okay you got my voice okay our chair um will hopefully be joining us he's indisposed currently and so the first item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda so moved and a motion is second to approve the agenda any discussion any public discussion to the motion seeing them back to the board all those in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion is unanimous okay mr crosby item one is the fiscal year budget development department review our recommended actions to provide direction to staff for any adjustments to the county manager's budget or the proposed millage rates and with that you all are recognized the collective all collective everybody i mean crosby assistant county manager budget fiscal services this is no fun doing it this way yeah we were supposed to be in grace night code enforcement's had a scheduled meeting so we published here and then they finished early so that's all right sorry for the formality it's freezing in here so uh mr chair in the backup was again the calendar so just a reminder we have one more meeting on august 14th it's kind of a recap get you to review the ftes the cip plan finalize what the board's comfortable with in terms of assessment and millage so that we can prepare for september 11th a reminder again that we normally do it at our tuesday meeting but because of the way labor day fell the school board took the ninth so we had to pick the 11th so to meet our trim timeline etc so it will be a thursday special meeting which is a little unusual for us hopefully this will be the only year it falls out that way a little bit unusual year tommy that's okay yes sir that is an accurate statement it is kind of an unusual year financially um okay again uh fund balance so we do follow our uh budget guidelines that the board adopted early in the year we have a general fund 10 projected operating of 10 of operating revenue is our ending fund balance number and five percent for the mstu for law enforcement you have a chart you see what our ending fund balance and what the uh total revenues are for each of those funds msbu policy has a minimum of five percent projected operating revenue for a fund balance and our gas tax policy is also a five percent projected of operating revenue if you remember last year we started putting more of the cst into gas tax to help support as gas tax revenues were not increasingly as rapidly as inflation was so we made some adjustments there i anticipate next year us making more adjustments to help with that function our reserve policy not less than five percent of our operating revenue and not greater than ten percent of our total budget we have kind of what we spent through the years the negatives were adjustments at mid-year for things like fund balance carry forward things like that that's why they show a negative we actually put money into reserves during the year this year we've only spent 1.1 million dollars out of reserves so actually that's a low for us we appreciate that remember our policy is to completely re-establish reserves the following year every year so that's what we do county-wide budget proposed budget information again some of those we just went over those guidelines we did increase the local minimum wage to 1850 an hour we applied the salary increases to the bocc the same to constitutional officers we are in alignment with what the sheriff's request was you asked us to go work that out we have a schedule to meet his needs as well within our budget yes so he seemed to be pretty satisfied applied health insurance increases which were minimal again so i don't think we probably tout publicly enough probably should send you a email publicly just so you understand that as health insurance has exploded throughout the country and state we've been able to get by with minimal increases and impacts to our employees so it's really been a positive that we probably should celebrate more often than we do so we'll work on that including our clinic and and and maybe talk about how on that yes agree because i think that's important important information to share so we're excited um our next step um with the pharmacy we're in a renovation phase now when we get an actual pharmacy and we don't just have to do generic and we can do brand that should be another significant savings for us as well when is the when are the um self-insurance board meetings i was on that and then i rolled off of it and i'm just wondering when those right um we had we just had one um in july june june so we try to get it ready for the um around the manager's budget time is the main one to talk about rates we have one in the fall mainly that was to talk about things like workers comp and the total liability fund but the health insurance premiums are usually discussed in may or june okay so the next one will be sometime in the fall we have one coming up in the fall i believe i'll have to get with amy but i will forward it to the commission amy manages that and commissioner you're um i think right now that's chuck and i are on that at the county but you're always welcome to attend this yeah two votes right yeah we get two votes but you can attend you get two votes the sheriff gets two votes and the rest get one vote and the library is included in that yeah we made the appropriate adjustments for farther retirement system rates and then we adjusted the retiree health this has been a really large change for us which is actually helping our our self-insurance fund originally when this started out this was a minor piece of the cost of our insurance fund it has grown substantially with the changes in accounting rules and also the benefits we provide like supplemental help premium support that we give so now we have the clerk's office has included that in its own fund and we fund it separately so it's not coming out of our self-insurance risk pool so that will help the total budget for fiscal year 26 is 944 million an increase of 81 million dollars over 25 again these numbers are broad numbers that get thrown around there are a lot of things in there most of that's going to be your new debt issues that we're looking at for an animal service building and for the finishing the courthouse also just the transfers between flip funds are included in there and so you're almost like double counting when you're talking about transfers in and out so that's the reason for most of the increase county manager only approved four thousand dollars i'm not sure why it's oh four one why there's an extra tenth of a penny there seems to be a mistake but we had a minimal budget request approved by the board again no ft were approved on the commission side there were some on the sheriff's side and some on and one on the property appraiser debt payments allocated are all in the budget now we had an increase based on last year's debt issue if you'll remember and we're going to have another debt issue reserves are at policy we again have the one million dollar transferred from the general fund to the housing trust that's in addition to the surtax funds property liability insurance increases we've covered and workers comp increases we have covered county-wide revenue proposed budget taxes are 285 million dollars that's your mstu for law enforcement as well as your general fund permits and assessments 42 million.2 million that's going to be includes your solid waste fund as well as your fire and your stormwater fees that's your bulk of those that's all of those in your local revenue this is also a reason why the budget has increased we're now surtax funds are coming in at a normal pace again we are going to see a reduction based on the commercial leases that the commit that the state adopted that's going to be about 14 million dollars over the life of the surtax so pretty big hit 1.9 million we talked about that rule yesterday so we're trying to make adjustments to the capital improvement plan and we are getting the benefit of uh interest earnings right now um until we get all of our legs under us and get projects rolling out the door because we do have substantial cash right now that we're earning interest on that the interest earnings split the way that the sales taxes split right all of interest earnings are applied to who earns it yes whatever fund earns them is who gets it correct charges for service uh 99 million dollars the bulk of that again is ambulance service fees would be the biggest largest part of that um and then charges for services at the solid waste as well judgments is minimal miscellaneous revenue those interest earnings other sources debt debt issues would be in that included in that as well and other sources is your debt inclusion as well as your fund balance carry forwards whatever that yesterday expenses 132 million in personal services 198 million in operating 265 in capital outlay 13 million in debt service we will have so you're aware on the 14th we are coming back with some adjustments to your policies in the debt policy we're asking that your per capita debt go up to a thousand dollars from 750 we're going to need that to comply with policy if we're going to issue debt for animal services and for the courthouse we're going to be approaching that 750 pretty rapidly just so you're aware grant and aid 40 million dollars other uses which includes using fund balance 295 million we we budget we use a lot of fund balance um in the budget knowing that we that will not actually happen um but it gets us down to our limits we have a lot of lapse salaries we have a lot of operating costs that don't that don't happen but a lot of it also gets carried forward to the following year so their project's not completed so everything budgeted for this year that's not completing and your carry forward will have to be rolled over at that time so it ends up in fund balance but it needs to be used and we hold projects harmless to we typically roll them over uh commissioner alford can i ask a quick question about the change of policy on the debt service ratios is that um how do we benchmark against other counties and what they do are we in you know we're in very good shape um i believe uh todd explored that on the financial statements whenever he did the annual financial report yeah and he tracks that a lot closer than i do to make sure we're in alignment um last time he brought forward and our last conversation was that we are in um pretty low ratio compared to other counties i just couldn't remember so thank you we were okay yeah and i thought we were good i just couldn't remember how good we were great question and on the 14th when we when we get that presentation if we could just have leon county certainly as a peer and some of the other ones yeah yeah that's yeah i always like to hear that and also um what we're what we are leveraging so a lot of our leverage lately has been towards development dollars not general fund sales tax or sales tax dollars um are coming into budget now the courthouse animal service will be general fund impact sales tax impacted um but the sports event center was all tourist development driven and so was the equestrian center so those were a different funding source and and and it's i guess we have um you know we have a policy and then we have what's actual and so i guess you're you're saying that we're approaching our current policy policy that doesn't mean that we're going to approach a thousand it just means that we're allowing that capacity that capacity okay right so whenever the board adopts the cip you'll see the things that need to be funded with debt so we want to make sure we have coverage if and as you are well aware nothing has really come in at an original projection back when we started now we're doing a better job now prices have stabilized but you know that's going to change the issues change yes all right thank you appreciate that question um again property appraiser requested one fte that we included the tax collector requested no new request uh also just for your information the tax collector used the excess revenue they had to pay their debt off early on their new building so that is paid off so we should start to get those dollars back into the general fund this coming year historically has been about a half a million um yeah on a good on a good year yeah clerk had no additional request um for ftes or budget request judicial um had some minor requests a budget request 128 000 that we included supervisor of election had 100 had some warehouse material request and election poll worker stations so 190 000 that we included and then the sheriff's had three fte or two ft and a part-time to a full-time that we included and again we went back at the board's direction and worked with the sheriff on being able to meet their needs within the budget at the salary levels that they had requested in their targeting i would say over the next year our biggest challenge you're going to see between the manager's budget and the final budget one big increase you're going to see that we were going to request is an additional three million in facilities preservation projects now that we have a facilities director that are extremely proactive and gets gets things moving we have a lot of roof systems air-conditioned systems that we need to catch up on if you wonder when jim harriet's 19 million dollar roof number was going to come back up here yes exactly so more than that is the um as our hundred degree weather has hit uh travis has been running around like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs trying to keep up with air conditionings breaking down and heat going through the roof chillers are pretty difficult yeah commissioner air conditioning front you know it reminds me of the fact that we did not get the funding to move forward with our you know some of the the work we were going to do with looking at overall an overhaul in the jail and so i'm wondering if we have factored in you know that plan that travis developed for renovations and restoration and if we're maybe taking a percentage of that or if we can consider taking a percent of that and starting to parse that out into our um budget in order to make those upgrades that it so that's why i mentioned it at this point i think jail needs are going to drive that facility preservation cost up so yes that is a part of why we believe we need to put three million three million more dollars there okay um it's partly to do with the jail now having said that we are also still going to move forward with a study to find out the cost benefit analysis of doing all of those changes over the next five plus years or whatever it is versus when do we need to build a new jail and how much that's going to cost so and we know that's going to be a really big number so but yes that's part of the reason for the ask budget and fiscal we had 165 000 requests we're expanding our use of open gov it's going to be contracts and the budget book we have a contract for the budget book we're also looking at expanding some of the things they do in our contracts we're looking at doing a better job of document workflow document management in terms of being able to you see a lot of these things about when you have to sign up we there's a lot of things going on with workflow and keeping those records in one place and where do we find them and are they in knowledge lake are they in docu sign are they in open gov are they where they're at so that's something we're working with open gov on we've been pretty happy with that relationship so far then facilities management had no new request that's not counting what we're putting out there for facilities preservation that's in a different division sorry um i thought facilities did have a couple of fte requests where they and that weren't fulfilled so they ended up dropping those requests one of those requests we handled this year already already handled and the other one um the conversation yeah he dropped the request he says no we're not ready to do that right now so we have a larger scale we filled the jail coordinator or the project manager or the assistant director so we added another project manager that's what we needed to add okay okay and the other position at some point we're going to have to look at an assistant director level type position over there just for the volume of work coming out especially with taking things over so he and i have discussed where we're at and where we need to be and there's a few things he needs to put in place so that probably you will probably see that in 27 yes thank you you're welcome so non-departmental so this is a big number and people always what what are you throwing in there you can see the list taxes are non-departmental in nature american rescue plan that's really revenue recovery plan that's what we have left of those projects that we we're spending them down and just so you're so you're comfortable with fund balance the manager mentioned to me you know this year when we looked at the annual financial report that our fund balance was very flat actually dipped a little well most of that was spending up those dollars those one-time dollars it wasn't from using recurring dollars so as we spend those dollars down it comes out of fund balance but it's they are one-time things that we're doing so one thing also that i'll be doing is bringing to you a recommendation to take some excess funds we have in some of those projects and we need some more money into the transfer of the santa fe water system uh that that water system is just not enough from the engineer study so but we'll bring that back to you and let you know what our recommendation is but obviously we need to finish that it needs to be done so sir tax hold on tommy commissioner alford um under the disaster preparedness is that are those fema dollars that we're expecting okay those are our dollars those are our dollars to handle work until fema reimburses us so those are our dollars that we have in a fund we keep a couple million dollars sitting over there are we doing or have we done any sort of sensitivity analysis based on the fact that we may or may not get certain dollars okay we we have staff conversations over what if what ifs because obviously fema is a large national discussion um there are things that we will probably have to adjust we'll have to talk about our emergency pay plan we're going to talk about what we can afford debris is going to be a big issue then obviously it's a big cost so how much of that we absorb versus and how much we can contain for other municipalities and those kind of things so if it looks to the point that we're not going to get reimbursed yes ma'am we're going to have to come back to the board and have a discussion about that policy all of those policies surrounding what we're able to afford to do timing will become an issue so this year you know we push forward increase um the vendor contracts to get debris off because citizens want debris out of the way it may come to a point where it's i'm sorry we can't pay x dollars more you're going to you'll have to be patient i think that one thing that is is going to be really important going forward is being transparent about what we are picking up what we're not being reimbursed for what we were told we're going to be a reverse war we may not be i mean i think all of that i i just want going forward for us to for it to be really clear to our citizens that you know what what has been funded in the past is it you know if it that changes i just i want that to be a really clear conversation and i'm not saying that you guys would do that but i just uh i i want it to be something that um we're just prepared to do when the time comes and that it becomes something that we may have to discuss you know before it becomes an emergency not when it is the emergency so that people are prepared for that so it's not like us and 66 other florida counties yeah having that discussion yeah yeah exactly i i sit on i sit on that that board with fac and with naco and it's a discussion nationwide but how how that information is being shared um to the citizens i think is is the part that i think is is different from county to county so well i think that the um the entire like you said the national conversation the probably the biggest frustration is just it's a national conversation where they're not a lot known exactly like all the other federal money we're talking about it's like what's going on and it's like you all if all your information not news but all your information comes from twitter then that's probably a problem right and that's that's where i felt like that's why i asked the question about like a sensitivity analysis like you know percentage of our budget would change based on you know these changes at a federal level most of our reserves would then then go to if we had a significant storm you would say a significant ask out of our general fund reserves to fund that until either we got reimbursed or didn't but that would definitely be i agree with you we would make that very public about what that's done to our budget yeah okay thank you okay keep going tommy you're good okay expenses again you see we budgeted american rescue our reserves that's 80 million dollars of that number is just in reserves that we hope not to spend um special expense um debt service and disaster preparedness special expense ma'am special excess special expense you had our list of special yeah probably can my manager special expense special expense is pretty much county-wide components uh so for example um the cpm class that uh everybody goes to uh naco membership that's for the county those types of things so anything that relates not necessarily to one department but is spread out county-wide for everybody gets put in there so it's not affecting individual budgets and we track it that way what's the big one the big one health insurance health insurance pretty much the health insurance i think is the bigger one yeah so yeah but for for related to you um the i call it the 301 corridor uh forward focus which is a it's a county-wide initiative not an individual department initiative so we put that in there and then we track it from there once you go through the budget book and identify more of those larger numbers okay all right project underway um completion of emergency operations center fire rescue administration that's getting close environmental protection department we're moving them to the old fire administration building working on that animal services you all are well aware of all the issues there and where we're trying to get to and the holdups um civil courthouse court services we are making progress there the garage is going up the chiller plants going up and so then we just we're getting ready to bring you the construction manager at risk for the actual building itself pretty soon so we're planning on going to market for the rest of the money in october so that's kind of our our plan right now um actually just got definitely just got bids in on the cost of money so those will be coming back to you pretty soon what's the rate um can you give me a range let's just say it'll be south of 40 less than four i mean yeah less than four yeah okay pretty good that is really good commission i believe that's where we will land i probably don't need to expose too much because i think it's still into the receipt i think they received them yesterday actually so but based on preliminary conversations it should be less than four that's not bad i was just gonna say that under environmental under environmental protection we also have the land management building hey that's going that's different that one's already because that one's under wild spaces or okay that one's already done i believe it's done it's not done i think it only just now is done being drawn and engineered great a lot of stuff thank you miss commission services there were no requests county attorney there were no requests county manager had no new requests communications office had no new request our rescue wants to replace some portable radios that's the thing we'd already approved right i'm not sure say again commissioner i was wondering if that was the radios that we approved earlier like when we had that whole presentation about was that or is this just literally replacement upgrades to the radio system itself okay so this is a new radio 150 portable radios and they're expensive that would cost a lot more okay keep going environmental protection department they have a request for some certification pay um an intern for the arborist some money for overtime that's normal for some of the work they do and then some more money for stewardship and wildfire prevention trucks and equipment so those are all included in the budget it's been three years coming glad to finally see it looks it looks in the budget like there was a four million dollar reduction in operating for epd is that accurate it went from 17 372 to 12 9.57 jeez i don't know if there's pages on the departmental budgets but i'm under tab number four and they're in alphabetical order for epd looking at their operating line isn't that a transfer of land conservation out of epd just a reclass no maybe i think we're showing them in a different well i'll look at it okay yeah we can answer that again the budget hearing dates um right now this is where we're at the proposed and millage adopt the proposed millage in a budget for the general fund then we adopt the mst law enforcement millage and budget should say the assessments we adopt the fire assessment again we've adjusted that tier one will be 132.47 tier two will be seven dollars and 28 cent per ebu which is at five thousand dollars stormwater is at sixty dollars there's no change solid waste tipping fee is at sixty five dollars that's the assessment is no change and then no change in the collection rates as well sugarfoot is still at ten dollars with no change and then the final budget will be september 23rd at that time we will adopt the hospital assessment as well which is a pass-through assessment based on them sorry actually we heard this morning that they want to do the hospital assessment earlier so they can get the bill out so that'll come on september 11th okay all right commissioners any questions the next health meeting is october 16th you had asked okay so so tell me i health insurance is 42 out of the 50 million for health insurance is 42 out of the special expense category that's what that's what it was it was a transfer to the self-insurance pool all right okay thank you okay um tom out this isn't no questions i my only one and i i didn't know what meeting i would ask this um but i i i think it's important that we at least have you tell us if this board for some reason were decided to go to the rollback rate what's the budget impact and where would that come from give me a heads up i know um we did that calculation and i did not bring it with me so senior what's that my sheet on my your sheet it's about four million yeah i think it was about the impact is uh see it goes from the rollback where it would only generate 3.6 we're generating 14 so it's about 11 million dollar difference that we would have to come up with in the general fund that would put us at 7.1455 mils that's the rate you're asking the impact i did some numbers for the manager a list and i do not have that with me i wasn't prepared to answer that question but i did prepare a list and it is there are significant impacts to service okay if the majority of this board wants to know that then we'll ask it at the next meeting yeah we looked at what was not um required services for example um because obviously there are things we have to pay even if we don't like them being our responsibility like medicaid there are things that we cannot not do um so we looked at where the discretionary the more discretionary functions were um and i was looking for the 11 million number i'll get with you yeah okay i'll send it out to everybody so they have it that'd be great okay anything else on this budget item i just want to say thank you uh it's always um having been through lots of budget meetings in my life for for public and private things i find your presentations always very transparent and very um informed and very organized and conservative and i always feel good when i leave the room so i just want to thank you for that very nice thank you i appreciate that my my team works very hard um they they are diligent and um our job is to make sure your policies are implemented as best we can but to also make sure that regardless of what happens that you are in financially strong position and we work very closely with the clerk's office again they're a part of that as well and so we are very diligent in making sure that we don't waste money and that that the county stays on track financially and as i've always i've been very lucky since i have been in this county to have all of the commissions i've worked for in this county have been supportive of understanding end of the day we can't ask we you can't ask staff to do something that they can't afford to do and so i've been very fortunate to have the commissions that i've worked with so i appreciate y'all as well and making sure that we don't make decisions that financially are really precarious or bad in the long term too i thank you okay so as is often the case once we start talking lights sometimes turn on so i got the manager and then i got commissioner wheeler so sit tight to say as it as it relates to the exercise we did with the rollback rate obviously i wanted to know what that number was and i asked tommy to put together those things that were in the more discretionary realm we'll get that out to you i'm certainly not sitting here today specifically advocating for any position on that but i thought the to do the exercise this year was important because at the time we were starting the budgeting process of putting that book together we did not know what the impact of the legislative session was going to be and frankly we don't know the impact of this upcoming year so i thought it was a good exercise for us to do this year to look at those items and what would that be and what could that be so um when that goes out just kind of understand that context as well good thank you appreciate that uh commissioner wheeler i just want to thank you too because finances is not my expertise i avoided math all through my college years um and went into art so i i i really do appreciate your holding the line for us particularly for people like me you know who this isn't a strength and that you are that the presentation i think that mary one of the words you left out was simplified and for people like me and for people at home i think who are watching it makes a big difference in terms of the simplification of what you're saying and how direct and and i appreciate your willingness to push back in a very professional way if it looks like that we're overstepping our bounds or making um decisions that are not quite wise so i appreciate your wisdom and all of that and your willingness to you know to go toe to toe with us on that thank you thank you thank you commissioner thank you okay tommy i think that's did you thank you yeah thank you big thank you from all of us um not yet though we'll thank you a lot more on september 23rd okay we are now off to closing comments and the first one is our public comment and so this is a time when the public has an opportunity to speak to the board about anything not on the agenda and mr connish you are recognized welcome thank you for being here mr jim connish in 2019 i took a look at your utility bills and i found um massive billing errors that i pointed out to the manager but um to stay consistent with the false narrative that the problem with our utility bills are our buildings are our behavior this was ignored and all the interactions are going to be put on the internet because you're going to be audited for this kind of behavior sir so i'm going to put this all up there and i'm going to tell doge to take a look at it so while you say everything is perfect you are not paying gru for street lights you are not paying gru for fire hydrants you are not paying gru the full price of your broadband internet from grucom you are not paying gru to collect your pyramided utility tax administer it and remit it to you you're not paying for all kinds of local options sales tax and all kinds of utility services that are being administered and collected by a gru you're not paying anything now the problem with this is there was an audit done and by the auditor general of gainesville and they found that there's what's called service level agreement losses where gru is doing stuff for local government you and the city of gainesville and other probably the school board and simply not getting paid for it and this these um this hemorrhaging doesn't show up on the financial statements so the city's charter requires that service level agreement losses be identified included in the flow of funds and disclosed on the financial statements that's not happening sir and you're up to your eyeballs in a in a fraud basically where you taking from gru and you're not paying for it when we don't pay the bill we get disconnected but you free load to the terms of millions and that doesn't show up on anyone's financial statements and tommy is never going to bring it up you weren't even billed at all for streetlights that doesn't mean you don't know it you weren't even billed who else wasn't billed for a million dollars with the gru services so you may not think there's going to be auditors coming in and you may just blow this whole thing off but there's lots of things that grow out of your incestuous relationship with the city commission when it comes to gru that it's going to be looked at and it's not going to be smiled upon there's no justification for it and it's illegal finally if you look at finding three there's an interfunded exchange between gru and the city they systematically falsify the full cost allocation reports and you're tangled up with that okay that can be criminal thank you thank you thank you for your comments um i'll i'll just make one comment that they also do not pay for right away so thank you for that um list anyone else from the public that wishes to address this board okay we'll go ahead and close public comment and we'll move to commission comment commissioner wheeler we'll start with you something very quickly um i have been working with linda soddock as you all know for the lime rock mines up in high springs for about seven years now um that horses dies so we've dismounted and but they the family would like to offer the cemetery to the county it's a historic black cemetery and that has been on their property for a while and they've kept it private because they were concerned about um liability issues but as that they have begun mining on that property again and so they would like what i would like us to do if you all are all right with that to ask our staff to uh check into it to see what ownership of that property would mean for us or for the city of high springs you know what the opportunities are there for us to uh receive that that cemetery okay so we've got a referral the staff on the historical black cemetery up on that's very it's the asbury cemetery um very cemetery yes you you can look it up online it is there um it is a feature anybody object to that i do not okay thank you thank you very much okay you got it you got that michelle thank you commissioner the only thing i have is something on the self-insurance board i just um it was kind of it was it's something that surprise surprise has been brought to my attention as i've gotten older and that's menopause care um and a lot of it's considered women's health it's considered basic care and so like in sort of standard of practice it would be something that you would receive through your general practice um but i think it doesn't seem to be something that our clinic offers um and so i just wanted us to refer again to staff and the group to like look into what they do offer or they can offer um with our existing contract um i looked at the contract it looks like it it lists women's care but um a few of our employees that i've spoken to that have tried to get these services at the clinic haven't been able to get them so if we need to contract separately to provide that care through the clinic with them or something but i'd love to chat more about that at some stage can we send that to amy over at self-insurance we'll uh absolutely look into that but maybe offline you could yeah i can types of services so i can check and make sure i don't miss those yeah absolutely okay that's it thank you commissioner alford i just want to let everybody know that i um uh have a new intern that started yesterday she's great and the first thing that she did without me even asking her is prepare a four page summary of the doge audits and how they affected other counties and cities across the state uh statements that they made and uh whatever findings and i was i forwarded that to um latoya to distribute to you guys if you're interested so if you're interested i'll send it but i thought it was an interesting read okay yeah i yeah i'm definitely interested in fact i'm glad you brought that up um because that was actually what i wanted to bring up you know i mentioned at the end of the meeting on tuesday about the doge and how i was excited as an ex-auditor about having an audit and um i saw a cartoon that was published like maybe yesterday and first of all with regard to the cartoon i actually like the cartoon because apparently i've lost weight um because i've seen some other cartoons where i looks different um whoever wrote that cartoon i want to let them know i have not lost weight um but that that's at least reflected so that was kind of funny but in all seriousness i don't know in all in all seriousness i i think to explain really to commissioner frizzy why i'm excited as an auditor is i think whenever you have an audit it gives you an opportunity to actually tell your story and um from that perspective i think this is a great opportunity for us to really you know tell our story and when you think about our story over the last nine years this board and specifically since 2020 this board has has made a significant investment in increasing funding in public safety specifically fire and sheriff made a significant investment in increasing roads and ultimately really core services has been at the heart of everything that we talk about and that's all been done while at the same time reducing the millage rate when you i got this you know in in our capra we get the so i want to tell this story in the last nine years this board has reduced the basic rate every year from a high of 8.929 which was a high of our millage to the current level of 7.618 now that is a 15 reduction and and it's well below our nearest pier in leon county in addition to that we've also eliminated which y'all were not on the board when we did this so i wanted to bring it up we eliminated the mstu unincorporated that was 0.6325 mills so if you look at the combined that's 9.5615 at the high to now 7.618 which is a 1.94 mill reduction which is 20 that's a 20 percent mill reduction and when you look at just our base rate we've actually done the rollback rate two of those nine years ask other counties around the state if they can do that and when you look at other counties around the state and look at all of our millage we're right in the middle of the state we're at 31st out of 67 counties not the lowest definitely not the highest but for the amount of property off the tax rolls this board's been doing a good job and i just wanted to make that point the mstu for law enforcement has stayed flat for five years you know that was kind of the grand bargain with law enforcement is as property values increase please don't ask us for a lot of money you know do that underneath your millage that is a property tax increase but you know we haven't raised that and so i just thought that that was important for you all to hear what i meant when i said i look forward to the audit because i think it's an opportunity um and it's an opportunity for every county to tell their story and so i just want to put some context on that and let the cartoon person know thank you because i um and thinner apparently now i always wanted to be on one of those cartoons i'd just like to add you've done all that while you've also increased the bottom line substantially the financial security of this county and fund balance has grown significantly while you've done all that thank you tommy and i always miss something and i appreciate that uh commissioner alfred and i you know i also want to make the point that you know we we don't control the property values going up which do increase people's taxes but those property values going up are a direct reflection of the fact that people want to live here and you know that that says a lot as well i think yeah i mean home rule is about the budget reflecting the local priorities of the local community exactly and i think that's what we'll have an opportunity to talk about in the coming months commissioner i made a facebook post pretty much saying that same thing and i i appreciate that you know it's a it's a good thing commissioner wheeler then commissioner prison i i i just wanted to say uh in order to celebrate all that good news i agree with you i'm looking forward to hearing what people have to say about what we're doing because i'm proud of what we're doing but this weekend there's a an event at the animal services that's a giveaway uh animal just go get a puppy everybody go get a dog we'll celebrate by having a dog celebrate have a cat or cat thank you commissioner commissioner yeah i i just wanted to say thanks for that context i think i i totally agree with you on that front like being able to share what we're doing and really highlight how this county has done more with less i think is great um and i do i did but i did want to point out that that part of that is because our i mean i was looking at some of the real estate and property value ducks information at the end and i mean the median listing price for eletro county's homes are 345 500 right now and that's trending upward that's 1.1 up just from april of 2024 so you know our housing prices are going up and so you know that's allowed us to absorb some of that while dropping the property taxes but it also has had a really big impact on our community and so i'm really proud that we were able to do the surtax and be able to do housing i'm excited when we'll actually deploy some of that money because i think that's you know as we see these housing prices continue to increase and house housing purchases be less and less attainable for more families we really have to put a dent in that affordable housing um project and we've been able to do that while also dropping taxes and creating opportunities for the voters to make the decision on how they spend their own tax dollars that's our greatest obligation is do what the voters tell us to do exactly yeah thank you and if and if i could add as criminalization of homelessness continues to become a bigger and bigger issue we have to address that madam manager i was only going to add that that also includes a lot of new construction we've had quite a bit of new construction over the years um and our this is also over a period of time our population just since i've been with the county has increased probably about 50 000 um in the last decade and so with that increase in population it also puts on a demand for more services and more things and we've been able to continue to reduce the millage rate while increasing while maintaining levels of service for an increased population and increasing programs and services from where they were so i think that's something that as a staff we're all very proud of okay excellent so i think that concludes commission comments that includes the agenda we stand adjourned