Moving to the agenda of a county department presentation, C1 budget overview. We do have a public comment section. Is there anyone here that's filled out a card that wishes to speak? Seeing none, we'll move to board discussions. I guess we're doing the board report. I think we're doing the county department presentation budget overview. Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Do we need to make a motion to Commissioner Goodson and Delaney?
I think that would be good.
I'd like to make a motion to have Commissioner Goodson join us.
Second by Feldener. All in favor say aye. Aye. Carries. I have such great commissioners that keeps me on track here. I don't know what I'd do without you guys. So I got ahead of myself. We'll go straight to budget overview.
Okay. Good afternoon, commissioners. A couple things. What I'm going to do is it's just me today doing a little bit on the high level, keeping it a little bit informal, but we're going to talk about at the board, last board meeting, you asked what we're going to do in the budget workshop, and I said we're going to talk facilities, and you asked to see infrastructure. But I also want to point out that facilities is infrastructure, so we're going to cover a lot of stuff on infrastructure. Some might be surprising. Just as me, if I talk too much, start waving your arm, or talk too fast, start waving your arms, let me know so I can slow down. We have staff in the room. Folks, if there's, if they have a slide related to the department, they're here. So if we have questions, we have the available staff ready for you guys. And then just before we get started, just a couple thank yous to Keith, Jill, and Tad, who have been stuck dealing with me for the last week to put everything together. Of course, the budget office and all the departments, because we've been asking them lots of questions, lots of nuggets of information to put this together for you guys. Sorry, that helps if I work the clicker. There we go. So the, you know, so the topic is we're going to talk about the county infrastructure, and there's kind of the subjects we're going to go through. And then, believe it or not, a little bit of insurance funds, some revenue options, and then questions and board discussions and whatever direction you want to go with. So, you know, at the last workshop, we talked about the color of money, you know, where we go through our $2.5 billion budget. When you get down to it, it's about $288 million of operating funds in the general fund. And then last year, to help balance the budget, we went through a number of recommendations to general funds for cuts. So I just want to highlight there so you can see what we, cuts, reductions is a better word, but what we did not fund in the budget that we would have liked to fund. So there was a number of public works items there. There was quite a bit of facilities management items. We're going to discuss that a little bit. The next slide is you're going to see the parks and recreation items. And so we have an asterisk there. That was one of our last minute updates because based on your action on Tuesday, the restore the parks and recs through the MSTU. So those reductions have been restored. And then you see a couple other reductions. But I just want to point this out. This was in the budget message. This is the items that we removed from our recommended budget before we gave it to you so we can fund all the other needs and the priorities that you had. And I don't have it in front of me. I should also point out that when you look at the cuts, we give instructions to the county charter cap is 3% or CPI or whatever is less. So when we talk to the departments, if they have general fund, we don't let them ask for more than 3%. So when you look at the number of the cuts, we've had a number of departments that actually received a little bit less than general fund. IT was one. They received about $70,000 less with network switches. Then there was a number of other departments that didn't even receive up the full 3%. So when you look at this list of items removed or requested budget, that was even after we restricted the departments asking what they could ask for. So we went through. A lot of folks took a little bit of a haircut last year to make sure we can balance the budget for you. Along with the public works funding, there's the detention center. We had correctional impact fees. Normally we spend about $3.5 million a year just on various functions of the detention centers, anywhere from repairs to maintenance. We had some impact fees, so we were able to use those for this year. Now there's $3.5 million reoccurring is an issue that we now have to address. And then the road resurfacing, it was kept the same amount of money as last year, but due to inflation and construction costs, so instead of 50 miles, we were going to go down to 40 miles. The reconstruction went from 7.5 to 5. At the board meeting on March 17th, what you did with Parks and Rec, you also restored $1.5 million of that back into the road resurfacing program. So the miles would be a little bit better than 40 now. This is kind of a slide that we always show. These are cumulative changes in the CPI since 2009. I just want to point out, especially for the folks on TV and Zoom or Teams, you can see the blue line is the consumer price index. That's what we follow along with our cap. And so that's the blue line, but you can see our construction costs and the general municipal cost index is higher than what we've been able to do. And you can't tell it in this slide, but we had two or three, actually we had three years over 3%. The cap is CPI or 3%, you know, whatever's the lower. So those couple of years we had 8% inflation and another year 6%, we only increased the revenue by 3% those years. So if you have a lot of bad years of inflation, the cap keeps you underneath just even the inflation rate there. Our next, for next, this coming budget year is 2.63%. And we just went over some budget guidelines for the apartments, they probably don't even know what this year, but the guidelines to them will be 2.3, 2.6% increase, not 3%. Nobody fell over in their chair, so. Under facilities, just, I love the chart here, it's just some of the fast facts. There's 154 buildings that facilities is taking care of. There's 2.6 million square feet. They're under direct management of 76 billions and 1.8 million square feet. You're going to see from a couple departments, they're going to show the different infrastructures they maintain. Our facilities budget is 45 million and we're having a hard time. Well, actually, we can't keep up with everything with the current budget, to be honest, the way it is. So there's just some fast facts. I like at the bottom, the average building was built in 1971. This building we're in here opened in February, let's see, when did I come back? February of 91, this building opened up. So this building is 35 years old. And so we don't have a lot of young facilities out there. And so the older they get, the more rehab and more repair you have to put together. So this is a list of some of our critical needs. Public Works was nice to divide it into different areas. I'll kind of read through it. I won't catch everything. But in the north area, we have a couple million dollars. And this is beyond just constitutional needs. I'm going to highlight those. But you have the historical courthouse. We have the Brevard Room, which is a community room up there that needs HVAC. The detention center, we're estimating there's at least six million dollars of repair there. Four sprung structure tents. I hope I got it right. That's the tents. But there's called sprung structure. We are working on replacing the fabrics with the sheriff's office on that. And the central area of the county service complex, that's the Merritt Island. For us, old folks still call it the Merritt Island Courthouse. There's Timothy G.A. Mills Fire Rescue Center. That's a multi-story building in Rockledge that houses fire rescue and public safety. And then the south area. The south area includes Vieira. So you'll see some coming up next slide about elevators and HVAC. The Moore Justice Center across the street. We're working on envelope repairs. We're working on buildings down at Sarno. And then we have the Melbourne Courthouse children and tower equipment. So we have a lot of immediate needs already that we're trying to fund, find and fund for this next year's budget. Major issues there. I got to tell you, I'm learning a lot from Skip and from Mark. And that's why we have them right here. Skip Bell is your facilities management manager. Mark Bernath is the public works director. I'm going to start on the right side. It is the HVAC. We've been working. Last year we completed eight projects. You're always, always, always going to be working on HVAC no matter what you do all throughout. And then we have budgeted. We have another six or actually seven different HVAC projects that we're working on right now. And when I say we have what we have budgeted, that's, you know, we budget what we think the costs are. Costs could be different. You could get in. Once you start tearing ceilings apart or walls apart, you find new stuff and floors. So that's what we have budgeted and that's what we try to accomplish. Elevators, even without Skip's instruction, I learned about elevators can be a pain. We had to do a major reduction in the elevator at the central, the Kathy Swainsburg Library. When that went down, now you have to rebuild it to meet new codes. So all our elevators need to meet new codes. We have to do new monitoring on our elevators. The recommended lifespan, and you may hear me use the word useful life. That's a federal term, but the lifespan is 27 years. Nineteen of our 31 elevators are beyond that right now. But you can see the crew has been working pretty hard over the last seven years. We've been able, I didn't write down the number. There's about 10 of the elevators we've been able to replace, rehab, and fix up. And we have budgeted for three of the elevators this year. So we still have got at least a half dozen more to go. And that's just rehabbing. That's just not if they break down or there might be an issue with them. The detention center. We have multi, at one point we had multi-years major projects. We had to take the S off because it was a duplicate, but it does feel like multi-years. There's a lot of work to do. You can see there's a pretty nice overview of the detention center. You can see the older existing building at the center. There's a newer wing on the right. And then if you look at, because we're going to talk a little bit about the pods, you can see the four green structures there at the lower right-hand corner. Those are all the different pods. But so over the years, we've been working on plumbing chases. I have a friend who is actually an architect. And, you know, plumbing is different in a detention center, you know, because they can back it up. You know, it's everything. It's not your standard plumbing you find in a building or even, you know, a house or a building. So we have a lot of work there. Of course, we're always working on the HVAC replacement. The jail doors, which you just saw at the last board meeting, a couple million dollars there to help finish up our jail doors. We've refurbished the showers in there. We've got more HVAC fiber cable. Then what we added was, speaking with the sheriff's office, some of the key points. The last expansion of the jail was 2006. And since then, the population has grown by 25%. And the tent structures were somewhere around 2005. That was the last expansion we've done. So the capacity is still running. There's a committee that keeps an eye on it, probably running 80%, 90%. But the thing to remember is it's almost impossible to have your jail at 100% capacity. Because if you're dealing, you know, if somebody gets sick or you have different things, you may not be able to double up in a cell. You have to move stuff around. So if the capacity is 1,500, that doesn't mean you can have 1,500 inmates every single day in the jail. So the sheriff does a really nice job working with the various county departments. They keep that number where we can. I put in there hundreds of work hours annually. Skip and crew do a lot of work. The sheriff's department's already in there doing a lot of work. And then, you know, for expansion, a rough, rough number of the new pod might cost $40 million. So all there at once.
The committee, can I say something real quick on that? The committee is the public safety council that meets here, and I chair that. And they work collectively with all the stakeholders, if you will, to keep the jailhouse population at a certain level. And so it's a diligent thing that's always ongoing, even making sure that people get to state prison when they need to go, because that's getting them out of our jail and on to state prison.
So it's something they work on a lot. Yeah, and that group's been pretty successful. You know, Commissioner Alvin remembers back when we had to add on, we had a sales tax for the detention center because we had to expand. We had suits to make sure on the capacity, and that committee came out of it. And that's been a big help to keep us at the proper level of a population. This is a constitutional officer, offices, facilities needs. Tad and I met with, let's see, a tax collector, property appraiser, supervisor of elections, and representative from the clerk's office. Last week, we went through the six, I call it the six stories. It's the Brevard County Government Center North or something like that. I'm old. It was the six story when I got here, so I'm going to call it the six story. So we went through all the floors looking at what we need to do. But as you take a look, the HVAC system, there's at least another $2.5 million of repairs. We have windows. We have electrical upgrades. So you can see there's about $4 million of immediate needs in the six story. We have reoccurring down at the Sarno Complex of about $300,000 a year. Some work, I don't know how familiar you are, with the elections office down on John Rhodes. It's a pretty comprehensive building. He's got a lot of functions in and out of there. So we have some work there. We've got east precincts we're working on with the sheriff's office. And once again, just to repeat, the detention center, $4 million. But there's also a couple other costs there that are, you know, I kind of almost called it almost non-prisoner related. But, I mean, it still has to do with the facility. So we have some costs there. A couple pieces of good news, at least with this, is, you know, as we come back in our mid-year adjustments, you're going to see that in April. We're going to be able to put some funding towards the HVAC system. So we'll be able to start cutting down on that $2.5 million of need. And this meeting this morning, I at least heard that we had a walkthrough with the different contractors for windows. And we had a much larger number than we thought of contractors that are interested in bidding on the project. So hopefully that will lead to some lower costs than we hope. But there seems to be a lot of interest out there for that. So this doesn't cover everything of the constitutional needs, but it gives you some of the highlights and what we were shown last week. Then we have, there we go. So we have other, we call it unfunded enhancements. We've been working on, actually throughout the county, working on bathroom replacements. You can see in this building, the first two floors were able to be completed. We took the funding out for the third floor. There's other buildings, buildings D and E next door here. They need some work. A and B aren't quite there. Like I said, it is, well, the restrooms are 34 years old. We spent a lot of time, the crew was out today, they work on the washrooms up here and across the building. So they're there every time. A bathroom is about $100,000 a pair. And I've heard it from somewhere else that it would be about the right number. So it's expensive to fix bathrooms nowadays. And then we have other, we have LVPs. I forget exactly, but that's your flooring. So we have other needs out there. So we're looking, you know, we're, even when we do stuff in-house, there's about $800,000 in need there. For flooring, we have another $2 million. So just in the government center and the Melbourne offices and the Merritt Island offices, we're looking at about another $3 million of needs for facilities. That's, you know, what you see under facilities. What I asked, and I'm going to highlight some of the departments, because there's more than just what facilities oversees directly. So you've got the library system. So they're operating out of 18 buildings. We have that many branches, you know, main library, 17 branches. Interestingly, only 14 of them are owned by the county. Some libraries are owned by the cities, and a number of libraries actually sit on city-owned land. It's a little interesting how we put stuff together. But as you can see, if the library needs, there needs just under $12 million. In their budget, they have about $4 million funded. So at least on about an unfunded list of 7.4. Now, the libraries operate under their own MSTU, so they don't use general funds. But what I want to point out is they generally spend about $5 million, a little over $5 million a year on infrastructure needs. And they have $7.5 million in needs right now. So that shows that they're a year behind. It would take them a while to try to get caught up. And that's assuming that we don't have any other issues that might happen to the buildings. So there's more than a year and a half of needs that they have out there. Parks and recreation. I'll start off right in the middle. It's a little hard to see there. Over 130 parks, over 1,000 different buildings and facilities. Anywhere from fields, lights, playgrounds, bathrooms, boat ramps, community centers. They've got a lot. And they spend a lot of time and money on it. About average, they allocate about $3.2 million for infrastructure needs. And that's above what they do on a daily basis for maintenance and repairs and constructions of new items. But you can see their unfunded list is somewhere around $30 million. So, you know, so you're looking at almost 10 years of needs with parks and recreation. And then I asked them to put together, you see at the bottom, so we have eight community centers out there. And they're divided up between community nature and senior centers. Lots of infrastructure and then other senators and amenities. You may or may not know, we went out to the voters in 2000 for a referendum to build more parks and to pay for more park facilities. We had to go back on again in 2006 to, you know, complete the funding. And luckily, all but one of the debt millages had been paid off. The last one will be this year. But what I want to point out is, so these facilities that we've been putting together, they're now reaching their 25-, 30-year lifespan. So they're going to start requiring major repairs or major maintenance. Some things may have reached their use of a lifespan. But we don't have to pay for those repairs. We're going to have to come out of our operating. When we built it, we issued debt to build it. And then we had separate operating fundings to operate our parks. Now that the debt's gone, and so we lose that ability to bond that out. So any major repairs or replacement of these facilities are going to have to come out of their operating millages. And they also receive some general fund or general fund. So just a couple minor things before we get into public works is to let you know there's some good news. So there's – this just gives you an idea of the different departments, what we're out there. Natural Resources needs a facility to put together their aquatic harvesting equipment. The Extension Center has a roof replacement. Did I say it right? Okay, roof replacement. Thank you, roof. And I want to point out, because the Extension Center, it says Ag Center, that really kind of operates as a separate community facility. They host lots of meetings. You know, they had the Blue Origin, the famous Blue Origin meeting was there. It's used by a lot of the public. It's a public need. It's more than just the UF and the IFAS program. Mosquito Control has been putting a lot of money together and spending a lot of years. And you can see their biology laboratory. There's a picture of it right there. So they've been putting together the money, but they're still about $800,000 short. Mosquito Control has their own MSTU, so that comes out of their own budget. And as I'm pointing out, many of these MSTUs are also operating under the cap. So they just can't decide to raise the MSTU by $800,000 to fund it. We have to stay within the charter cap. So Road and Bridge, you know, we talked about – and there's a slide about their maintenance and drainage and everything you need to do. But Road and Bridge needs to also – they make sure their maintenance shops are well-maintained and put together. A few years ago, we put funding together to do a needs assessment. And so you can see up there that we have over $25 million of upgrades, replacement, fixing we have to do of the maintenance facilities. And that's just the three of them that you see listed. We're working pretty hard on the Melbourne Central Fleet. I'm old. I call it CEP. When I got here, that's what we called it. But there's a nice picture of it. There's about $40 million in needs. We have $23 million of it funded and are actively working on it right now. But we're still about $17 million short. So, I mean, this is to help the crews that go out and help the people as we go out and fix the drainage and fix the roadways. So we need to make sure that they're operating in good facilities. Information technology. You may not think of that as infrastructure, but definitely to me that's the backbone of everything we put together. There's been heightened awareness of security and attacks going on. We know of one place that has actually was attacked and their system was brought down. So we always try to make sure we keep an eye on everything and try to stay up to date. This last year, we were able to fund their department with their existing funds. But you can see if you look at the bold parts, you know, we're looking at having to replace our network connectivities. The switches, the firewalls, keep everything up to date. That's going to cost us about $80,000 a year. When you look at the systems with all the servers and all the infrastructure with the servers, beginning in 29, we're looking at $350,000. And then all our storage, once again, more equipment, we're looking at $400,000 a year. So you're basically looking at a need between $40,000 and $5,000 a year of IT starting in 2027. You've seen this chart before. This is a chart put together by utilities. As you know, and you're going to see on the next slide, we have a number of wastewater and water plants that we have to bring online, upgrade to make sure we meet all the new regulations. Based on the revenue, as you can see, the costs are going to exceed the revenue existing that we have. And so there's the listing of them all, literally from MIMS down to the South Beaches, down to Port St. John, South Brevard, Sykes Creek, Port St. John, or regional, a new regional plant. So they put together a list. Their needs are going to be over $865 million or so. Right now we have about $71 million funded. That doesn't mean we're not moving forward to projects. We have $793 million of unfunded needs. Eddie and the crew and our lobbyists, both federal and state, have been really good to help us with getting grants going through. So we'll stay active with the grants at some point. We'll be issuing debt to build some of the plants and facilities. You'll see us coming back to talk about connection fee adjustments and user fee adjustments as the studies go along. And we know what we need to do to meet our funding gap. So the analysis and studies are ongoing, and utilities has a deadline of 2032 to meet all these regulations. So, I mean, some of this stuff is occurring even without capacity needs that we have to make sure we have upgrades. Solid waste, I kind of look at the two of them as partners because they're both kind of working similarly. They have to expand their capacity. So the new solid waste facility up down on 192, we have the first part funded at about $35 million. Part two is still unfunded, but we'll be looking at some kind of debt financing for that. The Titusville Transfer Station is currently under construction. Right now it's funded with bonds and commercial paper. That's what the CP is. That should be completed by July. So that means that's some good news for Tom and his crew. And the Central Cell 3 at the Central Disposal Facilities is, right now it's funded with some commercial paper, but we still have $31 million to go to complete that. So to help funding sources, that is right there at the front, disposal assessment adjustments, debt issue, gate charges, impact fees. And so he's got studies going on. They all have studies to show the cost, because if we have to issue debt, we have to justify what we need, the debt. While it's not super directly connected, you'll probably see us in the next month or two talk to you. We've been talking to, or speaking with Waste Management. Their contract's up next year, and so they have a chance for extension, but so you'll see us talking about that and the rates for collection. Just a warning, just a heads up there. This is my favorite infrastructure slide, because, and I don't know if people think beaches are infrastructure, but this is Brevard County. It's extremely important to Brevard County, to our tourism, to our businesses, to our residents. So it's infrastructure, and we've made major commitments. So as you can see on there, so over the last, over the years, we replaced 16 million cubic yards of sand. That has cost us $375 million. $31 million comes, the TDT stands for Tourism Information, Tourism Information, Tourism Development Tax. And then the rest comes from various grants, mostly from the Corps of Army Corps Engineers, for the funding. We have a commitment or a plan with the Army Corps for the 50 years, and as you see, we're going to spend $600 million. So over the next 43 years, and as I was showing the slide to my wife, as she pointed out, she goes, you better live to see the end of that. So that would make me 101. So I plan to see the end of that contract. The other one is across the street, or close across the street, is the U-Triple-S-A facility. We own that. That used to be the spring training site. Worked out a really nice working arrangement with U-Triple-S-A, where they rent it from us. As part of their contract, they put in $250,000 a year of their own funding into the capital fund. For the first five years of the agreement, we also put in funding, but we're now past the five years. So that stadium capital fund has about three, a little over $3 million in it. So they, being U-Triple-S-A, spends about $350,000 a year out of the fund. And just kind of a little off the side there, they have to run those approvals through tourism. They just don't get to spend that fund. As they see fit, we work with them. They have to get approval through the county and make sure they spend the fund. So it's just not going to spend as they want. But the point I want to point out to you all is that we've got 15 fields that require turf replacement. It could start beginning in about two years. The fields are getting that owed. I think the first ones were coming in 2016, 2017, somewhere in that neck of the woods. That's about $10 million. As you can see, $250,000 a year from U-Triple-S-A doesn't cover it. We'll have to talk with tourism, and we're going to have to sit down with U-Triple-S-A how to address that need. And I meant to mention, and I didn't, you know, we also have the turf over here at Vieira Regional. That was paid through tourism taxes. That was a $5 million project. They're probably about six years in, so at some point that's becoming due for the parks, too. So I didn't highlight everything. I didn't want to torture every director in the world. But, I mean, there's other important infrastructure out there that I didn't highlight. You know, Valkyria Airport. Adam does a really nice job of getting grants. A lot of this funded through DOT and Federal FAA. Mosquito Control, they have their own MSTU, but they have a lot of infrastructure in between their vehicles, airplanes, drones, buildings, labs. They put a lot together. You have, you know, another good example is transit services. Their capital needs are to survive on grants. They're 100% federally funded, so even if, so they have needs that they can't meet with their grants. So there's quite a bit of infrastructure out there. And then I want to make sure I bring back to you all this at the last meeting. Mark did a wonderful job explaining. You guys wanted to know what we need to do about improving our drainage infrastructure. So that's the same slide as you saw before. So you can see the impacts of what we would need to have additional drainage crews where we can get the frequency down between, you know, two and three years to one and two years. If you want to double the support staff and the drainage crew, again, we can get cleaning each ditch a year. Then he has a number of other projects in here that will help. And you can see the, well, it's the funding impact to go with it. Sure. Our last department we're going to speak about is employee benefits and risk management. It's not infrastructure, but at some point I do need to highlight this to you all. If you take a look, the top chart, that is our balance, our fund balance for our employee benefits. That's health and pharmacy. Our claims costs are around about $70 million this past year. It's gone up. The last few years it's been, what, low to 60 to 65 million. So this year was a little higher a year. So as part of the budget, we are going to rate adjustment of 6% for an employer side. And you can see as we as an employer are paying about $15,000 a year per employee for health insurance. At the bottom part, the bottom chart is our risk management, auto liability, property insurance, general liability, and workers' comp. The claims last year were a little over $8.5 million. That, as you can see, we're down to $4 million. That one's a little bit getting drained quicker than I want to see. We're really down to, like, maybe a couple years before we'll have an issue with the balance forward. So you see our rates are going to go up between 8% and 12%. I'm pointing these out for both of you to show you both areas because it's a budgetary need. It's a budgetary impact to everybody, not just us, the constitutional officers that may be in it. There's a couple other outside organizations that joined with us. We'll be looking in 27 for going out for procurement on the health benefits side. We do annual renewals every year in risk management. More wonderful news is the legislature passed to increase the sovereign immunity limits. It's been $200 and $300 forever, probably. I seem to remember that. They passed the bill yet to $350 and $500. Now, it hasn't been signed by the governor. Melissa, our HR director, just preliminary, they're thinking that may raise our risk costs by about 20%. We don't know yet for sure, as we'll see when we come with a renewal, but that will have an impact. But so we just started taking a look. This is going to be a little multi-year. I do want to look at it and change on how we charge out to the difference, whether it's department-wise, employee-wise, vehicle-wise, risk. So we're going to take a little bit more in-depth look at that, because we've got to do something before we come to you guys with some help or some direction. We've got to do something to make sure we can kind of level off our fund balance in these two items. Then last, but not last, but not least, but I do want to point out a little bit of good news. The Florida, you know, the Florida has their own DOGE office, and they put a report together. This is from page 15 of the report, and I'll read at least the first sentence. To the credit, Brevard County leaders lower the county-wide military rate, supporting Board of County Commissioners' agencies each year during this period, over 20% in total. But if you take a look at that chart, you can see how we've been going down. One other county has gone down every year, which is Pinellas County. Other ones have kept their military rate stable, down a little bit. One actually went up, Brevard County. But if you look at that chart, and it goes back to fiscal year 21, our fiscal year 21 millage rate is actually the highest millage rate we have is fiscal year 21 in this chart. So our highest rate is actually lower than any of the other nine counties' lowest rates. So, you know, I want to put that out. That is commissioner direction. That is staff working to keep the budget balanced. And that's also, but you're seeing a lot of effect of the cap in that. So this is, and you've seen this a number of times before, we had it in the budget message, we talked about it at last year's workshops, we talked about it at the last workshop. There's other different ways to generate some revenue. Public service tax, we, that is up to 10% on your various utility bills. We don't implement any of it. Every municipality implements it in some form. That could generate somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 million. Under our charter, that requires, even if you guys decide to do it 5-0, that requires that it has to go out to the ballot. The voters have to vote on it. We just can't implement it ourselves. The fuel tax, which you all talked about the last couple board meetings ago, could generate up about $9 million supermajority vote, or you can put it on ballot referendum. But that $9 million only gets you the transportation-related expenditures that we highlighted throughout this report. The discretionary surtax, the local government infrastructure, right now that's a half penny we have for, or half a percent for sorrel. The charter regional transportation tax is also a, what they call the discretionary sales surtax, and that's for, but that will get you transportation-related expenditures, kind of similar to the gas tax. And then last but not least is the finding a critical need to exceed the charter cap limitations. Under our charter, as I said earlier, we can only increase our revenue from millages by 3 percent or what the CPI is. I'm double-checking to make sure Keith says I, he wants to make sure I say it correctly. If we go above that, and we have done it twice before that I'm aware of, that takes a supermajority vote by the Board of County Commissioners. You have to put a resolution out. You have to describe what you're doing, describe the costs and the reasoning behind that. So that is also a way to help raise some revenue to meet some of our infrastructure needs. So those have all been shown to you before in the budget message, in last year's budget, and in the workshops. I didn't do too bad, half hour. I thought practice yesterday was 25 minutes. So we're open. As I told you, as we went around the briefings, we were just going to give you a high-level overview, give you some numbers there, and then basically get out of your way for discussion. We have staff here to answer any questions, if you have anything specific on some of the numbers. And then we'll do our best and follow whatever direction or information you need. Thank you for listening. One technical question real quick.
You said 3% or the CPI. It's the lesser of the two. So, again, we agreed it's 2.63, right?
Thank you for correcting me, sir. Yes, it is. So this coming year's cap is 2.63%. Thank you.
So it's not sped off in the agenda. I assume this is the part of the agenda for questions from the Commission?
We have one comment, let's see.
It's good to hear public comment and then questions.
That would probably be, yeah, treat it like an agenda item, sir. That would be a good way to go. Yes.
So we have one card. Lisa Cullen. That sounds familiar. Lisa, good to have you here.
Hey. First of all, I want to thank you all for having your discussion about facilities today. Jim and Chad came to visit the Government Center in North Reward, and I'm here to speak for the inhabitants of that building. This year has been pretty bad in here. We have no heat. There were days that it was hovering around 60 in my office. I'm on the sixth floor and heat rises.
I'm sorry, that microphone's on.
Usually it's on. I just want to thank Jim and Tad for coming to visit the Government Center in North Reward, and they took a tour of every single floor of that building. And like I said, I'm here to speak for those inhabitants of that building. During this past cold snap, of course, the building has no heat, so it hovered around 60 degrees in my office, and it just got colder as you went down because heat rises. It usually stays around 53 degrees on the bottom floor in the clerk's office. Yeah, it's cold. They work with gloves, and it's just, I don't know how they do it. The HVAC in that building is, I guess Skip would say, way beyond its useful life. There are, the chillers that serve the building are no longer operational, so we have chillers that are setting, portable chillers that are setting outside the building that, thank goodness, are no longer powered by diesel generator. That was another fiasco within itself. The building's windows are not sealed, so therefore, the cold and any fumes come right through the building in every regard. Brain is a constant visitor through our windows as are wasps. On the first and second floor, there is a rat problem. I haven't experienced rats. I don't believe anyone above the third floor has experienced rats. But the building is in serious need of some attention. It is getting until it's almost inhabitable. On many of the air conditioning vents, you can see some type of black mold or black substance that is coming through the vents. So our HVAC has to be addressed, and it's been passed over year over year. And I would say if it was inspected, the building just needs to be torn down and something else happened. I thank you for your time. If you have any questions, there's several hundred employees there, and they need a better place to work. Thank you.
Thank you. Any other questions? I'm looking forward to my tour. I'm going to go up and take a look at it. Obviously, something we value. It's our county center, Titusville, our county seat. Our county seat. Yep, our county seat. We definitely want to take care of that. Any questions? That was the only card we had. Thank you for being here and sharing that. I have questions. I don't know if the board has any questions. I'll start. I mentioned, fascinated with, first of all, staff has done an excellent job in presenting to us the data. Very concise, clear, communicated extremely well in a very, very straightforward and simple way. On slide 19, the Utility Services Department of Infrastructure Needs. Notice countywide, we have a, this is a big ticket, a $793 million shortfall. Well, I'm curious, what's going to be the impact of that shortfall? Does that mean we will be facing moratorium? If we don't meet that unfunded need, does that mean we're not going to get building permits because they can't get, they can't get sewer permits? I know we're facing a moratorium in a big part of the campaign and septics, but what does that, what is the impact of that?
A consent order. Pardon me? It would be a consent order from the state of Florida. What does that mean? Explain that. Um, and probably Morris can explain it more from a legality side, but a consent order is in the state of Florida. Uh, it would come from the Department of Environmental Protection through their legal department, notifying us that we are not abiding with state law. So, the projects associated on that list, majority of them, if not all, are associated with the Florida statute. So, nutrient removal, as we have those conversations, and all of our laws as related to water and wastewater are in chapter 403. So, if you go under chapter 403, 403.064, 403.085, and I say this because as a director, it's just ingrained and there's subsequent laws coming. Um, it's a notification, basically, that within those laws, they give you a deadline of when you have to achieve your goal. So, if we do not achieve it, legally, we are not following the law, which would then result in a consent order.
Sure.
So, let me ask further. So, this doesn't mean, I mean, if we have an unfunded need, and whatever that may be, um, main, um, capacity in the plant, does that mean we, we don't have the ability to treat the sewage? No, sir.
The, so the, the question came, um, Commissioner, that what, what's occurred in Florida, at least on the, on the wastewater side, is about, uh, 2020, 2021, Florida started enacting a bunch of laws increasing the, um, standard of disposal treatment. Um, you know, if we go back prior, you hear the buzzwords of nutrient reduction. Well, that requires advanced wastewater treatment. That is the expectation, not only the state of Florida, but the EPA expect. All of that has a cost association. Um, if you think of how the, um, and I, you know, not to put it in such a way, but the business model of what utility services are, we are very different from most other utilities, even from a Brevard County geographic. When we think of COCO, it's one continuous area that COCO oversees. When you think of Melbourne, it's the same model. When you think of Brevard County utility services, we are essentially six independent utility services, none of which we have the ability to interconnect. So, in the magnitude of, um, how our logistics are set up, we really don't have the benefit of, uh, scales of economics, so to speak. What we do for one, we have to do for another. The issue then becomes, if we look at them individually, some of the areas, um, again, from a, um, payback period, from what we would generate in that area, would be a lengthy amount of time. So, we're constantly doing a fund shifting. But now, with the intensity of these state laws, and let's not forget, what really threw this into a wrench was 2022-2023, and I know there was the graph showing the construction index, but that really threw a wrench in it, because what, I, I'll give you an example. The norm for a typical lift station project used to be about one, 1.2 million. Now, on those same projects, they're 2.4. And when I talk with other utility directors, it's just, um, you know, 30 years of doing this, the data points of what I used to think would be the price of a project have been thrown out, because they're constantly moving higher and higher.
So, what I hear you're saying, this is real interesting, this is not necessarily just quantitative treatment, but these costs are what are probably qualitative treatment, that we meet standards that are based by state law, which I assume a lot of those state laws were mandated by federal law as well. Yes. So, it's not just, have to still defend the state a little bit. Well, it was probably many of the, the nutrient reduction requirements of federal law as well.
Absolutely. But when you're going through this, when you're going through the exercise of achieving the goals of whether it's water or wastewater quality, you have to look at it from the sense of what service area are we expected to provide. And I understand, um, they may not be coming today, but as a utility, you have to be at least three to five years ahead of it. Because if you think in the world of development, they move much quicker than we do in government. So, again, it's quantitative and qualitative. Yeah. Yeah.
So, the next question I have is, are any of these standards eminent? Are we facing any immediate consent orders? I mean, we're already facing the septic moratorium, but what are we looking at from a time frame when we have to suddenly find ourselves?
The closest ones right now are going to be the water treatment plans. This is related to the PFAS rule. Right now, the EPA has set a threshold of 2029. However, there is conversation at a federal level of expanding that to 2031. The other ones with related to the wastewater quality, I believe it's either 2032 or in 2034 are the threshold for that. But as we speak and we say this conversation now, there are still additional laws being, um, or bills being provided. Um, right now, um, it's one of those things, and, you know, uh, Commissioner, you've spent a lot of time in Tallahassee, and you know, when you see the same common bill being floated year after year, um, it might not pass the first year, it might not pass the third, but it may be the fifth or the seventh it will get through. And what's alarming to us as utility directors, we're seeing those bills. We're seeing those bills that have been floated now four or five years straight. And in conversations, it will occur. So now, that would be an additional cost on top of what's presented.
And I know in Tallahassee, I've been there, we run a victory lap, which is good. We have increased the standards, the nutrient standards, we're going to clean up Florida waterways, which is good. But we're not providing the funding, or we're not having the utility hearings or the ratepayer hearings. We know there's got to be a follow-up. People have to step up and fund those. And there seems to be a lot of public support. Sir, do you think we have any immediate need to start looking at rate adjustments to meet this standard?
Oh, absolutely. And it's already in the works, sir. So, upon the conclusion of this, and I've consulted with both Jim and Tad, we've already completed the connection fee. And again, the connection fees from this department go back from 1993 and have been unadjusted. So, and as we are currently speaking, I have a rate consultant going through our financial model with recommendations on, not to be presumptuous, but if the connection fees were to be placed and if we showed that graph, there is still a delta there. And let me say, there isn't a project in our CIP that I would say we should be doing. These are literally, we must be doing. The shoulds have been removed about two years ago.
Well, we know there's a lot of public support for cleaning up the lagoon. Oh, hi, Commissioner. You have the floor.
Oh, thank you. Sorry to interrupt. I was just wondering, just because we're on this topic, are these things that could be paid for by the infrastructure sales tax? And what would that look like? Because when I talked to Morris last, we could still possibly have some time to update the language to include some of this stuff.
Morris, did you want to comment? I believe the question is, if the board revisited its decision to just renew the Save Our Indian River Lagoon half-cent surtax and instead make it a full penny with provisions for infrastructure, could funds generated by that be spent on these projects? And the answer to that would be yes.
Or even keep it at a half-cent, but just expand the allowable uses?
Potentially, yes. But it would be, even though it would still be a half-cent, it would be the equivalent of implementing a new surtax.
Well, I'm looking at our half-cent generated last five years, right, about $500 million. I'm looking at $793 million. So it would not fund it. And that's if you used every penny of it, which means none of that money would be going toward cleaning up the lagoon. It would be providing sewer treatment. Can I ask one technical thing on that?
And if you did, let's say you did the half penny and expand it in that last scenario, half of the funds generated there would then go to the municipal governments. Roughly, yes.
It doesn't just stay in Brevard County.
Right.
Either by formula or, you know, the allocated to our local agreements. But, yes, it wouldn't be exclusively to the county. And if we sort of revise the existing half-cent to expand the uses, we would absolutely be in a position where we'd be renegotiating those agreements with the municipalities.
And, Commissioner, let me add, because you were mentioning about state funding. So on the next board meeting, you'll be seeing that we're going to be submitting for state revolving fund. And state revolving fund is a great program. It started in the early 80s. It's associated with water, wastewater. However, due to the demand, the rules have changed. What the rules have changed used to be you could submit for multiple projects. Now they've scaled that back. Now what they've done is they've scaled it back where you can submit on multiple projects, but as an entity, the maximum we can get is $25 million. Now that's pending what their committee decides. So, you know, we will be leveraging that because it is a lower interest rate. We always submit every opportunity that FDEP has, and we've been in communication with our lobbyists, both on the state and federal level, to try to see how we can leverage it. As we know, we're doing the effort as it's related with the space industry. And we want to make sure that we're leveraging federal dollars and not county dollars on the infrastructure for that. So, we are definitely trying to stay as aware as we can to stretch our dollars as far as we can. I have a lot of questions.
Can I ask you a couple? Sure, sure. You know, we're not alone in this in bringing our wastewater up to the new standard, right? So, how do other municipal governments, how are they tackling that?
Well, they have an advantage because, like I said, for, you know, and like I say, I feel quite comfortable in that question because, Commissioner, for 10 years prior to being a utility director, I was an engineering consultant as a VP doing water wastewater water with a variety. The logistics of these utilities are they were able to capitalize on a treatment plant, and there you have the ability to get, you know, the scales of economics in terms of keeping your price down. But as we function, we're essentially six independent. So, if you think about the nutrient removal, we have six wastewater plants. So, what would an advantage of, you know, whether it's a cocoa, Melbourne, cocoa beach, they're putting their assets all into one asset. We have to do that times six. And it's not just a nutrient removal. Now it's into the disposal, especially if you're in the Indian River Lagoon. So, disposal methods is traditionally a deep injection well. And going back eight years, if you asked me what a deep injection well cost, it used to be six to eight million was the swag number. Today, we're getting into numbers of 25 and 30. The state now has now said, but every five years, you have to do a test on that well. And the testing period is about a five-day period. The state used to allow a period of time where they would allow you to discharge to the Indian River Lagoon during the testing period for the benefit of testing the well. Come 2032, that is no longer allowed. So, now that requires a second deep injection well at a cost of around 25, 30 million, so that you have the benefit of when you test one well, you transfer it over so nothing gets discharged to the lagoon. These are the challenges that we have, times six.
Can I ask one follow-up there? Reuse. We talk about reuse a lot here because Viera has reuse for, and so has Sun Tree, for irrigation. Now, is that cheaper, a cheaper model, producing reuse water than having to do another deep injection well?
Is it cheaper?
If you're starting to construct a new plant, would you go the way of, we're going to look to a deep injection well, or we're going to try to do reuse?
So, the DEP does not allow reuse to be a primary disposal. They consider that a secondary. The reason being is, it's considered a secondary because we have no control of the homeowners shutting off their irrigation pumps. Right now, today, we are producing more reuse than the demand. So, if you can imagine, we have the wetlands that we're familiar with. By permit, that is our primary disposal. Why? Because we control it. So, the DEP doesn't give you an option. If you decide to go full reuse, you don't need to do a deep injection well. They don't consider that an option.
That's interesting on the demand situation because we know when it gets dry here that there's pretty heavy demand on reuse, at least in this part of the county.
So, it's cooler weather right now? But I'll guarantee you in about a month or two, it'll be flipped.
When it rains more. Okay.
All right, sir.
What are we looking at to fix this problem? We see the gross amount, the number. But what are we looking at as far as potential rates and adjustment of rates? Is it a significant?
So, for connection fees right now, just to give you a sneak preview, the sanitary or the sewer connection rates would double. And what are they? Commissioner, I will, if this is a pop quiz, I hope I score a passing grade. I think right now it's 2,300, 2,400. They're going to go up to 48. The water, because we have smaller, we have less water, but it's a calculation, and again, I'd be thrilled to discuss this one-on-one on how the calculation was formed. It's going from 1,700 to, I believe, 5,000 per ERC. And how about the monthly rates? Monthly rates are still being worked on. So, we don't have those numbers yet? I anticipate in the next two to three months we will. Okay.
The other, gosh, this is, you know, I assume we have a lot of the rate payers that are using Brevard County Sewer are in cities. This is not a jurisdictional thing, especially with the cities doing the large annexations. So, this is not a county-city thing. A lot of our rate payers are in the cities. Am I correct?
So, when we talk about rate payers and incorporated, the beaches come to mind. This is where we have Satellite Bede, Indian Harbor, and whatnot. The only areas, like what we call South Central, that we reside in, Palm Shores, but the rest of it is really the Sun Tree, Vieira area. We do Merritt Island. We do Port St. John. So, those are really unincorporated. And then we have North Brevard. Okay.
So, two or three months, we'll get more news. You'll get more? Yeah. Yes. As far as the consent order, is that the right legal term to consent? It is, sir. Are we, are any of those imminent? I mean, within the next year or two? I mean, that's probably a question of Morris. I don't know. Not yet. Pardon me? Not yet. Not yet. We still have a window. We still have a window. But you mentioned that window is about a three-year period. We need to start thinking.
Yeah, and let me say, sir, that for the most part, most of those projects, if not all, are already in motion. So, we've already gone through the RFQ portion. We have a consultant. We are working through the design. And the benefit of that is because whether it's federal or state, even when you do come for an opportunity for a grant, they typically ask you what stage of the project it's in. It's critical that we get these projects at least, if not more, than 90% complete because that seems to be the threshold that they're looking for you to be seriously considered. So, as we're churning out these projects, and even though we may be in a situation today to say, why are you designing it for the benefit you don't have the money to construct it, we still need to because in order to be, you know, to be viable to get those grants when they do become available.
It makes sense. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? I'll give a little history here. I've been, you know, when I first got elected in 84 to the county commission, our prior commission in the early, late 70s, early 80s, were facing a consent order or a federal mandate to get, there was direct discharge into the Indian River Lagoon, part of the Federal Clean Water Act. And a lot of those plants that we had were not county plants, they were, with the growth of the 60s and 70s and the space programs, they allowed developers to come and develop these package treatment plants. And there were all kinds of package plants that were just not working. The developers didn't put capital reserve there. We had to inherit them, and affluent was just being dumped into the lagoon. I mean, raw sewage, practically. So, it was a lot of courage. Our commission stepped forward, and, you know, in so many things, they'll probably never get the due credit, but the commission of the early 80s, late 70s, really had a great solid waste director, I mean, a wastewater director, which, as we do now, great staff, a lot of capability. But they, they, well, they were, had a gun, a federal gun pointed at their head, but they stepped up and had to do a rate adjustment. The public hearings were so big, they had to find some of, all the largest churches they could find. They couldn't fit people into any of the public meetings. But it was the issue of the day. And, but they laid the groundwork for so much of what has got us to this point now, our prosperity that we have now, and has been based on what they did. And, and it sounds like history does repeat itself. We're going to be faced with some challenges here, and, and I appreciate it. The good news, it sounds like we have a little bit of lead time, but I, what I'm trying to get at is where are our decision points? Do we have a, a set of benchmarks that we need to act and react? And I hope that, I know the staff gives us, though, that we, we don't catch ourself in a situation where we, you know, we haven't really thought ahead and addressed those. So I appreciate you bringing these numbers up. It was really interesting. Any other questions on the, on the presentations? Okay. Well, that's great. We, we, we, matter of time with plenty to spare. I want to thank staff for their, yes.
Chairman, chairman.
Yes.
I would, I would like to make a motion, okay?
Okay.
Okay.
Can we, can we take an action as a workshop? Are we able to vote?
The board cannot take final action at a workshop. The board can generally give staff direction and ask staff to bring things back for formal action at a future board meeting or things of that nature. Okay. Did you hear that, commissioner?
All right. How about a request?
Okay. All right.
How about a request?
Yes.
Can I make it over?
Yes. Yes. Can, is that more? Yes, sir. Absolutely.
Okay.
Okay. I move to direct staff to be required at the general fund millage rate to a level that would generate revenue needed to address the county's infrastructure and other critical needs.
Evaluation would identify these needs and include any and potentially impact property owners.
We should bring back this to the board at a future meeting to discuss.
That's absolutely a direction that the board could provide staff at this workshop.
Okay. Good. Good motion. Is there a second?
I thought we couldn't do a motion. Well. But we agree. I agree.
Do we do a motion, a second, and a vote on that? We're not going to take final action, but we're asking staff? You can take a motion on directing staff to bring back. Okay.
I will second that.
Items for consideration. So there's a second to the motion. Any discussion? All those?
Can I clarify? Yes. To reset the millage to, what are we talking about, a critical funding need?
Commissioner Goodson, did you want to respond to that question?
It would be to reset the millage to handle the critical needs. Is that to exceed the charter cap?
I don't think that's, I'm hearing.
I'm missing it.
I'm missing it. To establish, I'm hearing that it's direction for staff to do an evaluation and analysis of where the millage would need to be reset in order to fund critical needs, and then the commissioner listed off things to be included in that analysis. Yeah.
Yeah. With more, the way I'm hearing, I understand it, address the critical needs. We come back with categories or a list of critical needs for you all and what the cost would be, what the millage would be to generate the revenue to offset the cost.
Okay. And also to clarify, we're not voting even for a tentative millage until July. Correct. So, you know, you can decide that, you know, at the end of June for July meeting, or you can give direction today to, you know, to start preparing those things, but ultimately they're not voting for any of that until July.
That's correct. This wouldn't be action today, this would be just direction. Otherwise, staff will prepare a budget that is within the limits set forth in the charter. So, we're going to have two budgets prepared for us.
We're going to have staff, staff is going to go in the direction of if you don't get a critical funding need, this is what fits within the charter cap. And if you do get a critical funding need from the board, then this is, this is the budget, is that?
My understanding of the request was that we would be coming back to the board with an evaluation of what those critical needs are and what that millage would need to be set at. So, I think we would try to do that before we brought the proposed budget to the board in July and get direction, additional direction at that time.
And, Mr. Chair, and I apologize, I screwed up a little bit. You all asked for a third workshop. I mean, this may, that's what we can target it, bring it back for. And we had penciled in, we haven't put anything on the calendar to ask you officially, but we could have a third budget workshop after the second meeting in April. The same day, you know, you have your board meeting, finish, you know, hopefully around noonish, come to SIPP, come up here at one o'clock. And I believe that's April 21st, is that Tuesday. Yeah, thanks.
Would that give you time to meet the motion?
Yeah, because we'll have to sit down with the county attorney's office and the budget office. What I'm picturing is something to bring back to you all, to look at, and you tell us yes or no to start proceeding with developing a final critical need. So that way we can be, and that would be presented to you with the budget in July. I mean, you know, so I'm making, commissioners, I say, I say this so often, I'm making something up. So if we decide to, and I'm going to be silly, if we decide that we want to build a four-story on the Vieira and we put it as a critical need and we present it to you in April, you guys say, no, I don't want that in the budget. But if we come back and say we need to fix $10 million to the elevators and you agree with that, then that's what we put in the budget.
Well, I do want to say, Commissioner, that is an extremely good motion, because we've all been briefed by staff, and it's been difficult because of the need for direction. So I appreciate your motion. I think it's well thought out, and I will support it. Do we want to take a vote? Any discussion? All in, we have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Commissioner Atkinson. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed?
Aye.
So it's a 4-1 vote with Commissioner Delaney voting against. Did I read that? I think so. Is that correct?
I think that's what I heard. And we're going to have these options brought back to us in April.
Yes, we're not committing to anything. These are just options.
So we're agreeing to have a workshop now in April? Is that part of it? I'm fine with that. I'm fine with it, too. But I mean, is that what we're going to do?
I'm working a little bit on the fly, so what we'll bring back is critical needs for you guys to decide on, to you, what would be a critical need?
But even in the workshop, where it's not a vote, that's some direction. It would be direction, yes.
And so that would be... I have a question. Yes.
Would we be able, because of the topic of this workshop, would we possibly be able to do it as an evening workshop so more people would be able to be available as far as the public goes?
Well, I don't know if this is intended to be a public hearing like a public hearing on the budget. This is a workshop. If we're calling this a workshop, we wouldn't be able to take a final action.
Yeah, it would be a workshop. Like I said, I'm doing a little on the fly for you, Mr. Chair, but that we'd present you a number of items that you could take a look at, and then you would give us direction, and then we'd go and develop the final resolution or whatever for critical need and present that as when we present you a budget in July.
And we were talking about the second regular meeting, so that's a morning meeting, so... 21st. Right? Yeah. So if it were following that, I mean, I think just sort of naturally, 1 or 2 o'clock, by
virtue of that, we're all here. Right. It's a normal meeting at 9 a.m. We have that meeting, maybe a lunch break and come back, probably run. Like you said, I agree with that. I don't think we could... I wouldn't support doing it at night. I think that would be a hardship.
Yeah.
And we're not going to take a formal action. It's a workshop. It's time for us to consider. Yes?
Mr. Chair, one more thing. I wanted to discuss the email that I sent out on Tuesday evening, if we have the opportunity to do that.
Absolutely. So we voted on the workshop. Thank you, Commissioner Goodson. And I do have a procedural question on that.
Oh, sure.
Yeah. So we will... Would we advertise that as a part of the regular meeting that we'd phase into, or do we need a time certain to the workshop?
I would call it a workshop. You know, agenda your regular meeting and then come in as a workshop. Okay.
So if we... That makes sense.
Yeah.
If we end up early, we can come in here earlier on the workshop. Okay. Yes, Commissioner Ackerson.
Thank you. So probably everyone in here saw the email that I sent out on Tuesday evening. I wanted to explain it a little bit to my fellow commissioners, but also to staff. So last year, being new, I felt like I was drinking from a water hose, right, trying to understand this budget. I don't feel like I had a whole lot of input in it, to be perfectly honest with you. So staff did what staff does, which is make it balanced, because we have to. I feel like I want to participate a little bit more in that this year, to the best of my ability anyway. So my office just went through and looked at some non-essential county services. All of these services matter to someone, multiple someones. They matter to me. But I think it's important that we look at what we can, because we're not talking about cutting the fat, right? That's... We're not... We're talking about service cuts here, because the only way to balance the budget is either to bring in more money or cut stuff. So this is here because I wanted the commissioners just to have a look at some of the things that maybe we don't have to do. I mean, Jim, you said, took a haircut last year. Commissioner, you said, facing challenges. All of that is lovely language for, we're in trouble here. You know, we all have a budget at home that we try to balance, doing different things. So while some of them seem mean, it's a couple of comments I've heard. Yeah, these ones hurt. What I was hoping is that maybe we don't discuss it right now, but it encourages us to go to staff and say, hey, is this foolish thing that Kim brought up possible? Or do I like it or don't I like it? And get staff to weigh in on it a little bit. While we probably, as a group, might not want to put our names to these cuts, because they are emotional, maybe if we tell staff what we think, what we could support in full or in part, that gives staff some direction when we do ask you to start dealing with this budget, right? If you have commissioners who overlap in things that they would support reducing, it might help staff create some cuts that are needed. That's what my email was meant to do. It was not to support getting rid of any of these things wholly or in part. It was just an idea for us to start talking for real about what some of these cuts could look like.
Okay. I think it was good input. Very good input. Thank you. Okay. I think we'll get to reports.
Do we have a county manager report? Yes, Mr. Chair. I do have one. Thank you. The email went out a little bit earlier today from Billy Prasad, the planning and development director. We've been invited to the LNG workshop. I'm calling it the LNG workshop. It's an open house or workshop. The Canaveral Port Authority, next Tuesday, the 24th. We've been asked to be one of the presenters, and Billy will be there representing us, presenting. And you'll see the slides. They were sent to you, and the slides were emphasizing the process it would take if an LNG plant was built on the county, if that became county land. I just want to point out, it is not county land right now. It is port land. If somehow the port decided to sell it to the folks to build an LNG plant, there's a long process they would have to go to to get it permitted or allowed in the county. So Billy is going to explain that, and part of the process is explain to the citizens that there will be a number of chances for the citizens to speak up or have public input if that plant happened to be proposed in county land. So I just wanted to, since I had, since we just worked on it, I had the chance to discuss it in public. I just want to make sure it's out there. So that, and so I'm sure Billy would do a very nice job representing us and explaining the process.
So I have a question on that. So I assume what that means is if that transfer were to become reality and it becomes county land, and they wanted to put an LNG plant, they would have to do things like comp plan amendments, zoning requests. Is that kind of what we're...
Yes, sir. They would have to do a comp plan amendment, they'd have to do zoning, and they would have to go through the site plan process and meet our code.
And the comprehensive plan amendment wouldn't be just a future land use map amendment, they would also require a text amendment to the comp plan.
Okay. It would not be an easy process.
Yeah. All right. Any questions on that? Do we need a vote? No. No. I just let you know.
So that way you're aware. And I'm sorry, it gave me a chance to speak a little bit to the public on the floor of letting the public know that, yeah.
Commissioner Goodson, it's your district. Are you okay with that?
I am.
Okay. Thank you. All right. Anything else? Yes, sir. All right. We will move to county attorney. No report, Mr. Chair. No report. Commission District 1?
I just want to say thank you guys for letting me participate remotely today, and I hope everybody has a great day.
Thank you. District 2? District 3?
No report. District 4? I'll say something really quick. I think I've done this every year. Brevard Zoo ranked as fifth best zoo in the nation in the USA Today 10 Best Readers' Choice Awards. So congratulations to our zoo. It's a beautiful time of the year. If you get the chance, get out and see the animals. It's a wonderful thing to have one of the best zoos in the country right here in Brevard County. Congratulations to them.
It is a phenomenal zoo. It's great. And I learned something. I was just there a week or two ago. Giraffes love to eat Brazilian peppers. I mean, they love it. I watched them. They, man, they devour them. Yeah. I mean, do we need to introduce giraffes into Brevard's native habitat? There you go. Yeah. Thank you, Commissioner. I have no report. So I think.
Mr. Perry, you skipped me.
What's that? You skipped me. Oh, my gosh. District 3. I'm sorry. I don't have any report, though. No report. Okay. How did I do that? I'm so sorry. Okay. I have no report. I think that concludes our business. If no objection, we will adjourn the meeting. Thank you.
The opinions expressed by any member of the public during any period of public comment do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions.