey. Yes, and add the city. So 200 to peak which is already our cap partner and 52, the Children's Trust or the Center for Nonprofit Excellence depending on how the Clark sees fit to move that funding through and adding the literacy action plan funding to the city and county joint meeting. Second. I'll tell you what. Motion in a second. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mary. And I'm excited the school district has already stepped up their part. Doing what? Huh? Doing what? They stepped up and adopted the action plan as well and have been working on a number of different initiatives including curriculum, working with teacher training opportunities, a bunch of different initiatives. They need to take – that $250,000 would hire five new teachers, five trained teachers to get into the school system that they've already discontinued a lot of those teachers because he couldn't pay them. Jeremiah came home yesterday saying that one of the reading teachers had 38 kids in his class. How can you teach reading to 38 kids? Except that you hook them to a computer and they have individual plans. You know, it's not like having a teacher right there in your face, loving you, taking care of you, understanding root causes. Yep. Yep. Totally. So it bothers me that all this money is going out into community agencies when it really should be going into the school system. Well, at this stage, I'll just say I know – We can also do a joint meeting with the school board on the same issue. Yeah, I mean, and we – I hope we will. I mean, every time we have a joint meeting with the school board, this is on the agenda. I think they're experiencing a lot of budget woes. A lot of people are taking their money out of our school district, unfortunately, moving it into their private homeschooling or charter schools or, you know, other decisions. So it's really putting our school districts in a really difficult place and it's very unfortunate. I think they're trying to do the best they can with what they have. I think at this stage, the community organizations have put together a really strong action plan with evidence-based curriculum to support our students getting to grade level, utilizing Great Leaps curriculum and curriculum that we know works and have a number of agencies already lined up, volunteers trained, ready to go, and – After school. In after school programs. Yeah, and the – Kids are tired. After school programs. And the superintendent and Tina, as part of the trust, that we're in support, voted for this. I understand. But they're not classroom teachers either. And kids are tired by the end of the day, not even just from the school expectations from their class works, but dealing with that many children, that many personalities, and trying to stay good. Right. And I'm with you and I'm 100% with you at that joint school board meeting, pushing for them to focus their budget on the priorities of literacy, math and reading, literacy, and focusing on those things. Not new schools. Not new schools. Not new curriculum. Not new programming. Not new things. But really focusing on the core curricula and the needs of our students and ensuring that we can get our kids to grade level. I'm there with you 100% at that joint meeting. I don't think we have a joint meeting planned. Are you saying you would like us to do another? Because we recently had one. Yeah, our next school board, whatever we do. Yeah, I guess we usually do one annually, and so not always. Not traditionally with the school board, but we can add that to our annual list when we do municipalities. I would like that to be added. I would like to have an annual meeting with the children's trust and with the school board, so I guess I could add that as a third part of my emotion that we can add a joint meeting with the school board and a joint meeting with the children's trust. Yeah, I thought that was annual, too. I didn't realize that we didn't do that regularly. Because we've been, it seems like we've been doing it every year. My comment was, is because these are already CAP partners, then they will be subject to the same sort of financial oversight as a CAP partner would. But I just want to clarify that for this amount of money. So, Mr. Chair, I think what we would look at first from a timing perspective is whether or not we have the ability, and I will have to defer to legal on that, but whether we have the ability to amend their existing agreements to change the scope and increase the dollars to account for a... So they're good to use it? No. No. We already have an agreement with them under CAP for CAP funding. Whether we can amend that to add an additional force of funding. I think she said they had 170 volunteers ready to ramp up. Yeah. And I'm not questioning it. I just want to make sure that, you know, the financial oversight is there. 100%. These are reimbursement grants also, so they have to submit the documentation, yeah. Yeah. Well, I feel like the public needs to hear us say all these things when we make these discussions. And they're going to be working. I will say that as staff works on that, we need to be sure that there's subcontracting ability, because they will be working with a number of the community organizations. It's not just all going to them. They're working with Kids Count and Girls Place, you know, a number of different organizations that are doing this work on the ground and supporting them with the curriculum, the volunteers, the site coordinators for the efforts and others. Any further comments? I just wanted to say that Jim Connish is mixing up aerobic and anaerobic subject. There's a motion and a second on the floor. Are there any further or more discussions? Oh, I'm sorry. We haven't voted on. Yeah, we have not. And are there any citizen comments to the motion that's on the floor? Seeing none. Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by a sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Are there any other further commission comments? That's what I was going to say. Jim Connish is conflicting. I'm accepting things. And Mr. Chair, we have extensively looked at whether or not we would take the permitting, the septic permitting, as a potential option, because that is something that is changing. Steve has analyzed that. We've looked at that potential, and I'm happy to have him send an email. If you'd like to you, it's, one, it's not that simple. And two, I don't think the state's ready. There's a delay in that potential. And whether, so for right now, the health department's going to continue doing that. They're frustrating. Well, if there aren't any further business, we adjourn. Okay. Good luck. Good luck. Good luck. Good luck. Good luck.