Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioners. Oops, let me pull this. So we just have one presentation to go through. I'll try to talk slower than normal, but it's not a very long presentation, and then we'll bring it forward to you guys for discussion. Get sure. Why don't we do this? Let's do it. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic, one nation, under God, indivisible. To vote on Goodson? Yes, we do. Thank you. I have a great, a lot of support on this board to keep me in line. A motion be in order for recognizing Commissioner Goodson. So moved. Motion to second. I allow Commissioner Goodson to call in. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimous. Commissioner Goodson, you are in. Thank you, sir. Okay, Jim. Okay. So with the slide, so we're going to go over a few subjects, the board direction, charter cap language, impacts, county comparisons, the finding a critical need process, some general fund critical needs for you to look at. We also did add in additional revenue options for you to look at, and then questions in board discussion. I'm already talking too fast. So at the March 19th workshop, the board directed staff to evaluate what steps it would take to be required to reset the general fund millage to a rate that would generate revenues needed to the rest of the county's infrastructure and other critical needs. We're going to give you a little bit of background on the millage rate and some possible methods to look at on the critical needs. And then we're going to, as the board instructor, we're going to show you steps, we're going to present the steps required to reset the general fund millage. So this chart, you've seen it a number of times. This is just a reminder for all. We have underneath our charter cap, and you'll see the definition coming up. But underneath the charter cap, we're limited to CPIU or 3%, whatever is less. So as the taxable values, which is the red line, increases, you're going to see the millage rate drop, which is the blue line. So there's the examples we've had for the last seven, excuse me, yeah, it's the last seven fiscal years. And this is the chart we use to determine the CPI. Our CPI is the CPIU, and it's the average of the 12 months previous. When you look at the chart, the blue line is the CPI that we've been using to increase the revenue. It's the way the charter cap works. You look at last year's revenue, and you can increase by the CPI. So if you looked in 2015, our revenue increased by 0.12%. This coming fiscal year, which is all the way at the right, we'll be able to increase by 2.63%. The dash green line is the cap. We're not allowed to go above 3%. So those three fiscal years in 2021, 2022, and 2023, as you see, the inflation rate was higher. So we were only allowed to go up to 3%. So the year that costs went up 8%, we only captured 3%. And then if you look, this year's inflation rate, I went through, already through March, which is at 3.3%. The producer price index is up at 4%. I want to point that out, because remember, our 2.63% is a number from last year, 2025, but it applies to the budget that starts October 1st to 26 and runs through 27. So if we start facing 4% inflation as of now through the end of the next fiscal year, our next fiscal year, we're only going up to 2.36%. So it's always a lagging number, because that's just the way it's set up in our charter and the way we have to do with CPI. So it's just a reminder there, if gas prices don't go down and some of the other inflationary impacts, we won't be able to address them in the next fiscal year's budget. I'm going to point out the same thing we talked about the other day, just, and I don't mean to interrupt Jim, Mr. Chair, but, you know, that's CPI. So you can call that the inflation that government admits to, okay, at the federal level, but that's compounded. So it's a little misleading when you see the peak and it sort of goes down, because each of those years is compounded from the prior one. Yeah. And I can't give you the perfect math, because, you know, if you just do it based on the street percentage, we have to do new construction and some other things. But those three years that we're maxed at the 3 percent, we are able to capture about 9.27 percent increase when the overall inflation rate was like 1.17. So we lost about 8 percent a year, and that compounds year over the year. You know, once you lose it, you can't gain it back, because you can never go above the 3 percent. So the years, those couple, those three years have had an impact, and I have a fear that we're going to see that later this calendar year and then the next fiscal year, that we're not going to be able to keep up with the inflation. This goes back to the previous chart. There's where our military rate has dropped by 27 percent since February 2019. And then you look at the bottom, those are our comparison counties we look at when putting our budget together, that we have a lower military rate than everybody else. And then in 2019, our military rate was 3.9 percent. So of the other seven peer counties that we looked at, peer, P-E-E-R, only one had a lower military rate, even we did before it started really going down in 2019. But that gives you an idea of what other folks are looking at. You only have two counties that have decreased over the last seven years, and you have three counties that have, excuse me, you have had three counties that have decreased the last seven years, and then you only have three counties that have increased, and then one, Seattle has kept their military rate the same. And so, I mean, whenever you keep the military rate the same, if taxable values go up eight percent, that means you capture eight percent. Taxable values go up here eight percent, and we have a cap of 2.6, we only go up 2.6 percent. So it's just a reminder of what we're facing compared to other counties. There is the exact definition of the finding of critical need. What you really need to see is about in the middle, and it talks about paragraph A and B. You have to go to your charter to look that up. But if a supermajority of the board concurs in finding that such an excess is necessary because of emergency or critical need, that finding shall be set forth, the ultimate facts upon which is based, and shall be valid for the one, excuse me, for one single budget year. In the packet, we also included, and we'll talk about it again briefly, but we included the last two times the board found critical need and the resolutions in there. If you read through it, one of them was quite detailed describing all the different critical needs, if the board went so far as that, that's the type of resolution we'd be presenting for you guys, let you decide what you want to do. But you got to, if we declare critical needs, you have to be pretty well defined, and you have to follow the charter. The date process for that is we're going through the February through March, or February through May is the budget workshops and getting board direction. Staff will be turning in their department budgets early May-ish, I believe, like May 4th or something, somewhere in that neck of the woods. Staff, that's where they put together, then we sit down, county manager, assistant county manager, budget office, go through all the requests. We sit down with staff, each department will be presenting Memorial Day week and that first week of June, and then we start putting our heads together, start developing, we get the balanced budget, and we put the budget message together for you. July 13th is the date we'll be sending a proposed budget. What we do is, because July 21st is your tentative millage, so July 13th is when we'd have the draft agenda out, so we'll have the proposed budget put together for you guys then. July 21st, there's two major dates on here. The first one's in green. On July 21st, the board sets the tentative millage. So if you all decided to go to critical needs or anything else, that is the millage, you set the millage then, and you don't go lower than the millage you set on the tentative millage. I mean, if there is a process, you can go above it, but it's not worth talking about, because you have to send out new trim notices, but you have to set that millage rate at that meeting. That gives the property appraiser enough time to put together the trim notice and mail that out to all the property owners throughout the county. The second important date is in September, and that's where the board adopts the tentative and final millages after the first budget hearing. If you don't adopt, after the first budget hearing, you can't raise the millage rate at the final budget hearing, so those are the important dates. So basically, you can't go above on July 21st, and you can't go above after the first September meeting. A little drink of water. Hang on a second. So we laid out, you know, there's the dates we put the budget together. We talked about critical needs, so the question is, if you decided to do critical needs and had a resolution, when would you vote on and adopt the resolution? And I hate to say the answer is depends, but the two times we've done it, we've done it two different ways. The first time we did it, we adopted it in September 13th of 2016, and in 2019, we adopted it July 23rd, which was the tentative millage. So just to let you know, there's a couple different ways that we follow whatever the board would tell us, whatever method the board would like. I have a quick question, if I may. Yes. What makes the determination between July or September? I have no idea. We kind of went back and looked, and the board decided to do one in September and decided to do one in July. So it's just no rhyme or something. Okay. Does trim, I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, how does the trim process affect that? The trim, if, because critical needs, if you declare critical needs, you're going to go above the charter cap. So the trim in July, you have to have sent out the trim notice with the higher, above the cap millage. Right. So, so if the board were to head that direction, because of trim notice, you have to get that to the property appraiser in, in July so that she can send that out in August. I'm just, yeah, for the, there you go. That's correct. And just to add to that, you could set that proposed millage in July at the higher rate and then adopt the critical need in September, I think, which is what was done in that first instance. So the, the finding of critical need isn't really related to trim other than you have to set that higher millage rate in July. And I should add that, that works for any millage, just not general fund. If you want to, if you want to declare critical need on any millage, you got to make sure you meet the same timelines as we're showing off here. I keep saying general fund, but it would apply to any of the non-voter approved millage rates. So we're just going to go over some of the highlights of what could be critical needs and the impact. So this, these are the, the slides or the areas you heard from the last budget meeting where we went through and we had the pictures and all the definitions of all the different needs. And, you know, so we have infrastructure, public safety, general countywide. And we have some numbers up there. I mean, they could be higher, they could be lower, but that was some of the items we could identify pretty quickly. There's about $47 million we could, up to that we can show you and have you decide whether that's a critical need or not. In red, I want to point out that the ad valorem, because this has come up, ad valorem taxes do not fund the utilities or solid weight infrastructure or operations. Those are funded through user fees and not included any finding of critical need or the military set. So what we did as a staff, we went through and we called them options for lack of a better way. I mean, but these are just examples to show you of critical, different ideas for critical needs. I'll go a little bit backwards. If you look at option three, option three, if the military was, it's 3.0486, that was from two fiscal years ago. If the board decided to go reset the military to two years ago, that would generate about 22, almost $23 million. And an impact on a taxable value home of $200,000 would be about $36. And then down below, you can see option three, where it says 18.43, that's the increase per $100,000 of taxable value. So if somebody had a taxable value of $500,000, and I didn't write the math down, I did it last night, the tax increase would be about $90. Option one is the, if you go back three years, the fiscal 22-23 rate, which is 3.2619, the impact to a $200,000 taxable value home would be just under $80, that would generate about $39 million. Option two, we just put, we picked something somewhere in the middle, just so it just helps us with the math, if you want to look at an impact of $50, that generates, we backed into that millage rate of 3.11, and that would estimate about $28 million. So we just, we have this slide just to show you, trying to give you some sample impacts, some sample amount of revenue that different millages could generate for everything. So, so, and I'll go back, and this is a little bit more detailed on some of the, the possible ways of critical needs, you know, you've seen the slide, the information on the left, you already saw, you saw before at the March 19th meeting, the $1.5 million was restored for resurfacing. On the right, we asked Public Works to put together, those are some of the projects, if you declared a critical need, those are some of the, if you declared, and if you declared a critical need for Public Works, those are some of the projects that we start on immediately in fiscal year 27, just to give you an idea what their, what the needs are across the county, and they're pretty much everywhere across the county itself. A little different information, you haven't seen, the jail, we talked about some of the capital for the, the jail, you know, the doors, these, the, I keep calling them the tents, but the sprung structures, the HVAC, you know, coolers, and then below you can see, this is the cost increase, or the, the costs have been increasing, they include the jail operations and the facility CIP, the jail is pretty old, I've been here 35 years, it was old, old enough when I got here, and we've added on since then, so we are facing some jail needs that will be coming up in the next handful of years. This is information that you've seen before, that's all the facility, not all, that's facilities being maintained by Public Works, so the facilities group, but we talked about all this in March, the, between the north area, the central area, and the south area, and I forget, in one of the briefings that we got asked, the south area includes Vieira, so you're pretty much, when we say south, you're looking at Vieira south, central is between here and 528, and then north area is above 528. It's not a bad way to divide up the assets across the county, aren't distributed evenly, but that comes pretty close to dividing each county in the thirds based on the assets. Same information that you saw last time about parks and recreation, this is just to let you know that we have needs coming up in the next few years. Same thing, the millage that will be, the last one will be paid off, the debt millage will be paid off this year, but we as the voters voted on 2000 and 2006, so you're looking at structures and parks and infrastructure that have been built 25 years ago, and those are just the ones with the, with the referendum, doesn't include some of our older parks, so we do have quite a bit of needs coming back and forth on parks that we'll be facing and adjusting to over the next handful of years again. IT, same slide, it's in there just to point out that we will have some yearly costs starting in 27, down below for storage center systems and working on our networks, that's, I mean, there's small numbers compared to what you see in public works or the jail, but I want to point out IT is infrastructure, you know, we can't get anything done without our IT, and they've been pretty good with us working on their budget, but we do have some needs coming up, keep seeing the same thing, don't I, folks, so, sheriff office, this is items that you hadn't seen at the last one, but the sheriff has the same issues, infrastructure, equipment and operations, infrastructure, there's lots on the jail, equipment, they, you know, they have, I believe, over 500 vehicles in their fleet, you know, I'm an old transit guy, so I know that's a lot of turnover every year, a lot of needs on their equipment, and in operation, we have a lot on the county jail, we have inmate food services, medical care, both of those, as Commissioner Feltner pointed out, the CPI that they're admitting to, we've all been to the grocery store, I mean, I'd love my groceries and only be at 2.6%, I don't believe that number for groceries, and Medicare, medical care, same thing, that is not at 2.63%, that's a much higher number, so the sheriff's office are facing the same issues there, as we are in our budget. Public safety, I'm going to kind of go counterclockwise on the slides, but at the upper left-hand corner, that's in the orange, what we want to point out is that the board's public safety is the number one priority, and we've been following through that the last handful of years, so public safety, which includes a sheriff, fire rescue, and the medical examiner, the share of the general, general fund has gone from a little over 53% to just under 60% in the last five or six years. When you take a look on the fire rescue side, you can see, and I'm not criticizing or anything like that, but I'll just point out, there's the investment we made with our firefighters last year in 2025, their comp and benefits is $71 million, they're expecting this coming year, $91 million, that's all part of their contract that they just received or agreed to, and then when you look at the upper right-hand corner, the, as they call it, the blue side, the emergency medical transfer, their amount of funding went up over a little over $10 million in the general fund. The board told us to focus on public safety, and so that was the budget, we balanced budget we delivered to you guys last year, just showing what some of the impacts were. We talked briefly with the sheriff, with medical care, but don't forget, we're an employer too, so we're facing the same pressures that we're getting on both health insurance and on the risk management, homeowners and homeowners see it through their homeowners insurance, we see it through our property insurance, our workers' comp, auto liability, all those regular insurance things that everyone faces. You can see that our balance forward, or basically our money in the bank for employee benefits has dropped from $40 million to about $23 million, and on the risk management side, $20 million down to $4 million, and I explained at the last meeting that we're going to take a closer look at how we allocate the costs, how we come up with the costs, how we deal with everything, but I have this slide to point out to you that, so let's just say we need to raise health insurance by 10%. Well, that 10%, that's 10% more in the fire rescue budget, that's 10% more in the sheriff's budget, so we got to, how to, I'm sorry, I didn't back it in the right way, but what we got to do is we got to keep that, we got to stop the bleeding and employee balance forward, we got to start balancing out, because eventually you're going to run out of money, and you're going to start putting the backs on the back of the departments, but we're funding the departments with all our own money, so we got to pay this no matter what, whether they put it in their budget, or whether they're going to shore up the fund. That didn't explain. Could I ask one technical question, Mr. Chair? A quick one. Okay. What happened with sovereign immunity this session, or are they not done with that? 300 or 500. Sovereign immunity went up, and we're expecting Melissa at the last, there's Melissa, so, yes, please. Just curious. So House Bill 145 was passed by the legislature. My understanding is it never got signed, but it never got signed, so I was, sorry about that. So I'll repeat myself. House Bill 145 did get passed by both the Senate and the House. It was not officially signed, but not vetoed by the governor, so my understanding is it's going to be law, effective October 1st. The limits are increasing to, I believe, 350,000 per incident and 500,000 per event. Thank you. Yeah, and that will increase our premium on our risk management side. So we are self-insured up to limits currently, and then have excess coverage as well. So our excess coverage costs will likely go up, but also our claim cost in that self-insured portion is going to go up dramatically as well. Thank you. So, to be honest, Commissioner, I'd look a little bit better if I look at my notes. The point I really want to make with employee benefits is, and risk management, those funds affect all budgets, whether you're board, constitutional officers, general fund, enterprise fund, special revenue funds. It affects across the board. Can we take a quick break? Can we take a quick break? We need to get into the bathroom. Okay. That's it. A couple more slides. Okay. Sorry about that. So, the bottom chart is the FRS rates. The blue is the regular and orange is special risk. Just pointing out is the FRS rates increase, increase our costs. You know, a 1% increase in FRS rate is the same thing as a 1% COLA increase. So we have to fund those. Those rates are set by the state. We added two different examples of other taxes, because we talked about revenues. We talked about the public service tax and gas tax at the last workshop. So what we did here is, and it's not the perfect math. If the board's interested, we'd have to go more details. But basically, what we did is we put on a sample tax bill of an employee's FPL bill, what their current bill was, and then it did a 5% and 10% on the bill. Like I said, it's not perfect. We'll do better math if you're interested. But it gives you an idea of a 5% increase on a public service tax. The impact to this customer would be about $76 a year. A 10% increase would be somewhere in the $150 range. And what those would do is generates between $16 and $33 million. So we just did this so you can, you know, what does $30 million in property tax, what's the impact to a homeowner? $30 million tax on a public service tax, what does that go to an average homeowner? So we brought that down as an example. And I will say it's not my bill. Mine came in today during lunch, so I was doing the math during our lunch break two with the same one. And last but not least, we just have fuel taxes up there. We have the $0.09 tax and then the local option gas tax of $0.01 to $0.05. So we also, if you look in the light blue there, the consumer went through, we did 50 gallons a month. I went through a few studies. It looks like the average monthly consumption per vehicle is about 48. I saw a couple that say 48 to 50 has dropped from 55. So I asked the budget office put together based on 50 gallons, just for the easier math. But if you increase the gas tax by six cents, that would be about $3 a month, about $36 annually. And that's per vehicle. So if there's more than one vehicle in the household, it would be higher. That would also affect all your lawn services, your delivery services, whatever else that may be using different fuel taxes. And then I point out that it generates about $9 million, but that would only take care of transportation critical needs. That would not take care of infrastructure critical needs. So we just want to, because you both had, you had discussions on both items at the last workshop. So we just want to show a couple examples on that. So after that, you all indicated that you want to discuss it. And so we're here for questions, whatever we can do to help. And then any directions that you want us to bring back at the July, what do I call it? July tentative millage setting meeting. That's it. Thank you for your patience. Okay. Commissioner Delaney. Thank you. I had a question for either Jim or Melissa with the insurance. I had spoken with the school board because they're doing some different things with clinics and trying to do different things as far as like, um, early treatment and that kind of thing. Um, early detection of, um, you know, medical needs and whatnot. And they say that it's saving a lot of money for them, uh, especially when it comes to pharmaceuticals and prescriptions. And so I didn't know if we'd looked into any of that or any different ideas or, um, creative things that could bring savings. Is the mic still on? Can you hear me? Okay. Um, sure. Yes. Um, I have been speaking with the school board, um, and they are expanding. They currently have a couple of clinics. They are looking to expand that. And they've asked, um, the county through me if we would be interested in joining them because obviously the more lives involved, the more leverage you have to negotiate better prices. So I definitely indicated we would definitely be interested. Um, we're working, my understanding, he had some meetings, um, I think about a week ago. So I just need to follow up and then bring that back to the, um, benefits advisory committee. And then obviously they make recommendations, uh, that we bring to the board. Okay. And, um, just from your initial, um, conversations, do you think that that could be a possible direction we could go? Um, or are there other things out there that people are doing that, that are bringing savings to the insurance? Sure. So, um, right now, kind of the current status of the industry, there is a lot of, um, push towards direct contracting with providers as opposed to going through negotiated rates with insurance companies. Um, so we are definitely exploring options there. Um, and this is one piece of that. Cool. Thank you. Um, I guess I'll kind of just throw out my, um, thoughts for different things that are on my mind. Um, one of them is the idea of bringing back the sorrel plan that we have right now. Um, not talking about the renewal, but the plan that we currently have with the dollars we already have, um, and seeing is, are there any infrastructure projects or land acquisition projects that we could implement through those, um, funds that would still work within the sorrel plan that could help, um, help in this because it's funds that have already been raised. Um, and even if taxes do need to go up, this is, you know, maybe we could make them not have to go up quite so much, um, if we make some different choices as far as the sorrel plan goes. And then the other thing I was thinking about was, um, employee salaries and the, the raises and the possibility of looking into a tiered, um, a tiered situation rather than across the board. Uh, I don't really know exactly how that would look, but I just figured, um, it's something we could talk about. Those are just a couple things, but I'll, um, I'll open up the floor to anybody else and I've probably, I've probably got more, you know, thoughts going on, but I'll let other feedback come in as well. Yes. Uh, just a couple of things, um, during your, your presentation there. Um, and since you still have that up about the gas, do, do we, do we buy gas in advance? So we're buying it at today's price versus what's going to happen a month from now. I mean, you know, you see things with, with even airlines who are in serious trouble because they sold a ticket at a certain price and then gas, gas has gone up. So is, how, how do we, how do we do it or how can we do it to, because we know we're going to use a certain amount of gas. I'm sorry that. No, you're good. Um, uh, I'm sure it's today's prices. Uh, Kathy's nodding. I will tell you as a transit guy back, I can't remember when it went up. I, I had a spreadsheet. I budgeted 83 cents a gallon for diesel and it got to a dollar and I was panicking. Uh, and at that point we're paying five dollars a gallon for diesel. Um, so there was quite a, especially independent transit agencies. It, it, it can work and oftentimes it also doesn't work that you, you do your futures contract. Southwest Airlines was famous for doing it. They had a couple of years of savings, but when their contracts, future contracts came due, their prices went way up. Uh, that is something to take a look at. Uh, but knowing the transit agencies, I don't know of anybody that really came on ahead in that. You're talking about the futures contracts. Yeah, I, I think in our, our, our search situation is certainly in, in, in the short term. I mean, uh, it's, it's, it's not a, uh, stretch of the imagination that, you know, gas costs will continue to, to go up in, in the short term and how to possibly, um, mitigate that. So, um, on the employee insurance, we're looking at, is it 15,000 a year to insure? Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, the employer's share is 15,000. The employer's, the employer's share of it is, um, 15,000. Those costs will only continue to go up. So, you know, I was, I was thinking about what you're saying, commissioner, um, with the clinics and such. And, um, I think the, the new model around here, it seems because of the Rockledge Hospital situation, um, and Health First is, is building standalone ER because it doesn't make sense that everybody go to the big hospital ER when they have simple things. And, um, and so they can do triage there. If you need to go to the hospital, we'll go ahead and take you to the hospital. So, I think there, we will see a lot more, uh, clinics in the future. I was, I was curious, are they doing an in-house clinic, the school district, or how's that work? From what I understand, I think they have a con, maybe a contract with some, some smaller groups. Is that, um, Melissa? Sure. Yeah. I think, I think that it's, it's more in-house. So, the clinic model is basically setting up employee clinics. So, it's only, uh, it's care that's only for employees of the organization. And it's intended to be primary care. And then, you know, if, if more, um, specialized care is needed, they can either have the capacity to do that with contracts with specialists or refer them out, um, if they don't have the capacity. And I think the idea is that if people are going to, if there is a place in-house in the buildings, then employees are more likely to go to the doctor early on before diseases and illnesses get to a more serious and expensive. That's definitely one piece of it. Um, the other piece of it is, it's usually, you're negotiating the prices for that directly with the provider as opposed to going through negotiated rates with insurance companies. So, you're not paying that overhead and all of that with, with the insurance companies. So, there, there's kind of multi-level of, of benefits to it. Um, typically, the hurdles have been the upfront cost to establish, you know, brick and mortar clinics. Uh, you know, if there's a way to do it, which I think the school board is looking to do with kind of established groups, um, that you're not having to build buildings or purchase buildings, um, that there could, it could be more feasible. It'd be nice if we could share it with, with them across the street. I mean, we have a lot of employees there here and they're across the street. It, um, it's interesting, um, to, and commissioner Altman will remember this very well, the, the doctor of the day, um, you know, in the legislature during session, they have a doctor of the day and, um, and, and when the doctor of the day wasn't there to travel or whatever, uh, there were, there were always a couple of members who are also doctors. And so they became the doctor of the day. And I, I certainly remember one time going in doc and I'm like, I got the crud. He's like Z pack, here you go. And just that fast, you know, it was off, off the Walgreens and that didn't cost anybody any money. Um, so for, for the easy stuff like that. Okay. Very good. Um, on page parks and recreation, uh, you, it's unfunded infrastructure needs. Does, are those numbers, um, is, is that what's required if we went to the voter approved millage or how much of that millage rate would we have to go to, to fund those parks unfunded needs? What total 29,000? I mean, 29 million. I know, I know. Yeah. I'm looking, they're doing, they're literally trying to figure out the math. So, I mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, because each millage represents a specific area, it kind of depends on where these projects are in terms of what millage you would have to levy to raise the amounts. Right. So we haven't really evaluated what we would need to do from millage rate to, if we were to meet that number of the 29 million. And if you're interested to give us some, some time, not a whole lot of time, we can bring that back to you. I think that'd be good. Cause I know we fell pretty far short of the voter approved millage when we did it last year. And I'd love to know what it would be. And then secondly, in the second half of that slide, in the categories, community nature, senior center, the three items, and the approximate age of those facilities, estimated replacement costs. So I'll use the first line, community nature, senior citizens, senior centers, eight hikes. List those as 25 to 30 plus years, the estimated replacement costs of 40 million. So, I mean, that's not very old, 25, 30 years. You wouldn't have to do total replacement costs, would you? Would that be replacement costs or renovation? What does that number reflect? Good afternoon, commissioners. We actually, when we were putting this slide together, we do ongoing upgrade and replacement, uh, uh, maintenance costs as part of our annual budgets. This was looking at, as you get to 30 plus years of age on structures, you start losing major systems. And so we, major systems. And so as you start doing that, the trade-off between the cost of repairing it versus replacing it starts to blur. And so really what we were looking there, projecting forward, what the cost would be for replacement. Total replacement? Total replacement. Tearing a building down and replacing it? Yes, sir. But what would be the need to do that? What's an example of that? So an example would be maybe not even one of the facilities that we have, and I don't have it with me right now, but we have facilities that are older than these that were built with referendum dollars. And some of those facilities that were built in, say, the 70s or 80s and are approaching 40 and 50 years of age. Again, we're getting to the point where we're having to do multiple replacements of systems within the building. It's HVACs, it's ceilings, it's floors, uh, potentially other structures within those buildings themselves. So when you start spending that amount of money, you start, do start looking at, do we start planning for replacement of an entire structure? And you say that just seems to be pretty low, a 25 year old structure and you're thinking about what kind of structures are we building if they can't last 25 years? That never loses a lot of credibility with me because... Okay. And Commissioner, or Mr. Chair, this is also part of an illustration because we, when we voted, we voted for a debt millage and an operating millage. And the debt millage was building the facilities. Well, the facilities, once they need, even before replacement, any repair, we're paying that out of the operating millage. And so if all of a we're replacing, uh, because we've got a thousand different buildings and facilities, once you start replacing it, we don't have, we don't have that debt millage anymore that we can use that funds. Um, we have no ability to issue new debt to replace those buildings or improve those buildings. That's all going to come out of the operating funds. So that's going to put new pressure that we haven't seen with parks ever because that, those millages, uh, until 2000 didn't exist. So that, I mean, it, it's not a tomorrow issue, but this is an issue we're probably going to be facing over the next five or ten years and how do we do that? I guess I'm having trouble. Let's just say a nature center that's 25, 30 years age and you put a estimated replacement cost, replacement cost of a building of only 25 years. I can understand if it was the air condition or the roof. So again, the idea was we were trying to project out, not maybe for next year, we were projecting out for the next five, 10 years. And the other thing that we have to think about with the structures and the facilities that through the Parks and Recreation Department is the sheer number of people who are going through those facilities. Uh, people have pointed out to us, well, you know, why does it cost so much for a pavilion or a bathroom repair replacement when it costs me X to get it done? You know, my friend did it at his house, put a billion in his backyard. That friend doesn't have thousands of people using that pavilion every year. They don't have thousands of people going through a bathroom every year. Uh, they don't have the same ADA requirements, for example, that we do for those facilities. So this was really just trying to get a handle on, you know, when we project out what the replacement costs could be for those facilities as the years wear on. Yes. Thank you. Um, so what about like the foundation and the structure of the buildings? Is that something that's still sound in most of these buildings or are you saying that there's possibly foundation and structural issues? So again, it depends. It's a projection. Yeah. So there is the potential to do footprint replacements where you leave the footprint if those structures are salvageable. So like gut it and put a new... That could be an option. Again, this was just a matter of an exercise, if you will, to project out costs. Um, the other thing that you take into account as you look down the road is there are potentially some offsets. As technology improves, the roofs that we put on or systems that we put in place years ago, if they're upgraded, they could last longer. Same thing with other things that we can do when we go in and potentially retrofit and do repairs. They could extend the life of buildings further also. So it's all of those things. But again, this was just kind of an exercise to get at if we need to. And if we look 10 years down the road with these type of funding issues, and as Jim pointed out, the fact that there are no referendum dollars left that's coming out of basically operations, having to do long-term planning, very long-term planning. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Yes, go ahead. So this is Kim talking out loud while she's thinking. Um, we have parks that we have to maintain, tear down buildings, rebuild buildings, because we have all of these things that we have to pay for. Um, ADA compliance, toilets that can last through hundreds of thousands of people. How many, you may not know this answer off the top of your head. How many parks do we have that are actually in cities or towns? You're right. I don't have that off the top of my head exactly. That's fine. But I do know there are quite a few. There are some, such as up in this, within the city of Titusville, that there's actually, as part of an agreement with the city, uh, there is a interlocal in place that allows us to actually charge the special district fund against the city population to help fund repairs and maintenance and operations at those city parks. What if we just gave those city parks to the cities and let them maintain it and somehow say you always have to be a park, right? You can't sell it or give it away. And again, this is Kim thinking out loud because then we don't have that ongoing maintenance and we can still be assured if they wanted it. So I would have to ask the county attorney's office to review the interlocal, but my guess would be that if I was a city that's putting, putting their tax bases, tax dollars into repair and maintenance, they would want those tax dollars back. So they would remove themselves from that special district. So we would not actually potentially see any cost savings because they would want to have those dollars that their current residents were putting into that special district. Aren't you also giving them a liability? I'm sorry. Aren't you also giving them a liability with future expense? Sure, but maybe cities or towns would want their park to be the things that they want. If you have, and I'm just thinking of Melbourne Beach, which I know is not a great example, but it has a particular kind of community and, and they may want. I don't disagree with the, the, um, sort of the thought process, but my experience from the prior board tried, uh, some of that and they, they weren't looking to take on an expense. Um, and I understand that they're, they're dealing with same kinds of, uh, you know, burdens, um, that, that we are. But they're not constrained by the cap like we are. Um, I, I understand that too. Um, I'll stop talking one second. Something I was thinking about commissioner. I mean, when you're talking about, and I'm, and I'm with you, you know, you don't have to level the whole building cause you need a roof on it and what have you. But one of the things I think of right here in, uh, this district in the center part of the county is the zoo linear trail. Okay. Completely outdoors. Um, and it won't be that long in the future before all of the surface will have to be recovered. And I can't remember how long it is. It's over a mile or something. And, um, it's, it will, I, I, it's hard to know what that expense will be in the future to resurface all of that with, uh, the new decking. And, and that's one that doesn't have the benefit of a roof and indoors and out of the elements and, and all of that. That'd be an example of one that's definitely not going to make it to 25 years before. It would. Plus we have probably miles of boardwalk. Right. That's what I mean. You know, a lot, a lot of things that are outdoor playgrounds, for example, and especially over on the beach. I mean, you know, it, it's, uh, you know, I lived over on the beach for a number of years, even plastic can rust over there. So, uh, if you have anything that's metal over on the beach, you're going to have to replace it. Uh, you know, um, so, and just commissioner, uh, for more information, we have three cities. We maintain their parks, Titusville, Copeland, Rockledge. Copeland, Rockledge is with the special rec district four. That's what district four was back way back in the day. Um, we just negotiated a new contract with Cocoa. We were pretty tough on Cocoa to make sure that, you know, above $5,000 costs. I mean, it took two years to get that contract done to make sure that this, you know, more of the burden was put on the city. Uh, their contract, I believe rocks expires in 31. I forget which tax we share with the city of Titusville. But we maintain with the city of Titusville, cause the same way. So we collect the tax and spread that money out. Um, we have given or returned or whatever the proper words, the number of parks, Palm Bay regional, which is now known as Fred Poppy. Um, that was just before I got up here and that was five years. And with the agreement with the cities, we funded five years or gave them enough money for five years to transition. Uh, I know Palm Bay is now struggling with those parks. That is, that's come up. This is just Jim giving you a heads up. Um, uh, we had the, uh, I don't know the exact title, but it was a gun range up in Titusville. That was one of the first ones we gave to the folks without a reverter clause. A lot of that because there was lead and this, and we don't want that back. But, you know, if we, if we get the cities to work with us, uh, you also want to be careful on the reverter clause cause, and I'm not saying Palm Bay is doing this, but you give a park to Palm Bay, you know, after 10 years, they may not be able to afford it. And then they hand it back to us, you know, and that was in worse shape. Yeah. And that was a lot of negotiation with the city of Titusville. If, if we handed the parks back to, or with Coco, we handed the parks back to them. They want to make sure they were properly maintained the way they were at the beginning. Same thing if somebody hands it back to us. So it's not as easy, but yeah, I mean, it's something, but, but I think that's a gun range is the last time we've transferred any property to a park or a private group that used to, that we used to maintain. Yeah. And it was the first I know of without a reverter clause. No, I'll just go back on, um, community nature centers, uh, 25, this building here is 25 years old, relatively new buildings. You wouldn't propose 25 years old. You wouldn't propose tearing this down or let's look at the Melbourne library. That's right. 30, 35 years old. You wouldn't even dream of tearing that down. So it just makes me question. I can understand if it's an open air boardwalk in the ocean or something like that, but I think we need a lot more analysis for those numbers to be valid. Yeah. We're not. And what we have. Yeah. We're not coming to you right now saying this. Okay. This is a, that the bottom part here is a critical need that we need to address this now. This is, it's a, just a demonstration, but yeah, like this building is 35 years old and, uh, we already, you know, rehab in the bathrooms is over a million, or pushing a million dollars to do all the bathrooms. It's complex. So the parks is going to be facing the same issue as they all age too. And again, I will emphasize this was a projection. This was not saying just because they were 25 or 30 years old, they had to be replaced. This was their 25 or 30. They're on our radar as 10 years down the road, maybe longer. It's something we have to start planning for. Yeah. And this is from the last presentation because we talk about infrastructure and we all talk about roads and bridges, drainage, you know, infrastructures, IT. We talk about buildings, but parks, he's got a, he's got over a thousand buildings and facilities. We all forget about parks. They, they spend a lot of time on rehab, building, repairing, you know, I, what I learned is parks are parks. Parks is the ground and the facilities recreation is what the program should provide. So parks takes a lot of money to keep it up and maintain. I have another question just in general. So looking at the, and staff did a phenomenal job on this. This is a really concise, understandable, simple presentation. It really does capture what our needs are. So if we were to take a look at all these unfunded needs that we, we need to fund to keep our present level of service, all the critical needs that we're talking about here, um, in terms of, um, county general fund infrastructure, public safety, what, what, um, what millage rate would we need to pass to fund what you have presented here? And I talk about the county jail, historic courthouse, central and south area infrastructure needs, the whole shooting caboodle. What, what would we, what would we be looking at in terms of a millage rate? Wow. Um, I'm going to be both, you'd be looking at option one, you'd be looking at rolling, resetting the millage back to three years ago, that the 3.2619, that would generate somewhere $39.8 million. So option one, you think would fund these needs? It, it would get us, it would get us there. If you look on the, oh, let me do this. I apologize. I have slides. Um, so, you know, there's option one, but if you look at the previous slide, you know, that generates $39 million. We're showing there could be about $47 million in, in critical needs. So that gets you close. Um, cause what, what this does is give you the funding for the next year and the year after, cause not everything would be able to be addressed all at once. So this is a chance to work through some of the issues. I have a backup question for that. Okay. Um, does that also include, I know you mentioned the firefighter contract, but what if I, the sheriff's contract was pretty substantial too, from what I understand. Um, so does that include those increases as well? Yeah. That's part of his operations over the three years or, okay. Yeah. I can't tell you exactly all of it, but yes, it will help cover that too. Well, to me, that's a doable thing. I mean, we're, we're going basically back to the news rate that we had, uh, not in the not to pass future. And if indeed these needs are something that need to be funded, I think that's not a big ask. So that'd be kind of where I'm coming from, the need to try to keep county services provided at the level that they are, um, including the parks. I would have additional questions on that, those numbers. Um, I, I know there's other issues out there that, that you don't mention that are needed. I was going to bring just the point in particular. I know if they haven't already spoken to you, they will be in circles of care. Um, they're having trouble staffing 100% of their beds and they're looking for a recurring number, a little bit over a million a year, which would enable them to draw down around 1.2 million in federal funds. We're leaving a lot of money on the table that we could draw down to match that. I certainly would be willing to take a look at how we can try to meet those treatment dollars. I'm not advocating anything, but I'm just bringing that to everyone's aware. And I said, if you haven't already talked, they'll be coming to you there. I know they've probably talked to staff, but, um, that's kind of where, and then I, I'd mentioned the staff, um, that we at least have discussion of the service tax revenue stream that would have to be voted on by the voters. So it'd be something we couldn't raise, but we could definitely give the voters the option to vote on that, the public service tax. And some of that, well, the nice thing about that, you do not have to go to the public service commission for a review of the ballot language. You could put that, put that on almost at any time, as long as we met the, the ballot language deadlines. And, and I, we could also use that to reduce some property taxes. If we wanted to give some property tax relief, virtually every, I think virtually every city in the county already levies that fee. And, uh, that would only bring, bring us in to come to the level of the other cities and maybe provide some necessary property tax relief and at the same time help meet the back backlog. It's pretty clear. Um, we are extremely low tax state and county. We're extremely low tax county and a lot of, um, necessary improvements have been kind of kicked down the road and, and it's, if we don't address them soon, it's going to cost us a heck of a lot more money than it would if we continue to delay. So I'm, I'm coming from a place of trying to meet these unfunded, unfunded needs. Mr. Chair? Yeah. Yes. So I'm going to pass out the same thing I passed out at the last budget meeting where I said I was going to bring this back for discussion. So for anybody out there who's writing an article, um, I am not suggesting that we, uh, get rid of lifeguards or crossing guards. I'm not suggesting any of those things. I'm simply saying these are things that the county provides the services that they provide that we're not required to. And it's, you know, if we're talking about raising taxes here, we need to start, I think, looking where we could save money. Um, and this is not a happy list. It's not fun and nobody likes it, but I think I would like to discuss some of it. Um, and we certainly won't get us the amount of money we need. I think we need to do a little bit of saving and a little bit of maybe bringing in more funds. I'm not sure. Um, but when we have things, uh, I mean, can anybody tell me why, why couldn't the school pay for their crossing guards? We already know that they're about to raise their, let me, um, let me, let me speak to this because I've worked hard on crossing guards, um, along with, um, Matt Wallace, chief. Um, and I'll tell you when I got here, I mean, Vera elementary down there is like the Berlin airlift happening every day and I give them a lot of credit. Um, they, they make it work. And as you know, I'm working on a light down there and asking the legislature just every which way, uh, we can to get that done, but, uh, it's been hard to get crossing guards paying them, paying them. The idea that we'll have them if we don't pay them is it's just not, not going to happen. Now the question I'm going to ask, cause I'm going to, I asked this question before too. How did that become a County function? I think at one time it was schools. I believe it went to sheriff and then it, and then it came to County. Okay. So I, I agree somehow they're connected schools and crossing guards, but it is our situation and it's part of our, uh, public safety, um, department, if you will. And, um, I wish that there was, there was more revenue going toward that specifically, but I gotta tell you, that's the last thing that and the lifeguards that I'm, I'm going to, um, I'm not suggesting we get rid of lifeguards. I just my own personal experience. I just want to say that because I've, I've lived it. But that's the thing is if we're not willing to cut anything, then we have to say out loud that we're willing to raise taxes or we just don't do anything and we let our capable County staff decide. I didn't say that. And just, just, just living that with our schools and that, that is for now, that's, that's our responsibility. But could it be the responsibility of us, the sheriff and the schools? I don't know. I'm just, I'm just throwing things out there for us to talk about and think about. I, I've, I've gone as far, let me, let me just say this so, so that you know, I've gone as far as can we have, I mean, cause I mean, when I was a kid, um, in, in Ohio, I mean, part of detention was you had to go out there and be a crossing guard. And, uh, so, uh, can we, can we have, you know, high school juniors do it? And, um, the thing of it is, I, one, I think they want to be paid. I asked about service learning hours cause they all have to do that for bright futures. Yeah, the school board could probably get there, um, with them, but I think we can't have, um, someone under the age of 18. So even with our lifeguards who are, um, oftentimes many of them high school students, they're always with, correct me if I'm wrong here, on the, on the public safety side here, right, Matt, they're always with a lieutenant, uh, lifeguard who's 18 and over, right? Isn't that the situation? And again, I am not saying that we're not funding the lifeguards. So we can't do that. No, I'm just, but even on just taking the crossing guards as an example, does that sound? Yes, sir. Those public safety functions, uh, 18 years older is really for liability's sake is kind of where we draw the line. Yes, sir. So it's, we've really sort of peeled the onion on that one and it's, uh, it's extremely, um, difficult. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I just wanted to say on that one issue, right, right here where there's seven school zones, we live it every day. Since you brought up lifeguards, the other thing is I'm not saying that we don't fund them. I'm saying could the TDC do it? Well, it does. We're, we're, we're continuing, continuing to shift the, uh, the cost because as, as you know, Brevard's property owners paid 100% of the lifeguards and Torres paid 0% of the lifeguards. So even I petitioned the legislature to turn the that around so we can use tourism tax, uh, to pay for the lifeguards. Expanding the services, what, or the area is, is what made the bill go up, um, you know, sharply, right? Um, and we were there with the prior board. And so, um, and I, I don't, I can't remember how much Peter's got in the budget, um, for this year. We were just talking about, well, there's Peter. Okay. Good afternoon, questionnaires. Um, yeah, we currently have 1.56 million in this fiscal. And, uh, right now and going into next year, um, I've got budgeted 1.6 million. None of that, by the way, is coming from the beach fund, which, um, you know, is always an option. Of course, that's a little concerning because that, that fund has to go to paying Army Corps of engineer projects. So you don't want to go dig too deep into that. And we were just talking, was it Friday I came up and we were talking about this. And so I, I think in the, probably the next few years, we get there a hundred percent where 100% is and 0% paid by Brevard's residents. Um, but I think you got to get there in a couple of steps. So we've, we've taken since the prior board, I mean, we took a big half step and I think we got a few more steps to, to get there the rest of the way to pay for. And, you know, my motive in there too, was when we were impasse with firefighters because of trying to move cost out of their silo. And so ocean rescue is part of fire rescue. So that was, that was the, and because we had the increasing, uh, coverage and, and, and those expense happening, um, quickly. So I think, sir, just one, sorry, just one quick thing to add on and I'll sit down. But, um, yeah, in the next couple of years, our hope is that we'll hit 30 million in, uh, revenue, in which case we can ask for an extra penny of tax, which would allow then 6 million additional dollars. Then we could, you know, conceivably cover, um, a lot more of it at that point. So. Right. And so, right. That's, that's in the, in the law that before, uh, the county can go ask the voters, do you want to tax the voters one more penny? You got to get to 30 million in collection. And so with some new hotels coming and, and, and if the, I mean, if tourism continues to happen, uh, you know, the county, the county may be looking at that in the next two years, um. Is it 1.9 plus the 1.5? That's the difference, I think, right? Matt? Uh, yeah, in the current fiscal year, the general fund is funding approximately 1.9 million and then tourism is just over 1.5 as Peter stated. And I think we just, I think we just raised lifeguard, uh, right? Yes, sir. We did with some initiatives internal to the program. We, we moved the starting salaries up to $20 to be competitive with the local areas and local counties. Go ahead. Commissioner Axton. Thank you. So, Jim, one of the other things I wanted to ask you about was the, and I know that the 14 million is not an accurate number completely, um, but can you tell me a little bit about the idea of eliminating funded vacant positions, what that looks like for you? Oh. I know we've talked about it a little bit. Yeah, um. I have an extension to that question, if I may. Um, and does that include public safety like fire rescue or any of the other ones that sometimes are not necessarily part of, what does that include, the, the, this $14 million? That, I don't know what includes the $14 million. That's Commissioner Atkinson's number, uh, and I'll get to the position, but it gave me a segue. Uh, I can tell you as county staff, what we'll be looking for at the departments, we're going to be looking through their balance forward this year, what they have projected balance forward. Their vacant positions and their positions, we're going to be looking at that. And then we've already, in past years, everybody, they've received general fund, got the, you know, budget 3%. This year, we've already knocked on a 2.6. Uh, but we'll be looking at all budget positions. And when you said public safety, uh, you know, lifeguards are part of public safety. What, what they did is they came back, what their funding is with vacant positions that's not being filled and putting that money towards the employees. So that's a little bit different, but we're going to look at different positions and vacancies. Uh, and I'll, and I'll say this out loud because then the other ones will hear me. As a department director, if, you know, I had vacant bus driver positions, other positions that I knew I wasn't going to fill, and I didn't have enough general fund to fund whatever I need for the budget, I eliminated a position or two each year, uh, whatever necessary for me to present a balanced budget as a county manager. That's sort of the stuff I'll be looking at as county, as a county manager. What can we do on that? Okay. So, yeah, it's, we, we, we need to look everywhere and that's, yeah, you, you guys won't see all that machination going on, but that's what we'll be doing as staff. And to say, I'm sorry, I'll just say on that, I think we all know that, um, you have a position in the county manager's office that, that you've held off in, in hiring. I mean, we're, we're, we're all cutting, uh, where necessary. So, so, I mean, just, just as an example, just right on the other side of this wall, there was a position not filled. I have a question. Um, what about, I know we had, Jim, we had talked briefly about vehicles, um, and that that was something that you were going to be looking into possibly, and then, um, it'll come back to me. You go on that and it'll come back. Yeah, and, um, uh, budget office has developed a different method on how we're going to be reporting purchasing of vehicles, replacement versus expansion. Once, I go back to my lizard brain as transit and vehicles is, you know, I said, we're fun, if you get a new vehicle, expansion is expansion. So you have 10 vehicles, you need a new vehicle for expansion, then you should have 11, but if you're replacing two vehicles, you shouldn't have a fleet of 11 again. So we'll be looking at trying to compare those numbers. And as we go through the, some of these are multi-year things. We're going to be looking at balance forward, where we are in projects, the, uh, vacant positions and what positions aren't being filled. Um, on the other note, the, the lower, uh, the percentage and with vehicles, uh, some of these are, and what we're going to do with health insurance and how we're going at risk management, that's going to be a multi-year risk management thing is, excuse me, risk management, I was thinking of, as we go through. So, I mean, vehicles will be included in there. Cause it, it's, and, and I could tell you last year, even last year, not everybody got their vehicle requests that, that they requested. I remember the second part of my question. Um, what about, and this is going way into the minutia and I know that, um, what about things like, you know, of course I've brought up the stoves in the park buildings, the, like some of the things like that, that are we, is there opening to not saying getting rid of what the vision is, but does it have to be the premier commercial blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? Like, does it have to be the, does it have to be the $14,000 stove or can it be the $6,000 stove? You know, and I know that's pennies compared in a billion dollar budget, but when you add all those pennies together through everywhere, that could add up. Yeah. I mean, you got to buy the equipment necessary to get the job done. Um, I'm looking at the carpet, but we're, we're kind of cheap to begin with. I mean, we're careful on how, we're careful on how we spend our money. I mean, if, if a Toyota Corolla, uh, does the job, we're not buying a Jaguar, so, already. So, I mean, and the staff, when they, or the departments, when they present their capital equipment along with, um, along with their CIP projects, they have to show and justify it to us. So, so it's something we'll be keeping an eye on, too. Could I say something about, uh, sort of piggyback on, on what you said there? Um, I mean, with, with our, our part, let's take the example of the stoves in, in our parks. I'd imagine that there are some parks where the pavilion, right, and you've got the attached, uh, kitchen there, but it's used a lot. Um, and, um, you know, Wycombe Parks, um, got one where, I mean, they have, they have events seemingly every weekend, uh, but there might be some other places that don't. Um, so, I mean, is that, is that a, a way to split it? I imagine, Ian, you probably look at something like that, even though a stove is, is older in a certain facility, it doesn't get that much use, and so, therefore. So, we, we also, we do look at usage, but we also look at sometimes the more expensive avenue is the better for longevity. So, for some of those stoves, that, you know, are six versus, say, 14, first thing is, we, we budget 14. Doesn't mean we're paying 14 for those. They were budgeted at 25. Again, I don't remember off the top of my head, but that just gives you an example that what we budget is not what we always pay for the item, because we do look at getting quotes, we also look at piggybacking to see if we can get the best deal possible if there's another city or county across the state that's negotiated better rates. So, we, we do try to maximize those savings, but we do have to look at what the usage is. One of those stoves was for the Gibson Center where there's a school in place, and so, they're doing meals for school five days a week, plus they're running activities on the weekends. But like you said, there are some that potentially don't, and so, we do take that into account. If I could just give an example, like, one of the things was the Tom Statham building. It now has, like, commercial refrigerators and stuff in there, and so, I don't know if that's totally necessary, you know, and so, that's, that's just, you know. I don't, I don't disagree with you in situations where you have an off-site caterer who's coming in to do whatever that may be, and that's a beautiful park and that facility and everything, but, you know, you're, if you're doing a wedding there or something, you have an off-site caterer come, I imagine that they, they make plans for, you know, cooking their food themselves and, and, and storing everything, so, and maybe some of these facilities don't necessarily need that because of that reason. Well, and again, sometimes we brought up vehicles earlier. When we do vehicles and we look at those, we look at what peak need is, and so, you have to purchase to whatever that peak need is, because when you need it, you can't not have it. So, it's the same with vehicles that potentially have higher clearance rates for eels if they have a washout and they need to get to something. It's, it's those type of things that we have to plan for. I wonder, especially with vehicles, is there, for instance, I know like the clerk, for instance, they, you know, they kind of check out vehicles and turn them back in as needed, and so I wonder with some of the larger vehicles, if that could possibly be an avenue where, you know, like the everyday could be a more economical vehicle, but then if they need to check out a larger vehicle for those things, if that could be possible. I'll say every time I drive one, I say, I want a car. I don't, I don't want to drive a truck. So, I imagine there are other people, people working for the county like that, too. I have a question going back, probably for Jill, on the estimated impact of resetting the general fund millage slide, so that, so that we're clear, not exceeding charter cap. We're at the final column there that you have, charter cap, FY 2627 estimate, right? Am I reading that right? Correct, and that's based on very preliminary estimates. We won't receive the actual property values from the property appraiser until the beginning of June, so we were doing some preliminary estimates, but what you're seeing there is because of the charter cap, that millage rate goes down based on estimating that property values will go up. So, with a lower charter cap, with a lower millage rate, and again, all these comparisons are based on just a $200,000 taxable value. So, so that would be our estimated millage rate at the charter cap. I won't be voting to exceed the charter cap this year, okay? So, we understand where we are as the staff is going to be working this summer to prepare a budget, and so I like, we've talked about it many, many times in this, in this building, and they know that, so I'm just saying for the, for the rest of you in this meeting, so that we can prepare accordingly. If I may? Yes. With that being said, could the conversation be opened back up about, say, the Sorrel dollars? Because I know we had talked about funding, and it, I know we didn't necessarily say it would be out of Sorrel dollars, but doing something with flooding, especially for North Brevard? Listen, I think you have to, okay? So, and I, I said to you that I would work on things in, up in the north end of the county, and I'm going to make good on that. I think whether you're talking about wetland restoration type project, that, that also has the benefit of flood control, but with the primary focus on keeping that runoff out of the Indian River, I think that's how you get there, and I think you, you have to do some things. Now, this board, we had, you remember not very long ago, we had a settlement agreement on a, on a Burt Harris case, and we were able to work something out that, that, you know, I suggested some things, and, and we all agreed, where Sorrel could buy a piece of the property, and Eels bought some property, and all together, we were able to get something done where they're going to get stormwater retention, flood control in Merritt Island, desperately needed, and able to settle that case, so we don't have to continue to litigate it. So, I, I just suggest to you that I think going forward, we have to do things like that. I don't even think it's a question, really. Okay. And, so, one of the things that was brought to me by a couple of residents in D1, Laura Lee and Vince Lamb, they had come to my office, and there was a property up in Titusville that they were talking about, that it's, people have tried to rezone it over the years, and it's never gotten support to get it rezoned, and part of the reason is because it's got massive amounts of wetlands there, and, um, they showed me a presentation about, um, you know, the, the effects that that would have, and, um, possible, possible benefits to, um, keeping water from going, heading to the lagoon. Um, the other thing that I was thinking about was Fay Boulevard, and some of the other places in Port St. John, we have some, um, broken drainage pipes, and, um, with steel plates on them, and so, if we, um, fix those drainage pipes, that would also keep the water going to where it's supposed to be going, rather than tunnel down the street to the lagoon. Let me say something, too, on, on the EELS portion, I had, I had talked with the EELS folks, um, you know, even when I, back when I was a candidate, and, and, um, now as a commissioner, that looking at EELS properties, I've, I've suggested to them the thing that's less painful for the county, okay, if you consider taking value off of the tax roll, but if you have properties that aren't paying that much in tax, and then they become an EELS property, as far as future tax rolls, that's less painful for the county, so you're talking about some property that maybe doesn't have a high value on it, because it's problematic anyways, um, that's, it just, as far as cannibalizing the tax roll, that's less painful in the future, right? And, like, um, off of Singleton, there's all that land there that is, um, low quality wetlands, and so that is something that, I mean, would be astronomically expensive to develop, but could give benefit, you know, um, for protection. We're, we've done the 100-acre hollow, so we, we voted on that a couple of times, and that's going to be the, you know, the, the best EELS property, in my mind, in this district, because there just isn't much opportunity, um, for that, and I think if you remember, an earlier meeting, when we, when we first brought that before the board, I said, I want to reserve the right to put stormwater there, if we need to, because, ironically, it has four basins that was originally going to be a packing plant, you know, 35 years ago, and it never turned into that, but, and we don't, we don't have that kind of problem along Vera Boulevard, but if we did, um, I, I want to, I mean, that's the perfect place to, um, to, to send stormwater, so while that's an EELS property, they, if stormwater goes there in the future, um, you know, that's, that's where you get two uses out of this, out of the same, uh, property, so I, I think there's opportunity, I think you have to do that in the future. I think that's just being, uh, pragmatic, um. And so, if the votes aren't there to, to do what's needed to reset the millage, um, I used your guys' term, um, um, that, uh, that could be a way to also get some infrastructure projects done, and so, you know, you can make all sides a little happier. Again, I don't think you have a choice in the future. Yeah. I think you have to. And I guess I'll, I'll bring this up, I know it's an uncomfortable topic, but, um, the employee salaries, um, doing a tiered system, I don't know if anybody had considered doing something like that, but I know that we have some salaries that are, you know, 200,000 plus, and, um, you know, not that we don't value our, our employees, we, we certainly do, but when we're considering a, um, a resetting of the millage, it's, it's hard to go to the voters and say that, while also, you know, there are considerable raises that could happen when you go percentage-wise. May I, Mr. Chair? I'm sorry, sir. I hadn't been going through you, so I, so I apologize. I'm busy reading the budget. I know it's less formal when I work in the workshop, too. It, it seems to me that probably the, the, in my mind, the more fruitful thing to do is looking at the vacant positions, uh, maybe have a tiered approach to that, and that might actually net you more money, and so, and I know it's a painful, painful thing, too, when we're talking about, you know, covering positions and such, but we're, we're in a financial situation, uh, everybody is, and so, you know, if we're living without certain higher administrative staff, just as, as an example, um, we just forgo that for a while, just, you know, Jim's living without Karen Connie, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm sure he would like to have Karen Connie up there, uh, up here today, but, but he's doing that, and so, I, I think, I think if you look at it that way in the vacant positions, and we all agree that on the, on the bottom half of those vacant positions, those are things we really do need, you really, you really do need folks out there fixing things every day, but maybe we don't need as much, and I'm, I'm speaking on behalf of the county manager here, but on, you know, from a board policy position and how we get through the budget, we may have, we may have to go in that, that direction. Mr. Chair, um, I, I do want to talk to you briefly, um, I will say, um, Commissioner Goodson is disconnecting, he has an appointment he has to make, so, just to let you know, um, and, and the raises are, I, I guess you could call it tier, they're three percent or a dollar an hour, so everybody, that cutoff is somewhere around sixty-some thousand dollars, so everybody less than that will be making a dollar an hour, uh, and, uh, you'll see, I don't know how to define it in the budget message, I'm, I'm trying to fade the needle, my contract says I get the same thing as employees, so I will be cutting off raises at some point, so I don't get it, but I don't want to interfere with the medical examiners, assistant medical examiners, we still have to figure that out, so. Is it possible we could take a break, maybe that's, uh. I have a couple things, I just wanted to, I know, with Goodson leaving, does that mean we need to end our meeting soon, or we can continue? No, it's, you can continue, yeah, you're fine. So, I, I, again, back to our presentation, I think staff has done a really good job in highlighting what we call critical fund needs for our county, infrastructure needs, the jail, serious problems, we have three tents that need to be refurbished, government center, courthouse, I've toured that facility, it's in really bad shape. Almost a public embarrassment. Roads, drainage problems, we know that's a problem. Public safety, we don't need to mention fire, we all know that problem, but the sheriff operations, jail operations, disaster response. Then countywide, keeping the doors open in the county, health insurance, auto insurance rates, retirement requirements, and so forth. That's a $47 million hit. We know that we can fund these critical needs with no problem. With a millage rate of 3.2%, which takes us back to where we were, I think, what, a couple years ago. That millage rate is lower than virtually every other county of our comparable size in comparison. And in some cases, that millage rate is half the rate, less than half the rate of some of those counties. So we can be fiscally responsible. We can really be watchdogs of the taxpayers' dollars. But what is just as important is our need to fund the critical needs of our residents so we can provide the necessary services to have a county that's operating in a healthy way, which ultimately, from an economic point of view, is even more important. If we lose that, we lose everything. But we can do that with a 3.2, 6.91 millage rate. That's option one. Seminole has 3.7. St. Lucie, 4.2. Osceola, over twice that. 6.7. Indian River, higher. Pasco, over twice that at 7.4. Martin, over twice that at 6.5. Martin County, which has a high assessed value, is probably more comparable to what we are than Osceola, and then Lake at 5.3. So to me, the question is, are we being financially responsible? Yes, we are. We're keeping the millage rate in a manageable form that makes us competitive, still the lowest of any millage rate of any of those counties that are of comparable size and nature. And we're meeting the critical needs. Just so it's clear, that's where I'm coming from. I know there's a lot of esoteric arguments about rollback and what have you, but I think the bigger question is, what is being fiscally responsible, and what is providing the responsible revenue that we need to provide healthy county services? Ultimately, that's our goal and responsibility. So that's where I'm coming from, and I don't know if we have the votes to do that, but I just want to make that infinitely clear. Do any of those other counties have a charter cap? I mean, I'm not trying to be difficult, but I mean, that's what has allowed that situation in other counties where they're much higher than we are. So it's something that I respect. The voters put it there, and I knew that when I was seeking this office, and I do respect it. Well, there is a provision to penetrate the caps, and I think we're at that critical nature. I think, obviously, we still have a military rate substantially lower than those other counties, but I think there's a reason that they put that ability to penetrate for those critical services. Yes, sir? Yes. So I think, from my perspective, we have a cap that the voters voted on. We have a critical need, but I don't feel like I'm hearing a lot of conversation about cutting costs, and that's hard for me to be comfortable going with option one, raising it as high as we can, if I just don't feel like we're having a good conversation about cutting costs. And obviously, staff is still working on this, but that's where I am. I'm just not comfortable with asking the people for more money if I can't tell them, look, we've cut as much as we can, and in fact, we've cut things that have upset you or almost got there. So that's where I am. That's where my brain is at the moment. And I don't differ. I think we need to fund critical needs. That doesn't preclude our constant desire to cut where we can cut and doesn't cut to the bone. So I'm not saying that that's a bad thing. I'm just saying we've got to fund these critical needs. So that's where I'm coming from there. Some of these things go to the ballot as far as, like, infrastructure needs or whatever. So we have our infrastructure sales tax. We have the transportation sales tax. Isn't there one just for facilities? I can't remember. I don't have the thing. I think that's a very good point. And that's one of the reasons I asked the staff to include the service tax. Because if we chose to maintain the millage below the cap, charter does provide for us to ask the voters. We could put that on the ballot, giving them a choice to see if they wanted to fund those critical needs. And the public has been very responsive to that. And that would be an easy one to put on the ballot. And the service tax, can that be spent on anything that just goes into the general fund? Yeah, the public service tax would be considered general fund. So that could be used for any of those critical need purposes. And I believe maybe the other infrastructure, you were speaking of the infrastructure sales tax, which we had discussed previously. Right. Which, again, would have to go through the APAGA review and all of that. So I believe we're past that period to revisit that until potentially 2028. Was there another one, though? I know that there's emergency services, hospital. There's like six or seven of them. There is a transportation tax that's specific for transportation needs. Okay. No, just as a technical question. Some of those are split with municipal governments. It's not all just goes to the county, right? Yes, that's correct for the infrastructure sales tax. The charter transportation system surtax, that one, I believe it would come to the county. But then there could be interlocal agreements with the municipalities, if I'm remembering that correctly. But the service tax one, that one goes directly to the county? The public service tax would just be in the county, and that would be in unincorporated Brevard. I think someone earlier mentioned that all of the municipalities in Brevard County are already levying that. We're unique in that our charter states that for us to levy that tax, it would have to go out to a ballot in a general election. Okay. And Commissioner, if you give me a chance, I do want to, because I didn't explain fully, we're showing you an example on the electric bill. The cities also put it on the gas bills. Some have them on the water bill. And I believe there's even, so you can put it on kerosene, too. But I mean, so the example we showed you is just the electric bill. But that $33 million is the total number. What I like about that is those people that are driving electric cars and not paying fuels tax have to pay their fair share, which being one of those, I think that's a good thing. I've got $26,000 a year. Yeah. And I don't have it. Yeah, I think people like I should pay their fair share. Okay. Is there any other discussion that we have that staff have anything they wanted to close with? Do we have public comment? Yeah, I think we do. Could we possibly take a three-minute break? Yes, absolutely. Before we do that? Okay. Let's take a five-minute break. Then I can go, too. Oh, we do. Lifeguards. And certainly, that's going to need to be a part of our discussion. That's when we look forward into the budget and funding critical needs. But our first card for public comment, unless there's any other questions or comments from the commission. Stell Bailey. Stell Bailey. I was watching the previous budget meeting, and I don't feel that we have enough discussion on fraud, waste, and abuse. And just some examples of that is a $100,000 promotion raise for the county manager, seven salaries over $200K, $30K promotion for assistant managers. And most importantly, because I'm dealing with this in my own neighborhood, redoing sidewalks while we have silver plates all over most of Fay Boulevard. I just don't think you've built a convincing argument to the public that we need to bust the cap. Now, I do have two questions that I'd like answered after I'm finished. The first question is, the 3%, is that warranted for the assumption of salary? And the second question, on page 16, if you look up, what makes that a critical need under field upgrades and additions and lighting? And those are my two questions. And lastly, I do want to say, Commissioner Atkinson, I appreciate you doing the list and actually trying to find areas to cut waste. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Next speaker, Sandra Sullivan. Sandra Sullivan from Waves Action. So when you were talking about the CPI, it's currently 2.63, which is less than 3%. So maybe we shouldn't bust the cap, which is 3%. When you look at other counties, and this is in your own presentations that you've done on budget, the transportation tax, other counties, that's what they use. Most other counties have that, which means everybody's paying. The tourists that come here are paying, the renters are paying, the people that own their property are paying, et cetera, et cetera. You talked about that you need to give some more money to Circles of Care. Why did you give opioid money to affordable housing when you knew you needed this? You've prepared a budget without looking at the impact of a vote that you're going to be taking, which is the impact fee feasibility study. That was supposed to take nine months, and we haven't seen anything about that. There's no showing that in this budget. So what impact will that have? So I'll promise to pay AWT. We're going to see rate increases. And so this is double taxation. We're paying for it twice. I did a records request to Space Florida and got a copy of the draft agreement. It does not have any funding coming from Space Florida to pay the number that was mentioned as $130 million that was needed to upgrade that plant for Space Florida in the December meeting. That is not represented. So in addition to busting the cap, we're looking at higher water and sewage, which was updated also in 2022. I think it was 22% aggregated over the few years. We're looking at potential new service tax fee and increased gas tax. If you're going to increase parks and rec, it should be to a referendum and not just busting the cap, as you have done in past years. And we're looking at increased stormwater assessment at another county commission. You haven't talked about that, to address the flooding. And so when I look at SORA, I look at it, it should be an infrastructure surtax as Florida Statute 212.055. And we were made promises to match state funding for AWT and other things that hasn't been fulfilled. I look at that as a stormwater septic and sewer tax is what it should be for infrastructure, but it is not. And so in the end, the people are paying for the cost of development for all the growth that is happening in Brevard, largely because we've kicked the can down the road for 25 years on impact fees. And then we didn't see organic conversation here at this table about cutting costs. It was brought up like just a conversation so we can say we did, but there was no real conversation. For example, we doubled the budget for the Economic Development Council from about $700,000 to $1.4 million, and they did not deliver on results to get the funding for Space Florida. So that's an easy one to cut right there. So that about sums up what I wanted to say. So I'd like to see some serious cost cutting, and I would like to see not all the burden put on we the people. Thank you. Rick Eiffelfinger, District 1. I'm getting a little confused, and it may be because I'm new to this big budget. You guys have got a large outfit. You're talking about the general – hey, it's right on the screen. Cool. The general fund millage rate. But you're also talking about a lot of other people – you guys correct me if I'm wrong because I'm just trying to – that have their own millage rate, not just the general fund, right? It's got one. If we bust the cap on that, that's one thing. But don't we aggregate the millage when we decide whether we actually broke the cap? So we could bust the cap – correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know. We could bust the cap on the general fund but still come in under because the other guys held the line. Is that true? That's a question you can answer. Because a lot of this discussion, I think, they have their own millage, right? But you're talking about those guys busting the cap, too, maybe, if we try to solve all these critical – right? Because doesn't the sheriff have a millage? No? Is that all – he's Faye Boer out of the general fund? We have a law enforcement agency. The – Oh, my time's kind of going. The charter cap applies to each individual millage except for those voter-approved millages where the aggregate comes into play is more of a trim requirement, and that's where you're looking at how you advertise the final budget hearing. So the cap applies to each individual millage rate except for those voter-approved millages, which are primarily – and we had discussed these last year, and the board actually rolled up some of those voter-approved parks and recreation millages. The fire control MSTU is also a voter-approved millage. The law enforcement MSTU is not voter-approved, so that one is subject to the cap. So I guess now my question is, so if you bust the cap on the general fund, we could be getting trim notices on a bunch of others that we're addressing for critical need? So how many trim notices do you think I'm going to get? You only get one trim notice, and that includes everything. Okay. So it might just not be a rollover or going above on the general fund. I may see some of the MSTU – I don't know. There's a big list of stuff that you guys hit me – I don't know, initially you guys, but, you know, St. John's Water gets me, too. But there are individual little things that are kind of – I guess they're fenced funds, or they're targeted. The general fund, I don't know, it somehow supports those, too, right? But those guys, if they've got critical needs, I would expect their millage rate to go up, too, if they're going to try to cover – you know, I think facilities is just about all general fund. That could be wrong, too. Although – and then some – Parks and Rec. Does Parks and Rec get their own money for facilities, or does the general fund pay for some of that under facilities? I'm confused. So I'm concerned that we just talk about general fund, and we say, hey, this is – you know, this is the only one that's going to bust a cap. But I hear things that are – they're going across the board, you know, the jail. Is that general fund, or does the sheriff pay for the jail? I don't know where that comes from. So I'm scared, and I'm not sure that I understand that we're not addressing some of these things that are going to also bust the cap. Now, you know, my last thing to kind of do is we talked – Kim brought up – I should have Kim – Commissioner Atkinson brought up – that's a wonderful list. You guys kicked it. She brought it up. I'm glad she did. I wanted to hear about that. But you can't make a decision here today. I understand that. We're not voting on stuff. But as Commissioner Goodson said, you can kind of vote to direct staff to complete some of those analysis on those cuts. Because by some statements in here, that was not completely done by staff. So that $12 or $13 million of unfilled billets, we don't know who that impact. Katie made it – Commissioner Delaney made a good point that we don't want to just say, hey, fire department guys, guess what? You know, you're already understaffed. We just – but we can't fill them, so we're pulling the money back. Do it with the guys you got now. We don't want to do that. But if you've got Parks and Rec – I'm going to pick on them just as an example because I know they had some rollover a while back. If you've got maintenance guys that you can't fill the billets for, and they've been sitting on the books for three years, two years, and you've been getting by, we want to claw the money back. Claw money back, right? But without direction to staff, you're already putting together a plan right here. Option one doesn't account for any of those things that may contribute. So I'm concerned about that. Thank you. That's our final card. Any other items before us? Any other discussions, questions? All right. They stand. The workshop being adjourned. Thank you. Thanks, sir. Thank you. Thank you.