Board Workshop - Broward Sheriff's Office - Sep 29, 2026

Let me just document it. It's 12 minutes after 10 in the morning. Is any representative from the sheriff's department here? Not security, but is there any, not our good security people here who are great or as a gentleman here, but is anybody from the sheriff's department here to talk about the budget? Not that we are aware of. Okay, so seeing, yes, actually I texted the sheriff this morning, asked him if he was coming, said he was jammed. I'll read you exactly what he said. Give me one second. The sheriff said, he said, no, sir, I'm swamped. I said, can you send someone from BSO? He said, my team will be there, colonel and CFO. It's 12 minutes after, I'm sorry, it's 13 minutes after 10, and the colonel, are you here, colonel? Can he hear me in the building? They should, yes. Or the CFO, we're ready to, we're starting late, actually, but we need to move forward, so let's go. The first item on the agenda for today is the FY26 appeal and the FY27 adopted budget. Monica, do your team want to, or is that Anika? I can start us off if that's okay. Sure. And thank you, Mr. Mayor and commissioners. So, we put together, you know, over time, the board has collectively shared that they wanted to have a group discussion about several topics related to BSO. And at the last Port Everglades budget workshop, in the essence of time saving, one of the items that was outstanding was the discussion of the law enforcement feasibility study at Port Everglades. And so, at that workshop, you all asked for us to have a separate workshop to discuss that. So, in part, you're going to hear a little bit about that today as well. So, before you, we will have five areas that we're going to be covering today. One, we thought we'd talk about the FY26 budget appeal and the FY27 adopted budget that was just adopted last Tuesday evening. The E911 budget and some things that we need to share with you there from the budgeting perspective. And then you're going to see the third bullet point there is the Airport Seaport Feasibility Study. And really, it's going to be just to highlight those things in the Seaport discussion, the jails, facility, and fire rescue. We all can read. Let's go. We got it. Let's move. Thank you, Mayor. So, since, you know, I became county administrator in 2022, you know, I have gained a unique perspective on the county's various public safety partnerships with the sheriff's office. And so, whether we're discussing 911, call taking and dispatch, or most recently the fire rescue, it has become clear that the agreements with BSO that define these partnerships no longer really provide the county with the ability for transparency and accountability that I keep hearing from you all for the need for financial and fiscal responsibility. So, we're going to go through that, and you're going to hear some of those concerns that we have. And Michael is going to take the lead on some of these discussions as he has been working closely with the sheriff's office over time and through some of these issues as well. Michael, I'm going to kick it off to you to give an update on each of these subjects. We'll start with the budget appeal and the adopted budget. Okay. Thank you very much, Monica. You know, I'm going to just add, as running this meeting, I think it says something, and you could interpret this any way you want. Again, when we're having a workshop regarding all these items on the BSO, and no one's here from BSO. And it's disappointing. It's really disappointing. I was told today that there would be representatives here today. And anyway, interpret it the way you want. I find it disappointing. Yeah. I think it's beyond disappointing. I think it shows a stunning lack of leadership to not have somebody here. You know, even when you talk about we're going to talk about budget appeals and we're going to talk about different things, Miami-Dade County had their budget meeting. It went until 4 in the morning. The sheriff is appealing that budget. But the sheriff still goes to the meetings, and they have a back and forth, and they bring facts out one way or another. Between you and I, I mean, and everybody that's listening, this is a horrible way to operate, not because it's disrespectful to us. I don't really care about me serving here. It's disrespectful to the public not to be able to come and to post ridiculous videos talking about Proterra buses when we're talking about, you know, paying sheriff's deputies or helicopter issues or real issues. To me, this says a lot, and I'm happy to participate in this workshop, but to me, having a workshop without the providers that are providing this is the height of disrespect to the public and a total lack of leadership. Well, just to add on that, when the sheriff was here once, we talked about, sheriff, are you going to have meetings with Monica? Do you remember that? Yes, you know, he wanted to have meetings, but Monica wasn't meeting with him, and here, again, there's no material. The auditor did a report of our airport, and there's 14 items on the airport's auditor report which weren't even implemented between the airport and the sheriff's office on public safety. Simple things that should be done that any, you know, partnership should be able to provide, and it just wasn't even implemented. Senator Geller? Senator Geller, just as a follow-up, Mr. Mayor, I agree with everything that you said, and I agree with everything that Commissioner Udean said, but to take it a step further, we have asked, remember that report that the independent study that they gave us, and we asked, I don't know how many times for the backup, we asked while they were here, they promised us that information, I've asked for it multiple times. Mr. Ruiz, have we ever received that information? All the information that we have received has been provided, as you requested. What we do not have is the actual raw data of the comparator agencies from around the country, which is what drove the recommendations from the consultant. Also the raw data from other counties in Florida. And, you know, Mr. Mayor, the problem is, I honestly believe there is no amount of money we can give the sheriff that would satisfy him. Because if you've looked at his report, basically he's compared us to New York, to Chicago, to other very much higher expense states, and says he wants us up the 100th percentile, meaning he wants us to be the highest funded in the nation, which is an irresponsible request. And, you know, the fact that he's constantly putting out videos that are wrong, saying that he's 6% of our budget, that's just incorrect. And, you know, Mike, these things, I don't know who is supposed to respond on behalf of the county. I don't think it's the commissioners, but we've got to get, you know, this information out that what the sheriff is sending is simply inaccurate. Anybody else? I just, I've always directed my energy in this topic towards the two communicating, meaning our administrator and the sheriff. And every time I brought it out of the meeting, you know, it brought more contention from the sheriff. And I think where we are as a commission, what we've directed the administrator to do is where we need to focus our interest. What somebody does on social media is what they do. I always try to make it positive, what I do on social media. But, you know, we have deputies in this meeting today that are doing their job. And I don't like, you know, to send the wrong message to them because each and every day the folks that are providing the services are doing what they're supposed to do. But the leadership is making this something that doesn't have to be. We had a unanimous decision, and Monica, I'm looking forward to you and your staff bringing back the information I need so I can go back to the public and say that we're moving forward with the decisions we've made. And we feel good about it fiscally, and we'll have all the transparents that we have had in the past, and we will continue. I will not any longer entertain this lack of respect towards a process that generally and historically has happened with many, many other sheriffs. So let's keep moving forward, and let's not lose the momentum. And we're fighting for Broward County. Thank you, Vice Mayor. The only thing I'd like to ask Monica is I see Kim is here today. Why can't we issue, you know, issue something to the public, whether our own social media, no show. Today there's a no show from the sheriff's office. It's a fact. This is not an opinion. This is not being negative or positive. It's a fact. There's a no show. We're here to talk about a budget. We're here to try to resolve things. And, nope, not one person can show to talk about. As mayor, I think that I would be requesting that, you know, as mayor, you be our base on this. You know, you're not shy. And I'd like to think that if there is something that comes out of the county, that our mayor can take the lead on that. Well, Kim, I'll be talking to you. And, Monica, maybe we can get your department to – I think it's important. I think it's not something to – you know, this is a big issue. The sheriff has made it a big issue. It's a major part of our budget, and there's no show. So, anyway, let's go. Let's move on. I'm sorry to keep – So, one thing before I fully turn it over to Michael, I wanted to – I'm sorry, Monica. Commissioner Rogers? Thank you. Just wanted to add my touch to where we are on this issue. And I would like to hear also from the attorney. I don't know or someone other than staff. I trust what you're saying is factual. That I believe. And a no-show is a no-show. The seat is empty. Okay? How do we move forward, as was stated by my colleagues? It needs to be specific. What are we going to do other than go out there on social media and talk, Mr. Mayor? I want to know the action steps that we are going to be taking here, recognizing that the sheriff might never show up. So, we take it one step at a time. What is our next step, Mr. Mayor? If we can leave here understanding specifically what staff will do, what we can say, and what we can do individually around this topic. So, whatever the mayor says, then we can say that also. I don't know how to respond. So, I would like to hear our conversation around how we deal with the issue of no-show, recognizing that public safety is important to all of us across Broward County. Every city is impacted because there are contracts, and they rely on Broward County to do certain things. So, we're looking forward to seeing what our next steps are. If you have a question, you can ask any questions. I mean, I don't know. I don't know if the attorney has something to say. Nika, would you have any comment on this? No. Commissioner, I think we can hear what the county administrator has to present today on this. And then, if there are specific questions as to the proposed action of the board, then our office can advise, and we've been working with county administration in terms of advising some of the options that are available. Mr. Fisher, did you want to add a second? Yeah, Mayor, I just, when we get to the E911, I just want to drill down on that pretty heavily. So, if you notice, notify me. You bet. Once that comes up, I'll pull that administration and I'll drill down. Sorry, Monica, please continue. Yes. Yes. Your microphone, please. Whatever you want. Other point, clarification, don't say that. Okay. All right. We have a sheriff that's non-responsive. We just go along and just continue in the same order as if we have a responsive sheriff. And if something should come up, then we reach out to the sheriff. I'm trying to see how we manage this situation that we're in. And if there's anything, when I said attorney, I am not talking strict policy. Is there any legal, anything other legal avenue that's out there available? So, I'm hearing from the attorney that let's go with administration. Yep. I'll follow the lead if that's the directive of this body. Great. Monica, take it over. Okay. Thank you. So, I wanted to share. So, many of these items that we're going to cover today were, I had sent out an update memo to all of you on August 26th. And it was titled, Board Conversations on Public Safety Funding, Transparency and Accountability. That provided a status update at the time of many of those reviews and where we were. Today, it gives us a good opportunity to kind of go over those again since that month has passed. Where are we today? And then hit on a couple of additional items that have come to light since that time. My expectation after today's workshop will be that we once again provide kind of a summary of today's discussions. It will inform not just you all, but also the public of where we are with each of these items and any action items or things that you guys will want to see from those discussions. We will work with Anika in her office to go over any legal options that are available, given whatever direction you guys give us. So, I think at that point, we're going to just take it from there. Michael, if you can. Thank you. Good morning again. Michael Ruiz, Assistant County Administrator. I'll begin with the budget topic. You all recall that the Broward Sheriff's Office appealed the fiscal year 26 budget. The core conversation or difference of opinion was a little over $73 million in salary increases that the Sheriff's Office has been trying to get funded. That amount totals roughly $100 million once you account for the impact on benefits. You raise salary. You also raise benefits. That does not include the additional amount that would hit for overtime. So, it's roughly a one-year implementation of a salary increase at $100 million. That's the issue that was primarily at stake. That process was initiated. We, as a group, county attorneys and county administration, put together a response and filed it timely. There have since then been no official requests for information that we're aware of. In a sense, we are in a discovery phase in the appeal process. There has been no actual budget hearing by the staff of the Administration Commission, and I do not believe that the Administration Commission has any more meetings to be held in this current fiscal year. So, it appears unlikely that Tallahassee is going to hear this particular appeal for the fiscal year 26 budget simply because the clock has run out at this point in time. I will say that on the fiscal year 27, or excuse me, the end of your fiscal year 26 budget, something has come up that we were unaware of until fairly recently. BSO advised, as we were going back and forth on some budgetary issues with respect to 911, that in addition to the step increases that they've provided this year, that the sheriff approved a 4% cost of living adjustment to the totality of the sheriff's office in the first week of September. That means that that 4% will be retroactive to October 1st, so all of the functions other than Department of Detention, to our understanding, are going to receive essentially a 4% annual bump in the two pay periods that occurred in September. That means that those costs will be borne by contract cities, regional services, fire rescue, civilians in the Broward Sheriff's Office. That's our understanding. That's a significantly different approach to budgeting and pay than you would normally expect. Cities and the county, if we were calculating an end-of-year budget impact, would not expect that a retroactive pay increase be granted at the end of the fiscal year, and it's going to create an interesting challenge for closing out the fiscal year for the Broward Sheriff's Office and for contract cities and for everyone else. Can I get clarification just for a second? Sure. Thank you. From September, you're talking about to last October. Yes. Right. So in the first week of September, according to an email we received from the CFO, the sheriff approved the 4% COLA retroactive to October 1st, 2025. A whole year. For all of this current fiscal year. The one that we're sitting in today that ends in two days. That we're in. All the way back to last October. Correct. So the two paychecks, my understanding there were going to be two paychecks, two pay periods in September, and that those pay periods would include this 4% increase. On September 11th and September 25, those paychecks would include the entire year's worth of retroactive pay. Do we have an idea how much that is? Approximately $13 million. Where does he get the money? That's in his budget, correct? That's all. I'm sorry. Right. So can I just interject? Senator Geller has asked, and I assume Anika, if there's something that's being done that's not legal, you're going to say something? Because he asked the county attorney if what they're doing is legal, and it's not questioning what we're doing. Right. What they're doing. It's not something you cleared. I mean, is this something that he can even do something retroactive? I don't know if it's legal, if it's to you or administration, but how can he go back and do something for a year ago when all of the budgets are closed out? Technically, it's not closed out until September 30th. The cities don't have the money. I mean, how do you just go back when you have a contract and say, well, retroactively, I'm going to go back 11 months and start increasing. It is possible that the sheriff has calculated that there are savings because of attrition, because of vacancies, or other costs that weren't expended. I think what's interesting is we seem to be in a back and forth with the sheriff about their inability to implement their salary study, and yet they are still able to provide steps and cost of living adjustments. If a step is roughly 5% and a COLA was implemented retroactively for a year of 4%, you're looking at a 9% salary increase for a lot of, or most BSO employees. That's not a bad year for an employee. And yet our understanding from that same email is that this 4% COLA is not being treated by the sheriff's office as reducing the $73 million pay study challenge that we have, right? So the implementation of steps and the implementations of COLA aren't being credited against the $73 million they're asking for for the pay study. Okay. I have three in the queue. I have three in the queue. I got Commissioner Udine, then Commissioner Fisher, and then Senator Ridge. Michael answered what I was going to ask. We've budgeted dollars for them to increase salaries of these officers. They just choose to use those dollars differently, but as he just said, they were able to do it. So we put the money in the budget that they could have done that for. I'm concerned with, I don't think the contract cities know that they're getting hit with this bill either. I mean, is there, they're going to go, I think they're going to go a little bit. So we have been in conversation from a, both a budget and a city manager standpoint with the city, the contract cities, because different cities were in different positions. Some of them funded the sheriff for the salary increases, even though they hadn't been implemented. We were worried that some of those caught some of those revenues would then come back to the county and then we would be in the awkward position of having to consider returning funds to cities that weren't really our funds, so to speak. So we've been asking the sheriff's office, how are you planning to true up at the end of the year? If you've got this gap between what the city gave you versus what you actually spent. It's it, this suggests to me that the sheriff's office looked and felt that they could actually go ahead and use that gap and fund the pay increases. For both the cities and for regional services that the county provides because one of the sticking points has been that the sheriff's office wants to do it all collectively right so they're not going to increase certain deputies and not others certain firefighters and not others. So it's fairly clear that the sheriff's office is in a position to provide salary increases. I am. I'm still unclear as to why, therefore, they're sticking to this seventy three million dollar increase for the pay study in and of itself. Why couldn't they have just implemented over three, four years their their pay study when clearly the funding is there in some way, shape or form. I don't know if the cities are aware of this. We haven't specifically reached out to them. But this is going to be a more challenging closeout of the fiscal year simply because there's no way they they fully anticipated having this four percent implemented in the last month of the year. Commissioner Fisher. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. And I was being silent at the beginning of the meeting when you voiced your frustration. And so I totally agree with you that it's I just don't understand why the sheriff is not here. But having said that and you also asked, Mayor, when they were here a month ago or two, you said, would they be open to an audit? And of course, they never did respond to that, obviously. So that's number one, because we go back to the control of monies and going back to legislations in 2024. We can audit going back to legislation where we can't dictate to the sheriff where he or she spends their money. We can give them money. We have budgeted 2026 monies accordingly. And now you have this retroactive pay scale. So my question, I'm assuming he found his own money in his own budget to pay for these items. So if the county is not responsible for these monies, are there? So we aren't certain of the financial position of the sheriff's office vis-a-vis their contract cities, because we don't have eyes on those dollar amounts. We will assume that they're in a position to absorb it, given whatever the city's budgeted themselves. However, there is a there is an impact to the county with respect to 9-1-1, which is the next topic. Because the sheriff's office has asked for additional funds in part because of this 4% increase. So there is an impact to the county because of the regional 9-1-1 contract. But you mentioned 13 million, approximately 13 million would be this cost. That's going to be absorbed in his budget, correct? Except for what they are specifically asking in 9-1-1 of the county. Take 9-1-1, which we're going to talk about that in a moment. But all the other dollars would be absorbed in his budget. So that's not our responsibility, correct? A portion of it, because the dispatch that Michael's going to get into in a few minutes, part of that 13 million includes dispatch. The 9-1-1 piece that we have through a contractual arrangement, even though there's no existing agreement in place that's operating under a term sheet. But but that is a function that the sheriff operates on the county's behalf. Okay. So part of that 13 million would have an impact outside of the regional. Outside, not even on, so the other dollars we would not be responsible for, correct? Except for the airport and the seaport, because if he implemented 4% across the board, which is what we understand, then the airport and the seaport would be bearing their portion of that increase for fire rescue and deputies. So this just goes to show, once again, the first of all, these deputies here, you guys are absolutely amazing. So this is not anything against you at all. But it shows the distrust to me how this goes. It goes even back to the helicopters. And I want to I want to hit on this once again. And I know, Senator Rich, we talk about this often as far as that at public meetings. It goes back to the this scenario here. And when the sheriff gets on social media and blames the crash in Pompano Beach to Broward County is unacceptable to me. Unacceptable. And he blames Broward County because of that. Number one. Number two is he's responsible for the maintenance of the helicopters. He is. So you never heard back what the study was, what the crash was. But he decides to blame Broward County, the commission for that. Unacceptable to me because it's very personal to me at that point. And to use a death of somebody is inexcusable. It really is. But then we immediately come into action and give him $15 million to buy a new helicopter. And then he decides to buy three. And then he comes back to us and say, hey, by the way, folks, Broward County, you got to pay for three now. This is the same thing happening again. The races are great. That's fine. But but it's not our responsibility. Again, we cannot control this budget. We do not say that we give him a pot of money. He can shift it around any way he wants to. Again, as I said on Sunday, hope and pray he gives the eight million dollars to the deputies in the detention center. Hope and pray he does. But he doesn't have to. So he shifted. And we have no accountability for it. It's financial accountability. It's transparency. It's management. And it's it. I I'm hot on the collar because this continues to happen. And what it brings personal things like that into the play and tries to scare people. And to use somebody like that is totally inexcusable. And I won't tolerate it. And I'm going to say to the media right now, I won't tolerate such dissatisfaction. He's a vendor to us. And he needs to be able to communicate, as the mayor said. He came back and he said he would communicate directly to Miss Shapiro. And he has not done this. And yet he decides not to show up here today. And yet he has this action here taking us without blindsiding us at the end of the day. So I'm sorry. I'll talk about you. I'm on one, but I just had to get that off my chest. Thank you, mayor. Before I recognize Commissioner Rich, just to clarify what you said, Commissioner Fisher, when the sheriff had his people here at the last meeting, Monica, you may remember, I specifically asked them, it's on video, would he allow us to, would the sheriff allow us to audit? They said they would get back to us on that. I've not heard anything. Have you heard anything on that? No, sir. Senator Rich, you got the floor. Okay. Well, most of it my colleague to the right here has said. But, you know, we talk about this all the time. And we've spent now already 40 minutes, you know, basically on this kind of thing. And I have to say, it's the same thing over and over again, that he has no responsibility to us, he feels no responsibility to us, and we have no way to audit. And that's not how you run a business. I mean, if the state's looking at people that they should be auditing, they should be auditing the sheriff's office. They've audited us, we came out fine. But we can't say what is going on there. And nobody else can either, except a small group. So, at the top. There is no accountability to anyone. And I think that it's time that we figure out a way, I mean, whether it's, you know, through the legislature, but some other means of ensuring that they have to be, they're treated like everyone else. Every other one of our providers, suppliers, everything, has to go through an audit. And they should have to, too. So, I think we've spent a lot of time on this. I suggest that we move ahead. I mean, we're all kind of on the same page here about the fact that we have no control over what happens to this money after it goes to him. And that is wrong. One last thing for you guys to consider. If you've got Monica, you could tell me, an attorney who thought it was legal. A little out of the box here. What happens if we just decrease the budget? It hasn't closed yet. We just take the budget and decrease it significantly. Let them go and appeal it. And let the state legislature that put on the ballot about reducing real estate taxes, that put on, that the governor did doge. They're all concerned about spending. They're all concerned about money. So, let the sheriff go to those people and let him appeal his budget. And we just reduce the budget because that's what the community is talking about. That's what we've been talking about. We have no accountability. Why not think of, if he wants $10, we allocate $7. If he wants $20, we allocate $15. Let him go and appeal it. And let the state be the ones to say, sure, here's all the money you want. I don't know why we don't do that. It's an idea that we should consider. I don't know how you guys feel about that. But why not? It hasn't closed. Why don't we just slash it 30% and let him go and appeal it? Yes. I'd love to hear from everybody. Yeah. Well, I believe that you will get a response from the sheriff on the audit on the 12th of never. But I had one yes or no question for administration, which was simply, and this is a yes or no question. So the fact that the sheriff gave a 9% budget, a 9% increase, 4 plus 5, within his existing budget. Do I understand that he did it within his existing budget? So he had room in his budget for a 4 plus, for most employees, 5%. So a 9% increase for most of his employees without additional money. That was a yes or no. That is our understanding. Yes or no. Okay. Anybody else want to comment or we want to move on? Yeah. I haven't commented yet. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Just to clarify, the contracted cities already had it in their proposal, what they've given to the sheriff for these raises, correct? That was discussed with them, I'm assuming. He's not going to go back to them for money. Some of the cities did. Some of the cities transmitted the budgeted amount. Some of the cities were considering transmitting only the actual amount. We do not know for certain. Our assumption is that the funding, that the 4% increase that was done retroactively would be covered by the funds that the cities already budgeted. That is our assumption. Right. And so that's for them to take care of. And as far as we are concerned, the airport and the seaport, that additional COLA, was that included? We are double checking that right now. Okay. And you're saying the 9-1-1 was not included for sure? It was not because they sent us an official request for an additional $5.85 million to close out the current fiscal year. Or 9-1-1. Or 9-1-1-1. Or 9-1-1-1. But that's not necessarily for the COLA. Part of it is, yes. Okay. So we'll get to that. But I just, so if he can find that out and let me know, I'd appreciate it. But as far as we're concerned, he can move around his budget, do what he wants with the excess. That's entirely within his purview. As long as it's in his budget. So long as the, so long as we're discussing regional funds. So when it comes to contractual funds. It's between him and the contracted cities. And the contract at airport and seaport, and I'm, and Jennifer's is crunching the numbers here, but it looks like part of that 13 million is, includes our airport and seaport law and fire, which means it would come back to us through those dollars, through those contracts for more money. Because. But they haven't come back to you for more money yet. Not yet. But they're paying, but they are paying retro. So how are they paying if they don't have the money? Through other savings that they may have, if they have vacancies and things like that, they would have. Right. So we won't necessarily be hit with a cost. So we'll wait to see. I mean, you're saying you don't, they're going to pay them regardless of getting any extra money from us. Is that what we're saying? Well, they have requested additional dollars at least. Only from 9-1-1. At this point. Okay. Thanks. I came out today. I'm dealing with bereavement in my family. I'm dealing with my wife in the hospital. But I felt the need to come here for the public today to speak on this issue. I agree with my colleagues, in particular, Senator Ann Rich. We know what we need to do. And we can't control what he does. We know the ordinances that prevent us from doing that. I think we keep moving forward on what we want to do that's best for PSO and fire that we control at both airport and seaport. And when these items come back to us, whether it's additional money, the contract cities know what they have to do. We'll deal with it at that time. Let's just keep moving forward. I think we can go on the rest of the day with what we think the sheriff is doing. But we know and we don't know what the sheriff is doing because he has no intention on speaking with us. So let's just keep moving forward. I'm going to return to my family right now, but I thought it was necessary to be here today to talk about this important issue. Yes, I do agree with you, Mayor, that we should do something drastic. But I don't think that's the answer. If we were in our own business, as Senator Ann Rich said, you know, this is what business people do. We're not, it's not our own business. This is the citizens. This is the taxpayers. This is the people's business. And we've got to do the people's business here. And we don't have that luxury to do that. I think we have to follow our process and wait and see how it plays out. So with that, let's just move forward if we will. And if there's no other comments, but that's up to you. We move forward. Thank you very much. Okay. I asked a question as to where we're going and I hear our vice mayor saying we move forward. But I truly want to put at the table that we need to go to the legislatures. Somehow we need to change policy. Does the sheriff's office or any of our constitutional officers have to do their budget in the public, with sunshine, in the sunshine, or they don't? So I'm assuming they don't. If not, we would have the information that we could use because it's in the sunshine so it's available to everyone. So we need to look at policy. If we have to operate in the sunshine, all of these constitutional officers should be. I'm just saying. Because they could be doing the same thing and we don't know. Okay? So I'm telling us to take a look at that. And, of course, I believe strongly we should be moving forward, but we need to know before leaving here what instructions were given to staff. What is it that we want staff to do? So it's very clear to us the directives that we give to the county administration that it's coming from us so we can stand behind it. Okay. Want to move forward, guys? Let's move forward. Michael. Are we done? With that one issue, we'll keep moving forward. Thank you. We'll keep moving forward. So, pivoting to the fiscal year 27 adopted budget. When you all approved the adopted budget last week, it included an increase of $52.6 million for the Broward Sheriff's Office. That's a 6.4% increase. Total value of $878.1 million. That's primarily for the general fund operations. The reason we get to 6.4, just a quick reminder, is that the Sheriff's Office did ask us to assume a number of the utilities for our jails. So that funding left the Sheriff's Office. It sits now on the county side, and we're assuming those utility costs about $8.4 million. So not only are we assuming costs that the Sheriff had before, we're actually increasing the dollar amount as well. So that's how we get to that $52.6 million on his side, and a 6.4% increase. As mentioned before, given that the Sheriff's Office is not considering the 4% COLA as eating into the $73 million difference of opinion on the salary study, and that remains an open issue, we don't see why they wouldn't continue to take advantage of the appeal process moving forward. That's the inclination that we have. So I think we should be ready for that to occur once again. Even though this year it wasn't considered, this is an annual function. And for those who might be listening, because I know that everyone in this room understands the two major power plays that Sheriffs have in state statute, the public may not fully grasp it. The Sheriffs have two major abilities. One, in 2022, the legislature granted Sheriffs the power to move monies between funds and between categories within funds. So effectively, once a Board of County Commissioners adopts the budget, Sheriffs at that point, outside of contractual relationships, can do whatever they want with the funding. And I think the best public example that everyone understands is the helicopter purchase, where the Board provided funding to replace one fire rescue helicopter, and instead the Sheriff's Office put down payments on three and essentially said, now give me the money for those three helicopters. That's the most obvious example, but it happens behind the scenes all of the time, which means that you all can't ensure that the investments that you prioritize and that you put forward will get applied where you'd like them. I recall Senator Rich asking me on a number of occasions, if the Board wanted to give a 3% increase to the firefighters and the Board approved it, could we guarantee that the Sheriff actually gave the firefighters 3% increase? And the answer was no, we cannot. Even though it's your fire rescue agency under an ILA, we weren't in a position to ensure that. So the ability to move money around is very powerful for Sheriffs. The other major power for Sheriffs is the ability to take the total dollar amount that you've all approved and appeal that to the Governor and the Cabinet, which essentially politicizes the budget process. And what we saw, because typically that's the statutory functions of a Sheriff, which are fairly limited to the jails and the regional functions that they have. But in the fiscal year 26 appeal, Sheriff Tony appealed absolutely everything in his budget. He appealed the contractual functions of 9-1-1, he appealed the ILA functions of fire rescue, appealed the contractual functions at the airport and at the seaport. And even though I think it was the first point that the attorneys and we made in the rebuttal, it still put it in that realm. And those two powers make it extremely challenging for you all to have the transparency that you'd like and to be able to hold the Sheriff's Office accountable, right? So without... Because once you vote, in a sense, the state says the Sheriff can now do what the Sheriff would like to do. And it makes it very, very challenging. I say that because the agreements we're about to discuss and sort of the nature of 9-1-1, airport, seaport, jails, and fire rescue, those agreements were all created in an era when this was not the case. They never contemplated sheriffs having this much power over the funding and this little ability to hold the Sheriff accountable if the Sheriff isn't operating in a good faith effort with the board. And for that reason, I think we're systematically looking at all of these areas one by one to understand what does the future look like with the Sheriff given that these two powers exist. And I just want the public to understand that because it's a nuance that you all assume, but they don't necessarily understand. And it's also important for folks to recognize that sheriffs can ask for the sun and the moon and the stars of a commission, but sheriffs don't raise the millage rate. They don't have to face the voters on an annual basis regarding property taxes. They get to ask, but then they don't have the responsibility of actually making that action happen. They do face the voters every four years, but that's every four years. That's not on an annual basis. So there is this very obvious imbalance in power and responsibility. And generally, you want power and responsibility to be balanced. That doesn't really exist with sheriffs in the state of Florida right now. And unfortunately, you're facing that challenge. So before we move into 9-1-1, I just wanted to put that on the record so that the public can understand the position you are in as a board. Okay, 9-1-1. So a little bit of a quick history. In fiscal year 26, Monica became county administrator. 22, I'm sorry. I meant 22. I said 26. Get rid of it and bring it back. Because I was going to go. I became assistant county administrator. Yes. I became assistant county administrator shortly thereafter. You'll recall that the hot topic at the time was 9-1-1. The performance was not there. Calls weren't being picked up quickly enough. And there was a lot of public conversation and consternation for good reason. As part of that conversation, you all had a number of meetings with the sheriff. And the sheriff came and said, let me take a look at what the possible solutions are, and came back to you afterwards and said, I need more funding so that I can increase the salaries so that we can be competitive and we can start filling these vacancies. In doing so, the board approved $4 million, which was prorated for that fiscal year. And then you analyze that in the following year in fiscal year 23 and added an additional $11.3 million, excuse me, $11.5 million for salaries in 9-1-1. Between then and now to the fiscal year 26 budget, the costs of 9-1-1 essentially increased 50%. You've invested a lot of money, but the costs have also continued to grow there. Thankfully, increasing salaries did help the sheriff's office hire more people, fill the vacancies, which are essentially at zero at the moment. I think the last number we got was five, but five out of 449 is close to zero, and it varies on a daily basis. And the call-taking performance has been dramatically improved and remained consistently improved over that period of time. So in this particular case, your investment in dollars did actually solve the primary challenge, which was there weren't enough people there physically to take the calls. Unfortunately, we haven't seen a reduction in the overtime cost that we would normally have expected. So if you're sitting there with 20, 20 plus percent vacancies, and you take it down to essentially 0% vacancies, you would expect that the overtime cost would go down. That hasn't really been the case. In 26, we had a $70 million budget for BSO for these costs. They requested $82.5 million, which is a 17.9 increase in 27, which included an additional 27 full-time positions. You'll remember that they also asked for those 27 full-time positions last year. If you're asking for that many more positions, there usually needs to be a justification for doing so. So if the performance is good and your vacancies are essentially at zero, why do you need an additional 27 positions? We don't have a good justification for it. So once again, in this budget, we did not recommend it and you did not approve that increase. Unfortunately, we did receive a request from the Sheriff's Office to help close out the fiscal 26 books in 911 for an additional $5.85 million. That's a combination of the 4% increase that kicked in in September that was retroactive. That was probably, we're estimating about $2.5 million if you include benefits along with the salaries. So if you remove the 4% at the end of the year, it would have been $3.35 million, which is about the back and forth that we're always having with BSO. It's primarily overtime. What we're having a challenge understanding is if you are fully staffed at 449 people, why are you still spending between $5 and $7 million a year in overtime? We would expect that to shrink significantly. We don't have a good answer for that. You might ask, do we have to give the $5.85 million? You probably don't have to. But if it's a negative in their books, it's probably going to get addressed by them at the end of the fiscal year when they return money to the county. Either way, it's probably going to get zeroed out. We would recommend that if it's an actual cost and assuming it is an actual cost, that it then has to get covered. It's a service that we asked him to do. The challenge here is we go back to this idea of transparency and accountability, and this is an obvious place where, on an annual basis, we're being asked to provide funds at the end of the fiscal year. This time it was so late in the fiscal year we couldn't even include it in the September budget amendments. So we're actually doing this after that process is complete. We do have a process for doing it. But I think this sort of highlights the challenge that the board has. If the sheriff has this function and is able to do late-year salary increases, knowing it's going to have a material impact and some of these funds are going to have to be requested of the county at the end, what are your options for managing that and for managing that cost growth over time? There really aren't that many. So we wanted to put that out there, let you know officially of the $5.85 million, that about 2.5 of that is associated with the 4% increase, and let you know that we would likely be moving forward over the next month or two to address that dollar amount in BSO's budget. Mayor? Yeah. Commissioner Fisher. Thank you. Thank you, Michael, for the detailed report. You know, just as a recap, we all know that we have three PSAPs throughout the county, one in Pembroke Pines, one in Sunrise, and one in Coconut Creek that's going to be moving into the value adjustment board building. So as far as the PSAPs are concerned, we own everything. We own the software, the computerization, we own the furniture, we own everything in those PSAPs. We contracted as a vendor to BSO to manage the 911. And, again, what Michael, I don't want to be redundant, what Michael talked about, when the sheriff came to us, again, came to us and said there was a shortfall of the $4 million, ultimately $11.5 million, the board stepped up and said, hey, we understand the issue you're going to. We stepped up and gladly, you know, paid those dollars to get 100% funding for 100% positions. So now we're dealing with overtime, now that we're dealing with all of a sudden 27 positions that are there. He never asked for that to begin with. He funded 100%. He has sat in a chair there somewhere and said, yes, I'm 100% funded, I'm 100% staffed. So now we come back again to, again, an opportunity that he sees to take advantage of the county, even though we're out of contract, and Anika, correct me if I'm wrong, or even Renee. I know Renee did a lot of work on this prior, too. So with the current contract that has expired, will we not be operating under that contract even though it's expired? Wouldn't that be common law or not? I'm not a lawyer, but I'm just figuring out usually when a contract expires that they go under that same contract until we get a new one. So in this case, right, we are out of the contract. I understand that the last correspondence that we had with the SO, and it seems to be kind of the meeting of the minds that we would be operating consistent with the existing contract. But, of course, there have been, you know, in that time changes with how we've operated as a result of that. But we are not bound by, you know, strictly bound by that contract because it's expired. So it's really, you know, where the parties meet. So unilaterally we can make a decision, and unilaterally he can make a decision, and we can just implement those without having to meet in the minds? We don't, yes, we don't have a contract. So we have nothing that's binding us to be able to operate pursuant to the terms of that contract right now. And so BSO can make, you know, there'd be no contract to say, oh, you can't do that or you have to terminate or, you know, do anything else. It's more practical matters for us to deal with. In my understanding that it's been his delay in trying to get a contract put together, correct? We have tried to come to the table and trying to get a contract together? So a little bit of context there. If you take a look at some of the recent budgets that the Sheriff's Office has submitted, the Sheriff's Office has been attempting, via their presentation of the budget, to turn the 9-1-1 function into a regional general fund service that is not contractual in nature. We have consistently presented it in the traditional contractual manner. But that has been a desire of the Sheriff's Office is to turn 9-1-1 into a general fund regional function, not a contractual function. I will say that that's consistent with legislation that's been put forth in Tallahassee over the last two years by a house rep in the Hillsborough area. Sheriffs have wanted to try to gain control of the 9-1-1 function statewide. We are expecting a third version of that legislation to come forward. So it is not surprising that BSO has been attempting to shift 9-1-1 into a regional function. If it were a regional function, for example, then their power to move money around would apply to 9-1-1 as well. Once again, okay. So I'm going to create a new acronym called MAP, called Management Accountability and Transparency. And I think that's what I'm looking for, and that's why I keep kind of preaching to the choir here, obviously, but more importantly to the public, that we need. We need to manage. We need to be fiscal responsible and accountability of these items and then transparency. Because again, we have no idea where the monies are going to. Again, not fault anybody. The legislature actually did that. And so we need to stay, in my opinion, we need to stay for that. And going back to we already own everything and basically the employees are there on behalf of the sheriff. You know, I'm inclined and I think I'm going to bring forward an item as a supplemental to our next commission meeting to discuss whether Broward County wants to take that aspect over on 9-1-1. I think it's a healthy move. We did it with fire. Again, going back to my MAP, Management Accountability and Transparency. So I'd like to have that discussion, Nika, to bring forth an item to discuss bringing 9-1-1 back to Broward County. Thank you, Mayor. I'm done. Yes, Commissioner. Your mic, please. I thought I touched it. As to that, we must do something. But I hear us not talking about every year we have a legislative package. We have the legislative delegation that goes to Tallahassee every year. I know we have partners with the legal cities. I can't see us having this conversation without engaging. I hear the conversation around notifying the public and let them know what is happening. And I'm in 100% agreement. But how can you be talking to the public and not talking to the contractual cities? They are in the same bind that you are. And if you need any allies, I think we should be having conversation with the cities that have those contracts with BSO. They need to, I just believe that should be something we're doing. There's no way we should be talking about this and not including possible partners, possible folks that will be going with us to Tallahassee to talk about the impact of what the sheriff is doing on their budget. If we did not engage them first, sheriff, they might just ask us that question. Have you ever brought this to our attention? Have we ever brought the challenges we are having to the attention of the legislatures who are responsible for these laws? We have a delegation. And we should continue to go every year because it's something that's not going to go away. All right? I like what we're doing. But I believe strongly we need to engage those cities also so they are educated and ready to be a part of whatever we're going to go through. And so that's what I'll say for now. Other than that, I like the idea of whatever we need to do to protect taxpayers' dollars. And, of course, 911 is another resource that we need to own. We own it. So we need to manage it also for greater transparency. Thank you. Commissioner Davis? Thank you. I just have a question on, you mentioned that the sheriff returns funds annually? Correct. Per state statute, after the sheriff essentially closes the books, any funds that are in excess of what was necessary to close the books, get returned back to the county. So that could be excess funds at the airport. That would be specific for the airport. Excess funds at the seaport would go back to the seaport. Excess funds from the regional, which is our general fund, would go back to the general fund. Correct. And over the years, you've received funds back. Yes. And typically, the sheriff's office, where they may have purchases of capital outlay that haven't been received but were ordered in the fiscal year, they'll typically send a request to the county asking that those quote-unquote rollover funds, so to speak, get applied, because at that point they're one-time funds, get applied to help pay for the products they've already purchased. And it has been typical for Broward County's board to say yes to some or all of those requests historically. So it's not as if the sheriff essentially loses the dollars because they are costs that the board would have likely borne one way or another regardless. And you've all been extremely cooperative historically, in fact, so cooperative that this is actually a negotiating term during appeals in other counties, where those rollover funds become how they sort of agree on what the final budget looks like, whereas here it has been pretty standard. So do we have an idea of the funds that would be returned this year? Given the 4% COLA that was just implemented about three weeks ago in this month, I think it's going to be hard for us to understand what the impact is going to be or what we might receive in return. So over the last couple of years, I can share with you what has transpired. And in fact, we go back in the first budget amendment and explain that process that Michael has just explained specifically as to how much money was reverted and to what or which items they were requesting to fund out of those dollars. So the most recent one was in December, December 9th of 2025, that was the first budget amendment for the prior year for at the end of fiscal 25, there were $33.2 million reverted from the Broward Sheriff's Office general fund budget. And then in the 26 budget request, they had requested $31.5 million of those $33.2 million appropriated to fund items for the expenditures that were not completed. And so of that amount, $14.4 million was for vehicle replacements, $6.7 million was for building and other land improvements, $4.5 million was for computer software, $3.9 was for operating expenses, and $2 million for equipment. So almost all of those dollars, just under $2 million that was not allocated or requested, $1.7 million was requested. And then they also had a $3 million on top of that inpatient, inmate, inpatient health care costs. And so they had to fund that separately. But I just want to be clear that all this was all budgeted for. Everything was budgeted for, and they were giving you back funding. Is that what we're saying? It was already, like, even this money here. But they didn't expend it in the 12 months. Right. So because it was kind of encumbered, if you will, they were saying that it was going to be spent, but they just didn't have time to pay out the dollar. But it wasn't any new money. It was budgeted for, as I'm trying to get to. So this COLA and the other overtime funding, it is not new money. It's been budgeted for in the BSO budget. And generally, you would get money back. It's already budgeted for. But now you're utilizing. They could claw back this money because they need it. So let's separate a couple of issues. So in the case of 9-1-1, because we're discussing 9-1-1, they're asking for additional unbudgeted dollars. You said something about the return. Hold on. Let me finish. It wasn't why I brought it up, because you said something about the return funds. So whether we approve it or not, they'll probably take it out of the return funds. Isn't that what you said? That's what I heard. No, we may have confused you, because the process, what he was describing in the dollars I just went over were from regional funds. 9-1-1 is not part of that money, and nor are the contract cities. Okay. So I just want to be clear. So you never get back money from the 9-1-1 budget? I have. If there were leftover dollars, but there haven't been. Okay, so Jennifer's telling me, in past, there have been, at times, a small amount unused, and that would go to general fund. But this particular item that I just described was for the regional pot. It was not in 9-1-1. Right, it wasn't for 9-1-1. So for the 9-1-1, you would have to come up with new funding, because you don't perceive that there is going to be any money refunded. Correct. The fact that they asked for $5.85 million means they know they have no dollars left at the end of the year in that contract fund. And then you brought up the refund, return funds, because out of the enterprise, you'll probably get money that could cover this. Because I did hear something about, we have to approve this. So I think what you're referring to is my statement that what happens if we just don't try to fund the 5.85 at all and leave a hole in their books? My assumption is that what they would do is they would manage their close out of the fiscal year somehow to keep themselves balanced, meaning that the funds that we would get returned somehow would have that 5.85 already balanced on their side of the books. So I suspect that whether the board officially agrees to give it or doesn't, that that hole will get plugged by BSO one way or another. By the return funds that they would normally give us from wherever they get it from. All right. Thank you. Not necessarily. First of all, Commissioner Rogers, unfortunately, the chance of our going to Tallahassee to rein in the sheriffs, you know, would go nowhere. It's only 23 or 24 that the legislature passed the law giving the sheriffs complete discretion. So that's just not going to change. But I've got two questions. Let me just. Please. Okay. I kind of understand the legislature. I'm just saying we document. Okay. We want to be transparent. We want to educate. That is a tool that we have as a Broward County to ask one of our legislators to carry this for us so they know it's a process we can use. Thank you. And I have two questions. One. And so I just, if the sheriff increased retroactively salaries and there was money in the budget last year. But now I'm trying to figure out, obviously, if there's already an increase for this year, does that mean that somehow we have to increase funding to them this year to pay for, if there was a 9% increase, we hadn't budgeted a 9% increase. We'd budgeted a 4% or so or 5% increase. How do we cover, does this mean we're going into this year's budget with a shortfall to him? So that's an excellent question. The answer, from my perspective, is no, because the sheriff must live within the budget that you all provide, barring an appeal that goes against the county. That means they'll have to manage their expenses, right? So one of the things they could, and I mean, these are budget tools you have available to you, right? So they could simply spend less on operating than they had anticipated if they have higher than expected salaries. Because they could, I mean, there's a, given the flexibility that a sheriff has to do what he will with the funds, they could make sure that they start increasing their salaries and just reduce the other expenses that they have so long as they live within the bounds of the final number that you all provided. You don't really expect them to do that, though, do you? Well, I think there's a lot of flexibility there, right? I think what's challenging for us in the negotiation process on the salary study is if you could give 4% for a COLA, why didn't you just apply that 4% to the salary study and over a three-, four-, five-year period complete your salary study as opposed to giving the 4% COLA and then also saying, now, I still want the full $73 million for the salary study, right? To me, it seems like trying to have your cake and eat it, too, a little bit. And if I might interject here. So at the last set of budget workshops, when you all directed and asked, directed me and asked him to work together, I attempted to do that. And we had a couple of what I thought to be classified as productive conversations. And right before I released my recommended budget to you all, I had a series of conversations with him as well, as well as with the undersheriff and the CFO, through Michael as well. And we were hoping to do it over a four-year period of time, and that is what was proposed. And in fact, the dollars in part that are recommended in this adopted fiscal 27 budget was reflective of salary dollars that could have been towards the four-year implementation. And at that point, when I was expecting, because he shared he would get back to me, at that point, I have yet to speak with him again. He did not call me or reach out to me. And instead, I understand he reached out to all of you individually and said that what I had proposed in the recommended budget was unacceptable. So, to me, you know, when you directed me to work with him in good faith, I did that, and I expected a similar, you know, courtesy. And my final question is, we keep saying we don't have the ability to audit the sheriff. A, is that accurate? In my prior conversations with our former county attorney, I was told it's not clear. But secondly, even – we don't even know the amount of his budget. We know what we give him. I don't think we know what he gets from state, federal, forfeiture, et cetera. Can he just ignore public records requests? I'm – you know, can't – can we get this information through public records requests if we can't – and then have our own people go through and do an audit? So, we can and we have. In fact, the county attorneys put forth maybe the largest public records request of the sheriff's office I've ever seen in the process responding to the appeal. But it is a process, right? It is not a timely, normal, annual operating effort. It's typically something that you would do for a specific period of time. It can be done. They do respond to public records requests. They have an entire system, actually, a technological system. But it can take time to get the information back. And then, of course, you have to have analysis. And then the question is, at that point, does the information change what you do at all? Because you may be aware, as we now are, that they do look for savings and salaries and then shift them to, let's say, the training center, capital expenses, or for helicopters. But I don't know that it materially changes what decisions you all make from one year to the next. If they're not spending the money the way that – what they keep saying, sheriff – deputies, deputies, deputies, deputies, salary, and then that we give them the money for that and that's not where they spend it, A, we need to know that, but B, also the public needs to know that because the sheriff keeps beating us about the head and shoulders on salary where we put that money in. And that's not where he spends it. I think I'd be very interested if we've gotten responses to all of our public records requests. I think that we need to hire an accounting firm or somebody to analyze this and report back to us if we can get that information, if he responds to all of our public records requests. So just in response to your initial question, Senator, we don't have a generalized ability to audit the sheriff, right? So he doesn't have to give us the full access in the way that our agencies have Bob's office go in and really do a full audit. But certainly as part of the – you know, some of our contracts, we do have auditing provisions in some of our contracts, but those are going to be for those specific purposes and they rely on enforcement. And then we have, as part of our budgeting appeals and budgeting process, made public records requests to which the sheriff has responded. And we've worked with our OMB team and auditor team to review that. And that's how we've been – I think we understand the sheriff's use of their funds a lot better over the past year as a result of making those public records requests. But we have to do it in that way, which is different than, you know, how we do our overall audit or how we do a county auditor audit where, you know, you have full management cooperation in that process. So we're left with just relying on the public records to try to figure out what's happening in each scenario. Just while – well, excuse me one second. Just while you can't believe everything you read in chat, GBT, it claims that the Broward sheriff from state, cities, county, the total budget $1.3 billion. Actually, it says $1.397 billion. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but it deciphered from our county and all the other sources of money. Whatever. Anyway. You want to move on? County and contract. That is true, but it did not account for some of the other things you had mentioned. Okay. Yeah. I had one thing I wanted to clarify because when Commissioner Davis was talking about the money being returned, and I wanted to clarify that that $5.8 million was not utilized from returned – those returned dollars, right? You had said that before. So the $5.85 million is a request from the Broward sheriff's office. It has not been paid to the Broward sheriff's office. It's not like there's money that they returned to us that they're now asking for. At the moment, no, because they have returned nothing yet since they have yet to close their books and cut us checks. I just want to – because some things have been returned, and rightfully so. They come and we give them the money, but this is not – From prior fiscal years. This is that category. Correct. Move on. Mayor. Oh, I'm sorry. Just a couple comments. One method to obtain the right to audit the sheriff and the other constitutionals would be to change the county charter to allow my office to do that, which when I was in Orange County, that got done. So that's one method that could be done. And also I wanted to point out that during our training center audit that we did, the sheriff's office required us to use public information requests, which we did, and they provided the information. However, in my opinion, that's a lousy way to do public business to require the auditor to submit public information requests. And then the third thing is the sheriff does return a lot of money historically at the end of the year, and then he requests you all to give most of it back to him, supposedly, apparently, for things that were in process. I would suggest you might want to consider requiring us to do an audit of those requests prior to you all approving to give the money back to him because the state processes are set up so that the money is given back to the county at the end of the year, and we typically don't have the obligation to return it back to the sheriff. So that might be an avenue you may want to consider. We would be more than happy to do that. Mr. Melton, great idea. Thank you so much. Anybody else? Well, we usually put him to sleep. Unfortunately, we usually put him to sleep. Sorry about what we do to you. Sorry about that. Mr. Mayor, can I ask a question of the county attorney's office? So Mr. Melton mentioned that the charter review process might allow for auditing of constitutionals. I'm a little concerned that state statute would actually supersede that. So would you all provide a little bit more information? We would have to look into it a little further, but we think that there are potential conflicts between what the state law provides. And I think the story of how the sheriffs have been able to change the law when we try to do anything probably tells that story well. But we'll look into, you know, our options on that because we know that this is an important request for the board. Move on. Let's move on. Michael, please. Okay. Airport and seaport feasibility studies. This one should be much quicker. You're all aware that in 2024, the county auditor's office completed an audit of the BSO contract at the airport. The number one recommendation, literally the first recommendation for law enforcement, was to take a look at whether or not there were other options for managing security at the airport. That was really the genesis of the overall conversation of taking a look at law enforcement at airport, and then it turned into seaport. In December of last year, after the appeal was triggered by the sheriff's office, the airport went ahead and contracted with a consultant to do a feasibility study. That feasibility study resulted in conversations with the board, and when the board said you should also take a look at the seaport, so there was an addendum made, an amendment made to that agreement that created a feasibility study for the seaport. Both resulting reports, as you all are aware, say that it is feasible to do so, to create a law enforcement agency at the airport and one at the seaport, but that a lot more work needs to be done before a recommendation can be considered. The next steps, as we've discussed with you all in one-on-one briefings on the seaport and at the workshop as a whole for the airport, would be to complete a competitive procurement process, likely for an RFP, that would bring a consulting firm to do both a workload analysis and a staffing study. Those are sort of the two key pieces necessary to understand what the realistic costs would be of creating an agency and then operating it, but we would likely put it out as a unified sort of enterprise agency, one that would provide for both the airport and the seaport, because you need the economies of scale. Those two facilities are essentially adjacent to each other, but there's a lot more work to do. So if the board is interested and we believe that from, you know, we've heard from any of you that we should continue to educate ourselves, the next step would be to go ahead and move forward with an RFP to bring on board an agency to do it. You may ask why not just continue with the consulting firm that we have. They were brought on board under a very specific scenario under authority of the administrator for limited time, short-term scope. They've completed their mission. We were a little bit concerned about firms having – they had to have experience in the airport and the seaport realm, which are very sort of highly regulated, multi-jurisdictional areas, and they have their own state laws associated with whether or not we can do it, which we can. And that's why we looked for this particular firm to bring them on board. But a staffing study and a workload analysis is a far more common job. Cities do it all of the time. I think you saw it at Pompano Beach. You saw it at Deerfield Beach. Those are sort of traditional jobs of consulting firms. So we would be looking at a competitive process. We were probably looking at another 12 to 24 months of work before you'd have a result and understand the finances associated with it, the startup costs, the longer-term costs, and to what extent it would offer longer-term management of cost growth at the airport and at the seaport. So that's likely the next step that you'll see from county administration is to bring someone on board to do that work. Point of personal privilege, I will say, since the board voted last week to do a transition for fire rescue, there's already a lot on our plate to be able to manage that transition. And I think that having the time to allow a consultant to do that work would actually fit well into the fact that we're already doing a transition of fire rescue. With all due respect, Michael, I just, you know, I don't know how the other commissioners feel, but two years, I mean, another two years to study something, it's just not a – it doesn't work for me. And if the consultant's buried, there's other consulting firms that we can retain. We don't just have to use one, the same one. And, you know, so I just – things just take way too long since I've been here at the county. And, you know, if your plate is jammed, Monica, bring on somebody else. If the consultant is jammed, Monica, you guys can go and hire another consulting firm. It shouldn't take two years to study this. Again, we've been dealing with this for a year already or two years. It's just ridiculous. I can appreciate your sense of urgency, Mayor. I really – but let me say this. Fire rescue is your agency. It already exists. You already have a union. You have personnel. They've been under you before. There are very few unknowns in the transition of fire rescue. The county has never had its own law enforcement agency, to my understanding. It is not a space in which the county has any experience. It is not – it is very limited in the fact that we are allowed to have law enforcement at the airport and at the seaport specifically. And I think that there are many, many unknowns in that space. So I don't think it's a bad thing for the board to be diligent in the effort. And I know it sounds like a lot of time, but I will say, Mr. Mayor, that if we're doing the fire rescue piece and if you all have a conversation now on 9-1-1, that's a lot of work to be done appropriately. You don't want any mistakes to happen. You don't want to put anyone at risk. And the law component – and maybe it can be faster. Maybe it can. My assumption is the 12 to 24 months as a whole to get to a decision point for the board, mainly because we've never explored this before, right? You do have access. We have access to former sheriffs, former state law enforcement officials that have decades of experience. Monica knows there's just a great deal of people that have run our airport in the past, that have run airports to other places in the past, that, you know, I understand that we're not in that business. But we do have access to these people right now that have that experience. Anyway, I'll leave it. Thank you. I do want to read some things, some thoughts that I have to get them on the record, because I do believe this is extremely important. I concur with Michael Ruiz. This should not be rushed. So let me read what I have written here. I want to begin by saying that I support the county doing its due diligence. We have an obligation to make sure that our taxpayers are receiving the best possible public safety service for the dollars we spend. But after looking at this issue, I have some serious concerns about creating a separate Broward County Police Department for the airport and Port Everglades. My concern is not simply the cost of hiring officers. My concern is whether a relatively small, standalone police agency can provide the depth and breadth of specialized public safety resources that these two facilities require. Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood International Airport and Port Everglades are not ordinary facilities. They are critical infrastructure. An incident at either location can quickly become much larger than the facility itself. We could be dealing with an active threat, a major criminal investigation, a hazardous materials incident, a maritime emergency, an aircraft emergency, a bomb threat, a mass casualty event, or a situation requiring specialized tactical resources. The question I keep coming back to is, will a small department have enough specialized resources immediately available, or will it ultimately have to call upon other agencies for those resources? If the answer is that we will need other agencies for specialized response, then I think we need to carefully examine what problem we are actually solving by creating another police department. There is also the issue of recruitment and retention. A police department needs to offer officers a career, not simply a job. In a smaller agency, there are fewer opportunities for advancement and fewer specialized assignments. That can make recruitment difficult, and even more importantly, make retention difficult. We should not underestimate the infrastructure required to operate a professional law enforcement agency, command staff, training, investigations, evidence, records, communications, technology, professional standards, recruitment, human resources, and all of the other functions that exist behind the uniformed officer. At Port Everglades, there is another very important consideration, marine policing. The port currently has landside, waterside, and air patrol security. We need to know exactly how those specialized capabilities will be replicated, staffed, and funded under a new department. So I believe there is a middle ground that we should consider seriously. If our concerns are about accountability, cost, staffing levels, or performance, then let's establish measurable performance standards and hold the existing provider accountable for meeting them. Let's negotiate requirements for staffing, response times, specialized unit availability, recruitment and retention, reporting and financial transparency. I'm not opposed to change. I'm opposed to making a structural change simply because it is possible. Feasibility does not necessarily mean preferable, and it certainly does not mean safer. But before we create a new police department, I want us to be absolutely certain that we are not giving up the depth of resources, specialized capabilities, and regional coordination that our airport and seaport require. These are two of Broward County's most important economic assets. Our first responsibility must be making sure that the people who work at them, travel through them, and depend upon them are safe. And I know we're trying to do another study, spend additional tax dollars to do that. If we are going to do that, I believe we need to be very clear about what we don't know today, and that this additional study is going to tell us. I've already invested in a feasibility study, and that study tells us that creating an independent department is possible. But it also tells us that there are significant questions surrounding cost, staffing, and specialized services that still need to be addressed. So before we spend more money, I would like to see a very specific scope of work. I want the next study to give us the true, fully loaded cost of running this department, not just the salaries of police officers. I want to see the cost of specialized response, marine operations, dispatch, training, administration, technology, equipment, pensions, benefits, recruitment, and retention. And I want that cost to compare not only to what we are paying BSO today, but with what a renegotiated BSO contract would cost if we address the county's concerns about accountability, staffing, and performance. Because I don't want us to spend additional money studying whether we can create another police department. We already know that we can do that. What I want to know is whether creating that department will actually give the taxpayers better value and provide the same or greater level of public safety. And if we're going to spend additional money to answer that question, then the study needs to be designed to give us apples-to-apples comparison, including all of the services that we may otherwise have to purchase from other agencies. I also don't want us to fall into the trap of believing that because we've spent money studying an option, we somehow need to proceed with that option. Our responsibility is to make the best decision for Broward County, regardless of what we have already spent getting to this point. I'm almost done. I want to be clear about my position on this additional study. The question should be, which model provides the appropriate level of public safety, specialized capabilities, accountability, and value for the people of Broward County, so that I can support doing the additional due diligence without prejudging the outcome. My vote today, or my opinion, should not be interpreted as a support for creating a new police department. It is support for making sure that we ultimately make that decision, that when we make that decision, we have all the facts in front of us. If the study demonstrates that an independent department provides the same or greater level of public safety and specialized response at a justifiable cost, then we will have that information. But if it demonstrates that we would spend substantially more and still have to rely on other agencies for critical, specialized services, then we need to be willing to say that as well. And so, for me, public safety has to come first, and the decision needs to follow the evidence. Thank you. Thank you, Sheriff. I mean, Commissioner Davis. Lamar, did you want to say something? No, no. Go ahead. I just want to ask, Ms. Shapiro, just for clarification, and these are actually not tax dollars. This is enterprise fund dollars, right? Correct. There are no tax dollars associated with this part of the discussion at all. Okay. I know we don't respect that clarification. Thank you. So, I mean, just for the record, her comments about tax dollars were talking about these are not tax dollars from the public. That's correct. Just want to make sure. Yep. In a way, that's kind of why I agree with what Michael Ruiz was saying. The two-year study to look at this would have to be a comprehensive study, that we would have to look at all that stuff, all that was raised by Commissioner Davis. That's what would be – that's why it takes a long time. And I agree with you. Everything moves so slow in government, but this is the type of thing that would be a multi-year thing to actually do it the right way. Can I just interject? I'm not looking to rush anything. Right. I just didn't – it's not about rushing. It's just about getting someone that has room on their plate to do it. Right. So, there's – the things that Commissioner Davis mentioned are the things that would be in this report. What type of backup would be needed? What would the size of the force need to be if there was a port authority type of police department and all that kind of stuff? So, I think that if we decided to look at that, it would need to be an agenda item to get – put this out for a bid because I think that this is a big, big undertaking with the airport and seaport. A couple other things just that I've heard along the way, I think that, again, complete lack of leadership. I've sat in the MS – most – almost all the MSD meetings with sheriffs from other parts of the state. Sometimes they say things you don't like. Sometimes the board says things back that they don't like, but they should be here so that we could have these conversations because these conversations are incredibly frustrating without having the sheriff being able to provide answers to some of this. I'm old-fashioned, like, when we look at lawyers. I know these – the sheriffs can appeal whatever they want to appeal. They can go to the state for whatever. This is all drawn in a way that's favored to the public safety provider. And, you know, I like when you go to trial. Like, you can't really appeal if you didn't object in the trial. And, you know, like, we haven't even seen the sheriff. So, you know, they asked us for more money. We gave them more money. I've put in every one of my budget requests that I send to you every year, and you guys all make fun of me, and I'm a very sensitive guy when you make fun of me. I put in there, you know, you cannot adjust the budget when you have half of the budget growing by 10%, 11%. Even this year, the sheriff got a higher increase than what our tax base grew at. And just based on math and compounding, those numbers don't work. So, I mean, I think that when we look at this, this workshop is amazing today. Through no fault of anybody in this room, this has become a very frustrating exercise. I agree with Lamar. Put this on the agenda. I want to look at 911. And I was never a proponent of taking this back under the county. I've always thought that it's better to be by the public safety. But what happened with Tallahassee is they want to push this to the sheriff anyway. They want to push this there. We were fighting with the city of Coral Springs. It was one of the things we agreed on this legislative session to let us still have this power. I'm just incredibly frustrated because I think there comes a point when you have a duty as an elected official to do some of this stuff. And there's a seat that's empty there. You want to talk about overtime? You want to talk about public records requests? I've seen reports that you have sheriff's deputies making over $400,000 a year through overtime. So there's an in-house cottage industry to keep some of these same way going, and no one's here to ask about it. I mean, McKenzie said something that I also agree with. We are a board of directors. Basically, that's how we operate as elected officials. We have a CEO, and if our CEO is not doing what's accountable to the board of directors, they handle things a little bit differently. I mean, obviously, we don't vote that CEO in, but, you know, things happen from Tallahassee all the time, and it wouldn't surprise me if things happen again in Tallahassee if you get somebody that completely will not address the ideas that they're supposed to be bringing up to their county commission. I mean, look, the governor hoisted this sheriff upon us. He was the one who appointed the sheriff here. And, I mean, somebody should be sitting there answering these questions. And I personally have no problem with the sheriff. I've spoke with him before. I've worked with him before. But is he still sheriffing? Because all I'm seeing are workout videos and videos blasting the commission. So, at some point, we've got to say we need to – what's going on as far as why aren't you here telling us what you need? If you can do what you can do, what Michael just said. I can do math. The money was there for the raises, so how come the raises weren't given? We gave the raises a few years ago, but all that money went into a training center. So, we should have the best trained sheriff deputies in the country. But when we get a mass event, it doesn't always work like that where we have the best sheriff's deputies responding in the country. I read the after-action report of the airport. It was a previous sheriff. That didn't look like the proper response from the sheriff's office. In fact, what closed the airport for two days was mistakes by the sheriff's office, which announced certain things that weren't happening and caused the collapse of every public safety officer down to the sheriff. We just had a major incident in Tamarack recently where they weren't trained appropriately, and half the staff in Tamarack had to be reprimanded in some way. So, don't tell me about training, and then when something comes up, show me your actions after. And, Commissioner, I also met with the sheriff several times in the past couple months trying to see how we can work together. I had really good meetings with the sheriff. I mean, I thought we were moving forward, and then after my last meeting, it's invisible. Don't hear from him. You can't meet with him. So, my feelings are changing to, you know, not in a positive way, but anyway, Commissioner Fisher. Yeah, and I wanted to – I'm all for the studies. I think we need to do those, and I think we need to move forward. This is my opinion, and I think we need to forward it expeditially. I think the mayor has good points. If we can get it done sooner, you know, the better for me as well. I understand your timeline, but if there's folks out there that can get it done much quicker and better, I'm all for getting those folks as soon as possible. So, I'm all in. Thank you. Just for a point of clarification, am I to take from this that you all would like us to proceed with the initiation of an RFP to do an additional analysis for the airport and seaport law? I just want to make sure I'm clear on – Sure. How long is that RFP going to take to put together? Well, we will get on it right away, and with some of the changes that we have made to the procurement process, I'm hoping that we could get through that within a year's time. I know that's not something you'd like to hear, but we will move through this expeditiously, and we'll do it as quickly as possible. It'll be under a year. It's going to take up to a year to get the RFP out? Through the whole process, not to get the initial RFP out, but to conclude the entire process so that we would have something, a selection of a consultant through a competitively solicited process. Does that – except you guys realize they're saying it's going to take a year just before we even hire anybody? We haven't even voted on it. It's still got to come to us to vote for anything. No, let's assume they vote in the next meeting. Right, so you've got to vote on it. It takes a while. We will get something together. We couldn't get a library of accountants for less than a million – you know, that's taken us more than a year. It takes a long time to go through this process. Okay, let's move on. All right, next. So, yes, personally, I'm for this. Do you need us to vote? No, this is a workshop, so there's no voting, but if there's general consensus, we will start that process and bring something back to the board. Okay. Yes, I believe I do. Yep. Mr. Mayor? Yep. Okay, I really wanted clarification also. So, I would like to hear that my colleagues do strongly believe that we need to be collaborating with the contract cities so that it's not just said and nothing happens before we start talking about educating the public. What are you educating them on specifically if you have partners in the business and you are not having conversation with that group and to see what challenges they're having. So, there can be collaboration and also the fact that the legislators are the ones that gave all that authority to law enforcement, BSO. They need to know the challenges we're having. We have not done that yet. We sit here and we have our conversations, which is good, but the folks that made the law are not in office now. And the ones that will hear us might just understand a little bit different and act accordingly with information that will educate. They don't have that information. So, let's speak to that. Commissioner Rogers, are you talking about our lobbyists? We should work together with our lobbyists, with the other cities' lobbyists, to move forward to Tallahassee? Because I'm confused. I'm not going to tell you how to do it. I'm just saying if there's no... Does anybody here understand why we'd want to work with the other cities then? That's the only thought I would have, is lobbying Tallahassee. Mr. Mayor, if I'm... I don't know if anybody else understands that. So, like, last year we had the E911 bill. We were against losing E911, where we have our county PSAPs, the way it's set up. It wasn't even a contract city. Coral Springs isn't a contract city with us. They were against losing their E911 and their PSAP. We worked together with them, and we jointly brought this to Tallahassee all the time. I'm sure, and I don't know how it works, but I'm sure there's bills up for next year as soon as they're going to do the same type of thing again, and we'll be back with those cities to do that. So, if I might help bring this in for a landing. So, there are multiple, multifaceted discussions going on here. So, what I want to just, for the public and for the board, to fully understand, as it relates to working with municipalities where there are mutual interests, we certainly do that. And we engage with our municipal partners through the Broward City Managers Group, as well as through the Broward League of Cities, which are the elected group, for the common provision of service desires that we all have. For 911, we are engaged with the legislative process, with those legislators that are actually sponsoring the bills. They have reached out to us because we are a leader in the state. We are the most regionalized system in the entire state. And so, they do come to us, and they ask for us. We've sat down with them prior to them even working on the legislation and filing the legislation. As you know, as a former legislator, that process of how a bill begins and then where it ends, there's a lot of different iterations and reasons why those legislation items change. But what we are engaged with the legislators that are writing those pieces of legislation. Ultimately, they take feedback from us, but then they can write it however they choose, and then they go and negotiate with other legislators, and then something will come out. The Florida League of Cities and the Florida Association of Counties are actively engaged in that process. As it relates to Airport Seaport, obviously, that is a different beast because it's not working with cities. And as it relates to contract cities, we are engaged with them as it relates to FIRE because there are certain contract cities, cities that employ BSO FIRE to provide those services. But for those cities that have BSO as a contract for their law enforcement, we don't interact with that because we're not discussing any kind of other law enforcement activity with a negotiation with the BSO, with the sheriff. It's only at the airport and seaport, so we wouldn't have a touchpoint with municipalities there. But for all those that are relevant, we absolutely do that, and I hope that I was able to address your questions or concerns. Right, but you went too broad. I was speaking just to the issue as it relates to how the sheriff moves around the dollars, how he's using the dollars. There's no capacity for auditing, and to share that with them, and you're telling me that is done every time we go to Tallahassee and we are challenged by the sheriff. We are informing them that we have no audit. We don't know what he's doing with the money, and all these things I'm hearing here, you're telling me that you're currently sharing with the legislatures. I don't mean the legislature's staff. I don't see you before a committee. That's when I know it's touching the legislator. You're talking to staff. I'm asking, do we use our lobbyists to send something to the legislature and mandate a conversation in a committee or one of those entities of the legislature? We're doing that, so they're aware. Yes, ma'am. You're answering my question. Thank you. So that is off the record that they already know that the sheriff is not telling us where the monies are going, and he's moving it around and applying it to helicopters, and he's applying it here and there, which is not what they intended or should want to happen. So that's all I'm asking. So you're telling me that it's being done, that they already know that the sheriff is not being audited, and we have no control? Yes, ma'am. Okay, thank you. Yes. Just to follow up on one thing that Commissioner Rogers has brought up on our lobbyists, and I say this not knowing who the teams are, but are there lobbyists that represent both Broward County and BSO? If there are, and I, again, don't know if there are any, but it is unfortunate, but I now believe that we can't have lobbyists representing both us and the county. And I say this, again, not knowing if there are any, but there is clearly a conflict now between us and the sheriff. I think the testimony has been here, and I think that you need to tell our director of government affairs that perhaps we need, you know, we seem to not be doing very well in Tallahassee. Perhaps we do need to bring on one or two additional well-connected Republican lobbying firms. I know we have multiple already, but if there are people that are representing both us and BSO, I think the time has come that we would need to part ways or, you know, hopefully if we have good lobbyists, which I believe we do, they would choose to stay with us and not the sheriff. But it is obvious to me and I think the rest of the commission that there are now so many conflicts you cannot represent both us and BSO. Can I, is there a consensus on that, or what do the other commissioners think? That's just my view, and that's why I'm asking others. If anybody wants to join in, they can join in. Yeah. No, I think that it's what Senator Geller is saying is accurate. I mean, you know, there will be a conflict over certain things, and I've watched it myself there where some of our lobbyists have represented to both sides of something. So I think it's really important that we make sure that our lobbyists know where they need to be and if they can abide by that, fine, and if not, it may not be appropriate for them to lobby for us on those issues. And we communicate that very message to our teams. Okay. Quickly, just so that we're covering all of the topics, you're all aware of the recent transitions with respect to the jails for utilities, for facilities maintenance. You all approved an item allowing the administrator to do any kind of procurement necessary while we create contracts necessary to maintain the jails going forward. A relatively quick update. We did have a counterproposal for how we were looking at approaching the onboarding of the 34 maintenance staff that BSO currently has in their budget. So we're in the midst of going back and forth for a fiscal year 27 transition. I think it's good that the CFO and I are having back and forth communications. That's a positive. It suggests that we're going to get there eventually. So the exact mechanics haven't been agreed upon yet, but we are having active communications. And we do expect that on October 1st we'll have all of the utility transitions ready to go, so we don't anticipate any challenges there at the moment. As well, today letters will be going out to all of the hospitals that provide inmate medical care to the individuals in BSO custody so that everyone is clear on the new approach to handling the billing process, and that process is moving relatively well. So I think from a jails perspective, the transitions that we hadn't anticipated are moving along pretty well, and we're expecting everything to move relatively smoothly beginning October 1st. Michael, just a quick, you talked about the hospitals. Was the Broward Sheriff's Office not paying the bills for the inmates? No, I wouldn't say that they weren't paying. So they use WellPath, which is a contractor, to manage that entire space for them, and as the bills would move through WellPath, there appeared to have been some delays in that process because it had to work its way through WellPath, then to BSO, then requesting the funds from the county. So that entire process took some while, and we actually had a, I would call it a true-up this year as part of that transition. Jennifer, how much total did we pay that we wouldn't normally have anticipated? Was it close to 11? So probably we paid $11 to $12 million. I thought there was like up to a year backlog. So there were actually bills from 23. I was just going to say, we've been almost three years. So actually BSO's vendor is responsible for this, or is it BSO? It's hard for us to tell because we weren't in the midst of their process. We would only get the actual requests for the funds to pay that off. So when we met with the CFO of Broward Health, she was quite eager to see us take over that process because she anticipates that we're going to be paying on a far more frequent basis. Next. Final item. And Fire Rescue, you're all well aware of the vote on the 22nd. We promptly notified the Sheriff's Office that the board has decided not to renew after September 30th, 2028. So they are aware. I anticipate that we'll be looking at attempting a kickoff with the Broward Sheriff's Office sometime next week. We will likely initiate some public records requests so that we can get inventories of all of their contracts, all of the equipment, so that we understand from a mechanical standpoint what that transition looks like. We'll also communicate with the union to make sure that they understand the transition process that we're looking at. Technically, we have the two-year time period between now and then to bring them on board so that we can hopefully begin no later than October 1st of 2028. If we are in a position to accelerate that process because we've made enough progress, then there will be the option for the board to utilize the termination clause, which would then shrink the time period essentially to six months. So that's something that we're keeping in mind so that if there is an opportunity to do it faster, then we'll be in a position to make that recommendation through the county administrator. Thank you, Murray. Real quick, thank you, Michael, for that. And the sooner the better for me. And if we need to use our attorney's offices to expedite, let's do what we need to do to expedite because I really don't want this to go two years. In my opinion, I think it could happen sooner because, again, it's a transition over. It's easier. So I'm just requesting administration and the attorneys work together to facilitate and to move this as quickly as possible. And we do have a working group already established. Then we have already begun that. With the county attorney's office, they've been excellent partners through this. We actually learned a lot about how to work even better during the appeal process. So we actually have a bit of a system moving forward on that. So, yeah, we'll be working very closely with the attorneys. There are a lot of layers to this. There are administrative layers. There are also a number of legal layers. The main one being the agreements with the contract cities to Commissioner Rogers' point, which is why I've remained in communication this entire time with the city managers of all the contract cities. We will likely form a working group within the Broward County City Managers Association so that we have that venue on an ongoing basis to make sure that we're keeping them up to speed and we're working with them on that front. I suspect that given the vote by the board, we will probably also be speaking with the Broward League of Cities now since the electives will probably want to hear directly from us. As to the transition period, we hadn't done that yet because there hadn't been a vote and we traditionally work staff to staff and therefore through the city managers, but I think it'll likely be time in the next four to eight weeks, depending on when the next meeting for block is, that they hear directly from us. Can I just say, as far as the Broward League? Okay, when you finish. Yeah, just a quick question. You referred to public records. Is that the way we're getting the information? I mean, there's no other way than going through public records again. I would hope that we're in a position to simply work directly with them on this front. We are in an interesting moment, at the moment. Either way, though, we'll want documentation. So whether we submit a public records request or we simply ask for it, there will be a lot of data that we will need to get from them. So mechanically, it's going to be more or less the same information. And it wouldn't hurt to understand and have those physical documents as a starting point for inventory of equipment, for a list of all of the contracts that they use for vendors, what insurance that they're carrying. There's just a lot of documentation. And so since we already have a starting point list that we began with because of the appeal, it might not be a bad thing for BSO to know exactly what we require. I don't mean that in an adversarial manner, but we have to cover all bases, right? This is not going to be a casual process. So documenting that process is probably a good thing in this case. And I want to bring something else up. So while we believe and our hope is that it will be a smooth transition, there will be some things that inadvertently will always come up of unexpected things that we'll be faced with. A good example is with this facility discussion with the jails. One would think that we might be able to just take over the existing contracts and be able to work with the folks that are doing some of the work currently under the sheriff's framework. But as you all had seen in the agenda item and that conversation, we are unable to just take over those contracts. And so some similar situations may arise with this transition as well. So those are the types of things that we need to make sure we have all the proper documentation and we have the actual contracts and all of the documentation so we can work through those things. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure as the person that's appointed to the Barrett League that I understand when you're coming what the discussion and all that is about so I'm not blindsided. Yes, ma'am. I'll make sure that after I have initial conversations with the executive director that I let you know if there's a specific meeting that's being suggested or recommended, what the topics are. Obviously, all of the commissioners would be aware at that point in time. But yes, ma'am, we'll keep you in the loop. Thank you. Commissioner Rogers. A clarification, just a question, relative to we have a budget, we have a contract that we should be paying this person X amount of dollars annually, quarterly, whatever that arrangement is. And if you don't get an invoice, what is the process? Because to be told that you did not pay for something that was due in 2023, what was the trigger? Truing up at the end of the year should be a trigger, and that should be brought to our attention. You know, there's a lot of things. I don't know how we manage this huge budget, but there are things I know from being a part of a small city that we do. Simple things that can be repeated that would catch some of these things. So I'm not buying all the sheriff's side of all of this wrong. We're responsible to collect. We're in a contract situation. You should know if you're being paid or whether or not you're paying those vendors that should be paid. So in this particular instance, if you're referring to the well path things that we were sharing, that's not a contract we're in. That is a contract that is managed, and the oversight is by the sheriff, and it's between the sheriff and well path. But we are responsible for the payment. But we only pay when we are given the invoices to pay. And so there appears to be kind of a little bit of a breakdown in that process. And since now we are going to be overseeing and managing that process, that's what Michael was saying, that Broward Health is very excited about us now being over that process because we can manage that process. It appears a lot more efficiently. Just a brief comment. So you have other bills that you are responsible for paying and you don't know when it is due to be paid so you can manage your cash flow and all the other things that goes with preparing to pay your bills, simple as your household. You don't know what the amount is, but you know that you have to do this every year, every quarter. That's all I'm saying. So now that we will be the ones overseeing that, we will know and have a direct line and be able to better address those payment issues because we have a different system in place. Okay. Mayor, just one more thing. I know Michael has been working with the BCCMA. Obviously, if you have some hiccups with the Barrett Sheriff's Office getting documents, obviously reach out to the cities. I'm sure they have the contracts directly with the Barrett Sheriff's Office. It will probably get you more information more quickly and efficiently than maybe happen to a public records request. So thank you. Anything else? Michael Ruiz, thank you. You're the best. Monica, thank you. Great job. I think we're done. This meeting is adjourned.